Construction Post: TOMU 2-40
Oct. 24th, 2011 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerin10/24/2011
5:00-5:30: ~1000 words (+700)
6:15-6:45: ~2000 words (+1000)
[Half hour in. Other than ~300 words carried over from Thursday, I'm just starting this chapter today. This is the second one in a row that I'm doing almost all the actual writing on the publication date, which is not ideal but is doable.]
Amaranth was pleased with how she'd accomplished her reveal. While she'd done pretty much what I'd been hoping she might do, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Looking at the picture of the figure of billowing smoke towering over the cowering human, it was hard to find anything that I could relate to my experiences with Twyla.
Of course, I knew how stories that used a type of being as the villain could "demonize" them. Demons were a legitimate threat to the human race, but stories invested them with horns, leathery wings, pointy tales, and all sorts of other features that were either cribbed from unrelated creatures or simply used as a shorthand for scary. The older stories about elves made took their abilities to move quickly and quietly and basically made them out to be natural teleporters. There might never have been an ifrit who was actually twenty feet tall and radiating menace like that... or if there was, he might have come by some exceptional abilities through magic, as often happened with the most powerful demons.
If you took the figure and scaled it down to somewhere within spitting distance of six feet and gave it more of a solid humanoid frame, I could see a progenitor for Twyla. The horns certainly looked similar, though the ifrit's were quite a bit bigger, even proportionally. The picture wasn't exactly a realistic portrait, but it wasn't cartoony, either. Possibly Professor Bohd knew what ifrit horns looked like in real life from other sources, or had some other way of recognizing one... if not, she might have made one doozy of a rush to judgment.
"So Twyla's part genie, then?" Ian asked.
"I think an ifrit is actually a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about them, but that was about it. "I know they do get conflated with demons and other infernals sometimes, because of the fire and the horns, and no particular affection for mortals... but my grandmother was pretty definite that they were purely elemental."
"Yes, but so are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though like all intelligent elementals, they're somewhat mixed, and djinn seem to be airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones. It's hard to work out comparisons like this across orders, but djinn and ifrits might be more like two different classes of elves than like elves and dwarves."
"And djinn and ifrit... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed. "I mean, in the story of the two genies as I read it, it seemed like the ring guy and the bottle guy just had an ancient grudge against each other."
"Worse than rivals," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that flattened mountains and destroyed a lush paradise in the middle of the desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often... maybe because the scope of the destruction doesn't translate well when it's talking about somewhere so remote to the audience, or maybe because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"That story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. And a certain number on both sides are bound to objects to make them hostages to their free kin's good behavior. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[]
"Not to keep banging the same drum," Ian said, "but I really can't see Bohd being scared out of her wits by an idea that came from a story."
"No, but we're getting all of this basically thirdhand," Amaranth said. "These stories are only the human view of the conflict from the outside, and we can only read them in translation... and of course, all the stories in the Nights were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down in their modern forms. Professor Bohd might have more information that's been handed down on the djinn side of the family, possibly including warnings."
"Then why would she be looking things up in the book?" Ian asked. It was a perfectly sensible objection, but I couldn't really see any flaw in Amaranth's line of thinking.
"Well, her djinn heritage is distant enough that the information might be getting a little... attenuated?" Amaranth suggested. "Or maybe it only consists of general warnings about ifrits, and not anything about what to do if one makes a move against her. It can't be something that comes up very often. There might be permanent populations elsewhere on this plane, but I think ifrits wandering around Magisteria are probably even rarer than bottled ones."
[]
"I would like to keep looking at the book," Amaranth said. "I checked the receipt in the front and it's due back next week... apparently they don't check this one out for any longer than that, which is sad but understandable... but that's more for my own curiosity.
[1 hour in. I was delayed slightly between writing bursts by computer problems, but as a result I had a lot in my head ready to be set down when my laptop came back up, hence the phenomenal word count.]
Amaranth was pleased with how she'd accomplished her reveal. While she'd done pretty much what I'd been hoping she might do, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Looking at the picture of the figure of billowing smoke towering over the cowering human, it was hard to find anything that I could relate to my experiences with Twyla.
