Who: Maia and Morrigan What: Showing off their magic turns into a battle with the forces of the Empire When: Today Where: Around Warnings: PG-13ish for magical violence, also Morrigan briefly shapeshifts into a giant spider
Things were certainly looking up for Morrigan currently. She had a girlfriend, and so far things were going well. Even if she had insecurities in herself in regards to maintaining the relationship, she was still going to try. Morrigan didn’t do anything half-assed, as it was. When she set her mind to something, she threw herself into it completely. Mind, body and soul. So for better or for worse, she was going to see this relationship through.
Morrigan had asked Maia to meet her for a date consisting of exploring their magic together. She’d found an area outside the city where they wouldn’t be in danger of starting a forest fire or a brush fire on accident. She arrived early so she could prepare the area better for them to cast spells in. She had no spells of protection or the like that could contain their magic, but she did ensure if a fire did start, it couldn’t spread that far.
Also, Morrigan had dressed in her trademark robes from her dreams, complete with her hair being in a messy bun. She felt oddly comfortable in them, and there was something right about wearing them while doing magic.
Maia was in a relationship with someone. It wasn’t even a sexual one which was strange but she didn’t really mind so much. She still made Morrigan blush or stammer so it was worth the trade-off.
She was eager to really test out her magic, and to see what Morrigan was capable of in this world. Maybe there’d be shape-shifting. Maybe she could learn something.
She arrived in her best robe, eager as a beaver. “Well hello, love!”
Morrigan would get to the sexual part at some point. She simply needed to get over herself first. Which may or may not be helped with doing something to stop her from overthinking the whole relationship aspect of things.
When Maia arrived, she turned and greeted her with a smile. It was also highly unnerving to Morrigan just how much she was smiling of late. She didn’t think she’d smiled this much in her entire life. If her mother knew about this, she’d undoubtedly make some snide comment to her about the frequency of her smiling.
“Hello, tis good to see you,” she said as she approached Maia and greeted her properly with a kiss on her lips.
Morrigan smiling this much would give Alistair heart palpatations. Maia thought he should know, then. But then she was kissed and her lips buzzed a little and she suddenly felt like a little loopy puppy in love. And really that wasn’t dignified but did she care? Of course not. “Getting the sparks flying early I see.’
She smirked at the comment. “Tis one of my specialties,” she quipped amusedly. Morrigan would take full advantage of not being tongue-tied at the current moment to make such quips. “Besides, there shall be plenty of sparks flying here, may as well begin them as soon as possible, would you not agree?”
“Oh yes,” Maia snapped her fingers, creating a brief flame as she did so. She took another chance and pecked Morrigan’s cheek. “What did you want to start with?”
“You have quite the affinity with fire. As I recall from the dreams, you are more with the elemental spells. How about beginning with cold spells?” Morrigan suggested. It was an area of spells that she possessed as well. Where they differed were in the specializations, and Morrigan also had a few entropy spells.
“Ice, yes?” Maia rubbed her hands together. “Not my best, I think but it’s a good place to start!” Though there were more than one occasion where she’d had all of her area elemental spells going at once.
It drove the rest of the party buts, but she just got so excited sometimes.
Morrigan had her own area of effect spells, but she tended to leave those to Maia. She tended to focus more on single spells, such as Winter’s Grasp or her Entropy spells. Now and then she’d toss in another area of effect spell just for fun if things were especially bad.
“Yes, ice. Sometimes I prefer it to fire.” Morrigan saw an elegance in the ice spells that perhaps few others saw. She concentrated, a white misty cloud forming around her hand before she waved it and cast Winter’s Grasp. It came easily to her, and the feel of casting spells was exhilarating.
“You certainly can be an ice queen.” Maia pinched her butt. “But you’ve got a warm, cuddly center.” She stepped to the side, wriggling her fingers. What to cast, what to cast….”You know, we can definitely keep cool over the summer.”
Ice formed around her body, a barrier of chilly armor to protect her.
Morrigan yelped as Maia pinched her butt. She then gave her a somewhat pointed look, eyes narrowing a bit. “You are a cheeky one,” she commented. Then once Maia had cast the armor spell, Morrigan smirked and flicked her finger at Maia, a little bolt of lightning coming out of it. If it managed to go through the armor, it would be little more than a static shock.
