"I can't die, as far as I know, unless local magical effects can kill me, and I wouldn't want to bet on it. I don't know if I can become a ghoul either, but I don't want to test it. If a ghoul-me could also use my magic, me becoming one would be sufficiently awful that I should probably engage with darkspawn only with the help of binoculars, if at all."

"At what distance and speed can you create arbitrary matter? How quickly could you destroy an army of darkspawn from a comfortable distance?"

"Distance is basically immaterial for these purposes - I could put stuff on the moon from here - but I have to know where to put it, which means seeing or having extremely detailed maps of where things are going. Assuming I can destroy darkspawn in some relatively straightforward way, such as by filling their abdominal cavities with liquid nitrogen - uh, very very cold partial air? - then I can handle any army I can see roughly as fast as I can look at them, and I don't know if you've invented binoculars yet but I can see things from quite a long way away with a pair and I can make them myself. I'd want to be very sure that I could distinguish darkspawn from non-darkspawn without fail, how easily recognizable are these things, are we talking forty legs and poison dart frog color schemes or, like, zombies?"

"I don't know what a zombie is. Darkspawn are... very obviously not the same as ordinary people, but they have the same number of limbs as the rest of us, and I suppose you might not even know what all the kinds of ordinary people are. Humans, dwarves, elves, qunari?"

"...Are dwarves and elves respectively short compact humanoids and humanoids with pointy ears? No idea what a qunari is."

"Elves are also shorter than humans but taller than dwarves. Qunari are large humanoids with horns and greyish skin. Darkspawn also come in four varieties: hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks, and ogres. They seem to correspond to the kinds of people, but I haven't been able to find out why. Hurlocks are similar to humans, genlocks to dwarves, shrieks are similar to elves but with longer limbs, and ogres are similar to qunari but much, much bigger. All darkspawn have sharp pointed teeth."

"I might need to look at at least a competently drawn picture of these things before I know exactly how close I have to be to pick out adequate distinguishing features. I can produce the picture if you can specify one that already exists sufficiently."

"The clearest illustrations of darkspawn I've seen were in a book called History of the Blight that I read back at the tower. Is that specific enough?"

"Who wrote it?"

"It was a collaboration between groups of scholars from several different kingdoms and species. No one put down their individual name on it."

"Uh, what year was it published? I can almost never do title alone."

"8:60 Blessed."

"...Let's see if I can use that despite total unfamiliarity with the local calendar..." Cam holds out his hand. Now there's a book in it. "This look right?"

"Okay, I can probably distinguish these from the air with binoculars from way beyond the range of arterial spray."

"There are no ordinary people with faces like that," his summoner affirms.

"By the way, what's your name, I'm Cam."

"Metella."

"Okay. Is there a darkspawn army some known place for me to go slaughter right now or did you choose this moment to summon me for other reasons?"

"We're expecting one within the next few days."

"From a direction I could fly towards until I spot 'em, or via nondirectional intel?"

"Nondirectional. They are currently out in the woods in large numbers, not assembled into an army. They are expected to attack us soon."

"Okay. Can I help with anything in the meantime? Are we besieged? I can do food."

"Not exactly besieged, but food would help. I haven't summoned you on anything like an official basis, though, so there's a limit to what you can do openly. People who can do magic without authorization are not well thought of, and the fact that you can do new inexplicable impossible magic won't help anything. Unless we dress you up as some sort of miracle-working prophet, I suppose, but false prophet is probably not that much safer than apostate as careers go."

"I can get rid of the wings and tail if there's a good place to burn them, and I don't have to be visibly paying attention to a place to appear food in it as long as I know the layout, but maybe people wouldn't eat spontaneous bacon or whatever?"