ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on Apr 30, 2014 14:24:06 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| She can feel the corruption in the land like a prickling of goosebumps on her skin. The hair raises on the back of her neck, and her mouth is dry. Shadows cobweb the corner of her vision. She's almost glad for the stark mundane nature of the templars chasing her. They're a familiar evil, the small and petty humans her elders always warned her about.
The darkness that clings to these mountains is more insidious. It is slick oil, glittering cruel in the light, disguised in a goblet as a dark wine, a trap for the unwary--or the deliberately blind. It makes the gorge rise in the back of her throat with memory, so Leithian focuses instead on her flight, arms pumping and heart racing as she darts across the unsteady rocks of the mountain pass.
She is a good child of the Dalish, fleet and nimble and for now, far ahead of the clumsy templars in their bulky armor, but she knows she can't outrun them forever. She doesn't want to. All she needs to do is find a place to make a stand.
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 2, 2014 1:50:03 GMT
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"oh, come on." mark hears them from several paces away. it's not that difficult when the templars had all that clanging armor on, although he supposes that templars are probably cheaper than crows.
he had been making a run to a stream for some water when his evening went a bit awry. usually mark would have appreciate the sight of a pretty young thing running in his direction. usually, they weren't being pursued by a group of mage-hunters either. familiar evil or not, mark rather liked his organs where they were.
he could turn back. he could go back to whence he came, quieter than when he arrived-
"another apostate! over there!"
there goes that option. a five foot staff on his back is a bit difficult to hide, he'll admit. mark grins and waves a little. "i don't suppose that we could talk about this--?"
even as he says this, mark draws the silverite staff from his back, the cold metal smooth in his hands. one of the templars diverts to approach him, and mark rewards him with a winter's grasp to the face. he's rather reluctant to break out the blood magic if it meant that he could still walk away with his water pail, as opposed to having to slaughter everyone who tried to throw themselves at him. templars tended to be a little more stubborn with blood mages, from his experience.
the frost slows the templar, but not for long. his face is frozen in a funny manner, and mark memorizes it for gloomy days.
still. more templars. behind him. templars behind the first. that's not good.
Leithian |  |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 2, 2014 4:52:21 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| Leithian barely spares a glance for the apostate the templars sight as she darts up the jagged outcrops of rock. He is human. He belongs to them. He's not her concern. But these templars have no hold over her or her people, no claim and no right. They'll learn that.
She settles on a boulder set and weathered with time, spinning on her heel to face the onrushing templars who have caught up as she selected her position. A few have diverted to the human, but not all, and as they advance upon her, circling warily, Leithian brings her staff down upon the rock with a resounding crack.
They had kept their distance, but not far enough. Within four meters is far too close. The hand of winter freezes most of those who would draw their swords upon her; only one moves forward still, pushing through the onslaught, and he is slowed, dulled in his movement. His sword swings clumsily and Leithian sidesteps neatly. The blade crashes against the rock and he's off-balance for a moment--she catches him the chest with the end of her staff and shoves him backwards off the boulder, where he crashes down a few yards into the dirt with the breath knocked out of him.
Behind her, one of the frozen templars has regained himself, and she can sense the shear of metal cutting through her shoulder before she even feels the white-hot sting. With a gritted ma halam, she turns around and catches him in the breastplate with stonefist, activating her draining aura at the same time. Wispy tendrils connect the two of them for a moment, a pulsing exchange of power: and then he collapses into the dust as her shoulder knits itself back together.
She's exhausted, suddenly. Her arms are iron, but Leithian raises her staff regardless and faces the two who are left before her, still crusted with ice from her earlier spell as they raise their weapons.
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 3, 2014 23:49:16 GMT
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if leithian seemed a bit uncaring to the plight of a fellow apostate, then mark didn't particularly mind.or maybe he didn't notice. enough templars had kept their attention on the girl that the stragglers weren't much of a problem. their resistance to magic is certainly a little annoying, and the second templar uses cleanse to rid the other man of the deep freeze.
mark frowns. well, he can't have that, can he? he takes a gamble and waits for the templars to approach him. he's not too worried about being skewered by their swords before making his move, not when their armor weighed a ton. he waits before blasting all three templars with a cone of cold. two of them freeze. one of them doesn't.
"andraste's knickers" is all that mark has to say about that. he forces himself away from the templar's sword, only to be bashed in the arm by the shield in his other hand. mark fights the numbing pain in his arm. he doesn't need both arms to throw a winter's grasp. the templar falls, finally.
he looks to the other mage with interest as he stoops to pick up his overturned bucket. looks like he'll have to make another run, but damn that grasp of winter wasn't half-bad.
"where'd you learn how to cast like that?" one of the templars actually turns to see his fallen comrades, giving leithian an opening if she needed it. the other was presumably too experienced for such mistakes.
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 7, 2014 20:30:22 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| One of the templars looks back at his fallen compatriots, at the apostate behind him as well as before him, and Leithian is grateful. She'd been running from them for some time before she stood to fight, and she's not willing to waste anymore of her reserves when she has to. She's Dalish. She was training to become a hunter before the magic ever woke in her.
Her staff sweeps the legs out from under the faltering templar and she somersaults forward off the boulder to follow him, landing with a crunch on his flailing body as the senior templar lunges after her. He's a moment too slow; Leithian balances, one heel perched delicately on the fallen man's face, and petrifies the other templar with a blank expression.
She looks at the other apostate properly for the first time.
"Nowhere you could learn it," she says. "I appreciate your assistance."
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 8, 2014 3:09:09 GMT
| primal spells are the bread and butter of any combative mage, but mark figures that isn't what the girl means. huh, maybe she's just like him, although mark wouldn't really bet money on it. never mind that he barely even has the money to be gambling.