Maia jumped a little, then threw her head back and laughed. “Good one!” She formed the words for another spell, and lightning arced, striking a rock out cropping. Maia danced forward, the air filling with the smell of ozone as she threw lightning bolts from her hands. She switched it up, the earth cracking beneath the rock before flame burst from her hands and engulfed the outcropping. She wondered if she could get fancy. “Can you cast Stonefist?”
Maybe she could light it on fire. Flaming stonefist!
She watched as Maia danced and cast the spells, a fond smile on her face. She liked watching the way she wielded magic. Maia had skill and artistry in it.
“Alas no, that is not one of my spells. Earth is not an element I am proficient in.” Though she did get an idea. She closed her fist and concentrated, fire gathering around it. Then aiming at the outcropping, she slung the fireball at it, making a nice mini-explosion of molten rock. And while Maia was distracted, Morrigan used the chance to shapeshift. So the next time Maia looked at her, there would be a giant spider in her place.
If one didn’t have fun with it, what was the point? Magic was something beautiful, no matter what the chantry said.
“Nice shot! And that’s a pity, I wanted to make a…” Maia trailed off, nearly jumping out of her skin. “Shit! Warn a person next time!” There was something a lot more ….impressive about the shape-shifting in this world. Maybe it was different expectations. “You’re bloody huge!”
If a spider could laugh, Morrigan would be laughing right then. However, she just had to settle for waving a leg at Maia. One of the things about shapeshifting, especially into the giant spider, was the species of spiders in Thedas were not found on Earth. Maybe prehistoric Earth when there were insects and the like that were far far larger than they were now.
After a moment, Morrigan shifted back into herself and she had a bright smile on her face and an amused twinkle in her eye. “I could not resist the temptation to surprise you with that. I have a feeling the giant spider form would frighten most people in this world. And even some from our own dream world.”
A big, hairy, spider leg. And not the good kind of Morrigan-leg that Maia was fond of either. It was creepy. “Maker. The fascinating thing is it’s a miracle you can move around. We’re long past the giant spider era.” Which made her wonder what the oxygen levels in Thedas were.
She put her arms on Morrigan’s shoulders. “That’s so exciting though! You can shape-shift! How does that even work, could you learn to shift into an earth animal?”
Creepy was one of the effects that Morrigan was going for with the spider form. It wasn’t one she planned to use very often. In fact, she’d probably only use it to give people heart attacks. She had other forms that she could utilize during battle that were more efficient, such as a bear or a wolf.
She set her hands on Maia’s hips. “It takes a great deal of concentration, and I would say it is similar to hurling a fireball except that the magic is turned inward upon you. Tis an odd sensation for my body to change shape, but it is not painful. Simply...quite odd. As for becoming an animal from this world, I believe it to be possible, yes. Animals in Thedas, in part, have little difference to animals here. Cats remain similar as do bears, both being forms I have in the dreams.”
They should troll the Templars. It would be too much fun to troll the Templars. “What about a lion? Oh! Or a dinosaur! Could you learn to be a raptor or a tyrannosaurus?” The applications would be both epic and hilarious. “Do you know how to be a dragon? Can you teach me?”
Trolling Templars would definitely be something Morrigan would enjoy doing. “A lion, certainly. As for a dinosaur, that may be far more difficult. To become an animal, you must envision it, study how it moves so that you may move similarly. Example, one must study a wolf to learn how it moves so as not to alert other animals that something was off about it. I could teach you, yes, though a dragon is not in my repertoire either.”
“What if you watched all the Jurassic Park movies, as well as those Walking With Dinosaur documentaries?” She was sure they were mostly inaccurate but a dinosaur wasn’t exactly something that they’d need to worry about alerting other animals that something was off.
The fact that a dinosaur was walking around was just about enough to alert anything. “Would you really teach me?”
“I suppose it could be worth the try.” At the very least, Morrigan could see a use for a velociraptor. Or even a Tyrannosaurus Rex on occasion. At Maia’s question, she had to smile. “Why would I not teach you? You are eager to learn and you are a very skilled mage. You would not try my patience in pretending to want to learn.” Morrigan would be more leery of teaching some other mages because she wasn’t certain of their level of seriousness about the craft. But Maia? Maia was serious about her craft.
