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“Dorian, show me your tool.”
With all the grace of an avalanche, Sera once again got straight to the point. It was rather odd seeing her stood in the library full of intent. In general, Sera wasn’t often seen with a roof over her head at all. More often than not, she perched herself atop roofs, flicking crumbs from her sleeves or contemplating her next attack. Even in the city, she flitted between structures, not within them, as though bidden onward by the wind itself.
Now, here she stood, arms folded, lips pursed, expression expectant. As if she hadn’t just asked something utterly bizarre and inappropriately worded for decent company. And hadn’t once again made Dorian regret his own initially perfectly appropriate metaphor.
Dorian, sat in his high-backed chair beside the window, tried to keep his face from twisting in distaste too openly. A true contender in The Game would have mastery over such trivial matters as facial expressions. But Sera somehow knew without even seeming to know how to rattle even the most practiced of players.
“I beg your pardon,” he tried lightly, daring to hope clarification would make things better.
“Save the begging for tonight, Bull’s into that power play tossup, isn’t he.” She waved the comment away with a bony hand. “And I told you to show me your tool.”
Dorian shifted in his seat, clearing his throat as imperiously as he could manage. He rested the book he’d been reading on his lap in a way he hoped wasn’t particularly ostentatious.
“I thought you hated tools,” he pressed, weighing each word carefully and hating every syllable.
Sera’s full lips pursed. “Well, they’re dangerous and downright weird, yeah? But I’ve never seen one up close. Figured you’d be the most trustworthy to ask.”
“Because of my personal inclinations on the matter.”
“Cause you’re a weirdy Tevinter who wouldn’t use your tool to hurt,” she drawled, mirth tuning each word into something mischievous. “Least, not hurt the good people. You can keep hurtin’ the baddies. That’s how it should work all the time, anyway.”
“That’s final confirmation my suppositions were, in fact, correct. I should have surmised as much.”
“Summarize your supper-whatevers with Bull all you want later. I asked to see your tool now. Get on with it, or are you shy about it?” Sera snickered openly, the sound foreign and unnatural in the cloistered, echoing quarters of Skyhold’s library. “Knew it. Weirdy.”
At that, Dorian stood, bristling. “I’ll have you know, I’m trying to be the decent one here and not wave my tool around like you requested!” Quieter, he added, “How do you think that would look if I did that? I’d have the Templars on me in an instant, and I’m not going to be rendered tranquil just to satisfy your curiosity.”
“Yeah, well, I even asked all lordly and polite-like, didn't I?” Now, she drew her hands together, fingers cupped, face morphing into something that might have been imploring and convincing if it didn’t immediately set off mild alarm in the pit of his stomach.
Now, he could definitely surmise Sera had ill intentions.
“And what should happen if I did show you my tool?” he asked curtly, drawing himself up to his full height. He was easily taller than Sera without the move, and broader, nearly double her wiry width thanks to a lifetime of strength training and her own narrow frame, and not for a moment did Sera appear small before him. You wouldn’t shrug away from an explosive because it was smaller than you. For whatever the Templars or the Qun thought of mages, Sera was the real unknown they should be wary of.
“Nothin’.”
Worries confirmed, Dorian drew back, intent on resuming his reading. “No, I don’t think that would gain me anything.”
“Come off it. Don’t you like a bit of humor? I’m not gonna use it, obviously. Just want to see the head.”
“You mean the part where the important stuff comes out? No.”
“It’s harmless!” Sera paused, a fleeting look of contemplation changing her face in a blink. Finally, she added, “I’ll owe you one. That make it worth it?”
At this, Dorian paused from his failed attempts at resuming his book, a rather engrossing yet alarmingly reverential outline of exactly how Divine Ambrosia liked her tea served throughout her lifetime. Remarkable, the things one could glean based on the gradual addition of more and more sugar as the drinker craved some sort of sweetness in her life.
Having Sera in his debt would basically grant him immunity from her next prank, a prospect that eased more than a little of the innate anxiety that came with inhabiting Skyhold. It also made her a prospective ally. Oh, sure, they were both comrades against Corypheus and Venatori and Red Templars alike. But sometimes, another war waged within the fortress walls, and Sera was a one-elf army of utter mayhem.
