strangetrip | EP - The Sweetest Blood Mage

Merrill knew where a handful of things were for sure. Her room. The kitchens. Anders' room. Rey's. The café. The pool.

Everything else was basically a coin toss, something interesting she'd found and then probably never see again. It was how she'd treated Kirkwall for the most part.

The day was lovely and sunny in a way Kirkwall rarely was. She sat int the middle of a manicured field, eyes closed as she sprouted flowers around her instead of just hacked off grass. She hadn't ever been shy about her magic. What was the point? People saw her vallaslin and assumed anyway even if she didn't have her staff on her.

This place was alive and healthy as far as she could tell. She wasn't a healer. She'd have to ask Anders and that would be a battle in and of itself.

She wanted to work on connecting better with this place, on figuring out what it wanted. If she knew what it wanted, maybe they could all get back home and she and Anders could help Hawke and the rest of the world. She didn't want Anders to get to the point where his hope started decaying and there was nothing any of them they could do about it.

Maybe... Maybe somehow she could figure it out...

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No way to miss it when a chatty, bubbly woman like this one or Keyleth went quiet on you, Kash considered the situation. He reviewed what he'd said, what she'd said, and what the possibilities were. Obviously, something he'd said had upset or scared her. The only thing he could think of was "cleric."

"Let me guess. Cleric isn't a good thing where you're from."

"It depends on who you ask," she said. "Cleric and magic aren't two words that go well together..." She was going to give him a chance. She had to. They were all stuck here together.

"Will you tell me what it means where you're from?" There. That was a good starting point. She could figure out where he was coming from and then wouldn't have to explain anything about the war or the Chantry or the Chantry's history with the elves in particular or any of that.

Scared. Definitely.

"Clerics are magic users where I'm from. We fight, foster and heal," he explained. It sounded more like Pike than him, but it wasn't wrong when it came to him either. "We get our magic from our gods instead of from the Weave."

Hoping to stave off the inevitable, Kash added, "I'm a Life cleric. I believe in Life itself."

If anything in Kashaw's statement made Merrill relax it was the plural on gods. She didn't know what the Weave was. Probably something like the Fade. She nodded and let her shoulders release the tension she was holding.

"They're not, where I come from. They're higher up members of the Chantry, the church of Andraste. It's..." She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "The Chantry and magic have a painful history as do the Chantry and elves. When you happen to be both things get painful. I'm sorry. I shouldn't've jumped to conclusions."

Kash waved that off. "No harm done." He'd given worse offense for less reason. Honestly, he'd given worse offense because he didn't feel like talking to someone.

"Sounds like a real bitch." Which was the Kashaw conversational equivalent of sympathy. "We've got places where magic is restricted to the clergy and plenty of people who hate one or another kind of magic but when your world's full of magical beings and races that'd murder you as soon as spit, at most, it usually gets you a side-eye."

"Oh we have plenty of magical things that'll murder you as soon as spit," Merrill said casually, adjusting her seat. "Demons and dragons and darkspawn and..." She shrugged like it was no big deal. "The Chantry just has some...oppressive ideas. Really, the mage rebellion was a long time coming. I just hope it's over soon."

"Who'd they think was going to kill the magical threats?" Kash groused, because it was the kind of thing that would piss him the hell off if he lived in her world. He shook his head and shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Anyway, you learn anything from the flowers yet?"

EP - The Sweetest Blood Mage - OTA

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