"Sounds like a bit of a weird word for it? I mean, if some human - scrapes their arm or something, it'll heal, and they won't be like, thinking 'heal heal heal' at it or anything. Pretty much same thing, just - benefit of a mage spark and not just a body so it'll do it for more. And faster and all."

"Well, if we break down we have to get repairs."

"...do you have something around for that?"

"Nnnot exactly?"

"...how easily do you get hurt?"

"Not very."

"...It does make sense if you don't trust us very much, but if we're going to - work together, it might be good if we knew more than that?"

"When you say break down d'you mean anything at all, like, if I scape a carriage it's not going to paint itself, or do you mean just the serious stuff, like if a human takes a crossbow bolt or something?"

"Minor maintenance is unlikely to be an issue. Problems would arise if we had need to fabricate a replacement limb."

"Unlikely because your body can deal with that, or because you're hard enough to scratch that if something gets that bad it probably goes straight to breaking, or unlikely because you can just live with the scratch if it happens?

This isn't just curiously - I can heal a human who gets a scratch but I can't unscratch a carriage the same way, with a human I'm going partially on that their body's got the - system. So if you do have some system - well then I dunno, never met metal people. But if you don't it's probably harder for me to do anything for."

"A combination of the second and the third. You probably wouldn't be able to help."

"Well, it'd be weird if I couldn't do anything. But, yeah this all sounds like a thing to keep in mind while planning.

So what does it take to leave a scratch? What happens if someone shoots you?"

"We don't let it hit."

"...well that's very impressive but also does not answer the question."

"It depends what we're shot with."

"A crossbow bolt? Your pod weapons? Magical energy?"

"A crossbow bolt shouldn't be a problem. Sustained Podfire would hurt. I don't know what magical energy is like."

"Hurt as in be painful or hurt as in take your arm off?"

"The latter."

"It wouldn't be fun."

"Understood. Good to know."

Walking, walking.

"Could you show us some magic?"

"Sure. Anything in particular?"

"What about those magic blasts you were talking about?"

"Sure. I'll do a minor one if you don't mind, save on the effort and destruction and charging up and all."

And she stops, concentrates briefly, reaches out a hand, and blasts a branch off a nearby tree.

"Magic blasts!"