-- What the fuck is this, there's no reason the Princess's half-complete 'Find Familiar' spell-item-thing should be trying to fire, but it is and she's in the laboratory, what fucking timing --

Well, she says half complete, but really all it was actually missing was something on the ...other ...end...

Fuck, that could be bad - but the Princess, despite her many faults, wasn't that much of an idiot - fuck -

Stabilize it now and figure out what in the Nether-damned fuck this even is once things aren't maybe possibly going to explode --

She grabs hold of her magic and makes something λ, a cascade of well-ordered void constraining the chaos-given-purpose of her predecessor's magic.  That they are complementary elements does not make this any easier, though Void has a type advantage against Chaos - Light similarly gives rise to Order that might subvert the containment!

...It doesn't explode.

From Aeslin's perspective, this manifests as something pulling, sharp but not harsh, even as the black-and-silver become strange and impossible colors - and then, a feeling like being drunk (as if a glass of water), as a universe asserts it surrounds her once more and a shell of magical containment lays itself down around her. 

Whoever's doing it seems inordinately concerned about explosions - there's something terribly infinite about the darkness she can almost make out behind the ineffably-purplish barrier sphere she's materialized within, as if the world is nothing but an infinitesimal possibility - one chance, out of infinities.  And one out of infinity...Well.  It may as well be zero, for all the infinity cares.

Then, the empty void... peels away, along some stranger axis, and the young woman who presumably called up that primal force as a firedamp buries her face in her hands.

"...Why is this my life.  One isekai scenario wasn't enough?  I have two of them?  Why..."

...Well.  She hopes this is just one of those.  It should be.  The λrules of the λeffect she wrapped around the seemingly-not-exploding artifact shouldn't have permitted something particularly hostile to existence passage, to say nothing of the chaotic attractor warping the world towards "things that complement Alicia's existence" left from the princess's work.  Still, the question is how that part resolved, and she doesn't know.

Aeslin is surprised to see a world around her.  Is this not a pocket dimension at all?  Is it an instant-travel spell that yanked her into some far part of the world?  There're some stories of those from the Days of Wonder, but she didn't think they were real...

Well, if so, she's not sure whether it's better or worse than being trapped in a pocket dimension until someone can get her out.  It probably depends on where they dropped her.

At least it'll be more fun than being trapped in a pocket dimension.

She looks around, noting the un-Suinel-like architecture of the room and clothes on the mage in front of her.  She's never been out of Suinel before, except for the war - she never took the time.

She also waves her wand - without casting anything - to feel for leylines.

With that, it's maybe ten seconds before she answers the strange mage "- Two strange arrivals?  Did someone else trigger the spell before me?  I hope they didn't hurt anyone?"  And then she quickly adds "- oh, and where are we?"

She's about to add her name and rank in the Royal Research Mages, but thinks better of it just in case this mage is an ally of the Crystal Mountains.

"No, that story is yet stranger still.  This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time this has ever occurred.  ...There was a spell on your end that triggered this?  Great.  Great, okay, excuse me, I need to just...

"Wait, shit, you might need to go back --

"...Oh, blast.  Can we even make that happen?  The effect being chaos magic on my end does not bode well and there just isn't enough passive recording here to reconstruct a trace..."

"No, I've never seen anything like that spell before!  Unless you count the pocket dimensions - I've seen two of them - but we haven't been able to make any of them since the Days of Wonder!  I had some recording, of course, but that was from outside - and I don't think they could even tell what was this spell versus what was all the other spells, and I suppose I can't really be totally sure myself; for all I know the quasi-ritual-binding was a necessary part even though I was pretty sure I unraveled that -"

Her train of thought suddenly having arrived at an idea that's both specific, worrisome enough to be worth quickly checking, and able to be quickly checked, she casts her first spell in this world:  a spell to inspect her own body for magic on it.

(On it, not around it - she's got a lot of wards around her, plus the passive shields woven in her hair, plus the spare wands sewn into her blouse.  She came to war prepared.)

It comes back clean.  As she expected, but worth checking.

"...Yeeeeah, you're definitely not from around here.  Spatial expansion isn't that common, but it's understood.  Not to mention portals.  Which are even more -- Hold on.

