"Ah. It is ...good that now you can." He's still speaking very slowly, expressionless, sifting for words. "Your magic allows you to copy things you see?"

"It's not about--seeing, exactly. It's about having a model. A point of comparison. But that model can come in many different ways."

He nods. "You used it to... flee a ...danger and arrive here?"

"Oh. Yeah. One of my teachers figured that since I was probably going to be the next Great Mage he ought to kill me because that's some seriously abusable power and he didn't feel like taking the chance that I wasn't going to abuse it."

Amusement, again. Weariness. "Great Mage?"

"Most people who take up serious magic in the first place are sufficiently deterred either by the pain or the mental side-effect that they get in a couple of decades of decent mage-work and then retire. Sometimes, though, you get someone who's resistant enough to at least one form or sufficiently fond of pain to spend their whole lives doing it. And every once in a while you get someone who's both, and can exercize at least one form of magic with near impunity."

"What makes one resistant?"

"Your personality. I wouldn't exactly there are any specific mental features that guarantee resistance to anything in particular, but there are a lot that can help."

A grim smile. "In that case I would like you to teach me as swiftly as possible, particularly if it can be mastered to the level of useability in only a few decades as you implied. But first I am obliged to offer- food? drink? rest? warmer clothes?"

"I'm not tired, it was noon back home. I'm not particularly hungry or thirsty either. I've been handling the temperature with magic, but warmer clothes would be a better solution in the long term."

He nods and says something in his own language; there are no servants in the room, but presumably one can hear them, becuase he nods in satisfaction after a second. "In that case I would like to use your magic to destroy the Enemy. How would I start to learn it towards that end?"

"Good question. For direct destruction, conquest is usually best, but it's often more effective to slowly erode at things over time, which would fall under effort, or to poke at it until you can get at its weaknesses, which would be sympathy. Given what you've said, 'Destroy the Enemy' is likely not a single effect which can be achieved by a single magical effect. Tell me a step towards the Enemy's destruction, and I'll tell you how I would do it. How I would do it if I were fifty years older and a great deal more powerful, if necessary."

He nods. "Angband, the fortress, is inpenetrable. If the walls could begin to crumble..."

"Is there any reason they shouldn't? That wasn't a real question, that was your first lesson in Sympathy magic. The way you do that is by finding a point of comparison, and then convincing the universe that the one should resemble the other. There are limits--the more strained the comparison, the less likely it is to work, and the more power you have as a mage, the more likely it is to work. If I taught you the basics of Sympathy magic, and you went out today and stared at this fortress's walls for a thousand years and tried to coax it that it had the consistency of brown sugar, you would fail. But if you work up to it...it's not out of reach forever."

"Does the universe care about good and evil? Can I say that the walls should crumble because great harm is done behind them?"

"The universe doesn't care about good and evil, but you do, and the universe cares that you genuinely believe that the effect you're going for is correct."

"Ah, all right then. Should I practice on similar things? Smaller fortresses? How does it affect my mental state, again?"

"Sympathy magic makes you more diplomatic and more conflict-averse, Conquest magic increases your force of personality and decreases your ability to take no for an answer gracefully, and Effort magic increases your willpower and makes it harder to change your mind about things."

"So they cancel each other to some degree? Is it recommended to practice them in equal measure?"

"Not usually equal--even for people with no particular exceptional resistences you're usually not equally susceptible to all of them, so you want to balance your ratios that way, and some people find the changes unequally unappealing, and they don't cancel out perfectly. And many people have greater individual talent for one or two, and are willing to deal with the uneven effects."

He nods. "And great workings, like making Angband crumble, would be more destabilizing?"

"Yes. There are also meditation techniques that can be used to pick apart what the magic is doing to you and prevent at least some of it."

"Can you describe those?"

"Verbally, or...?"

"Osanwë is faster for teaching."