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"Nice."

Ari fiddles with the controls a while longer. "Hm... how about..."

A pair of daggers appear! They're like lyrium, but red. Some kind of... red... lyrium? "Hell yeah! Zan's gonna love these."

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All three of them react with immediate alarm, but Stalas is the first to act. "Don't touch those," he says sharply, moving to put himself between Ari and the daggers.

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"Aw." Ari obediently folds his hands behind his back.

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"It's roughly the same kind of potential hazard as entering the Fade, but much more so and much more widely verified," Stalas explains. "If this is in fact red lyrium and not merely lyrium that happens to be red. You might be safest just leaving the room while we figure out how to dispose of it... the trouble is, there really isn't a way to dispose of it as such, the best we can do so far is break it into very small pieces and seal it in a warded container and lock it up. And we don't currently have access to any of the appropriate equipment." He contemplates the ominously glowing daggers unhappily.

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"...Can you draw the equipment? I've got a Modus that can work with that."

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"I'm increasingly convinced that it is red lyrium. If only I had thought to warn you not to make it red. I'm still not used to the principles this thing," he waves vaguely at the alchemiter, "seems to work by."

The gesture causes a drop of blood to fly from his hand. It lands on one of the red daggers. There is a crackling hissing noise, and the spot where the blood touched the crystal turns from red to a bright silvery white. Stalas yelps with surprise. "What the fuck just happened!"
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"Yay?"
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"I'm not totally sure I trust this result!" says Stalas.

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"Try bleeding on it some more," suggests Sefton.

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"Not necessarily a bad idea," says Katrin. "It's hard to imagine how turning white could make it significantly worse, and 'Dawn of Hope' does... thematically suggest a tendency to improve things."

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"Well, if you insist."

He flicks a few more drops of blood at the daggers. As more and more white spots appear, their glow brightens and the angry red aura of the red lyrium correspondingly dims. The white begins to spread out from the points of contact. Stalas stands back slightly and waits.

Then there are two daggers made of silver lyrium.

"Admittedly they feel much less evil now. Katrin, Sefton?"
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"A noticeable lack of... evil, as you put it."

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Sefton nods tentatively.

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"D'you want to try poking yourself with them again? Unless there's a less stabby litmus. Preferably one you can draw."

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"Unfortunately, this stuff isn't nearly that well understood. I'm going to pick it up and hope I don't die," says Stalas.

He picks up a dagger. It glows softly, the same blue-white as the rest of him.

"...Okay, I'm not hearing crazy singing or feeling any urges to keep it under my pillow at night. That's a good start, right? So apparently I can turn red lyrium into... white? Silver?" He studies the dagger. "I'm calling it silver. Silver lyrium. I think this is genuinely the strangest thing that has happened to me today."
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"Nice! Can you, like... channel Hope through it, or something?"

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"Good question. I'm more wondering if I can get out of having to bleed on all the red lyrium in existence. I mean, I'd do it, I've done worse for less reward, but I am really hoping I won't need to."

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"I can have Arcanist Dagna look into it," says Katrin.

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"I mean. I could, instead, alchemize a few gallons of your blood. Or, like, a lot of gallons."

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"Would alchemized blood even work? ...Do we dare test it?"

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"Personally, I dare test just about anything. And I've already got the codes for the knives set up, so we can try it out and if it fails you can just do some more bleeding."

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Stalas glances over at Sefton and Katrin.

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Sefton shrugs slightly.

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"Go ahead," says Katrin.

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Ari takes a swab of Stalas' blood off the floor, then begins pressing a number of buttons on the alchemiter.

A red lyrium dagger appears on the platform, followed shortly by about a pint of sparkling blood, which splatters pretty much everywhere, since Ari forgot to alchemize a container for it.

"Dammit!"
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