Chapter Text
That flicker of recognition in Solas’ eyes stays on Shisui’s mind for the rest of the journey. He thinks about it especially when he’s alone, scouting.
What is it that Solas recognised? He thinks it might have been the network of chakra coils and tenketsu; he knows that Solas know about those, even if most people seem ignorant. But he can’t quite shake the thought: what if it was something else? The way mana seeps in, certainly, Shisui can see how he would recognise that, however crudely abstracted. It could have been something about the genjutsu, or even the cycle of chakra… there are just too many options.
He wants to ask Solas, but the journey leaves little time for that.
Later, he tells himself. There is an awful lot he has set aside for ‘later’.
It takes them another week to get to Jader. The storm washed away several chunks of the road, and left others mired in mud, that they have to slog through on horseback, instead of walking over the top of the mud like civilised people. (He immediately feels guilty for the thought, when he has it; he knows his other teammates aside from Solas don't know how to as much as tree-walk. He should be grateful for the horses, since it keeps the squad from slogging through the mud.)
The first sign that they are approaching the sea is the raucous call of a gull, winging by overhead. It is followed quickly by a whiff of salt in the air. Something foul comes on the heels of the salt, just a hint. The hint gets larger as they get closer, old fish mainly, but also a little of the smell of a city with an inadequate sewage system.
“Is that smell… normal, for Jader?” Shisui asks.
“Haven’t you ever been to a port, Fluffy? They all smell a little like that,” Varric replies. “You get used to it.”
“Even in Tevinter,” Dorian says. “The ports tend to smell… ripe.” He wrinkles his nose a little.
“I’ve been to ports,” Shisui sighs. “You couldn’t smell them from this far away.” There’s always some kind of a smell, sure, but it’s not (the breeze wafts another hint of something past his nose) like this. And not before you can even see the place. The breeze picks up, and the stream of bad smell now a constant in his nose.
Why.
“Why.” He groans, and Varric laughs, rides up to give Shisui a pat on the back.
“You get used to it, Fluffy-stuff,” he says, audibly amused.
The worst part, Shisui realises, as they approach closer to Jader, is that Varric’s not wrong. Intellectually, he’s aware of the bad smell still being there, but slowly, surely, his nose goes dead to the smell.
The road also gets more crowded as they approach the city as well, traffic thickening until Shisui actually swings up into the saddle to get out of it. It helps, more than he thought that it would. People on foot and horseback alike give them space, though for different reasons: those on foot, he assumes, don’t want to risk being trampled, while those ahorse are probably concerned with keeping unfamiliar animals away from their own.
Or they are just trying to avoid the strange and heavily-armed squad. Shisui wouldn’t blame them for that; even the armed people he sees around them are civilians, for the most part. Oh, there are soldiers here and there, and he can see the glint of armour ahead at the gates of the city, but many more people are carrying arms than he thinks know what to do with them.
A spike of pain shoots through Shisui’s hand; at the same time, acid green light flares inside the city gates, perhaps a block beyond them. Shisui is moving, sharingan spinning, before he even has a chance to think. Cassandra does something with her horse, and he hears her bellow, “Make way for the Herald of Andraste!” People do, responding automatically to Cassandra’s order—not that it matters. Shunshin carries him across the crowd (he feels a barrier catching him just as he passes out of range), over the wall, and into a wide square just in time to sink kunai into a materialising wraith.
A Terror rises beneath his feet as he does, and Shisui flips neatly out of the way; its claws miss him by centimetres. His wire does not miss, and nor does the fire he sends along it. Another Terror strikes for his back, and he catches that one in a genjutsu, turning its strikes back upon the other wraiths. He dispatches those before taking care of the Terror, a simple enough prospect, with it unable to even locate, much less attack him.
Solas arrives in a breath of frozen air just in time to meet the next wave of demons with him.
Six wraiths, three more Terrors, and one Desire appear; the biggest group Shisui has seen since he sent the note through the rift.
“Take Desire,” Shisui orders, following his words immediately with a housenka no jutsu, with little fireballs each precisely aimed at only the demons, careful to avoid the infrastructure. (He does not, entirely, succeed. There are scorch marks here and there; not bad, as far as he’s concerned, and a small price to pay for the utter annihilation of the wraiths.)