"Ritual binding?  That's - oh dear - if you don't mind I'd like to check and make sure that you aren't -- if you don't trust me that far that's fine, I'm assuming you have some idea of how to check yourself - was that what that was?"

Her magic responds, precisely as she envisions it.  It may not be the traditional Azerosan paradigm, but it's sufficiently Orderly that it will work.

"Yes, they didn't get any on me, and I'm not totally sure that's even what they were trying; I couldn't really take the time to check -"

She suddenly realizes the first thing the other mage meant.

"Wait, you actually know how to make pocket dimensions!?"

"I mean, not off the top of my head, it's not quite as simple as it looks once you know spacetime is a Thing you can Do Stuff To, but yes?  Yes."

"I didn't think anyone knew how to do that anymore???  Not since the Days of Wonder???  Queen Elethy herself doesn't have the least idea - stars above, how did you find it --

"-- and where are we?"

"...You're in the research laboratory of Princess Alicia Thorn, of the Kingdom of Villarosa, on what is probably an entire other planet than wherever you came from to say nothing of the possibility - the likelihood, even - that you aren't in your home universe.  ...Ah, and in the interests of clarity, yes, I'm the Princess.  Please don't mind that.  I try not to, at least when it comes to magic."

"So, speaking of, I'm not actually sure that were I deposited into your universe that the same methods would work, but I can explain, I suppose.

"It's oddly akin to glassblowing.  Making a spatial pocket, that is.  There's a certain - way you approach it - you have to be careful with the boundaries - and then if you're talking about pocket dimensions in the sense of isolated planes you have a whole 'nother kettle of fish involved in getting them out of this one - but...it's well-understood, around here.  Has been for a while.  It's extended from stasis fields, if you squint."

"I didn't know there were other universes --"

She feels utterly lost and abandoned far from home for a moment, before remembering that was just speculation.  Her magic works here; her body's holding together, the enemy mages' spell got her here - the evidence she has so far, at least, points to her still being in the same universe.  Unless Alicia has other evidence.

"But making spatial pockets like that sounds - plausible but so complicated!  Blowing space like glass - you'd need to keep calculating how the flow of magic changes through the space you're changing, and I can see how that might get pocket dimensions, but I'd need to think more about how to actually calculate it accurately enough!  Or maybe train your intuition, but that sounds like something that'd need to be much more precise than even the best-trained intuition... at least for humans like me; I wouldn't be surprised if it's different for some Fay if not Elves?  Oh, you are human, right?"

(She isn't minding the "Princess" part at all, but she hasn't remembered to even mention that.  She's used to working with Queen Elethy, and her being a queen barely even matters to Aeslin compared to her being the last Elf alive.)

"Geberally that's what building support structures into your spell design is for.  You can just do math on magic.  At least, here, I don't know what your world's like on that front."

"...As for 'whether I'm human'...

"That's a more complicated question than you might think.  Because obviously biologically I'm human in all the ways that matter.  But...mmm...  There's a thing that happens, sometimes, when the conditions arise for new souls. Sometimes when that new soul coalesces, it comes with a deeper connection to the formless chaos that is at the root of existence, for all that that itself arose from another interaction of the primal forces in turn.  And in that sense, I'm capable of feats no human should be - it's a weight upon the fabric of the universe, and I can somewhat control which way it pulls.  And if that's what Fay do, then I suppose I'm not unakin to them as much as I'm still just...human, underneath it all.

"...Elves and fae, insofar as fae exist as a coherent category, which I don't necessarily believe is a thing -" She certainly didn't design them - "are not actually more or less prone to being like me than anyone else is.  I just want to note that.  There's a great diversity of form around here, and that's a bit of a language collision."

"'Controlling how the fabric of the universe pulls'... That could be one way to describe what Fay do?  If by 'fabric of the universe' you mean the flow of magic itself?  But that's not how any of us - well, almost any of us -" (there was that one weird scholar she met that once) "- would describe it - and personally I think it's more likely that magic flows from the planet not the universe - and anyway Elves are all like that with the flow of magic where I'm from so you're probably talking about something totally different...

"... And if you have solid reasons to believe anything about conditions for new souls, it sounds like your magic is way ahead of ours there!"

"Oh, don't take my words as being about the state of knowledge - I'm cheating - but yes, we do have something of an idea of how souls happen."

