Chapter Text
It'd been a long day. Rook, Taash and Emmrich returned to the Lighthouse after a successful expedition to the Hossberg Wetlands, where they'd had an explosive encounter with an unusually large blight outbreak. Rook had said that destroying blight boils always made her feel like she needed a bath, and after their last adventure it was a position Emmrich wholeheartedly agreed with. Back in the comfortable safety of the Lighthouse, he planned to soak in the warmth of a tub at least until the skin of his fingertips had begun to pucker.
As evening approached, bathed and refreshed, the trio joined the rest of their companions for dinner, a chance to come together after their separate missions, sharing stories, wine and good company. Lucanis was on cooking duties and had outdone himself once again, right down to a delicious chocolate ganache tart for dessert. Feeling very tired and full, Rook looked like she could easily fall asleep at any moment, right at the table where she sat. Her companions took her weariness as the cue that perhaps they should all call it a night.
Neve offered to assist Lucanis in clearing up the evening's dishes whilst shooing everyone else off to rest. Obligingly, they filed out of the dining hall, parting ways first with Davrin, a bowl of scraps for Assan in hand, then Bellara. Taash stopped with Harding at the path leading to her conservatory, their conversation continuing softly as the Qunari was not quite ready to say good night.
Rook and Emmrich, as the last of the group, continued on towards the library in a companionable, easy silence. They approached the building's outer doors, enchantment opening them as they drew close enough. Passing into the entrance hall, they continued on to the inner doors as an impulsive thought set Emmrich's eyes sparkling with rarely-seen mischief.
"Please, allow me," he said, taking a couple of faster steps ahead. He triggered the doors to open for Rook with possibly the most overly dramatic and ultimately pointless gesture possible.
"After you, my lady," said Emmrich with a smile, offering an over-polite half-bow as he inclined his head towards the door.
Rook chuckled at the absurdity of the gesture, particularly coming from the Professor, and of course she couldn't resist playing along.
"Why thank you, kind sir," she said in the most haughty noblewoman's voice she could conjure. She pretended to pick up her non-existent skirts, curtseyed to Emmrich, then, still pretending to hold her skirts, glided past him and through the door, her nose held comically in the air.
Emmrich laughed at the sight. He followed her into the library as they began to ascend the stairs towards their rooms. You delightful sprite, he thought, closely guarding his fondness.
At first he'd dismissed the attraction he felt towards Rook as silly nonsense. It's just misdirected camaraderie, he'd told himself, a one-sided passing fancy towards an attractive colleague. But after their last trip to Lavendel, he'd found those feelings significantly harder to wave away with logic.
He couldn't quite put a finger on when or why, but it was as if the balance had shifted between them. He'd felt a new warmth from Rook - a kind word here, a compliment there, even playful moments like this. It all added to a feeling that there was something unexpected growing between them, beyond mere comfortable companionship.
Wishful thinking and purest confirmation bias, you old relic! he thought. It does not stand to reason. Still the what-ifs continued to orbit the centre of his thoughts, his mind gravitating wishfully to the possibilities.
They came to the landing at the top of the stairs where they would part ways. Emboldened by their shared moment of levity, Emmrich spoke before his mind could catch up.
"It suits you," he said.
"What does?" asked Rook. "My nose in the air? Or these voluminous skirts?" She waved a hand in the air where the skirts weren't.
He paused for a moment.
"Happiness."
The gentleness and simplicity of the observation seemed to completely slip beneath Rook's guard, much to Emmrich's quiet delight. He saw her face soften perceptibly, and could have sworn a sweet blush had risen to her cheeks. Were he a braver man, there was so much more he wished to say. But he'd reached the limit of his courage for the evening, his insecurities and uncertainty kept his tongue in check.
Instead, he simply doffed an imaginary hat and said, "With that, dear Lady Rook, I must bid you a most pleasant evening."
Rook managed to recover sufficiently to respond in kind. "Goodnight, Lord Emmrich," she said, curtseying again. This time, however, there was no trace of noble affectation, only the lingering traces of curiosity and surprise.