Cold washes over him as Solas takes the Desire demon with a spell he had previously told Shisui was called winter’s grasp. An apt name, and a spell that Shisui is rather giddily looking forward to trying sometime. (It would be just the thing, he thinks, to surprise Danzo some enemy back home with. Hyoton is a kekkei genkai after all, and those cannot be copied. Magic, Shisui is learning, has different limits, but they are just as subject to sharingan exploitation.)
The demon is half frozen when Solas casts a spell that Shisui can feel in his hand, smashing down on her, and catching one of the Terrors as well. It’s very effective; Shisui decides on his next breath to copy it. It seems a little tricky, the way Solas twists the veil and pulls from the Fade, but there’s something about the mini-Breach in Shisui’s hand that makes it… not easy, precisely, but almost natural.
Solas glances at him, almost too fast to catch, but to his credit, he doesn’t let the swift copying distract him, instead channeling blast after blast of mana through his staff to finish the demon off.
There’s a scream, and Shisui moves—just in time to see a Smite, an explosive crossbow quarrel, and a precisely aimed arc of lightning strike a Terror simultaneously, reducing it to so much goo, and leaving a shaking, wide-eyed civilian, half-cowering behind.
“What are you waiting for? Get out of here!” Cassandra commands. The civilian does as he’s told, thankfully. Shisui has already put the man from his mind, to focus on the remaining Terrors.
“I have this one!” Solas calls, and Shisui leaves it to him, turning his attention to the remaining—most healthy—Terror. It dives into the earth before he can catch it in genjutsu, but luckily it seems he has its attention as well, because he can both see and feel it about to come up under him just before it does, and he’s ready with both genjutsu and his tanto.
It comes, he dodges, catches it, and dispatches it in the space of three heartbeats. (It would have been faster, but the demon was oddly tougher than others of its kind. Greater, in some way.)
He waits a moment for another wave to appear, and when it doesn’t he closes the rift.
“Is anyone hurt?” he starts to ask. He is not expecting to be interrupted by a cheer. Wordless at first, but then a few voices stand out from the crowd:
“It’s the Herald of Andraste!”
“The Herald came to save us!” A murmur goes through the crowd at that one. Somewhere, someone starts another cheer.
Not-so-deep inside his heart, Shisui knows that he has Leliana to thank for this.
Despite Shisui’s mounting dread, Varric has them out of the crowd and ensconced in their accomodations in under an hour. For all his stealth and keen eye, it’s abundantly clear where Varric’s greatest skills lie. Shisui has never been more glad to have him on the squad.
“So,” he says, once the Inquisition people waiting for then have given their report. “We have four days until the next ship leaves for Val Royeaux. What’s there to do in Jader?”
It would have—should have—been the day after tomorrow. Unfortunately, the ship in question had a cracked keel, which means, Shisui had been told, that the ship isn’t seaworthy. The next ship is leaving in four days, after barnacle scraping (“It’s even less pleasant than it sounds, Fluffy,” Varric had said) and cargo aquisition. (It seems that unless one is obscenely wealthy, there are no dedicated passenger ships in Thedas, and the Inquisition is nowhere near powerful or influential enough to field even a single ship. Which, fair enough, Konoha doesn’t have its own ships either, and Shisui’s village is substantially more powerful and influential both.)
“Well, all the usual pleasures of port life can be found,” Varric starts, to be interrupted by Cassandra’s stern,
“Varric!”
“What? The kid’s a seasoned veteran. I’ll eat my notebook if he doesn’t know all about whores, sop houses, and gambling dens. Tell me you know about them, Fluffy,” he adds. “I’d really rather not eat my notebook. I have a lot of good stuff in there.”
Shisui laughs.
“I knew all about that stuff by the time I was ten,” he assures Varric. “And warned to stay well away from all of them outside of missions.”
“What kind of missions would bring you to a whorehouse? At ten years old? Wait, do I want to know?” Dorian clears the different stages of curiosity faster than Itachi takes a shuriken course, and the matching look on his face is enough to make Shisui snicker again.
“Anybody who can afford us can hire shinobi,” he explains. “And kids are great for stakeouts. Not that brothels typically hire the kinds of teams that have kids on them—genin teams, usually. They tend to want either people who can blend in, or people who’ll be obvious, visible protection.”
