"Oh huh I had a pretty vivid dream of doing impossible things recently too but I don't think I got any Skills from it. Also I was the party's tank, which is pretty unrealistic if you ask me."

"I had one last night—or, while I was dead actually, which is really weird because I'm pretty sure you're not meant to have dreams while in stasis, but maybe it was while I was bleeding out and hallucinating—"

"Bleeding out? Vallynn, what in Hel—"

"Tell you later, this is more interesting. Can you heal people who aren't hurt? Can you heal yourself while you're not hurt? Can you show me?"

"Can't heal people who aren't hurt; I used that diagnostically once, to see whether somebody was bleeding inside. And, yeah -"

Arik stands, a good distance from the bed. He isn't holding a knife. It goes straight through his hand anyway. Then there's a pulse of energy, and the wound is healed, with only the spray of blood on his skin and the floor to show it was ever there.

"—huh, not being able to heal people who aren't hurt is interesting, actually. Can you do that again but try to heal less? Or just be slower? And..." He sits up, looks down at his own hand, and frowns.

...actually he'll put down the paper and ink first and then try to experiment with magic in ways that might hurt him. There they go, onto his desk.

And then, can he repurpose his telekinesis spell into something that'll cut? It doesn't seem like it shouldn't work, in principle; with all of the improvements he and the other mages he knows have made he has a lot of fine control and precision and efficiency, and it's just a matter of applying mana as pressure directly to objects, so if he does that directly to his hand in a slicing pattern—

"Ow, Freyja fuck me with a spear that hurt," he hisses, as he's apparently cut deep enough to nearly reach bone. He uses teekay to make sure he doesn't drip any blood on the bedsheets then says, "Okay, let's ignore me for a moment, we'll get back to me later." He needs to stop distracting himself.

"No!"

Arik prods him forcefully in the forehead. He is healed.

"...I didn't have good enough reaction time there to actually watch you do it so I'm gonna have to hurt myself again you know."

"You could hurt me!"

"We can play later I am investigating."

Arik takes Taharqi's hand then, telegraphing very deliberately, stabs him in the forearm.

"Are you watching now?" he asks.

"...yes."

Taharqi is going to just stay very still here and ignore any physiological reactions he may be having.

"Good." Another pulse of healing energy, and - the wound scabs over, but doesn't quite knit shut. Then there's another pulse, and it does.

"Fuck that felt weird. You ever try to stop pissing five seconds in? Agh."

"There's exercises you can do to make that feel less bad, you know, and it also helps with orgasm control. Now do yourself, I wanna compare."

If Vallynn keeps talking about orgasm control this is going be become less physiological.

He stabs himself in the side, this time. Heal.

"If you wanted that partway I'm not sure I can actually hurt myself badly enough - it doesn't waver nearly as much, I wouldn't have a good stopping point until half my ribs were showing."

"...huh. Okay I know absolutely nothing about enchanting," except for the tidbits he picked up here and there from reading stuff in the library or hearing other mages chat, "but I'm going to guess one of your items is doing something there."

"...that'd make sense," he says, rubbing his necklace. "Thanks, Father Nikos."

"Father Nikos? ...Nikos Velsignet?? You have a necklace made by Nikos horsefucking Velsignet????????"

"...is that person famous, then?"

"I never personally saw him fuck a horse, but yes, people called him Velsignet sometimes. I'm with Taharqi, how do you know him?"

"Holy shit I need to introduce you to someone she is going to lose her marbles over a necklace made by Nikos Velsignet."

Taharqi flicks Vallynn's forehead. "Hey, airhead, focus."