They are fortunate, in a way, that this creature appears to be entirely alone.
Bound in electricity, limbs broken by rocks, it is still a terrifying, dangerous thing. The sizzle of burnt blood sears the air. Derrica's hand shoots out, draws a shimmering wreath of energy from the air and wreathes Marcus in it. A barrier, to deflect whatever retaliation he draws when he surely moves forward to engage more fully with this creature.
"Left," she directs him, as the cage flexes and constricts at the turn of her fingers in the air. The lightening bolt she brings down is distraction, meant to give Marcus an opening as those claws scrabble through the air towards Derrica.
He moves as she says that, as if she'd released a bow string.
A physical launching off, long strides that rush in, before the third step lifts further into the air and his corporeal form collapses in roiling smoke, in which contains a rush of embers, and the motes of protective magic as Marcus carries with him her Barrier. Distance is eaten up in the blink of an eye, a good spell for a hasty escape.
Or a hasty confrontation. Smoke trails off armor, the edge of his blade, as solid foot finds earth, and Marcus swings his staff. A coppery smear of light trails after, cleaving iron edge into writhing demon flash which connects with both a flash of ice, a shimmer of energy that seems to make the blow land all the more firmly, and then the simple connection of a heavy blade finding its mark.
The fear demon swings wildly, claws hooked. Marcus turns his staff, takes the hit, a shimmer of Derrica's magic keeping him on his feet. A pulse of fire ripples through runes, scorching across the demon.
They have done this before. She has seen Marcus fight before. (She has been in opposition to him on a battlefield before.) The operation is not new to her, and she understands what is needed.
Marcus is so close, as he should be. As his abilities require, really. He can do such damage when crowding his target. But it means Derrica is the one who must distract, keep the creature turning and turning so Marcus can utilize the gleaming blade of his stave and the flares of elemental magic at his disposal.
When Derrica draws the head of her stave through the air, six pulses of energy blur into existance, flying forward to make contact. They impact over and over, tearing the demon round in the purple-sparking cage Derrica has enclosed it in. The claws lash as is shrieks, seeking purchase any way it can accomplish.
A battle with one mage is chaos enough. Two, and it's a mess of whorling colour and light, of run-off energy and confusion.
And it's possible to get used to it, to stay the instinct to flinch from the snap of electricity and the brightness of pulses of energy. Marcus sees the demon reel back from where damaging magic scours across its side, peeling back leather hide to the black sinewy layers beneath.
Marcus catches his sense of balance, reels back, and runs his blade deep into that open wound.
Black ichor burns into acrid smoke off super-heated blade. The demon's howls hits a higher pitch. Another confusing layer of magic, a tornado of something like heat waves, crackling with arcane potential, that does nothing extremely obvious in all the more violent actions being taken, but seems to catch at the fear demon, seems to rake across it invisibly.
It is dying. The wild swing of its claws is the twitch of a dying thing, but it does pass finally through snapping bars of lightning, seems to unhinge from its own shoulder and elbow with a snap of tendon and bone just as it can rake sharp edges against Marcus' arm and shoulder.
Armor must absorb the most of it, because there's no immediate flinch back or buckle. A grimace, and then a twist, wrenching loose his blade in a movement that that spatters demon ichor in a wild arc.
With only the two of them casting, Derrica is very aware of the smoke-tinged crackle of Marcus' magic. It is specific to him. It is easier to draw it from the air, let it supplant her own ability.
He is so close. There is nothing for it; Marcus' magic lends itself to this, and he has never shown any inclination to amend that. When those claws find momentary purchase, scraping across armor, seeking purchase there at his shoulder, Derrica feels how her breath catches.
The next volley of energy, blue and purple and searing hot, aggravate Marcus' work. The deep slice of the blade is torn wider by the impact. The guttural scream of protest, followed by gnashing fury, is to be expected. Any thing so cornered would lash out, shriek until it was snuffed out.
Still, her off hand stretches out. Turns in the air, drawing up a sheet of magic to swathe Marcus in once more, for all the good it might do him.
"Again!" is likely unnecessary. Marcus knows his business, whether or not she is shouting encouragement from a distance.