Emmrich turned and started his walk down the corridor to the laboratory, not daring to look over his shoulder. Had he glanced, he would have seen Rook considering him for some moments before turning to head up to the meditation room.
Reaching the laboratory, he smiled warmly at the sight of Manfred seated near the fireplace, not for warmth but just because that's what he'd seen his mentor do. Manfred looked up and gave a bright greeting hiss, emerald eyes glittering in the firelight, waving a bony hand holding one of Emmrich's socks. In the other hand, he held a darning needle and thread which he was using to mend a hole — his ward had appointed himself as the companions' tailor, taking on mending and alterations of gear as needed. It was a practical contribution that Emmrich approved of greatly, hoping it would both continue to improve his dexterity and help him feel a valued part of the team.
"Goodnight, Manfred," he said. "I'm looking forward to seeing your progress in the morning!"
Manfred hissed, his eyes turning back to his work as Emmrich started to climb the spiral staircase up to the loft.
The Lighthouse had decided that the best place a man who loves books should sleep is as close to them as practicable. Emmrich approached a bookcase at the far end of the loft, a hint of his magic coming to his fingertips as he made a pulling gesture with one hand in its direction. Obediently, the shelf swung away from the wall, revealing the entrance to a room beyond.
At first glance, it looked like a reading room, an extension of the loft's library outside. Large, book-filled rosewood shelves sat on the left and right sides of the room, and a pair of tall shelves joined together, similarly heaving with books, sat in the middle of the wall opposite the entrance. Flanking the centre shelves were a pair of low tables in matching polished rosewood. Each was topped with a lantern for late-night reading, encouraged by the generously upholstered armchairs placed beside them, offering comfort in a dark green velvet.
Entering the room, Emmrich's magic flared as he gestured behind him to pull the bookshelf door closed. Crossing to the left-hand table beside the centre shelves, he carefully removed his skull pin, taking care as he unthreaded the long, delicate chains attached to it. He had woven them through his waistcoat like a warding, down to his waist, through his belt loops, and finally into his trouser pocket.
There was something ritualistic about wearing this piece for Emmrich. He found the focus needed to achieve visual harmony in the threading of the chains quite soothing, an anchor for his thoughts, which tended to scatter in all directions chasing possibilities at the start of a new day.
He placed the skull pin and its chains carefully onto a waiting tray on the table, and began to remove his grave gold to place beside it, each ring, cuff and bracelet finding its way into the tray save for a lone ring on his right ring finger and a single, solid round bracelet at his left wrist. Each had the appearance of being both well-worn and well-loved over many years, a part of him that he was more comfortable with than without.
Next, he crossed to the left side of the room, raising his left hand, its now-bare fingers glowing briefly as he made a pulling gesture towards the bookshelf there. It swung out from the wall, opening the way to a large, walk-in wardrobe behind it, complete with a full-length mirror, neatly organised shelves and hangers. A long, deep-green robe and soft cotton sleeping trousers hung from a hook fixed to the back of the bookshelf itself. Emmrich undressed, neatly hanging and folding his clothes into the wardrobe, then redressed for sleep.
Magic again at his fingers, he turned to cross the room. With a sweeping gesture, he closed the wardrobe behind him, then repeated the pulling gesture towards the bookshelf on the far right side of the room. It swung open obligingly to allow access to a small vanity set into the alcove behind. It provided a hand basin with water, a place for his shaving mirror and all his toiletries which were neatly arranged on shelves set into the wall behind.
He took several minutes to complete his nightly ablutions - face and hands washed, teeth cleaned, hair combed - then he paused to look critically at himself in the mirror, prodding at the darker coloured circles beneath his eyes.
"You look tired, Volkarin," he said to himself. "A good night's sleep, that's the ticket."
Green embers of magic coming to his hands, he stepped back from the vanity to gesture it closed, then turned to the paired shelves in the middle of the room. He pointed to the top of the shelves, and then down to the floor as he crossed back to the side table. The bookshelves began to slowly fall forward as one, until they were face down on the floor, an enchantment holding the books within firmly in their place.
