The Legend Of The Luminaires

Vol. 1, Ch. 6: Knowledge Checks, Part Two

After a quick meal, Drenar is busy poring over every book and academic journal under the sun he can find online, trying to find something–anything really, that could explain this situation.

The lack of science on people growing scales or other weird anatomy is not exactly unexpected, but he's racking his brains on how this could happen, and why he's not even given Julia a hint on this. If there is anyone who could help him figure this out, it's her, followed closely by Angela. Angela's reaction might be more muted, and Julia...he figures she'll use him for science. And probably not safe science, either.

He makes sure the bedroom door is locked before he rolls up his sleeve, and takes off the wrap. He'd traced a permanent marker earlier around the area, with the intent to see if it was spreading. And it had, very marginally. Oh, this is bad. This thing is spreading. But I don't feel like death, and it doesn't hurt, and I can still feel it. Wait. Scales with nerve endings? This is getting bizarre. It's organo-metallic, if I had to come up with a word for it. Well, hemoglobin has iron in it, and there are a few other trace minerals we need in our diet.

"Time for some science." He grabs a pair of tweezers out of his desk from a hygiene kit, and tries to pry one. He feels it, and it hurts. That metallic scale isn't going anywhere. He pulls harder and gasps–that had hurt, and he drops the tweezers. He rubs at the offended flesh gently. "Well, that's not gonna work. Can I cut it? Mutilating myself in the name of science sounds like a dumb idea."

He does, however, grab his hunting dagger out. The one his mom had gifted on his tenth birthday, with a soft leather-wrapped handle, a textured grip, and a double-edged blade that is remarkably sharp. A dark thought lingers in the back of his mind. This is different. Stay focused. Let's solve this scientifically.

He applies a little pressure to the scale, and it doesn't budge. It's remarkably hard. It's almost as hard as steel, when he thinks about it. But he can feel the knife point applying pressure to the scale, in a muted sort of way. Not painful. He applies more pressure, and his grip starts faltering. He stops. If it's not budging with that amount of force, I'm going to slip off and stab myself by accident. And that's going to attract too much attention. Next plan.

He takes a hammer out of his toolkit and taps the scaled section of his forearm. It almost rings like it's metallic, and it barely registers as an impact. He hits harder–still nothing, but it looks really dumb, him hitting his arm with a hammer. He puts the hammer down and frowns. He taps the hammer against the scale–he can feel the coldness of the metal, very faintly. He can feel the weight of it, the pressure on the scale. He slides the hammer laterally–and he can feel texture–but it's muted. Smooth metal against scale, and there's a gentle ringing sound as he moves it. This is just buzzing his brain with possibilities.

How is this possible? It's organic, but also has metallic qualities. I'd apply heat, but...I don't want to hurt myself in the name of science. He does, however, grab a magnet that he normally uses to clip things to his memo board. He places the magnet on the scale patch and–

He feels it tug. And it sticks very gently to the scale. He goes wide-eyed at this revelation. Either there is an unhealthy amount of cobalt, iron, or nickel in my body that has the grain structure aligned to create a magnetic field, or I'm dealing with magic. And for this to be this magnetized, I should literally be suffering from heavy metal poisoning.

He pauses for a moment to stew on that. Magic. I mean, really? At this point, it's not an unsound assumption. Physics and biology bedrock principles have already been violently broken.