"When I'm not taking summonses I read and fly and swim and play the violin."

"Violin! Nice! I mostly just do magic and fight monsters and have lots of sex, which is fun. And some competitive poker."

"Well, I do magic too, but that's more of a daily 'hmm what's for breakfast, what is the latest issue of my favorite periodicals today' thing."

"Your magic is cool but I don't imagine it lends itself to, like... being a hobby? It's kind of just a thing you do. Whereas with mine it's more like art or karate or something, you want to practice a bunch so you can get better and maintain your skills and stuff."

"Yeah, I mean, there's things I read up on to be better at deploying it, but that's more like learning engineering and physics and chem."

"Same for mine with math, though that's more because I specialize in earth and long-term earth effects are super complicated. Lucky bastards who picked up fire don't have to worry about that, though I get the last laugh since I'm actually useful for things other than destroying things."

"Things like accidentally summoning unbound demons."

"Seriously, I have no idea how that happened. How does a gnomic resonance array turn into a summoning spell? It wasn't even finished!"

"I don't know, was it a horizontal design drawn by a human containing a circle that said around its border in some language something about summoning a demon? There's not a ton of flex on those parts."

"...There were some squiggles-around-a-circle involved? Maybe the exact configuration of squiggle for 'make a dick out of gravel' accidentally aligned itself into Urdu for 'summon a demon from Bizarro Summon World' somehow? Not likely, but I could believe it."

"By the way, don't do that again, there were no precautions at all and you're very lucky. Most of the demons who take summons aren't doing it for humanitarian reasons."

"I can avoid circles with words around in the future, yeah. There's other configurations that can sub in. It's kind of weird that nobody else has summoned something nasty that way, given how frequently that kind of diagram crops up in magic...Might have to ask the loa about that too. She's going to be getting half a cup of my blood at this point, isn't she."

"Wow, that's gross. I can make blood if that helps."

"...Huh. That could be interesting, blood from no one - she might actually put more value on that, magical curiosity or because she already knows what she could do with it. Could be very helpful. Thanks!"

"I mean, by default it would be materially identical to someone's, I'd have to go somewhat out of my way to make it a total nonmatch for everybody. But are you sure it's a good idea to make it known to this individual - if she doesn't already know - that it's possible to summon daeva?"

"'Is there a way to retrieve the Library of Alexandria'. 'Is there a way to safely de-radiate nuclear fallout'. 'Is there a way to launch spaceships without burning fuel'."

"We already have the Library of Alexandria and you could do a temporal scry on it anyway, anybody who wants to un-nuke Three Mile Island is welcome to a choir of angels to do it with, and launching spaceships without much fuel is totally feasible for a wizard without getting daeva involved. As are most things. And the thing is, she's got discretion. She doesn't live on Earth, but her customers do, so she's got a vested interest in it not turning into a black hole; anybody she'd actually, willingly give the secret to is somebody who wouldn't fuck it up."

"No, anyone who wants to un-nuke things is not fucking welcome to a choir of angels to do it with, an angel who is not handled correctly might have a hard time destroying the earth but they can sure as they sprout feathers go on a massive killing spree or worse if they feel like it. If daeva are going to be common knowledge it's got to be carefully handled. I did it once but I would want to know about the local differences before doing it again."

"Yes, because she'd obviously tell them how to summon an unbound angel, or tell someone who has no idea what the hell he's doing, because she has no idea how to keep people from using dangerous knowledge to destroy the world, what with all those other apocalyptic secrets she's let slip over the past several thousand years and allowed to shred the world to pieces. This is not her first rodeo."

"Look," says Cam. "I consider telling anybody about daeva - who doesn't already know a dangerous amount because he got one while trying to sculpt genitals in a park - to be my personal responsibility. I carried it off without disaster once before and I did that by being fucking careful and I still got murdered in the process. I have known you for about fifteen minutes. I have never met your friend. My, personal responsibility cannot be discharged by going 'oh it's probably fine, I have hearsay that this person has both competence and reasonably well-aligned goals'."

"Or by the fact that she already knows much, much more dangerous things, apparently. But that is... reasonable. Okay. I concede defeat. Grumpily. I concede grumpy defeat."

"That will probably suffice. Don't go tearing off to announce eureka to anybody, please."

"I am still telling my best friend, because there is literally nothing you could say that would convince me not to. But not to the Knower."