combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

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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 close people have to be."

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"Close enough for their magic to touch all the ways it needs to for the spell to go off."

"They have to touch."

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"- not with their bodies, necessarily? But the magic does?"

"Does it feel like anything?"

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Qiri nods.

He closes his eyes. He mutters something in Quenya. He opens them again.

"I'm so sorry," he says. "I just got magic, and it was very upsetting, and I've been feeling bizarre and afraid, and I blamed you for it. But it isn't your fault at all, and I've been scaring you half to death for no reason whatsoever. I don't think I want this strange gift, but that isn't your fault, and I deeply regret frightening you. You may tell me to leave and I will."

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Qiri opens his mouth but does not manage to actually utter a dismissal.

He takes a couple careful steps back but accordingly doesn't leave. "We don't have magic here. I think you must be from some place very far away. I'm so sorry we can't send you home."

rockpaperscissors

"Um, that's okay."

Are the cages more comfortable here? - no -

"We'll do everything we can to arrange for you to be comfortable and happy here. I'm Maedhros. I was dead for a long time, and am not very good at being alive again, but I won't hurt you."

rockpaperscissors

"...you were dead? I - it was just me and Master Huo, I don't see how two people could do that, I think you need at least four and they have to be the right kinds..."