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“Before I help you with this,” Azure said, even as she set up the first target, “is there an actual reason your mother doesn’t want you using your fire?"
Taash glowered at her and Azure shrugged a shoulder. “I’m all for parental rebellion, but if it turns out that doing this is going to cause you to barbecue your insides or something, I’m going to be a little upset you didn’t warn me.”
Taash snorted. “She just doesn’t want me to get caught using my fire. ‘Cause the Antaam would try and get me in their stupid army. It’s not dangerous to me.”
“Unless your tongue gets in the way,” Azure teased, setting up the next target.
Taash wrinkled their nose up. “I haven’t done that in years.” They hesitated, then added, “She probably also doesn’t want to deal with me lighting the bed on fire again. Or the pots. Or her bookshelves.”
Azure laughed. “I imagine that went badly.”
Taash nodded gravely, as though remembering a funeral, or an execution. “I only destroyed two books, so it could have been worse, but she was not happy.” Shathann’s discipline had largely taken the form of writing papers or practicing discipline in the most boring ways anyone could devise. Taash had been made to write up everything she could remember being in those books, along with a long essay about why it was bad for those things to be lost. A few books had been singed, and Taash had had to assist in repairing the damage.
Azure finished setting up the targets and hopped back up the beach and onto the rock Taash had claimed for their training exercise. “Was it accidental fire, or were you trying a trick?”
Taash winced. “How’d you know?”
“Are you kidding? If I could breathe fire, I would have been the horror of Ostwick. I would have been six years old, seeing how many market stalls I could catch on fire with one breath. I might even have deserved it when my mother locked me out of the house.”
Taash had started laughing at the idea of Azure puffing herself up to blow down the market, but they went stiff at the last sentence.
Azure grimaced, as though it had taken Taash going still for her to realize what an alarming thing she’d said. “Forget I said that. Go on, you’ve got target practice to crush.”
Taash eyed their friend warily, but Azure apparently found the wooden target boards incredibly interesting to look at. Taash took a breath as they chewed on their next words, then released and turned the board to ash.
“Bulls-eye!” Azure crowed. “I told you you had no reason to worry about your aim!”
She was dodging the conversation. Taash was beginning to suspect she was pretty good at that. “Is that what you meant at dinner the other night, when you said you didn’t want to find your family?” Taash asked. “Because your mother used to lock you out?”
Taash hated being questioned like they were an essay in need of editing, every word being examined and turned inside out, so as soon as the question was out they spat fire at the next two targets in rapid succession. Both hit, but one of them impacted the target too far to the right for Taash’s liking. All well and good for target practice, but those few inches could be the difference between victory and friendly fire in a real fight. What if they’d been trying to back up Lucanis as he came in from the side, and then they had an on-fire possessed assassin on their hands?
“Good work,” Azure said, not answering Taash’s question.
Taash pushed her shoulder. “It was a lousy hit and you know it.”
“Just needs some practice,” Azure countered. “That’s why we’re out here. So you can practice.”
Taash frowned at her.
Azure sighed. “Fine, yes. My mother used to lock me out of the house and make me sleep on the streets if I’d been causing trouble, or if there wasn’t enough food for both of us. And you shoot before you aim, that’s why you’re off-center. You’re going for speed over accuracy, which isn’t a good move with fire.”
“Aiming takes too long.”
“No, you just need to think about it the way you do your other fighting. You start aiming for your next target before you even hit your first, right? It’s the same with magic, and, I assume, with fire breathing. Once the fire for the first shot leaves your mouth, it’s going to hit where it hits. Forget about it and start setting up for your next one.”
“But what if I aimed badly for the first one? With my axes, I’m close enough to swing back if I didn’t hit as good as I should have. With my fire-“
“You have to trust yourself,” Azure said firmly. “That’s one of the first things they taught me with my magic. If you’re worried your shield will fail, it probably will. If you’re worried your flame will burn out of control, it will. You have to believe you can do it. You have to trust that if you do get it wrong, you’ll deal with it then. Or the people around you will.”
