kintire wrote:Kat listens wide eyed. She has not heard of such things before, though the Master Alchemist'scaution clearly signals that they have strayed into risky territory. At the gesture to the experiment and the veiled promise of dramatic revelation her curiosity overwhelms her caution and she moves to the tale with alacrity.
"Is that what you think has happened then? Someone has summoned... something... and it has become trapped? And it is now wandering the city, operating on its own laws of nature? Wow! But how do you get rid of such things?"
''Yes, a summoned and trapped creature could be involved. But unless you have information I lack, I don't know that the evidnece suggests that particular possibility is a strong one. It could just as well be something entirely different. Perhaps a backlash produced by some grand magical ritual that failed, some natural change in the Mists causing the extrusion of one reality into another, pollution from the dying breath of some dark Power or Principality, or even a magical and alchemical attempt at physically altering our city and its environs by calling exotic reagents from another world. "
A sooty black rat stares up at her from the bottom of a birdcage.With a deft movement she whips off the cloth covering and bends close to examine what it concealed
It squeaks.
Flammarion comes close.
''He was albino two days ago. That's how deeply the stain goes. But there is more-- look very closely."
If she leans in and squints, Kat can see tiny puffs of smoke from the creature's snout.
''No doubt you have encountered more terrifying monsters in your adventures. But if this is what a couple of days of Black Ash ingestion do to a small mammal, imagine what as -yet invisible changes might already be underway in the bodies of human beings in this city, people who have been breathing this stuff, drinking water and perhaps eating bread tainted by it, for the better part of a week? And if the Black Ash is becoming more stable, lasting longer, staining things visibly..."