"...That said, I know for a fact that the magic of this universe is not generated by the planet, unless you squint really hard at spirit and spirits - there might be a spirit-of-the-planet but she's too big to pay attention to us!  Magic is the process of invoking one of the six - fundamental forces, prime concepts, take your pick they're big, ineffable, and important - and using their nature to fit your will.  And insofar as magic, and indeed the universe we're in, comes from anything, at least around here, it's all from the -"

She suddenly realizes that while she knows, intimately, the process by which stuff Exists, she doesn't quite have the vocabulary to describe it.  ...Fuck it, she'll have to improvise.

"The excitation of probability, I suppose.  I had to make that up, but...

"This universe, hell, this multiverse, sits in a fundamentally uncollapsible superposition between a source of a single overwhelming existence that outcompetes all others, and infinite infinitesimals that have no weight yet paradoxically exist.  Heavy on the paradox, because they also, y'know, don't exist, because they're probability zero, but I digress.

"It is from the refraction of the Light into the infinite unpossibility of the Void, that anything resembling normal existence happens - but even the impossible things happen in the Twisting Nether, which is...Where you either ended up, or got pulled through.  I think 'got pulled through' is more likely, because if it you had ended up there first this thing should have already worked based on that same infinite unpossibility thing - but based on it taking this long it needed something with more weight than just the Principle of Explosion.  At least, if the universe didn't start existing last Tuesday, which I really can't disprove given my information..."

She trails off, into the dread existential question of whether this universe was just now made.  She...really doesn't know.  Shit.

"...Moving on.  Magic where you're from...Seems to be quite different from magic here.  Because it is fundamentally true of this universe that it arose from its magic.  Magic here isn't just something bolted on to a material physics.  Magic created material physics."

There're so many things in there Aeslin doesn't know what to respond to first!

Her existential lostness at having a reason to think she's in a whole new universe is almost outcompeted by all these fascinating questions!

"Yes - where I'm from magic is something different from physics as close as we can tell - magic comes from the stars, and we can't exactly get there to look at them --  But how is my body even existing here without physics!? -"

She throws up her hands, which are still hands, her shock warring with her curiosity warring with her disbelief.

"Did my soul suddenly create a whole new body or something!?"

"It's magic, it don't gotta explain shit, to make a reference only people on the other side of the fourth wall - and me, I guess - will get.  But more seriously...Yeah, that's probably basically what happened?  With whatever happened to you to begin with doing who-knows-what, and then having to pull you up through the Twisting Nether - I wouldn't be surprised if a new body just sort of happening based on your self-image wasn't the path of least resistance, magically speaking.  Both from the 'sieving order from chaos' nature of the entire axis of spellwork that was actually powering the thing, and also because Light magic just sort of does that."

"Well.  It's all a function of oneness, is Light magic.  And given that my predecessor was really quite capable of stubborning that oneness into doing what she wanted, even if she wasn't really a healer, I think it's - something that would happen.  The spell was - maybe meant to summon, like, a familiar spirit, or a companion animal - but I think she missed something, in the design.  Because if she'd done it right, this would not have happened!  She got the focus backwards, too, I think.  The spell felt like - using Light to search - which is...not how it does things - I mean, every magic can do most things but they're better at some depending on the approaches...

"...Really," and here she seems to be fully taken by a nerdsnipe, "it needed just a hint of void to it.  To - leaven the chaos that would, despite the spellwork, twist out of the light's grip before the - beacon - could draw it in, with stable possibility.  ...Damn.  I guess that means it's my fault you're here, that's one of the forces I work with."

"Well, I'd rather be here than where I thought I was going to be," she immediately replies to that last statement.

And really, being a friend to magically-prodigious royalty is half of what she's been doing, aside from magic itself.

"You keep saying things that almost make sense, that rhyme with the magic I'm used to!  Order from chaos - yes, that's how stars bring forth light brings forth life.  Self-image being the path of least resistance - yes, that's one major theory of how souls interact with bodies in the first place!  But you're not using them in the right way, which means -

"- Well, it could mean you've got a totally different magical tradition from ours which has gotten into whole new aspects of the same fundamental magical laws and we can maybe both bring each other to new heights!  Or maybe not, if we've lost too much in the Last Elven War in the first place, but it'd still be great for us!

