"It's still a potential threat," Soma said, frowning slightly. Lingormr picked things up so quickly here it was sometimes easy to forget just how far in the past he'd lived, formal manner of speech or not. "Y--the boy proved as much. If you have a good weapon, why limit it like that?"

Still, Lingormr's explanation went a good way towards explaining just why he'd felt so rejected for being a scholar of magic in his village. She thought, fleetingly, of afternoons spent in front of the television, listening to the lieutenant colonel explain the political maneuverings of countries she'd barely even heard of before she'd left the HEA. He'd always made an effort to include her in the discussion, ignoring her purpose as an unthinking weapon.

She closed her eyes against the sudden pang of homesickness. "Where I come from, it's important to learn everything you can about the world, even if you're just a soldier. You can't fight anyone well unless you understand how they think."