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“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?)

Richard ratchets down reflexively at the thump, his flinch contained to a hard blink and short breath, nerves successfully steeled short of flattening his hands to the table. The garter snake across his shoulders is less composed, but also less visible, the only trace of her a whip snap of disturbed magic under his collar.

He does not actually say Wysteria please.

The sentiment is carried instead in the break before he manages a, “I would very much like to see your work,” politely, in spite of himself. It helps that his curiosity is earnest. He does have paper.

“I prefer discretion whenever possible. Nothing I can do here requires much in the way of space or -- safety equipment.” The chair under him grates against the drag of his scoot back from the table; he stands and crosses back for the desk, where he’s able to shuffle a clean (but creased) sheet loose from the stack of books it was lost in. “On the subject of paper,” he begins as he returns, and retakes his seat, “who would I speak to about procuring more of it?”

This particular sheet is hers now, smoothed out and passed over.

She takes it from him gratefully, producing from somewhere behind her ear - in the twist of her hair, perhaps? - a pen for writing with, which she commences with immediately, making a series of quick shorthand notes for her own reference.

"I would inquiry with the Seneschal's office. I'm certain it could be supplied to you there, or at the very least requisitioned. Myself and Seneschel Pizzicagnolo usually have a few rolls in storage so they might be cut for the writing of new reports, and the logging of personnel and the various receipts and so forth required by an organization such as this one. The house in Hightown will would be best then, I think," she continues, as if the two thoughts are remotely related. "We can arrange for something of a mutual demonstration there. Would you mind terribly if Mr. Fitz were in attendance as well? It's perfectly all right to say you would prefer he wasn't, but he and I have been working rather closely on the questions of Rifter... let us say, continuity? And the information may be to the benefit of our work together with respect to that as well."

Richard cocks into an odd pause after the appearance of her pen, teeth parted to make some comment -- this is the second time she’s sleight-of-handed one from out of the aether in front of him -- only for her to beat him through the door to dialogue. The moment has well passed by the time she’s finished speaking.

In the interim, he’s furrowed his brow at her sketching down notes, girded his disapproval into benefit of the doubt, and caught the breath he’d drawn in immediately to object to the involvement of Leo Fitz.

The look he finally lands on is inscrutable accordingly -- one compromise after another just to keep up. That he’s doing half the legwork on his own to convince himself is a testament to his level of interest.

“To adequately demonstrate healing I would need a -- willing victim.”

He says this like it’s a concession.

"Excellent! Then it's sorted."

What's sorted? Wysteria, go back to the semantics of--

"I suspect that once we have completed our trials, the information will naturally lead in one direction or the other so I don't wish to jump to any conclusions too early. But if you have any particular line of inquiry you most wish to pursue, then I am of course all for it. Being a student of Oghma, I trust you will, and while one should always have a specific question they wish to investigate when conducting our tests, I see no issue whatsoever with keeping our theoretical interests rather broad."

Snagged on middle distance distraction off to one side, Richard half-listens to the rest -- enough to nod on cue when she’s finished. Critical thinking skills and an academic mien have carried him this far in life without a single research methods credit to his name.

“How much of this do you intend to write down?”

The note taking is what he comes back to, focus centered back on the present.

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