«Uh-huh,» said Zorian dubiously before deciding not to pursue the issue. «For what it’s worth, the transparent rock is called glass, and it’s not really carved. It’s made from sand, which is heated until it turns molten and therefore malleable and then shaped by sticking long tubes into the resulting molten mass and blowing air into it.»
Novelty turned around to focus all of her eyes on him. [How, in the name of grandmother’s shriveled egg-sack, did it occur to one of you to do that? Do humans have some sort of magical stone sense or something?]
«Err, no,» said Zorian patiently. Explaining stuff like this to Novelty was annoying, but it made her much more willing to share things with him in turn, so he would labor on. «Humans have always been mucking around with tools of various sorts. We’re pretty fragile in our natural forms, so building things is a matter of survival. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then those better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. I don’t really know how glassblowing came into existence, but it didn’t just magically pop into someone’s head all out of a sudden…»
[I don’t really think you can be considered fragile,] Novelty said dubiously. [You wield incredible magic, and you pretty much conquered the surface world with it.]
«Not all humans wield magic,» said Zorian. «Only a small number of people are mages, and the number was even smaller the more you go back in time.»
[Most of your ‘tools’ sound a lot like magic to me, to be honest,] Novelty said. [You take rocks and stuff and perform complicated rituals on them to turn them into these wondrous creations that no amount of web-weaving can duplicate. It’s the part that fascinates me most about you humans — this weird building magic of yours. I was kind of hoping I could learn some of your secrets while I teach you, but it looks like that will be pretty difficult because, you know,] she waved her front legs in the air for emphasis, [I haven’t got these ‘hands’ you humans use for everything. Not that I’m giving up or anything! I’m definitely going to figure something out!]
«Well, you already told me you are learning to be a mage, so you could always resort to actual magic,» said Zorian. «Fabrication spells are a thing, after all. Granted, you’d have to understand the properties of materials you’re working with and the engineering principles of the things you’re trying to create, but if you’re serious about being a crafter that’s pretty much a must anyway.»
[I’ll be honest and admit I have no idea what you just said,] Novelty said after a brief silence. [But I’m guessing you were trying to be encouraging so thanks!]
«Right,» Zorian sighed. «We’ve gone on a tangent again. Let’s focus on the lessons again.»
[But those lessons are so boring!] Novelty complained. [You already know most of this stuff; it’s just a matter of practicing, and you can’t do that here, anyway. You are practicing, right?]
«Sure am,» Zorian agreed. «I spend most of my classes trying to sense my classmates and other students in the building. Not like I get anything else useful out of classes these days. It’s going pretty well, but I still have to concentrate pretty heavily to achieve any kind of range. I’ve also tried sensing their emotions, but that is still pretty hit and miss. Are you sure no one is going to detect me doing that? Because I’m going to land in pretty hot water if somebody detects me messing with people’s minds.»
[I keep telling you, no one is going to detect anything without invading your mind first,] Novelty assured him. [I totally went and asked other aranea about that, since you keep asking about it, and they confirmed it. Basically, sensing minds and basic empathy doesn’t involve any delving into other people’s minds. I know you don’t believe in the Great Web and all, but imagine a kind of mental plane that permeates everything. Minds create ripples on this mental plane, like stones thrown into a pool of stagnant water, and those who are Open can use these ripples to locate other minds around them and divine some basic facts about them. Stuff like species and their general mood.]
«Huh. That does make sense,» Zorian said. «So sensing minds and empathy are really two aspects of a single ability — that being an ability to perceive this mental plane of yours and interpret the ‘ripples’ propagating through it? Do you know if mental shielding spells have an effect on this?»
[Oh, definitively,] confirmed Novelty. [The basic shielding spells that mages like to use will pretty much ruin your ability to use empathy on them. Too much interference. Detecting them, on the other hand, becomes even easier. Any mind-affecting spells make a mind ‘noisier’ to a psychic, even defensive ones. Especially defensive ones, now that I think of it. Well, except for that one infamous spell called ‘Mind Blank’ that actually causes a mind to disconnect from the Great Web, making a person completely undetectable to mind sensing and utterly immune to mind-affecting magic. Pretty terrifying stuff, that.]
Zorian knew of the spell she was talking about. Mind Blank was well known as a kind of ‘ultimate defense’ against mind magic, but the spell was infamous for causing psychological problems if miscast or used too extensively. A number of mages paranoid about people invading their minds had gone insane after leaving it permanently on, giving it a somewhat poor reputation among mages. There were other, less drastic protections that were sufficient in most cases.
«That’s strange,» Zorian said innocently. «The matriarch told me that no flimsy human magic could shield me against her if she was determined to get me, but here you’re telling me there is a spell I could learn to make myself completely immune to psychic powers.»
[Ah, well, you see…] Novelty fumbled. [She was actually right because, because those are totally different things, yes? A shield is one thing — we can totally batter it down or bypass it. If you take yourself off the Great Web, though, it’s like you aren’t there at all! You first need to sense a mind to connect to it, and if you can’t connect to it—]
«I get it,» Zorian interrupted. «No telepathic link, no aranean mind magic. And you can’t connect to something you can’t sense telepathically. Hmm, clearly the creator of Mind Blank knew a thing or two about psychic powers — it sounds like the spell is designed specifically to defeat them.»
[The idea isn’t that revolutionary,] Novelty grumbled. [A sufficiently skilled psychic can disconnect from the Great Web with some effort. It’s called ‘going dark’. It’s a pretty shady skill, though, mostly used by assassins, thieves and saboteurs. Anyway, the problem isn’t just the Mind Blank — it’s the fact that any mage powerful enough to cast it is also powerful enough to take on the entire aranean Web all on their lonesome. We have ways of dealing with people like that, but I totally can’t tell you because the others would have me dismembered if I said anything about it — since, you know, secret defenses and stuff.]