That blur of arcane wind thickens, streams off of the fear demon like wisps of smoke. As Derrica casts her Barrier into it, she might have a sense of the connecting tether in the moment of cast of something pulling, draining.
But the spell takes, in the same moment that all signs of Marcus' magic fall away, save for the runes that glow on his staff. At the next lashing out, Marcus ducking aside, claws rake against nothing where a flash of light repels the strike completely. Enough for Marcus to carve his blade up under one long limb, and then around again into that open wound, and this time, the orange-glow of the tip emerges out the other side.
With a snarl of noise, Marcus levers the demon down into a thrashing mess amongst the tall grass. Raises his staff up as he pushes the demon off the end of it with a boot, and brings it back down again.
That ripple of something, a siphoning quality hooking into the edges of the spell. Making her push harder, exert more energy to wreathe Marcus in a barrier.
It is not immediately clear to her whether something is wrong, when Marcus' spellwork drops. The runes burn still, even when the demon is a twitching, oozing corpse on the grass. The ichor of its blood is scorching the earth, staining everything it touches black.
And it is quiet, apart from the slap of footsteps as Derrica hastens down to him.
"Let me see," she is saying already, slightly breathless even with sparks and lightening leaping between the locks of her hair, along the curve of her neck. "Are you alright?"
After an irritated movement that dislodges blade from a demon corpse beginning to sink into the earth as unstable sludge, Marcus roams in the opposite direction, a restless pacing motion designed to rid himself of his own adrenaline. Grass hissing against armor, folding underfoot. A sort of plodding out of the sharp sensation of an injury opened between overlapped metal and leather.
But he hears Derrica's advance, her voice, gusting out a breath and turning, moving to meet here some of the way. His expression is tense but far from agonised, rolling his struck shoulder as he stops for her.
"Aye," Marcus says, although it's more a sound than a word, panted out of him. Lifts a hand to reach for her, fingers twitching on nerve-instinct at the mild snap and bite of electricity, a thing he pushes through to curl fingers around her arm. "I'm alright."
"Let me see," she repeats, insistent. The electricity sparking around her quiets by degrees, soothed by the wrap of his fingers but not dispelled entirely. "Did it draw blood?"
A bruise would be preferable. Easier smoothed away with a pass of her palm, if he would allow it. But the kind of gouge claws leave behind worries her. The ichor eating away the earth alongside them worries her, in combination with that possibility.
But Marcus lets his staff drop beside him, a lazy kind of toss aside, runes slowly dimming and then diminishing entirely once the weapon leaves his hand. There, unbuckling some complicated attachment of the leather that protects his shoulders, letting this flip backwards to reveal the dark blue linen of his shirt beneath.
There, a tearing of fabric with a hint of blood, and pale skin beneath. Marcus helps with his other hand in tugging cloth aside for her inspection, where the impact of the strike doesn't show up the black and blue it will be tomorrow, but does show a thin pink line where a laceration has already been halfway healed.
"I can heal what's left of it," she tells him, fingers coming to rest at the battle-warmed surface of leathers beneath the opening. "You don't need to carry it back with you."
Looking up to him, eyes moving over his face. Finding traces of exertion, perhaps deeming whatever she finds there acceptable. Mendable.
"Do you think that's the only one?"
They had only been made aware of the one roaming demon, but that doesn't mean there's no possibility of others.
Marcus nods his permission for this first thing as he gets his breath back. There is a prickled quality to his flesh of a hasty and imprecise healing, just enough to stave off acidic or poisonous intrusions, just enough to knit skin closed. Something in that tug of magical energy Derrica had felt pull at her Barrier, in the blinking out of Marcus' magic.
A trade, of kinds. A constant checking and balancing of magical ability, protection, physical ability, more entropic than the healing she recognises.
"It's not usual," Marcus says, as she administers to him. "But may it was the worst of them, if any others've gone unnoticed."
He returns his hand to her arm, resting there, feeling the last of prickling energy of her magic cooling back down, replaced with something else.
The warmth of his hand coupled with the assurance as to his well being is enough, for the moment. They're in the open, and they aren't entirely certain the job is complete.
She can look him over properly when they've finished, and made their way back to whatever hayloft or attic room or, if they are unlucky, tent serving as their lodging for the evening. Her fingers smooth over now-unblemished skin, before she gives a nod.
