Comment by Chrysalis

Well, now I'm REALLY curious as to what the rune-activation phrases sound like! Would overhearing Xira's phrase here be enough for Sev to guess that Xira is also a Runewriter? Unless he was too distracted to notice, which seems likely.

Come to think of it, would mind magic even work on an aberrant? We know that facestealers are intelligent (or at least are capable of convincingly impersonating intelligent beings, which might not be exactly the same thing), but I have no idea what would happen if Xira tried to interact with one's mind. After all, we saw what happened when Sev tried to combine aberrants and shapeshifting. True, we don't actually know for sure that that was what got him stuck with the tentacles, but maybe it's just as well that Xira wasn't able to finish whatever he was trying to do here.

There are very few stories I've read that make me this curious about the mechanics of the magic in them.

Oh yeah, and there's an army of aberrants outside, that's probably important too.

Reply by Glew

Come to think of it. Have we ever learnt how aberrants are "born"? Do they just pop out of nowhere? Do they multiply? Do runewriters turn into aberrants? Or are they, I dunno, "stray magic from a miscast" or whatever?

Reply by Shazzbaa

Chrysalis:
Hmmm.... the words don't sound, like, inherently magical -- it's just a phrase in a forgotten language, and most runewriters don't actually know that language. I'd compare it to, if you know a single phrase in latin, and somebody else yells another phrase in latin. There's a possibility that if you're not in the middle of something you miiiiight be like "wait, was that latin?" but more likely you'd be like "oh hey I didn't know you spoke [insert common romantic language here]" because you don't know enough of latin to immediately recognise it without obvious context.

Glew:
We have not learned how/whether aberrants are born! The aberrant hunters originally believed Severian was becoming an aberrant (though they appear to have changed their minds since then), and Severian has insisted that doesn't happen ever. But that's all we've heard on it!