"If it's very absolute it might be in history books and if I find a person from however long ago who killed a thing called the Destroyer and who matches my dream I am really not sure what I'll do about that."

"Were they a mage? You could learn magic from them."

"They were a mage. It'd feel a bit like cheating but on the other hand what matters is the results."

"It's not cheating if you take their work and improve on it. Also, cheating is a fake idea."

"Yes, yes, I'm not going to actually not do it if I happen to have any dreams with him in which he is doing some cool unknown magic, it will just singe my pride."

"You've got Heal—or, a cousin of it, actually, you said it doesn't go if someone doesn't need it, but otherwise it seems to work identically to our current best Heal—and a sword passive, that's probably something standard, you've got this smite Skill, what else?"

"Ah - yesterday, I worked something out while fighting that spirit. It was barely getting scratched by my sword, and I remembered a thing he could do, covering his sword in holy fire that cut through demons and undead like butter. And I tried doing that. It didn't feel like it was hitting as hard as it should, but it did let me hurt it."

"Holy fire, hmm, maybe Demonsbane? Do all of your proper Skills that aren't whatever that other thing you mentioned is come from your guy?"

"Beu taught me Light. Other than that, no."

"Which one are you calling Light, I know of like seven of those."

"He had a magic light attached to a torch and it revealed hidden enemies."

"...I now know of like eight of those!"

"It can attach to other things!"

He pops a light globe onto Vallyn's shoulder.

Vallynn moves his shoulder and then leans this way and that to watch it follow him. "What's the reveal range?"

"I haven't widened the channel since she died - it's like ten, fifteen feet? You can see the light's pretty dim. When I need a lot of light I send out the rest of them to stick to the walls."

Demonstratively: that. Three more globes of light emanate and take a wobbly path to the walls of the room, where they cling and continue glowing.

"—I suppose it stands to reason you can do multiple but I'm still surprised, I only know of one other Light that does that."

"Yeah, it's definitely weird, but without that they wouldn't be very good at the point of the Skill."

One of the globes, which neither Taharqi nor Vallynn is looking directly at, abruptly flares so brightly that if either of them was looking directly at it they'd regret it. Then it dissipates.

"The point?" he says, looking over at where it used to be now that it's not.

"They're traps! I can only do the flashy one, but Beuriman had lights that poison, lights that burn, lights that petrify..."

"Oh that sounds useful as Hel."

"Can it do exclusions or does it affect everyone?"

"It excludes me. And it won't hurt people I love. ...which would be inconveniently specific for most adventurers except I'm broken in various fascinating ways so I'm pretty sure it would exclude Taharqi and Annika and in a few days it'd probably exclude you too."

"Would it be faster to exclude me if we also had a near-death experience together?"

"Yes."

"I think we've all had enough near-death experiences for the moment."