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She is, for the record, most happy to indulge the line of his conversation. In fact, by the time they reach the quarters in question she has asked perhaps only half of her follow up questions with respect to Loxley and werewolves and the mechanics of suppressing curses. But there she hesitates as if suffering under an entirely different sorcery which keeps her temporarily from actually passing across the threshold, through the door he is so generously holding open for her, and into the dark room (where two men sleep) beyond.

"It will be two years come Kingsway."

The toes of her smart leather boots with the floral patterning and the ribbon ties are just barely past the boundary between hall and quarters. For a moment, her hands float up about her middle, the nail of her thumb threatening to pick absently at some cuticle on her other hand.

And then she steps forward, as she has already made the most prudent decision with respect to the locale of this meeting and it would be ridiculous to change her mind now on the basis that she has never stood in a man's room before.

(Byerly's doesn't count. He was practically dead at the time.)

"Mr. Loxley and yourself arrived at the same time, didn't you? That's very odd, you know. Even Mr. Stark and Mr. Fitz and Mr. Fitz's associate all came through to Thedas at different times. I don't know that I've ever known two people from the same place who were so familiar to each other to come together as a pair."

Stood aside with one hand on the open door, Richard clocks her momentum catching at the threshold with a glance down to her boots (which have ribbons), and then the further hesitation at her hands. He looks again to the darkened room’s interior, with furniture set out empty in a museum diorama of transplant loneliness, and takes in a breath, reconsidering appearances. Hm.

Wysteria walks in before he can casually suggest the city of Kirkwall a second time.

So it’s fine.

“Yes,” he answers, easily. “We’d been traveling together for several weeks before we were brought here.”

He leaves the door standing open behind them, and speaking quietly while he crosses to the desk and quickly fumbles through the process of striking up a wad of tender and touching it to a pair of oil lamps. One of them, he carries to the table on his way to closing the door.

“I take it the native magic is so fundamentally different you haven’t been able to do much with it in those two years.”

Oil lit, the room doesn’t look any more lived in than it did in complete shadow, but it is substantially warmer in atmosphere.

Assuming possession of one of the chairs comes easily enough, and by the time he brings the lamp to bear all lingering and notable traces of her second thoughts have evaporated. She assumes. In any case, she is not picking at her own fingertips while her hands are her lap which is fine enough. Nevermind the appearance of her hands (for what good are beautifully manicured hands when you're sporting a complexion so soured by jungle sun), but raw cuticles are damnably difficult to keep safe from all magnitude of stinging things in the workshop--

Wysteria forces herself to stop gazing curiously about the room.

"That's right. It was immediately obvious to me that I'm unable to reach into the Fade the same way mages here do, so my studies have primarily been focused on enchanting and the theoretical study of warding and so on. In Kalvad, magic is ordered much more thoroughly than it is here and those two things fall closest in line with the diagramming methods I'm most familiar with."

Nevermind that she has at this point been studying Thedas' magic craft for far longer than she was ever a magician's apprentice. That is unimportant.

"But reading things in books and observing the thing in practice - and I do mean practice, not in the field as we're all running pell mell from demons and Venatori and so on - has been something of a challenge. We no longer have anyone in the Gallows who is capable of working enchantments, and back before Misters Stark and Fitz and I became engaged in our current subject of study it was rather more difficult to convince any mage in the Gallows that an interest in magic didn't secretly come out of the intention of throwing them into the most convenient dungeon."

(It definitely has nothing to do with her personality. That would be ridiculous.)

"Have you experienced anything differently? From your description of the planes, the practice here and in your home seem rather more closely aligned."

“The same is true for Tassia. Arcane magic is ordered and refined into distinct schools of study.”

Richard joins her, folding himself into the second seat with a creak and a very late glance aside to assure himself that there’s nothing scandalous that’s been left out on Loxley’s half of the room. All clear.

“The forces these mages brandish seem chaotic -- barely tamed. I would offer you ‘lemonade,’ but we just have the wine.”

It occurs to him late that he should be polite, in the off chance she’s a day drinker. He pauses, uncertain of how explicit he should make the offer. When was the last time he hosted a guest? A decade ago? His pupils are pinned a little too fine for the low light while he dithers over moving on, sharpened bones in his face the only lingering evidence of any true jungle suffering. The sun wasn’t able to get a firm grip on him in the way Wysteria has. By the elbow.

From the darkness pooled behind his collar, lamplight glimmers faint off of dark scales and the flicker of a tiny tongue.

“I studied arcane magic for a time, and had some very limited talent for manipulating it, but have not been able to replicate that willful resonance with the Fade. What other power I can still channel is reduced, both in scope and -- coherence.”

There is something in there which clearly piques her interest, for her hands float up out of her lap to instead rest on the table and somehow that small realignment sheds what remained had remained of some latent uncertainty. It is like shifting from heels to the toe.