It would fulfill Maia’s lifelong goal of having a pet velociraptor to ride.
“You’re the best girlfriend a bird could ask for.” Maia winked at her, and rolled her shoulders a little. “I want to try something a little dangerous. An inferno or lightning storm.”
Morrigan would take offense to being called a pet. A velociraptor was not a pet. Nor was Morrigan a pet.
“I do what I am able,” Morrigan responded with a slightly shy smile. “By all means try it. Tis why we are all the way out here.” And she well knew Maia liked to show off and cover the battlefield with as many area of effect spells as possible.
Maia wouldn’t call her a pet, of course, it would be a joke. But probably a tasteless one. She surveyed the ‘battlefield’, imagining hordes of darkspawn as she prepared to conjure and inferno.
Some crazed part of her wouldn’t mind a real battle.
Morrigan stood back a little as Maia prepared to cast her spell. While she knew she wouldn’t be in the line of fire, both literally and metaphorically, she wanted to have a better view of Maia casting the spell and watching it form. When in the middle of battle, Morrigan didn’t have the time to watch the other party members save for noting where they were on the battlefield so she didn’t accidentally hit them with any of her spells.
So this was a treat for her.
Fire flared at the spot Maia targeted, quickly turning into something resembling a tornado of flame. It spun around, scorching the ground and catching tumbleweeds on fire.
Maia was so distracted by her display that she almost didn’t see it coming. A green bolt of light hit the rock next to her and she went flying. Something screamed overhead, like a plane, only very, very fast. Maia picked herself up and peeked over an outcropping. Several dozen soldiers in white armor were marching towards them. A gigantic four-legged vehicle ambled along behind them and there were three two-legged variants.
“Andraste’s knickers!”
Morrigan had missed it as well until Maia went flying. Snapping out of it, Morrigan quickly dove for cover, ending up beside Maia as she looked at what was coming their way. Well then.
“Okay. I think perhaps Blizzard may incapacitate the large vehicles better than Inferno. I can use hexes on the foot soldiers easily enough. Though perhaps my bear form might be of better use here. What do you think?” They needed a plan before they started firing off spells left and right, after all. These were not darkspawn and required some planning in order to take them down.
“If you’re in close I won’t be able to use the bigger spells, but that might be for the best.” Maia could hear someone giving orders, and really she should have expected that today’s outing would have gone sour, what with the news reports of ‘cosplayer’s’ from yesterday. “We need to disable that big one or we’re going to be a wee bit in trouble.”
“Let us throw the big spells first, centered on the large one. Once that is done, I shall move a bit closer and use my hexes on as many of the foot soldiers as possible.” She then looked at Maia. “And if either of us become injured, I can heal.” And she could revive Maia if she needed to, but Morrigan couldn’t revive herself if she were the one to fall.
“Be careful.” Maia squeezed her shoulder, then brandished her staff. She could give them cover and call down the thunder on that thing. “And stay away from the firelightningice storm!”
Lightning crackled around the AT-AT and seconds later it was joined by the inferno, fire raining from the sky. Maia followed it up with the blizzard so that the legs of the thing would hopefully start to stick.
“You as well,” Morrigan said, giving Maia a smile. She gave a nod as she spotted some cover a bit closer to the approaching enemies. Morrigan quickly darted over to it. She looked at the AT-AT and wondered if a hex would work on it. She could attempt to put a vulnerability hex on it, making it more vulnerable to Maia’s spells, but it wasn’t an organic being.
So instead, she cast disorient and horror hexes on the foot soldiers, taking enough time to hit them all before she then concentrated and shifted into a bear, purple smoke and some lightning whirling around her as she changed shape. Morrigan then charged at the stormtroopers, letting out a mighty roar in the hopes that those affected by horror would be more affected by the roar.
“I don’t know whether to be turned on or not,” Maia murmured, turning her attention back to the task at hand. With Stormtroopers scattering like ants, she started to pick them off. Bolts of lightning and fireballs hurled onto the battlefield around a rampaging bear and really, it felt like old times. One of the two-leggers spotted her and opened fire. She barely got a stone barrier up in time and the lasers shattered it. She went flying backwards, landing unceremoniously in a heap.
Crawling for cover, she called out, “Do you think entropy magic would work on them? Rapidly age the metal?”
