I can't fix you, but maybe I can still help

[powerispain]

He's trying to kill us--could ruin him--worry about that later--grab your sister and go.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

Apparently! Lights don't de-age people.

[powerispain]

How do lights work, exactly?

[alicornucopia]

This one wizard is also a light. He cups his hands and gets a little ball of gray-white sparks hovering there. If somebody touches it they will be healed of things.

[powerispain]

Okay but how does being healed of things work.

[alicornucopia]

...you touch the thing and then you are not diseased or injured anymore. If there's something more complicated wrong with you they need to send you to somebody with training this light doesn't have.

[powerispain]

So it just burns out pathogens and closes wounds? Is cancer a more complicated thing? Will a light reset a bone or do you risk requiring rebreaking if you touch it while your leg's a funny angle?

[alicornucopia]

Lights heal cancer just fine without complications. It'll set a bone but if it's healed wrong you do have to rebreak; same with scar tissue.

[powerispain]

So what counts as complicated, then?

[alicornucopia]

Things you have to reinjure. They train midwives separately. Anything embedded in an injury, that's specialized work.

[powerispain]

Huh. So there's no skill element at all to the actual magic part.

[alicornucopia]

Not for lights, no.

[powerispain]

Weird. ...Does it hurt?

[alicornucopia]

...no?

[powerispain]

Magic that doesn't hurt to do. Wow.

[alicornucopia]

Wizardry hurts to do and the elemental kinds of magic hurt to get but lights and sorcerers and witches do not have this problem.

[powerispain]

What's sorcery? And elemental magic, what can they tell her about that?

[alicornucopia]

Sorcery is moving stuff around without touching it. Some people are born with the potential to control one of four elements (earth, air, fire, water); this potential can be detected with wizardry. The power's dormant until the power is necessary to save your life. You can activate air powers by just leaping off something tall and not hitting the ground, but the others are typically activated on a lot of painkillers or while outright unconscious.

[powerispain]

It is weird that most kinds of magic don't hurt to do, here, but given that it makes sense that the one that's the most doing magic-ish instead of random superpower-ish would be the one that does.

[alicornucopia]

It only hurts if they're doing largish spells for their capacity.

[powerispain]

What, really?

[alicornucopia]

Yeah, stings a little if they use more than half and goes up from there and this is why teleportation circles are so expensive, hardly anyone can do them and if they can do them they have to use full or near-full capacity.

[powerispain]

Huh. Well, this is a square planet. It does make sense that things would work completely differently.

[alicornucopia]

Why, what's her magic actually like to do?

[powerispain]

Uh, it hurts? And it has the following mental side-effects.

[alicornucopia]

Well that's weird.