I'm not a theoretician but intuition I have!

He grins.

It'd be great if you could figure more stuff out about our magic. Our lost knowledge of the ancients was due to actual lost knowledge, not deliberate self-crippling.

Yeah, I can probably do that. After we wrap up here I'd like to stare at an artefact and some other magic for a while, see what I can figure out.

That should be easy to arrange.

Cool!

Some people are private about what exactly their artifacts do but not everyone and I know someone who owes me a favor.

What does that one do? he asks, pointing at the one the sorcerer's wearing.

Mm, not actually sure what was that and what was sorcery, but it seemed to be some kind of--long-term mind-influencing thing.

Hmmm... He walks over to it and looks.

Well, it's not currently doing anything except being attached to the unconscious guy.

When I arrived I noticed it had a sort of... net thing... around the guy's brain, he explains, continuing to look at it.

At a guess that would be its--attachment to him--but I don't know.

So artefacts get attached to people... I wonder if I could undo that attachment.

Good question.

Would that be worthwhile?

I wouldn't prioritize it without a lot more thought, there's a lot of--cultural stuff--and suddenly introducing a new "thing that it is possible to do to people without their consent" is, um, complicated.

Fair enough.

More staring!

It is really complicated!

It seems to have something to do with chemicals, maybe.

This is ridiculously complicated, have I mentioned that?

I think you might've.

Yeah. It is.

Stare stare staaaaaare.

It has something to do with a whitelisted subset of chemicals.

He will definitely need to stare at it for a very, very long time to conclude this. The two girls are likely to wrap whatever they're doing up before that happens.

Yep. It's also possible the authorities might arrive before then.