"Reduced how, would you say? Could you give me some example - 'There I might light a bonfire, and here I light candles.' It is strange to me, you see, how so many of us Rifters with some mage Talent, I suppose"—the 'T' is definitely capitalized—"seem to conduct themselves according to so many different series of rules.

"And it is not merely a question of learning the thing differently, as if we are speaking the same language but ordering the words in strange ways. Madame de Cedoux herself claims to have had little education in the subject when she was in her own world, yet was both able to learn here according to the rules of her own home and is unable to teach anyone the same. There are laws to how the world governs itself, Mr. Dickerson. Even the likes of what Corypheus does is bound by them. Yet here we are breaking them."

So not intrigued by the offer of wine, then.

“Madame de Cedoux reported resorbing memories from later years of her life some time after arriving here, wherein she might have accumulated additional knowledge.” Theoretically. They could ask her if that’s the case.

Despite the distinctive stoke of his interest behind a beat of sharper focus, he is reserved well short of fumbling his crystal out onto the table and suggesting they call her to ask right now.

“If she studied in that time. Have you experienced anything similar in your two years?”

Dick watches closely for her answer before offering his.

“At one point, I was certain I could breathe life back into the recently deceased, given the chance." And the right motivation. "I could speak with the dead. I was capable of defending allies, of compelling truth, of creating water, or fire. Here I heal in a very -- limited capacity.”

"I have been working on a few things here and there - things I knew the theory of already from Kalvad, if not the practice. If there has been any difficulty in the practice, I would chalk it up to a natural necessity for repetition and not to any challenge presented by Thedas itself," is her easy answer.

It is one she promptly decides she regrets the moment Mr. Dickerson begins to describe his own, ah, challenges. Something in her expression - which until this point has been more or less as open as one of the gossipy pamphlets printed and distributed in Kirkwall's Hightown - thins faintly and the line of her spine slowly takes on the distinctly uncomfortable quality of a ramrod.

She has returned to picking absently at her fingertips.

"And this spellwork - conversing with and raising the dead, truth telling. Are these common magics in Tassia?"

There’s a claw-prick catch to his attention once she’s started to recede -- a departure from the low-burning enthusiasm he’d been building up beneath this exchange of information. It’s clear that he noticed, and that he noticed almost immediately.

He hoods his brow again, puzzled or perhaps concerned if we’re generous, second-guessing as he walks back through the list he just provided. Trained rats are concerned when the bell they’re ringing to receive treats suddenly stops making sound.

Was it the necromancy?

“In a manner of speaking.” Being cagey will definitely help what he has done here. He pauses. Not wanting to lie outright makes reassurance more difficult. “Nothing that would be considered aberrant for a human.”

"How fantastic," is light and bright and strangely at odds with her appearance of being dipped feet first into an ice bath. He has noticed and she has noticed that he has noticed and she is going to continue to talk as it seems the most natural thing to do. "Tassia must be a very rich place indeed with so much latent Talent. In Kalvad, you would have been quite the respected magician with skills such as those. It is very impressive. And I am only sorry to hear that your skills have been so diminished by your arrival in Thedas, for I imagine it must be rather inconvenient to you."

And then she stops. Her smile is fixed carefully into place.

Silence. Richard listens to her as if she’s railing off a secret plan of attack for him to pass on to a superior without writing it down. His expression changes very little, save that his teeth part after she’s finished for him to draw in a breath, deep and slow.

“Miss Poppell, have you ever spoken to anyone about -- ?”

It’s a genuine question, gently posed, and invitingly open-ended.

Edited (tweak) 2020-07-23 09:02 (UTC)

She is quick with an answer. The silence makes her skin crawl.

"Oh, no. Or, hardly at all. As I said, I have written down some general details as to the nature of my skill which I believe might be in my personnel file, but with very few exceptions I don't believe they are known whatsoever. And so there has been very little in the way of comparing notes, so to speak. And to be candid, prior to Mr. Fitz and Mr. Stark's arrival, I had almost no interest in the subject whatsoever. What difference does it make to me where Rifters come from or what they are? There is quite enough in Thedas' arcane history and theory to consume the day. But the pair of them are quite interested in the whole idea, and I will admit that it has inspired what I hope is a natural curiosity in the whole thing. Hence Mr. Fitz's and I's survey. I am very fond of systems, you see. And of modifying them, I suppose. And the more we have studied the rifts and what comes through them, the more compelling the whole subject is. I should discuss the subject with Jenny Lou as well. She spoke of educating herself—"

An intake of breath. She glances up from her hands to him.

