Eventually they get back to Theo's place, and Tyler walks in through the door, and then he proceeds to stand at the edge of the room.
It seems like he's doing this a lot right now.
He sighs.
"I don't know," says Theo. "I'm not really sure what to do with him so I think he might just end up, I don't know, taking care of himself or whatever, he seems like he's not gonna want me to interfere, and– you don't have to go home yet?" He shrugs. "I mean, you can, and it's kinda late, so – I don't know."
She will be! And they'll have morning registration, then two hours of lessons, then a twenty-minute assembly on the importance of looking out for one another and a reference to the teachings of Jesus (because it's a Church of England school, such fun) and then they'll have morning break!
Theo does not approach her during this twenty-minute interval.
"Alright, I guess. Juniper and I talked a lot, except not really because we shared memories until yesterday morning so there wasn't a whole lot to talk about except me asking her about stuff and how she was different from me and we tried to do magic but it didn't really work also we were talking to Maya she's nice."
"Should I call wind? Wind, make me weightless and lift me up, give me the ability to fly!" she proclaims, and this causes her to lift about ten centimetres above the floor. "...okay, not as good as the card, is this a general thing, how did Clow even create the cards if we're limited like this?" She hovers forward a bit.
What, really, no 'why on earth'? "I have no idea, I was mainly just meaning to give it extra strength instead of being thematically appropriate, but perhaps the things can do the opposite of their themes too, and since Earth is about the ground, and you want to fly, perhaps it'd be able to get rid of the annoying thing, like reduce gravity on you or something."
Shrug.
"So, maybe if we weren't inside and worried about fire, you could get that involved too? Could result in more freedom of movement or greater speed or something. Also the 'thee' thing might be affecting stuff, so maybe we should try it without that and see if modern English works differently."
Tyler: flies!
"If it's just long chants does content actually matter much? If I say, for instance, Wind, grant me flight, grant me flight, grant me flight, o Wind, grant me flight, make me fly, grant me flight, grant me flight..." She repeats this a few more times until she's been speaking for longer altogether than Theo did.
And she starts hovering a few inches above the floor.
"Yeah, chant length is not enough."
"Wind, I, Sadde, command thee to lend Jess aid and grant her lift! Earth, I, Sadde, command thee to release your bonds over her! Under the guidance of the Moon, breaking the shackles of the Sun! Give her flight!"
She lifts!
...she can't fly with it, however. She's immobile in the air.
"I don't," she shrugs. "Of all the possible ways magic could've turned out to work, 'say what you mean out loud while invoking arbitrary bronze age concepts' is a pretty specific one, and we had only very slight evidence that it would work at all. I suggested it entirely on a fit of whimsy."
It was Maya, but Sadde would be forgiven for not remembering. "I've just noted down the things that you've said and what sorts of results you got – like, longer phrases work better, repetition doesn't work, targeting non-magical people seems to give you control over how it affects them but that might just be targeting people who aren't you, calling two elements maybe works better than one, speaking in a language that isn't your own only really works if you know it?"
"Maybe we should see if how long it takes to say the spell affects the power – I mean, currently we've tested things with the same words, but if you rush it through or if you drag it out, does it affect the power of the spell? I'd guess not, because of the repetition thing, but should probably test it just in case."
"Okay, so it's just what is said, not how fast it's said. Tyler tried murmuring it earlier and it seemed to work just fine, Theo you can try that, and I can try just saying it out loud and seeing whether it changes from person to person."
She recites the spell again and is flying.
And it turns out that murmuring it is no worse or better than saying it out loud, and Sadde's spell also lasts the same.
"Okay, so it's looking like this is a property of the sentence itself. I wonder if we need to actually say it out loud?" She tries just thinking the sentence really hard... "Doesn't seem to work."
"Alright, need to be spoken out loud, different people saying the same thing get the same results—actually I wonder if this is always true, it sounds weird if it's not, but maybe different spells can be different? ...also maybe Theo and my magics are more similar because we've been doing this for about the same time?" She yawns a bit.
"So it's probably more like a limit on the spell itself rather than a mana thing, since we seem to be fine doing the spells over and over right after we drop down? Should possibly keep an eye on that if we do some quick-cast thing, like, a blast attack if that's possible, to make sure it's not a mana thing?" She blinks at what she just said. "Not that I'm recommending we get a blast attack necessarily, nor do I think this is a game, but like, it kinda seems it is."
