ιѕαвєℓα (rivaini) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-07-14 19:26:00 |
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She currently lived in the city but the forest was still one of Isabela’s favorite places - or, well, the sea ranked as number one on the list, but the woods with their brown and green color palette, carpets of pine needles, and the aroma of nature were certainly appreciated. Perhaps because smog and car exhaust fumes and people bustling about carrying to-go cups of coffee was all a little much sometimes - she preferred to be wrapped up in an ocean breeze, and the way it felt like a comforting warm towel leaving behind a misty brine. Salt and sand were her favorites, the songs of the sea - nothing could ever compare, really. But she also realized that perhaps not everyone felt that way? A shame. But she had the Siren’s Call II and she had her swarthy stalwart crew (goblins and satyrs, mostly), so she could sail off whenever there were cruises to be had. Otherwise, she was plenty fine with keeping her knife skills sharp - and her blades sharp. Getting bored seemed detrimental to everyone’s health and so she wouldn’t allow that to happen - thus, she built a few target boards for knife-throwing practice (well, she had Diego help her since he would also appreciate using these), and it involved a lot of wood (wood) and drilling (drilling, the emphasis on the dirty connotations of course) and she’d only carved one dick on these creations. Only one. Now she was in the forest testing them out. With another member of the Sapphic Blade Club, what a delight. “So we call this one the murder knife,” she explained, unsheathing the blade - with her she had specific throwing knives and also her usual beauties; she was armed to the teeth, actually. “I took it from Skyhold’s armory. Hawke used it in fights but it made the rounds somehow - cutting ropes, pinning messages, that sort of thing? Overall it’s the murder knife though. I’m quite fond of it.” And she was eager to use it to test out how structurally sound these practice boards were. “All knives can be murder knives,” Ostyia pointed out, which was exactly why she was a part of the Queer Women with Swords Club (or, variations thereof, she didn’t much pay attention, she showed up when someone said ladies with sharp objects, she flirted, she admired the ladies, she admired the sharp objects, what wasn’t to like?). Her affinity for the blades was more out of necessity, see the coats she and Serefin would wear with blades in the seams as a way to be able to bleed at any given moment to use their magic. But no one was harder on Ostyia than Ostyia was on herself. So she learned how to be good in combat and defense, physically and magically, she learned language and history and war tactics and diplomacy so that no one could say she was successful only because of her proximity to Serefin. Working with only one eye--her eyepatch today was black and bedazzled with rhinestones in the shape of an eye--meant she had to compensate in large and small ways, especially for this task. She took the knife and laid it on her outstretched finger until it balanced in a straight line. “Not bad,” she commented, flicking the blade up in the air and catching the handle and then flipping it around to hand back to Isabela. Showing off a little bit? Absolutely. She trusted Isabela would do the same! “Okay, let’s see you, impress me! But I am so very hard to impress, just so you know!” That was said in jest, as so much of what Ostyia said was. Isabela chuckled, a throaty cocktail of sugar and spice - and all things nice (alright, not much nice, but she had her moments). “Yes, even things that aren’t necessarily knives can be murder knives - I knew I liked your logic for a reason,” she replied with a teasing twinkle in molten honey eyes. “Alright, let’s see - “ She took the knife (honestly, the balancing-the-blade on one finger trick was one of her favorites too). The ability of perfect aim no matter what she was doing wasn’t exactly one of her skills, unlike her handsome lover - instead she had a rogue’s typical arsenal, danger and stealth and lethality, blades tucked away and a sheer amount of cunning; the ability to mock an enemy and drive them to distraction was favored as well, as it enabled one to control the flow of the battle. Bela did like her control. But she enjoyed blades overall (much preferred them to guns) and throwing them was good stress relief. So she oriented herself toward the target (it was a skull visual, the idea to stick the blade in the open mouth, or wherever there might be a good kill shot), aimed with balance and precision and then thwack - right in the dead center of its forehead. Another one soon followed, then another, until the skull head was thoroughly dead. Or would be, if it was a person. “How did that go? Are you at least somewhat impressed, or should I try it with my eyes closed?” she asked as she went to go collect her beauties. “Or maybe you ought to try it with your eyes closed and impress me.” Obidently, Ostiya clapped, a light patting of her fingertips against a flattened palm like she was back in court idly watching an orchestra play. Ostyia had two sides: the serious General who took no shit from anyone, and a tease who took very little seriously and winked shamelessly at the world. The two very rarely intersected, obviously. “It was impressive, yes! And,” she made a blatant show of scanning down the length of Isabela’s body because she shamelessly flirted with all women. “Good looking too, extra points for that of course, I’m shallow.” She unstrapped a dagger from its holster. The contraption was camouflaged in Ostyia’s knee high black boot. The knife itself wasn’t anything remarkable, dark metal with a dark handle. It wasn’t combat after all, if it had been she would have armed herself with a