Of course, I knew how stories that used a type of being as the villain could "demonize" them. Demons were a legitimate threat to the human race, but stories invested them with horns, leathery wings, pointy tales, and all sorts of other features that were either cribbed from unrelated creatures or simply used as a shorthand for scary. The older stories about elves took their abilities to move quickly and quietly and basically made them out to be natural teleporters. There might never have been an ifrit who was actually twenty feet tall and radiating menace like that... or if there was, he might have come by some exceptional abilities through magic, as often happened with the most powerful demons.
If you took the figure and scaled it down to somewhere within spitting distance of six feet and gave it more of a solid humanoid frame, I could see a progenitor for Twyla. The horns certainly looked similar, though the ifrit's were quite a bit bigger, even proportionally. The picture wasn't exactly a realistic portrait, but it wasn't cartoony, either. Possibly Professor Bohd knew what ifrit horns looked like in real life from other sources, or had some other way of recognizing one... if not, she might have made one doozy of a rush to judgment.
"So Twyla's part genie, then?" Ian said.
"I think an ifrit is actually a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about them, but that was about it. "I know they do get conflated with demons and other infernals sometimes, because of the fire and the horns, and no particular affection for mortals... but my grandmother was pretty definite that they were purely elemental."
"Yes, but so are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though like all intelligent elementals, they're mixed in their composition... not pure fire. Djinn seem to be airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones. It's hard to work out comparisons like this across orders, but djinn and ifrits might be more like two different classes of elves than like elves and dwarves."
"And djinn and ifrit... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed. "I mean, in the story of the two genies as I read it, it seemed like the ring guy and the bottle guy just had an ancient grudge against each other."
"Worse than rivals," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that flattened mountains and destroyed a lush paradise in the middle of the desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often... maybe because the scope of the destruction doesn't translate well when it's talking about somewhere so remote to the audience, or maybe because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"That story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," she said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. And a certain number on both sides are bound to objects to make them hostages to their free kin's good behavior. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
"So what does this mean, if it's true?" Ian said. "I don't mean about the war, I don't really think Twyla's going to be making a blood feud against a teacher. But can she grant wishes?"
"If ifrits are anything like djinn... and they seem to be a lot like them," Amaranth said, "then they have more access to true wishes than most beings do, and use them as a sort of currency in their culture the same way we use gold. A coin is valuable because it's gold, but it will change hands many, many times before it's ever melted down and the gold is used, if that ever comes to pass."
"Why would you buy something with a wish?" Ian asked. "It seems to me you could just wish for whatever you wanted and them some."
"Well, the common denominations are actually in fractions of wishes," Amaranth said. "They might have the equivalent of a bond or personal check that's worth a thousandth of a wish, for instance. The wishes themselves are held by very powerful djinn houses that act as bankers. They pay for services and favors with notes, backed by the wishes in their vaults."
"Still seems silly," Steff said. "What do they gain from circulating tiny, unusable fractions of a wish?"
"An economy," I guessed. I'd never heard of or considered this before, but it did make a kind of sense to me. "Actually using a wish is tricky, and once it's used, it's gone. No one's actually sure where they come from, though the common theories involve stars... wherever they come from, it can't be easy to get more. By basically trading shares in the wishes, they can get the things they need... sustenance, entertainment, comfort in whatever forms those things take... without depleting their stock or risking the consequences of a poorly worded or badly interpreted wish."
Amaranth nodded.
"Exactly," she said. "The thing about three wishes? That's basically a benchmark, like being a millionaire in human terms... not that three wishes are worth exactly a million gold, but I mean, that's the level at which a djinn is considered to be among the rich and powerful, when they own three wishes. If one is bound to help a mortal, they'll do whatever they can to avoid expending an actual wish, including using magic and their own natural abilities, and begging, borrowing, or even stealing. Not all 'genie wishes' that go badly are because of cruel fate twisting someone's words... some are just the results of the djinn in question trying to frame the request in a way that's easier to fulfill."
"Shoddy wishmanship," Steff said. "Frankly, I wouldn't stand for it."