"Perhaps it is a question of the strength of the conduit. Like a pipe whose diameter has been throttled. For some people, there is no difference whatsoever for all their Talents fit securely within what is allowed by the separation of the Veil to be conducted through the Fade. But for others, or for some powerful spellwork, they fall beyond the diameter of the thing and so cannot pass through. Were you to travel to the Fade itself, perhaps you might conduct yourself as you're accustomed."

“The Jenny Lou who tried to propagate the word ‘himbo’ and asked what would happen if the Maker ‘fucked somebody’ in a public forum?”

That Jenny Lou?

Richard’s scrutiny falters long enough for him to look doubtful.

“Perhaps,” he allows, late, for the idea of a throttle. “The aether I draw from is not -- strictly speaking -- my own. I had assumed there might be some barrier or filter here between myself and my ‘overseer,’” that’s a word he used earlier in a completely different context, sure, “muddling the connection. If the tether was instead forced to ‘thin’ through this pipe…” His knee bounces for just a few seconds before he catches it, and stifles the movement.

“Regardless, no talent is involved, and there is nothing impressive about it. I have an obligation. I initially believed Thedas might be a place of punishment.”

He smiles for the first time. It’s barely there, and a little grim, like he expects that could still turn out to be the case. Another gathering breath, and he changes tack.

“It surprises me to hear that it took the arrivals of Stark and Fitz to inspire you into the study the nature of your own existence here.”

There are questions there - the magic is not his own? How then is it transferred to him? Does it have something to do with the snake coiled there behind his collar even now? In what way does this 'overseer' manage that? What is he meant to have done? What obligation is so serious that he might be sent elsewhere (this being a rather broad application of the term indeed) for somehow failing to meet it? -, but there is more pressing business at hand.

Namely, justifying what seems very much like an oversight when it's phrased like he has said it.

"Misters Stark and Fitz have, I gather, certain obligations of their own in the places they left behind. I have no such thing, and so Thedas itself has historically been a far more appealing mystery to me than what I am or how I came to be here."

Richard accepts her explanation with a nod, void of any challenge or skepticism.

“Had I been pulled in twenty years earlier in my life, I might have believed something similar. The alien nature of it is interesting.

“But if there is any intelligence to the process by which we’re brought through the Fade, it had to have decided your abilities could be utilized in service to something here. That’s worth reflecting on.” Isn’t it? “Especially given the mess this plane has made of itself.”

Something shifts in the carefully constructed mask of good cheer she has adopted. It is, perhaps incongruously, the echo of a more genuine version of the thing lurking in a blink, in the very minor adjustment of the line of her shoulder, and the smoothing of her thumb across other faintly ink stained fingertips.

"Well, yes. But that is precisely why I had spent so little time on the subject - the reflecting on the thing, as it were. There is every likelihood that we will leave Thedas without any warning, and that we will take those abilities we brought with us when we go. Why, there are only three other Rifters who have been here as long or longer than myself."

Unbeknownst to her, this number has already reduced itself by one.

"Obviously I cannot dispute the appeal of the Rift research. There may very well be value in it for anyone who comes after us, or even for the war effort. But if my presence here is to be at all remarkable for Thedas and not just for people like the two of us, it seems far more prudent to see that the continuation of my work need not be so reliant on my own hand in it. That it have some application which immediately looks beyond the study of the Fade and whatever we might discover about how and why we came from it."

With his hands joined on the table and his shoulders set, Richard has a way of sitting very still while he listens, not entirely unlike the slip of the snake under his collar. Her needle tongue flickers from shadow into the lamplight at his throat; a lean forward in Dick’s posture by a matter of degrees offers a glimpse of her watching Wysteria just as steadily.

“If not Rifters or the Fade, what system is it that you do wish to impose change upon?”

It is a strange thing - to not just be listened to, but to be studied. It makes her very conscious of the shape of what she is saying, the spaces between her points filled by both unsaid things and unaccomplished ones. Does it make a difference that she can see the little snake there with its beady little black eye and the faintly oil texture of the magic which hangs in the air about it staring at her as well?

She cannot say.

"Nothing so grand, Mr. Dickerson. I simply wish to learn how to adapt Thedosian magic and materials to create new tools for us to use, and to do so in a way that anyone here might replicate. It might help, I think, to see the places where all our various Talents overlap. As I said, magic in Thedas has rules. But if people like you and I and Madame de Cedoux are here appearing to bend them, then it is possible that some of them are more practice than fact. I would like to clarify the boundaries of the canvas, so to speak."

The snake, catching a glimmer of eye contact, or by purely coincidental timing, doubles back on herself and slithers out of sight, deeper beneath the rest of Dick’s coat across his shoulders. Magic continues to radiate through the cloth where she settles, tell-tale.

“Have any of the mages been at all cooperative with your efforts?”

She mentioned Matthias earlier. Given a moment to sort through his own rolodex of known casters, he can’t immediately think of more agreeable mages within the organization.

