hazmats | Glowfic Constellation

iwillgetyou

"Prince Stalas," says Metella. "It's very nice to meet you. May I have some of your blood so I can investigate it for lyrium content?"

first-and-final

"Sure," laughs Stalas. He detaches from Annie.

Sentevlan Rasna

moreperfect

"She did mine already, and it has a little," volunteers Tev.

iwillgetyou

Metella pokes Stalas's finger with a small pokey pin and gets a drop of blood onto a tiny metal dish, where she stares at it for a few seconds until it flares with brilliant white light.

first-and-final

"You made it glow!" says Stalas, fascinated.

all-the-thoughts

Dagna eeps in startlement, but then stares in fascination. "Why'd it do that?"

iwillgetyou

"A very good question," says Metella. "Tev's blood only glowed very faintly, and in the usual shade of blue. This... Stalas, your blood is more lyrium-like than purified lyrium."

keep_busy

"That... does not make sense as a sentence," Annie says, "it sounds more like you're not measuring lyrium-likeness per se but some sort of power output to indirectly guess it."

iwillgetyou

"It's not just power output, although power output is definitely the most obvious sign, it's... if you put a drop of maximally concentrated lyrium potion and a drop of Stalas's blood in front of me, and I didn't know anything about either of them to begin with, I would identify the potion as a dilute or impure extraction of the magically active ingredient in Stalas's blood. Stalas's blood is, or at least contains, a more... advanced, powerful, concentrated, form of lyrium."

first-and-final

"I'm really starting to wish you'd been able to take a look at me before I got - purified," he says. "I wonder what I was like then."

keep_busy

"Oops."

first-and-final

Stalas laughs. "I'm not complaining, mind you! Being a purified Stalas is very convenient on a number of levels!"

iwillgetyou

"It certainly seems that way..."

Metella gazes thoughtfully at the drop of blood on her dish, now inert, its power expended.

"I want to have six months uninterrupted to study this. With multiple other samples to compare it to. Humans, elves, dwarves, qunari, mages and non-mages, Grey Wardens and non-Grey Wardens, you and Tev. I want to know what happens if you purify Tev, too, but there simply aren't enough Grey Wardens available to risk losing one..."

all-the-thoughts

"I want to know what happens if you put Stalas's blood in someone else's blood," says Dagna. "Or like, in someone else? That's probably dangerous. But we could learn so much!"

keep_busy

"That's really dangerous even when there's no lyrium involved!" exclaims Annie, diving for her notebook to scribble blood typing on a list. "People have different kinds of blood and you can only use blood that's the same kind as yours and I have no idea how blood type testing works!"

all-the-thoughts

"Really?" says Dagna, fascinated. "Is it different for different species of people? I guess you wouldn't know... but it would be safe to just put Stalas's blood and someone else's blood together outside of both of them and see what happened, wouldn't it?"

keep_busy

"Yes, I suppose. I mean, unless the answer to what happens is 'it explodes' or something, but it wouldn't have the standard blood typing problem."

all-the-thoughts

"So we could do that! With - well - each of our blood, I guess?" she says, looking around at the available test subjects. "Unless somebody doesn't want to."

first-and-final

"I wouldn't mind," shrugs Stalas.

keep_busy

Annie flinched only very slightly when Metella took Stalas's sample and has no qualms about offering her own. "Sure."

first-and-final

So Stalas lets Metella poke him again and produces enough drops of blood to combine with drops of Annie's, Metella's, Dagna's, and Tev's.

all-the-thoughts

"So your blood with Annie's doesn't glow, yours with mine glows a little bit, yours with Tev's glows a little more, yours with Metella's glows a little more... we should do it again to see if the same combinations glow the same amount!"

first-and-final

"Sure, why not. Metella, what about the interesting magical properties?"

iwillgetyou

She tests them. Four brilliant flares of light ensue, some more brilliant than others.

"Annie's blood seems to dilute yours. Dagna's blood... seems to turn into yours, almost. Tev's blood and mine... I'm not sure what I'm looking at in either case, but I can tell that they're different."

all-the-thoughts