“In other words, not you,” Varric says. “I get it; it’s possible, but not likely you’d end up on that kind of mission.”
“Right.”
“Did you ever end up on that kind of mission?” Dorian asks.
“Just once. I was twelve, and I played the part of the madam’s niece, learning the business. It wasn’t hard, since my voice hadn’t changed yet. The brothel was a high-end independant place, that was being harassed by these gangsters,” Shisui elaborates without being asked. “They hired us to get rid of them without causing a fuss. That part was harder, but it was still only a C-rank mission.”
“You have mentioned something about mission ranks before,” Cassandra interjects. “What does that mean, ‘see-rank’?”
“Missions back home are divided by rank according to difficulty,” Shisui explains. “The lowest difficulty is D. These are glorified chores, babysitting, cat-catching; things that genin—who are usually around twelve, but might be younger or a little older—can do to cut their teeth on mission and command structure, and get some experience working.”Varric’s pencil scratches furiously. “A D-rank mission will essentially never leave the village, and typically you can do a couple in a day. C-rank is the next level up, and are typically simple escort—bodyguarding—or courier missions, with occasional light infiltration; still broadly suitable for experienced genin, along with their jounin teacher, but most often handled by chuunin.” He holds up a finger to forestall the question he knows is coming.
“After C-rank is B-rank, then A-rank, then S-rank,” he continues. “The difficulty and danger involved go up with each rank. Only the most elite jounin handle S-rank missions.”
“Would you give an example of what that might be?” Solas asks.
“A politically sensitive assassination in a hostile foreign country,” Shisui replies, with a wave of his hand. “Where the target can be expected to have shinobi bodyguards. Long-term spy missions would also have the same rank—it’s all down to the difficulty and danger.”
“That is a very sensible way of ranking things,” Cassandra says approvingly. “And I take it missions are assigned to people based on known skills and ranks—I have heard you mention three, and you have mentioned them before.”
“Yeah… I could’ve sworn I’d explained this to you before, but maybe it was only Leliana,” he muses. “Well, it’s simple enough. There are three general ranks of of shinobi, or ninja—for our purposes the terms are interchangeable. From lowest to highest, that’s genin, chuunin, and jounin. There are also tokujou—I guess you could say ‘special’ jounin, chuunin who are considered jounin for the purposes of a particular skill.” As he speaks, he gestures for Varric for paper and pencil. Varric rolls his eyes a bit, but obliges him, and so Shisui can start sketching out the chart.
A • B • C • D, and then S off by itself. 上忍 • 中忍 • 下忍 below, and then lines between each rank and the missions they take.
“Like that,” he says.
“Uh-huh, and how do you read those?” Varric asks. Shisui smacks his own forehead, and adds pronunciation in the local characters for each.
There is a knock at the door. And then another one.
“Excuse me?” It’s the voice of the innkeeper, a tall woman who had introduced herself as Jolene. “There’s an officer from the King’s army here looking for you, milord Herald. He says it’s urgent.”
Varric slips Shisui’s chart into his notebook.
“Better go see what he wants, Fluffy.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I’ll be right back.”
When he opens the door and looks up at Jolene—she has to be at least a hundred and eighty centimetres, maybe the tallest woman he’s ever met!—she’s visibly relieved.
“This way,” she says, and starts to lead him down the hall, when an armoured figure steps out from around the corner.
“No need. I took the liberty of following you, madam,” the officer—a Captain by the insignia on his shoulder—says. “It really is urgent. You see, my men have been fighting in shifts to hold back the demons from one of those rifts for the past three days. We sent a messenger to Haven, but she must have run afoul of something along the way, because you obviously haven’t heard of out trouble.”
Shisui shakes his head.
“We haven’t. I hope your messenger is all right, but you’re right, this is urgent.” He raises his voice then, and calls, “Squad, we have a rift.”
“I heard,” Solas says, and he’s already sliding his staff into place on his back.
“We all did,” Varric says, right on his heels.
“Just like that?” the Captain asks.
“It’s what we do,” Shisui replies. “Especially, I guess, me.” The Captain gives him a wry smile.
“It’s half an hour’s ride outside the city. Please follow me.” Shisui—and the rest of his squad—does.