"Or it could mean something totally different and your magic is totally different from mine!  Especially if I really am in a new universe!  Do you have any ways to tell if I'm using your magic!?"

Until that last statement, she'd successfully distracted herself from the question of what she even is anymore.  But now, her mind's racing again down uncomfortable directions.

In a new universe where the 'physical laws' are just special-cases of magic...  If she was confident it's the same magic she's used to, she'd be wondering if she was now just a Fay-golem.  No, that's not quite the same thing; she'd be a Fay-golem without physical instantiation which has never happened - well, not that she knows of since the Days of Wonder -

"...Do I have a way to tell if you're...using the native magic?  You already did that."

"I haven't the slightest clue how to differentiate the cases of 'you are in the same wider multiverse as you were' versus 'this is actually a different...whatever...', though - but there's ...enough plot you've clearly run into just by having your life that I know wouldn't have counterfactually shown up in mine, to lead me to think that wherever you're from is genuinely somehow out of bounds - and I wouldn't subject anybody to a lost Age trope if I could fucking help it, personally speaking -

"Which is to say that, to borrow something from a friend of mine - you're in your own story, and it wasn't supposed to run into mine.  But I do agree in wanting to make the best of it!  And on trading magic tips.  I'm tooting my own horn a bit, but I think I can probably come up with something that'll help inside your native magic paradigm.  Assuming we can get you home."

Somehow, whether or not she might be a Fay-golem, it feels comforting and homelike to hear that the same magic she was casting is the same magic Alicia is talking about.

But trying to parse the rest of what Alicia was saying just throws up so many more questions.

"... what are those bounds my world is out of?  Is it something about - the Days of Wonder - but you say it happens often enough, across different worlds or something, to be a trope?

"And of course I wouldn't start a Last Elven War either, but -

"- Oh, if it happens that often, do you know how it started?  Not even Queen Elethy knows!  Nobody and nothing survived to say how!"

"Across works of fiction I've read, more like.  Because, and this is going to sound insane but the most unfailingly reasonable and competent person I know here believes me, I'm technically supposed to be in one."

"So...Sorry.  I can't tell you why your war started.  It isn't in this plot to begin with and that's where my information ends.  ...Probably for reasons that weren't worth the cost, I'm sorry to say, just because that's true of most wars - but...I'd need to get a much closer look and for the tools I'd lean on to work there.  I suppose I could try, but Void divination is all about confirmation bias.  ...If we had - "

She emits a frustrated swear.  "Ciara is going to be so disappointed in me for not getting her in here sooner.  One moment, if you don't mind -"

There is but a moment, and then there is -

A woman who stalks into the room like all the imperiousness that Alicia has discarded was carefully gathered up in her wake and assembled into armor.

"Alicia.  Why did the conversation you are having get this far without my presence?  Yes, this is unexpected, but the unexpected, especially such as this, means you need support more."

"...Well.  She started talking about magic and I got distracted?"

"...Yes, I can see how that would have happened.  Would our guest care to introduce herself?  Otherwise," she adds, with an almost conspiratorial air, "it will likely be months before her highness realizes she forgot to ask."

"It would be hard to think of anything that was worth the cost of the Last Elven War.

"But if you're saying we're both supposed to be in a piece of fiction -"

She cuts herself off when Ciara enters.  She doesn't want to get existential in front of a strange... Queen?  Tutor?

Aeslin curtseys quickly when Ciara asks her to introduce herself.

"Aeslin Sellon -" She quickly realizes Ciara hasn't introduced herself yet, and follows up with an awkward "ma'am.  Intendant-General of the Royal Research Mages of Suinel, by Her Majesty Queen Elethy.  And... well, several other things too."  She laughs a hollow chuckle, eliding both her honorary degrees, her ambassador's commission, and her brevet military rank for the war.

"I'm afraid I wasn't intending to be here - it was a magical accident, at least on my end though it seems to have been one here too?  I'm happy to be here - I couldn't have asked for better company than Her Highness - but I'm afraid I don't know where I am."

That last one is rather more the case than she's saying at the moment.

Well.  This is a decidedly...Interesting...twist of fate that rightly should not have been, by all their knowledge.  But Alicia has already been flapping butterflies' wings...  Even if this is meddling, they'll make it work for them.

