Sigh. "Hey El, has the void saddled you with any horrible flensing spells that might actually be useful here." 

"Sure has. Wouldn't usually be my first go-to for a maw-mouth but under the circumstances. Latin?"

"Latin I've got, aside from my still-novice Sanskrit I've got--well, English, obviously--and Mandarin and Spanish and Latin."

El flips through her spell binder for a flaying spell in Latin.

Lucia peers at it, then pulls out a notebook to copy it down. 

"So, my priority should still be my spikey pikey and the harp, yes? And a blocked power sharer for Lucia."

"Yeah, that much hasn't changed. If we're not planning to tell Bangkok what's up immediately then the diamond thing is lower-priority."

"I can ask for spells for making a diamond, and just not use them right off."

"Right, and find out if the carbon coming from mal ash would help." 

"Exactly. Spikey pikey's going to be glorious though."

She wiggles a little. "I bet it is." 

(Just because things are mostly terrible doesn't mean she can't enjoy the little things!)

Lucia is a little anxious, the next time they set up the killbox, but no maw-mouths come through. Not that time, or the next, or the next, all the way up through Field Day. 

Maw-mouths aren't terribly common. "If we do see another one," El remarks, "if they get hungry enough or whatever, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell an oozy end of one of the big ones from a small one. Would you?"

"Yeah. Not, like, on sight, but if I hit it with any kinda spell, yeah." 

"Mkay. I guess maybe we don't want to completely kill any of them if we can avoid it."

"Yep," she snorts. "What a position to be in." 

"The irony is delicious."

"And yet we do not find ourselves less hungry." Sigh. "I've been thinking about trying to learn to eat spells, and I think it would be safer to try to eat a potion or an artifice or something first. Something that's not still attached to a caster so there's no risk of, uh, overreaching." 

"I have an old alchemy assignment, a paralytic," says Liu. "I've - used a bit on mice, it wears off if you can't do it."

"Sounds like a plan." 

Liu goes and gets it. "Do you want to spray it on yourself or should I?"

"--I'll do it." She's pretty sure she won't accidentally eat Liu but she wants more than pretty sure, for this. 

She spritzes some on her wrist. She does not manage to eat it on the first try. 

It stiffens her up - that arm is totally immobile and the rest of her is distinctly disinclined to bend, though she's bigger than a mouse and it's not completely overpowering her diagonally opposite toes or anything.

She doesn't growl, because that would be a motion and she isn't that invested in making it happen, but she thinks growly thoughts, and she forces the finger on the spritzer to twitch again, and--

The container is much lighter. 

"Hm," she manages. 

"Did it work?" Liu asks.

"...Ish." 

She jerks her arm a bit to demonstrate how the thing is not making a sloshy noise.