Once lowered to the ground, the bookshelf had become the base of what looked to be a deep, comfortable foldaway bed. It was neatly made, with a deep green comforter quilted with fine lilac threads in a simple repeating pattern of lilies and long-legged water birds. Behind the head of the bed were small shelves holding various books, knick-knacks and treasured souvenirs he'd collected from their adventures.
Emmrich gestured to each light in the room in turn, extinguishing them until the lantern beside his bed was the only light left. He pulled back the comforter and slid between the crisp sheets, then reached for a small gilded box on the night stand next to his grave gold and reading glasses. Carefully, he turned a small key on the side several times, each turn making precise, mechanical clicking sounds. Then he placed the box back on the side table and shuttered his lantern.
In the darkness, the faintest sound of music began to spill with a soft, bright tinkling from the box. Sweet and gentle, a simple children's song about friendship and dreams, a lullaby for his thoughts to gather around that would usually allow him to drift into sleep more easily.
As exhausted as he was tonight, however, almost as soon as his head touched the pillow the gentle sounds of his breathing became regular, slow and deep as he drifted off into sleep.
Tonight I'll dream while I'm in bed
When silly thoughts go through my head
About the bugs and alphabet
When I wake tomorrow I'll bet
That you and I will walk together again
I can tell that we are gonna be friends
Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends
— The White Stripes, "We're Going To Be Friends"
Emmrich blinked, opening his eyes wide to the clear summer's sky. He blinked again. There was not a cloud in sight, just another clear blue day in the suburbs of the Nevarran farming town of Preston, just south of the graceful minarets of Nevarra City. He was standing on the front lawn of his foster home, school binder under his arm, as he did every morning, waiting for the school coach to arrive to collect him.
He opened the binder to check its contents, then let out a sigh.
A ward of the Necropolis, Emmrich showed great promise as a potential future Mourn Watcher. Already a gifted student of necromancy with natural sensitivity to spirits, he possessed an academic's mind ready to plumb the depths of whatever topic captured his attention. Unfortunately, easy access to the Grand Necropolis was proving to be too great a distraction for Emmrich. He would often skip classes to talk to the spirits, a far more interesting prospect to him than anything he was learning in school.
As a Senior Watcher, the enigmatic Vorgoth had been monitoring young Emmrich's progress carefully. Seeing such a bright student risk failing high school, Vorgoth requested that Nevarran Family Services take steps to support the young man. So it was that Emmrich was relocated to a small foster home in the quiet, unassuming town of Preston to allow him to focus on the final year of his high school studies away from the tempting distractions of the Grand Necropolis.
He looked down the dusty road at the bright yellow coach which was rolling down the road towards his house, pulled by a team of four horses. It stopped at the front of his house, and the door swung open. He took the only remaining available seat on the coach, right up the back next to a younger student that he'd often shared the back row with.
"What are you going to do today, Emmrich?" said the young man next to him as the coach began to move.
"Today, I shall do whatever it is that I feel like," said Emmrich with an exasperated sigh.
He considered the coach driver from beneath a raised eyebrow to ensure that he wasn't paying attention to his passengers. Opening his school binder, Emmrich retrieved a toy action figure of a purple-coloured skeleton that had been wrapped in a length of fine yet strong thread in a fawn colour, the same as the dirt road they were travelling on. He meticulously unwound the skeleton, then with a furtive glance first at the driver, then at the coach window, he opened the window before surreptitiously tossing the toy out onto the road. Holding the loose end secure, he fed the thread out so that the skeleton bounced merrily along the road behind the coach as it rolled onwards.
The younger student watched the entire performance wordlessly, without so much as a question of why. It was as if this was the natural order of things, and perhaps it was, as Emmrich was known to be a little eccentric. Had he asked though, Emmrich would have confessed that he'd done it in the hope of it being a whimsical and amusing diversion. Anything he could do to forestall the inevitability of another Preston High School day filled with potential for tedium, violence, or usually for Emmrich - both.
The school bell rang.
