"....Uh, I - guess that's the case, it's - no one's...tried to order mages who aren't evil to use blood-magic to see what happens, because that would be an evil thing to do too..." 

"- Would it?" Ma'ar leans forward in his chair. "I mean, sometimes you have to do experiments, right, to know how things actually work - I read a book about how Healers do that, and they sometimes kill animals on purpose to understand how different injuries kill humans - they won't kill people who weren't going to die anyway but if someone's dying of a rare disease I bet they'd have students come watch for their lessons... And I read that Healers've watched executions before to understand how being hanged kills people, because it helps with saving people who're trying to kill themselves by hanging. Uh, you could do that to study blood-magic too?" 

"...Nnnno, that would be evil?" 

Ma'ar is so frustrated and wants to fling up his hands and yell something but he's learned enough, by now, to be aware that this wouldn't help with anything at all. Maybe Azabel will know what to say. 

"What are Healers doing specially to make it not evil?"

The teacher is also so frustrated. "Healing isn't evil! It's - well, distasteful and unpleasant, to study executions, but - Ma'ar does have a point, it helps them save more patients later. Blood-magic is completely different, it's never going to be about saving people, only about killing people, so I'm not sure what it would accomplish to run that test!"  

"I think it could be, though. Like if there were a war, or - what if the Guards were fighting bandits who were trying to kill students, and the bandits were mages and they killed one anyway, sometimes the Guards do kill bandits, then - what if getting blood-magic from that meant they could save the students when they couldn't otherwise because the mage was too tired?" 

The teacher's face is going red. She takes a deep breath. "I'm - not sure we should be discussing ways to - try to prove that it'd be okay if you wanted to use blood-magic." 

"I don't want to! Killing people is horrible!"

"Well, you sure aren't sounding like someone who thinks that!" 

Ma'ar is so angry and scared and upset and he wants to cry and he wants to run away and never come back and he has no idea what to actually do except, probably, stop talking. 

"What if there was a famine and you needed a Gate to get food from far away and people were already dying of hunger - or a wildfire and people were dying of the smoke and you could scoop water out of a lake to put it out - or an earthquake and you could unbury people if you could use the people who were already crushed to death - me and Ma'ar are Adept-potential and can just use nodes but not everybody can -"

Ma'ar shoots her an incredibly grateful look and then focuses on calming himself down, which fortunately he has a lot of practice at doing. 

The teacher is also attempting this. Classroom debates don't normally go this out of control. "I - hmm. I...suppose that isn't evil the way bloodpath bandit mages are, but... I don't know, I'd feel uncomfortable about living somewhere where that was something everyone thought it was okay to do? It'd - weaken the line against it. And then it could be tempting for mages to justify doing it even in circumstances where it wasn't as clear-cut." 

"- I don't think so? Because people dying is still bad, I don't see how - that being allowed - would make anyone change their mind about that. It's just math. Whether it helps save more people or not." 

Sigh. "I...feel like there's something here you're not getting, but I reckon it could be I'm not explaining it very well." Hopeful glance at Azabel, who is also frustrating but maybe she has another clever diagram. 

"I don't think it's just math - like, if you're in a terrible hurry to go save some people and somebody is... uh... asleep on the very narrow stairs between you and them... you don't fling them down the stairs even if that would be faster than waking them up, because you can't just attack random people for being asleep on the stairs. And it might be that it's better to spend the same amount of classroom time on learning to be more efficient in the first place than on learning to do emergency blood-magic, the math might work out that way, and maybe people would be scared if they heard that people learned blood-magic in school even if we were very careful about it because it's impossible to make everybody include all the details every time they repeat something they heard once, and maybe it actually is addictive and if people took it up me and Lionwind would be buried in addicts who constantly wanna kill people and need help with that..."

Ma'ar is thinking that this is why he likes Azabel so much more than this teacher (or most of the teachers), she has points that actually make sense! The example about the stairs isn't a very good one - waking them up is almost as fast and you could accidentally kill someone by kicking them down stairs if they landed wrong and besides you could maybe just jump over them, but because she's Azabel he trusts her to know that and she did just have to come up with an example on the spot and probably could do ten better ones if she had ten minutes.

"I don't think you should teach it in school, probably," he agrees. "Just, it seems important to do the test on whether it's addictive or bad for people in other ways? Like, what if a mage in the Guard breaks it and does it to save all their friends from bandits and then they get addicted, you'd want to be able to help them, because they - did a brave thing and hurt themselves... And if it's not addictive then maybe it'd be all right to - I don't know, have some special rules that only count during war, I read about that too - there are lots of different laws in war, like, it's illegal for Thoughtsensers to just read people's minds but it's sometimes allowed if you really urgently need to interrogate a captured soldier to find out the battle plans so fewer people die." 

"I think," the teacher says wearily, "that we've probably spent long enough on this digression, and I want to get us back to the rest of today's lesson, all right." 

Aza goes and sits back down agreeably, writing down a sketch of the points covered.

The rest of the class goes normally and Ma'ar doesn't raise his hand to say anything else. By the end of it he's only fuming internally a tiny bit. It helps him calm down to instead focus on how Azabel is smart and has good arguments for things. 

(The teacher looks a bit like she's considering calling Ma'ar over to stay after class, and she shoots a few uncertain looks in Azabel's direction as well, but shakes her head tiredly and seems to decide against. The other students are less restrained about their disturbed looks, mostly at Ma'ar but Azabel gets some as well. And a few impressed looks too. Talking back to the teacher like that is pretty brave.) 

Ma'ar follows Azabel after class, head down. He's suddenly very tired and doesn't want to go to the dining hall at all. :...Can I come over for lunch: he asks her. 

:I was actually going to eat at the dining hall but you could go to your room and I could bring us both something there?:

:Okay sure, uh, unless you'd rather talk to your friends at the dining hall, that's fine too: 

:But then who will bring you food?: And she heads for the dining hall and collects two plates and carries them very carefully to where he lives.

Ma'ar unlocks the door to let her in and then goes to sit on his bed; she can join her there if she wants or take the chair at the desk. He looks exhausted and sad, more than scared, and spends a minute picking at his food in silence because he suddenly has no idea what to say.