[ She moves them along, and John feels the first jolt from the chair, mild enough that it rouses nothing more than a tightening of his fingers and a dark twist of his expression. It passes like a cloud over the sun, and he returns again to a distantly patient baseline.

So that's the game. At least it's straightforward. ]

Learning more of magic... if I'm to be here for years more [ which he says very mildly, as though he doesn't regard it as active imprisonment and damned inconvenient, ] that'll be the thing. There's plenty to learn about the local system - we have very few working theories on the fundamentals.

[ Corruption and all the curses aren't, after all, eccentricities that come and go like weather. It's all transplanted by an eldritch invading force, which really seems the thing to keep in mind. ]