"Maybe. The templars were sick too, but with a different suite of symptoms." She's less concerned with the line between science and magic, frankly, than trying to work out consistent causes and effects. Magic can come to the party if it will behave. "It's just a frustratingly small sample size, really." She takes off her glasses briefly to rub the bridge of her nose.

"And I'm also going to be frank — Riftwatch is the organization's name. We're going to have to do better than 'might be possible' for ways to close rifts without active anchor shards before I'm going to advocate this step for anyone other than the actively enthusiastic. A quick way for everyone to stop wanting to cooperate with rifters is to make the argument that native shardbearers have to keep theirs for the greater good but rifters should all ditch theirs for self-preservation. And I know that's not exactly what you're saying, but it's going to be easy to read that way." She exhales and puts her glasses back on. "You and I have both been here long enough to see the occasional outcropping of why should I care, it's not my world sentiment, and this could appear to dovetail with that in a really unhelpful way if we're not careful."