InsaneJournal

When it came to her magic, Marian could definitely say she’d gotten stronger and stronger with every passing week. There were times when she looked back on the mage who’d first gotten into that pissing contest with Lomea and didn’t even recognize herself. Lomea might have been proud of what she’d created, but in these moments it was hard for Marian to tell.

They were locked in the heat of combat again, and sessions like these always pushed her to the absolute edge of her limits. Marian was no ‘force sensitive’, but these days she felt like she’d enrolled in her own version of a sith academy.

And she wasn’t sure that was a bad thing, anymore.

Her eyes flashed orange and red as another fireball came into existence, seemingly from nowhere, and flew towards her assailant. Last week she’d still needed to make a gesture with her hands. This time, she mentally directed the blast.

Lomea had always detected great power in Marian. And from her understanding of the woman’s life, she knew she’d performed feats in the past. But there was so much more potential to unlock.

And she was convinced Marian needed to fall, before she could pull herself up. To taste the darkness and know what waited for her should she misstep.

The Sith deflected the firewall with a lazy wave of her hand. “Tsk. You can do better than that!”

The fireball exploded harmlessly against the force-fields, and Lomea took a step forward. There was only so far for Marian to back into - another field had been in place, though if Lomea had had her way it would have been a firepit or laser system.

Fear of death did have its uses after all.

Lightning crackled in the space between them. “Harness your anger. Use your fear. Taste the darkness, let it consume you. Only then will you understand. Only then will you be strong enough to grasp hold of your own destiny!”

There absolutely was a great deal of power hiding within Marian, and she could count on one hand the number of times she'd ever used it to its fullest extent. Both times had been as a last result, because she absolutely meant someone harm.

Lightning crackled across the space between them and then hit against an invisible barrier Marian quickly constructed, as she contemplated Lomea's words. Finally, as she wiped some sweat across her forehead, she asked. "Do you want me to kill you? Is that it? I thought I was the one with the death wish."

There was no lava or death pit between them, or Marian would have tried to suck Lomea into it. Instead, she set up a prison of arcane energy around Lomea's body, one that would crush her and make her own attacks slower.

A laugh erupted from Lomea. “You? Kill me? Unlikely.” She held her arms out, the Force like a shield around her that countered the prison.

“You think to trap me within a prison? Your spells are pathetic. Try harder! Your mind is too soft. Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Without conflict, we stagnate. With it, we can change. Grow. Adapt. Evolve."

The bubble burst, and Lomea thrust her hands out, lightning shooting out, stronger than before. "Through passion, we gain strength! We reach our full potential, we challenge the status quo. Passion keeps us alive!"

There was something in the air, the ozone from the lightning and the darkness of the Force swirling around like a whirlpool. Like a rapidly building storm. "Through strength, power! Through power, victory. Fight for your power, and fight for your victory."

A wind had picked up, joining the lightning crackling off the forcefields. "Through victory, your chains are broken! Free yourself of your chains, Hawke. Of the restrictions of a life now lost to you, of the chains placed upon you by others and yourself. Achieve your potential, achieve your power, and your destiny and the Force shall free you."

The storm crackled around Hawke, battering against her barrier as Lomea's speech cut through her. It was true, she was chained. Chained by a world who used her against her own kind. A world that had trained her to cut down any mage that dared to ask for more, even if it was their only means of escaping the prison the Chantry had built around them.

She'd placed those chains around herself without a second thought because that was all her father had known. Surviving in the world without them was a dangerous prospect, and few mages had the will to temper themselves. In this world, none of that mattered.

What would await her if she gained victory in this battle? Through the past few months she'd gained ground but that power always came with a price. What of her would be left? Did she even care? Did it matter, here in this world between worlds?

Marian reached into her pocket as the storm threatened to bring her to her knees, fishing around for the phial of lyrium she'd stowed away inside it. Her reserves were pushed to the limit just trying to stave off the storm of electricity, but she knew what would happen next, regardless.

The glass crushed in her hand as she pulled it out of her pocket. The faint glow of the blue potion flashed in the storm as she absorbed the potion into her flesh, and then a rush of blood splashed against it.

Her hand was a mess, but Hawke no longer cared. She let out a loud cry as the barrier exploded around her, knocking herself to the floor and taking down half of the dampening fields with it.

"Challenge me!" Lomea's voice rose to a shout, one hand twisting with the Force to disrupt any alarms before they went off and reassert the force fields, the other snapping out, her fingers like a vice as the Force started to crush Marian's throat. "What are you waiting for? A signed invitation?"

The storm had died down, and there were only the two women now and the Force between them.

But soon, there was something more than just the Force between them. It didn't matter if Lomea intended to kill Marian - she might have given her the benefit of the doubt before the Sith had broken her arm on purpose, but now, all bets were off.

No, this was no longer some game they were playing, and it'd passed any kind of training or sparring session. As Marian's throat started to constrict painfully, and her vision started to fade in and out, she knew what she had to do.

She had to give Lomea exactly what she was asking for. It was a spell she'd only ever cast once, and lacking the clawed glove she'd used to scratch the sigils into her flesh, she instead opted for one of the shards of glass still in her hand.

