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[credere]

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[credere]

Though even that, visibly, makes him uncomfortable.

"What kind of casting?"

[magician_king]

"We go out to the Enclosure, make a reservoir, and cast 'boil water' at it. Stand in a field, and you raise your arms and summon the summer storm. If you're- right now a literal tempest in a literal teakettle, think of how you'd let that kind of force out safely."

[credere]

"I don't understand why I have to," Credence says, sounding faintly embarrassed, as if the answer's obvious and he's stupid for not knowing it.

"I've been fine for this long. Mostly."

[magician_king]

"Didn't you kill a bunch of people and then die in a magical explosion?"

Sorry, they're having a blunt day.

"That could happen again unless you deal with it."

[credere]

He flinches like he's been slapped.

"...The Admiral took so much. I can't do that again. Not here."

[magician_king]

"Unless our powers come back again. Unless there's a port- often when we go down to planets, our powers are returned- and many times we're kicked off the boat and don't get a choice about it. Unless you become a warden here and things are returned to you."

He reasons, gently.

"The magic hasn't stopped being a part of you, any more than it ever stopped being a part of me."

[credere]

"So I'm an abomination whether I use it or not," is Credence's quiet, baleful conclusion.

[magician_king]

"In your philosophy. In mine, you are a secret spring of potential in a desolation."

He tells him.

"You can change the world."

[credere]

"But I don't want to. What would I change?"

[magician_king]

"How much all this shit hurts."

Which it does, always has, in Quentin's experience.

[credere]

Of everything Quentin's ever said to him, it's this that actually gains a little traction.

"...Really?"

[magician_king]

"Yeah."

He says, and plucks his glasses off to polish them.

"Not always. But if everything in the world is a crushing battle, then magic is just- one tiny little edge over it."

[credere]

He looks at the hammer and the prised-away boards.

"Even when it's just things like - nails?"

[magician_king]

"I mean, it depends. But yes."

Yes, for him.

"It's about mastery."

[credere]

"I don't..."

He looks, uncertain, at Quentin.

"What does mastery do? What does it...change?"

[magician_king]

"For me, it was- the difference between feeling like things just happened to me, and like I was part of it. Like I could get purchase."

[credere]

"Like you're not..."

He peers down at his hands.

"....helpless."

[magician_king]

"When you can take a nail out, a door can't hold you."

He agrees, softly.

"I've never even used it for that- but I know."

[credere]

Credence chews his lip for several moments.

"Can you - show me? Please."

[magician_king]

"I can."

He says, and smiles at him.

"Please ask Jesse to get you a wand?"

[credere]

"--Oh."

His stomach lurches.

"I d-didn't mean that. Not yet."

He really did just mean show. So he can see it in action.

[magician_king]

"Oh."

He says, face warming.

"Sorry. And I can try- I don't know if it qualifies as a maintenance spell though, I thought I just had stuff for fixing things."

[credere]

"You might need nails to fix things," Credence points out, very softly. Why would it have been left out?

[magician_king]

"Yeah."

He says, and then draws in a deep breath, going to get the nails he's been making particles with, and a plank of wood from the window covering.

He thinks of Mayakovsky, shakes his hands out, sits back so their can be no suspicion of any trick, then casts LeGrand.

The first nail picks itself up and snaps into the wood, straight as an arrow. Bujold, with another twist of his fingertips, and it draws itself back out again, retracting right to the very tip, until it's just balanced in the hole it made.

[credere]

Credence watches with wide, unblinking eyes. There's something about magic of this sort - the sheer ordinariness of it - that makes it feel unthreatening. You could do the exact same thing with a hammer, so what makes this an abomination?

Yet he's still holding his breath, regardless.