"There are plenty of blood mages I've never seen performing blood magic." Anders is furiously scouring at marshmallow residue burnt onto the sides of an otherwise marvelous glasslike pan. "Like, oh, the ones who killed most of — well, most of everyone at Lake Calenhad, and it took the bloody Hero of Ferelden to clean up after that mess. Never saw old Uldred doing any blood magic, no." He resorts to chipping at the marshmallow with a butter knife. "This stuff is dangerous, Nate," and he does not mean the marshmallow or the pan. "Really, really dangerous. You know when demons find it easiest to get close to you? In your dreams. Because of the Fade. And you know when demons find it easiest to take over your body? When you're doing blood magic, that's when. In dreams, your sleeping mind crosses the Veil; when you do blood magic, you're tearing the fucking Veil, in the real world, the waking world. If you want to tell me that dreaming works differently here, that there is no Fade and there's no Veil between us and spirits, first off, the metaphysics of people dreaming differently in every world may not hold as much water as we'd like to think. Even so, let's say, for the sake of argument, that yes, dreaming works differently in Martin's world, and so do spirits and demons and the dead. Never mind that magic seems to work exactly the same way, only with different names stuck on, magicka instead of mana and Restoration instead of spirit healing and so on and so forth."
(He may be rambling.)
"Never mind all that, let's say: yes! Mages are absolutely at minimal risk of demonic possession and dreams have nothing to do with it, because Tamriel is completely different, and Exsilium is different to that! Well, then, we still have to explain this: who's visiting Martin in his dreams? If the friendly ghost of his father is really hanging about and giving him advice, how did that ghost get here? Did it hitch a ride through the aether on the way to the Initiative Hold, like ... like a child hanging onto the back of a cart? And why wouldn't it have anything better to do than give Martin nightmares? Nightmares are generally not a sign of benevolent spirit visitation. Nightmares are generally bad. And I've not yet begun to touch this idea of twenty-odd ancestors having their souls all mashed together in a necklace thanks to some of that blood magic we're not finding fault with."
no subject
(He may be rambling.)
"Never mind all that, let's say: yes! Mages are absolutely at minimal risk of demonic possession and dreams have nothing to do with it, because Tamriel is completely different, and Exsilium is different to that! Well, then, we still have to explain this: who's visiting Martin in his dreams? If the friendly ghost of his father is really hanging about and giving him advice, how did that ghost get here? Did it hitch a ride through the aether on the way to the Initiative Hold, like ... like a child hanging onto the back of a cart? And why wouldn't it have anything better to do than give Martin nightmares? Nightmares are generally not a sign of benevolent spirit visitation. Nightmares are generally bad. And I've not yet begun to touch this idea of twenty-odd ancestors having their souls all mashed together in a necklace thanks to some of that blood magic we're not finding fault with."