"I told you that I don't feel tempted to do it at all! I could've done it so many times when I was trying to make it here by myself, and been in less danger, because then I'd have gone to sleep with more magic instead of having none because I had nothing to eat. But I didn't because people dying is bad. And I didn't do it even when I'd just killed someone anyway - which was really horrible!!! - because I also don't like it and it didn't seem important enough!" Ma'ar is getting so. incredibly. tired of how it keeps feeling like people don't believe him when he's being very clear about what he thinks! 

"You don't have to yell at me!"

He shrinks on the bed.

"...Sorry..."

She sighs. "I'm really sorry all that bad stuff happened to you. But even if blood-magic doesn't do anything to your gears at all bad stuff happening to you can. It's not fair! It's horrible that if somebody has awful things happen to them they don't even just have those awful things to live with but also extra awful things that live in their head! And if you won't go see Lionwind and everybody else is totally crazy about everything to do with blood-magic then I am the only person here to worry about it besides you personally, and I'm not calling you names, I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm not saying you can't be okay or can't be a good person or anything, I'm just - noticing. And telling you since you didn't want me to tell Lionwind."

Ma'ar listens her out, hugging himself but otherwise looking calmer. He nods. 

"I - thank you. For looking out for me. I...don't think there's anything wrong with my gears that would make me - want to hurt people - but if it looks like I'm going to do that then you should stop me. You - have my permission to do that and I wouldn't be mad." 

"... I mean, you might if we are already postulating that you have in this situation started hurting people, but noted."

"If you think I'm hurting people right now I - have no idea how but you should tell me and I'll - figure out a way to stop." 

"I don't think you are right now."

"...Thank you. - I guess if in the future I go all evil because my gears are broken then maybe me then would be mad, but - me now isn't mad about the idea of you doing it, if that makes sense? I don't know if it helps but I mean it." 

"I think that makes sense." She kind of really wants to look at his gears now but she is not EVEN going to kind of allude to that a little bit.

He fidgets. "Maybe we can go look at books now?" 

"Yeah, let's go do that."

It turns out to be kind of hard to find books on blood-magic, it's not indexed in the appropriate alphabetic section, but Ma'ar isn't particularly in the mood to ask the librarian about it. 

:Maybe under 'dark magic'?: he suggests to Azabel. 

:Maybe, you check there and I'll check the one on reserves and ley lines and nodes in case it mentions it as annotation somewhere?:

There are SO MANY books on reserves and nodes and ley-lines; it's possible one of them has an annotation somewhere but if so it's not in the index or otherwise findable without skimming every page of every book. 

Ma'ar Mindspeaks her after about ten minutes, though. :I think I found something!:

She puts back the one she was index-checking and goes over to him. :What's it say?:

:Just let me find the right chapter, it's about all the different kinds of magic that're illegal in Tantara: He sits down against the bookshelf and flips through. :All right, here - we can both read it?: He holds it at a convenient angle for this. 

Blood-magic is understood to work by releasing all of a person's life-energies at once, via a violent death, in a format such that a mage - even a mage with very poorly trained or minimal mage-sight, and there are rumours this includes people without mage-gift at all - can wield them. Bloodpath mages commonly torture their victims first, on the grounds that this releases more energy; the book doesn't know if this claim is true, obviously no scholars have tested it. There are a couple of quotes from anonymous sources about the 'rush' and 'high' of wielding blood-power. There's also a mention that it makes some people very ill after using it; the example given is a farmboy with an untrained and unrecognized mage-gift semi-accidentally used it when under attack by nomadic horsepeople, bloodpath mages don't tend to collapse after fights, the theory is that they become inured to the horror of it and so don't get sickened afterward. 

:Are you done this page?: 

:Almost - yeah okay -: She's scribbling stuff down.

Blood-magic, in addition to its addictive high, is suspected to damage the minds of people who use it regularly; the main source for this claim given is that bloodpath mages generally have very sloppy control and, for example, almost none of them can Gate even though taking in blood-magic provides more than enough power.

Blood-magic use is also damaging to the land, in the short run; it behaves differently than the naturally released mage-energies that emanate from living things and eventually trickle into ley-lines and finally to nodes. It's 'stickier' and tends to block up these flows, causing particular problems with the weather and making people with certain Gifts or sensitivities sick. 

There are almost no official schools of magic that train it, for the obvious reason. There are the usual unskilled criminal groups, who are assumed to be self-taught or maybe apprenticed with more experienced bandits, and there are rumours of very secretive mage-cults that teach it in more elaborate ways, but of course nothing much is known about the specifics of this. 

Blood-magic is illegal in Tantara because it involves murder which is almost never justified, it's harmful to mages who use it and to the land, and because obviously letting people just do that is a terrible terrible idea. 

"I wonder why they can't Gate. Maybe it's too hard to learn if a normal school won't train you? I know Gates and stuff can mess with weather too, though, it doesn't explain enough about how this is different."

"I was thinking that. Gates are - I asked and they're not normally even covered until two years in, that's a lot of classes and tutoring they think you need first. Probably these mages out on their own don't even have books! And I thought that too, doesn't any really big use of magic mess with the weather? Even draining nodes for doing construction or something, if you do a lot of it fast in one day, it messes up the ley-line flows nearby, I read that somewhere." 

"Yeah. So it sounds like - there are a lot of problems that come with blood magic and you can mostly not have those problems if you don't have blood magic but it's a stretch to say that blood magic is in fact always bad, if you have a dying person on hand anyhow."