"It is a pleasure to have you here, regardless of the circumstances; someone who can keep up with her Highness when she starts in on magic talk is a blessing.  I can't, not beyond, mm, practical applications.  And in the spirit of introductions given, I shall give one in return - you may know me as Ciara Beraen; I manage the royal household for their Majesties, King-Regnant Ambrose Laertes Vaudelle and his consort Queen Jethelia.  Among other things."

"...She's the very reasonable and competent person I mentioned earlier."

Ah, Ciara's the chamberlain, or something close to it - maybe the same role as Tilda at home.  "I'm glad to meet you, Ciara!  And I'd love to hear about those practical applications sometime, too.  They're actually one of the main focuses of the Research Mages - or at least they were before the current, er, unsettled times and now the war."

"I'm sorry you haven't found anyone who can keep up with you yet!" she says to Alicia.  "I don't know what I would've done without first Svarendar, and then Elethy!  They never had time to work with me as much as I wanted - but it meant so much to know they could.  And that they had things to teach me, too."

And then she turns back to Ciara.  "- but, er, Alicia was saying you both agreed we were supposed to be in a piece of fiction?  Which, when I think about it, rhymes weirdly with how she says the physical laws are all just special-cases of magic... That isn't the case where I was from, at least as far as we know or guess.  But magic is the only way I can think of someone could create a universe I could be inside and still maybe be a 'me' thinking about this..."

"...I see.  We shall have to review operational security again, your highness, if you're spilling this many things that should be secret - yes, the circumstances are extenuating, but really.  You know better."

"...Still, if you know that much - ah, how do you prefer to be styled? - then it will not further harm to confirm that I do believe that this universe was created according to a narrative, given certain evidence.  I sha'n't be disclosing the details of why, at this time."

Alicia tries to open her mouth, after that statement.  She meets Ciara's expectant and disapproving gaze first, however, and whatever she was about to say remains, instead, unsaid.

"It is not that we believe you are a danger.  It is that we would both, surely, prefer to not put our guests in danger, and if you are likely to be here for a while - which you will likely be, or at least in our company at the Academy if external consultation is necessary - knowing the wrong things could unfortunately leave you there."

"Ah, just call me Aeslin.  My official style at home is 'Lady' - it's the same as half the nobles - but I don't care in private."

"And why is being in a story secret?  Or is that something else you're not going to disclose?"

"That's not a secret so much as something that no-one will believe you about, because the story everyone else who knows, knows, is 'I had a vision'.  Which is, conveniently, not properly falsifiable and not even really wrong besides - I did, in some senses, have a vision of a future.  It's just the rest of it that I'm...not mentioning."

"Well, that makes sense... I wouldn't think I'd believe you, except that I've got another world to compare against and yours does look much more like something that could be spun up as a story.  If you told me my own world was a story, I'd ask how that could possibly be.  But when you told me that about this world - I thought it made sense."

"But... if we're in a story... how could I get out of it?  Not that I hate being in it - at least not right now - but - do you really think I can get home again?"

"Infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will produce everything as a story somewhere, in an infinite multiverse."

"As for how to get you home...

"I'm not sure.

"I wish I was more sure, but there's so much I don't know about what happened that I'm not really even able to pull something out of my - ahem."

And if Alicia doesn't have three ideas of how to throw magic at it at the drop of a hat, then it's pretty serious.

"...But we will try.  And there is much to be said, for what we know of the people who will try, can pull off."

"Thank you."

"So - how does magic give rise to something that at least looks like the physics I'm familiar with, at least on the level of things I can see in this room?"

Belatedly, she remembers that with Tilda's counterpart here, and her talking to a Princess, there might be other duties interrupting.  Urgh, politics.

"-- er, feel free to give the short answer now if there's somewhere else you need to be."

"...Well.  On the one hand, with quite some effort.  But on the other hand, on the subatomic level - well, actually, given that the root of that is - atomos, I think it was, being a foreign word gratuitously butchered for its having been coined or involved in the first statement of the possibility of a smallest possible division of matter - anyway, technically if one is defining a physics from scratch one should make the atoms truly indivisible, but I am used to there being subatomic considerations - and I have gotten quite sidetracked -"

"...The physics you are observing only looks like it's like the physics you're used to, because underneath the existence of things like gravity, and various types of material, is elements.  Elements and forces, actually, that all derive from magics."

