Outside of the Warden-Commander's office, a curious, almost-green shimmer had caught the party's attention. It was relegated to the far corner of the enormous room, hanging over the stone floor like a sickly mirage. It took a moment of racking his brains for Zevran to place where he'd seen it before, but when visions of being trapped in the Fade flashed through his head and sent his guts reeling, he wondered how it hadn't come to him sooner.
"I do not suppose that thing is Fade or demon-related, is it?" he asked Rhodri, jerking his head at it with disdain.
"Both," she uttered softly, and glanced over her shoulder at the witch with a rueful smile. "It looks like you were right, Morrigan."
Morrigan, who usually acknowledged such concessions with a huff and some variation of 'obviously,' said nothing, and watched the rippling thing with knitted brows. "'Tis a very large tear, Warden."
"Mm," Rhodri grumbled. "Not much smaller than at Redcliffe. The demon possessing Sophia Dryden's corpse must have pinched it shut when it knew we were coming." An unsettling moment passed as she wiped a hand over her mouth and turned to the party now.
"We are going to sneak out of here," Rhodri said firmly. "I don't know how many demons are in proximity of the tear now, and the supplemental lyrium we have might not be enough. I'd rather not try to seal it until after we've rested."
No arguments came; she gestured at the exit, halfway between the tear and where they stood. "Relax yourselves completely . No emotions, no thoughts."
Zevran had to fight to keep his belly from churning; it had to be serious if even Morrigan wasn't seizing on the opportunity that 'no thoughts' presented to make a jab at Alistair. And not so much as a crooked grin from Rhodri, who was by all accounts one of the most flippant people Zevran had ever met when it came to danger.
He emptied his head as much as physiology and psychology allowed– which effectively lowered the typical deafening buzz of activity to a droning hum. Whether that much was audible to a demon Zevran didn't know, but as subsequent efforts to further dim his cognition failed spectacularly, he decided it would have to do.
Quickly, silently, the party strode toward the door. Zevran kept his eyes focused on the wooden jamb, his breathing steady and even. And for the first time in recorded history, fate didn't shit on his pillow: they left without issue.
§
By the time the party had set up camp in the foyer, the sky was already tinged with pink. Lunch had only been an hour or two ago, and it was hard not to feel cheated that the sun was already packing its bags to go somewhere else– likely Antiva, Zevran guessed amid a fierce little stab of homesickness. Short as the winter days were, Ferelden got long stretches of daylight in the summer, to be sure. Zevran might have called it a fair trade were it not for the fact that nobody in their right mind wanted to be able to see Ferelden in full sunlight for more than an hour a day.
But happier things awaited, Zevran insisted to himself. The mages had enveloped a swath of the room in protective spells; Sten was in charge of tonight's stew, which meant dinner would be adequately seasoned; and, Rhodri had assured them, the rest of the day was theirs to do as they pleased. It had been a while since they'd had an afternoon off, and Zevran was determined to get his money's worth.
Of course, that didn't explain why he was sitting at the campfire, twiddling his thumbs as though the act would make a distraction fall neatly into his lap. Zevran didn't dare call the feeling boredom; Cristofania had often said that only boring people were bored, and Zevran was in no way a boring man. If anything, he was a very interesting man who was more able than most to make something out of nothing.
To prove it to himself, he shoved a hand into his pocket, determined that whatever he found in there would amuse him for at least fifteen minutes. His fingers instinctively dodged his prayer beads (the corresponding pang of guilt was similarly manoeuvred past), ignored a handful of silvers and a lost peanut he had been too lazy to remove, and then fell still.
The pause in searching, of course, wasn't because his eyes had drifted onto Rhodri, who at the time of looking– inadvertently looking, at that– had bent over to pick up a book. People stopped what they were doing for all sorts of reasons, and though an exquisitely hard rump (albeit a heavily covered one) pointing in one's general direction certainly was grounds for dropping any and every task at hand, it was unlikely to have been the cause this time.
Zevran redirected his gaze with an inward grin, both for the sake of modest behaviour and to stop any untimely bodily reactions before they could become obvious. That much had been necessary, but there were no obligations, moral or otherwise, to keep his thoughts salubrious. In fact, now that he had a little time on his hands, was this not the perfect moment to contemplate the current state of his libido? After all, he had been sleeping in Rhodri's tent every night for almost a week now, and it behoved Zevran, as a world-class lover, to appraise the state of affairs and find where there might be room for improvement.
