[Talent draw in progress... Congratulations, Host, you have obtained the talent: Convergence of All Arts.]
[Convergence of All Arts: Analyze any directly observable magical effect and reconstruct its underlying principles, perceiving straight through to its essence. Effectiveness scales with magical foundation. At its peak, allows the user to claim an opponent's magic as their own.]
Another research-type talent?
Tom mused over it privately, though he didn't dive into studying his new gift right away. Something more pressing came first.
"You've done well, Joan."
Tom kept up his head-patting routine, and Joan leaned into it obligingly, eyes narrowing to slits, her ponytail swaying back and forth like a docile little cat.
"The Lord never plays favorites based on talent alone. But He does look with special favor on those who are diligent and devout." Tom deliberately invoked the Conviction Amplified talent Joan herself had granted him, channeling something like holy radiance to work on her.
The village girl from Orléans gazed up at him with even deeper reverence and devotion. If her Approval hadn't already been capped at a hundred, it would have spiked wildly in that instant.
Ravenclaw and Ariana watched the scene unfold in stunned silence, both of them struck by how absurdly ridiculous it all looked.
Tom had genuinely started playing the part of a false prophet, and Joan believed every single word out of his mouth without question. It was almost too pitiful to watch.
After a few more rounds of gentle manipulation, Joan threw herself back into her studies like she'd been given a shot of pure adrenaline, clutching the Riddle Bible like a dictionary, working her way word by word through the basic reading material Ariana had picked out for her.
"Tom..." Ariana wrapped her arms around the young man's arm, worry creasing her brow. "I feel like something's not right about this. The more she learns, the more she's bound to realize you're not actually some... divine son. What happens then? Won't she resent you for it?"
She'd almost said love turning to hate, but this wasn't quite love, was it. It was faith. She'd read once that the collapse of faith could be even more devastating than that.
Tom shook his head with a smile. "It won't happen. No matter how much she learns, Joan's fundamental worldview won't shift much at all. Besides, who's to say the Lord she believes in can't simply be me?"
Ariana went still. Ravenclaw, meanwhile, wore an expression somewhere between amusement and disbelief.
That line landed exactly right with her. If the world truly held no gods, then a wizard might as well be one. If a person couldn't even let themselves imagine such a thing, if their mind stayed shackled by conventional limits, then even with real talent for spellcasting, they were doomed to mediocrity, never once breaking past their own boundaries.
But her amusement didn't last a second longer.
Tom, in the middle of talking with Ariana, shot Ravenclaw a quick, private wink. She read the message perfectly, let out a short huff, and walked out of the room.
...
Late that night.
Having fulfilled the terms of the wager, Tom emerged from Ravenclaw's garden villa looking thoroughly pleased with himself, even if he'd technically been kicked out sideways rather than walking out upright. Still, he'd gotten the job done.
He'd discovered that Ravenclaw genuinely had a soft spot for admiration, of all things. Before, he'd assumed simply being crowned with authority would push her Approval past fifty, but he'd stalled right at the threshold. Today, one small victory over her, plus getting his hands on her for a bit, and apparently that had been enough to clear the bar entirely.
Tom checked the Approval meter.
[Ravenclaw: 58]
Eight minutes of touching, eight points gained. If he'd just dragged it out a little longer, could he have maxed her out entirely on the spot?
He let himself entertain the thought for a moment, though he knew better. Not only did Approval grow harder to earn the higher it climbed, he genuinely wasn't sure his hand would have survived the attempt.
"Maybe I need to defeat her completely to max out her Approval."
The young man muttered to himself, and found, unexpectedly, a fresh motivation to grow stronger.
...
He made his way to the arena and began testing out his newly acquired Convergence of All Arts talent.
"Bloom."
He murmured the spell, and a cluster of bauhinia blossoms unfurled in his palm, fragrance spreading through the air. Through his magic sight, he'd always been able to watch the process by which raw magic transformed into a spell's effect. But now, with Convergence layered over it, Tom found he could perceive far more than before.
"An exchange..."
A sudden clarity struck him. The true nature of spellcasting was an exchange, or perhaps more accurately, a sacrifice: offering up magic charged with emotion and will, surrendering it to the world itself, in order to achieve the desired result.
Magic was the offering, and at the same time, it was the channel of communication, the currency the world itself recognized as valid.
The realization overturned some of his older assumptions and opened up entirely new ones. Tom, unable to contain his eagerness, ran through several more experiments, even slipping into his transcendent state and a kind of accelerated cognitive flow, stretching that single moment of insight out as long as he possibly could.
By the next morning, he strode into the Great Hall looking thoroughly refreshed, glanced over at a cheerfully oblivious Daphne, then turned to find Astoria a little wilted from the sudden change in weather. He handed the silver-haired girl a warming potion before deciding that Hermione would make his next experimental partner.
The Miss Know-It-All never turned down an opportunity to learn something new, so after Care of Magical Creatures let out that afternoon, the two of them headed into the Forbidden Forest.
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