As they (ugh) ride, the Captain, one Neal Archer, explains the terrain (flat and marshy this time of year) and conditions (men flagging, healing supplies low; no mages to help) of the field.
“All right,” Shisui says thoughtfully. “Solas, Cassandra, you’re with me. Varric, Dorian, I want you on artillery at the barriers. Stay mobile, and use your best judgement. Dorian and Solas, switch off on barriers. Cassandra—“ Shisui’s hand jolts, and ahead of them the crackling electric mass of a Pride demon erupts from the just-visible rift.
“Smite that!”
Cassandra doesn’t even nod, just urges her horse into a gallop, even as Shisui flings himself off of his, and crosses the distance with shunshin. Up close not only is there a Pride demon, but two Terrors, four Rages, and one that takes Shisui a moment to recognise as matching the description of a Sloth demon—a twisted caricature of a bear.
A flight of arrows impacts Pride as Shisui arrives, and another right behind it. He takes the chance to try out Winter’s Grasp on one of the Rage demons; it is incredibly effective. Lightning arcs between all of the demons, and then Solas is there with his icy shunshin and an echo of Shisui’s spell on one of the other Rages.
Shisui lets his KI loose, and most of the demons quail briefly, but Sloth is unaffected. Moments later, Cassandra’s Smite strikes it; she correctly decided that it is the greater threat for the moment.
“I have that one!” she calls. “Handle the Pride demon!” And then she bellows a challenge, chakra infusing her voice and demanding attention. Lightning arcs between the demons again, finishing off the two frozen Rage demons. A barrier falls over him in the next moment, and Shisui lays a genjutsu over the whole of the field, focusing it on the demons.
A third wave of arrows hits, and the Pride demon lashes out in retaliation with its raiton whips, even as it begins to succumb to the pacifying jutsu. Shisui dodges, and so does Solas; Cassandra catches the attack on her shield at the same time as she catches Sloth’s claws with her blade. The others—including the soldiers—are out of range.
Solas catches both of the remaining Rage demons with another freezing spell, and for a third time, lightning arcs through all of the demons. This time one of the Rages shatters into frozen goo.
Cassandra smashes the Sloth demon—seemingly undeterred by Shisui’s genjutsu—with her shield, which knocks it into range to be hit by a grand fireball as well if he aims for the Pride demon, and so—he does. He follows the fireball with fuuton jutsu, blades of wind, and then his specialty: a barrage of shunshin-based afterimage attacks that leaves the demon dazed, confused, bleeding ichor, and very shortly, dead.
He dodges a blow from one Terror and then another, and then takes the second out with a precision strike as he does. The now familiar sensation of another barrier dropping on him comes then, follwed by the cold radiating from another Winter’s Grasp on the remaining Terror; the last Rage has fallen to Solas’s skillful ice.
The last Terror takes a flurry of arrows—and a rapid stream of crossbow bolts from Varric, finishing with an exploding bolt that splatters demon goo over the field.
A second wave comes: three Pride demons, and six Terrors.
“What the hell? Why are there so many?” Shisui hisses, and drops another, stronger genjutsu over the field this time. His eyes spin, following the movements of the various demons, and he strengthens the genjutsu. The Terrors sway, and slowly slump to the ground. One of the Prides stumbles to its knees.
Good enough.
"Focus on the ones still standing!" he calls. "I'll keep the others out of the fight. Dorian! Boom Buddies!" He matches word to deed, and as soon Dorian lays the mine, Shisui sends another grand fireball right at it.
The whirlwind conflagration is a delight, but Shisui doesn;t stop to appreciate it; he follows the grand fireball with a shunshin flurry. The demon roars, shaking off some of the effects of the genjutsu--enough to armour itself up.
"Shisui! Disrupt the rift!" Solas calls, as he drops another barrier on them all.
"On it!" Shisui darts in closer, trusting his squad to guard his back while he focuses on and through the mini-Breach, connecting to the rift, and then disrupting his chakra, like he's breaking a genjutsu.
The analogy is more apt than would be ideal. While the disruption works to break through Pride's armour, and it leaves all of the demons reeling... it also disrupts Shisui's genjutsu, which is just not fair. He renews his focus on the genjutsu; the Terrors drop again, but this time all three Pride demons...
