crystal.

[achievable]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Howard Stark
RECIPIENT: Everyone
NOTES: Nah

[ A snappy American (or dwarven or Qunari) accent, familiar only to anyone Howard has bothered in person over the last couple of weeks while finding his way around and becoming slowly convinced this isn’t a fever dream, breaks the mid-afternoon doldrums with, ]

You people really live like this, huh?

[ The time for acclimation is over. ]

You have kids who can throw electricity out of their fingers. And you’re walking up ten flights of stairs, in this heat? It’s interesting, but I hate it.

[ The time for being an ass has begun. ]

Someone explain lyrium to me. Only the dwarves and the wizards without feelings can handle it—I assume everyone else has tried gloves.

[ But, like, he’s not sure. Please confirm. ]

Comments

[achievable]

Do the cages have stairs?

[justice_is_blond]

You're living in one of the former ones, I'd have to assume. The Gallows.

[achievable]

Right. Then we shouldn't be walking up the stairs.

[justice_is_blond]

What would you do instead? Lightning doesn't let us float. Trust me, I tried many times to find things that would when I was younger.

[achievable]

Did you try a hot air balloon?

[justice_is_blond]

You're going to have to explain that a little bit more before I know if we've tried it or not.

[achievable]

Hot air rises above cooler air. I assume you've all gotten that far.

[justice_is_blond]

Yes...

[Or it makes sense, at least. Heating on a lower level helps the upper, but heating on upper levels never seemed to do the same.]

But we're not air.

[achievable]

Very astute.

But say we put you in a big basket, and we take... Do you have balloons? A big sack. One that doesn't allow a lot of air through. And we tie the sack to the basket, and then we make the air inside the sack hotter, with, I don't know. Kids who throw fire out of their fingers.

[justice_is_blond]

So the sack... goes up, and the basket too? It can do that? It just takes those things?

[achievable]

It's more complicated when you don't have fire fingers.

And the sack has to be big. Really big. It's not subtle. And you can't steer—you go wherever the wind thinks you ought to go. Back when they used them for surveillance they had to do it at night, and they tethered the baskets to the ground so people didn't drift off over enemy lines.

But for the general concept of making things float? That's it.

[ ya dummies ]

[justice_is_blond]

I happen to have... fire fingers, as you call them. I'm a mage. How big of a sack? You've done this sort of a thing before?

[achievable]

Not this specific thing. Other things. Better things. But I can do the math for you, if you’re willing to compensate me by lending me those fingers.

[justice_is_blond]

It almost sounds like you're hitting on me. But consider me interested. I'm Anders. Tell me about these things, and where and how you could use these fingers?

[achievable]

Easy, pal, I’m only here for the science. I need to see it. How much fire there is, how long you can sustain it, that kind of thing.

Plus it sounds fun.

[justice_is_blond]

I don't think we'll be testing the maximum of what I can do with fire. But I can show you the rest. Where would you have me meet you?

[achievable]

I don't know. I'm new. Somewhere with space.