"From my perspective, at one moment I was on an entirely different planet, where nobody and nothing was fucking with the physics, living a normal, unadventurous life, and then boom, I was suddenly teleported or translated here in a flash of lightning.  Right in the middle of one of Leonardo's experiments.  ...I feel like it was more 'translated' than 'teleported'; I felt like a fish on a hook, felt like a fish on a hook - which rules out a disassembly-reassembly sort of process, most likely - and didn't experience my inner ear going all wiggy, which contraindicates spatial fuckery other than the whole thing where I'm in another universe."

"...The faith of your polity...

"The Buddhism parallels intensify.  Although generally the virtues they followed were hardly anything like Prosperity.  Attachment to material things was really quite anti-virtuous, as far as I understand their teachings.  ...When you say miracles, how do you mean?  Are they comparable to the sorts of things Eternals do in either power, reach, or scope?  What other explanations exist, and is there anything that would dis-prove 'Paragons did it'?""

"People often get Prosperity wrong, yes. It's much more about rewarding hard work, and ensuring things are put to use rather than left idle, than simply accumulating things. Despise the grasping miser is an important teaching.

Miracles tend to be quite idiosyncratic; spontaneous generation of powerful auras is the most common, which can't be replicated with magic."

"...huh.  Good on you.

"Spontaneous generation of powerful auras?  Auras of what?"

"Virtue, of course," replies Dante. "Look, do you mind me briefly Insighting your guest? And does your guest mind, for that matter? It's just if you've picked someone up from a regio who actually has a soul, it sounds like I'm going to have to sit down and give them some basic instruction."

She is giving him a look, and the look is approximately communicating "Just because I don't know 'what everyone knows' is hardly a reason to suddenly be talking around me as if I am some tween you are expecting to require a highly-euphemised explanation of the birds and the bees".

That said: "I don't have reason to believe looking will do me any harm.  Or particular objections, if the results are mine alone to disclose."

Leonardo shrugs. "Whisper to her, I guess," he says with somewhat bad grace.

Dante sets his tray down on their table and takes a small wrapped object from a waistcoat object. Inside the wax paper is a violently purple blob of chewy candy, which he consumes.

"If you can just look into my eyes - hold still - contemplate your essential nature for me, please - hmm..."

He stares intently, looking like he is in a mildly psychedelic trance, for about ten seconds.

...Why are the drugs magic.  Why is the magic drugs.

She successfully does not fidget the parts of her that he is staring at, having had enough experience with optometrists to adapt, but if he's expecting her to actually successfully contemplate her essential nature, instead of idly wishing she could stab the universe's stupid with a knife until it stops being that way, no matter the logistical absurdity of such a proposition, he is rather out of luck.

"I have to say, I hadn't expected 'surprise isekai' to be a viable route towards ever testing my idle speculation that targeted application of psychedelic chemicals will jar loose the metaphorical gunk in my brain.  You just walk around with that?  All the time?  Good grief.  Not counting the way it metabolized at how the fuck can anything move that fast rates, but that's, presumably, magic."

"Liao, actually. Mind if I lean in to let you know your result? Or we could go off into the corridor if you actually want to keep it private from these inveterate eavesdroppers." He doesn't seem to be very surprised with what he saw, but he also seems like the kind of person who is not easily ruffled.

"Honestly as long as I don't somehow have the soul of a baby-eating mass murderer stapled to me in a mockery of the normal function of life, you can just say if I have a clean bill of health or whatever.  Just keep anything that's actually personal out of it."

"...but seriously, whatever liao is, nothing moves that fast.  As far as I know.  Even 'instant-release' drugs start later and last longer, and while I don't know much about the nasal insufflation RoA of the medication I'm using as a point of comparison - to speak of routes of administration that kick in the fastest, as far as I know - I think that takes minutes at minimum despite its speediness.  And it certainly wouldn't metabolize in ten seconds!"

"Very well, then. This here is a perfectly ordinary human being. I know, I'm surprised too.

Liao works along similar lines to alchemical potions - I suppose you don't know what those are either?"

She allows herself to go snerk at Dante's quip.

"Alchemy is not a science we had any success with, no; its successor field is where I'm getting a lot of my knowledge of the underlying nature of reality from, but I think it's safe to say that it's not robust to whatever your universe is doing."

"Alchemy isn't much of a science," Elena insists, "despite what some serious-looking alchemists might tell you. Certainly there are combinations of components which get results, which could be studied in a scientific manner, but those who pursue the field tend to insist on all kinds of arcane processing steps which are entirely different from alchemist to alchemist, and yet this seems to bother them not the slightest bit."

"That does seem like it's a study of magic to me, alright."

"Magic as a technical term," replies Dante, "is not at all applicable to alchemy, as it doesn't partake of the Realms."

"Ritual magic, at least, is considerably more scientific than alchemy, at least in the formulation if not in the casting.

And hearth magic does not pertain to the Realms either, so essentially our language is just muddled again."

"Don't mind Elena, she'd have us all speaking Gemeinsamesprache if she had her way."

"I'm just saying, I expect they have distinct words for these things."

"Oh, hey, fantasy German.  ...Wait.  Wait a fucking minute.  Is that.  Literally a fucking bilingual pun.  That is possibly a conlang.  ...Anyway.  The definition I use when I say 'magic', is essentially 'any process that cares about not only the actions performed but the intent of those performing them', and I would like to standardize that definition for this conversation, because it's the most useful thing to filter on."

"Alchemists like to claim the intent doesn't matter, but it rather looks like it does from here."

"As much as I hate to admit it, and strive always to correct for it - hearth magic does rather get everywhere.

It's possible that there is, in fact, nothing that your provided definition of 'magic' does not describe."

"Trees falling in the forest when no-one can hear them still make sounds."

"Do they, though? I certainly know people who would contest that is only because Kimus is listening."

"Kimus is an Eternal of Day known for observing things, and extremely tedious philosophical debates about whether anyone can actually prove they exist.

I still think we should put it under Emnity just to frustrate it. It can't continually threaten to sell all our secrets to our enemies if it can't see them."