This isn't her first brush with the whole 'anyone can learn magic' concept - that's how it works where Spike's from - but it still throws her a bit. She can never decide if such an egalitarian approach would make things better or worse, practically speaking. In Spike's universe, the fact that anyone could do magic seems to be tempered by the fact that a significant percentage of the population doesn't even believe it exists.

What would the Wars have been like, if magic was as accessible as algebra?

Maybe her dubiousness is just a side effect of growing up in a universe where magic makes weird demands and goes rogue and isn't always biddable. It's hard to get all starry-eyed over the thought of some magical utopia when you can't even buy a charm without knowing, in the back of your mind, that it's probably going to go a bit nuts one day and have to be taken out back behind the proverbial woodshed.

Castor's universe isn't sounding that spartan on the egalitarian front, anyway. Setting aside the question of why something as basic as fire would only be available to the elite - he's carrying a lighter, after all - she gets the gist.

"So it's just about money, not the physical properties of the material?" she asks. Gods, this is the nerdiest conversation she's had in a while. "Like, when I transmute things - when anyone back home transmutes things - some materials are easier to work with than others. If it's denser, or if it's been heavily worked by people already, it's more stubborn. So, like, cloth is easier than stone, and a stone carving is harder than an unaltered rock."

"Strap in," Dom mutters to Persis. Then, to the group at large, "Should we sit down or something?"

Sunshine gives him an unimpressed look. "Like it makes any difference to you."