"… It would probably make sense for it to be the same, I think? Or else for it to be a limit that had to be put into the cards when they were made, so cards would be on a totally separate system, which I guess is possible." She frowns. "Or it could be a weird combination, yeah, but I wouldn't expect–" Sigh. "You know what, actually, just– yeah, okay, nevermind."
"Um, right," she says, then looks it up. "Apparently it's usually air in the east, fire in the south, water in the west and earth in the north, but sometimes it's fire in the east, earth in the south, air in the west and water in the north, and then sometimes it varies from that too, so, um. Not sure about that."
"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."
"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."
Sadde lands before any of the other three do. Juniper's version lasts more than Sadde's did, which lasts more than Tyler's, which lasts more than Theo's. Furthermore, Juniper's version lasts more than Theo's plus Tyler's.
"So it's nonlinear, and it's apparently better to try to use a large spell than many small ones."
"I have kinda a huge list of things to try," says Maya, then she looks through it a bit. "I think we were going to try symbols and stuff next, see if they affect things since the bear says that guy used paper thingies, and we should possibly see if they do it – if they do it at all – by passively being in the area, or if you need to call on them, or hold them, or what."
"That sounds reasonable," says Maya. "I think we only need one more year of school – well, college or sixth form – legally, and it's nearing the end of term anyway. I can probably take my GCSEs in November? Should be able to sign up to take them then, and then hopefully the sixth form will accept a late entrant or whatever?"
"So have another two years of sixth form?" He shrugs. "Yeah, might be worth it."
They don't have to do another two years – for their age group, the legal requirement is only to be in education up until just before the September after you turn seventeen. Another two years would mean completing their A-levels, though, and that's until just before the September after they turn eighteen.
"Well first of all because– I was going to say I'm pretty sure we won't have all the cards by then, but actually we might if we continue at the rate we've been getting them – but magic is kinda… probably more important and a slightly more interesting route than going into something like maths or whatever I would have done instead?"
"It's possible that the amount of energy required to reduce the amount of sleep someone needs is less than the amount of energy they get back, or whatever if it's not a neat measurable amount, or that a permanent change can be done? But yeah, making yourself less tired probably doesn't work as you want."
"Okay, so now we should probably re-try the spell with one of the charged words and see if that improves how long it lasts or makes the flight better or something? And also see if the Chinese words work when written with intent, and see if you can vary how much energy you put in, but first things first."
So he says a phrase for flight and then he tries to see if there's any feeling of heat, if it harms him if he puts his hand where it appears to be burning, if he can hear anything, precisely how invisible it is – does it cause weird ripples in the air or is it literally an invisible effect that just looks like it might be flame-y? – and also if there is anything else obvious of note.
Sadde uses the page to power her flight, and the whole paper is consumed by the not-fire, not just the corner with the word on it.
"I wonder if we can only use this to call on higher concepts or elements or whatever," she muses. "Like, what if we want to make a spell that's specifically supposed to produce a breeze?"
"Kero did mention there's a sort of hierarchy amongst the cards, right, they're divided amongst the four elements and two attributes, and also divided between Sun and Moon? And this also dictates more magic than just the cards, since I apparently have Sun magic and Theo has Moon magic?"
He goes over to the concrete floor, sets the paper down on it, makes sure he's in a position to get out of the way, and writes 'time', intending to refer to the concept with which one may fuck with– lots and lots of things.
The slightly scary one that results in contradictions. That one.
"Okay cool, so, now we just test a bunch of these with the various phrasings? See if the ones done by different people have any different effects – and actually, see if defacing them destroys them or something, like if we mark on the edge of the paper something else, or if we strike through the word?"
Casting the spell again does work but there isn't a noticeable difference in the subjective experience of performing it. It does last a bit longer than it normally would, though—the extra time in the air being exactly as long as he'd been already flying before casting the second time, suggesting the second cast merely restarted the timer on the spell.