"...And, I am going to be busy with this for the near future.  Both by necessity and by choice, because this is...Really quite unexpected and important, and also a magical conundrum I really want to solve.  ...Ciara knows how to do what she needs to do, for that matter.  Not to mention that she runs a very tight ship, in general.  We'll be fine.  But your concern is appreciated."

Alicia promptly begins reproducing the diagrams and tables that she once wrote down for an angel.  (This time, they're 3D!)

Aeslin stares at the diagrams.

"I'm not used to most of these being fundamentally real rather than generalizations.  I'm not sure where to start asking questions.  Are they... fundamentally balanced, too?  On such a level that the world we're in can't ever, say, be burned up by light or dissolve into void?"

"...That's a more complicated question than you'd think.  Notwithstanding that The Light is not a very burny thing, taking your meaning instead of your words...

"It's not wrong to say that in the end, the three axes wrap around such that, say, an excess of Light will create the shadows of Void just as Order is technically a choice of how one experiences Chaos.  Just as Life does not exist without Death lurking within it."

"Yes, or as I would say it, the possibility of death..." she says thoughtfully.  "I've been rather familiar with that juxtaposition, with both my best collaborators - Svarendar and Elethy - essentially immortal save by hapless chance.

"I suppose if we extend the analogy, Light would mark out shadows?  But by that analogy, Order would rather demarcate Chaos rather than be a choice from within it...?"

"...Perhaps, but it's not particularly..."

"Getting too caught up in trying to pin down the manner in which things overflow is rather losing sight of the forest for the trees, even if they're really impressive trees.

"They'll wrap around whether you think that's how they should or not.  And it does cut both ways.  Even, or perhaps especially, the harshest Order will shatter from the introduction of something unexpected, and it's a long-held theory that Light arose from the Void to begin with.  And Life and Death...  Each ending is a beginning of something else."

"Each beginning is the ending of something else, for that matter."

Alicia murmurs something like 'can't keep up my foot'.

"Yes, quite, and I suppose you'd know."

"Yes... and every end is a beginning.  I've seen that much from my own life."  She nods.  "But that's philosophy, not practical magic or physics.  How do you get that from there?  Do you visualize points of philosophy as you cast?"

"...I mean.  Yes and no?  To cast magic is to act in accordance with or in counterpoint to a philosophy, but it's not...  About the philosophy like that.  Philosophy is too human^[1] to matter to magic."

[1]: "Human", in this case, being the best available translation of a word that means 'of or pertaining to the general sapient condition', not about specifically humans, in Villarosa's language.

"But surely you aren't casting magic every time you're acting - say, orderly?  Or I suppose maybe you are if physics is magic, but surely there's some difference between - say, picking a book up off the floor with your hands, and casting a spell to pick five books up from across the room?

"When I cast a spell, I visualize what I want, and guide the magical flow through my wand.  Do you do anything like that?"

(Aeslin understands the word perfectly.  It's not in everyday use in Suinel - almost everyone in the kingdom is a human - but it's still used in scholarship.  Even when there's one public Elf left in the world, when she's Queen, it does make an impact.)

"Magic is traditionally considered to be more of a 'move things with your mind' thing, so, yes, there's - visualization and suchlike."

"...That's not to say that magic can't be exceedingly subtle, but it does at least require an effort to establish in some sense, in my experience.  Even if it can become habit."

"...And I suppose there are the occasional focus components, too.  Depending on your casting paradigm.  But I can freehand arcane magic, for example; they're not...well, mandatory."

"But surely magic can do some things beyond what you can do with your hands?  I can imagine how you'd extend that to, say, lift something larger than you can lift.  But what about... making plants grow faster?  Or binding spells; I know you mentioned you had something like those?"

"Well, yes, that's what the visualization and the understanding the principle you're invoking is for."

"And as far as making plants grow...well, I'm pants at that, you'd want a druid.  But that's what I mean about the principles."

"Ah, 'move' in a symbolic sense...  So visualize something in line with one of these principles, and focus on the thing and the principle...  And you don't need a wand or any aids, since your soul is innately designed to use magic to interface with the world anyway?"

