hazmats | Glowfic Constellation

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"Is it like a sport or is it for some other reason?"

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"It's... like a sport; I wouldn't necessarily say it is a sport. It's more serious than that, a lot of the time. You can hold a Proving to determine certain questions of honour - if Bhelen hadn't heaped bribes and blackmail on the Assembly and I'd had any chance to contest the charges, I could've demanded that he fight me over it. Or more likely that his champion fight me. It's usually customary for both opponents in an honour Proving to name champions, but I'm a better fighter than anyone I'd be willing to ask."

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"So like a sport crossed with... dueling."

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"I suppose. I think dueling is a roughly analogous human custom but I don't know a lot about it."

"How did a human end up down here?" wonders Hesta. "What was that earlier about another world?"

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"I'm from a world where all the magic is in the form of magical objects, which confer a drawback and a benefit on whoever touches them. Sometimes the drawbacks are one time things like 'transported to a completely different world'. It was an accident."

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"I'm sorry to hear that," says Hesta.

"How's the anvil coming along?" says Stalas.

"Very nicely," says Caridin.

"Do I have time to go looking for something to feed to Annie?" (Caridin nods.) "Annie, hungry?"

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"Enough to eat a nug but not yet enough to eat a spider."

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Stalas snickers.

"Eating," says Pell. "Now there's one thing I don't miss. Nor what comes after."

"Is spider a fashionable new delicacy?" asks Kador with a stone smirk.

"Don't be disgusting," says Tamek, to both of them.

Stalas laughs outright.

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"I don't have a sense of smell and the most I can say for it is that it's improved with anise and sufficient boiling."

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"All right, who wants to help me hunt nugs and forage for mushrooms?"

"I hardly have anything better to do," says Kador.

"Might be fun," says Pell.

"I will remain here and guard the forge," says Tamek.

"I'll stay too," says Hesta. "You boys have fun."

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"Bye," says Annie, and she goes to help spot nugs and mushrooms at a distance.

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"So, how's Caridin doing?" asks Stalas as the four of them traipse out through the trap-laden tunnels. (Kador and Pell know how to deactivate and circumvent everything; there is very little danger.)

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"It's sort of hard to tell, but he seemed happy enough answering all my questions and might have sort of calmed down over the course of it?"

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"Good."

"A thousand years alone in a room with the worst mistake of your life will have effects on a man," says Kador.

"Did I catch those implications right, did you all spend most of that time in some sort of golem-sleep while Caridin stood there awake the whole time? No wonder he's unhappy."

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"Couldn't you have taken turns?"

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"Caridin didn't want to," says Pell.

"I'll bet," says Stalas. "He seems the dwelling type. Although maybe what I'm observing is more of an effect than a cause."

"Both, I'd say," says Kador. "He's a good man, though, don't let him tell you otherwise."

"I wasn't planning to," says Stalas.

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"Nugs," says Annie, pointing.

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"A constant of this world," says Kador. Stalas snorts.

They find and retrieve two nugs for Annie to eat.

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Mm. Nug.

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And then they go back to Caridin's forge and Caridin has made enough progress that he's willing to ask Stalas to try on a heavy metal gauntlet.

"It feels lighter than leather!" he says, amazed. "How'd you do that?"

"Lyrium," says Caridin.

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"How does lyrium do that?"

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"Lyrium is, or has, a kind of life. In the same way that I can make a golem's body join to its soul as tightly as a body of flesh, I can make a hand of metal believe for a time that it is his own hand."

"So the gauntlet feels light for the same reason your face doesn't fall in?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Could you do that for anyone? Make golems that people could just put on and take off?"

"...Perhaps. It is easier by far to make one for you, because of the lyrium in your blood."

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"What does the lyrium in his blood do to help?"

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"Making this gauntlet for him was similar to making an alteration for an existing golem. It would not be so easy to craft golem armour for someone who was not made of living lyrium already."

"But could you do it?"

"Possible. Ask again when I have finished what I am making for you."

"Sure."

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