She repeats the procedure for each cardinal direction: North works but less well, and the other two don't work at all.

Noted! "Okay, so it seems like it's probably related to the linked concepts somehow, either by it affecting what people thought worked or vice versa?"

"Yeah. Dunno how to test either way. And anyway, we got derailed, what were we going to do?"

"A bunch of smaller components and see how they stack – and we were also gonna see if you had to use the elements or if you could use other things, which I'm not sure we actually did, since we just sorta tested the elements in combination with the directions? That might still just be the elements, I mean."

"Okay, so, I'm gonna do one with three parts, Theo, Tyler, and Juniper can do each of them separately, and Maya can keep track of time?"

(And Willow will be here just watching and not having any magic whatsoever.)

(So will Jess! But that's okay.)

"Sure," says Maya.

Tyler nods.

So she composes a spell, with a bit invoking Earth (and mentioning releasing its gravitational hold on her), a bit invoking Wind (and mentioning it giving her lift), and a bit invoking Fire (and mentioning it making her lighter). And she's up.

Juniper recites the standalone bit invoking Wind, and she's also up.

Tyler does the Earth part.

Theo does the Fire part!

Timers: go.

The timers turn out not to be very useful because neither the Fire nor the Earth parts work on their own.

"Huh," says Juniper, floating close to the ceiling.

… Well they can see if there's any discrepancy between the two other times, which there probably will be because there has been with the previous phrasings?

But okay, they probably don't stack neatly. Noted.

"Hm."

"Oh well?" says Theo.

The more elaborate chant does, in fact, last longer than the simpler one, even though the extra parts in themselves don't seem to actually do much. Or anything at all.

"Okay, so this is possibly not just additive."

"Maybe we should try calling upon like, paper or something that might be call-upon-able but is unlikely to add any value even in theoretical combination with wind? See if it's literally just the extra words that aren't repetitions that improve the strength of the spell?"

Sadde tries that. It lasts exactly as much as the previous, paperless version.

And she stumbles on landing, a little bit. "I am kinda tired, write this down, it's way too early for me to be tired, this might be relevant."

Noted!

"Maybe you should continue and see how tired you can get. And if it affects how long the spell lasts."

"Yeah, but we can multitask, so y'all should do stuff too." She repeats the incantation and takes flight again.

"So, apparently the fire and earth things are relevant in themselves to the spell, not just as extra words, since the paper thing added nothing, but they're not... sufficient. Just repeating a sentence many times doesn't help, we should try to figure out a spell made of parts that are all individually potent and that are nonoverlapping but I'm not quite sure how."