This is a foolish idea. Idiotic to the extreme, and for a nebulous purpose you can barely define. You wish to experiment? I will commend you on taking your madness out on yourself first, but there is nothing good that can come from lyrium experimentation. At best, you will poison and sear the bodies of anyone fool enough to volunteer; at worst, you will drive them to madness and addiction, and all for . . . what? The potential to heal a gaping wound? You do not even know if it will work. You did not see it heal; you saw it mutating, desperate to reform and reattach to a living host, and you think it can work as neatly as a bandage.
Do you understand how people like Corypheus began? How magisters of old began to delude themselves so greatly that they attempted to become gods themselves? Like this. Well-intentioned extremism fueled by delusions of grandeur. You will count yourself lucky that I do not deem your zealousness glory-hounding and little more. You see a substance that you barely understand and you think yourself so clever that you can make it dance to your tune, all without dreaming of all the ways in which it could backfire.
[A beat, and then, oh, so bitterly:]
No. I suspect you do dream of them. I suspect you are so thorough about your documentation. But you deem them failed experiments, and move on, jotting it down as a useful note and nothing more.
Do you wish to know how this ends? I can tell you. With mutilations like mine. With the blood of hundreds spilled to fuel magic and experimentation that oh, I'm certain someone somewhere could justify if they tried long enough. Perhaps I can heal a handful of the population if only I experiment a bit more, and it ends only when the cost is too great— and I do not trust that you will ever deem a cost too great, should it all be in the name of some nebulous furthering of scientific method.
Leave it be. Or experiment upon yourself if you wish, but do not poison an entire organization with your mania and your sociopathy.
no subject
This is a foolish idea. Idiotic to the extreme, and for a nebulous purpose you can barely define. You wish to experiment? I will commend you on taking your madness out on yourself first, but there is nothing good that can come from lyrium experimentation. At best, you will poison and sear the bodies of anyone fool enough to volunteer; at worst, you will drive them to madness and addiction, and all for . . . what? The potential to heal a gaping wound? You do not even know if it will work. You did not see it heal; you saw it mutating, desperate to reform and reattach to a living host, and you think it can work as neatly as a bandage.
Do you understand how people like Corypheus began? How magisters of old began to delude themselves so greatly that they attempted to become gods themselves? Like this. Well-intentioned extremism fueled by delusions of grandeur. You will count yourself lucky that I do not deem your zealousness glory-hounding and little more. You see a substance that you barely understand and you think yourself so clever that you can make it dance to your tune, all without dreaming of all the ways in which it could backfire.
[A beat, and then, oh, so bitterly:]
No. I suspect you do dream of them. I suspect you are so thorough about your documentation. But you deem them failed experiments, and move on, jotting it down as a useful note and nothing more.
Do you wish to know how this ends? I can tell you. With mutilations like mine. With the blood of hundreds spilled to fuel magic and experimentation that oh, I'm certain someone somewhere could justify if they tried long enough. Perhaps I can heal a handful of the population if only I experiment a bit more, and it ends only when the cost is too great— and I do not trust that you will ever deem a cost too great, should it all be in the name of some nebulous furthering of scientific method.
Leave it be. Or experiment upon yourself if you wish, but do not poison an entire organization with your mania and your sociopathy.