"Pink skin, uh, what were the cards again since those are probably good ideas for concepts…"
She flips back to the page in her notebook with the cards then says, "Well, the Change could work as a pretty good concept? Or possibly if it's an illusion, we could try to dispel it by calling upon Illusion. For the feathers, we could try ripping them off – ow, sorry – with wind and then just applying water to heal the wounds, since we know that works now?"
"Oh, right – we should probably see what sorts of constraints we can place on a spell, like, 'only do this if it won't become permanent in a horrific way' or something? Or if we can get it to fail – um, gracefully – if it would do something we dislike, probably doesn't allow precog but should also try that some time, um…"
Notes. Lots of notes.
"Okay, so precog presumably is not impossible, right, but I'm not sure a spell would let you have it only work conditional upon some future event – that sounds like it's just asking to be abused and– why am I even talking about this system like this, for all I know it's readily abusable and no-one's decided to mess with it properly yet, okay, we should try that."
"Okay, so, um, I don't know how much the phrasing matters here but okay, let's see if being theatrical is necessary since I'm pretty sure I can't do theatrical properly – I call upon Change at this dark hour, this hour some distance past dusk, in the Dark of the Moon – ugh – and ask that you change the– things sticking the feathers to Sadde to liquid, preferably in a way that won't damage her, such that we can remove them – the feathers – more easily."
(Ugh.)
"I have no idea why it would be a drawback of just the card, but then again, I have no idea why it would be a drawback of the concept either. For the other cards – the ones I can think of that we've tested and done equivalents for – it seems to be a matter of scale instead of removing drawbacks, but I guess they don't have comparable… things…"
"Okay, so, 'moon, undo the horrors of the past, fix the fluorescence of this shade, turn my skin back to a colour more normal for me.'"
Theatrics be damned. Who needs a phrase that sounds fancy when you can have one that's slightly fancy and then horribly contrastingly not fancy but makes sense.
"Well depending on how quickly it recharges, we could try doing a single spell as many times as we can after twenty-four hours after having totally drained our supply, and if it's a meaningful number, write them down and keep track of how much we can do after certain amounts of time? Such as, the short flight thing, you could see how many times you could do that, or instead see how many times you can inscribe a piece of paper with 'wind' before you get the weird effect?"
"Yep. And they might vary over time or with the weather or something, as might the recharge rate, and we might get fluctuation because spells take different amounts or something based on environment or they might take less if you do them a bunch or there might be differences between us for different spells, but it at least seems to be a mana thing."
Maya will– realize that she should probably try to drain her mana too, and note the approximate times that the others drained theirs.
Then she decides that actually, no, she'll leave her probably-mana undrained in case there are horrible side effects. Such as it being a limited pool of magic that never recharges. (Presumably not. But ew.)
"Well, at least consumes enough to drop you below the threshold for doing another piece of paper, yeah, but it might not drop you quite to zero? It might depend on the effect, though it's not like that's– particularly helpful. I guess we could time how long it takes me to, if I keep trying to charge a piece of paper, get to the stage where it does a weird effect again?" Shrug. "That might take a long while though – we don't know if the recharge rate is very high, or if it improves when you sleep or run around or what."
Theo… does not look super happy about this idea, but he replies to Juniper, "The different failure things – candyfloss and pink skin – might take different amounts of mana, so they might drop you different amounts, meaning 'zero' might fluctuate if we base it on where they occur or where they take you to?"
"Well, Theo was able to write another symbol thing, after un-pinking himself, before he ran out of mana or whatever – then it turned to candyfloss – but other than that we were just talking about what sorts of stuff could confound the mana thing, if it– uh, if it recharges, stuff like that. I think."
"Yeah," she says. "Um, horrible as it is, on the bright side at least Tyler and I still have mana? And presumably there must be some way to get it back unless people are just really careful with the spells they can— okay, eugh," she says, thinking about it. "That would explain too much, I think, eugh."
"Uh, right, well the symbols thing we still have all the different materials to try, and I suggested seeing if foreign languages have different strength effects on the spells, test out the weird distinction for whether it works or not, I have various things as question marks for the mana thing because we have hardly any data on it, we need to test different concepts in the spells, see if we can do something like immortality with it, presumably that takes a lot of mana or something though, see if we can specify into the spell that the nonmagical target should get control over it, see if it acts the same on magical targets, try language variants – old and modern English, different dialects – and sign languages but we'd need fluency in that, see if time and 'strength' relate, see how those things stack a bit more, test the cardinal direction thing, see if the affinities do things with this stuff, see if getting tired affects the strength, see if it's length or theatrics or what, test if card drawbacks go over to the concepts."
