The light grew gradually bigger as he approached. There was something strange about it. Was it an odd shape? He slowed when he approached the sand.
Then he jerked the bike to a halt. He didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. The light was a person. A small person huddled near the water. She was surrounded by a ring of amber light that created what almost looked like a circular ray shield sprouting up from the ground and extending high above her head in a pillar until it faded out into nothing. Glowing lines were etched into her arms. The light illuminated her short blonde hair.
Oh no. Tech took stumbling steps forward. The closer he got, the more he was sure who it was. He cleared the rest of the distance between them in huge, flying strides. “Omega!”
She turned her head toward him with evident strain. Her eyes were wide and terrified. “Tech?”
Tech skidded to his knees beside her just outside the ring. She was in her undershirt and wore only one sock. The lines weren’t just on her arms. Glowing marks adorned her foot, her neck, and her face. The shining visible beneath her thin shirt indicated it covered her chest and back. Possibly her whole body. The marks looked like a garden of thorny vines.
No. Tech felt like the ground fell out from under him. They were the same markings he had been watching slowly disappear in the mirror. The ones on her left arm were oozing blood from her hand up past her elbow.
He tried to reach for her. His hand hit the pillar of light and could go no further. It was like a solid wall.
Omega grimaced. To Tech’s horror, he realized the blood was gradually spreading up her arm along the path of the vine as if she were being cut there with a knife.
“I’m sorry, Tech,” she said as a trail of tears dripped down one cheek. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
Tech struck the wall of light with one fist. “What is happening? Why do you—? What is—?!” He was afraid he already knew. But he couldn’t put it into words.
“It’s okay,” Omega said. Even now, she tried to comfort him with a smile. “It was worth it to bring you back.”
Tech felt like he was stabbed simultaneously in the heart and in the gut. Everything made sense all at once. Why his resurrection seemed too easy. Why Omega always wore gloves. Why she asked him about his research everyday, always hoping for a different answer. He grabbed two fistfuls of sand. “And this was the price? Was this always the price?!”
Omega shrieked. A trickle of blood mingled with her tears and Tech realized one of the paths on her cheek had split open. “I d-didn’t know it at first. By the time I realized it, it was too late. I’m sorry. B-but you’ll be okay. You’ll—” She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. The cut continued up to her temple.
Tech fumbled for his comm. He slammed the button on the side that would activate the emergency alert system he’d installed on the home console. Their brothers would receive the distress signal and the coordinates for his current location. “Hang on!” he cried. “We’ll figure this out.” He hit the force field one more time. “I can’t get to you. Can you move?”
She shook her head. “Not much. There’s too much pressure. Tech…please go home. I don’t want you to see this. I don’t want you to remember me like this.”
Tech’s already bleeding heart cracked open further. “You are not going to die! And I am not leaving!”
“I left a note on my datapad. It explains everything. Please, Tech.”
His eyes rapidly flew over the magic-induced force field. It extended up much higher than he could reach. If he couldn’t go through it and he couldn’t go over it… He scooped frantic handfuls of wet sand away from the base. Maybe he could dig down far enough to get under it. He flung sand behind and to either side of him like a canine. He quickly created a hole in the sand before him, but no matter how deep he went, the wall was still there. Still he dug. The tide washed in and filled the hole halfway before receding. His hands splashed through the water without slowing.
This couldn’t be happening. Omega couldn’t be sacrificing herself for him. She couldn’t be sitting here ready to accept an agonizing death on his behalf. Especially not when he had only just realized who she really was to him.
His body flooded with adrenaline, and his brain went into the overdrive state it often did when he was on the battlefield and needed to find a solution to a bad situation fast. What else could he do? There was no droid to be hacked. No detonator to disassemble. No precise shot to make. This was Force magic, and Tech was no jedi. What could he do against that?
A sharp sting sliced across his right pointer finger as he dug. He jerked his hand away and found a broken shard of a seashell deep inside the hole. He ripped it free and prepared to toss it away. The motion made his hand come into contact with the wall of light again.
He started when his fingers passed through. He dropped the shell shard. He pushed his hand forward. It went through the wall only up until his knuckles. Then the pressure was too great for him to proceed. His eyes blew wide. The cut on this finger began to glow. Where it was inside the wall, the line of blood on his hand shone with golden light. He could advance his hand only as far as the cut went.
He fumbled for the seashell piece. He took it into his left hand and, with no hesitation, pushed the sharp end into his skin right where the cut ended and sliced a long streak down his palm.
“Tech!” Omega cried in alarm.
But Tech had a theory to prove. He put his hand to the wall again, and this time, it went through down to the base of his palm. He could get inside the barrier as long as he was bleeding. He yanked his sleeve back, took the shell to his skin, and slashed down his arm to his elbow. He pushed his arm through the wall, his cut immediately lighting up. It was enough for him to be able to get a hold on Omega’s upper arm.
Her skin was burning. She was hotter than she had been on Eriadu. He held her above where her patterns were bleeding. He pulled back, hoping that perhaps if he could pull her out of the circle, the spell would end. He couldn’t move her. He could feel the pressure she mentioned bearing down on him. It was like it pushed everything to the center. Getting in was easy, but going back out was nearly impossible.
Then Tech noticed something else. Where he touched Omega’s skin, light crept up onto his fingers. The glowing vine pattern gradually bled away from her arm and crawled onto his hand.
