She grins. "Okay, next magic system?"

"Sorcery is very versatile, but it's fueled by lifeforce, which is divided into five aspects: breath; stamina; wakefulness; health; youth. Sorcery is divided into sorcery gifts and sorcery rituals. You can have up to five gifts, each associated with an aspect of lifeforce, being fueled by it; you get them by expending lifeforce effort. Sorcery rituals use symbols, except each school of sorcery is an alphabet or language artificially created by spending about a decade's worth of youth in a ritual - the first sorcery school was likely the result of some sorcerer gift - individual schools have different strengths, but they always have the capacity to create new schools."

"What exactly is a school?"

"I feel like saying they're like arcanist spell symbols externalized, but not quite? In a school there are series of rules to create magical effects. So in the Lor-ersian school of magic you can burn this herb and say these words to make your lifeforce power up a light spell, but in the Trimegistus school you have to write symbols with special inks to get the same effect. When someone makes a new school they can pick new rules, but the old school you used for the new school ritual influences the new one, your gifts influence it as well... Is that clear enough?"

"Yeah. How do you make a new school? How many schools are there? Can you get any kind of sorcery from all schools?"

"Creating a new school is a ritual - well, a series of rituals - the exact details aren't known to me, but you basically have to tell the magic that this or that thing is supposed to have this or that magical effect. There are at least 30 schools, probably no more than 50. Some schools are specialized, but the majority is generic enough to do anything that sorcery can do."

"Is there a reason to pick one school over the other? What determines who can do sorcery?"

"Some schools spend more resources to do certain things. Or are less straightforward for certain magic effects. Anyone can do sorcery, but the term sorcerer is synonymous with people that have extra lifeforce and thus can do sorcery more easily and safely. Some people find that they have an easier time with sorcery rituals of a certain school because the rules are more intuitive or they learned that school first or maybe they live somewhere with a tradition in that school and they can borrow from the work of others instead of coming up with rituals themselves."

"Could I do sorcery?"

"I don't see why not. Or at least it should be worth trying."

"Show me!"

Katur guides her. It turns out one needs to know a minimal set of rules from a school before casting anything with it, even if they're going to use just a small part of the relevant rules. After that introductory work, they both cast a small freezing spell. Katur's water glass freezes.

Kaede's doesn't.

She squints. "You have a thing I don't. One of the four things I said, the one that's in you but not a part of you."

"Maybe our lifeforces are too different? ...Maybe I could transfer some of mine to you and see if that allows you to spend it?"

"Go ahead."

Katur offers a hand and presuming she takes it, sends some health. The veins of his arm pop up oddly.

She still can't cast it.

"Yeah, nope. Can't do it."

"Damn..." He thinks. "I think the next step would be trying with external lifeforce which is rather costly and not often tried... I have a plant in my office that could work for that. If that doesn't work... maybe staring at me until you can copy it?"

"I can't really copy things—but I could borrow some, without needing to know much about it, probably."

"If you think that is safe. Or at least it will be faster than getting the plant and casting the spell again."

"I'm not sure if it's safe but I'll be able to tell before it becomes unsafe."

"Okay, anything I can do to help?"

"Nah, I just need to squint a bit." So she does.

Katur makes himself squintable.

The possibly-sorcery magic, as soon she starts to borrow it, latches onto her fully copied.

No it doesn't. As soon as it tries she stops it and holds it in her metaphorical hand. "This is trying to attach a copy of itself to me," she remarks, with the abstracted look of someone considering lofty thoughts.