"Yes, we should."
Here, she brushes his fingers aside so that she might secure the leather plate herself.
"This one left tracks, it shouldn't difficult to trace back."
The odds of finding something gruesome left behind, high. But they might deal with that too, if they have the opportunity.
He lets her, hand hovering initially as if to locate a job for it to do, but eventually resting against his breastplate as she ably navigates the buckles involved in securing the more flexible leather. Chin tucked down, watching her hands work, just for the sake of it. The slight itch of healing, and whatever other quality of response that occurs at the feeling of Derrica's fingers on his skin.
Nods to her. Picks up his staff out from the grass, once she's done.
They have their horses not too far away, who are making much of the springtime bounty of Free March greenery, unbothered by the distant sounds of demon screams and flung magic, save for maybe some ear swivels in that direction to determine those sounds would stay distant.
Likely, before they'd found each other, Marcus and Derrica would be walking at an amiable six feet apart. Here, without really intending it, Marcus stays near, as if by gravitational pull, keeping them well within arms reach. He doesn't have to speak up too loudly, then, to say, "I think I'll make it out of my time with Riftwatch with less scars I might have had otherwise."
No credit to his insistence on melee combat, is what his glance to her suggests.
Of course, she is familiar with the jagged scar across his face. It has occurred to her that if he carries that wound, there will be others to accompany it. Perhaps less visible, obscured from daily view, but inevitable that they exist.
"We might find you plate to wear," is a little joke. Plate doesn't lend itself to the way Marcus moves, even if the protection it affords may deflect the injuries he attracts in return.
He is so close that it is very convenient to lay a hand on his forearm, as if she needs to prompt his attention. There is a little flicker of surprise, however misplaced, at finding herself already so clearly in full possession of it. (A marker of how things have shifted: the nearness of him, the specificity of his attention—)
"We've more healers to our name than most places," she assesses, though in the same breath adds, "And I prefer traveling with you, when we have work to be done."
Yes, they have many capable healers. It is not quite the same as the way she attends his injuries, with a very particular kind of attention.
"Find me plate to wear, and you'll have killed the demon yourself by the time I get to him."
It is probably true that there has been a small yet marked shift in his manner around her, more since that day riding to Ostwick than the party itself. An uncharitable interpretation might be that his attention is only motivated by the promise of what else they might share, but the truth of it is simply finding welcome, and less inclination towards the distance necessary between even good friends who are colleagues.
Marginally quicker to begin conversation, rather than waiting to receive it. Here, this nearness, knowing she would welcome it, or breach the gap with her hand on his arm. His arm folds to accommodate it, as though they were walking the halls of the Gallows rather than windswept, demon-infested field.
Well. Perhaps not the halls of the Gallows, not yet. He knows he would like to.
"The other healers we have don't wear your concern half as well."
Knowing that perhaps her concern is more frustration than comfort to those she directs it towards.
Hooking her hand securely into the bend of his elbow, they proceed forward more closely knit together.
"Did you teach yourself to fight this way?" shifts them slightly from the easy, teasing lilt of their conversation thus far. She hasn't asked. But she knows his reputation, has seen him fight. Has felt it when all that strength has been directed towards her, and how insurmountable it felt to survive it.
Who had taught him to use his ability that way? Was it so different in the south, when Derrica had grown up in Dairsmuid with the barest capabilities for combat?
She asks her question, and first he nods, before reflecting.
"By necessity. Anyone without magic, fighting mages, knows to move in close. We needed some of us willing to stand between them and those who couldn't fight that way, and my Circle produced no Knight-Enchanters. I don't know that I taught myself anything beyond trusting that the mages behind me would protect me, and staying on my feet."
But it's different, now, he knows. Rushing in, doing more than acting as a shield. It's why Marcus presses on, and adds, "I learned more from friends I'd made, after. Apostates. And the spellwork is new."
This, she feels in her chest. A sharp thing, almost a knife of feeling in reaction to what he describes.
It is not a surprise, really. Only the details of it, not the outcome. Of course he did this. Of course he made himself into a shield.
Her fingers tighten around his elbow.