Omega gasped. “Tech, let go!”
“I will not.” The marks elsewhere on her body had not changed, but where they made contact with Tech, they left her and attached to him.
“Stop!” Omega cried. “The whole reason I did this was to save you! You can’t undo that!”
Tech squeezed her arm harder. “I did not give my consent for you to trade your life for mine.”
“And I didn’t give my consent for you to die for us on Eriadu! I didn’t want you to do that!”
“I would do it again,” Tech said. “I will do it again.”
“No!” Omega attempted to pull out of his grasp, but she couldn't move more than an inch. She whimpered. A spot of red blossomed on the shoulder opposite Tech where another vine began to split open. She hung her head. “Let go, Tech. It’s not going to matter. It’s too late.”
Tech plunged the shell into the sand beside his knee, sharp side sticking up. He maneuvered his left hand against the point. It took a few tries, but he was at last able to cut a few messy streaks along his hand and arm. He reached that bleeding hand through the barrier and grasped Omega’s bare ankle. The pattern glowing there shifted on her skin as it slithered toward his fingers. “It’s never too late.”
(Excerpt from chapter 12 of my fic, The Call of the Amber Dawn. I decided to finally make an illustration for it.)
Force mages are a fearsome sight on the battlefield, bending the laws of nature to crush, toss, and debilitate their foes. Kirkwall's Circle houses a higher-than-usual percentage of mages who excel at this specialization, and their combined research has refined the school considerably.
I think Kirkwall's Circle having a huge amount of force mages is fascinating, and the fact that Hawke can specialize in it as well.
MERRIN SAID A WARRIOR BRANDISHING A LIGHTSABER ATTACKED THE NIGHT SUSTERS AND MALICOS USED THAT HATRED OF JEDI TO LEARN THEIR MAGIC BUT IT WAS GRIEVOUS THIS WHILE TIME?!?!??????!!?
Also the mother that took in morgan just abandoned merrin on that same battlefield? Like girl what?
And why did Morgan’s paint (tattoos?) vanish if merrin had kept the magic alive? Maybe she learned it later from texts but proximity to the altar of the all mother (name?) allowed her to keep it?
What magic is the other tribe (the mountain people) able to use? It looks like light side magic to balance the dark side magic that the night sisters use, but does this mean there are two different sects of the Witches of Dathomir? Why have we only ever seen the one faction til now???
Guys I have THIUGHTS about all this new dathomir lore omg
Another little throwback piece from 2021. I wanted to draw both Hecate and baby Grogu and eneded with a compromise of both. It's still one of my favourite pieces I've completed. 🥰🧙♀️🎨
I hope in the next game they bring back a healer mage option. With the spirit tree you could do support but I miss being able to heal other than just potions. I love playing a cleric or white mage so I hope this comes back. That or force mage, gravity powers are fun.
Remember that mandalorian arc where Satine calls Obi wan for help because Maul was taking over Mandalore with Death Watch? What if before Satine is almost killed, Maul uses some sith magic/force thing that de ages/time travels BOTH Satine and Obi wan to sometime during the year they were on the run. As in, padawan Obi wan who has been in some wars is protecting this girl and they are on Mandalore where there is a lot of fighting.
He sees a sith, white mandos that have different types of style, and all this fighting along with something wrong with his bond to Qui gon and decides to run and protect Satine. That is his mission.
Also I head canon that before being a pacifist, Satine was one of the best shooters/mando during her youth. So young Satine is all shooty with a gun and just looks devastated by the destruction. When she is brought back to everyone she starts about how she is going to stop all the fighting, no more war and tries to give a speech to her people like when she was ‘younger’ and came back the first time. A lot of people see this and are more understanding of why Satine made Mandalore a pacifist planet if this was what she had to deal with.
I sometimes see Satine and Obi wan as sibling like relationship and romantic. Any choice is good.
Obi wan and Satine are basically doing what they did during the war, running and hiding until Qui gon says its okay and so they go to people and try to hide. When the truth comes out that they are de aged, they stare in shock of their life works in flames just come crashing down.
Before that, Obi wan sees Ahsoka (she is still there okay, creative license) as a fellow padawan and tells her stories of some of his missions. Which the 212th and 501st also get in on listening because here is a brighter general giving out stories and the ones he tells are so weird and frustrating to them as they need to have a more protective watch as the stuff he gets into is awful.
Also Bo-Katan, Satine’s sister is there, so how must it feel to see her sister young and realize that she was always thinking about the good of their people, its just that Satine saw too much war on the run with everyone tired that she stopped it, only for those with traditions ruin that along with throwing Mandalore in an unstable position. What about Satine’s nephew? The one that has known peace has now been thrown into war and knows what his aunt went through to get peace only for it to blow up in her face.
This painting appears several places in Dragon Age Inquisition, and I have a headcanon about this man.
Karl Thekla writes a magical tome on force magic, both theory and practice, and unexpectedly but understandably gets attention among mages in all of Thedas, not just the south. Because of this, he is made to get a portrait painted for the back of his printed books since he's now a somewhat famous mage scholar.
That's why he looks unhappy because painting is a long process he didn't want, and Anders gives him a ton of shit over the silly little hat they made him wear for the portrait.
It's also one of the reasons why he is sent to Kirkwall's Circle, because it's the circle with the most mages specializing in force magic and thus a research powerhouse.
