This is the most complicated passage I’ve ever read (textbooks included).. yet I understand it. I almost laughed out loud at the end of it, but I was at work so I didn’t. I’ll give you the prelim – Zedd, Nathan, Ann, Nicci, and Richard all have the gift (magic). But only Zedd, Nathan, Ann, and Nicci have all grown up around magic their whole lives; Richard hasn’t. Zedd is First Wizard (highest order), Nathan is a Prophet (can forsee/predict prophecy), Ann and Nicci are both sorceresses, Nicci is especially powerful.

They are currently discussing Prophecy – there are many different ‘forks’ or ‘branches’, and when one branch proves ‘true’, it nullifies other opposing branches deeming them ‘false’. So Zedd, Nathan, and Ann are discussing Prophecy, and have pretty much dedicated their lives to studies such as this. I just love Richard’s response to it all!

“Zedd droned on about overlapping transpositional forks and triple duplexes bound to conjugated roots compromised by precession and sequential, proportional, binary inversions shrouding flawed bifurcations that the formulas revealed which could only be detected through Subtractive levorotatory.

Nathan and Ann stared without blinking. Once, Nathan even gasped. Ann incrementally went ashen. Even Nicci seemed to be listening with uncharacteristic attention.

The unfathomable concepts made Richard’s head spin. He hated that feeling of drowning in incomprehensible information, of trying to keep his head above the dark waters of complete confusion. It made him feel dumb.”