(She has all of this noted down quite neatly.)
"Any of those sound interesting?"
So they get some more materials and she and Juniper lead the other to the sleepover room.
...it is, in fact, a sleepover room. It has several beds, each with its own canopy, allowing one to sleep through lights from the rest of the room, and also noise cancellers and sleep masks. On the one end, there's a TV with several video game consoles and beanbags, as well as a bookshelf full of books and board games.
"Yeah, it suggests that. Except you can still apparently do stuff at nearly-zero, stuff that would otherwise require more than that gap, you just get a weird side effect with it that might destroy the result – like the pieces of paper that didn't get destroyed by the weird effect. And then the thing presumably takes you down into the negatives, so it'd be better to just stay in the positives anyway, but yeah." Shrug.
"If it takes a consistent amount of time to get back to zero after draining when near zero, we should see if it's actually putting us into the negatives at a certain point – like, if we wait a minute after getting back to zero, then drain, does that take a minute off the usual recharge time?"
"Yeah, it seems kinda fun, but– I hope we can get proper results out of it instead of having to leave a legacy for future magical users or something." Shrug. "I mean, presumably we will because of what we can do already, but still. And it might be nice to try to find a community of magic users so we can benefit from collective research or something. If there's one available. Which, you know, if there is, it doesn't seem to be doing a great job yet."
"… I mean, so far we've only tried doing, like, flight and that's turned out okay although limited in length. And it gets stronger with extra words, though that might just make it take more mana, and likewise with the symbols, and we can do sorcery with concepts that we don't yet have cards for, so… possibly but maybe not?"
"No, but I wouldn't expect to do that sort of thing in any actual dangerous scenario unless it were worth the risks – like, if we can heal with it, maybe that'll have horrible side effects where it undoes after a few minutes, but that'll presumably be better than leaving someone to bleed out, and with flight, it's not like I'd want my first run to be 'flying in the middle of the sky' unless I was literally flying away from something even worse than potentially falling out of it."
Shrug. "Anyway – uh, should probably start gathering data then. If we wait until you guys get the feeling again, then you drain it and set a timer and see how long it takes to get the feeling, do it again and see if it's approximately the same, then see how long it takes for the feeling to disappear?"
Woo! That's good.
… How many things does it take to get him down to worrying levels of mana, though? Actually, on second thoughts, they should probably think of some useful things to do with the magic rather than just expending it on random stuff as they do it.
"Okay, so, I'm not sure what the most efficient way to go about this stuff would be. Like, repeatedly writing 'change' on a piece of paper doesn't seem like the best use for mana at the moment, but we should probably do it to get a baseline 'number of change papers from X hours of sleep'?"
"Yeah, obviously I intentionally decided to sabotage our results. Nah, you can just test your own mana today and I can go do random stuff with the papers that will hopefully help us in the future, if we can think of any useful spells, instead of just leaving stacks of papers around?"
"Yup, so we can figure out how many things of 'change' he can do today, see how many 'moon' he can do after an equivalent amount of rest probably tonight, and then that can be an approximate conversion between the two if mana recharges at approximately the same rate. And we'll have the same data tomorrow, we just can't have it today unless we all decide to do 'change', which we probably shouldn't?"
"Yup, but it'll at least give an approximate-ish value, if he keep doings 'change', since I don't think he'll have charged like fifteen overnight and then another five in these few minutes. Though maybe he has – maybe it ramps up your mana recharge temporarily when you do a spell, I dunno."
Maya says to Sadde: "And you should probably start trying to drain yourself too, on the sun-or-moon things – uh, should probably pick one – so we can hopefully get a result from how long however-much-sleep-plus-a-bit-of-movie recharges? Then I can do some things and probably work out where my max mana is in relation to how much mana you've recharged?"
"I'm not sure it's that horrible, like – they're copies and they seem to be functioning fine, it'd just be if they could stay around for stuff by being housed somewhere, and like, if it's not that bad to be temporarily disappeared then you could just wait until you probably have money from this and resummon them then, later on."