"I was also being a bit twee.  But yes, you've got the right of it.  Did you...not have that, yourself?"

"No - we humans don't!  Without my wand," (she holds it up) "I can't do any magic at all.  Except, well, living and moving my body - it's still debated at home whether that's magic to some small degree, and if anything you've said holds true at all at home that's definitely the case.  Even if this's a story set up by magic - to even interact with my soul with magic to the degree that's required would be strong evidence!

"Elves and Dragons and Fay are different; they're innately magical without any wands needed..."

"... sadly, almost all of them died in the Last Elven War.  As far as anyone knows, there's exactly one Elf and one Dragon left alive."

"...Well.  That's fucked up."

"Also, this is going to sound utterly stupid - but you should try doing magic without your wand, real quick.  Just something really simple, that won't explode you if it goes wrong.  It might help differentiate the possible universes."

(Azerosa technically has exactly zero dragons, for Heroine reasons, but that doesn't stop Alicia from knowing what a dragon is.)

"...Anyone would be, if they had but a single quantum of their soul capable of empathy.  It's a base platitude, but...given the opportunity, I would offer my condolences for her loss."

"...Ciara has said it much better than I could.  I...wish there was more I could do.  No-one deserves to be stuck as The Last Of Their Kind like that, and from how you speak of her, Queen Elethy less than most."

"Believe me, I've tried. I'm pretty sure I've helped. Some."

If General Connar's wildest guesses about the Crystal Mountains are true... maybe there might be another Elf there? Somehow frozen in time till now? But - Aeslin hopes not. If so, they would be an evil Elf, and Aeslin hopes Elethy won't have to meet another Elf only to find them evil.

... and that said, on to the happier topic of magic!

"Sure!  I guess I'll pick - order; that's the one we've been talking about and I think I understand the best."

She steps over to the desk and carefully, gingerly sets down her wand, as gingerly as if it's got her life in it.  And then she reaches up her sleeve and pauses.  "Actually, I've got a few spare wands sewn into my blouse, just in case.  And even a bit of wood in my slip that might serve as a wand in a tough spot.  Normally I'd be confident I wouldn't accidentally cast through them, but just to make absolutely sure it wouldn't hurt the experiment, do you have something I can change into quickly?"

"Sensible precautions."  As to whether she means the wands, or the changing clothes to avoid risking the experiment, she doesn't elucidate.  (But it's probably the wands.)

"I will want these back," she says, producing spare clothes from Somewhere.  They aren't quite exactly Aeslin's size - they look more like a spare set of Ciara's - but they'll suffice.

"...Ah, and let me just..."

A brief flare of magic precedes a screen appearing for her guest to change behind.

Aeslin wants to look closer at that flash of magic.

But she's not holding a wand, and the wood in her slip isn't fine enough to cast anything precise.

So she instead takes Ciara's spare clothes and goes behind the screen to change.  They feel strange on her, but she shrugs that off; they're obviously fitted for someone else.  Her sister would have any number of comments on the style, she's sure... (She blinks back tears; hopefully she can see Mireda again someday?)... but she doesn't care.

And then, she comes back out, loosely folding her own clothes and setting them on the desk next to her main wand.

"So!  Order!  I'll pick something that isn't anywhere near my wand -"  She points to a coil of rope on the other side of the room.  "And I'll try to channel the magic through my arm itself, just as if I was an Elf.  New human students try this a lot, sometimes by accident, and when they're holding a wand it can actually hurt them - but not much for something small like this."

She holds out her arm at the rope and visualizes it lifting in the air and uncoiling.  She tries to probe for the magic and push it out, as if she had a wand in her hand...

Alicia watches intently, taking something like notes, stored in her own magic.  ...Really, that might almost come out as spirit magic even if it doesn't remotely seem like it should be that...

...but it is, well, order to its core in approach even if still somewhat convoluted.

...She has no idea of how that rope came to be there, which is disconcerting - perhaps Alicia made it - but she supposes, seeing it levitate, that it makes a convenient test subject.

Huh.  Her arm's glowing.  ...Wait, shit, that's bad for different reasons -- "Ciara, kill the spell!"

There is a flare of something cold and certain as the magic stills.  "We should have known better.  A word of advice, dragging magic from the Twisting Nether through your body isn't good for you either."

