[PQ] Quality Assurance Testing

Ashe smirked, glancing her eyes over to where Kalt stood with Kysma and letting her gaze linger there for a moment. "Kalt has a love for the dramatic," she said, and she returned her attention to the task at hand. Did she expect the barrier to come down today? Hardly. But she expected to come away from this having learned something useful.    At her mother's arrival, her eyes sparked and she smiled with a wrinkled nose at her mussed hair, but the kiss to the cheek was welcome. She glanced side-long at Remi who had gotten much the same greeting from Vervain , and something in her warmed. That her mother and her brother didn't hate her for her disappearance was nothing less than an immeasurable relief. The arrival of Archebold however, sent her spine locking, turned the blood in her veins to ice. Tense, her electric blue eyes watched him with a sharp wariness until Remi addressed them once more.    Simple enough. But.. Earth? Remi could manipulate the earth? She wanted to ask him about it, but now wasn't the time as Zariah -    Lightning. The assassin's eyes went wide as she watched the former blueblood make her blast, and her heart leaped to her throat. Another lightning mage. She knew Zariah Launcelyn to be a dark magician back in Northaven, had known that destruction mages could manipulate the elements, was that what this was? Or.. was she finally not alone in her magic? She blinked and resisted bombarding the woman with questions - Zariah was a Launcelyn, she had been more than loyal to the crown that Ashe had hated, and it was a tough habit to break her wary mistrust of the upper teir of blood status.    So instead, Ashe took a slow breath and turned to face the barrier, eyes narrowing. "Here goes." She held her hand out, and brilliant veins of electricity crackled down her arm. "Lightning," Ashe said firmly. The bolts exploded from her palm in an arcing, weaved pillar of blinding blue and white. Ashe's lips flickered to a barely-there smirk as the magic hit true, but she held the lightning, bolts spreading from where it struck and battered at the target.