Not that there had been any mention from Rhodri on the need for him to do better (and by the Maker, Zevran had nothing but praise for Rhodri's attentions to him!). Between them, they averaged at least five orgasms a day this week, with the upper number sitting at eight. Of greatest concern thus far was a mutual tendency to finish too quickly, which had led to a painful but reassuring pre-sex discussion in which Rhodri candidly pointed out their shared foible and confided that she was glad not to be the only one. Said conundrum turned out to be a somewhat easy fix, too: a handful of small breaks during any given act worked wonders for Zevran's stamina– and, once Zevran had concretely established that moaning and overly-intense kissing could also set her off, for Rhodri's as well.
Naturally, it was as Zevran's musings lost their technical aspects and began to sharply verge into the explicit that Rhodri, as if having been alerted of this, plonked down beside him with a book in her hand and a mile-wide grin. Thanking the Maker and refusing to consider more edifying ways to spend the afternoon off, Zevran hummed a greeting and in one swift motion, he swung a leg over Rhodri and projected himself into her lap.
"Ah!" Rhodri's eyebrows shot up as he landed astride her knees. Surprise gave way to delight, and she rested her hands on his hips, thumbs stroking his waistband gently. "Well, this is lovely. Hello."
Zevran regarded her with a grin, and planted several eager kisses onto Rhodri's cheeks and brow. He hummed approvingly as Rhodri sighed and snuggled him to her. Encouraged by the response, Zevran commenced another round, and then one more, and by the time his mouth had covered every kissable part of Rhodri's face at least twice, the book had fallen to the floor and her hands were gripping his hips with considerable tightness.
"Hello," he finally purred back. "You are looking even more irresistible today than you did yesterday, lovely Rhodri." Zevran stroked a finger over her burning cheek and added, "and your cheeks are deliciously warm ."
"Is that so?" she asked in a soft, low rumble.
"It is." He pointed his nose in the direction of her tent and said with a wink, "Earlier today, I made mention to what I tend to do when you're looking like this. Do you remember me saying so?"
Rhodri swallowed thickly, audibly. She kissed a slow, hungry line from Zevran's cheek to his ear, pausing to breathe, "I do, dulcis. I always, always listen to what you have to say."
Zevran took a moment to check the sudden incursion of sentimentality before trusting himself to hum approvingly. "Well, now. I wonder if you might be free at the moment to take me back to your tent? Perhaps an interactive demonstration of what I do when you are being irresistible might be of interest to you."
Rhodri was on her feet in an instant with Zevran still clutched to her, leaving the campfire and making for her tent in what was indisputably a run. If she heard Morrigan's groan or Alistair asking Leliana if she was free, Rhodri didn't let on.
In the tent, between feverish kisses and the removal of their footwear, Rhodri panted, "I thought that perhaps tonight might be a good time to start using magic in sex."
Zevran cackled joyfully. "Ooh! Just before my first magic lesson, too."
"Nice to get a practical session in early, sic?"
"Oh my word, yes."
§
"I love thunder," Zevran declared in a happy slur to the roof of Rhodri's tent. How loud he had said this remained to be seen; since his third orgasm, Zevran's ears had been ringing so insistently he worried people might show up for Saturday Chantry mass, and showed no sign of letting up. But he was boneless, tingling all over, and his spirit was lighter than air, and if the price for it was living with tinnitus for the rest of his days, it was well worth it.
From beside him on the bedroll, Rhodri acknowledged his remark with a bleary chuckle. "I thought you might like that one. You seemed to enjoy the lightning quite a bit, too."
"Oh, I d-i-i-i-d," he crooned. "I only wish I could do those myself, so that I could return the favour."
Rhodri shrugged and rubbed her eyes. "Thunder and lightning might be a little beyond your reach," she mumbled, "but with training, I think you could do heating and cooling."
Zevran laughed, and then, upon realising that Rhodri had not joined in– and was, in fact, observing him with a baffled squint, he stopped dead. "... You were not being serious, Rhodri? I am no mage, you know that."
"Of course I was being serious," she said between yawns. "You don't have to be a mage to do magic. Most everyone, 'cept the dwarves, has some level of magical ability."
"What?"
"I said– just a moment, dulcis, if you please…" Rhodri propped herself up on her elbow, smacked a hand into her chest, and let out a tiny gasp. A small wave of cold emanated off her hand as she withdrew it, and with a wiggle of the fingers, warmth returned to the air. She settled back down with a sigh. "Right, now I'm awake. What part seems to be troubling you? Did you not know you can do magic?"
Zevran, who had up to now wondered how Rhodri could find it in her to keep him in suspense for at least eight seconds while she froze herself awake, shook his head fervently and advised that he most certainly did not know that he could do magic– or that any non-mage could, when it came to that. For that answer, Rhodri looked at Zevran like he was fine print she was struggling to read.
