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[credere]

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[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.

[magician_king]

Down, and down, and down, he hits one nail after the other, lining all three up in a neat little row, straight as can be.

He lets out a sigh, and sits back, pleased, smiling.

[credere]

Credence hesitates for a moment, then reaches out and picks up the board. It doesn't feel magic. If this was the first he'd seen of it, he'd assume the nails had simply been hammered in. Albeit very neatly.

"Was this one of the first things you learned?"

[magician_king]

"Nope."

He admits;

"You start with something more neutral. A marble- and you heat it, cool it, make it invisible, etcetera."

[credere]

"How long do you do that for?"

[magician_king]

"A long few months of intensive training."

He says, with a shake of his head.

"We won't make you into that kind of magician, unless you're feeling super self-flagellating."

[credere]

He frowns.

"I don't understand. Are there different kinds?"

He understands from previous conservation that Quentin's magic is different to, say, Newt's - but surely one's not significantly easier to learn than the other?

(Then again, he should have gone to Ilvermorny aged eleven.)

[magician_king]

"Sure. There are wizards like Newt, magicians like me, hedgewitches like Chloe."

He says, with a faint smile.

"It's like how you can be a writer of many different kinds of books."