Emmrich was seated in the middle of the class at his desk. At the start of the school year, after a fresh sanding and coat of paint, each student was asked to sign their name upon their desk as a way of encouraging responsibility and ownership of their learning space. He'd written his full name, "Emmrich Volkarin", using his most elegant flowing cursive, each capital emphasised with an elongated flourish. Anyone who cared to look closely enough would notice that he'd turned the dot over each letter "i" in his name into tiny skulls. His classmates could barely read cursive, let alone be interested in the finer details of his penmanship, currently on display as he was doodling a complex anatomical diagram of a scarab beetle in his notebook.
"Emmrich," said Miss Winters, Civics and Language teacher for this period.
His attention immediately focused when he heard his name. He looked at her startled and snapped his notebook shut.
"Your current event, Emmrich?" she asked.
"Ah, yes. Of course," he said, sliding out of his desk and making his way to the front of the class. Another pointless day in another pointless exercise, Emmrich thought to himself. They won't care, they won't even be interested.
He turned to face the class, the very picture of gangly teenaged awkwardness.
His unruly black hair was closely cut to the back and sides of his head and left longer on the top, a practical cut which should in theory have allowed him to part it or to sweep it back neatly from his forehead. In practice however, these attempts to control it were futile. His hair would sprout upwards and outwards from his temples in any direction it pleased regardless of where it was placed, and sweeping it back served only to accentuate his naturally high hairline.
Hazel eyes blinked from behind round-framed tortoiseshell spectacles perched atop an aquiline nose. His face bore the hallmarks of an adolescent grappling with learning to shave, despite not really needing to. As it was a warm day, he was dressed casually in a sky-blue short-sleeved shirt with a low collar, the top buttons undone, paired with navy blue trousers.
He stood rigidly upright, his feet close together and hands tightly down at his sides. It was as if he hoped to make himself as thin as possible and thereby vanish into the Fade and away from the bored stares of his classmates. His fingers nervously twitched at the seams of his trousers as he prepared to speak.
"Last week," said Emmrich, "Tevinter Magisters performed magical detonations throughout the swamps of the Korcari Wilds in an attempt to destroy The Witch Of The Wilds."
Two girls sitting in the second row with heads together giggled quietly behind their hands.
Emmrich paused briefly and frowned slightly at the sound before continuing. "Velcorminth VI, Leader of the Flemeth Alliance summoned the help of the Chasind's indigenous mages to cast a unique protective ward over the Wilds, its local flora, fauna and inhabitants and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of the Chasind's long-lived ally."
Elgar'nan, all blonde hair and mocking grin in the second-to-back row of desks, snorted loudly and rolled his eyes in a display for his friends sitting alongside him.
Emmrich clasped his hands, looking downcast and returned to his seat. It wasn't so much the humiliation of the ridicule from his classmates, but his disappointment at their inability to grasp the immense significance of the event he'd recounted. So much environmental destruction prevented by vigilante magic users, he thought, standing against Magisters no less!
Such a bold, subversive action was intriguing and exciting to him. Alas, it was not to someone like Elgar'nan and his gang. They were only interested in anything involving fast carts, faster girls and hard physical sports, and ideally all three at once.
Next period was Physical Education, which was definitely Emmrich's least favourite class.
It wasn't the exercise he disagreed with. He'd long performed his own exercise regimen to ensure he was strong and fit enough for exploring the Grand Necropolis, a location notorious for turning any casual excursion into something extremely demanding on a whim. No, it was something more fundamental, a combination of ostracism and competitiveness that made it the nadir of his day.
At the start of the class, they were all forced to change into sports uniforms to allow for easy movement and to prevent their regular clothing being damaged or soiled by rough play. Short or long black trousers were paired with light blue shirts onto which the school's logo and their names had been embroidered.
"Today's focus is ball sports," Master Schaedel addressed the class, "Please separate into boys and girls, then select and divide yourselves into teams to play ringball. Anyone not playing ringball can play handball or magic users," he said with a glance at Emmrich, "you may use the tether." He then retired to the bleachers to supervise the students from over the top of a coffee cup and a novel for the next hour.
As usually happened, the class first divided into two teams, "Emmrich" and "everyone else", before breaking into smaller teams to play ringball - a game where two teams would pass a ball between their teammates, throwing it through a ring to score a point, all while the opposing team tried to take the ball.