"My goodness, truly?" she said after a moment. "But why do you think Morrigan's potions and balms work on you?"
"They work on everyone, do they not?" Zevran turned up a hand in a shrug. "They have herbs and other things in them, and the body takes them up and reacts to them. Not unlike eating a meal, but more nourishing, no?"
Rhodri shook her head, "Not at all. The speed and magnitude of the effect are your body's response to the reagents that make the potions and balms magical. The more magical ability you have, the better you respond to them."
"Ah… huh." He rubbed his chin absently, doing his utmost to ignore the growing list of follow-up questions that now clamoured to be vocalised. "Well, I suppose you learn something new each day."
"I had no idea you didn't know," she said. "Do non-mages commonly think they don't have any magical ability?"
He shrugged again. "I presume so."
"But don't you feel it?" Rhodri pressed, frowning. "When you're angry, for example. Wildly angry. Enraged. Don't you heat up? Doesn't your chest swell, don't you feel like something inside you is about to break, or spill over, or–or burst? I thought everyone did."
"Well, of course. But what does that have to do with anything?"
Rhodri blinked. "Well, that's… your magic. Trying to escape." She shook her head as Zevran's mouth fell open, and hastily added, "I– I'm sorry, I don't think you're a fool or anything, I'm just… astonished. The Chantry didn't tell you any of this?"
"... No," Zevran mumbled. "Not a word. But–" a frown came to him now, "but when you are overwhelmed, remember, you said you cast spells? I do not. I suppose I assumed if I had any magic, I would be able to cast spells, too, no?"
"Ah, I see." She nodded thoughtfully. "Well, a lack of spells doesn't mean you don't have any innate magic. The magic that is in you feeds off that heightened emotion and becomes unstable. Your 'temper,' I suppose you might call it, but its proper name is magic. The only difference between you and me is that your mana pool isn't big enough to channel the Fade and make a spell if your emotions force the mana out."
Zevran caught himself fidgeting excitedly with the bedroll and forced stillness in his hands. "But you could teach me, couldn't you? To cast spells, I mean."
"With time, I think you could learn to cast some small, useful spells without tiring too much, yes." Rhodri nodded again, raised a finger, and summoned a tiny flame that hovered over her fingertip, "A fire of this size would be a reasonable ten-month goal, for example, or maybe a small cupful of water. Keeping warm or cool enough to not die of the elements, perhaps even healing a very small cut."
"Ooh!"
By the time Rhodri had finished asking if learning any of those spells may be of interest to him, Zevran, now entirely in the grips of eager anticipation, was throwing her clothes at her and hauling her upright.
"Maker's–!" Rhodri exclaimed as her shirt flew into her face, removing the offending garment and pulling it on. "My word, but you're worse than Alistair, and you haven't even had coffee! All right, all right, I'm getting dressed!"
Out by the fire, Morrigan watched Zevran and Rhodri emerge from the tent with a look that could have curdled poison. Levi, who was on the opposite end of the campfire, pretended he hadn't seen them, though his brick-red cheeks indicated the exact opposite. Jeppe was curled up nearby, snoring loudly. Long, low moans were coming from Leliana's tent, and where the others had gone, Zevran didn't care to wonder. Rhodri went to the fire, scratched the dog on the belly, and retrieved what appeared to be the book that had fallen out of her hand earlier on. As she came back to Zevran and they sauntered away to their own corner of the room, Rhodri held out the book to him.
"I promised to explain to you how the shields work, sic?" she said with a smile. "This book has everything you need to know about it. We can make it a part of your first magic lesson, if it suits."
Her grin broadened as Zevran heartily assured her that that suited him very well, and once they sat down together, Rhodri handed him a pencil (after fishing it out of the giant void that was her pocket) and tapped the book.
"There's a sheet of paper in there for notes," she said, drumming her fingers on her legs like she was watching him open an expensive present. And, it had to be said, as he opened the book and took the paper out, he was starting to feel a little that way himself. The book was an old hardback, bound with deep purple leather. The writing– gilded, Zevran supposed it must have been once– was all but gone now, leaving nothing but the faintest runes behind.
"I shall have to brush up on my runes," Zevran murmured as he traced a finger over what appeared to be the table of contents.
