✍ iselan 👀
@katabasiiis / send me a ✍ + a muse to see how i would play them. accepting.
“Hold this.” Iselan holds out her hand behind her, leaning in close to inspect the lyrium embedded in the frame of the eluvian, waiting until the weight of her hammer is absent from her hand before cupping her hands around it. Safely! Never touching, no, but close enough to prod at the way the Veil warps and folds, testing the resonant frequency of magic with careful fingers.
This eluvian — old as it is — has no twin that they’ve found. It should be dormant, but the glass ripples and shines like water on a lake, glittering as if under the light of the noonday sun. She thinks, perhaps, it’s possible its pair is elsewhere. Buried with the ancient city of Arlathan, in some magister’s mansion in Tevinter, or a noble’s estate in neighboring Orlais. The thought makes her lips purse and brow furrow, the lines of June’s vallaslin creasing on her forehead. The lyrium fragment crackles when her anger flares, indignant, at the very idea. If the eluvian took them to some damned shemlen infested —
“Careful, Ise,” comes a voice from behind. Patient. Grounding.
She takes in a breath and nods, “Right,” curling her hands into fists, then extending her fingers again. Her eyes close to better focus on the strands of magic, flowing like the finest silk across her skin. And then… There! A hitch in the magical resonance, cresting at irregular intervals and creating a cacophonous harmony with the lyrium. Iselan catches it, using her own magic to smooth it out, soothing the melody until it stabilizes and sings with the correct notes.
When she opens her eyes, the mirror glass still shimmers, but now beyond it she can see the reflection of a place with rippling colors and floating islands. Standing slowly, she reaches out, hesitating a hair’s breadth away from it. “Where do you think this leads?” she asks, turning to her companion.
Felassan grins and steps forward, taking her hand. “Only one way to find out.” And before she can stop him, he’s pulled her along through the eluvian. The magic washes over her like water and she isn’t sure if the gasp that pulls from her lungs is from surprise or the sudden assault of vibrancy all around her.
If it is not the bright, beautiful array of colors — some of which she’s never even seen and couldn’t find the words to describe if she tried — then it is the free flow of magic that passes through her, calling at something ancient and familiar in her blood. She can hardly decide where to look, green eyes darting back and forth from the floating islands in the distance to the ancient architecture just waiting to be studied and explored. It’s all too much to take in and she expects to find the same shock and awe on Felassan’s features. But when she looks to him, his gaze is locked on a fixed point somewhere in the distance, almost wistful, and she pauses.
“Felassan?” she asks, voice almost uncertain as she places gentle hand on his arm. “Are you… Are you all right?”
When he looks to her, it’s with an easy smile, the longing she glimpsed tucked neatly away like he so often does. It makes her heart ache. “Of course, Ise,” he says in that lighthearted way, the way that tells her this is the only answer she’ll get.
Iselan opens her mouth to pry anyway, tired of letting him pass off her concern like it’s nothing, when his expression shifts and he mutters a curse under his breath. The glass of the Fade eluvian has started to ripple, the image of her workshop on the other side flickering and warping and once again he has taken her hand to pull her through it. Just as well, too, because as soon as they are back it goes dark, with only the faintest shimmer of silver and blue to indicate it’s not entirely dormant.
“Damn it!” She immediately begins rifling around on her work bench for her quill — where is her quill!? And her hammer — and she’ll need the device for recording frequencies, and —
Her quill is in her hands, suddenly, along with her journal, opened to a blank page. She flashes Felassan a grateful smile and sits on her stool to clear a space to write her notes, already sketching out a diagram. Behind her, she doesn’t see the way Felassan’s face drops, or the way his eyes linger on the eluvian, too caught up in this latest development and her eagerness to remember every detail to ask him any further questions about what she saw.
