Blood and Sorcery

[ruthless_hunter]

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!"

Comments

[ruthless_hunter]

Lockdown often doesn't get pegged as a mage, since he's rather muscular, which is an atypical build for a mage. Most mages he knows tend to be on the leaner side when they do have muscles, especially his fellow apostates.

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.

[warden_enchanter]

Ah yes, Templar mercy. It always does well to remember that mercy from the Chantry is a blade through the heart, and the soldiers wear it so proudly on their armor. A sign of death displayed in glittering steel plate. Even if they are evidently not addressing herself, Amell is hardly inclined to step aside for their benefit, if only to deny them the satisfaction of a kill.

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.

[ruthless_hunter]

Lockdown senses that familiar magic, and looks over at the other mage, in time to see her split her palm open. So this is a woman after his own heart. This just got more interesting. But that can wait until the Templars are disposed of.

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.

[warden_enchanter]

A downed mage is a vulnerable one, though at least the glyph Amell put down is holding strong, the templars bouncing off of its barrier with an amusing rattle of armor. The Smite still lingers in the air, making a hollow of the place in her mind where her mana collects; she squeezes her cut hand around the hilt of her staff to anchor herself, making pain flare white-hot and blood run down the metal, sizzling and sparking where it drips on her glyph.

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?"

[ruthless_hunter]

Lockdown senses that change in the air as she casts more magic at the Templars, shivering slightly as the ice avoids him and goes right for their attackers. She's definitely powerful. Most Warden mages are. Lockdown's unsure if it's the process of becoming a Warden that makes that so, or if Wardens just have access to better training. Every Warden he's ever met has refused to spill their secrets.

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.