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Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
Flicker at Whateley
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point_b
"I don't love having to inconvenience people, and I've gone and gotten used to being able to flicker anywhere I please on an eighth of a second's notice. I'll deal."
"Well, Circe can open the door from a distance with minimal effort, since it is of her design. She may be your best point of contact for the door anyway, as she has a great deal of free time."
"Well, if there's nothing else, I won't detain you."
point_b
"Thanks for the help."
Armed with her shiny new card, Bella goes about her business. She gets a phone and a laptop and an alarm clock and textbooks for her upcoming classes and a backpack and a wallet. She reads books and the internet, and eats cafeteria food, and says hi to the people she's met and various others, and bugs them for entry into the magic library to read more books. She practices meditation (she gets into the habit of doing so after lunch and dinner, when she's already managed to wrench herself away from reading for a moment), since that has apparently already given her a wee smidge of magic and can't hurt. She talks to Alli, and through Alli, her parents; she gets that letter to the Gemini schools about her educational arrangements written and sent.
She completes her homework assignment. (There is so much magic!) Eventually, she narrows it down. Her basic, cheap intro spell list for herself contains:
1) A silencing illusion, which will work to make her inaudible to people besides Alli, when she twines, unless she very much misses her guess;
2) A light illusion, for obvious flashlight-replacement purposes and simple sillhouette-drawing;
3) Small fire conjuration;
4) Small fire extinguishment;
5) Freezing quantities of water;
6) Calling up small breezes;
7) A spell to braid hair (Alli insisted, she thinks it's hilarious);
8) An illusion that will temporarily blank a page of notebook from view;
9) A dish-doing spell (too specialized to be really useful, also an Alli suggestion);
10) A spell to clear dust off a surface, which Bella strongly suspects will also work on ash.
Her ambitions list - since it turns out that defensive mind magic mostly takes the form of "if you get the hang of wrangling your Essence this naturally comes with the side effect of being able to win at defense in mental combat" - includes several healing spells, the immortality Circe mentioned, interdimensional transit, wards, a more involved defensive measure for her notebooks, and how to make cut-anything blades and unbreakable cables she'll be able to sell for industrial uses if she runs out of arbitrage to do.
Armed with this result, she pops to just outside Circe's doors precisely one minute early on Sunday morning.
Armed with her shiny new card, Bella goes about her business. She gets a phone and a laptop and an alarm clock and textbooks for her upcoming classes and a backpack and a wallet. She reads books and the internet, and eats cafeteria food, and says hi to the people she's met and various others, and bugs them for entry into the magic library to read more books. She practices meditation (she gets into the habit of doing so after lunch and dinner, when she's already managed to wrench herself away from reading for a moment), since that has apparently already given her a wee smidge of magic and can't hurt. She talks to Alli, and through Alli, her parents; she gets that letter to the Gemini schools about her educational arrangements written and sent.
She completes her homework assignment. (There is so much magic!) Eventually, she narrows it down. Her basic, cheap intro spell list for herself contains:
1) A silencing illusion, which will work to make her inaudible to people besides Alli, when she twines, unless she very much misses her guess;
2) A light illusion, for obvious flashlight-replacement purposes and simple sillhouette-drawing;
3) Small fire conjuration;
4) Small fire extinguishment;
5) Freezing quantities of water;
6) Calling up small breezes;
7) A spell to braid hair (Alli insisted, she thinks it's hilarious);
8) An illusion that will temporarily blank a page of notebook from view;
9) A dish-doing spell (too specialized to be really useful, also an Alli suggestion);
10) A spell to clear dust off a surface, which Bella strongly suspects will also work on ash.
Her ambitions list - since it turns out that defensive mind magic mostly takes the form of "if you get the hang of wrangling your Essence this naturally comes with the side effect of being able to win at defense in mental combat" - includes several healing spells, the immortality Circe mentioned, interdimensional transit, wards, a more involved defensive measure for her notebooks, and how to make cut-anything blades and unbreakable cables she'll be able to sell for industrial uses if she runs out of arbitrage to do.
