Liar.

Taharqi walks up to him, half-smiling. "Is that another non-Skill you got on your own?"

"No, no, that one was a Skill. Lightning Bolt."

"Which you didn't have this morning."

"It's still morning."

"Ah huh."

"Oh, come on, I did say that I had three or four potentials. Surely if you tried to get a new Skill right now you'd get it quickly, too, especially if you had a book about it."

"Oh, no, not me, I'm all full up."

"...really? Why?"

"There was not really any question of what I was getting and I had good enough access to tutors, so."

"...huh. So what'd you get?"

"Four ranks in Double Attack."

"Which presumably does what it says on the tin."

"Pretty much! Think once act twice kind of thing, it's not really a very active Skill, it just kind of happens."

"It's really weird how Skills do that, actually, like I'd been told but it just feels a lot different to actually experience it, the difference between my teekay and the Lightning Bolt Skill."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. It is very much me who is doing the things I am doing but I am not, really, all there for it, you know?"

"It must be so much creepier when it's physical Skills like that."

"I wouldn't know. No magic here."

"I'm of the school of thought that all Skills and Stats are magic."

"...walk me through that?"

"I will but get back to stabbing that training dummy, that was hot and I want to watch."

"Yes, sir." He gets back to what he'd been doing, paying somewhat less attention to it but not so little that his form suffers very much.

"So. What's magic?"

"...you're lucky I like you because I don't like where this is going. I don't know, Vallynn, what is magic?"

"Any phenomena that permit creatures with a will to change the way the world works," Annika recites, without looking up from her dummy.

"—right!"