[attr="class","depths"] In recent weeks, Desmond had made a point to decline all mercenary requests from Sundial. There was something dark going on beneath that city and he wanted to have no part in it. Harvesting parasitic mushrooms from corpses seemed like a much better activity by comparison.

"Are you sure this is a good idea..?" Grendel asks from within their mindspace. The familiar always got nervous when Desmond changed up his habits, since it usually meant he was either chasing after or running from a vision.

"Of course not," the seer muttered, as if that explained everything. The resulting silence between them is uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar.

Desmond had taken an Eluvian Mirror into Eclipse Town, then made the rest of the way on foot. He traveled light, with his inventory comprised merely of a scarf to cover his mouth, a tall harvest basket slung over his shoulder to carry the mushrooms, and a single skinning knife to help extract the samples. It was the bare minimum of what he might need. Practicing divination for so long had eaten away at his sense of caution, with concepts like Fate and Destiny increasingly blamed for the ills of his life and the world. He had seen bits and pieces of what tomorrow would bring, and his funeral was not among them.

As he nears one of the caverns, he spots a light accompanied by a silhouette. "Taylan?" he calls, but immediately realizes the figure is too small to be the florist he was expecting to see today. "Ah, my apologies -- you're not who I was looking for." A pause. "Though, assuming you're also here to harvest mushrooms, are you averse to collecting from the same cave? You can have the first pick in exchange for me using your light."

Tsubaki Kokeshi @open

[attr="class","depths"]"I did," Desmond affirmed as he accepted the offered knife. He listens to her advice, admittedly unfamiliar with the growing habits of parasitic mushrooms. He does not appear embarrassed, but is certainly aware of his academic shortcomings. "Perhaps, if the alchemist doesn't want sub-par ingredients, he shouldn't advertise to every human settlement in Salem... You seem rather knowledgable, though -- are you an alchemist as well?" he muses while silently mulling over the question of whether it was luck or fate that he'd met a suitable guide.

Inevitably, though, he decided that he didn't care quite enough to ponder the potential meaning behind this seemingly fortunate encounter. 

"As I said, take what you need. I admit, I still don't fully grasp the appeal of these things," the seer admits. He was content to watch her methodology and mimic it, as he had no need for the mushrooms himself. From what little he knew, the death from their consumption was slow. But, even for the use of torture, what was the point if the brain was one of the first things to go?

The seer ducks into the mouth of the cave, following the other harvester's light. "My name is Desmond," he notes, almost as an afterthought as he gazes towards the shadows dancing at the edge of the lamp's reach.

Tsubaki Kokeshi @open

[attr="class","depths"] Desmond merely offered an understanding hum as the stranger offers a high level summary of her training. Everyone had their own opinions on when a witch could be considered a true practitioner of their affinity, and experienced witches' idea of the bare minimum was often quite a bit higher than average.

"No forgiveness is necessary," Desmond says as he follows the alchemist-in-training and listens to her explanation. He was often impressed with how much witches with prepared affinities needed to know to perform their craft: the properties of each component, both alone and when combined with others, and the process of to combining them. After falling for a runescripting partner earlier in his life, he had become very much aware that those technical details were far beyond his ability to memorize and perform. He pulls his scarf up a bit higher as they travel deeper into the tunnels, ensuring it's covering his nostrils.

The body which they come across is still fairly fresh, its skin not yet fully digested by the fungal parasite.

The seer opens his mouth to reply to her question of whether or not he needed a demonstration, but shuts it immediately, clearly taken aback, upon hearing her next request. Instead of answering, he poses a question of his own, short and to the point: "Are you a seer?"

Tsubaki Kokeshi @open

[attr="class","depths"] The seer catches the flask, but takes his time opening it as the hunter explains her seer-like insight. His questioning expression softens a bit as she mentions that it is from an item. Thank Merlin it was only an item... Desmond only rarely had good experiences with other diviners, and had no desire to further complicate his life by meeting more.

"The spider's name is Grendel," he finally answers after a thoughtful pause, "He's too large to be crawling around in confined spaces like this." And too careless. He'd likely crush a corpse and all the mushrooms growing from it with a single misstep, even if there was sufficient room to avoid it.

As Tsubaki makes note of her observations on the state of the corpse, Desmond takes the opportunity to sniff the mint paste and look at it through the lens of an advanced guide spell. The hues bleeding from the vial weren't particularly foreboding, so he decides to trust that its contents weren't dangerous -- or, at the very least wouldn't ultimately lead him to severe harm. He smears a bit of the paste between his nose and lip as he lets the colors of the spell fade. "I think I can manage," he mentions as he pulls the cloth back up over his nose. Cutting out organs was nothing new to him, and this body seemed to be more mushroom than flesh -- a significantly less gory prospect than his more regular job of cutting open the living.

He takes a closer look at the body when the hunter briefly leaves the cave. It was fresh enough to read, but so corrupted by mushrooms that he'd likely only be able to get answers for mushroom-related questions. That was probably fine, considering their current mission.

"Again, no need to apologize," he says as he moves away from the body to give the alchemist more space to work, "I understand the need for caution in the wilderness." After all, he'd grown up in the South Hillocks, at a distance from any human civilizations. Though the ecology was drastically different from the woods they were exploring now, he understood that unpleasant actions were needed to live longer in an unpleasant world. He watches her demonstration of extracting the fungal growths, though he is silent for the first.

"Are there certain parts of the body and stages of decomposition that produce more useful mushrooms?" he asks out of curiosity, "I may be able to find more."

Tsubaki Kokeshi @open
spells used: guide (adv)