Chapter 234: Spite
Siobhan
Month 9, Day 6, Monday 3:00 a.m.
Siobhan looked back to the tasteful nude of her other form drawn in Myrddin’s journal. “It does look a little like him,” she admitted, trying to keep her voice from cracking with nerves. She must have succeeded, because Thaddeus flicked a glance to Grandmaster Kiernan and then helped her turn to the next section of pages.
The older man had stationed himself on the other side of Thaddeus despite the distance making it difficult to see past the incoherency defenses on Myrddin’s journal. He was too uncomfortable to stand next to Siobhan, so was constantly squinting and rubbing at his temples as he tried to see what the two of them could.
Siobhan concentrated on the two new glyphs that flashed up, which succeeded in both keeping the contents coherent and partially distracting her from the issue. Surely, Thaddeus had more to say about the uncanny resemblance to Sebastien, but perhaps he did not want to discuss it in front of Kiernan.
Myrddin had left behind whatever the purpose of his last project was, and was now attempting to cultivate a pepper with “perfect hotness and sweetness.” That would have been reasonable, except that he wanted versions that additionally had flavors of cumin, paprika, lemon, and garlic. An all-in-one spice. By this point, Siobhan shouldn’t have been surprised that he seemed to manage it. He modified the seeds with magic, then sped up their growth immensely through several rounds of testing and tweaking.
“Surprisingly efficient,” Thaddeus said, pointing out some notes about the overall energy requirements for a round of peppers from seed to harvest.
Siobhan tried to note the details, since this was the kind of thing that Oliver’s warehouse farms might benefit from, but most of the work had been done on previous pages, and what was left was still beyond the limit that her meagre leftover mental capacity could parse.
Myrddin was more self-satisfied by this achievement than most of the ones that had come before, calling himself an “unparalleled genius and a master chef” and lamenting only that the new pepper varieties had sterile seeds.