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[ Politics and wars are one thing, but magic is quite another; some thirsts aren't slaked so easily by squabbling imps and gaudy fabric. Knowledge is power, and power is every wizard's disease.

Felix is far more rumpled than he'd like, and that hair won't unfrizz any time soon, but the words come calm as day: ]

It seems we've all been busy, so I suppose I ought to be brief.

Magic. If you'll indulge the melodramatic imagery, it's as myriad as a hydra's necks, and almost twice as difficult to pin down. Any sort of rigorous survey seems better left for days without a pounding headache. Perhaps instead, we might just speak.

Tell me what you know about magic. Stories, facts, vicious gossip if you're so disposed. Magic brought us each here, so let us be kind guests and oblige it the conversation.

[ He flashes a wide, tired smile. ]

Unfamiliarity is quite acceptable. I'd just like to hear it from you.

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Magic is the suspension of reason for as long as fear and superstition gain ground over plainly sighted truth.

[ A pause. ]

And the Pope and his Church will burn you for it.

[ And another. ]

If you're poor.

How utterly charming.

[ Droll. He's no stranger to pyres -- that is, after all, the point of heresy -- but fuck every seventh saint if he has the first idea what a pope is. ]

Fear, I'll grant you, and superstition's the watch-word of any well-oiled imagination. Do you find all fact in coin?

I find history.

A practical man. But have you studied from the tail or the head?

[ What's your bank like, bro? ]

I'm a courier, sir. My like don't study. My like don't hear, my like don't see. My like aren't heard and we aren't seen. We don't have use for learning.

[ "Me poor." ]

Do you call yourself a magician in the way of the priests or the alchemists or Pythagoras?

[ As though he's ever heard a servant wield words like that. ]

And yet your like speak freely? [ A gentle nudge, but in it, the lift of his eyebrows is almost audible. ] I call myself what I am, a wizard of the Mirador and Curia.

[ A moment's hesitation -- and interior cursing as he nearly drops the locket behind a dresser -- and the feed switches back into video. Felix tilts his head to consider the window curtains, looking rather unaffected as they abruptly burst into green flame. A second later, it falls away, the cloth unharmed.

It would have been easier, and wiser, to choose a smaller trick. But once a peacock, always an insufferable show-off. ]

In what manner do you call yourself a courier?

[ Oh... oh, a ginger. Small wonder he doesn't want talk of the real burning. He might have known a torch or ten - eleven, if he's of the villages.

And then there's the parlour trick, and far from Cesare to judge a man in the throes of improvisation agony, but it's hardly worth more than a gasp, once you've seen the troupes of Venezia and their borrowed Turkish boys, who eat fire.

He has the grace to keep a polite silence throughout the (green) flame wars. Then, sheepishly - ]

Well... well done. For a man without the means of his trade, I commend you.

[ ...is that light clapping? It is indeed. Rejoice. ]

And I am a courier in whatever manner don Lorenzo de Medici will pay me to assume. I don't have that say, sir magician.

[ Is that a polite clap? That's a polite clap, and a soft-handed insult worthy of court.

He bites back the urge to take insult -- surely, he can hold his temper here more than a day. Right? Right...? See, he's building character. Gideon would be so proud. His eyes narrow, flinty, and it's a near thing.

But then Cesare speaks, and there's something to steady upon instead. The losses of translation are doubtless dire. That's what questions are for. ]

Please, call me Felix. [ He seems to be making a pointed effort to put himself at ease, but it's no poker face. ] Your sense of duty cannot be disparaged. Has the don accompanied you to this place?

[ And now for the world's driest, least invested pronouncement: ]

As Fortuna would have it, don Lorenzo's previous engagements conspired to bereave him of this most joyous opportunity to seize misery and squalor.

[ Hmmmmm. ]

And magic.

[ And back to apathy: ]

I present you his apologies and wishes of health.

[Swallows on his end of the line.

Doesn't sound as if it's what the gentleman wants to hear, and it wasn't specified as to whether it's Drabwurld magic or magic in general that's got his interest, but in case the latter, ah-ha he's staunch about his developed experience with and relevant to it...

Picks up dryly, softly, quickly, and sounding barely-teenage, but serious and earnest.]

Unholy. Corruptive, corrosive. Can be, but was not meant to be, wielded by man; drawn -- from pagan deities from other realms...

-- That's magic as I am familiar with its presence in the world I know. [Shaking his head perhaps a tad fidgetish.] -- I still know little about this world's magic, and -- I don't intend to know any more than I have to.

[ It's not the stupidest thing that he's ever heard. Powers know that magic can be dangerous -- though Felix is far more like to fear its users. Pagan deities are little without pagan worshipers. ]

Then you have my respect for speaking of it here. [ No he doesn't. Felix might recognize the bravery in broaching a difficult experience, but lack of curiousity remains a cardinal sin. Still, it's enough to spark his interest, and that's enough to fold the affectation of sympathy over his fascination. ] And my hopes that this realm's spells show you wide berth. Can the magic of your home be ignored?

Thank you, my lord. [Somewhat obligatory, and he takes the supposed expression of respect as possibly the same. Not backhanded, but obligatory.

And oh-ho, lack of curiosity isn't the issue here, at all - "as much as I have to" is a rather deliberately flexible and easy to loosely-define restriction.]

-- Perhaps not ignored, but it's only very few who've knowledge. Of it.

Its practitioners -- who I am sure still exist -- and by that I mean the cults of the Ancients, as there are those not among them who have used magic - including myself...

[He's taken a decided detour there - pauses, pulls himself back on track.] -- Pardon me. The followers of the Ancients do not practice it openly.

If one outside of them is allowed to know it, to ignore it would be -- iniquitous, if not dangerous.