Taash let out a frustrated breath. “It’s easier when I’m alone. If it’s just me on the beach, no one is going to get singed if I mess up. I mean, the birds all take off as soon as I start.” They waved their hand to indicate the lack of seagulls in the area. Then they swung the conversation back again, as though they and Azure were taking turns being the one who was the most uncomfortable today. “Making you sleep outside is harsh. Shathann disciplined me for all kinds of things, but it was always stuff like making me redo the dar-saam until my fingers ached. I never…” Taash trailed off, unwilling to say never went hungry or never had to sleep out on the cobblestones in the cold. Thinking of their friend like that twisted their gut, and saying it felt like it would make it too real.
“It wasn’t discipline,” Azure said casually, like she didn’t care, but Taash could see the tenseness in her shoulders, could smell the electricity in the air that always rose up when Azure was stressed. It was like her magic would whirl around her in a protective, electrical cloak. “She didn’t want me there. If I brought back food or money, and I was quiet, it was no trouble to have me around, and I could come in. If I was making her life harder, I couldn’t. Like a bad roommate.” The magic crackled. “Go on, do the next couple.”
Taash hit the first, turned their head to aim for the next one, and nearly choked on the flame when it lifted into the air. They recovered, hit the bottom edge of it, and clipped the inside of their cheek a little as the fire exited their mouth. “Warn me next time!”
“It’s target practice! The darkspawn aren’t going to stand there like bumps on a log! Come on, you’ve got this!” Azure stretched out a hand and three targets lifted into the air and began to dance across the beach. The smell of electricity faded, swept away by the wind that was now lightly tossing their braids around their shoulders.
Taash took a deep breath, trying to access that place of deep discipline and battle focus. Shathann had tried to teach them this, but Shathann was not Antaam. This was for battle-hardened Qunari, not scholars. It had always seemed so easy when it was just Taash; whether they were going up against dragons or Antaam or just mercenaries who thought they owned the Rivaini coast.
Now there was a team to look out for, and Taash couldn’t stop thinking about how crowded together they’d been in Weisshaupt, how they’d been uncertain even in swinging their axes, much less breathing their fire. They’d never felt so far out of their depth before, so unsure in their own skills. That was why they were out here now, as though spitting fire at a few target boards could undo the clusterfuck that had been that fight.
“Stop thinking,” Azure ordered, her tone now the one of Rook, of the leader who had taken them into Weisshaupt and back out again, the one who never seemed to pause no matter how freaky or awful things got. “Trust yourself, and take them out.”
Taash inhaled and spat. One, two, three. Three direct hits.
Azure let out a whoop of delight. “There you go!”
“They’re still just target boards,” Taash grumbled, feeling less victorious than they would have expected. “It isn’t a real fight.”
“If you can’t trust yourself in practice, you won’t be able to in a fight.” Azure gave them a considering look. “Is this about what we talked about the other day? With you being our dragon hunter?”
Taash couldn’t stop thinking about the horror show that had been Ghilan'nain’s archdemon, and how woefully unequipped they’d been - still were - to deal with it. “We got our asses kicked at Weisshaupt,” Taash said, grateful Davrin wasn’t there to hear them admit it. “All the target practice in the world wouldn’t prepare us for that.”
“An entire horde of darkspawn, led by an archdemon and an elven god? No, probably not. But we killed an archdemon, didn’t we? And we got out of there with our lives.”
“But-"
“No, Taash.” Azure’s voice was firm, but kind. “It was bad. It was really bad. But we survived it, and we landed a really good hit, even if we didn’t win. We keep moving. We keep landing what hits we can. That’s all we can do, yeah? You don’t expect to kill a dragon in one big flashy move, do you?”
Taash breathed in, trying to focus, trying to repress the urge to run around, to scream, to bash their head through something. “No. You hit its weak points over and over until its knocked down enough for you to hit something important.” They’d told Azure that before, hadn’t they? And now Azure was spinning their own words back on them to make a point, and Taash wasn’t sure they appreciated it. Just because Azure was right didn’t mean it wasn’t a damn tough pill to force down. “Like having a conversation you don’t want to have, so you ask two questions for every one you answer.” They glanced at Azure.
