"Their bones aren't any harder to break once they're dead."

"Big difference there, that 'once they're dead'."

"Well, yeah, but that's sort of it, right? The kind of muscle that lets you stab very well is still there when you die; the kind of Stat that lets you stab something twelve times a second isn't."

"And you're saying that's magic."

"Well, I mean, words are words. But if there's anything the word 'magic' means that isn't just 'the Skills that are also spells' then that's what it is."

"Hmm. Seems a bit... philosophical."

"I am a mage," Vallyn says, wryly. "Prospective."

"Speaking of, Mr. Mage, you should go back to exploding porings, you're distracting me and worse you're distracting Annika."

"Isn't."

"You mistimed three punches over the past two minutes."

She stops to stare at him. "How did you—"

"Situational awareness. It's a gift."

She huffs and goes back to practising and definitely tunes other people out this time.

Sure, he'll go explode some porings.

Later at lunch Pierre is picking at his food, still looking dejected, sitting at a table where a few other people wearing robes are also eating. Most of them look substantially less upset than he does.

Oh is that the mages' table? Sure, he'll sit with them.

"Oh if it isn't Mr. Prodigy," sneers one of them when Vallynn sits down.

"—I'm sorry?"

"Bjorn told us about you," she says. "Teekay without a Skill, and then learning Lightning Bolt over two hours. Are you sure you're not too good to sit with us mere mortals?"

...he really hadn't realised all of that was that exceptional. Like, sure, he's not bad by any means, but.

"I had already studied it," he says, which is kind of true but only in the most technical of senses. "So it's not all that."

"Uh huh."

"Anyway! I'm Vallynn. It's nice to meet you."

"We'll see about that," she says.

"I'm Magnhild," says another mage. "And these are Georgina," the girl who was talking before, "Pierre, Natalya, Inga, Astrid, and you've met Bjorn."

"Hey."