Lockdown (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ruthless_hunter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
boxofmisfits2017-12-22 12:24 am
ruthless_hunter) wrote in boxofmisfits2017-12-22 12:24 am
Blood and Sorcery
Lockdown considered himself lucky that he'd never been inside a Circle.
His magic had manifested at the tender age of six, and he'd been lucky enough to live near someone who could teach him. But the Chantry had still found a way to hurt him. After that, he had no love for it, or its Templar lackeys. Nowhere to go, he mainly wandered Thedas, taking up bounty hunting jobs and avoiding the Templars.
But even he had his moments where he slipped up.
A small town Chantry had learned a blood mage was in the area, and sent Templar goons out to find the blood mage in question in the surrounding woods.
Lockdown did what he could to shake them, but they were persistent. They weren't about to give up without finding a blood mage. The mage, holding onto his wide-brimmed hat and his long coat flapping in the wind, found himself on the trail cutting through the woods. He nearly ran smack into a woman with dark hair.
"Lady, if I were you I'd go back the way you came."
As if on cue, to emphasis his point, Templar voices came from behind him, a little further away, "That blood mage went this way!"
no subject
Being wary of Templars isn't something that can simply be shrugged off after twelve years in the Circle — any mage that makes it through their Harrowing has a good healthy dose of it to keep them alive. Even with two years of untouchable freedom behind her, Amell isn't immune to the bolt of alarm that comes from being "caught" by them.
But she is untouchable, so however these templars managed to track her down without her phylactery — a viciously triumphant smear of old blood and thin glass beneath her heel when she demanded it from the storage — she has no reason to fear them, and no reason to flee. She is Warden-Commander, Hero of Ferelden, and now, even templars cannot stifle her magic, because she knows how to reach within and find power in her own veins. It hasn't made her a popular figure within the Chantry, but anyone who had ever met a darkspawn has made it very clear that whatever the rumors of her blood magic, most of them are simply grateful it's been turned toward the Blight, and the rest is the Maker's business.
Still, she supposes it shouldn't be too surprising, that a few Templars might take offense to a mage getting above her station as a good prisoner, going about making blood magic seem like it could be as perfectly useful as drawing from the Fade. How they managed to find her, and why this man seems so alarmed by them, is something she can look into once they have either been forced to cower back to their tower or shredded to pieces.
Staff held loosely and casually in her hand, Amell gives the stranger a look at is meant to be reassuring, if not for the tilt of pride in the corner of her lips. "Your concern is not necessary," she tells him, perfectly at ease. "I'm quite sure I can send them on their way."
no subject
It's only now that he notices that she too has a staff. And then he registers the blue uniform. He's met enough Gray Wardens to recognize it. He's also known enough Templars who hate the Wardens, and has no reason to think these ones will spare this woman if they see the uniform too.
Lockdown draws his own staff, with the eye-catching skull on the top, when the Templars finally catch up to him. "Come with us willingly and we'll show you mercy, blood mage."
Except Lockdown knows that the Templars' idea of 'mercy' is giving him the Brand. Hence why he responds by casting a lightning bolt spell the nearest Templar.
no subject
The Silence they throw out automatically chokes Amell's sense of the Fade in an instant, but she's well familiar with their tactics and has already split her ungloved palm on the thin blade worked into the hilt of her staff by the time the nullification reaches her. The rush of pain becomes a grounding reality she can grab for, shrugging off the numbness of being blocked from the Fade and stretching out with her mana to tangle in the stranger's bolt of lightning, adding her own surge of power to it and making it arc between them all. As they twitch under the electricity, she sweeps down a glyph around herself and the other mage to keep the templars from closing on them too quickly.
"Your commander would be ashamed of you," she tells them sternly, in the moments of peace their jerky paralytic dance allows her. "Grouping up like that is just amateur." Too used to mages they can intimidate with numbers or suppress with Smites, perhaps, or apostates who are better at running than fighting. Shame they're not even half as tough as a tunnel full of darkspawn, or they might have had — well, no, they'd still have no chance, but Amell might not have scolded them for poor form before she killed them.
no subject
Whipping out his own knife, Lockdown follows her lead and runs the blade across his palm. His eyes, already strange with their red irises, glow red as he accesses his alternate source of mana. Targeting the two nearest Templars, Lockdown wills their own blood to turn against them, the two men making choking noises as they fall to their knees.
One of them falls over, but Lockdown isn't able to react in time with one of the remaining Templars casts Holy Smite on him. Lockdown finds himself on his knees now, his body suddenly feeling cold and his head now spinning. Once his head clears he's going to be kicking himself, because he's usually on top of things during fights with Templars.
no subject
The world bends to her will, the air around them suddenly crackling with energy, a rushing maelstrom of freezing wind she pulls from nothingness because she demands it. Sheets of ice climbs over the struggling limbs of the templars, crystallizing them like dew around leaves in the dead of winter, locking them in place. Casually, she pulls a knife from her belt and uses it to stab one templar through the slit of his helmet, and he dies in silence, choked by the ice in his throat.
"Did you want to get some," she directs toward the other mage, gesturing with the soaked blade toward the other frozen statues, "or shall I?"
no subject
Using his staff, Lockdown pulls himself to his feet. He's not shaky anymore, though he does have some sweat on his pale brow, despite the cold in the air.
"Don't mind if I do." Pulling out his own knife, Lockdown approaches the nearest Templar and does as she did, then does it to another.