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[Perish the thought! Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth is always permitted his fill of whatever he can catch in the garden. And the midden-heap. And...well. He might be starting to look a little thick around the middle, for a nug.

Exercise might be on order. For right now, however, he will take head scratches and look much less nervous than he had. This new Faun IS good people.

Myr's expression falls a little as Hector says that and it hits him, once again, how isolating falling through a mirror was. His bees at least were enough like the native sort they've already interbred and happily cast several new swarms, but a nug...]

It makes you wonder, [he says, suddenly,] if a Witch couldn't create another one, given an example. Like your hybrid plants.

[The mabari back home were bred through magic. Maybe...

Well, maybe that's also tampering with nature far beyond what's licit or ethical, on Geardagas. Another moral quandary for Myr to ponder when he can't sleep.]

Maker, like you'd put on a mabari for war? [Wait, did the mabari have spiked harnesses? He's pretty sure they do. He read that somewhere.] We've got to. It's the least we can do for his--ambitions.

[And, he's pretty sure it would look adorable. Fearsome, but adorable.]

[Hector has no frame of reference for how pudgy Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth should be, but he doesn't mind if he is fat and happy.]

Maybe. If I were still a Forgemaster, I'd forge Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth an army of spiny sows.

[But he's not, so all they can do is try to find a witch with a creative streak and a loose definition of what constitutes crimes against the laws of nature.]

Don't know what a mabari is, but I am completely serious. Something to make him feel secure when he has to come out from your garden.

[It will be The Most Adorable, Myr. Hector will describe it to you in detail so Myr doesn't miss out.]

[Myr's mind immediately goes two different directions at once when Hector says that.

The first thought that manages to make it to his mouth is:]

Are we going to call Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth that every time? [He's got composure enough now he can make it through the name without laughing, which would certainly startle poor Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth.] Not that he doesn't deserve the dignity of his full name, of course.

[Then, the second thought:] You could do that with your forging?

[Crimes against nature or not, that's the domain of Creation and he's intrigued.] And a mabari's an enormous dog nearly as smart as a man, or so anyone from Fereldan would tell you. You'd like them, I think; it's said a mage bred them from ordinary dogs Ages ago.

[As to the nug's continued tenure in his garden, ah... Myr takes a moment to rummage up one of the winter strawberries he's been so busy growing, to pass it down under the bench to Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth.] About that, actually--not the harness, but him staying in my garden. I was wondering if you'd be interested in his keeping.

Of course. Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth did not become the ferocious beast he is today for us to use a nickname.

[He is smiling so fondly at the little nug.]

I could have. Or something approximating them. They would have technically been reanimated, but my reanimation is a new life, not the facsimile the necromancers here enact, so they wouldn't have even noticed.

[Hi Myr, meet Hector: cavalier to a fault when flouting the laws of nature.]

Mabaris sound like a delight. That's the best application of magic I've ever heard.

[The final thing Myr says gives him pause, though.]

Do you really mean it? [~~maybe not after Hector's admission to his weird powers~~] Of course I'd be interested. Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth is wonderful.

[Hector can't understand why Myr wouldn't want him. Maybe it's only because Myr can't see how creepily adorable his beady little eyes and wrinkled hairless flesh are.]

Edited 2021-03-06 03:20 (UTC)

[That...is not at all something that would have worked on Thedas. At least, not to Myr's knowledge. If he had eyes to widen he would, as he thinks about that.] It's not how necromancy back home worked, either--that's about reanimating empty bodies with spirits drawn out of the Fade. Not the original spirits, either, [he's quick to amend; he'd thought the necromancy ban incredibly strange until someone had bothered to explain to him the absolute suffering any reanimated intelligent thing went through, with its native spirit stuck back in a rotting body,] just wisps who're happy to have any kind of physical form.

[It's ETHICAL necromancy. Mostly.] --We're going to have to talk more about this, you know, now that you've told me that. Creation didn't extend to dead flesh back home but that might've only been for want of trying.

[And it isn't an unethical violation of the Maker's law if he's talking about it in abstract! ...He'll be weirded out at himself later, in private.]

I'd never met one, but I've got to assume they're perfect for people who love dogs. Ferelden's gone to war over them, after all.

I'd always wondered if you could do the same thing with bees... [Because of course he would, though having come to Aefenglom and learned how smart a hive already was... Maker, the things he could do with that if he ever returned to Thedas and had his magic back...]

I do. [He absolutely trusts that Hector's weird powers would never be used to hurt a living animal. So, that's all fine.] We've got too many cats coming in and out of the garden for me to feel like Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth is safe out here, and the house isn't--"a big enough cave" for him, he says.

[The nug makes a wet noise of agreement into his strawberry.] So, if he suits--since you seem to suit him--he's yours.

Oh, I can do that too. That's devil forging. Use dead things to make a body souls from Hell can inhabit. It's a way of replenishing the populations of Night Creatures that have been hunted to near-extinction.

[It's completely ethical conservation work. Recycling AND restoring a balance. Nothing sinister or evil going on here, it's fiiiiiine.]

You and your bees. You probably could, but you'd lose some experimenting to find out how. Would you be willing to pay that toll?

[For all of Hector's successes, there had been many more failures, at least at first. Things that came out wrong, or that failed to awaken. It had been a hard blow, especially when he'd been a fledgling necromancer.

He watches the nug make a mess of his treat. Hector's house is crowded with animals, though most of the cats stay at the shelter, not in Everett and Hector's cottage. There's the army of rats, the velvet worms in the basement, and of course Cezar there.]

I think I could make a suitable cave for little Venomous and Covered In Big Pointy Spines with Huge Teeth. You don't mind sharing with some rats, do you?

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i'm 85% here for having to type the nug's full name out every time he's mentioned

It is what he would want

why else choose so glorious a name

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