“I have your word?” he pressed slowly, not eager for any loopholes. Magic could exploit oversights faster than blinking. Sera loathed the practice but she would have no problem finding some workaround, he had no doubt.
“Swear on Andraste’s lovely soft bosom.” She grinned, all teeth.
“And I may call in this favor at my discretion?”
“Whatever—we have a deal or not?”
Dorian sighed, wondering if he’d actually done Sera two favors today, but acquiesced. He reached back and pulled forth his staff, utterly unassuming save perhaps for the Nevarran skull staring emptily out from the end with its endless black sockets.
Somehow, Sera’s grin grew as she drew closer, not grabbing it outright, not that Dorian had expected her to. She much preferred jars and vials of substances that affected her or the container first and foremost. She did, however, hover close to that skull, muttering briefly about “creepy magic shite.” Then, with the kind of graceless flourish only she could manage, she drew her hand in a short arc, bumping the skull before drawing back.
“What was that?” Dorian asked indignantly, turning his staff in hand to inspect it, not really anticipating any changes and so all the more surprised when he found she had, in fact, done something.
The skull continued to stare back. Only now, it bore a mustache.
It was by no means a neat, tidy thing, hastily thrown on in the blink of an eye. It appeared to be rigged from dark tufts of something soft, held there by honey, based on the scent.
“You could have completely ruined its ability to channel magic and work as a focus!” Incredulity twisted Dorian’s face as he gestured rather unnecessarily at the bizarre sight.
“Or I made it better.”
“Better? Oh no. Any such changes would require research. Some basic understanding of magical theory. And furthermore-”
Dorian wanted to go to his grave without admitting it. Knew as soon as the smallest seed of the thought was planted in his mind, he was doomed. But...absurdly, the change did...actually...give it some character. Give the new makeshift facial hair a bit of grooming, and it could actually be presentable at the next Winter Palace soiree, even-
Scowling—mostly at himself—Dorian adjusted his grip so he and the skull both glared at Sera. To his own chagrin, Dorian had to fight from joining with the mad cackle she issued at the sight, completely overpowering the irate “Shhh!” coming from a floor below. There was no stopping her delighted peels as Sera doubled over, pointing openly, laughter redoubling each time she looked.
“Everything I hoped for and better!” she said around another fit.
“I’m thrilled to amuse you so.” Dorian stroked his own mustache thoughtfully. “I believe you might also owe me two favors, then, for my troubles.”
“I’ll owe you five, fancy breeches!” Face just a bit red, Sera calmed down enough to straighten, shoulders still quaking slightly. “Start with buying drinks? Chargers are all wrapped up with beating the stuffin’ out of each other. I want to see their reactions too.”
Trying and definitely succeeding to appear disinterested, Dorian picked at a speck of imaginary dust on his robes as he offhandedly said, “I suppose I can suffer their presence and endure some Ferelden beer if it evens the score between us. Let it never be said I’m a vengeful man.” Just petty.
“Deal it is, then.”
She continued snickering as the two marched side-by-side down the spiraling staircase to the lower floor of the rotunda. There, they were met with a very angry bald head. Solas, so habitually quiet, docile, passive in any of his anger, was glaring at them as a wolf might some unruly pups. His face too was blotched red, but there was no sign of laughter remotely tugging at his lips.
“You two. Are. Children,” he said through clenched teeth. “Utter children.” Blue-white veilfire gleamed off his shining head, wounding any chance of taking his wrath seriously, especially when the two targets were Sera still full of giggles and Dorian still wielding his mustached staff. “Tools?? Have you no grace? No decorum? No respect for the sanctity of where we stand and what we’re doing? It’s bad enough with the constant innuendos from Blackwall and the Bull, the ridiculous assertions that I would tarnish the incomprehensible sanctity of the Fade. But now I can’t even contemplate the studies from my dreams without tools being shown just above me!”
Something in his ravings clicked into place and Dorian made the mistake of glancing sideways at Sera, who was looking readily back. It took only a heartbeat for the rare sound of velvety mirth mixing with maniacal cackling to reverberate through the rotunda as the two brushed by Solas and out into the great hall.
Because he was a cruel man but not that cruel, Dorian called over his shoulder at him, “We were talking about staves. You’re the one who made it profane, Solas.”