take a good look in the mirror and tell me

[inkdamage]

Who: Severus and Amberdrake.
What: Business consultation.
Where: A restaurant in Flag Hill.
When: Presentlyish?
Notes: i'm in ur game spammin ur log comm
Warnings: I don't foresee any.

Taking a break from jobs that necessitate the corrosion of his soul is not a work hiatus, Severus would go mad. He remembers the man who contacts him over the CiD, remembers he pegged him for being awfully new and thus certainly under-funded; it's been a while since he walked into a job knowing he'll have to undercharge or work on barter, but maybe something about witnessing those riots is making him sentimental. He's not sure if that's a better or worse explanation than just doing something nice for someone new on his cohort.

The restaurant he's sitting in is one that he's been to before, both to get out of the house and to meet with potential clients; dimly-lit in a way that's subdued instead of shady, upscale without being exclusive, private seating, and no smoking restrictions. He waits sitting in a round, leather-backed booth underneath a low amber lamp, cigarette burning between his fingers, coffee at his elbow.

Comments

[inkdamage]

He's actually trying to determine how alike being drained by this 'gift' is versus being just tired; tiredness alone does not eventually leech bones of their density, and he suspects that there are other, more subtle issues of energy dovetailing there, but he'd have to get a closer look further down the line to be sure. For now it's merely something to note.

"Is it purely sensation, or have you ever experienced bruising, muscle tension, any physical manifestations in your aftershocks?"

Amberdrake did say that some people felt a lessening of their aftershocks with correct application of that tea, thus it's worth an inquiry. He's gone back to writing with his hand now, versus whatever runoff of magic was auto-piloting for a moment.

[amberdrake]

Drake stops watching the pen once Severus is back to using his hand. Fascinating, the things this guy just casually does with his magic.

"It's purely sensation," he answers easily enough. "I'm not entirely sure how full-time Healers cope with it, since as non-injuries it can't really be Healed in turn by another. I've always suspected any reports of the over-extension tea helping were psychological."

And he considers for a moment, and then offers:

"I could show you the type of energy the Gift uses, by burning a little of yours. It's not a conventional use of the Gift to just do that, but certainly easily done."

[inkdamage]

Severus has gone through a lot to be able to have his inherent magic be a part of his life. He doesn't even consider hiding it.

Meanwhile - the notes he takes there reflect the thought that the entire experience is psychological, as most sympathetic or phantom reactions tend to be, metaphysical in nature or not. Indeed worthy of further investigation, should their business relationship get to that point. But then...

Severus gives Drake a look that's subdued (he's hard to read) and yet, to a keen eye, plain for what it is: intense, searching skepticism. Unlike most socially withdrawn people, Severus makes a lot of eye contact, and now is no exception. For the first time, it seems like there's something weighted in his gaze, but-- then, no, maybe not.

"Verywell."

Perhaps not the reaction anyone could have expected, after that look. But Severus is curious, and he also knows that the second anyone tries to pull a fast one on him, they'll be in many tiny pieces, across the room.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake's serenity doesn't so much as ripple in the face of that stare. Urtho's own former kestra'chern and the Black Gryphon's sworn brother is quite familiar with dealing with those who could kill him in an eyeblink.

(Really, almost anyone could if they did it faster than he could paralyze them. He's not a combatant!)

"I would offer to work on that lung tar while I'm at it," Drake puts his hand out on the table, palm up, "but I would have to be much more efficient about energy to do any actual work. Another time, perhaps?"

And then, in the exact same easy tone, "I'll need skin contact, your hand will do."

The Gift works a little like electricity that way. He could bridge the gap without touch, at this range, like an electrical arc... but it would burn his own energy twice as hard, and that isn't the point of this little demonstration.

[inkdamage]

At that, his reaction is notably more pronounced - but really, it doesn't take an empath to guess that this man (body language just so, covered completely except his hands and face, no warmth about him) does not like to be touched. Severus can't help the brief flicker of his gaze down to the older man's hand, almost as if he sees the offer as him brandishing a weapon.