"You're very brave," she murmurs, more noting it herself than telling him what he must already know. Was he ever frightened, or did it come easy to him? "I wanted to do that, when I was very young. But the Enchanters never thought a healer should be that close to anything that might keep them from their duty."
And it had always been very clear to her what her duty was, even before the Annulment, when a battle was a far off fantasy, improbable and unlikely.
Maybe he senses something in her murmur, his other hand coming to lay over hers as they walk together. Does not dispute this assessment of his bravery—because he supposes that's so—but does set about thinking of what a more truthful framing of this information might be.
He isn't quick to get there, listening instead. "There's wisdom to that," he offers, mildly. "But there's a wisdom to knowing how to defend yourself, if you must."
It's not as though Marcus has forgotten the things she's been through, and so if his comment grazes against those recollections, it's only because there is only so much two mages speaking can do to step around the realities of their own history.
So he adds, "It might have been brave, but it was also satisfying. Standing in place, you know. There were plenty of times prior to that when swinging my staff at someone could only be a fond fantasy."
A tightening, there and gone in the span of a breath, in her face.
Yes, it would have been better if she'd been more adept at defending. Not just herself, but the others. Maybe she would not have been alone in her escape if she had been more skilled.
She has thought this before. Felt some quiet, guilty bitterness for it, and long since let it go.
All her teachers, they had taught her as best as they knew how. Who could have foreseen what had come to them?
"It doesn't diminish it," she tells him. "I understand some of what it must have been like, to be able to push back."
The southern Circles were cruel. She has had all the ways of their cruelty explained to her, demonstrated time and again when they speak together and she sees all the ways her life was different from theirs.
is the kind of agreement that comes with recognising a close call. There was a wave of newly-freed southern mages who were immediately drunk on new found power, and Marcus cannot say he didn't sympathise. Didn't feel its potential edge, the way so much anger suddenly given outlet could twist around. His thumb smooths over her knuckles.
Feeling her tension, in some small way, the distant shapes of things unsaid. He knows her well enough (and understands it well enough) to guess at their dimensions, a little.
"Better we never needed to learn," he offers, after some steps. "But you're good at it. Quick, strong. Did you come by your lightning, at Dairsmuid?"
She has spoken of this on the crystals, the experience softened down to soothe rather than convey the whole of the experience. It would frighten people, she knows, if she gave voice to what it felt like in truth to wrench lightening down from the sky. Bending an element to her will, and sending it onward to strike down those who would do her and her people harm.
"I was very small," she tells him. "I would make sparks dance on my hands, they said. I almost remember it."
But it's the kind of memory that is cobbled together from retellings, she thinks. It is only partly hers.
"I had to wrestle with it, as I grew. It didn't come as easily as the rest."
Whether Marcus likes it or not, he's sure, is far from the point. And what that means, to like it, to know some adrenalised thrill at the sound of it, crackling energy and bright white flash, the sort of primal danger that should make the animal in him, as it should in anyone, flinch back, but knowing so well he needn't—well, he wouldn't know where to begin in articulating it, strolling with her.
So, I like it will have to do, near-muttered and a little self-deprecating for how unhelpful a comment it is. It is a complicated thing, wielding the kinds of magic that have justified their histories. And present. Perhaps future.
"I had some difficulties when I was young, as well. I don't know that I properly mastered anything until I was grown."
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Bound in electricity, limbs broken by rocks, it is still a terrifying, dangerous thing. The sizzle of burnt blood sears the air. Derrica's hand shoots out, draws a shimmering wreath of energy from the air and wreathes Marcus in it. A barrier, to deflect whatever retaliation he draws when he surely moves forward to engage more fully with this creature.
"Left," she directs him, as the cage flexes and constricts at the turn of her fingers in the air. The lightening bolt she brings down is distraction, meant to give Marcus an opening as those claws scrabble through the air towards Derrica.
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A physical launching off, long strides that rush in, before the third step lifts further into the air and his corporeal form collapses in roiling smoke, in which contains a rush of embers, and the motes of protective magic as Marcus carries with him her Barrier. Distance is eaten up in the blink of an eye, a good spell for a hasty escape.
