"Humanishness is a little bit of a problem. Which is another thing that me being a Paragon would help with. Anyway, for all I know maybe strange glowing golem-men can't have children at all and it's a totally inconsequential concern. I used to feel pretty strongly that I should have children someday; now... I'm not moved to make any special effort to seek or avoid them."

"Okay. ...You're glowing? I just, I have no idea what you look like, I wish I knew..."

Hug! "I guess a reasonable first step on the immortality thing is seeing if it's particularly special that I have sourceless access to rune information. I also want to find, like, a hospital or the local equivalent and poke everyone in it but that seems irresponsible without knowing more about the drawback."

"I really want to test that drawback... will you be less upset about me doing that if I promise to ask for a hardier volunteer if I find it genuinely difficult and unpleasant?"

"Um. Less."

"It seemed like it was very intense but over very quickly, and that's my favourite kind of pain," he says. "From the way you and Ruck reacted, I expect it to be not much more than slightly annoying as long as I don't do something stupid like have someone sing at me for an hour. And if I figure out the parameters of the drawback, I can decide whether I'm comfortable having the healing thing on all the time, and I'd really like to have the healing thing on all the time if the drawback wouldn't be unsustainably awful, because of that thing where I bruise easily. Wearing the golem suit seems to protect me a lot more than I'm used to, but I don't think I can rely on that forever."

"...Okay," she says softly, this argument being rather unmistakably tailored for her unique argument reception characteristics. "Um, and also the range might matter. It's clearly not about whether the person can hear it or not. So you should probably do it progressively nearer to me after getting to some obviously safe distance based on how likely people are to be humming near this house."

"I'm not testing it on you, that would be cruel," he says. "The whole reason I want to be the one to test it in particular - well, no. Part of the reason I want to be the one to test it in particular is my overactive sense of responsibility. But most of the reason why I want to, and the reason I feel like I can convince you, is that I don't feel pain as strongly as most people. Or maybe I'm just more used to it, I don't know. Either way, there is less unpleasantness overall if it's me rather than someone else."

"Then how are you going to find out the range thing?"

"Find someone who's making music and walk nearer to and farther from them. There's a tavern on the other side of the city that might do it if singing and/or instruments qualify - they often have music there."

"...If it scales up with quantity or volume or something and it's worse than when it was just Ruck humming a little, you might not be able to leave if you get within range of that."

"Which is why I'm asking one of Caridin's friends to come with me and pick me up and carry me off if I collapse, yeah."

"...Okay."

"I'll be fine," he assures her, smiling. "Can I run off with the healing power now?"

"Okay," she sighs, and she touches his cheek. "Is Cairidin botherable now? I want to ask him about runes as long as you're going to be doing something I shouldn't be near."

She will just be busy grinning like an idiot while he does that.

So Annie parks with Cairidin and asks him if all the runes are known.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, they seem to have inherently magical properties; are all shapes that have magical properties exhausted or are there new ones discovered now and then, or are they invented in the first place, or what?"

"Ah, I see. The shapes themselves are less important than the process used to create them," he explains. "Some of the runes do yield worse results if crafted in other shapes, but with some, the shape is set only by convention."

"Oh, I see. I was hoping I was sitting on some kind of magical engineering revolution."

"Unfortunately, I don't believe you are. At least not that one. But I am always interested to hear your questions."