He isn't so phobic as to recoil, however, and is quite capable of sucking it up for moments like these. After only a brief hesitation, he reaches out and lays his hand against Amberdrake's, palm to palm.

Severus' hands are almost-calloused, long-fingered, his cuticles and nails forever dyed faintly greyish-brown from his work. To those sensitive to magic, it's easier to peg him for slightly corrupt, when touching (a dark magic brand seared into a person's arm will have that effect), but besides that, he's just a man. A man who looks like he's tolerating something mildly vexing. He says nothing about his lungs.

[amberdrake]

Amberdrake just waits patiently while that little process goes on, as serene and calm as any top-notch kestra'chern ought to be. Especially when knowingly pushing at someone's boundaries, even if the reason given was perfectly honest and legitimate. But he himself keeps almost all of his skin covered, and he certainly noticed that Severus keeps even more under cloth than he does.

The kestra'chern's hand is very warm, and lacks any apparent callouses despite his previously-observed abilities to stitch others up. His daily use of massage oils on others is to blame for that, making the skin quite soft. It would be, if one wasn't repulsed by touching people at all, rather pleasant. He's deliberately offered the hand that doesn't have Sanzo's lotus ring on it, so that it's nothing but a bare hand and the trailing edge of his open robe's wing-cut sleeve.

"Tell me when to stop, and I will," he says quite mildly, and allows the Gift to wake up. Amberdrake's very blue eyes go slightly out of focus, no longer only seeing the surface of living things -- or in this case, Severus.

The Gift threads in through the younger man's hand, feeling a little like electricity to someone magically sensitive. It gives the Mark a wide berth, if that's the hand offered, and otherwise just trails up Severus' arm until it's covering enough territory to most efficiently burn energy.

It is an actual heating sensation, although nothing burning. And slowly, energy dissipates. It's a little like bleeding to the point of wooziness, a little like participating in a triathlon, like swimming against the waves in the ocean. It's a tiredness that, though it's a very minimal level here and now, would leech what warmth Severus' very bones have and press him down into and perhaps under the earth.

Not that Drake would let it go quite so far as any of that, but it's that type of energy nonetheless.

It has a more final, inescapable feel to it than mere tiredness, even though it will regenerate. Something that wizards and muggles and humans and gryphons and hertasi and everyone has. And even undead creatures, in Amberdrake's own experience, because something has to power them.

[inkdamage]

It's his right hand, fortunately; he tends to avoid shoving the Mark at people who might be able to sense it - if not for privacy, then to minimize distractions. Severus is not repulsed by contact, but he doesn't trust it. Not even in the slightest. If someone's not going to hit him, they're going to patronize him, or want something out of him, and a lifetime of this being completely true has carved his reactions deep. Logically, he realizes this is not the case for everyone, but he also realizes that his own life has never adhered to logic.

As the sensation creeps through him, Severus watches their connected hands, as if tracking the progress of it visually. He shows no signs of being effected by the feeling of it, though he pays full attention to how it works. It's easy for him to see magic, where even others of his kind can't, and so this is a very illuminating lesson in how Amberdrake's abilities work. He is so focused, in fact, that he forgets to wonder if the other man will notice the old, unhealable scars on his right shoulder, cornered from the Mark. (He forgets he has those, most of the time.)

After a few moments he says, "All right," having gotten a very clear idea. He is, helpfully, a quick learner.

[amberdrake]

Drake's hand doesn't so much as twitch a fingertip during this entire process. It just lays there quite passively on the table, being all hand-like, fingers only curled that little bit that relaxed tendons creates naturally.

As soon as Severus gives the word, the draining sensation cuts off. And then, for someone adept at reading magic as Severus is, the Gift can be felt backing its way out faster than it had threaded in. After all, it's not having to go over new territory on the retreat.

"Obviously the drain isn't normally nearly that rapid for the patient," Amberdrake says, "and being on the receiving end of the Gift has never, say, brittled someone's bones. It's only a stupid Healer who over-extends too often who risks that particular side effect."

Let's ignore the fact that I am often a stupid Healer.