"Not to keep banging the same drum," Ian said, "but I really can't see Bohd being scared out of her wits by an idea that came from a story."
"No, but we're getting all of this basically thirdhand," Amaranth said. "These stories are only the human view of the conflict from the outside, and we can only read them in translation... and of course, all the stories in the Nights were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down in their modern forms. Professor Bohd might have more information that's been handed down on the djinn side of the family, possibly including warnings."
"Then why would she be looking things up in the book?" Ian asked. It was a perfectly sensible objection, but I couldn't really see any flaw in Amaranth's line of thinking.
"Well, her djinn heritage is distant enough that the information might be getting a little... attenuated?" Amaranth suggested. "Or maybe it only consists of general warnings about ifrits, and not anything about what to do if one makes a move against her. It can't be something that comes up very often. There might be permanent populations elsewhere on this plane, but I think ifrits wandering around Magisteria are probably even rarer than bottled ones."
"What kind of 'natural abilities' are we talking about?" Ian asked.
"Well, djinn can change their size and shape... and their whole composition, to an extent. They are a type of composite elemental, like I said, so they have everything within them they need to appear as a human or dwarf or elf... or a rock or tree, for that matter," Amaranth said. "And of course, they can do anything that an intelligent greater elemental can. They can fly, and they can shift almost at will between the mortal and elemental planes, with enough precision to basically teleport. And they have tremendous magical reserves... like demons, but even moreso, because they come by their fire naturally."
"And Twyla's not even an arcanist," I said. It seemed like a waste. I wondered what other classes she was taking this semester, and if any of them would reveal a talent for spell magic.
"Her body looks pretty fleshy to me..." Ian said.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Steff said.
"What I mean is, I can't really see her flying or dissolving into smoke or growing twenty feet tall," Ian said.
"No, I doubt she could do any of those things naturally," Amaranth said. "Even if she's only one generation removed from a full-blooded... or fired... ifrit, she probably would have inherited enough of an earth nature from her human parent to keep her in one form. She'd probably have a strong affinity for any of those things plus elemental magic, if she ever turned her mind towards studying them."
"So... basically, Bohd doesn't have any more reason to fear her than any other nineteen-ish-year-old girl," Ian said. "I mean, if Twyla actually did have it in for her. She could maybe throw fire at her, which is something anyone who's taken one of Bohd's one hundred level courses could do, anyway."
"And not something Professor Bohd would have any problem dealing with," I said. "I'm guessing she realized that after I talked to her... there was a definite change in her posture, from defensive to just kind of tired."
"Wait... do we think Twyla is actually half-ifrit?" Steff asked. "Emphasis on the half, not the ifrit."
"I don't know," Amaranth said. "She looks perfectly human except for the horns, but who knows what an ifrit looks like when it's trying to look more down-to-earth?"
"Okay, I'm only asking because you said djinn are greater than demons when it comes to the raw magical energy because of their fire," Steff said. "And you said that ifrits are all fierier-than-thou, where 'thou' is equal to 'djinn'." She put her hands on my shoulders. "And that means if she is half-ifrit..."
"Then she's got more power than I do," I said. "Which is weird, because I'd think that would have been noticed. I don't know if I would have felt it without looking for it, but one of her professors or someone might have caught on and said something about it, if only to try to steer her towards something more 'hard magic' than divination."
"Maybe her instructors all thought there was nothing particularly wrong with divination," Amaranth said.
"But that's the other thing," I said. "She went into divination to try to find out something about her heritage, but neither she nor anybody else were ever able to learn anything. I know that relatively simple divination could have detected a high energy level, because I can do that as an enchanter."
"So either she doesn't have off-the-chart magical power, or she does but something's hiding it," Ian said.
"What I was actually going to say is that if she has more power than Mack, she might be even more of a walking safety hazard than she is," Steff said. "No offense."
"Hey, my magic has almost never caused any danger or damage," I said.
"Well, she does still have the problem that started this," Amaranth said.
"I would like to keep looking at the book," Amaranth said. "I checked the receipt in the front and it's due back next week... apparently they don't check this one out for any longer than that, which is sad but understandable... but that's more for my own curiosity.
