He grabs four pieces of paper, each with a word corresponding to an element, and says, "Earth grant me stability, fire grant me power, water grant me flexibility, wind grant me flight!"

The four pieces of paper are consumed by invisible, heatless fire, and leave no ashes. And Sadde's flying.

He gives a long, low whistle.

"What else can that do? Mind if I try to copy?"

"Copy away. I've been running some small tests, haven't tried to see what-all can be achieved via this. It's not very efficient, this spell lasts about a minute, and I think the mana cap grows with use but there are diminishing returns."

So he eagerly solicits instructions, writes them down, and copies.

Sadde explains that it's just a matter of composing a chant and willing it, and that the same "willing it" action can be used to imbue written words with magic that can then be consumed by spells. He tried elements, and celestial bodies, and cardinal directions, and apparently all chants and spells need to reference something, like call on elements or the moon or what-have-you.

"Well - here - make an Excel table and we can keep track while I try some things..."

And he pretty much repeats Sadde's chants that got confirmed results.

He gets the same effects.

Same strength, inasmuch as they can measure this? Amount of water moved from one cup to another?

Yep, as far as the actual effect goes they seem to get the same results.

"That's a little odd, I expected us to have some measurable difference in strength. The cards locking me down, sort of, or you having been at it for longer."

"Well, there was that mana limit I ran into, maybe that's where the difference'd be?"

"Wait a while, then do an endurance test?"

"We could just continue going down the list, I made it in the order I tried stuff so if you reach the mana cap at the same point I did..."

"But I already repeated some of it. And did you keep track of how long it took you to do things? A controlled test this would not be."

"I totally kept track of how long it took me to do things!" he says, offering up a notebook with detailed information of this kind.

"Buuuut I already repeated some of it. I still need to finish your list either way but it wouldn't be a good test."

"Not to mention the part where you get more mana when you do magic."

"Hm." Back to running through that list. He's very careful with anything that mentions fire.

It turns out he has significantly less mana than Sadde. Or, at least, that magic costs more. It is very noticeable.

Kind of expected that. "Kero, any idea how long it takes to get back to full?"

"Not really, I don't think Clow ever ran out..."

"Something else to attempt to measure, then. We'll work it out."

"It's kind of annoying to measure, though. If I don't miss my guess, we get that weird feeling when a spell would take us to negative mana, but doesn't seem to change with how negative."

"We can establish a rough ratio by repeating two different things until we run dry on two different days. Make the units 'breezes'. If we don't decide that's too much of a waste of time."

"It sounds like it ought to be done eventually, but if we get more mana whenever we perform magic..."