"a fringe mage, huh." mark is careful about accusing any apostate of being a maleficar, and she's a little feisty to be an elven saarebas. the lack of blood writing throws him off a bit. "interesting bit of healing you've got there. i'm hardly the expert, but it's not creation magic, i take it?" the aura seemed downright vampiric to him.
"you were pretty good yourself" so maybe he wouldn't have been caught in all of this if she had decided to go running in a different direction, but even he can appreciate a bit of flair in sending templars tumbling into the ground. "and one less templar is good news for the rest of us, now that their leashes are off and all."
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 8, 2014 5:18:10 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| There's a ring of dirt on the edge of her staff from the boulder, a streak against the gleaming dahl'amythal wood. Leithian rubs at it carefully with her sleeve, making sure there's not a trace left before she speaks.
"I'm not a fringe mage," she says, her mouth twisted. "If the templars had known, they would not have touched me. There is an agreement. Even in these times, there is an agreement. I do not belong to their jurisdiction. They are human."
She hesitates, reluctant, and then adds: "No, it wasn't creation magic."
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 8, 2014 6:09:31 GMT
| mark blinks. since when did templars give a shit about any mage, elven or otherwise?
she speaks to him with such a strong sense of pride, and that is when he realizes.
"you're dalish?" he murmurs aloud. mark did not have very many encounters with the clans for obvious reasons, although he would always keep an ear out for any groups who stayed near human settlements to trade. it was often easier to get a bargain from the dalish than the humans. or at least, a trade that mark considered fair.
a more important matter occurs to him. "... i didn't think that i would meet any dalish this far out." he doubts that there are even enough shrubbery out here to support a clan.
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 8, 2014 20:45:52 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| "You should not expect to meet any Dalish ever, shemlen," Leithian says. "We avoid dealings with humans unless necessary. A human mage is barely better than a human hunter, should he stumble across our camp."
She steps off the templar body she's standing on, grinding down with her heel for a moment as she does so to break his nose, and slings her staff across her back, turning away from the other mage.
"You ask far too many questions."
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 9, 2014 0:36:13 GMT
| right.
"sure. that's why you were running from a group of templars, huh." things ended well for the two of them, but it still begged the question on why she was being pursued in the first place. "well, i get that templars are going after a lot of the wrong people these days, but i thought that pissing off an entire group of dalish hunters would have meant something to them"
in a modern au, this is probably the part where mark is supposed to look at her sternly like a proper adult and ask where her parents are. this isn't a modern au, and he doesn't always do what he's supposed to be doing.
"can't help it. circle enchanters were trained as scholars." piss poor scholars sometimes, he thinks, with all the restrictions sanctioned by the chantry.
mark shrugs. "no one's stopping you from asking questions either."
though he suspects that she really doesn't care to know.
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 9, 2014 14:57:23 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| "Do I look Dalish to you? Whatever the human notion of Dalish is? They had no idea what I was. I appear as one of your scholarly Circle elves whenever I'm seen on my own. It is unfortunate, but that's all it is."
She shrugs at his own comment.
"I lack the intrinsic human desire to possess everything, regardless of my right to it, to have any questions about you or your magic."
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 9, 2014 17:14:56 GMT
| there certainly are a lot of mages who are only too eager to dodge his questions as of late. mark probably should have expected it, but he would have rather earned their suspicions first. like substituting an apprentice's stock of elfroot for deathroot for example. good times.
"your loss." he says rather absentmindedly. except there's something else that mark finds a little more interesting. "how much information do you have a right to if you make no attempt to possess it?" it isn't rhetorical. he is genuinely curious, especially towards a mage who has not felt the circle's direct influence. a rarity, these days.
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 12, 2014 17:50:25 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| The mountains weigh down on her. The dead templars weigh down on her. This human mage, with his easy answers and his easier questions, weighs down on her. Leithian can feel all of it like an iron bar against her shoulder.
The words rip out of her, balanced and clinical, with none of the bitterness that swells in her throat.
"We have a right to what we created. We keep what we made and recover what we can of what was taken from us. I have no interest in anything else. I understand that it might be a foreign concept, given the relative inability of humans to innovate rather than steal."
mark amell
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Post by mark amell on May 15, 2014 5:51:56 GMT
| mark decides that he rather likes her answer.
"no, i think that's a sensible attitude to have." after all, he's been chasing quite a bit of his birthright himself. although mark feels much less like a 'we' and much more like an 'i'. does he have a right to the legacy of a family that he has never known? will he know when the time comes?
"how can knowledge be stolen?" it is a foreign concept to him. whether it was book learning or practical experience, mark never felt a particular ownership over any of it. the apostate barely had a name. culture is lost to him on a personal basis. magic is his science, and that was all there is to it. "doesn't innovation occur when an idea situates itself in a new environment, intentionally or not?"
Leithian | |
coded by electric of gs |
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ELF
“ a growing recognition of the genius of birds. ”
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Post by Leithian on May 15, 2014 14:17:54 GMT
the years of rice and salt
| Is this what they teach in their shem Circles? A parroted academic justification of their deeds. Leithian has never considered herself a violent person, but she understands now the thrumming desire for broken bones, spilled blood, that had coated the voices of her elders when they spoke.
The hatred, of course, she had always understood.
"When they beat the magic out of your people, when they take your books and your learning and all you have created and then take from you even the ability to read what was written and speak the language of your fathers, when they set fire to all you built until you have nothing left but memory and no understanding of what you are, or how you were: that is how knowledge is stolen from you, human. I thought your Circles were vaunted halls of learning. Do they not even teach you your own history, these days?"
mark amell
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LAIKA OF GS! |
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