5:00-5:30: ~1000 words (+700)
6:15-6:45: ~2000 words (+1000)
[Half hour in. Other than ~300 words carried over from Thursday, I'm just starting this chapter today. This is the second one in a row that I'm doing almost all the actual writing on the publication date, which is not ideal but is doable.]
Amaranth was pleased with how she'd accomplished her reveal. While she'd done pretty much what I'd been hoping she might do, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Looking at the picture of the figure of billowing smoke towering over the cowering human, it was hard to find anything that I could relate to my experiences with Twyla.
Of course, I knew how stories that used a type of being as the villain could "demonize" them. Demons were a legitimate threat to the human race, but stories invested them with horns, leathery wings, pointy tales, and all sorts of other features that were either cribbed from unrelated creatures or simply used as a shorthand for scary. The older stories about elves made took their abilities to move quickly and quietly and basically made them out to be natural teleporters. There might never have been an ifrit who was actually twenty feet tall and radiating menace like that... or if there was, he might have come by some exceptional abilities through magic, as often happened with the most powerful demons.
If you took the figure and scaled it down to somewhere within spitting distance of six feet and gave it more of a solid humanoid frame, I could see a progenitor for Twyla. The horns certainly looked similar, though the ifrit's were quite a bit bigger, even proportionally. The picture wasn't exactly a realistic portrait, but it wasn't cartoony, either. Possibly Professor Bohd knew what ifrit horns looked like in real life from other sources, or had some other way of recognizing one... if not, she might have made one doozy of a rush to judgment.
"So Twyla's part genie, then?" Ian asked.
"I think an ifrit is actually a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about them, but that was about it. "I know they do get conflated with demons and other infernals sometimes, because of the fire and the horns, and no particular affection for mortals... but my grandmother was pretty definite that they were purely elemental."
"Yes, but so are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though like all intelligent elementals, they're somewhat mixed, and djinn seem to be airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones. It's hard to work out comparisons like this across orders, but djinn and ifrits might be more like two different classes of elves than like elves and dwarves."
"And djinn and ifrit... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed. "I mean, in the story of the two genies as I read it, it seemed like the ring guy and the bottle guy just had an ancient grudge against each other."
"Worse than rivals," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that flattened mountains and destroyed a lush paradise in the middle of the desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often... maybe because the scope of the destruction doesn't translate well when it's talking about somewhere so remote to the audience, or maybe because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"That story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. And a certain number on both sides are bound to objects to make them hostages to their free kin's good behavior. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[]
"Not to keep banging the same drum," Ian said, "but I really can't see Bohd being scared out of her wits by an idea that came from a story."
"No, but we're getting all of this basically thirdhand," Amaranth said. "These stories are only the human view of the conflict from the outside, and we can only read them in translation... and of course, all the stories in the Nights were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down in their modern forms. Professor Bohd might have more information that's been handed down on the djinn side of the family, possibly including warnings."
"Then why would she be looking things up in the book?" Ian asked. It was a perfectly sensible objection, but I couldn't really see any flaw in Amaranth's line of thinking.
"Well, her djinn heritage is distant enough that the information might be getting a little... attenuated?" Amaranth suggested. "Or maybe it only consists of general warnings about ifrits, and not anything about what to do if one makes a move against her. It can't be something that comes up very often. There might be permanent populations elsewhere on this plane, but I think ifrits wandering around Magisteria are probably even rarer than bottled ones."
[]
"I would like to keep looking at the book," Amaranth said. "I checked the receipt in the front and it's due back next week... apparently they don't check this one out for any longer than that, which is sad but understandable... but that's more for my own curiosity.
[1 hour in. I was delayed slightly between writing bursts by computer problems, but as a result I had a lot in my head ready to be set down when my laptop came back up, hence the phenomenal word count.]
Amaranth was pleased with how she'd accomplished her reveal. While she'd done pretty much what I'd been hoping she might do, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Looking at the picture of the figure of billowing smoke towering over the cowering human, it was hard to find anything that I could relate to my experiences with Twyla.
