Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or Doctor Strange any of their related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Origins DLC, Awakening, and Dragon Age II, Dragon Age II DLC, Dragon Age Inquisition as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling. May also contain spoilers for Doctor Strange movie and/or comics.
Chapter Eleven: Piercing
Loghain's next days were quite full. He had to swiftly learn how to maintain a strong astral projection in one or two locations doing different things while his physical body did something entirely different elsewhere. That was hardly easy, even for strong Masters, and Loghain had only been taught to maintain a functional astral projection through concentrated meditation. But all it really required was considerable concentrated willpower.
He intended to keep his new students apart as much as possible. He would give them physical training together, since that required the use of his physical body, but he would give them magical training in separate rooms. He had been given the advantage of no such distractions as fellow students, he would give them that advantage as well. And there was something else driving this decision as well.
Every time that Chasteyn looked at Gilariel, Loghain saw something in the young man's eyes that he did not like to see. It was nothing you would not expect to see in the eye of most young men when they gazed upon a pretty young lady, but there was something about the former templar Loghain did not trust. Of course, the same could be said of everyone that he knew.
Their first lesson in the arena was his first chance to observe them together. As he'd rather expected, Chasteyn paid more attention to the woman than his teacher, and Gilariel ignored the boy pointedly. Loghain set himself to do the same for the first while. He turned to the woman. One hand behind his back, he gestured to her.
"You first, my dear. Attack me, in any way that you can," he said.
"I do not wish to hurt you," she said.
"If you do, it will only go to show that you require teaching at a higher level than I can give you," he said. "My Master will take care of any wounds you give me."
"Well… very well. If you say so." She raised her staff and attempted to cast a spell. Nothing happened. Nonplussed, she looked at her hands. "I don't understand. This has never happened before. Perhaps I require a lyrium potion?"
"It wouldn't do you any good, my dear," Loghain said. "You have no connection to the Fade in this dimension. Even if I had any lyrium to give you, it too draws its power from its strong connection to the Fade. It would be powerless here. There will be no lyrium here for either of you. I know that may be troublesome."
"Troublesome? It may kill me!" Chasteyn said. "I can't go without lyrium!"
"You will simply have to find the strength," Loghain said. "I assure you it is possible. Others have done it. So can you. And… so can you, my dear," he said, turning to Gilariel. "I have never heard one word spoken about the notion that mages, too, might be addicted to lyrium, but it seems likely to me. You take the stuff at least as often as templars do."
"I… I've never thought about it. I have always been provided with lyrium whenever I required it, whenever I asked for it. I have never felt any particular urge to take it before, but I have never been forced to go without it, either," Gilariel said.
"It may be difficult, but the pain will pass in time. Now, please my dear. Any way that you can… please attack me."
"This is hardly fair," she said. "You are a trained warrior, are you not? I am very much not."
"I will take it easy on you for that very reason, my dear, I promise you. Just attack me."
With some uncertainty, she launched a physical attack with her staff. He blocked it with one arm and reached out and put his other hand on her shoulder at the place where it joined to her neck. He applied fairly gentle pressure there, and she dropped to the floor, unconscious.
"It is not always necessary to be brutal," he said, for Chasteyn's sake. "If your opponent is of considerably lesser skill, there are many ways to take them out of the fight without harming them permanently."
"Is that the way you usually take care of your opponents, Mac Tir?" Chasteyn said.
"It's usually not that easy to gauge an opponent's skills. I'm also not typically that invested in keeping my opponent alive."
"You gonna be that soft on me?" Chasteyn asked.
"You have been trained to fight. You have supposedly been turned into one of the greatest soldiers in Thedas."
"And you've been taught how to fly."
"I have been taught how to levitate. It is a difficult procedure that requires intense concentration, but fortunately I don't believe I shall require levitation to take you on. Attack me."
"Attack you. So you can kick me upside the jaw again? No thank you."
"You wanted to learn this way of fighting. You should be glad you're learning it from me. My Master would probably kill you. I'm surprised he hasn't killed me, yet. He says I'm coming along well, but it's hard to tell in comparison to him. The fact that I can teach it now to you is the only way I have of knowing that I've made progress at all. Attack me."
"Nuh uh. Letting you kick me in the face is not the way I'm going to learn how to do this myself."
"How did you learn to fight in the first place?" Loghain asked.
