[IMG]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u79/SharpshooterJack/markerGerald_zps253683a8.png[/IMG]
[h3]Duchy of Pelgaid, secluded pond[/h3]
“It probably won’t be that bad,” Gerald felt the need to point out in regards to Jillian’s family potentially having to move to escape their reputation as one that had fostered a witch and a murderer. He could still make no promises as to whether they would be hurt, but... at least they were unlikely to get killed. Hopefully Jillian had managed to wipe out the witch-hunters in their last encounter, in which case no one would be left to do anything too sinister and dastardly against her family. “It would have been worse in any other duchy, actually; in Zerul they at least have plenty of mages around that can confirm that their goods aren’t cursed, so once the official search is over most people will probably not be too bothered.”
At least Dennis Remdal and whatever other noblemen and politicians included in the list of subjects that could have staged the destruction of the Voice of Reason were highly unlikely to do anything. [I]Especially[/I] Dennis, who tried so hard to seem nice and be popular, and who aimed to eventually fully take over the duchy once Marcus died and his only heir had been married off to Pelgaid... or who, at the very least, would want his son to do it.
Despite all their flaws, these people were not stupid; they were not going to endanger themselves just to hurt what was potentially the last surviving member of a small revolutionary group.

After a bit of silence during which Gerald drained the remainder of his tea, Jillian appeared to return to the topic of necromancy, causing the man to raise an eyebrow attentively, only for his eyes to be drawn downward when she stretched her legs out in front of her, which made him quickly avert his gaze from her entirely. While it might have seemed like a bashful thing to do it was nothing of the sort, really; under most circumstances the withered little man would likely have enjoyed the sight of her bare shapely legs as much as most healthy men and would have gawked at them shamelessly, but... her feet were naked. [I]That[/I] was why he looked away.
Gerald found bare feet [I]repulsive[/I].
“It is about that,” he confirmed her assumption about necromancy, “but... can you tell what your energy is doing?” Experimentally he set aside his cup and held up his hands in front of himself with the palms facing one another and, imperceptibly, started weaving tiny flows of magical energy between the two like threads in a rope. By the time he lowered his hands again he realized that he had just been sitting there staring at his hands for more than ten seconds, too focused on casually demonstrating the subtlety of magical energy to continue speaking.
“Reanimation isn’t the skill you really want to learn as much as a means to an end. Your magical senses won’t get sharper from nothing, and manipulating energy within your own soul is a different experience from manipulating it remotely, so being able to sense one sharply doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to do the other.”

Realizing that he probably was not making too much sense to someone not a necromancer or a warden – or even a sniffer, for that matter, though they were ironically blind to their own energy – Gerald scratched his chin and heaved a sigh. Then he had an idea.
“Let me try again. When we sense magic, you and I probably sense the same thing, only I know how to interpret it better and analyze it in greater detail. That extends to your own magic, too; you need to understand how your energy feels and behaves before you can learn to tighten control of it and recognize patterns in the energy of others. But on its own...” He reached his hands out in front of him again, only this time grasping an invisible object and making vaguely circular motions with both of them, closing and opening his fingers with even intervals so that it happened the same time with every circular motion. “...you can thrust energy into the air and make it do stuff to your hearts content, but you won’t actually gain much insight into what you’re doing or how well you’re managing. Corpses...” He stopped gesturing pointlessly with his hands and picked up his staff from beside him, bringing it up in front of himself and resuming the hand-motions from before, only this time using them to nimbly twirl the staff around. “...are puppets that can tell you what your energy is doing. You learn what it feels like to bend limbs the right way, then how to coordinate the limbs, then to control facial expressions. Animating a corpse is a way to see your energy, and once you know how fine control feels, you won’t need to see it anymore.”
He stopped twirling his staff around and made to put it away, but then stopped himself as he stared at it, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “Actually... maybe we won’t need corpses. Omni responds to and changes according to magical energy; maybe we could use it instead.”