Armed with this result, she pops to just outside Circe's doors precisely one minute early on Sunday morning.
Circe opens the door, which in addition to its usual lettering, reads STUDY HABITS MAKETH THE WIZARD. "Good morning. I see you've kept up with your meditation; excellent. Do come in."
"I have been observing the flows of magic for several thousand years; at this point, they hold few secrets for me. Add to that the fact that your Essence looks much better controlled than it did on Tuesday, and that thousands of years' experience at reading faces is well up to the task of telling a student who has done her homework from one who has not."
point_b
"I did do my homework." Bella presents it, neatly handwritten, two sheets of paper. There are citations for where she found the spells. "Am I meditating more or less a good amount? Will I hit diminishing marginal returns if I step it up, have I already, what's the recommended dose?"
"Diminishing marginal returns, not really. Well, at this point, maybe, since it's more about learning the techniques, but you're at a good amount. If you maintain this level you'll be in shape. And good work on the spell lists, naturally."
point_b
"Thanks! What's on the agenda today? I have a question if we aren't getting down to other extremely time-consuming business right away."
"Some work actively controlling the flow of your Essence, and then seeing if you can be coached through a basic spell. Of these, your light illusion is likely the best to start with. Easily modified, simple in its most basic form, and a good introduction to the general principles of illusion. You can ask your question before we get started."
point_b
"When people do interdimensional transit how do they locate the target world - specifically, can people find my world in particular on purpose without, well, me, or stuff that I've interacted with?"
"Not usually; it would require closer specification than would be practical to say 'the world which produced Bella Swan'. However, your world has certain distinctive features, so it would be fairly trivial to look through nearby planes for Earthlike planets with a massive caldera in place of Yellowstone."
point_b
"Planes have nearby-ness? In how many dimensions - or is it even transitive? Are nearer planes more similar?"
"To understand questions of planar nearness in any real sense, I recommend fifteen years of graduate-level metaphysics. I believe that nearer planes are generally more similar, but it's not an absolute rule. One of our 'nearest' dimensions, for instance, is an endless plain of black sand full of crystalline demons. A popular vacation spot for diabolists, I believe."
point_b
"Okay. Is looking at nearby planes usually pretty easy, do you mean literally looking at them?"
"No, and yes. The spell itself easier than transport, but it's far from simple. And it is a visual scry."
"Well enough. Now, for the lesson. The first thing to keep in mind about magic is that it is a mental task completely unlike any you have done before. It's possible to guide a student through it verbally, but there's not much reason to do that when there's an easier alternative available. What I'm going to do is the magical equivalent of taking your hands and moving them for you. It will feel very, very strange, but it should leave you with an impression of what you should do. All right?"
Circe's eyes glow, and her hands move in intricate patterns. A tendril of light appears between them and slithers over to tap Bella's forehead, extracting a similar, thinner strand from her. The strand, still attached to Bella, is pulled and twisted through the air, and as it moves Bella is left with an impression of... something. That magic is hers, and she's not the one making it do this, but she could, and she should be, and it makes sense. It's like seeing a pen in someone's hands and knowing that she could use it to draw.
After a few seconds of magically doodling, Circe inserts the magic back into Bella's head. "Do you understand?"
After a few seconds of magically doodling, Circe inserts the magic back into Bella's head. "Do you understand?"
"Excellent. Now that you know what magic is, we can discuss it in its particulars."
A lesson in magic ensues! This session appears to mostly be oriented around securing Bella's comprehension of the basics of magic use- the idea of pulling Essence from within, the construction of a spell as a sort of mental sculpting, and the nature of a spell in and of itself. All very theoretical, all very fun.
A lesson in magic ensues! This session appears to mostly be oriented around securing Bella's comprehension of the basics of magic use- the idea of pulling Essence from within, the construction of a spell as a sort of mental sculpting, and the nature of a spell in and of itself. All very theoretical, all very fun.