"Not by being overwhelmed," Chasteyn said.
"You won't be. I'm not that good."
"You were that good before you learned this new way of fighting, Mac Tir."
"Once, perhaps. But I'm eighty-seven years old, now. Are you going to tell me you're afraid of an eighty-seven year old man?"
"You've held up well, old man."
"Not really. I've experienced something of a resurgence of youth in recent days. My Master says I have regained the strength I had in my sixties."
"You were a damned scary man in your sixties, apparently."
"I was. You should have seen me in my prime."
"I'm just as glad that I didn't. All right, I'll play it your way. I don't like it, but I'll do it." Chasteyn drew his sword and shield. He circled Loghain, looking for an opening, but Loghain didn't even seem to be defending himself, keeping his hands laced behind his back. Chasteyn was wary, but his teacher did nothing, put up no guard. With nothing left to do, Chasteyn attacked at last, but faster than lightning Loghain knocked his sword out of his hands with his forearm and punched him in the face with his other fist. Chasteyn crumbled like a broken statue. Both students now lay at Loghain's feet, unconscious.
He left Chasteyn where he lay but opened up a portal to Gilariel's room and carried her there. He returned to his own rooms and his own studies. He worked on conquering the ability to cast his astral projection powerfully enough that both it and his own physical body could do separate things, and to cast more than one at a time. It wasn't easy and he had little time in which to learn it. He was interrupted, however, by a visit from the Doctor.
"You are coming along very well," he said. "Very well indeed. You will do well with your students. Their first lessons have gone well, though I see you purposely got them out from underfoot so that you could have your own private time. I wonder what you think of them thus far?"
"The elf is ready and raring to learn the mystical stuff, she'll do well once she breaks herself of the idea that it should come as naturally to her as the magic she's known all her life. The physical side of things won't be so easy for her, but she's got potential, like a very green army recruit. Chasteyn… well, I'm not sure he's got the discipline and I know he's not buying into it right now, like I didn't buy into it for a long time. It's going to be hard to get through to him. I'll do it, though, if I have to crack his skull open."
"I truly think you shall, and I don't believe any skull cracking will be necessary. I wonder now if you wouldn't like the challenge of choosing your own student?"
"I thought two at once was as much as you wanted for me," Loghain said.
"What's just one more?" the Doctor said, smiling.
"A pain in the ass-tral projection," Loghain said, scowling. "How would I even locate a potential student?"
"I can show you. Follow me."
Strange took him to a room of the mansion in which there was a large bronze globe. It was set to resemble Strange's world, but with a wave of his hands, it reset itself to a depiction of Thedas. Bright glowing lights millions strong, represented all of the people of that world. Doctor Strange waved a hand at it. "These are all the people of your world. One of them has the best skills to be a sorcerer. Focus on them and find him - or her, as the case may be. Simple as pie."
"I'm not much of a baker," Loghain said warily.
"It's all right, you'll do just fine. Just focus."
"Have you asked yourself whether I really want another student?" Loghain said.
"One more will make it even."
"Three students makes it even?"
"You're a student, too. Besides, there's another one out there, from another nation, that I thought had great potential, but I let be because I thought you wouldn't get along together. I want to see if you happen to choose them for yourself."
"If you let somebody go because you thought I'd get along with them worse than this Chasteyn fellow, then they must be really incompatible," Loghain said. "Still, I shouldn't like to think I'd make that a judgment against them when I'm looking to teach someone."
"It can be important. Sometimes you just can't teach someone you can't appeal to."
"Well, I can always try. What happens if I were to fail?"
"Another sorcerer would try to pick up where you leave off. Harder with you, because you're the only one at teaching level in your world at this point, but I could always help out if necessary for now."
"What if the student fails for his own reasons?"
"Then he goes back to his own life. Or, if they try to use their newfound powers for evil or selfish purposes, they become our enemies. We may have to fight them. Kill them, even."
"So… no pressure. Get it right the first time or everything goes to shit. What if they want to take what they learn and use it to help people, just not in the way we do it?"
"It can be allowed, but the Sorcerer Supreme needs all the help he or she can get."
"So I've gotta try and convince them to stick with me."
"Yes."