Quickly - before she ran out of air - she spoke the words in her mind. The sigils glowed with otherworldly power, a bright red that flamed out of her eyes when she opened them again. Portals of shadow and flame opened up in the air around Lomea, and within the blink of an eye gigantic armored hands emerged, grabbing Lomea by the arms and shoulders.

Lomea's grip faltered around the neck, and Marian took that opportunity to break away from the spell. Blood flew out of her hand and through the air, swirling around Lomea before taking shape into tendrils that ripped through her flesh. "Is that enough of a challenge for you!? Shall I rip your heart right out of your chest?"

If they were planetside, it was likely they would have torn the ground beneath them asunder in their battle. But not damaging the ship remained at the back of Lomea's mind.

If that were the case, a Force Storm unlike any other would have ripped through the training room. Instead, Lomea seethed, the Force contracting and roiling around her.

The grip on her shoulders started to lessen, and Lomea seized the opportunity. "You should have struck me down when you had the chance."

The Force rippled again, and she threw her hands out, dark energy swirling around her fingers. The energy thrummed, coiling like a snake rearing back to strike.

She threw off the demonic hands and then shuddered as the tendrils ripped into her stomach and chest. Lomea hurked, looking down at herself. Hawke's blood had almost crystallized into razor sharp, whip-like tendrils.

"Oh, look at that. I've been impaled."

"Yes, well..." Marian whispered, her vision still watering. The power she'd just called upon was already gone, leaving behind only dark, seductive traces of itself. The kinds of whispers and aches deep inside that made a maleficar turn to this kind of magic over and over.

What she'd done to Lomea was nothing she'd ever tried before and that, too, whispered at her. What else could she unlock? What new magic was lurking, just out of reach - or behind doors that had been closed to mages forever. "Maker..." She whispered, while sinking to her knees, "Is this what the magisters feel like all the time?"

She shook her hand out, and the blood that had impaled Lomea fell away in little drops. "... Anyway you DID ask for it."

Bringing her hand to one of the wounds, Lomea let out a soft, tired laugh. "That I did. Most impressive."

She refused to kneel or sit, so swayed in place. There were ways to use the Force to heal, but one needed to dedicate their life to such pursuits, and Lomea certainly had never. But she could use the Force to clot the blood, at least.

"I sense a change in you. Have you broken your chains, Hawke?" She stepped closer, eyes narrowing, "No. Not yet. But they have weakened."

She finally allowed herself to sit next to Hawke. "Now, if you do not mind, I think I shall sit here and bleed out."

"We both might, at this rate. And we'd well deserve it," Marian muttered. But she'd done this, and she refused to let her friend die for it. If they were still friends. In one way, the trust had been fractured, but in another way it had knit them closer together. Hawke had no idea what word to describe their relationship with.

She reached out towards Lomea with the hand that wasn't burned and cut, and summoned a bit of flame to cauterize the wound. "You're welcome. Shall I drag you to a med bay, now? Before I pass out?"

There was a chance they'd both be tossed in the brig afterwards, but she hoped she could chalk it all up to training gone badly. That was close enough to the truth, after all. She just hoped she didn't run into Varric on the way.

It was the trust of Master and Apprentice. Among the Sith, the threat of death was omnipresent. Trust could not exist in such a state, and it had been one of the things that Lomea had actually respected the Jedi for. Just never tell one that.

"That would be wise. We'll tell them the truth. Our training got a little out of hand."

She put her arm around Hawke. "To grow strong, one must understand where they are weak. The lesson today, is that is going to be a life-long process."

"I believe we're about to learn just exactly how little I know about myself," Hawke mumbled, staring down at her hand. The lyrium, which she'd never absorbed from the surface of her skin before, had burned an odd pattern down her wrists, and the blood showed no sign of scabbing over. That was the other price one paid.

She sighed, and rubbed at her nose - leaving her signature mark there, though completely accidentally. "Tell me that if I lose control of myself you'll end me."

Whatever had happened in Kirkwall had not truly brought out the Champion’s potential. It had hardened her like steel, but steel still needed to be tempered. Lomea believed that this was the path forward for Hawke.

“That is a promise, that I make to you as your friend,” Lomea responded, resting her hand over Marian’s. “But I shall never have to. For there to be shadow, there must be light to cast it. In time, you will understand why I train you the way that I do.”

"But you're more than my friend now, aren't you?" Hawke asked, glancing over at Lomea. The Sith's complexion was losing its color, and she tried to summon the energy to pull herself to her feet. Lomea at least needed medical attention. "You're training me... grooming me for something greater. I thought you were going to kill me that time, and maybe you were. Will we even survive this? And the only way to know is to trust you. That seems in short supply at your Sith Academy."

Marian slowly rose to her feet, steadying herself as the room briefly started to spin. Then she held her hand out to Lomea. "Up we go."

She took Hawke’s hand, letting her pull her to her feet. “If you did not fear for your life, would you have shed your doubts and your fears?”

A smile crossed her lips. “That is what I trusted you to do. Be strong enough to survive.”

"Lucky for us both, surviving damned near everything is exactly the thing I can be counted on to do." Marian joked, as she lead them both out. The room was a mess, but thankfully those things tended to clean themselves up in the future. Which was good, because it could have been mistaken as a crime scene, otherwise.

“Very good, then.” Lomea’s smile remained on her face, and very weary. But it had been a good day.