She rubbed the back of her neck, looking everywhere but Taash’s face. “Yeah, like that. And building it up in your head to make it this great battle makes it worse. One thing at a time, Taash. Bite-size pieces. You kept your cool while we were in Weisshaupt, didn’t you? It’s only now, looking back at it, that it feels so big. Don’t get lost in that.”
That was true. While they’d been there, Weisshaupt had been one problem after another. Get to the belltower, get to the library, get to the trap, kill an archdemon. It was after, as Taash was thinking over every near miss, that they’d started to think I got too close to Bellara with that strike or if Assan had spun out of the way a split-second later we might have lost him.
Azure put a hand on their arm. “You’re a good fighter, Taash. With your fire, with your axes, against dragons or darkspawn or whatever else. But if you start doubting that, your skills will start slipping.”
“But what if I-"
“Hit one of us by mistake?” Azure finished, bringing them back to the worry that had made Taash insist on this training exercise in the first place. The reason they’d wanted only Azure there, because somehow the idea of catching Azure by accident was laughable. She was too quick, too careful, too aware. “Have you ever hit someone by mistake during a fight?”
In Weisshaupt, they had spat fire at a hurlock that was charging at them, massive axe dragging along the blood-stained ground. Lace had darted in front of them, shot two arrows into the thing’s stomach in quick succession, and had rolled out of the way just as the fireball passed over her head. “I almost-"
“Not almost. Actually.”
“…No.”
“Because you’re good at what you do. All of us are good at what we do.” She raised her hands and the smell of electricity rose up again. A moment later, three bolts of lightning struck near Taash in rapid succession; one in front of them and one on either side. “Almost means you know how much space you have to work with,” she said. “Trust yourself, Taash. Trust us.” The wind picked up again. There were four target boards left in the sand, but it wasn’t them Azure lifted into the air this time, it was a brightly colored shell. “This shell is… I don’t know, which of us is your favorite?”
Taash snorted. “I am not going to answer that. You’d tell everyone else at dinner tonight.”
Azure beamed at her. “Of course I would! Okay, let’s say it’s Harding, since she’s the smallest.” She weaved the shell through the target boards, a squint to her eyes the only indication that the exercise was a challenge. “Hit the targets without hitting her.”
Lace, rolling into and out of the fight, the fire barely missing her as her arrows slowed the hurlock just a little, just long enough for the fire to hit its mark and knock it back, where Neve had immediately frozen it to the ground.
Trust yourself. Trust them. They braced themself, leaned forward, and let the fire pour out of their mouth, eyes switching between the targets as quick as they could, keeping the bright shell that was playing the part of Harding in their peripheral. Azure weaved the shell through the targets just the way Lace would have done it, as though she was softening them up before Taash moved in.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Azure reeled the shell in and deposited it in Taash’s hands. “Is it singed?”
It wasn’t. Taash had been moving too quickly to be sure if they’d hit all three targets dead-center, but the shell was undamaged, still cool to the touch. A knot of nerves loosened a little. Taash sat down gently, turning the shell over and over in their hands. Azure sat down beside them.
“One piece of the problem at a time,” Taash said.
“One piece at a time,” Azure agreed.
Trust yourself. Trust them. You didn’t know what the hell that archdemon was, but you killed it anyway, didn’t you?
“…Thanks.”
“Anytime, Taash.”
There seemed to be a lot of things hanging in the air between them. Taash’s fear, and their gratitude. The scraps of Azure’s past, suggesting wounds that hadn’t yet healed. The cloud of Weisshaupt that seemed inescapable - but perhaps that last was a little smaller now.
Taash put an arm around Azure’s shoulders and tugged her into a one-armed hug. “We’ve got each other’s backs,” they said, which seemed to cover everything that felt too big to talk about. “Whatever those god assholes throw at us next.”