VI. SEMI-CLOSED.

[liberalum]

WHO: Dorian Pavus; Sabine; Marcus Kane; and the people that happen to them.
WHAT: Purely a catch all to cover off the next month.
WHEN: Mid-Guardian through mid-Drakonis.
WHERE: Skyhold, Emprise du Lion, and beyond.
NOTES: This is a catch-all for pre-planned threads, rather than open prompts. PM or plurk me if you'd like to do something!

Comments

inquisition camp, emprise du lion. clarke griffin.

[liberalum]

[ The larger Inquisition camps are a bustle of activity most of the time, but none so much as before a battle is brewing. Tomorrow, the company will press on to Suledin Keep in the ongoing effort to purge this icy, ruinous wasteland of Corypheus' corruptive touch. For now, the sun is high in a cloudy sky, and training grounds have been segmented off and away from the rest of Cullen's soldiers, occupied by mages that duel with one another, share stories, repair their staves.

Oftentimes, Dorian manages to net some company -- from experienced apostates who wish to test their wild talent against his own refinement, through to young Circle mages who've never used magic to hurt anyone in their life. Sometimes he duels, often he teaches, but it's always training, always self-betterment.

He's alone, currently, but warming himself by going through a specific set of motions. His staff is polished black wood and serpentstone, and the air hums, a touch energised, at each measured, controlled swoop, making the shapes he will make in battle tomorrow, only picking up speed when momentum is called for, but otherwise practicing each one with slow deliberation. The dirt and snow beneath his feet scuff along beneath turning heels and pointing toes, and he is silent save for the swoop of staff through the air and the flap of black wool. ]

bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

[levered]

[ Clarke has used magic to hurt someone, in her life. But it was a haphazard thing with no art, no precision, fire and blood straight from their hands. She was still an apprentice when the Circles fell, and she holds a staff like—

Like she pulled it from a corpse and was never shown what to do with it before she was set loose on a battlefield. Basically.

Like that.

She's walked by before, while he was working with other people, and turned her head to watch without stopping, and she's listened by the fires and learned that he's—she's told—a magister, which shouldn't make her feel safer but somehow does. Who would he be to judge. Not that she's planning to give him the opportunity. She watches now at a spectator's distance, with her fingers pink and chapped from the cold where they're exposed by her cut-off gloves and wrapped in a tight, amateurish grip around a plain, amateurish staff.

She waits for a pause. ]

Will you show me?

[liberalum]

[ Dorian glances over, expecting to recognise whoever has approached him, and doesn't, thus netting her an added glance up and down that seeks out clues as well as such things as-- ]

Keep that level, [ he says, shifting his staff into an idling hold that is, nevertheless, more precise than the absent grip the young lady has on hers. ] Like so.

[ A tip of his head invites her nearer, into the vaguely defined space that constitutes the training ground. He's seen, by now, his fare share of Circle mages, young academics who are better versed in books and Chantry quotes than they are at holding the primary weapon that makes a mage, and so, he tells Clarke's story to himself before she can offer her name.

Not that he won't ask for it, too. ]

What's that you have to work with? [ The staff she's holding seems fairly stock standard, to him, but perhaps its imbued with specific qualities, cut from something that favours fire over water, ice over spirit. ]