"Again, no pressure. All right, let's find this fellow." Loghain stepped up to the globe and raised his hands. He closed his eyes and concentrated. After a few moments, he opened his eyes again. One bright light remained on the globe, in the vicinity of the Rivaini city of Llomeryn. He focused on that light specifically, and the globe turned into an image of a young elven man with a tattooed face and shining green eyes. His face glittered with gold and gems all over his ears, his eyebrows, his cheeks, his lips, and his nose. Loghain wrinkled his nose at the sight.
"What is that all over his face?"
"Piercings, I should think," Strange said.
"Did he do that to himself?" Loghain said.
"Well, given the decorative and rather expensive look of those piercings he has, I should rather assume so," Strange said. "Perhaps it has some religious significance to him. Or perhaps he merely likes the look."
"It's got to hurt, doesn't it? What keeps them from getting infected?"
"Keeping clean is a good help."
"Well, anyway, we've got this guy's look and his location, how do I find out his name?" Loghain said.
"The linking of minds. A difficulty for you, I know, but it wouldn't be necessary for you to give anything of yourself away to him."
"He's in stopped time. Doesn't that mean his mind is stopped?" Loghain said.
"It is, but you can still reach it, or any other mind. The astral self exists upon its own unique plane, affected by time but standing outside it. Right now, his mind thinks it is stopped, because it does not know that it can continue without time."
"So… all the minds in Thedas… in all the worlds with time… are stopped because they think they have to be?"
"Most of them. Some people have such active minds, either by simple nature or conditioning or through some mental disorder, that their minds refuse to cease functioning. This creates an interesting condition for them. Something like a dreamscape. They are generally aware that they are in a frozen state, but they think they are dreaming."
"All right, then. I have to… reach out to him, then. Will he be aware of it?"
"If you're clumsy, perhaps. Most likely not. Not in his current condition, unless he is one of those people who is still mentally aware."
"How often do you find that?" Loghain asked.
"Rather frequently in my world," Strange said, "but then we have a much higher world human population than Thedas. You yourself are like that, but I haven't seen that it is nearly so commonplace in your world. I haven't run the numbers, but I would expect that the ratio is probably about the same. At least amongst humans. Elves and dwarves are not much different, but in other worlds they don't tend to the same mental disorders that humans do, though they have their own."
"So I have a disorder?"
"I don't know. A man with an intellect like your own would be prone to simply being highly active of mind, but then, there is a thin line between genius and insanity. It does not matter. If you are mad, it is a helpful sort of madness. The sort I require for the position of Sorcerer Supreme."
Loghain grunted. "Nice to know. Well, let's get this over with."
He was only somewhat aware of the mechanics of the process of reaching out to touch minds with someone long distance, but he focused on the location and the image of the man and made the attempt for the first time. "All right, I think I've got him. His name is… Cal? Cal Morston. Not the sort of name I would have expected for a Rivaini elf with his face all done up in ink and gemstones."
"It's a fairly common name in many human dimensions."
"He's not human."
"He may have been raised amongst humans. Morston is not an elven name, either."
"Exactly."
"Well, you should take the Eye of Agamotto with you, and I would suggest taking your prior recruits as well. They may be able to help you convince your new potential student. Nermal, too, seems good at persuasive speech."
"You don't trust my skills? Well, I wouldn't either. All right, I'll take them. Are they awake yet?"
"I'll waken them. You know, you needn't have hit them so hard just to get a moment to study."
"I didn't hit the lady at all."
"The principle remains the same."
"Well, I've never been one for doing anything by halves."
"That much is certain. But they will need time to study just as much as you will. And free time as well, time to socialize amongst themselves, time for their own pursuits."
"You never gave me that kind of time."
"You don't have that kind of time. Plus, I know your ethic doesn't allow for that kind of thing. You'll have it after this business with the world-ending god is complete."
"What strange danger will crop up after that?"
"No telling. Countless dangers. But in the extended life of a sorcerer, one thing you can still count on is spare time. You might wish to develop a few… hobbies."
"Hobbies? What are… oh, yeah. Games and such. You talked about this to me before."
"Not just games. Embroidery, perhaps."
"Celia tried to get me into embroidery," Loghain said, giving Strange a wary look.
"I know. You got more deeply involved in it than I'd wager you'd care to admit to me," Strange said, smiling.
"That woman could get me involved in anything. She thought it would calm me down. It didn't work very well. Let's hurry up and gnab this Cal Morston fellow."
"Very well. You go find Nermal, I shall gather your students."
