"Yes, please. If it's not too much trouble."

"Without getting too far into the details of Ansati magical infrastructure for now, I'd say that ordinary magic is like an anthill, and what we're working with here is like an avalanche," she says. "Normally, doing anything complicated with magic is a matter of having hundreds of people each complete a tiny part of the whole, like ants digging in the sand, a few grains at a time. But when you're using torture, it's like rolling a boulder down the side of a mountain. You don't even start to see any effects until you're already working at a scale that would be nearly impossible to reach the other way. But because of that, and because the magic of pain is so... active, it was historically almost always used in unstructured ways, more like the way you would light a candle than like the way you would enchant a lamp. The secret of my father's success is that he learned how to use the magic of pain in structured ways. The trouble with doing that..."

She pauses again, carefully considering how to articulate this information in a succinct and understandable way.

"...The magical structure of the Howling Mountain is fundamentally unlike ordinary artifacts. Ordinary artifacts are - static, passive. Once they're made, they continue working the way they were made until something breaks them, and then they quietly stop. Structures in the magic of pain are dynamic and active. They can change and adapt, which is good; but when they break, they break unpredictably and destructively, which is bad. And this one is built to... build on itself, to become more powerful with time. It's perfectly safe as long as he keeps feeding it, and even if he lapsed, he's very good at steering the avalanche. But if he were to stop torturing people entirely right now, in a week we would be depending on his constant attention to prevent a disaster that would make the fall of the Ansati Empire look like a child knocking over a toy castle."

"Ah," she says, a little faintly. "Yes, that. Is a compelling reason to. Not stop torturing people entirely right now."

"I've been working on it almost since the beginning, trying to find a way to make it genuinely self-sustaining. It's a difficult problem. I would welcome your help, but it will take you some time to catch up to the necessary level of background knowledge."

"Yeah, it sounds it. How long do you estimate it would take to get me caught up?"

"I've never taught anyone before, so I have no good way to guess. I assume it will be less than three thousand years, but it might be as much as a hundred."

She nods. "That's fair. I have time. Well, hypothetically."

She nods.

"... How bad are the - swans? Mentally? I'd sort of vaguely planned to go see for myself, later, but I wasn't really looking forward to it."

"...I mostly don't go near them. They vary, but... they aren't usually pleasant to be around, and they usually don't enjoy being visited, and the best I can do for them is work on extending their lifespan, and even that is a very arguable mercy. But it will at least mean my father doesn't need to find new ones as often."

Wince. That's - an arguable improvement, she guesses. Maybe. No less horrific torture, but less families losing their loved ones mysteriously.

"I'll. Still probably visit if it's safe, I think, unless you strongly recommend I don't." Maybe there's some way she could help, but the prospect of attempting to play therapist to literal decades of trauma's sort of out of her league. But if she were in their position, she thinks she'd hate only having her tormenter and all of the people he's also hurt to interact with.

Plus, she doesn't think she wants to let herself forget that Serik tortures people. It's one thing to know logically that it happens, it's another to go - see the results.

"...They might be afraid of you, and if that happens please don't bother them further," she says. "But if you want to go and visit them, I won't stop you."

Solemn nod.

"I don't want to upset them," she agrees, softly.

"They are... hard to avoid upsetting."

"Understandably so. I just - I would hate being lumped into a group of fellow victims and then summarily ignored by everyone except my tormentor. I don't know what the right thing to do is, but I'm not sure it's ignoring them entirely without even checking to see if they'd like me to."

"I see what you mean. But - if you're here for a very long time, you might find that you stop trying, and I don't think that's wrong."

"No. It wouldn't be." After all, she's something of a victim herself, isn't she. Luckier than all of them, but not precisely lucky. "But for now I think I'll try."

She nods.

"I - hate to ask, but. Any estimation on when he'll go - locate another? I assume soon, since he was looking and technically didn't find another - another swan."

"Yes, soon. Within the week, most likely."

She winces, and nods.

"I'm sorry," she adds.

"Yeah. Me too." Sigh. "But I can mope about it later. I'm more than happy to catch up on magic so I can help you properly, but if you're in the middle of a breakthrough I'll be happy to wait and help however I can without actual knowledge of the problem."

"Unfortunately most of the books I would want you to start with are written in Ansati, which I assume you don't read fluently...?"

"Ah, no. I know a few phrases, but - no."