Or a hasty confrontation. Smoke trails off armor, the edge of his blade, as solid foot finds earth, and Marcus swings his staff. A coppery smear of light trails after, cleaving iron edge into writhing demon flash which connects with both a flash of ice, a shimmer of energy that seems to make the blow land all the more firmly, and then the simple connection of a heavy blade finding its mark.
The fear demon swings wildly, claws hooked. Marcus turns his staff, takes the hit, a shimmer of Derrica's magic keeping him on his feet. A pulse of fire ripples through runes, scorching across the demon.
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Marcus is so close, as he should be. As his abilities require, really. He can do such damage when crowding his target. But it means Derrica is the one who must distract, keep the creature turning and turning so Marcus can utilize the gleaming blade of his stave and the flares of elemental magic at his disposal.
When Derrica draws the head of her stave through the air, six pulses of energy blur into existance, flying forward to make contact. They impact over and over, tearing the demon round in the purple-sparking cage Derrica has enclosed it in. The claws lash as is shrieks, seeking purchase any way it can accomplish.
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And it's possible to get used to it, to stay the instinct to flinch from the snap of electricity and the brightness of pulses of energy. Marcus sees the demon reel back from where damaging magic scours across its side, peeling back leather hide to the black sinewy layers beneath.
Marcus catches his sense of balance, reels back, and runs his blade deep into that open wound.
Black ichor burns into acrid smoke off super-heated blade. The demon's howls hits a higher pitch. Another confusing layer of magic, a tornado of something like heat waves, crackling with arcane potential, that does nothing extremely obvious in all the more violent actions being taken, but seems to catch at the fear demon, seems to rake across it invisibly.
It is dying. The wild swing of its claws is the twitch of a dying thing, but it does pass finally through snapping bars of lightning, seems to unhinge from its own shoulder and elbow with a snap of tendon and bone just as it can rake sharp edges against Marcus' arm and shoulder.
Armor must absorb the most of it, because there's no immediate flinch back or buckle. A grimace, and then a twist, wrenching loose his blade in a movement that that spatters demon ichor in a wild arc.
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He is so close. There is nothing for it; Marcus' magic lends itself to this, and he has never shown any inclination to amend that. When those claws find momentary purchase, scraping across armor, seeking purchase there at his shoulder, Derrica feels how her breath catches.
The next volley of energy, blue and purple and searing hot, aggravate Marcus' work. The deep slice of the blade is torn wider by the impact. The guttural scream of protest, followed by gnashing fury, is to be expected. Any thing so cornered would lash out, shriek until it was snuffed out.
Still, her off hand stretches out. Turns in the air, drawing up a sheet of magic to swathe Marcus in once more, for all the good it might do him.
"Again!" is likely unnecessary. Marcus knows his business, whether or not she is shouting encouragement from a distance.
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But the spell takes, in the same moment that all signs of Marcus' magic fall away, save for the runes that glow on his staff. At the next lashing out, Marcus ducking aside, claws rake against nothing where a flash of light repels the strike completely. Enough for Marcus to carve his blade up under one long limb, and then around again into that open wound, and this time, the orange-glow of the tip emerges out the other side.
With a snarl of noise, Marcus levers the demon down into a thrashing mess amongst the tall grass. Raises his staff up as he pushes the demon off the end of it with a boot, and brings it back down again.
No magic, just a violent finishing stab.
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It is not immediately clear to her whether something is wrong, when Marcus' spellwork drops. The runes burn still, even when the demon is a twitching, oozing corpse on the grass. The ichor of its blood is scorching the earth, staining everything it touches black.
And it is quiet, apart from the slap of footsteps as Derrica hastens down to him.
"Let me see," she is saying already, slightly breathless even with sparks and lightening leaping between the locks of her hair, along the curve of her neck. "Are you alright?"
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But he hears Derrica's advance, her voice, gusting out a breath and turning, moving to meet here some of the way. His expression is tense but far from agonised, rolling his struck shoulder as he stops for her.
"Aye," Marcus says, although it's more a sound than a word, panted out of him. Lifts a hand to reach for her, fingers twitching on nerve-instinct at the mild snap and bite of electricity, a thing he pushes through to curl fingers around her arm. "I'm alright."
