"That is the general consensus of Thorne's academics. Emotions are unpredictable, Gods are untrustworthy, and Technology too simple." To Bay, each of these wasn't a weakness, they were a variable strength. Each did something unique, the tradeoff obvious that no one was better than the other. Academic Magic required wrote memorization of each spell, they were exact and repeated as New Magic. But instead of keeping them in your pocket they had to all be in your head.

"Academic Magic is spoken in a dead version of Thorne's local language. With more exacting pronunciation needs than just- words. Since I can't hear, I need help getting it right." The hand gestures and motions of the dance-like portions were easy, that's a language she spoke natively, that part she could do after only one or two repetitions. And then the high mages refused to help her study the pronunciations of words she can't learn through lip reading because she has no context to repeat them. "Still working out how I bypass that and shut everyone else up."