What even is the point of this game? Emmrich thought, observing the others playing. He shrugged, and returned his attention to the task he'd assigned himself for the period.
Like every teenager, he felt the hormone-driven need for conformity. But it was completely outclassed by his drive to hone his craft at any opportunity, and it was that part of him which was delighted they'd never ask him to join their teams.
The tether was a spell orb which had been attached by a cleverly-crafted tether to the top of a very tall pole, and this was the only apparatus in the entire school where magic users were permitted to practice during the school day. As the class' only magic user, it meant he had the tether all to himself.
It was the one redeeming feature of an otherwise utterly pointless class.
While he generally preferred to use his staff as a focus, he enjoyed having the opportunity to practice with other magical items as well. He focused on the spell orb which was hanging loosely from the tether. Allowing his magic to flare green along one hand out to his fingertips, he then extended the hand and his magic towards the orb.
Once connected, he drew his hand back, then pushed it forward, magic surging forcefully at an angle to the orb causing it to spiral around the pole wildly. He ducked to avoid the orb as it returned towards him, before pushing again on a different angle. Again, it moved wildly and he was forced to dodge it as it returned. Then, with a horizontal push, he managed to level its orbit, the spell orb drawing closer to the pole as the tether shortened with each loop.
"That's it, yes!" he exhaled excitedly, before pushing the orb again with more force, making it spiral faster. Each time as it looped around the pole, he would quickly draw his magic back and push again giving an excited hiss of "Yes!" until the orb was completely wrapped tightly to the pole. Stretching up onto his toes, he unwound the spell orb just enough to allow him to practice the drill in reverse. For the remainder of the period, he continued to practice winding and unwinding, balancing the maintenance of his mana reserves while using short, tightly controlled magic bursts.
After the class was complete, they returned to the locker rooms to change out of their sports uniforms before heading back to class. Emmrich sat down on a bench to wait for a change room, only to find himself joined by three of his four least-favourite classmates. Elgar'nan took the bench opposite, flanked by his closest friends — Albin Bataris and Calivan. The trio stared at Emmrich with cold eyes and predatory smirks.
"Hey Emmrich, what'd you do all last summer again?" asked Elgar'nan, feigning that the question was an innocent one.
"You have asked this on previous occasions, and my answer has been entirely consistent," replied Emmrich with a hint of exasperation. "I was selected to travel to the Anderfels as part of an expedition by the Nevarran Anatomical Research Archives in order to collect data and samples of deepstalkers."
"Did you kill any?" asked Elgar'nan. Emmrich seemed to be oblivious to the mocking tone of his question.
"We had no choice!" exclaimed Emmrich. "We were attacked on multiple occasions, including by a matriarch and her offspring as we tried to study an abandoned nest. It was most unfortunate, but they'd already severely injured one of our number."
Elgar'nan nudged Albin, smiling and rolling his eyes as Albin smirked at Emmrich.
"Well, would you have acted differently were you in the same situation?" Emmrich continued indignantly now, raising one hand in a defiant flourish, the other coming to rest defensively on his hip. "I think not!"
Elgar'nan glanced sideways at Calivan and snorted derisively, all three now openly smirking and clearly dismissing Emmrich's words as exaggeration at best, or lies at worst.
"What kind of weapon did you use?" asked Elgar'nan.
"My trusty Hermetic Pendulum, of course!" exclaimed Emmrich. Just mentioning his favoured staff was enough to defuse his frustration completely and send him off on a tangent. "Fabulous staff, gifted to me by Vorgoth himself, and highly effective against deepstalkers and most creatures one would find in the Anderfels who are generally resistant to cold elemental magic! I have a diagram of it somewhere in my notebook if you would care to see it?"
Johanna Hezenkoss was fast, stronger than a first glance would suggest, and determined, three of the least ideal qualities you could have in a school bully. At Preston High School she was the Queen of Bullies and Emmrich was definitely her most favoured subject. As he went to his locker to get his books for the next class, Johanna shoved Emmrich against the wall of lockers.