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A bruise would be preferable. Easier smoothed away with a pass of her palm, if he would allow it. But the kind of gouge claws leave behind worries her. The ichor eating away the earth alongside them worries her, in combination with that possibility.
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But Marcus lets his staff drop beside him, a lazy kind of toss aside, runes slowly dimming and then diminishing entirely once the weapon leaves his hand. There, unbuckling some complicated attachment of the leather that protects his shoulders, letting this flip backwards to reveal the dark blue linen of his shirt beneath.
There, a tearing of fabric with a hint of blood, and pale skin beneath. Marcus helps with his other hand in tugging cloth aside for her inspection, where the impact of the strike doesn't show up the black and blue it will be tomorrow, but does show a thin pink line where a laceration has already been halfway healed.
"Should be alright?" he asks. Unable to see.
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Looking up to him, eyes moving over his face. Finding traces of exertion, perhaps deeming whatever she finds there acceptable. Mendable.
"Do you think that's the only one?"
They had only been made aware of the one roaming demon, but that doesn't mean there's no possibility of others.
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A trade, of kinds. A constant checking and balancing of magical ability, protection, physical ability, more entropic than the healing she recognises.
"It's not usual," Marcus says, as she administers to him. "But may it was the worst of them, if any others've gone unnoticed."
He returns his hand to her arm, resting there, feeling the last of prickling energy of her magic cooling back down, replaced with something else.
"We should do a ride around anyway, to be sure."
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She can look him over properly when they've finished, and made their way back to whatever hayloft or attic room or, if they are unlucky, tent serving as their lodging for the evening. Her fingers smooth over now-unblemished skin, before she gives a nod.
"Yes, we should."
Here, she brushes his fingers aside so that she might secure the leather plate herself.
"This one left tracks, it shouldn't difficult to trace back."
The odds of finding something gruesome left behind, high. But they might deal with that too, if they have the opportunity.
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Nods to her. Picks up his staff out from the grass, once she's done.
They have their horses not too far away, who are making much of the springtime bounty of Free March greenery, unbothered by the distant sounds of demon screams and flung magic, save for maybe some ear swivels in that direction to determine those sounds would stay distant.
Likely, before they'd found each other, Marcus and Derrica would be walking at an amiable six feet apart. Here, without really intending it, Marcus stays near, as if by gravitational pull, keeping them well within arms reach. He doesn't have to speak up too loudly, then, to say, "I think I'll make it out of my time with Riftwatch with less scars I might have had otherwise."
No credit to his insistence on melee combat, is what his glance to her suggests.
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"We might find you plate to wear," is a little joke. Plate doesn't lend itself to the way Marcus moves, even if the protection it affords may deflect the injuries he attracts in return.
He is so close that it is very convenient to lay a hand on his forearm, as if she needs to prompt his attention. There is a little flicker of surprise, however misplaced, at finding herself already so clearly in full possession of it. (A marker of how things have shifted: the nearness of him, the specificity of his attention—)
"We've more healers to our name than most places," she assesses, though in the same breath adds, "And I prefer traveling with you, when we have work to be done."
Yes, they have many capable healers. It is not quite the same as the way she attends his injuries, with a very particular kind of attention.
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It is probably true that there has been a small yet marked shift in his manner around her, more since that day riding to Ostwick than the party itself. An uncharitable interpretation might be that his attention is only motivated by the promise of what else they might share, but the truth of it is simply finding welcome, and less inclination towards the distance necessary between even good friends who are colleagues.
Marginally quicker to begin conversation, rather than waiting to receive it. Here, this nearness, knowing she would welcome it, or breach the gap with her hand on his arm. His arm folds to accommodate it, as though they were walking the halls of the Gallows rather than windswept, demon-infested field.
Well. Perhaps not the halls of the Gallows, not yet. He knows he would like to.
"The other healers we have don't wear your concern half as well."
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Knowing that perhaps her concern is more frustration than comfort to those she directs it towards.
Hooking her hand securely into the bend of his elbow, they proceed forward more closely knit together.
"Did you teach yourself to fight this way?" shifts them slightly from the easy, teasing lilt of their conversation thus far. She hasn't asked. But she knows his reputation, has seen him fight. Has felt it when all that strength has been directed towards her, and how insurmountable it felt to survive it.
