...he's scrunching up his face as he tries to follow that logic.

He lets go of the hem of his shirt. "Can you think of any kind of protective talisman that would help you with that?"

"Hmm? Protective talisman in what sense?"

"Necklace no one can do magic within ten feet of. Necklace no one but you can do magic within ten feet of. Or twenty. Or one. Or a bracelet. Or an outfit that insulates better than the materials it's made of. Or immunity to mind control. Not tested against the two of you but no one's ever yet beaten my wards, anyway. I can also give objects infinite tensile and compressive strength or prevent certain chemical reactions from taking place or put things in stasis in such a way that you can unfreeze them later if you want."

"Oh, that's very interesting! Do you know anything about how it interacts with other conceptual effects generally? I'm pretty sure I'm not able to be made immune to mind control but I've been surprised before."

"What do you mean by 'conceptual effects'?"

"Hmm... do you mind if I use my communication power to explain or would you rather I try it unaided?"

"Sure, go ahead - if it's actually only communicative it's probably not already blocked by my existing wards but if you're lying about how it works it might fail and I'm not dropping anything to facilitate you trying."

She pauses for a moment, looking thoughtful, and then nods.

"So—the example I usually reach for when talking about conceptual effects is 'unstoppable force' and 'immovable object'. You can't have both a fully unstoppable force and a fully immovable object at the same time, because then the outcome when they interact would be undefined. So every conceptual effect must have some place in the implicit hierarchy where it can overcome some things but not others, or a guideline like 'when something tries to break this it tears a hole in the fabric of reality', or something like that. The opposite end of this spectrum is mechanical effects, like gravity, which aren't acting to enforce a concisely described outcome in the face of opposition. I'm curious both how conceptual versus mechanical the magic you're talking about is, and which kinds of things you expect it to overcome or be overcome by. And also how likely you think it is to tear a hole in the fabric of reality if it doesn't get its way."

"It won't work against something that's already in place and will work against something that isn't - at least, that's what it's done every time anyone has ever tested it, that I know of.  I don't see a way for making you immune to mind control to tear a hole in the fabric of reality, but I don't know of everything that exists. I guess what I do is pretty conceptual but some of it's more mechanical than the rest - insulating clothing would be more mechanical than protecting you from mind control. Uh, I'm concerned about you going off to deal with places with lots of torture if you're not capable of resisting mind control."

"I have a conceptual effect guaranteeing that I will recover from any bad thing that ever happens to me."

"...And the people you could be mind-controlled to hurt?"

"I have a different conceptual effect about that but it's trickier to describe. It's not quite that I can't be made to harm people, although that's pretty difficult, and it's not quite that I can't bring more people to harm by involving myself in a situation than would have been harmed if I'd left it alone, but it's... sort of close to that."

"Wow. That... really is very conceptual."

"A lot of my magic is like that."

"You really lucked out. Is it the kind of thing you can put on a charm and sell?"

"Quite a few of my powers are transmissible but not those ones in particular. And they're not trivially transmissible unless you'd find it trivial to spend several hours drinking my blood."

"...several hours? That's a lot of blood."

"...not trivial, no... it might be worth it to get my vampire friend in here even though the imperial government will probably notice if I do."

"Vampire friend?"

Silently seconding this question.

"Vampires drink blood. Friends are people you trade favors with without keeping track of who’s done more at any given time and maybe hug."

"...neither of those is the question I had and I suspect this other fellow feels the same—I'm Esme, by the way, I haven't mentioned it."

"Sekar. I think my question was something like, is this friend of yours who drinks blood a sort of person who you think should get a whole pile of magic you don't know much about?"

"And I'm Valanda and my friend is Nik. He helped to teach me about morality and notices things I don't. So, I think so. It might be more important to grab people with, uh, worse luck about magic than him, but he's the only friend of mine who drinks blood."