No.
Hell no.
Shisui is not going to be beaten by a bunch of demons, no matter how big and powerful. His eyes spin faster as he feeds them chakra, magic, power, and pushes the genjutsu into the minds of the Pride demons.
One by one, they fall, held under its spell--under Shisui's spell.
"Sorry, but my pride is bigger than yours. They won't fight back," he says, raising his voice on the last. "I'll keep them down."
What remains of the battle is quick, and all but silent, and while his squad isn't looking at him strangely, the soldiers certainly are. Well, it's not like he's not used to Looks. It's still a little disappointing.
The last demon is dispatched, and the rift ripples, smoothing out. Without further ado, Shisui closes it; unlike the earlier rift that day, it leaves his hand stinging.
"Could you have done that from the beginning?" Cassandra asks, as he rubs at it.
"Yeah, probably," he admits. "I'm trying not to spook anyone though."
"Your sense of discretion is admirable, but you should not hold yourself back for our sakes. Or for theirs," she adds, nodding to the exhausted soldiers. The soldiers who are now staring at Shisui with something oddly like... hope.
Just like the people back in Haven, like those at the Crossroads... even at Redcliffe.
He’s really not sure how he feels about that.
"All right," he tells Cassandra. "Next time I won't."
"Still, there were no further injuries after we arrived," Cassandra adds. "So no harm is done."
The soldiers join them then, to help clean up, and gather the things the demons--many demons, it looks like, before they arrived--left behind: glittering shards, lumps of goo, occasionally scraps of cloth or odd bits of jewellery. The latter he lets the soildiers keep; it's the least they deserve for holding out so long. The former...
"We have an expert," Cassandra tells the Captain. "She knows how to analyze things like this for weaknesses."
"Keep them," he replies. "Maker knows they're useless to us. Who knew you could do anything with... remains like that?"
"They are a bit creepy, aren't they?" Shisui puts in. The Captain laughs a little.
"They are, aren't they? I'm just glad my men won't have to try to deal with them." That settles the matter, and before long, Shisui an his squad are heading back to Jader.
"Is it just me, or were there a lot of demons this time?" Varric asks.
"It's not just you," Dorian says. "I can't recall ever seeing quite that many demons in one place before. Even other rifts seldom seem to have more than a handful."
"A lot of the demons that we end up fighting are--were--benign spirits, pulled in and warped by the rifts," Shisui says slowly. "At one point, I sent a note through a rift, warning them to stay away. I guess... word must not have spread here, yet."
"You sent a note to demons?" Dorian stares at Shisui.
"I sent a note to spirits," Shisui corrects. "They don't want to be demons any more than we want them to be."
"Becoming a demon, for most spirits, is a violent warping of their fundamental nature. It completely destroys who and what they are," Solas explains. "Shisui's note was a greater kindness to them than I have seen even in the deep memories of the Fade."
"I'll have to send another note," Shisui says. "If another rift shows up." He's hoping one doesn't; the soldiers had been run ragged, and the city is full of civilians.
He sighs.
"We need a better way of tracking rifts. Maybe predicting them."
"What we need is to just seal the Breach," Varric points out. "And if we're lucky, Ruffles will have finished negotiations with Fiona by the time we get back from Val Royeaux."
"You know you can count on me to help," Dorian says.
"I, too, will be there," Solas adds.
"I appreciate that," Shisui tells them.
Things are calm when they reach the inn again, much to Shisui's relief; he had been half-expecting his new fanclub to have shown up. But they haven't, and the squad is able to return to their suite without issue.
Shisui settles into a chair, and starts laying out his gear for maintenance. Cleaning, mostly; it's oddly difficult to chip or dull a blade on most demons. Still, there is some repair work to be done, and it's a relaxing, meditative task; automatic and rote, calming even. He tries not to think too much on anything else when he's working on his gear, but it's hard not to let his mind wander a little.
Even before he sent his note, there hadn't been so many demons from the rifts in the Hinterlands. Not even in the warped future, with the Fade and the physical world one and the same had so many--and powerful--demons had come through the rifts.
