combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

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Nelyafinwë Maitimo (Maedhros)

The strangers have six casters, in their group, that Qiri can count. Qiri's group has four counting him, and they got split up awhile ago when the strangers started that earthquake. Qiri is stuck with Master Huo. Master Huo is dying, but since Qiri is chained up he can't use that to escape, or attack Master Huo. The master's magic is uninjured, and he can reach Qiri's from where he lies, and Qiri is sitting there, goosepimpled, enduring it. He wonders if Master Huo might be in enough pain to distract him, if Qiri tried to wrench his magic away, but he doesn't think so. He can squirm around a fair bit under Master Yu and Master Zao if only one of them is using him for a spell - and if he wants to earn himself a beating - but not Huo.

He doesn't get nauseous anymore, like he did when he was a kid. So there's that.

Huo's casting a healing spell, moving Qiri's magic around this way and that to set it up. Qiri assumes it's going to target Master Huo, but spells don't know who anyone is. Qiri can't distract himself, not with his spine tingling and all his magic cringing under the slide of Huo's. Instead he tries to concentrate on something less directly sensory: how's the spell targeting? How is Huo going to make sure it heals him, and not Qiri's irritated skin under where the chains sit, the injuries to his fingers from the last time he irritated Master Yu, the probably broken toe sustained in the earthquake?

He figures it out when the spell is probably almost over: it's going to target the most injured person, and Qiri is a little banged up but Master Huo's got an arrow to the gut and a slice through his thigh that's probably going to bleed him out before the abdominal wound can kill him. It's objectively pretty impressive that he can concentrate enough to make his magic force Qiri's through the motions he wants.

Then, dimly around the cloying sensation of Huo's magic over his, Qiri notices a group of the stranger mages approaching, standing close together, back to back to back, doing something -

And he and Huo are banished somewhere else.

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How surprising. He's shocked.

He's not even sure he can pretend to believe in this one. He's pretty sure he's failing to pretend to believe in it, actually. And the child is scared of him.

How do these bits of magic fit together?

Nelyafinwë Maitimo (Maedhros)

Well if you did this and that and the other thing then you could affect metal. And electricity. It's not hard to see why Qiri wasn't bowled over with the effects; it won't put out a lot of watts. More small-scale.

He does not doubt in the slightest that if he figures out a way to describe it and then tells Curufin there will be an extraordinarily useful application.

Instead he leaves and spins up another copy to do all the work this copy had been expecting to handle and hides in his room until he gets notice that Qiri's friend is wondering if Qiri will be leaving.

"He said no," she tells Qiri the next morning.

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"- no what?"

"You don't have to leave to go to the King."

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"Uh. Did he say why?"

"He said that he was glad you were making friends and didn't want you to keep getting needlessly shuffled around, because it was better for you to be able to settle in."

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"But I haven't been shuffled around any yet. They put me in this room right away once they decided not to keep me in a closet."

"Getting magically sent to another world and then put in a closet and then here sounds like getting shuffled around at least a little bit." She shrugs. "He also said he'd be happy to discuss it more with you if you want."

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"Not especially."

"I'm glad you're staying."

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"Thanks."

"Want to go try a VR game?"

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"Sure."

There's a special set of rooms for them, and a special set of headsets - "I don't need one because of the soul, but humans and Dwarves do -" and a bunch of things they can do: explore a cave system or a forest or a coral reef or a mountainside, go skiing or kayaking or climbing, watch a play or a concert, participate in a play or a concert, wander a garden, fly a fighter jet...

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"How come you have headsets if there aren't humans here? Are there Dwarves?" He contemplates the options; nothing's jumping out to him yet.

"There're Dwarves, but their heads are shaped different. I think we ordered a bunch of hardware for humans specially for you when you arrived. And there are some humans here sometimes, there just aren't human families living here like there are west of here in Dor Lómin. We probably had some stuff already." There's a dancing tutorial and a bunch of flying games and a drama where you try to escape a city under attack by orcs and a parachuting simulator and a playing-with-small-children simulator and a long string of history sims.

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"Ooh, flying. Some of these don't make a lot of sense, why is there one about playing with children?"

"Well, people mostly don't have children during a war but lots of them still like children, so they like games where there are children playing and you play with them."

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"Fake children sounds weird even if you like children and there aren't any."

"I guess some people are weird."

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"Guess so. I want to try the flying one."