"Of the three of us, Amariah's native magic is the one that affords the most advantages in detecting magic," observes Sarion thoughtfully.
"What would explain your better entanglement? If my information's in-date between elfmagery and enchantment even you prefer the latter for most things, and you and Rose were about the same age when you got your respective things."
"We'd have to Wellspring a lot more witches and elfmages and native enchanters before we could say that your native magic system has an effect," says Matilda. "Although it's an interesting idea and very plausible."
"I wasn't an elfmage when I was young, but I did practice small magics," muses Sarion.
Aether is not next.
Etty is next.
"You're just about in the middle of those three," says Matilda. "Higher storage than any of them, though."
"I've barely practiced magic, and not for long, and Glass says it works for anyone just the same as long as they're in Lake when they try it," says Etty. "I don't know what this does to the theory."
"Nothing informative. Cam's got plenty of magic and he got it when he was fifteen and he's - not as good as those of us who are now in contact with the ground, right? And Juliet's world is Wellspring-compatible to begin with and we're beating her too."
"There's nothing saying that a lot of this isn't just plain noise," says Matilda. "We really don't know a lot about how Wellspringing interacts with templates. I guess we'll know more in a while, though."
"I hope it is noise, this theory here predicts that me and Angela and possibly even Aegis get nada just like Shell Bell."
It turns out that Aether is next after that.
"Interesting," says Matilda. "Your entanglement is about on par with Sarion's, but everything else is coming in just under Juliet."
"I haven't actually gotten the rundown on what these statistics mean," Aether mentions. "I can guess based on the names, but what are the details?"
"The working stats - handling, storage, and generation - respectively measure how much magic you can work with directly at once, how much magic you can have in your personal store without using it immediately, and how fast that personal store refills over time. People with high generation and low storage tend to leave a trail of loose magic wherever they go, but it's not harmful, just handy for your neighbours. Entanglement is how easily you can create or affect patterns—magic strongly prefers to work in ways it's already been used, and the higher your entanglement, the better you are at getting it to work in new ways and the more of an impression you'll make when you do."
"The theory is that Wellspring has had this kind of magic all along," Tilly puts in, "but Matilda was the first person in human history with a high enough entanglement to get it to work for her when it hadn't ever been used before and there weren't any existing patterns to go on."
"Or at least the first person with a high enough entanglement who really, really tried," says Matilda. "Magic was pretty hard work for me in the early days. And lastly, perception is how well you can tell what patterns are available, and it also relates to magic-seeing in general. If you have high perception, you won't need to rely on spell descriptions as much, because you'll be able to read the patterns intuitively."
"And meanwhile Sunshine and its siblings were infested with enough demons that some of them got to it first."
"Yes," says Matilda. "And it seems like they went the opposite direction from Wellspring - in Wellspring, the available patterns are so overwhelmingly positive that it's hard to use magic destructively. In Sunshine... they seem to have it the other way around."
"If I understand correctly, we now have Wellspring patterns and not Sunshine ones."
"There's plenty of available reading material to conjure, if you want to know more about exactly how it all works," says Tilly. "In Wellspring, that is. I have no idea what the literature is like in Sunshine."
"Another one about on Juliet's level," says Agent Honey as Stella's feet touch the floor. "With no surprises this time."
"Well, that's my ambition right there, unsurprisingness." New book.
After that comes Tab, whom the Matildas declare to be part of the same group as Stella and Juliet.
"If Golden's next I'd guess opacity would have to do with it."
"Less than Tab or Stella - about the same as Cam," says Tilly.
"Opacity could still have to do with it," Aegis says, celebrating not floating under someone else's power anymore with a backflip and then zero-g-aura-ing her way back into a more self-powered float. She opts to read up on Wellspring magic on a desk instead of paper.