hazmats | Glowfic Constellation

first-and-final

"If we're lucky we'll find edible mushrooms. If we're really lucky we'll find nugs, which are small mammals and can be legitimately tasty when cooked. If we're only a little bit lucky we'll find deep stalkers, which are lizards and taste kind of horrible but by all accounts still better than giant spiders."

keep_busy

"Can the spiders be preserved edibly in some way so I can discard them if we find nugs and mushrooms or are my options eat spider now or don't eat spider now?"

first-and-final

"Eat spider now or don't eat spider now. And at that, getting at the edible spider parts is going to be a bit messy if you don't want to risk me cutting them up with tainted daggers, which you probably shouldn't risk because if your magic healing can't deal with the taint it will be a big problem."

keep_busy

"...right. Um. I'm going to go poke a spider, see if anything conveniently magical happens, and then not eat it if nothing does. I can coast on breakfast for a day or two if I have to as long as we can find water."

She pokes a spider. The spider disappears, except for the edible spider parts, which, suddenly unsuspended by inedible spider parts, plop repulsively to the ground.

"...Um. Did I just filet a spider."

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"...You did," says Stalas. "That just happened."

keep_busy

"That's weird. What the hell kind of artifacts fell on me? Okay. How does one prepare filet of spider."

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He peers at the filet of spider. "I'm unfortunately a bit lacking in the necessary supplies to cook them, but as far as I know they're safe to eat raw..."

keep_busy

"...for humans?"

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"Humans, dwarves, and elves have mostly identical dietary needs and only differ in preferences. I can't say for sure about qunari but I've never heard differently."

keep_busy

She shudders and picks up a filet of spider and takes a tiny bite.

"Eugh," she says, in a high sad voice. "Might have been nice if in addition to blind and deaf I couldn't taste."

She takes a few more bites and then cannot bring herself to consume further raw spider filet. She looks like she might be in danger of losing her raw spider filet.

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"Sorry," says Stalas. "If I had anything better to offer you, I would."

keep_busy

"I know." There is a small flash of a sort of lovesick expression she's been suppressing and then it promptly goes back to being suppressed.

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"Anyway. Any darkspawn in that direction?" He points.

keep_busy

"Nnnnot as such but there are some in the connecting cave that way -" Point.

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"Hmm. That connection's a dead end, though. How many?"

keep_busy

"I count six but the cave doesn't end within range."

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"Tempted to risk it. Thoughts? Six darkspawn won't give me appreciably more trouble than those spiders; up to a dozen and it could get dicey."

keep_busy

"...They're sort of clustered, it's probably just six."

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"All right. Let's try sneaking past them and if that doesn't work I can just kill them all."

keep_busy

"Okay."

Sneak sneak.

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Sneak sneak sneak!

Successful sneaking!

keep_busy

Hooray!

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When they're well past the darkspawn: "All right, good for us. Clear thataway?"

keep_busy

"Looks like. ...I'm just going to stop correcting myself for visual metaphors."

first-and-final