Morrigan rampaged through the stormtroopers, lashing out with claws and leaving both dead and wounded behind her for Maia’s attacks to finish off. However, she heard the blast and turned, seeing a glimpse of Maia scrambling for cover again. She relaxed slightly when she heard Maia’s voice.
Of course, she was in the middle of the battlefield, so she quickly rampaged towards cover where she shifted back into human form. “That I do not know. Though t’would seem to be easily knocked off-balance. Where is Shale when she is needed?” Shale could easily take down the AT-ST. Then Morrigan took some fire that hit the rocks she was crouched behind.
Maia winced, craning her neck to make sure that Morrigan was still okay. But that gave her an idea. “I think I can shift the ground beneath it, if you can give me an ice-slick!”
Peeking out from behind her cover, Morrigan noted where the two-legged machine was in relation to her. But that was when the rocks she was hiding behind exploded and sent her flying. She was momentarily dazed, but picked herself up and scrambled for cover.
“I can give you that!” Morrigan responded. Which served as both answering Maia’s request and for letting her know she was still okay.
“Thank the Maker.” Maia stepped out of cover so she could better see what she was doing. It was dangerous, but she hoped between unsteady ground and an iceslick that the walking tank would go down. “We should have brought the bloody Mabari!”
Taking a breath, Morrigan also came out of cover. She moved and prepared her spell as she did so. She thrust her hands out in front of her, an iceslick forming along the ground to the AT-ST. “The dog would certainly be of use currently!”
He could have kept the Stormtroopers busy. As the AT-ST tumbled to the ground she spun her staff around, throwing blasts of spirit energy at more of the enemy. Her area spells had slowed the big one down, but the other AT-ST was sprinting to try to flank them. “If we die here they’ll never let us hear the end of it, you know.”
Spotting the other AT-ST, Morrigan turned and conjured her own blizzard, centering it on the area that AT-ST was sprinting into. “We are not going to die here,” Morrigan said with confidence and more than a touch of stubborn determination. Her shoulder touched Maia’s as she sent another iceslick towards the AT-ST that was being slowed down by the blizzard.
“There’s a reason I love you,” Maia quipped. She didn’t seem to notice which word she’d actually used, as she was too busy meshing her lightning spells with Morrigan’s ice. The second AT-ST toppled over, and the Stormtroopers were retreating. That AT-AT wasn’t getting the memo.
Morrigan heard the word loud and clear, and she actually looked at Maia for a good solid moment in shock. But Morrigan didn’t do anything about it. Not with that four legged AT-AT still up and coming at them. “Then we shall simply give it a louder message.” Turning to the AT-AT, Morrigan created two iceslicks, one hitting each set of legs in hopes of taking it down.
“Perfect!” Maia excitedly followed up with another crumbling of the earth and the combined attack made the AT-AT lose it’s balance. It toppled to the side, smashing like a tin can. “Honestly who makes a tank with gigantic skinny legs?” She nudged Morrigan with her shoulder, grinning profusely. “You’ve got such talented fingers.”
Once the AT-AT was down, Morrigan breathed in a sigh of relief. She turned her attention to Maia at the nudge and the comment. “So do you,” she said with a smile. She then looked back at the field to see if anyone was still coming after them or not.
‘Pity you don’t have first hand experience,” Maia quipped. They seem to have emerged victorious. Three vehicles down and a handful of dead troopers. The rest had fled, and she looked back towards the city. “Well, I think we just prevented something, and I guess those weren’t cosplayers, were they.”
Morrigan almost blushed at that comment. “Not yet,” she retorted, managing to not clear her throat or make some other awkward pause. She drew in a breath and eyed the dead soldiers and fallen vehicles. “It certainly seemed to be an invasion of a sort. This group at least was repelled.”
“We should head back.” Maia wasn’t sure how much use they’d be without some more back-up or a larger team. They were both powerful, but they had their limits and her magic needed a serious recharge. “A lyrium potion would be welcome right about now.”
“Indeed it would,” she said. Morrigan felt a bit drained where her magic was concerned. While it would replenish over time on its own, a lyrium potion would be an instant rejuvenation that would be most welcome right then. “Let us hope we do not run into any more of those along the way.”
“You could just go bear on them.” Maia put her arm around Morrigan. “Come on, love. Lets get back.”