Of course, I knew how stories that used a type of being as the villain could "demonize" them. Demons were a legitimate threat to the human race, but stories invested them with horns, leathery wings, pointy tales, and all sorts of other features that were either cribbed from unrelated creatures or simply used as a shorthand for scary. The older stories about elves took their abilities to move quickly and quietly and basically made them out to be natural teleporters. There might never have been an ifrit who was actually twenty feet tall and radiating menace like that... or if there was, he might have come by some exceptional abilities through magic, as often happened with the most powerful demons.
If you took the figure and scaled it down to somewhere within spitting distance of six feet and gave it more of a solid humanoid frame, I could see a progenitor for Twyla. The horns certainly looked similar, though the ifrit's were quite a bit bigger, even proportionally. The picture wasn't exactly a realistic portrait, but it wasn't cartoony, either. Possibly Professor Bohd knew what ifrit horns looked like in real life from other sources, or had some other way of recognizing one... if not, she might have made one doozy of a rush to judgment.
"So Twyla's part genie, then?" Ian said.
"I think an ifrit is actually a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about them, but that was about it. "I know they do get conflated with demons and other infernals sometimes, because of the fire and the horns, and no particular affection for mortals... but my grandmother was pretty definite that they were purely elemental."
"Yes, but so are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though like all intelligent elementals, they're mixed in their composition... not pure fire. Djinn seem to be airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones. It's hard to work out comparisons like this across orders, but djinn and ifrits might be more like two different classes of elves than like elves and dwarves."
"And djinn and ifrit... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed. "I mean, in the story of the two genies as I read it, it seemed like the ring guy and the bottle guy just had an ancient grudge against each other."
"Worse than rivals," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that flattened mountains and destroyed a lush paradise in the middle of the desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often... maybe because the scope of the destruction doesn't translate well when it's talking about somewhere so remote to the audience, or maybe because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"That story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," she said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. And a certain number on both sides are bound to objects to make them hostages to their free kin's good behavior. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
"So what does this mean, if it's true?" Ian said. "I don't mean about the war, I don't really think Twyla's going to be making a blood feud against a teacher. But can she grant wishes?"
"If ifrits are anything like djinn... and they seem to be a lot like them," Amaranth said, "then they have more access to true wishes than most beings do, and use them as a sort of currency in their culture the same way we use gold. A coin is valuable because it's gold, but it will change hands many, many times before it's ever melted down and the gold is used, if that ever comes to pass."
"Why would you buy something with a wish?" Ian asked. "It seems to me you could just wish for whatever you wanted and them some."
"Well, the common denominations are actually in fractions of wishes," Amaranth said. "They might have the equivalent of a bond or personal check that's worth a thousandth of a wish, for instance. The wishes themselves are held by very powerful djinn houses that act as bankers. They pay for services and favors with notes, backed by the wishes in their vaults."
"Still seems silly," Steff said. "What do they gain from circulating tiny, unusable fractions of a wish?"
"An economy," I guessed. I'd never heard of or considered this before, but it did make a kind of sense to me. "Actually using a wish is tricky, and once it's used, it's gone. No one's actually sure where they come from, though the common theories involve stars... wherever they come from, it can't be easy to get more. By basically trading shares in the wishes, they can get the things they need... sustenance, entertainment, comfort in whatever forms those things take... without depleting their stock or risking the consequences of a poorly worded or badly interpreted wish."
Amaranth nodded.
"Exactly," she said. "The thing about three wishes? That's basically a benchmark, like being a millionaire in human terms... not that three wishes are worth exactly a million gold, but I mean, that's the level at which a djinn is considered to be among the rich and powerful, when they own three wishes. If one is bound to help a mortal, they'll do whatever they can to avoid expending an actual wish, including using magic and their own natural abilities, and begging, borrowing, or even stealing. Not all 'genie wishes' that go badly are because of cruel fate twisting someone's words... some are just the results of the djinn in question trying to frame the request in a way that's easier to fulfill."
"Shoddy wishmanship," Steff said. "Frankly, I wouldn't stand for it."
