"Why was she—why would anyone do that, my gods."

"Do you actually want me to tell you or are you just expressing a feeling."

"I'm expressing a feeling, I don't—want to talk about anything that you wouldn't want to, or that'd hurt you."

"You're a nice person. Ruava likes you."

"I—thank you—I'm not doing this to be nice I'm just—" He shudders. "It shouldn't take an especially nice person to want this, it's the obvious thing, you don't do something like that to a person and you try to fix it if it's been done to them."

"Thinking that way makes you nicer than most people we have met."

He purses his lips and shakes his head. "Is there anything else you can tell me about this magic? Do you know how—deeply—it's rooted there, do you have any guesses about what it'd do if I just tried to get it off you by pulling really hard?"

"It wasn't constructed with gods in mind. No one would be able to pull on it like that normally. I have no idea what it would do."

"Okay so I'd better not do that."

He squints some more. Does it have a—physical location? Some magic sometimes does. How deeply is it attached, how many points of attachment are there, is it feeding on anything, does it have edges...

It mostly doesn't have a physical location more specific than 'attached to her'. It's delicately threaded through parts of her nervous system, sort of like a plant with many fine roots coming together into a single stem, where the stem is that tucked-in end that must be the connection for - wielding it. But it doesn't seem very deeply attached; it's mostly just... there, settled in place but not glued down. There's no sign of it feeding on anything.

He reports this, and continues looking. "I'm thinking I should try—touch it, a little bit, more or less. With my kind of magic that wouldn't really do anything but it might do something to you so if you'd rather I not do that I won't."

"Try it."

So he does, brushing ever-so-slightly against only one of the little roots with imaginary fingers.

She does not visibly react.

"Did that do anything?"

"No."

"Okay." Another root?

Nothing.

If he tries pulling it ever-so-gently, to detach it?

"That felt a little odd," she says, but the root is loose, curling in on itself and not attaching anywhere else.

"I detached a root," he explains. "Doesn't seem to be trying to do anything on its own. Should I continue?"

"Yes."

So he continues, slowly, carefully, stopping at the first sign of distress. Destroying things is always easy than creating or understanding them.

If he's waiting for a sign of distress he will be waiting a long time.

The roots all come free, and then the thing sort of... shrivels.

He could probably figure out how to sort out all its parts and attach it to someone else if he really tried. Or he could destroy it. He should probably destroy it.

Third alternative: can he convert it? Turn it into, say, arcanist mana? Something more positive and useful?