faderift | Sixteen books on magic spells

WHO: Hermione Granger and rifters (or anyone who saw her note and wants to chat)
WHAT: Adelaide is having Hermione find out about magic in other worlds by interviewing rifters ~~for SCIENCE~~.
WHEN: Mid-Drakonis and onwards. There's no deadline on acquiring knowledge!
WHERE: The default is Skyhold's library, otherwise note in the subject line if your character would have arranged to meet her somewhere else.
NOTES: Nothing comes to mind; will change if necessary.

Anyone frequenting the library has probably become used to the curly-haired young girl who's claimed a small alcove as her own. She can usually be found sitting in the corner, nose buried in a book as her brow furrows, attempting to bridge the gap between her worldview and that of Thedas'. It's not always an easy task, and sometimes names and dates get jumbled, which is why she can sometimes be found just a few steps away at the nearest table, books and journals and bits of parchment scattered about as she tries to make sense out of all the reading she's done.

Still, what at first glance appears to be a mess is actually rather organized, and for however engrossed she seems to be in her work, she's always been happy to talk to new people. After all, each conversation counts towards research, even if it isn't in the particular field she's been asked to study. Go ahead and ask around for her if you don't know where to find her; chances are she's hard to miss, and many will be able to point out the inquisitive rifter if she happens to be around.

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Hermione was silent for a long moment, taking that all in. At length, she murmured, "I would have thought it would be lonelier to be immortal." Shrugging slightly, she acknowledged, "But then, immortality in my world comes with a horrible price."

She's glad to get back to a topic that she's feels more comfortable with, and Hermione shakes her head in turn, sitting up straight and poised to take notes. "Yes, please, by all means. I'd like to hear about the sorts of difficulties other people have experienced in attempting to do magic here, and what work-arounds, if any, that have been developed."

"Perhaps," she said, a half-smile tinged with sadness on her lips, "it is simply lonely to be separated from those who are as you are." Or were.

Lenneth shook her head in an attempt to banish the slight melancholy, then surveyed the floor before getting up and moving the chair she'd been sitting in to grant a bit more space.

"There is one other skill I have regained since coming here, but it has no visible outcome, so this shall be the best example," she said. The valkyrie frowned slightly in concentration--she'd not quite managed an effortless cast yet--and then a cool blue light coalesced around the fingers of her right hand, which she drew back to her hip, then arced out and down in a tossing motion. There was a high crystalline sound as the light shot along her fingertips and continued to the floor; where it touched, a clear crystal structure of a similar cool blue grew quickly to just below knee height.

Lenneth looked pleased with herself.

"It will support weight, or it may be shattered and the pieces used for--" She frowned, tried to think of a reason "--whatever you wish crystal pieces for," she finished lamely. "They will float on water as ice may, but it is not ice. If cast on a surface, this crystal forms, but upon a living thing it will surround and trap it... until it breaks free. There is one thing else it may do, but I must destroy it to do so." She paused then, in the case that Hermione wanted to look at it before she did so.

"That's... certainly true," Hermione agreed, trying not to think too hard about it. She was lonely, but she'd much rather not swell on it if she could help it.

She listened to Lenneth, trying not to be too disappointed by the thought of there being only two skills she'd apparently regained, likening it to the thought of Hermione only reacquiring two spells. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to live like that, not in a place as dangerous as Thedas, but she didn't say as much, only focusing on the example at hand.

Having never seen anything like these crystals, Hermione first assumed that they were ice, at least until Lenneth told her otherwise. She wanted to examine them, but given that she didn't exactly have any of the sort of tools she'd need to properly examine unfamiliar magic, she instead quickly jotted down the characteristics as Lenneth described them before asking, "And what is that other thing?"

Taking Hermione's curiosity as permission, she repeated the spell twice more in quick succession--the first caused the crystal to begin growing, and the second, in a small flash of light, to powder it. It began to drift very slowly floorward as a scintillating cloud. Pretty, but not of any seeming use until Lenneth gathered her skirts, hopped nimbly above it, and landed as if it were as solid as the nearby table. She "rode" it down to the floor, the particles fading and disappearing as they touched down, leaving no hint that anything had ever been there. Lenneth smoothed her skirts and pulled the chair out to sit again.

"It can carry you farther, if there is space for it to do so," she gestures toward the railing that separated their second story balcony from the rotunda below, "A small thing, but versatile.

"As far as the rest--well." she lifts her shoulders slightly, then drops them. "I had few skills that could be considered magic to begin with. I am no true sorcerer."

Hermione wasn't sure what she was expecting, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't that. She couldn't even be entirely sure what she was seeing until it was already over, after which she frowned a little as she kept scanning the area for the remnants of Lenneth's spell.

"Versatile, yes," she murmured before turning her attention to Lenneth again, smiling a little. "Have you tried relearning other spells, or have you simply been using this one in whatever flexible way you can manage? I'm curious as to whether magic can be fully relearned or even altered here."

"For now? This. The others..." Lenneth narrowed her eyes slightly in thought, "may be considered magic, but I do not think they could be called 'spells'. I admit though that I have not been forceful in my attempts to regain my abilities." She frowned. "I experienced something the first time I attempted magic in this world. Something blocked me from it; like a wall, or a shield. Angered, I tried harder. It caused a great pain in my mark, a crackling of energy. I stopped there, but a young elf experienced its final result and, without intending to, opened a rift within Skyhold some time ago. It was said she was practicing magic at the time.

"I believe if those of us with shards attempt a spell too forcibly that we are at risk of such a thing. I also no-longer believe that it is the shard that was preventing me, but something the Thedans have deemed 'the Veil'."

Hermione hesitated, frowning slightly. She'd heard about a mage who'd inadvertently opened a rift in Skyhold while practicing magic, and she absently brushed her fingers over her left palm as she wondered over whether she'd ever experienced anything like that before while attempting to relearn her magic. She didn't think so, and she certainly wasn't the type to continue doing something even when it hurt or could obviously cause some rather large problems.

"The Veil is supposedly a barrier between this world and the next," Hermione allows carefully. "But I don't know that I would say I feel any sort of real barrier when I do magic here. It's more like... the energy is getting circumvented somehow. Deflected, to the point where the spell's outcome isn't what it should be, or it doesn't go where I'm aiming it, or it's harder to get it to do exactly what it's supposed to do. So I suppose that's where the 'block' is for me,even if it doesn't really feel that way, if that makes sense."

Sixteen books on magic spells

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