Is it just a coincidence? Or is there something about Jader--maybe something going on--that attracted them. There isn't really time for a full investigation, but maybe in the four days--
Or, he thinks abruptly. I could just check in the Fade. It's as easy as falling asleep. He resists the flighty little urge to go to sleep and check on things right now; he still needs a bath, and dinner, and to finish maintaining his gear...
"You have thought of something," comes a comment from Solas.
"Mm. I was just thinking that we could find answers in the Fade," Shisui replies. "Ah, about why there were so many demons at the rifts today," he adds.
"I agree," Solas replies. He works as he speaks, doing his own weapon maintenance--wrapping new leather strips around the base of the blade on the end of his staff. The edge of said blade gleams sharply, and is completely clean of the ichor and other residues left by demons. "I was planning on spending some time looking for those answers myself. It was... unsettling. I have not seen any rifts so active, not even at the beginning."
"And so many powerful demons as well," Shisui says. "I don't like it."
"Nor do I." Solas ties off the leather, and sets his staff aside. "So we are agreed?" Shisui nods.
"Yeah. We'll investigate the Fade. Everyone else, I want you to see if you can find anything in the physical world," he adds, raising his voice a little. "From what I understand, there might be something here that's attracting them."
"It's true," Dorian says. "People and events in the physical world affect the Fade, and certain activities tend to attract demons more than others."
"Happened all the time in Kirkwall." Varric sounds matter-of-fact about it, but there's a certain look in his eyes that Shisui knows all too well. He's seen it in the eyes of ninja, and even occasionally civilians--the eyes of a man who has seen things, and maybe done them. Things that leave a mark; that leave regrets. Having read (some of) The Tale of the Champion, Shisui thinks he can guess a thing or two.
He doesn't plan to ask.
Oh, he’ll listen if Varric wants to talk, but he somehow doubts that’s going to happen. No, for now, he can live with that particular curiosity unsatisfied.
“It is probably still happening,” Cassandra says grimly. “I doubt that the Breach has made anything better.”
“Well. You’re not wrong,” Varric replies. “But you have to admit, the lack of apostates and rogue Templars probably has.” Cassandra gives him a flat look, and he adds: “Relative lack, believe me, Breach or not, it’s been much worse in Kirkwall.”
“The city has neither Viscount nor Champion,” Cassandra replies. “I fail to see how it could be worse off.”
“There was a time, Seeker, not that long ago, when you couldn’t turn over a rock without finding blood mages, qunari, rogue Templars, or worse. I was there, remember? Believe me: it has been worse.”
“I am well aware. Just as I am aware—“
“Oh come on not this again, Seeker, we’ve been over this,” Varric interjects, audibly annoyed. “I don’r know where she is. I don’t know where any of them are, unless ‘the ocean’ counts. That’s where you can find Isabella. I’m going to the bath house,” he finishes, putting Bianca up, and striding out.
And that right there is why I’m not planning to ask Varric anything, Shisui thinks. He keeps his thoughts on the matter to himself though; saying anything out loud would only antagonise Cassandra, and he does not want to do that, either. What he does say, is:
“A bath sounds like a good idea.”
Cassandra sighs.
“I agree.”
“As do I,” Dorian adds. “We have been riding for days, and I for one would like to stop smelling like horse.”
“I think we are all agreed on that matter,” Solas says. “I will be going to the bath house as soon as I finish my staff maintenance.”
“Don’t forget that they have laundry here,” Shisui says. He puts his last kunai away, and then starts on his shuriken. These, he is more careful of, and with; he has fewer of them than kunai, since Harrit can easily duplicate the latter.
(He should have left a shuriken with the smith; a shame he didn’t think of it until now.
Didn’t think of it. Why does it feel like he has forgotten something? Something important?)
“Oh believe me, I won’t,” Dorian replies. “Speaking of staves, Shisui, have you given any thought to learning to use one?”
“I have,” Shisui answers. “I have one in my storage scroll, too, just in case I want to.”
“You should. It really does make spellcasting much more efficient.”
“But it would make any other kind of combat less efficient,” Shisui points out. He twirls a kunai into his fingers, and does a few tricks to prove his point.
“Dorian makes a good point, Shisui,” Solas says. “It is not without reason that mages prefer staves over any other possible weapon. It would do you well to experience why for yourself. You have said in the past that you would try.”