Although to be fair, he usually only comes in during emergencies, when burning that last bit of energy can keep someone from bleeding out. He'd never be dumb enough to over-extend on something routine! Certainly not the little taps and touches of the Gift he uses in his normal line of work.

Drake leaves his hand where it is once the Gift is withdrawn, curious. How fast will Severus retreat?

Double purposes, double uses. This, too, is an assessment. It isn't just Severus who is doing a professional consultation, today! He's just the only one doing it out loud.

[inkdamage]

Severus removes his hand without lingering, though without acting as if he's being burned, either. A completely unremarkable act done in completely unremarkable time. On purpose.

"That explains a lot," he says, "Thank you." His tone is not terribly thankful, but he seems satisfied enough having had a demonstration. He does feel slightly more tired, but it isn't anything that bothers him. Tiredness is a thing that seems rather boring after things like extensive curse damage. He takes a few more notes.

"Between this idea and your pre-existing tea, I'm sure that I can continue to make it, and most likely develop something past it."

[amberdrake]

Which combined with every other sign Severus has shown, reaffirms that he's used to concealing (or perhaps just forbidding access to?) his damage.

Fair enough. Almost everyone does that, Severus is just better at the acting aspect of it than many.

"Well then," Drake smiles faintly and folds his hands together on the table, "that's excellent news for me. For some reason, I would prefer not suffocating face-down in a ditch somewhere after the next medical emergency crops up." And it will. They always do.

And while he doesn't intend to over-extend anymore, because Sanzo had been right about that issue, he knows it will probably be necessary again anyway. What if the priest gets a hand chopped off again? Drake's certainly not going to hesitate to fuse it back onto the stump, thank you.

"What did you do to that thermos the other night, if you don't mind my asking?" he's been curious about that ever since, at least during his coherent moments. Amberdrake didn't see him do much of anything to it, but it had been a fresh batch afterwards. Obviously it had been magic, but if Drake was content with 'magic!' as his only explanation, he'd be a poor kestra'chern indeed.

[inkdamage]

Severus refrains from making some kind of backhanded remark about throwing ones self into such emergencies. He'd shown up all on his own, after all. Something he doesn't quite has an excuse for. Instead, he raises one eyebrow, and then picks up his half-empty coffee cup, holding it forward.

"Duplication." He taps one finger against the side of the cup - he doesn't need to, it's just for show - and it's suddenly full again. "Most substances can be stretched a little like that before they begin to break down and make manipulation impossible. It's difficult to create something from nothing, if I don't know what my intended something is, but when it's within reach, it's easy enough."

(Holy shit, more than three words!)

[amberdrake]

Drake is fully aware that he's an idiot about such things! Although it's not really in his nature to sit back on his hands when the War slithers out from its hiding place in the shadows and feeds.

Thankfully, his own form of coping with his PTSD, at least when the shit hits the fan, is to roll up his sleeves and get to work. His instincts in fight or flight situations is almost always to take action, even though he is a non-combatant. If his mind worked any other way, he'd have been dead a dozen times over by now.

But here in the present time, he peers at the cup when it's held forward (leaning forward a little to do so) and blinks when it fills. He sits back again during the explanation.

"That's amazing," Drake knows better than to compliment when he doesn't mean it, and right now he certainly does. "That has to be infinitely useful, especially in your line of work. Does it work on non-liquids as well?"

[inkdamage]

"Yes," he says. "As with substances, not all materials allow for it. Conjuring allows for a lot of leeway in the makeup of any given item, duplication is far more precise. Generally, I can tell by looking at something if I can stretch it, and how far."

He relates all of this simply. He can't just wave a hand and make difficult potions appear from thin air, which some people seem to expect from him once they realize he's a wizard, or observe him conjuring a chair, or whatever else. Magic is as fantastic and nebulous as it is exact and scientific. Which he likes, frankly. If it was all fantasy or all science, it would be one or the other; it wouldn't be what it is. (The only godsdamned thing he cares about, sometimes.)

