"More or less, though it is a bit more complex than that," she agreed. "Secondly. Flows exist in a state of partial independence from the Weave, and from other flows from different sphere, but they actively merge with flows of the same sphere. Once they are drawn from a strand, you cannot use other flows to try to affect them without considrable danger. In effect, you cannot mop up water with more water. There are indirect ways to do this, however. You can unravel another Sorcerer's weaving by trying to control his flows directly, or attack the Sorcerer directly with Sorcery to make him stop, or attempt to cut that Sorcerer off from the Weave, but you could not send flows out to untie his flows. If you do, the like flows simply merge, you get a tangled mess, and it often explodes as a wildstrike. Thirdly. Because the flows cannot affect flows, and like flows merge and disrupt themselves, that means that we cannot weave flows upon ourselves. When we are weaving, we are living extensions of the Weave, but we are only filled with certain flows, and the flows of the weave we are creating interfere with the power of the flows we are holding inside. We cannot heal ourselves, or weave any weaves that would affect ourselves. The flows merely enter us, touch the power within of the same sphere, then rush out down the flow and go back to the strand. We lose the power from inside, which takes away our ability to push it against the weave, and then it simply fizzles out. Fortunately, any attempt to weave flows on ourselves simply fizzle, and do not form wildstrikes. That prohibition starts at your skin and goes inward. It also means that you cannot weave any weaves against or for another Sorcerer who is actively in contact with the Weave. But mind you, that means those weaves that affect the Sorcerer's body directly. Sorcerer's Fire can burn a Sorcerer just as quickly as it can burn anyone else, because it is an external effect that comes into contact with that Sorcerer."

"What would happen if you try? Wouldn't it kind of ruin his spell?"

Dolanna smile broadly. "Yes and no," she told him. "The energy you are exerting against him is pushing towards him. Once it comes into contact with him, it comes down to who is stronger. If the attacker is more powerful than the target, he can reverse the energy of the flow and drain off any energy inside him, or he can pump power into the victim, exceed his ability to hold it, and force him to release his touch on the Weave in order to avoid being Consumed. If the target is more powerful, then he can block off that flow, literally drawing in so strongly that the attacker cannot overcome the force. Or he can simply allow the attacker to feed him that power without drawing in. If the target can hold more than the attacker, then the attacker could never force the target to let go of the Weave. Either form weakens the target's ability to weave flows, for he must dedicate a portion of his attention and his power to controlling the attacker's energy, but it cannot stop him."

"Then why can't a Sorcerer do weaves on himself?" he pressed. "All he has to do is resist his own attempt to drain, or feed off of the power he's trying to push into himself."

"Ah, but in both instances, there is a catch," she told him. "If you try to feed off of the power you channel into yourself, then what happens when you stop drawing from the Weave?"

"You-ohh," he said. "You cut off your own power, and then your spell fizzles."

"Precisely. No matter how you try to balance the feeding with the restraining, they will always cancel one another."

"What if you only try to feed off of a little of your energy?"

"What indeed? You should already know the answer, dear one."

He thought about it a long moment. "I guess you can't," he said. "If you try to feed off of only a portion of the energy, you're working harder to feed yourself a little bit of power that you get back. So you have to make it stronger, which makes you have to cut back on drawing power, but you can't do that, because if you do you lose that power to make weaves. You could never put enough power into it to make it work."

"A bit long winded, but essentially correct, Tarrin," she commended. "No matter how you try to balance it, you cannot get back more energy than what you are expending on yourself. To be absolutely technical, you can weave spells on yourself using this technique, but the flow of power would be like a slow drip of water trying to fill up the bathing pool. You would grow a span of hair by the time the weave showed any signs of effect. And since it is a sustained process, you would exhaust yourself and have to stop long before you so much as dampened the pool's bottom."

Tarrin laughed. "I guess that make it a bit inefficient."

"The draining aspect is just a little bit more difficult to understand. When you try to drain from yourself, you are reversing the energy flow through the strand, but you are still expending that energy to enact the drain. Remember when you asked me about trying to overcharge a weave? Where does that energy go?"

"Well," he said, thinking about a moment. Then he thought about it some more. "Doesn't it dissipate back into the Weave?"

"Yes, that is what happens. You do not get that energy back. It disspates into the Weave. Think about it, dear one. You are expending energy to drain energy away from yourself. You lose that energy, and then must replace it with more energy, which is used to try to drain away that same energy. You are pushing and pulling on something at the same time, and when you do that, it does not move. The harder you push, the harder the counter will pull. And all the while, you are drawing more and more energy that is doing nothing but making you draw more energy. It is a feedback cycle that causes you to eventually let go of the Weave to avoid injuring yourself."

"Oh, I see," he said.

"That is not an absolute, Tarrin. There are certain instances when a Sorcerer can weave flows on himself, and that is when he is holding power from all seven Spheres. When he, in effect, becomes a strand rather than a flow. And that can only be done using Ritual Sorcery, because the sphere of Confluence, or green, will only draw out under extreme magical power. To even be able to touch Confluence takes considerable power."

"I take it you don't know why that works that way either?"

"Not yet," she smiled.

"I have a question."

"Go ahead, dear one."

"You said that flows can't affect each other. Well then, how do weaves with more than one flow produce an effect? I mean, they can't affect each other."

She laughed. "You are making me work, dear one," she chided, "but you ask very insightful questions. Each flow cannot affect each other, but they can affect the energies that each one releases. The way a weave is woven together is critical to the working of the weave. The weaving dictates how, when, and at what strengths the energies of individual flows are released, and that very intricate process is what welds those energies together to form a specific effect." She raised her hand again, and he saw two flows, red and yellow, flow out of a strand and merge over her hand. This time, the merging was very slow, unlike the first time, and he saw the specific way that the flows were tied in with each other. Then the flows generated an effect, a small ball of pale white light that hovered over her palm, fed by two separate tendrils that linked it back to the strand. Those two tendrils drifted towards each other, touched, then wrapped around each other to form a twisted cord of sorts, although each tendril was most definitely separate. Just like the strands in a rope were individual cords woven together to form a larger one. "Do you see?"

"Yes," he said, studying it.

"That is a common effect. Separate flows that feed the same weave do that. Again, we do not know exactly why."