"Do you think you're funny, Volkarin?" she said. "Well, you're not, you know! You're just a scrawny, pathetic wastrel of a boy and a poor necromancer at that."
She was considerably shorter than Emmrich, but that was no impediment for her. She scowled at him, then reached up, quickly grabbing him by the collar, pulling his face down to meet hers.
"You just watch yourself," said Johanna.
Before he had time to react, she'd snaked an arm around his neck and turned her body, whipping him down and under her arm, trapping him in a headlock.
"But I didn't do anything!" Emmrich managed to choke the words out.
"Your parents must be so proud, Volkarin!" she said gleefully, shoving him backwards into the lockers again, knocking the breath from him.
He tried to struggle out of her hold, which just made Johanna smile as she wrenched his head down even harder.
"But I forgot!" she said, bringing her mouth right next to Emmrich's ear to be sure he heard her next words. "You. Don't. Have. Any!" She punctuated each word with a slam back into the lockers.
Preston High's Office Administrator, Myrna, was sitting at the office counter working her way through updates to the master card file index that held each student's family contact details. She was impeccably attired in her usual black high collared dress with green accents. A large badge had been pinned to her lapel, engraved with "I ❤️ PHS", worn to show her dedication to both the school and its pupils. At the sound of footsteps approaching, Myrna looked up from her work.
Emmrich walked with his gaze downwards, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. As he approached the counter, however, he drew himself up, clasping his hands together and prepared to greet Myrna with the respect her presence commanded, even in such a humble role.
"Greetings, Administrator Myrna," he said with a nod. "Would it be permitted for me to make use of the school's luve[1] to place a short call?"
Myrna considered Emmrich, with his collar looking rumpled and visible red marks at his neck. "Is there anything wrong, Emmrich?" she asked.
"I'm just feeling a little poorly," Emmrich said with the smallest glance of discomfort towards his feet.
Myrna nodded, and picked up the luve, a circular table mirror, polished silver and set into a dark metal frame inlaid with runes and numerals. The frame's edges seemed well-worn with frequent use, as one would expect from a busy school office.
She handed Emmrich the luve. "Do you require your home rune?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Thank you, but I have the invocation memorised."
Emmrich took the luve around the corner for privacy, as he began to enter the sequence of runes which would allow him to connect to the luve at his foster home. He finished the sequence and then pressed the activation rune. It glowed and dimmed, the light breathing each time a sound was played through his home's luve to indicate an incoming call.
The mirror flickered, then the freckled, smiling face of his foster sister, Lace Harding, appeared. Her red hair was neatly caught into braids at either side of her head, and he noticed that there appeared to be an enormous wheel of cheese resting on the kitchen counter in front of her. Presumably she'd been in the process of making lunch, as it seemed a large portion of the wheel had already been grated onto the plate stacked high with fried flatbread chips next to it.
"Hi!" said Harding, brightly as she wiped her hands on her trousers.
"Hello Harding, is Aunt Isabela available?" Emmrich asked.
Everyone, including her foster brother, referred to Lace as 'Harding' — she had made it clear that she felt 'Lace' was a little too soft for her image.
In Nevarra it was common for foster parents, particularly those to orphaned children such as Emmrich, to be referred to as Aunt or Uncle. Both Harding and Emmrich had been placed in the care of Isabela, a retired sea captain who was kind but firm, fiercely caring for her charges and often misunderstood by her neighbours. Harding had graduated from Preston High two years earlier, but as yet hadn't managed to make her way out from under Isabela's caring wing into the world beyond.
"No," replied Harding, "she's getting her hair done."
Removing his glasses, Emmrich sighed, closing his eyes as he massaged his temples. Johanna's abuse at the lockers left him with the makings of a headache behind his eyes, and he really wanted nothing other than to go home so that this miserable day could end.
"What do you need?" Harding asked.
"Would it be at all possible for you to get Aunt Isabela for me?" Emmrich asked.
Harding looked at the plate of cheese and flatbread the call had interrupted mid-construction. "I'm really busy right now."
Emmrich pleaded, "Well, could you just enquire as to whether she may be able to come collect me from school?"
"Why?" asked Harding, eyes still fixed on her lunch.