"That's true," Shisui says. He considers it for all of several seconds and--really, why not? He has seen Solas and Dorian fight with their staves often enough that their different techniques are both imprinted in his sharingan--and thus, his body. He has held a staff, and felt the way it affects his mana, a little anyway...
"All right. I'll get my staff out after my bath."
"Before," Dorian says. "I can show you how to check if it needs any maintenance. Or Solas can, I suppose. But I am trained by the finest Circle in Tevinter, which, my differences with my countrymen aside, means that it is the finest Circle in the world. No offence to Solas--"
"--none taken--"
"--thank you, no offence to him, but there are going to be gaps in a self-taught apostate's education that cannot be filled by the Fade."
"Just as there are things that can be learned in the Fade that no Circle could ever imagine," Solas replies evenly. "Dorian is correct however, Shisui, that you should inspect your staff before you head for the bath."
"If you insist." It's a matter of seconds to retrieve his scroll, and the staff within. It's the elegant, lyrium-infused, hollow staff that Solas had taken from the collection of staves confiscated from the Magister and his party.
"Ah yes, I recall this staff," Solas says, when Shisui presents it.
"My word, that is a lovely piece. May I?" Dorian asks. Shisui shrugs, and tosses it over to him. Dorian catches it neatly, and gives it half a swing; there isn't room for much more. He rolls the staff thoughtfully from palm-to-palm, humming to himself. "It looks like Daria's work--that is, Daria Octavia, from Vyrantium. She's a real innovator in staff design. Very elegant, as well."
"Well, it might be," Shisui says. "Since we confiscated this staff from Alexius' party." Dorian huffs something like a laugh, and tosses the staff back to Shisui. He catches it with a small flourish of his own, ending with the staff laid back along his arm and shoulder, a ready position he has seen a number of mages use. He catches a twitch of Solas' lips, and a hint of something like pride in his eyes. Dorian arches an eyebrow, and smiles a little.
"Well. It looks like nobody will have to teach you how to handle a staff."
"Staves are one of the many weapons that we train to use back home," Shisui explains.
"Then--"
"Not the way mages use them, though," he adds, without letting Dorian finish. "Melee training. Everyone learns the basics at the Academy, though most don't bother with anything past that."
"And you?" Dorian asks. "Ah, don't tell me, you learn by watching, and you have watched us a great deal." Shisui flashes him a grin.
"You said it, not me. So, come over here and tell me what I need to know for staff maintenance."
"Well, if that really is one of Daria's..."
The explanation is fascinating enough to keep Shisui absorbed for the next hour. By the time he has learned to both Dorian and Solas' satisfaction, Cassandra has departed for the baths, and Varric has returned.
"...finally," Dorian is saying, as Varric walks in. "You may want to bring this to a smith, and have them add a blade. See, there is a spot for one, even if it has none at the moment."
"I thought this staff wasn't designed for melee," Shisui responds, turning the staff over to examine the end.
"None of them particularly are," Dorian replies. "But that doesn't mean anything. Even the least staff of Tevinter make can withstand the rigours of battle. They have to be able to, to be suited for the Legion, and any staff crafted in Tevinter must at the least be suited for the Legion."
"Even one custom made for a particular individual?" Solas asks.
"Even then," Dorian confirms.
"Have you all been talking staves this entire time?" Varric asks.
"More or less," Shisui answers him. He turns the staff back over, and rolls it from hand to hand, as Dorian had done earlier. "Solas and Dorian both agreed that it was important for me to learn how to use and maintain one, and we started with 'maintain'." Not that the staff had needed any maintenance; during the course of their inspection Dorian had pronounced it 'practically brand new'.
"They're not wrong, Fluffy. The right staff in the right hands can make a huge difference. More than you can imagine, until you've seen it." Varric's words make Shisui think of The Tale again; it's harder this time not to ask.
"I take it you have?" Dorian asks, apparently having no such compunctions. Varric waves him off.
"A story for another time," he says. "You should go take your baths. I'll hold down the fort here," he adds. Something in Shisui relaxes at that; with Varric on watch, he'll actually be able to enjoy his bath.
"Thanks Varric, I appreciate it." He claps Varric briefly on the shoulder. Varric elbows him back, in a friendly way.
"I know you do, kid. Now go relax a little."