ridiculous and therefore distracting blade. For something like this, she just wanted something that would get the job done. “Does it count if one eye is not there?” She asked, but then made a show of covering up her eyepatch as well. “Or if it is doubly closed?” Probably not. When Ostyia first lost her eye her depth perception had been so shot that even reaching out for something an arm’s length away was a challenge. So, again, she worked and practiced and learned how to do things without any vision if she had to, just to prove that she could. And she wore garish eyepatches so that there was no way any of the Tranavian nobility could pretend not to see. So it was no surprise then when Ostyia threw her knife and it landed clean in the indentation that Bela’s had just created. She bowed deeply, forehead nearly touching the ground. “Please, please, hold your applause and laurels, it will be embarrassing for you!” They were both shallow (looks were important, alright? Let’s not pretend otherwise), and prone to shamelessly flirting - how delightful. Isabela would never follow through on anything, of course, she wasn’t a cheater in her relationships (cards was a different story, however) - but she was a pirate, a scallywag, a weaver of tales and a sailor who went from port to port and accepted terms like ‘sadistic’ and ‘ruthless’ as compliments. It was possible she’d gotten a little soft here, and blamed Molly entirely for that - but then again, she wasn’t complaining. The girl had no one before and now she had two people who cared about her and Bela would gut anyone who tried to hurt her. Pure and simple. “I do love the eyepatch,” she noted, giving a bit of a dainty round of applause herself when Ostyia successfully annihilated the target (and it was probably the daintiest thing she had ever done in her life, joking or not). And a bit of a leer too - because Bela could let those Pharaoh's gold eyes roam as well - all in good fun. “Pirates that only have one eye don’t let it stop them either. I’ve a feeling you’d make a lovely pirate.” Rummaging through her collection of beauties that she’d brought along for this adventure, she tugged out one particular blade made of aurum. “This one’s called the Bodice Ripper, one of my favorites - “ And she offered it to Ostyia. “You want to get a feel for it? Not that you need any help ripping bodices, but I suppose it comes in handy for that too.” “I would make a lovely anything,” Ostyia agreed, easily, and had her hair not been a jagged, chin length bob she would have tossed it over her shoulder. “Just think, we could not be in a crew, we would run the entire sea and it would not be fair to anyone else. Or is that an exact reason to do it? I’m not sure.” The appeal of the open sea had never been a real lure to Ostyia, not when there was war and assassins and Serefin’s life to worry about. Instead, the water was just another border to think about. Ostyia had been made a General because Serefin had been drunk, sure, but she also took that role seriously. Now, without all of that? She was a bit left adrift. But Ostyia was finding her own path, something different and new. She took the Bodice Ripper and tested the point against the pad thumb. A bead of blood welled up and she wiped it away on dark pants. “I try not to rip them, it’s bad form. And also sloppy! But needs must. What is it made of? Something magical?” Bela grinned, a flash of shark’s teeth. “That’s exactly what I did! Run the sea, I mean. Or at least some of them - Queen of the Eastern Seas, they called me.” Or was it that she called herself that, and everyone simply went along with it because they didn’t dare incite her lightning-strike wrath by disagreeing? Probably that, but it was lots of fun going around announcing herself in such a manner. “It’s volcanic aurum,” she said about the dagger Ostyia currently was testing out. Black as a raven’s wing too, the shade of the crafting material - kind of pretty, if one had a penchant for shiny things (which Isabela obviously did). “Fade-touched, I think. So aye, a bit magical - if it’s Fade-touched it’s supposed to help your focus. Even though the Fade’s not really a thing here it still seems to work as it should.” She catalogued a few other blades she brought, decided which one she wanted to throw next, studying them carefully in each hand. “You’re a blood mage, yeah? My last lover was too. Hawke. He got lots of shit about it.” Maleficar, they sneered at him - meanwhile mages like Anders were over here blowing up chantries to make a statement. “The Eastern!” Ostiya repeated with a chuckle. She returned the knife after giving it another once over, as if feeling out any residual magic and then headed over to pull out her knife from the target. She had to shimmy the thing back and forth a few times before it came free. “I’m assuming that was because your country was landlocked, otherwise I would expect it to be the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern.” Ostyia was a blood mage, and a damn good one at that. Her primary tutor had studied other types of magic and even though they weren’t accessible to her, it had helped hone an understanding of how the overall concept of magic worked. “Blood mage, yes. We’re very heretical back home so I can relate to getting the shit.” The Kalyazi had their gods as the source of their power, but Tranavians knew their magic came from their bodies. Ostyia preferred it that way, even if some of the things she’d seen had her questioning the rigidity of those beliefs. It could be both, she supposed. After all, Serefin’s magic was something else entirely now. “But here, not so much, obviously.” She stepped back to allow Isabela to throw. After all, there was an entire coven of blood magic users! And no one ever had anything to say about any type of magic, really, it was all sort of shrugged at. When a minotaur