"I thought that might be the case, so I wrote out the runic script with the alphabet beneath." Rhodri pointed her nose at the paper, and at the top of the page Zevran found that very thing. The alphabet he recognised instantly as her writing, sharp and angular, and with such curious shapes to some of them that it was hard not to wonder if Rhodri had ever properly learned to write them. Many of the letters were unnecessarily complex; others lacked the small flourishes that distinguished them from other similar letters. Under Rhodri's hand, the many curved lines found in alphabetic script, which Zevran took great pleasure in embellishing in his own writing, were reproduced as diagonal strokes that more resembled triangles and diamonds. As far as alphabets went, theirs could not have been more different. Her runes, on the other hand, were decidedly more handsome. Sharpness that looked so strange in the alphabetic script suited runes perfectly. They were angular and even, well-proportioned and bearing the uncomplicated appearance that came with years of everyday use. Zevran smiled inwardly as he wondered what Rhodri would think of his curly, childish script when he invariably started to write in runes himself, whether he would ever manage to draw a straight lined rune or if instinct would take over and force a sweeping semicircle here and there.
He was pulled from his musings, which had gone on for far too long, as Rhodri thumbed through the book and opened it when she was roughly mid-way through.
"Here it is," she traced her fingers under the title. A cursory glance revealed familiar runes, but nothing pointed to a word he was familiar with. He went to make enquiries as to the language of the book, only to find Rhodri already answering it as she said, "The book is in rather antiquated Tevene, so we will use it mostly for the diagrams today."
Her fingers drifted down to the lower third of the page, to three drawings of a robed human standing within a glowing diamond with their arms in various positions, and two of a pair of hands with arrows pointing in several directions. A guide for the motions required to cast the spell, no doubt; Rhodri's hands had moved much the same way when she summoned shields for the party. The left hand supinated twice, then a twist of the right hand, and finally the fingers snapped into the palms.
"I do not suppose I will be able to cast a shield like this, no?" Zevran asked as he replicated the motions in the diagrams. It was silly to ask when he already knew the answer, but Rhodri had fielded stupider questions from Alistair without issue, and what if she surprised him with a 'yes?'
Said magic teacher shrugged. "I have no idea what you're capable of yet," she said, and gestured at the book. "For the average Harrowed mage, this would take three months to learn and six months to perfect."
Zevran made the movements again, "The diagrams make it look easier than that."
"I hope you still have that confidence once you've learned what it all means," Rhodri grinned and nodded at the book. "Would you like a hands-on explanation? Or shall we keep it strictly academic?"
He cackled wickedly. "Ooh now, I think I would like the hands-on explanation. Shall I take some of these clothes off to make it easier?"
"Easier for who, hmm?" Rhodri raised an eyebrow. "You could sit on me, or I could get behind you, if you wa–" she stopped to laugh as Zevran, now halfway into her lap, moved the book out of her hands and onto the ground to make more room for himself. She let out a sigh and, once a sweet little squeeze had been administered to his shoulders, brought her hands out in front of him. Her voice dropped to something warm and tender, and though her eyes were on the book, Zevran felt more the centre of attention than ever.
Rhodri ran two fingers over the first diagram. "This spell has a static area component," she murmured, "meaning it doesn't move, and is spread out however much you choose it to be."
Her fingers, once Zevran had consented with a nod, slid over the back of his hands and interlaced with his fingers from behind.
"With your permission, I'll use magic to replicate what it feels like to cast a spell." She paused and kissed his temple. "It doesn't hurt, just feels like using any other muscle to move."
When Zevran nodded again, Rhodri kissed his temple again and eased their hands palms-up.
"Now, I want you to close your eyes for a moment, dulcis. You remember I told you, yes, that the Fade sits over us like a shroud?"
Zevran, whose eyes were well and truly shut, hummed in the affirmative. "I do indeed."
"Excellent. Relax, then, and guide our hands to where it is densest. Don't think on it too carefully, just let your hands do the work."
He frowned a little. "How will I know such a thing, though? Does it feel a certain way?"
"Yes, it does. I can't tell you much more, though, otherwise it will interrupt testing your natural sense for the Fade." He heard Rhodri chuckle, "Humour me?"
Zevran smiled and nodded, and following the instructions of mindlessness to the letter, he let his hands– and Rhodri's, by extension– drift over to the left, to which Rhodri hummed delightedly.
"Ooh, you're so close! Open your eyes, if you like." When Zevran opened his eyes, his hands were being guided a little further right. "Here, roughly, is where the Fade is thickest. Well done! You have a good sense for where energies lie. Sensitive, but not so sensitive you'd do anything to catch the eyes of the Templars."
He gave a modest little bob of the head. What else could he do? If the magical assessor thought he had a sub-threshold flair for magic, who was he to speak out against it? Even if he'd never cast a spell in his life.