They all hate everyone, with good reason. This really is a miserable plane of existence.

“You say innovation isn’t grand, but I have yet to witness much in the way of native magical undertaking that wasn’t in some way grotesque or explosive, in the literal sense.” He pauses. “Which isn’t to say I think the ones without ‘Talent’ would turn down an opportunity to mind boil their enemies given the chance.”

Maybe they should invent therapy.

Explosive is an interesting choice of words which she mentally elects not to comment on, given the state of her workshop and her and de Foncé's mutual interest in the subject.

In fact, perhaps it is best to simply steer around the specifics of the work - and its various moral quandaries - entirely now that they have established a loose concept of the thing so as not to risk saying anything untoward which might either make Mr. Stark, wherever he is presently, spontaneously break out into hives or for the Provost to look up from his work, pause, and squint (in some graceful, lineless way) with the certainty that someone somewhere is doing something they haven't asked permission to do.

"Leander"—first name, no title; how shocking—"has been willing to listen to some of my ideas, and confirm or deny some theories. He's very good with warding. He and Enchanter Julius once allowed me to observe them testing and modifying expulsion wards for cleaning the Gallows chimneys. And I have been in conversation with-- the new one, with the Northern accent. Porthmeus? He seems very willing to at least discuss the subject, which is more than I have managed to convince much of anyone else to do. Whenever I attempt to talk seriously on the subject, I am inevitably given reading lists. Which I don't mind, but books are rather poor conversationalists and worse with invention."

It is interesting that Leander is first name, no title. Dick makes a mental note at a glance.

“I haven’t worked with either of them,” he says, with an air of apology for his previous generalization. “I’ve primarily had cause to -- ‘chaperone’ Matthias. There are descriptions of similarly devastating applications of magic utilized throughout the rebellion -- there is an undead horse in the stables. I’ve seen little in the way of more subdued, practical applications of magic.”

Like chimney sweeping. Or magical snake friends.

Or mind control.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the Templars were in possession of unethical research on the subject,” he adds. “Research they don’t deserve to have.”

Just a thought.

“Provided you believe we can keep our necks out of nooses, I will assist however I can.”

For a moment, it's as if she is still a step behind - for that's exactly where she is, turning over the concept of the Templars thoughtfully, the prospect of Circles, certain Chantry libraries in Val Royeaux. Monsier de Foncé's close friend is a Chantry Brother, is he not? Perhaps there is some connection there which might be—

The derailment of her thoughts is a visible thing. Across the table from him, Wysteria sharpens so abruptly so abruptly that it's as if she's been struck by something. The look she affixes him with is pure shock.

"You will?"

Unfiltered shock provokes hesitation in return. Richard checks his work, rewinds what he believes he’s just agreed to, suspicion gone a little sidelong in the narrow of his eyes.

“...With that one very important stipulation.”

Edited 2020-07-27 07:41 (UTC)

She grows suddenly very pale. And then just as suddenly, flushes very hot up the back of her neck, into her ears, and well into her face with the effort required to subdue the hot spark of elation that rises up. Like a bottle under pressure, her eyes get very bright.

"Oh, yes. Well of course. I wouldn't want anyone to be unduly endangered by the course of our research." She does not sound as light and airy and casual and perfectly poised as she believes she does. "But how kind of you to offer, Mr. Dickerson. I would of course be most grateful for your assistance and happily accept. Tell me, do you have any ready friendships among Riftwatch's mages? Perhaps you might have connections I do not that we might first explore the possibility of studying."

Richard Dickerson hardly moves, resignation borderline sympathetic in a fine bristle of tension at the backs of his chops. This feels very much like an undue level of excitement.

He looks away from the brightness in her eyes, and back to nod reassurance in the same beat he proffers disappointment, matter-of-fact:

“No. I prefer not to speak to anyone here if I can avoid it.” While they’re being honest. “Outside of a select few, I’m confident the aversion is mutual.”

"Damn."

A thump of her fist on the tabletop punctuates the sentiment, and then is waved away. Never mind the Thedosian mages. The simple offer of his collaboration is more progress than she's made on this subject in months.

"No matter then. We'll make do. In the mean time, let us arrange a short series of studies of your Talents. Casting. However you prefer it referenced. Naturally, I would be more than happy to do the same in reverse should you care to observe, although I would warn you in advance that by comparison they will be quite unremarkable indeed. Will you need much space to practice in? In the past, Leander and I have used the Harrowing chamber in the Mage Tower for such things, but if it can be contained and you prefer discretion then the Hightown house shall be open to you. Have you a piece of paper that I might borrow, Mr Dickerson?"

It tumbles out of her seemingly all in one prodigious breath, a veritable exhaled tidal wave.

(Perhaps Salvio has gone so gray due in part to the frequence of her company?)

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