"Because I really do feel quite poorly," said Emmrich, his eyes downcast. It was a better cover than admitting he could still feel Johanna's breath whispering into his ear about his parents, and that he was miserable from just trying not to think about it.
"Well, have you talked to the school nurse?" asked Harding.
At this, Emmrich's eyes narrowed. "Of course not," he scoffed, "one might as well consult a fortune teller!" He continued, ticking off the list of his reasons on his fingers. "Nurse's knowledge of anatomy is functionally non-existent, she has received no training in modern medical practices and she's certainly not a registered practitioner recognised by the Nevarran Medical Board."
Harding looked at him blankly, then blinked slowly, her mouth a thin line.
"Fine, I admit it, I checked!" Emmrich said indignantly, a hand coming to his hip. "Well, would you be prepared to come collect me?" he asked.
"No!" said Harding, frustrated at being kept from her lunch.
"Well, perhaps you could just perform one small favour for me?" Emmrich asked, an ingratiating tone creeping into his voice as he attempted to wheedle his foster sister.
"What?" asked Harding with a sigh.
"Would you bring me my healing salve?" he asked. "It's on the top of my dresser, in the small green jar."
"No, Emmrich," said Harding flatly with a roll of her eyes.
"But I've been subjected to quite a significant amount of physical duress already today," said Emmrich. "It's already bruising and I really need to apply my salve to reduce the swelling!"
"Just borrow some from the school nurse," suggested Harding, "I know she has, like, five pots in her drawer."
"Oh, now that's just completely unhygienic, Harding," Emmrich said with disgust, screwing up his face. "There is no way I will be sharing such a thing with the entirety of this school."
"See ya," said Harding. She tapped the disconnect rune ending the call and the luve went blank.
Emmrich rolled his eyes, "Fancy telling me to share the school salve. Disgusting."
[1] Footnote - The Invention of the Teleluvian
The teleluvian, or the "luve" for short, is a remarkable device based on the principles of the eluvians and has revolutionised rapid communication throughout Thedas.
For years, researchers from the Tevinter Magisters to the Dalish in Arlathan had tried to unlock the secrets of the ancient eluvians with limited success. That was until an artifact discovered in Arlathan pointed towards a single, split lyrium crystal being the key to the device's operation. Amid a flurry of experimentation, researchers attempted to craft new devices based on this method, but their creations were imperfect. They would only work over short distances, such as across the breadth of a city and as the Tevinter Magisters had experienced using whole eluvians, these were also impermeable and so unusable for travel.
These shortcomings made them far less useful than other comparable point-to-point communications devices, such as elven stones or sending crystals, and as such research began to wane. However it was an accidental discovery made while making two pairs of such mirrors that revealed a novel property of the split lyrium crystal, and ultimately led to the technology finding a practical use.
All research to date indicated that the ancient eluvians were made in pairs with each mirror imbued with half of a single split lyrium crystal to force the connection between them. In the interests of recreating this process precisely, the standard protocol for creating modern eluvians for research was to also build the pair together.
A Dalish researcher in a hurry to make two such identical pairs broke that protocol. First, he split two crystals, fashioned them into two primary mirrors and left the remaining crystal halves resting upon his workbench in a tray while testing the new mirrors. He pressed the activation runes, expecting to see them illuminate and function while the two mirrors would remain blank without their corresponding, functional secondary mirrors.
Instead, he found himself looking at two images of his own face, one in each mirror.
This groundbreaking discovery was the first observed connection between unlinked eluvian-like mirrors, which the researcher dubbed a "teleluvian". By changing which crystals were near each other, they could make a single teleluvian connect to many others, breaking the point-to-point limitations of existing devices.
Further research revealed that it was possible to modify the sympathetic vibrations of a split lyrium crystal using runic identifiers. This made it possible for a given teleluvian to pair with a specific crystal from a group in proximity, dubbed a "teleluvian exchange".
For people living close together in regions, this provided a means for instant communication with people close by. All you needed to have was the identifying rune of the luve you wished to call, and as long as their crystal was in the same exchange as yours, the call could be placed.