"That is… good, yes?" Zevran ventured cautiously. "Easier to teach spells to, no?"
"Oh yes, certainly," Rhodri nodded. "In fact, if you're this good, it could well be that you do smaller magics already, perhaps without knowing it."
"Is… is that possible? To cast a spell without knowing it?"
Rhodri shrugged, "It happens often enough. On hot days in Tevinter, I saw people get their shirts wet because water leaked from their fingers while they were drinking from a glass."
Zevran snorted. "That is impractical."
"Well now," Rhodri cackled, "I never said magic was always useful. Still want to learn?"
"You know I do."
She smiled and nodded. "Yes, I do. Now, static area spells have two components to keep in mind. Static, not moving, means you have to choose a specific spot to put the spell down, and area means you have to draw the boundaries around that spot, map the limits to where the magic will be contained. Like putting down a house and then a fence around it, sic?"
"Mm? That does not seem so complicated."
"It isn't, yet." Rhodri chuckled. "But you have to do it while drawing on your mana, summoning it to your fingertips but not casting it. Takes a bit of discipline. Shall we try it up to that point?"
Zevran declared that they should, and a tiny strain registered in both hands, travelling up his arms to his shoulders and back down to his fingertips. It was no more demanding than holding a full waterskin, but the extra weight, unseen as it was, was enough to be distracting all the same.
"Right," Rhodri murmured. "You should feel a little pull in your arms. Do you?"
"Mm. Like I am carrying something. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. Now, where to put the spell?" A little beam of white light shone out of Rhodri's finger and onto the floor, "Choose the spot with your eyes and then direct the light to it."
Zevran dutifully selected a place a few tiles away and guided her finger to shine there. He announced the placement with a gentle, "There."
"Good, dulcis." A small white orb appeared on the spot, lazily floating a fingerwidth above the ground. "That was the static component. Now do the same for the area. Make the fence around the house, sic?"
After a quick glance at the diagrams for ideas, Zevran settled on mimicking the shape depicted. He cast his eye around and made a small diamond, and then took Rhodri's finger and retraced the shape. Wherever her finger pointed, a small, powdery line hovered in its wake. The strain grew with each motion, and by the time the diamond was fully formed, Zevran's arms felt like they had been carrying a sack of flour all day.
"Ah, bonus, Zev!" Rhodri praised warmly. "Perbonus! How do you feel?"
"It's… very heavy," he mumbled stupidly.
The weight suddenly lifted, and Zevran let out a sigh of relief in spite of himself. In the corner of his eye, Rhodri smiled understandingly as she said, "Yes, it is."
He flexed his fingers a little. "Is it always this demanding?"
"It's often much more demanding. But with time, you learn to handle it better. I simulated about half of that spell for you."
"Half?"
"Mmm. The static area component is the first half of the spell, which is the shield you see coming up around you. Of course, with the shield being static, the minute you step outside of it, you're no longer protected. If we go back to your question about two people with the shield bouncing off each other, in theory they would if the shields could move."
Zevran's right hand, still in Rhodri's, made some (though not all) of the motions diagrammed in the book. A shield no larger than a fist erupted by his foot and sat there like a ghostly jelly. Rhodri's left hand untangled itself from Zevran's.
"Try and smack that, Zev, see what happens."
With a nod, Zevran brought an open palm down onto the opaque little dome, only to find his hand was repelled like someone had pulled it back.
"Mmm," he rubbed his chin and sought Rhodri's hand again– for purposes of spellcasting, and nothing else. "So it is the second half of the spell that does not allow for the bounce?"
"Exactly!" She leaned forward, caught his eye long enough to beam at him, and pressed a flourished kiss onto his cheek. "Very good! The second half of the spell takes effect the minute you leave the shield. Gives you a thick layer of armour all over the body as hard as granite."
With a wave of her hand, a colossal, glowing glove appeared on their joined right hands. The thing had a diameter at least as long as his arm; had this been covering him through all those battles? Zevran gulped as it occurred to him that Alistair had managed to be eviscerated by that wretched Revenant despite wearing this armour and his own set of plate. Some things, evidently, had means of circumventing even the best defences.
He held up their shining hands. "And this protects from everything, does it?"
"Almost," Rhodri said cheerfully. "Dispelling magic, like what the Templars cast, neutralises it, and you'll still feel the impact if you run into something. Doubly so, I'd imagine, if you ran at someone with stone armour of their own."
Zevran gave a disbelieving little laugh and shook his head. "Absolutely no bounce, then."
"Absolutely no bounce."