ran a bagel stand, well. “Was it rare, where you are from?” The dagger Bela decided to text out next was one made of red steel - it was called Blade of the Many or some such and, honestly, all these Thedosian weapons had such odd names. As if Bodice Ripper wasn’t odd enough - but that was her homeworld for you. A whole lot of shit, and not much of it made sense. “Pretty rare, yes. It was - forbade, I should say. Mages in general weren’t looked upon kindly and blood magic was one of those schools of magic that no one dared study out in the open. The Circles of Magi - which were more like prisons and would take young mage children away from their families when they began developing magic - refused to teach it. If you were a mage and wanted to learn, you had to be an apostate. An outlaw, essentially.” Which Hawke had been - he was on the run with his family, until everything went to shit. Bethany was killed and Carver became a bloody Templar, of all things. She had never really cared for him but he was Hawke’s brother so she learned to get along despite the fact that Carver was a right shit on his best days. “Is it strange here for you, where - everything is magic? And sometimes blood magic at that?” she asked, assuming the position and thwack, one after the other, there went the daggers into the target. Her throws this time weren’t as precise - maybe she needed to have a drink about it. Which was why she didn’t offer Ostyia a blade this time, but a flask of rum instead. “I made this batch myself, by the way! It turned out well.” Rum was one of her talents, along with being a dirty pirate. Well now it was a party! Technically it was before, Ostyia supposed, throwing knives was a good time for her. Her preference may have been red wine, thick, rich, bold, and with flavors of black currant, pomegranates, dark chocolate, but rum was good too! Taking the flask she pulled a swig from it, the sun catching the metal quite nicely. The rum burned on the way down, the way all alcohol tended to, but instead of making her feel like she could breathe fire, the rum settled warm in her stomach. “It’s good!” she said, tossing the flask over. “You’re a woman of so many talents and curves, it’s unfair.” She leaned against a tree, one boot resting back on the trunk and took her knife and dug under her nails, all sharpened to a point. Sure they may have gotten in the way sometimes, but if she ever found herself backed into too tight of a corner without a weapon, she had those. “Not really. Magic is all over, and different people have different types of magic, so even that is not too much of a stretch. I think it’s more…” Ostyia considered her next words with a back and forth toss of her head, indecisive. “The culture? The technology certainly. I hate not knowing something.” How was it possible that something could be frozen solid after minutes in the microwave, but another 30 seconds later it was a blazing inferno?? That was dark magic, if anything. “Mostly it is being able to stand around and not be concerned that you poisoned me, or that somewhere, an assassin is lurking waiting to take out Serefin. Even in our own country,” she shrugged. “If it’s not from assassins from another country, it’s the royals. Nobility is a bloodthirsty game.” Ostyia had learned that the hard way, as a child who had escaped an assassination attempt on all of the royal children. Only she and Serefin survived. The nobility had to celebrate Serefin’s survival, he was a prince (meanwhile, they plotted behind his back, even his own father) but Ostyia? When their own children died? No, no. “Sounds a lot like Thedas too,” Bela replied with a puff of air that was meant to be a laugh, but was more along the lines of siiiiiigh. “The backstabbing, the deceit, the betrayal - especially with nobility. Can hardly trust any of those fuckers.” Isabela was basically a nobody in terms of bloodlines - she wasn’t a mage (but they tended to only put emphasis on the importance of bloodlines in Tevinter), she didn’t even know who her father was (only that, according to her mother, he was an extraordinarily hairy man, large and good with his hands - gross) and her mother made a living as a fake seer in Rivain before converting to the Qun and finding purpose. Right, sure. “But I know what you mean about the culture - I had to learn so much about the technology here too. And how the talky box can do a thousand different things,” she stated with a hint of wonder. Plus, hot showers! Microwaves! That was all just the tip of the iceberg. “Everyone else is always just so used to it and I’m still wondering what button to press.” Well. In other instances she knew all the buttons to press - but that was beside the point. She took another swig of rum, and to her it tasted like life at sea - something she sorely missed, but she also had other parts about her existence here that gave her fulfillment so it wasn’t all yearning. “We’re both quite fantastic though, so we’ll keep learning. And come out here and throw knives whenever necessary.” Ostyia chuckled, the sound low and soft and easily passed over. She had been reflecting on her life, lately, the life here and her life in Tranavia. The differences. What Ostyia wanted out of it all, and what she could and would get. For all of the flirtatious banter and bravao she threw around, it was easy to forget (and maybe she wanted it that way) that Ostyia thought deeply about things, observed the world around her, took it all in. She liked being inscrutable. It gave her an air of mystery. Quick like a lightning strike (or the wink of her one eye) Ostyia threw the dagger she’d been using as a makeshift nail file at the target. It wasn’t as spot on that time, Ostyia was at an odd angle and hadn’t tilted her head enough to adjust. Not good enough, she’d try again. She always would. “That sounds like an excellent plan.” |