[ Obligatory or not, he's pleased as punch to finally receive a proper honorific around here. Of course, he could remedy that by flaunting his titles a bit more, but what good is attention if you have to ask for it? ]

Wise of them -- for as short a length as that will stretch; 'unholy and corrosive' make for rather more pyres than dinner invitations. [ Why yes, he is still a bit vexed with Cesare. ] You embraced it, I take?

I, ahh -- didn't have much of a choice. [Restrained head-shake again. Thin and ambivalent. Honestly, heavens, no, he wouldn't say he embraced it. He'd tripped a trap that there wasn't any escaping, did what anyone should do to find it made no difference, and only later got confirmation he did in fact fulfill a duty.

Ambivalence and light earnestness hold. It is - still really nothing to be proud of, God forbid it sounds as if he's trying to honor himself for any amount of having tried; skews the wording.] -- The Ancients' cults sought to kill the Emperor of my country, and I came close enough to them to take a spell that I spent seven hundred years dying of.

[Hence the suspicion of magic. Much more so than lack of reasonable and rather morbid curiosity.]

It's a thing where I come from, if that's what you're asking. But yeah, I'm pretty sure you can blame all magic on the gods, one way or another.

[even the non-gods that can use it all seem to be godspawn or end up as gods or something. some myths talk about sorceresses and all that, but he's never heard of anyone using some sort of magic that wasn't somehow related to some god.]

It's not as complicated as you think. [ At the basic level, but Harry looks amused because he's always hearing this sort of thing from people who are unaware of magic's true nature. ]

You collect energy and you apply your will to it to get a result.

[ Felix can think of a great many different words to describe this ridiculous state of affairs, and the castle's tedious gloom. 'Squalor' doesn't quite make the list. ]

Gracious, I suppose I must accept them. The don must be a man of great wealth and taste. Certainly such would enjoy the court.

[ Purple and more fucking purple, with perhaps a touch of black for good measure. Felix can feel a hundred Marathine decorators cry out in pain. ]

[ How ghastly, is the first thought that springs to mind. Waiting seven hundred years intimates an absence of either will or creativity, comes the second. Neither seems worth voicing aloud. ]

A very great time to corrode. Were you successful?

[ In 'dying' or 'saving the Emperor', he doesn't specify. ]

Edited 2014-07-30 18:31 (UTC)

It's certainly one question.

[ Felix isn't religious, but he won't put that beyond the realm of possibility. His own magic is tied strongly enough to observation and belief; who can begin to guess at that of other worlds? ]

I take it's not particularly common?

[ Oh, good. There's the arrogance he's been missing. ]

Quite. However, smashing my way through the basic rhetoric of an introduction to spell mechanics won't tell me anything particularly interesting, here or in any realm. When we all sell the same lines, technique counts.

[ Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed -- or, well. Multiverse. Felix's mind finally seems to catch up with his mouth, and quite visibly he settles once more. Tipping his head to the left (the better to put Harry in view), he peers with plain curiousity. ]

Suppose you had to do something so simple as make a light. It doesn't have to last, but conventional means like a candle or lantern won't do, it must be magical. How would you go about it?

[ Felix may be trying rather badly to illustrate a point, but that doesn't mean he isn't interested in the answer. ]

Someone else ended it. I'm thankful to him. [Took the juxtaposition of those two phrases as cue to answer that for "dying".] It had to be done.

This -- has strayed from the subject presented, my lord, I apologize.

[Or simply narrowed breadth from magic to cults to his experience with both. It's, ah-ha - probably an easy subject to start saying too much on for both sides' sakes unless it's of explicit curiosity or interest.]

[ Well, Harry can certainly appreciate the attitude. At least this guy doesn't come off as totally condescending like some of the folk he normally has to deal with. For right now, that is. ]

Really? Am I gonna be doing show-and-tell? I think being here might not be so bad if people actually want to know about magic at this point.

[ And then, without further ado, he reaches into his shirt for his silver pentacle necklace. Holding it out, he focuses his energy through the silver til it begins to shine with a blue-white light. ]

Like this. It all depends on your personality and well. How bright you are. [ Resisting puns? Not in his rulebook. ]

Yes, don Lorenzo is... [ An increasingly deep-thrusting thorn between the Borgia ribs. ] All that you have said. More.

If your little act should earn his laughs, he might well patron you. Though I should warn you he prefers a troupe to the lone man. He is blood of the bankers. Numbers amuse him.

[ Finally, someone to talk to. He eyes the pentacle, amused, then flutters a dismissive hand. It's only half gesture; gaudy garnet rings encrust each garishly-tattooed finger, and light briefly in turn. He's smiling again now. ]

Precisely. The oldest trick in the book, correct? The first thing that any apprenctice learns. Raw energy is easy, all the more so with grounding channels. [ The light flickers out and Felix blinks, a little green flame dancing beside his propped chin. ] But conjured half a hundred ways, from a dozen different metaphors.

[ Red, now, then blue. The flame drifts into petals, a diamond, then a rough cariacture of -- uh. Is that supposed to be a bird? It's a bit more like a bat -- Felix seems to notice this. A pinched look steals over his face, and the light blinks out. He looks evenly to Harry. ]

We mediate magic through our own understanding of its use. I can think of little more valuable to its practice than exchanges of theory.

[ Well, that's a bit impressive by Harry's usual standards. It's not something out of the realm of possibility, but he usually just goes with what comes naturally to him. He tends to be as efficient as he can, so that means minimizing on details. ]

That's an elaborate way of putting it, but yeah. [ He nods. Though he has to say, some theories should probably remain unspoken, considering his previous encounters in the past few years. ]

But I can see your talents are different from mine. I'm a little bit more- unpredictable without a focus. [ Burn entire houses down, much? ]

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