"Not to keep banging the same drum," Ian said, "but I really can't see Bohd being scared out of her wits by an idea that came from a story."
"No, but we're getting all of this basically thirdhand," Amaranth said. "These stories are only the human view of the conflict from the outside, and we can only read them in translation... and of course, all the stories in the Nights were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down in their modern forms. Professor Bohd might have more information that's been handed down on the djinn side of the family, possibly including warnings."
"Then why would she be looking things up in the book?" Ian asked. It was a perfectly sensible objection, but I couldn't really see any flaw in Amaranth's line of thinking.
"Well, her djinn heritage is distant enough that the information might be getting a little... attenuated?" Amaranth suggested. "Or maybe it only consists of general warnings about ifrits, and not anything about what to do if one makes a move against her. It can't be something that comes up very often. There might be permanent populations elsewhere on this plane, but I think ifrits wandering around Magisteria are probably even rarer than bottled ones."
"What kind of 'natural abilities' are we talking about?" Ian asked.
"Well, djinn can change their size and shape... and their whole composition, to an extent. They are a type of composite elemental, like I said, so they have everything within them they need to appear as a human or dwarf or elf... or a rock or tree, for that matter," Amaranth said. "And of course, they can do anything that an intelligent greater elemental can. They can fly, and they can shift almost at will between the mortal and elemental planes, with enough precision to basically teleport. And they have tremendous magical reserves... like demons, but even moreso, because they come by their fire naturally."
"And Twyla's not even an arcanist," I said. It seemed like a waste. I wondered what other classes she was taking this semester, and if any of them would reveal a talent for spell magic.
"Her body looks pretty fleshy to me..." Ian said.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Steff said.
"What I mean is, I can't really see her flying or dissolving into smoke or growing twenty feet tall," Ian said.
"No, I doubt she could do any of those things naturally," Amaranth said. "Even if she's only one generation removed from a full-blooded... or fired... ifrit, she probably would have inherited enough of an earth nature from her human parent to keep her in one form. She'd probably have a strong affinity for any of those things plus elemental magic, if she ever turned her mind towards studying them."
"So... basically, Bohd doesn't have any more reason to fear her than any other nineteen-ish-year-old girl," Ian said. "I mean, if Twyla actually did have it in for her. She could maybe throw fire at her, which is something anyone who's taken one of Bohd's one hundred level courses could do, anyway."
"And not something Professor Bohd would have any problem dealing with," I said. "I'm guessing she realized that after I talked to her... there was a definite change in her posture, from defensive to just kind of tired."
"Wait... do we think Twyla is actually half-ifrit?" Steff asked. "Emphasis on the half, not the ifrit."
"I don't know," Amaranth said. "She looks perfectly human except for the horns, but who knows what an ifrit looks like when it's trying to look more down-to-earth?"
"Okay, I'm only asking because you said djinn are greater than demons when it comes to the raw magical energy because of their fire," Steff said. "And you said that ifrits are all fierier-than-thou, where 'thou' is equal to 'djinn'." She put her hands on my shoulders. "And that means if she is half-ifrit..."
"Then she's got more power than I do," I said. "Which is weird, because I'd think that would have been noticed. I don't know if I would have felt it without looking for it, but one of her professors or someone might have caught on and said something about it, if only to try to steer her towards something more 'hard magic' than divination."
"Maybe her instructors all thought there was nothing particularly wrong with divination," Amaranth said.
"But that's the other thing," I said. "She went into divination to try to find out something about her heritage, but neither she nor anybody else were ever able to learn anything. I know that relatively simple divination could have detected a high energy level, because I can do that as an enchanter."
"So either she doesn't have off-the-chart magical power, or she does but something's hiding it," Ian said.
"What I was actually going to say is that if she has more power than Mack, she might be even more of a walking safety hazard than she is," Steff said. "No offense."
"Hey, my magic has almost never caused any danger or damage," I said.
"Well, she does still have the problem that started this," Amaranth said.
"I would like to keep looking at the book," Amaranth said. "I checked the receipt in the front and it's due back next week... apparently they don't check this one out for any longer than that, which is sad but understandable... but that's more for my own curiosity.