[amberdrake]

But being able to do so to simple things must make the creation of more complicated things via other methods a little easier. Drake can fuse a limb back on, but the process is made of a hundred smaller processes. He can Heal damaged wings to be flight-worthy again, but it's such a complicated balance to strike in mass and control surface and nerves that he was one of the few who could do so in Urtho's entire army.

So, Amberdrake's eyes don't exactly glaze over at the concept.

"Just the little things I've seen you do casually with your magic is remarkable," Drake admits, "are these things just... normal Mage-craft on your world?"

Because he's used to mages, certainly; he was in an army full of them, lead by one of the strongest his world has ever seen (or will ever see again). But even Skandranon would have had to concentrate and gather energy for a moment before doing a simple spell. It was nowhere near as intrinsic and casual.

And that was before the storms.

[inkdamage]

Ah. The opportunity to be insufferably smug about himself, conflicting with the desire to keep his life private. What a puzzle. But he ends up conceding to, "More or less. There are varying degrees of aptitude and work ethic just like anything else."

Which should be sufficiently self-important without giving too much away. Severus is indeed naturally a bit more gifted than the average wizards (half-bloods tend to be, surprise surprise), but he also takes it to the extreme of being completely infatuated with advancing his own knowledge. His work is geared that way; he would be bored if he merely reproduced a stock of potions. Taking on individual projects means he gets to stretch his abilities and his intellect.

[amberdrake]

"I see," Amberdrake smiles at that, because Severus refers to other professionals in his field with distancing language, and will show off with his coffee far easier than he'll briefly touch someone's hand...

Drake's been a kestra'chern for longer than Severus has been alive, if one counts his time spent in Haven. These pieces aren't terribly difficult to put together.

"Mage-craft was thoroughly disrupted on my world," he says instead of any of that, "quite a few years ago. So it's always interesting to see someone else's magic at work." Unfettered by the Cataclysm, and alien besides! Either one is interesting, both in combination is even more-so.

"But it runs off your own power? Not some external source?" That's Amberdrake's next line of query, although tempered with, "I apologize if I'm being nosy, it's just that I haven't seen many non-Velgarthian mages."

Also true. Haven had been full of gun-slinging fighters and vampires and the occasional machine-person. The closest he'd heard of that could be considered a mage had been that purple-haired woman who everyone had been nervous around.

[inkdamage]

"It is innate, yes." Severus has always found beings whose magic is an outside source, they themselves being glorified tuning forks, to be somewhat pitiable. What is power without control over it?

"You don't consider what you do to be magic?" No word on what his power might constitute - either he doesn't know (unlikely) or doesn't feel like sharing (more likely). Personally, Severus doesn't like announcing that witches and wizards of his world aren't hampered strictly by physical exhaustion, just potential and concentration.

[amberdrake]

"It's arcane, but it's a different branch," Amberdrake gives a light, easy shrug, "I can't rain lightning or fire down on anyone, or rend stone with my bare hands, or produce mage-lights, or create Gates... or anything that falls under the Mage Gift. Nothing terribly useful until someone gets themselves mangled in some colorful manner or other."

It's not a very gentle way of putting it, but he doubts he needs to speak in dancing terms about medical things in his present company. Severus hadn't seemed squeamish in Vanessa's house.

"At the same time, a mage from my world can't really heal anyone. There's a variety of other Gifts, Mind-Healing, Mind-Speech, Seers, Empathy... all with their own unique abilities, and all of them vary in strength from person to person. The Mage Gift is the only one that relies on the ley-lines and nodes for power, so when they were uprooted and scattered..."

Drake spreads his hands. It's a simplification of what the Cataclysm did to his world's mages, in truth, but not inaccurate. It doesn't touch on the main obstacle to regular mage-craft on Velgarth; the storms of chaotic raw energy that warp everything they touch and disrupt everything they can't.

[inkdamage]

Severus' brows knit, following that. His opinion of people being limited like that is clearly rather low, but we've already established he's a snob about magic.

"I see." How unpleasant, to be bound by something like the earth. He thinks of Sebastian briefly, and the way he'd had his magic stripped... It's unimaginable. Severus is not, contrary to popular belief at home, a subscriber to the notion that those without magic are subhuman, but he is what he is - a wizard - and it's an enormous part of his life and identity. He's honestly quite discomfited with the notion of it being diminished.

