Well, if you prefer that, it's an option. But not one you'll take soon, I hope.

No, I need to figure out whether I can help win the war.

Nod. If the plan is to bring my magic to your world, you can probably help by learning a safer spell form from someone else - if you do that, you can share it with me, and I can bring it to your world for people to use as practice before I teach them teleportation. Plus you'll probably be able to get other helpful forms at the same time, but even if you can't that's still useful.

That is a good suggestion, thank you.

She grins.

...ready for more spells, I think, and then I can explain more about how exactly my kind of spells work.

Two more spells, that's the pinky and ring finger done.

So, when I cast a spell, the first thing I do is set up what I'm casting on. It has to be an object, but it doesn't have to be an object the way we usually think of them - I could cast on, say, half your blanket and part of the floor under it, and that'd be fine, it just has to be an amount of stuff that's all touching, and I have to be able to extend my mage-sense into it all, except for people and animals - anything with a mind, you're aware of the whole individual and can cast on any part of them if you put your mage-sense on any part.

The next thing is setting up the triggers. This part doesn't really depend on having a spell form, but having a spell form makes it easier to figure out how to do triggers related to it - I have an easier time setting up triggers that have to do with location than ones that have to do with, say, sound, but I can do both. You can use anything that affects the object you're casting on as a trigger - touch and pressure are easy, light is harder, sound is harder depending on what kind of detail you're trying to do with it, temperature isn't bad, that kind of thing. For things with minds, you can use anything in their mind as a trigger, too, but depending on the kind of thing you want to use, minds can be very hard or impossible to interpret - emotions are easy, telling what emotions are about is very hard, conscious thought is impossible, 'wanting to do a thing' and 'intending to do a thing' are pretty easy to notice but telling what thing is impossible or close to it, that kind of thing. It's also pretty much impossible to tell what's normal for a particular mind without, like, checking over a period of time. It's possible to make mind-based triggers sort of vague so the person you're casting on can learn to use them - that's how the anti-magic spell is set up, since it's cast on babies; it's just always on until they learn how to do the specific intention that turns it off. It's also possible, but more complicated, to combine conditions for a particular trigger, like, I could do 'this spell deactivates when the person intends to use a magic item, unless it's been less than a year since the spell was cast', or 'this spell only activates when these two spots are pressed and someone sings this particular note at the same time' or whatever.

Then there's the effect, and this I think varies a lot from form to form. Each spell has only one effect, but you can cast more than one spell on the same object to get different effects under different conditions or multiple effects under the same conditions. For my teleportation, the possible effects are 'teleport the thing the spell is on', 'teleport anything that's touching it in a specified area', 'teleport both the thing and what it's touching in a specified area', and 'open a portal', and then if make it open a portal that gives me a bunch of choices about how exactly the portal works - I can make ones that do light but not sound or sound but not light or both or neither, or only certain kinds of light or pitches of sound, or maybe other things, and I have some choices about how the edges act. And for all of those, I have to specify where the spell goes, but there's three ways to do that - one is to just use a location signature that I know, one is to give it details about the kind of place I want the spell to go to and let it pick one place like that and always go there, and one is to give it details about the kind of place I want the spell to go to and let it pick a new one each time. And also it defaults to landing the teleported thing on the ground someplace where there's air and a little bit of room, but I can change the first two if I want to and make the 'little bit of room' one more or less careful but not actually make it teleport things into each other.

Thank you. That's very useful. What other spell forms would it be useful for me to acquire?

Well, I don't know which ones exist, mostly. I think just about everybody has the light one and the one that lets you see magic, though, and there are definitely combat forms - the elves' fire magic is pretty terrifying. And I bet a lot of things can be useful if you set them up the right way, like, teleportation isn't an obvious choice for magic to hunt with but in practice it works just fine.

But you think it's too dangerous to ask elves for magic help?

I really do. Especially since it shouldn't be hard to find a human or dwarven place for you to try asking at.

Dwarven? Human?

Other kinds of people, the ones that make cities. There's goblins, too, but they're also kind of dangerous and even if they aren't to you I think you'd find them upsetting. And then lots of kinds of animalpeople but most of them are nomadic so they'd be hard to find, and some other kinds of people that live underground that I don't know much about.

I should definitely talk to people who make cities, we might be able to learn things from each other.

Nod. We're definitely going to need to figure out a way of explaining how you got here that doesn't mention me, I don't want to risk making trouble for kobolds in other places either, but humans and dwarves should be pretty safe to talk to from what I've heard.

More spells?

Yes, please. I'm sure we can come up with something.

Three more; she really is getting  the hang of this.

I wish I knew whether your magic shows up to the local magic-vision. If it does we can probably get away with just saying that the teleportation is something of yours too.

I could try getting magic-vision first, if it can be acquired over osanwe and without any interaction.

...that's true. You'd actually want the light form, I have no idea how the magic-vision one might go unstable, but once you have it I can walk you through what you need to do to get through the dangerous bit of learning to cast.

Okay. Once I can walk I will give it a try.

Nod.

At some point we should check whether osanwe works through portals. I don't expect it to, but if it does that'll be very useful.

Yeah. Also whether magic does so my brothers can heal me.

That would definitely be good. Is there a way to try it from here?

Maybe? You could make a portal and then go to the other side and I could try singing through it and seeing whether the song affected you.

Other way around, I think, you can hear through a portal the same way you can see through one, you have to be on the open side. But yeah, that's easily enough done.

Okay, then let's test that.

Nod. I'll do two portals, we can try the osanwe at the same time.

She puts a portal in the sunset-viewing rock showing a boulder in a shady jungle, then teleports there and puts another portal in the side of the boulder, showing the cave.