Most Likely A Refuge

[whatamithinking]

It was probably safe.

The bar was...unusually reticent, in the lower layers of her mind (and she hadn't pried further; she wasn't sure if she'd be noticed; she wasn't sure if offending would get her kicked out, and regardless of whether it was actually safe it was safer than anywhere else she'd been for the past...three years?) so she couldn't be sure this place wasn't really a trap of some kind, but the higher layers gave a plausible explanation that didn't involve being a trap, and whatever else it was warm and dry and had food. Her guard was probably a full 25% down. Positively trusting, these days.

Comments

[onceandforall]

"Edie hadn't mentioned sorcery at all that I remember, what is it?"

[mutatis_mutandis]

"Sorcery is magic that...can do anything, essentially. It's limited sharply by the skill of the sorcerer in question, but it doesn't have hard limits to what you're capable of doing at any given time like magical girls or artifact users have."

[onceandforall]

"...I want it."

[mutatis_mutandis]

"...Becoming a sorcerer is difficult and often very unpleasant. There's a reason neither of our children are. But then you're in a much more difficult situation," she acknowledges.

[mindovermagic]

"I am so, so sorry for not thinking of it," Edie winces. "What else is my brain trying to overlook...it's possible, if you're willing to spend some time in our world, that we could get you an artifact. The process is bureaucratically painful and you have to consent to having a powerful lie-detecting artifact used on you but there is the possibility."

[onceandforall]

"It might not be worth the risk for me to leave Milliways, I don't know what it will do to, you know, time," says Bella. "Is 'time' so much time that it would be unrealistic to have people from your world holding the door constantly? And what's unpleasant about becoming a sorcerer?"

[mindovermagic]

"It...might be. I'd say definitely not, considering the state of your world, if you were guaranteed to be approved and get something actually useful, but you're not. Becoming a sorcerer basically involves having your sensory organs burned out and simultaneously replaced with versions capable of perceiving magic."

[onceandforall]

"I can turn pain off, does that help?"

[mindovermagic]

"It might or might not. Normal painkillers don't work at all, and if you try becoming a sorcerer while unconscious it just doesn't work. It's possible that your innate magic pain switch could work where mundane painkillers and a handful of magical girls and sorcerers have failed, but I wouldn't count on it too hard."

[onceandforall]

"Well, the thing is I don't have any sensory organs on," she gestures at her gem, "my actual body, and if I don't want my body to talk to me any more I can tell it to cut it out, and I can specify that as far as 'pain', or just turn it way down if I need the heads-up."

[mindovermagic]

"It's possible that that would fail for the same reasons as unconsciousness, or that it might just plain not work for some reason--but I don't know that I would expect it to. If you want my advice, if you're absolutely not willing to deal with a large amount of pain, don't do it. If you're willing to take a risk of dealing with a large amount of pain where you wouldn't accept a sure thing--then go for it."

[onceandforall]

"I'd take it even if it was a sure thing - can I not retry if it turns out to fail for unconsciousness reasons?"

[mindovermagic]

"You can retry. I was just mentioning it because if it fails like unconsciousness then it wouldn't work for the actual thing."

[onceandforall]

"If I can retry I'll turn off pain first time and suck it up if that doesn't work."

[mindovermagic]

"Yeah. Actually, it might be worth asking Bar if she can give us anything that might help. Bar?"

[alicornucopia]

I have no special expertise on whether Bella's idea will work, but I can provide items local to your world that will.

[mindovermagic]

"Wait, stuff exists in my world that'll fix sorcerer-pain and no one's told? ...Is there a villain somewhere who discovered it and is amassing an army of sorcerous mooks, is that a thing that is happening."

[alicornucopia]

It is not new. It may have been lost; it seems to only be available natively in obsolete currency forms and described only in dead languages.

[mindovermagic]

"You can dispense the Lost Knowledge of the Ancients!? Of course you can, you could give me those Hebrew documents, how did I not think of this sooner. Mom, now is the time to get over your hangups about your inheritance."

[mutatis_mutandis]

"...Quite. What information do you need to draw from a savings account I never touch?"

[onceandforall]

"You don't need money, Bar takes counterfeit, I have thrown wads of hundreds at her for extended periods of time, everything's on me."

[mindovermagic]

"Oh yeah. Whoops."

[mutatis_mutandis]

"Of course, translation becomes an issue if we intend to take any of this home with us. Unless, I suppose, I read all of it while I'm here and transcribe it in English to a computer...or just enough to form a working Rosetta Stone...I suppose that much at least is doable."

[onceandforall]

"I could probably do magic transcription? I haven't tried it but it doesn't seem out of the question and we could check on the first page."

[mindovermagic]

"Wouldn't that still require reading it, to take advantage of the Milliways translation effect?"