"Healers must be in high demand."

[amberdrake]

"Less-so now that the war has ended, thankfully," Amberdrake, like the rest of Urtho's people, doesn't really think of it as gone. They all came to think of 'the War' as its own creature, with its own thoughts and hungers -- and this feeling was especially true among the Healers and kestra'chern.

And the War lurks, and it waits. Always. It's up to the fragments of the army, Drake included, to stay prepared for its return.

After all, Ma'ar hadn't been the only power-hungry Adept in the world.

"You are able to heal with your mage-craft, correct?" Drake asks, because letting his thoughts linger in those dark corners won't do anyone any good, "Although I seem to remember you saying something about it not being as reliable on mundane wounds?"

[inkdamage]

"I can make salves and potions that can mend flesh and regrow bones," he says, "But more often than not, for me to... point at something and cause it to be healed with magic, it's a matter of reversing whatever caused it to be damaged. Counter-curses, that sort of thing." He sips his coffee. "Medical magic has never been my primary field of study, though I've made a point to keep myself well-rounded."

[amberdrake]

"Reversing instead of repairing? Interesting," Drake stows that information away; it's always good to know what other healing-capable people are able to do, after all. "The Healing Gift is a bit more detailed, I suspect. I must bridge every nerve, reconnect every tendon, shift and pin every bone, and so on and so forth. Each must be deliberate, and then when I spur the body into healing at a rate a thousand times faster than normal, I have to stay 'present' to guide it. Burn out infection before it can begin, shift fluids before pockets can form..."

Is it any wonder it costs so much energy?

"I've long thought that Aftershock is there to keep us Healers from abusing the Gift. It would be easy to stop a heart, but I suspect it would kill the Healer as surely as the victim."

[inkdamage]

He considers discussing the difference between healing magic and counter-curse magic and why mundane medicine doesn't work with curse damage and many other magical ailments and... decides he doesn't feel like it. He's talked enough already, and he doesn't actually like teaching.

"It's fortunate you're so altruistic then, isn't it." H.aa.. ha?

[amberdrake]

"I'm worthless in a fight, you mean," Amberdrake smiles, anyway, because it's more true than Severus probably thinks. He has little choice about being a pacifist. "I've never heard of anyone using the Gift in such a way. Even Ma'ar used mages as assassins, never Healers."

And if there was one guy who would have turned the force of Healing and repair on its end in some poetic mockery of itself, it would have been the Kiyamvir Ma'ar. But even he, apparently, hadn't found anyone he could twist into that use.

Or perhaps he'd never considered it. Ma'ar tended to think of things in mage terms, after all. Almost all of his most cunning maneuvers and schemes had involved some horrific curse or other, and even when he'd taken out Urtho with the most heinous, horrifying poison known to the world, he'd had Conn Levas -- a mage -- shoot the darts.

But in a war between Adepts, perhaps that was expected.

"The most dangerous thing I've ever done to someone with the Gift is paralyze them temporarily while reconstructing their wings." And a good thing, too, because the Nosgothian vampire Raziel in a flashback-frenzy panic was danger personified. If Drake hadn't been ready for it, he would have been turned into a smear on the floor.

[inkdamage]

"Is paralyzing someone dangerous?" Severus drinks more of his coffee. It's lukewarm again, but that's his own fault; reheating it will just make it taste awful. He shall endure.

The thought of mages as assassins is privately funny. There's a surprisingly small number of primary magic user in the Assassins Guild; a great number of people who can use magic, or do a few specific things with it, but Severus finds himself an anomaly within their ranks. It is slightly irritating to be asked to make poisons and draw plans more than he's asked to take care of anything - just like it was with the Dark Lord, sequestered as a tactician, as a potioneer, socked away in Hogsmeade, playing nice... Well, it isn't the same, now. He learns enough in the Guild to keep him happy. Someone's even humoring him with lessons on how to throw a damn punch.