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[boundinblood]

[At first, the wrong camera turns on, showing the book Katherine has laid out on the table, pages bathed in sunlight from a nearby window. It's nonfiction - biology, in fact, and its target audience likely in the young teens crowd. The open page displays a labeled diagram of a strand of DNA and a Punnett square with an explanation in small print, courtesy of a cartoonish character sitting on its corner, clearly drawn by an adult attempting to appeal to a younger crowd they only superficially understand. The normal-sized text at its side explains hereditary traits, with a side of how DNA determines everything about a person's appearance. It's helpfully colloquial.]

Well, I can't say I completely understand all of this, but- oh, wait, I've got it the wrong way, haven't I?

[She switches to the front camera to show her face instead, bags under her eyes indicating a rather long self-imposed study session. She raises a mug of something no longer hot enough to require one to her lips and sets it down offscreen with a gentle thunk. The window beside her reveals the skybridges, flying cars, and gleaming metal towers of Tomorrow, from several stories up.]

There we are! Now, as I was saying, am I right in guessing this means the...the essence of who we are is in...all of us? Does that mean spells that require a bit of, say, hair, from the caster have worked on the same principles as blood magic all along?

Comments

[boundinblood]

[She's worse than Morrigan - to her sleep-deprived mind that takes a bit to catch up. The sentence sounds like a riddle at first blush, but actually makes perfect sense.]

And it doesn't now. So you're, um...a hedge mage? [Wait, that might not be polite.] A...shaman?

[The fact is, she's not confined to the magic theory Katherine knows. That part of her mind that grew up with the Chantry's view of magic balks, but part of her knows that as long as it doesn't veer into true blood magic, it could be one of her best chances. This is all for a quicker cure for abominations, but it's not some broad-reaching project for all of mage-kind, though that is certainly the end goal. Like so many of her highest ambitions, it's persons and events close to her heart that drive it first and foremost. If it works for them, she can apply it to all of them. But first, it is for them.]

[story_and_teller]

[Loki snorts with inelegant laughter, and shakes her head, black hair shifting around her face perhaps a little more than it should.]

Hardly, though I am familiar with shamanic practices... More like, I have the dubious advantage of the best sorcerous education love and money can buy, but I'm better off as an autodidact. Goes faster. Fewer messy preconceptions.

[boundinblood]

Such as...banned magic that isn't as harmful as they make it out to be? Like shapeshifting?

[She almost says not as harmful as blood magic, but doesn't want to steer the conversation that much. Start wide, and narrow down, that's how you learn things.]