"That I was using magic? Yeah."

"That makes sense! I apologize for the discomfort."

"It's fine. I'm really Sympathy-resistant. ...Context: doing mind magic to oneself generally leaves one significantly more vulnerable to the relevant mental effects of the magic than doing that amount of magic not to one's mind does; I'm resistant enough that I could--adjust my reaction to pain."

"Oh, how useful."

"It is!"

"I wonder if we could accomplish some of the same with chip blessings - and maybe protect against or at least revert the personality changes -"

"Chip blessings?"

"Elves keep our minds on little metal things in our skulls! And we can write little - translate 'program'?"

"...I...don't think we so much have those."

"...chips I was assuming you didn't have, but no programs either? Um - instructions. That cause our minds to communicate with each other or behave in ways we prefer. I have a lot of memory blessings, that's why I don't forget vocabulary words."

"You have telepathy?"

"Only with each other."

"Still. Lucky."

"It's often convenient."

"We technically have telepathy but it's super inconvenient, I've been trying to develop a more convenient version for ages."

"What's involved in developing new magic?"

"...So I should maybe start from how one does magic in the first place. So--each of the three requires a different state of mind."

"Seems sensible."

"Sympathy involves persuading the world to do what you want, Effort involves pushing the world to do what you want, and Conquest involves ordering the world to do what you want."

"With you so far."

"So 'magic that we already have' that isn't just free-form is...ways of persuading or pushing or commanding that are known to be relevantly effective. And telepathy in particular is tricky because it's incredibly important to be able to tell it apart from freeform mind magic after the fact."

"Is freeform mind magic common?"

"No, it's completely taboo. That's why anything that even borders on mind magic has to be able to be distinguished from it, if it looks like you've been doing mind magic to people you are fucked."

"In what way?"

"Usually lethally."