Who had taught him to use his ability that way? Was it so different in the south, when Derrica had grown up in Dairsmuid with the barest capabilities for combat?
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"By necessity. Anyone without magic, fighting mages, knows to move in close. We needed some of us willing to stand between them and those who couldn't fight that way, and my Circle produced no Knight-Enchanters. I don't know that I taught myself anything beyond trusting that the mages behind me would protect me, and staying on my feet."
But it's different, now, he knows. Rushing in, doing more than acting as a shield. It's why Marcus presses on, and adds, "I learned more from friends I'd made, after. Apostates. And the spellwork is new."
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It is not a surprise, really. Only the details of it, not the outcome. Of course he did this. Of course he made himself into a shield.
Her fingers tighten around his elbow.
"You're very brave," she murmurs, more noting it herself than telling him what he must already know. Was he ever frightened, or did it come easy to him? "I wanted to do that, when I was very young. But the Enchanters never thought a healer should be that close to anything that might keep them from their duty."
And it had always been very clear to her what her duty was, even before the Annulment, when a battle was a far off fantasy, improbable and unlikely.
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He isn't quick to get there, listening instead. "There's wisdom to that," he offers, mildly. "But there's a wisdom to knowing how to defend yourself, if you must."
It's not as though Marcus has forgotten the things she's been through, and so if his comment grazes against those recollections, it's only because there is only so much two mages speaking can do to step around the realities of their own history.
So he adds, "It might have been brave, but it was also satisfying. Standing in place, you know. There were plenty of times prior to that when swinging my staff at someone could only be a fond fantasy."
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Yes, it would have been better if she'd been more adept at defending. Not just herself, but the others. Maybe she would not have been alone in her escape if she had been more skilled.
She has thought this before. Felt some quiet, guilty bitterness for it, and long since let it go.
All her teachers, they had taught her as best as they knew how. Who could have foreseen what had come to them?
"It doesn't diminish it," she tells him. "I understand some of what it must have been like, to be able to push back."
The southern Circles were cruel. She has had all the ways of their cruelty explained to her, demonstrated time and again when they speak together and she sees all the ways her life was different from theirs.
"And you didn't lose yourself in doing so."
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is the kind of agreement that comes with recognising a close call. There was a wave of newly-freed southern mages who were immediately drunk on new found power, and Marcus cannot say he didn't sympathise. Didn't feel its potential edge, the way so much anger suddenly given outlet could twist around. His thumb smooths over her knuckles.
Feeling her tension, in some small way, the distant shapes of things unsaid. He knows her well enough (and understands it well enough) to guess at their dimensions, a little.
"Better we never needed to learn," he offers, after some steps. "But you're good at it. Quick, strong. Did you come by your lightning, at Dairsmuid?"
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She has spoken of this on the crystals, the experience softened down to soothe rather than convey the whole of the experience. It would frighten people, she knows, if she gave voice to what it felt like in truth to wrench lightening down from the sky. Bending an element to her will, and sending it onward to strike down those who would do her and her people harm.
"I was very small," she tells him. "I would make sparks dance on my hands, they said. I almost remember it."
But it's the kind of memory that is cobbled together from retellings, she thinks. It is only partly hers.
"I had to wrestle with it, as I grew. It didn't come as easily as the rest."
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Whether Marcus likes it or not, he's sure, is far from the point. And what that means, to like it, to know some adrenalised thrill at the sound of it, crackling energy and bright white flash, the sort of primal danger that should make the animal in him, as it should in anyone, flinch back, but knowing so well he needn't—well, he wouldn't know where to begin in articulating it, strolling with her.
So, I like it will have to do, near-muttered and a little self-deprecating for how unhelpful a comment it is. It is a complicated thing, wielding the kinds of magic that have justified their histories. And present. Perhaps future.
"I had some difficulties when I was young, as well. I don't know that I properly mastered anything until I was grown."
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How different that must have been, to be taken into a Circle in southern Thedas.
Derrica doesn't recall it as a terrible thing. But then, she was always allowed to walk out into the world when she pleased.
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slides under your doorstep
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hits fast travel button
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