Alicia buries her face in her hands.  "Well.  It worked, sort of, and while that sort of mana flow was a bad plan, we know you can use our magic - that sort of radiance is characteristic."

"...Come to think of it, though, it's like your magic is all spirit magic even if it's arcane in a funny hat...  I wonder if we could do something with that similarity."

It worked!  She did magic with her own body!  Without any wand!  She's now magical herself, in herself!  She doesn't need wands and devices anymore!

- but she pinches off the spell the same moment as Ciara flares.

Even though it didn't feel fundamentally different yet...

"So what was that?  It didn't look any different from Svarendar - the dragon - when he was trying to be flashy with our magic at home.  But the Twisting Nether sounds bad - I was focusing on Order as much as I could, just like I said.  Maybe my glee was pulling me off?  Or maybe something's different in my soul?  Or maybe I'm misunderstanding Order?

"But I can do magic!  All with myself!"

"It was...

"No, it wasn't a fault in your understanding or anything."

She pauses, clearly thinking about how to try and explain.

"The thing you tried to do with your understanding was where things went sideways.

"To do magic is to externalize your will.  Don't call up the forces of magic inside yourself, unless you are calling up the magic that's - that is, and is inside of, you - that's a discipline of spirit magic, albeit one that many don't think of.  Because if you call the magic to you it will change you more than touching it already does."

Oh no.

"Change me?  How?  In my body?  Soul?  In what way?"

"All I can say is - it depends.  On the force, on the person, on how it happens.  And...You are touching a primordial force of the universe.

"Of course it changes you."

"...Not that much.  This isn't going to do anything that just existing wouldn't.  But it can accumulate over time, sometimes.  And some people...Have tried to weaponize the injection of large amounts of aspected mana, before.  It's...Not usually effective."

"Not usually effective?  Why?  And what is this spirit magic I was using?"

"They can't control what it does.  And you aren't using spirit magic."

"You used arcane magic - order magic - kind of like you were trying to use spirit magic.  Or at least it felt like that, from the explanation you gave of what you did.  That, and the reliance upon - external mediation - is the thing spirit magic is known for, despite there being plenty of practitioners that use only their own spirits.  But your casting paradigm is not spirit magic, even if it looks very similar at a glance, because - well, if it had been spirit magic we wouldn't have had to abort."

"It really isn't either of our specialties, but - perhaps I could try and show you.  ...Though I'm not sure how, really, I don't - oh, but I could - give me just a minute, I'm going to make something for you so you can - see what I'm doing, I guess."

She's got pretty good magic senses, so it wasn't a priority - but now that someone needs it - well, she probably should have produced this a while ago anyway, really.

It takes her a few minutes to produce a single ?monocle?, the chain a strangely undefined metal that looks more golden than not while the glass is both a void-dark purple and utterly transparent.  Looking through it reveals lingering motes of...something, around Alicia and Ciara - assuming Aeslin actually tries to do so.  (They are, notably, different colors - and Alicia is a source of two kinds, with an occasional hint of two more.)

Ciara watches closely as Alicia does yet another stupidly complicated bullshit thing because she clearly doesn't know better than to think otherwise, the actinic purple of arcane magic transfixing the impossible shadow-radiance of voidstuff as she pulls yet another artifact out of pure possibility with sheer stubbornness.  It'll work like she intends, too.  This is the sort of thing she can't keep up with.

"Oh... so here we're all even more deeply magical than I thought?  And magic from most of the principles can be cast from inside my soul?  That throws off a lot of my guesses about how this could be a story and what whoever set it up could've done with souls -"

If someone's taking existing souls and making the magic currents respond to them, that's one thing.  If someone's making them generate magic inside themselves - how could that even begin to be?  Or are her theories about souls even farther off than she thought?

"And also I'm not sure - I don't think I've got the right reflexes to do that - how do you start?

"And what is soul magic after all, and why's it so special?"

"What?  I mean, I guess, but - no, souls are a different thing - I don't - Ciara, would you, casting, explanation - "

Alicia just...spins out, too many things fighting for her attention as Aeslin just says things.

...to say nothing of how some of what Aeslin said would be pressing rather many of her guilt buttons if she actually processed all of it in detail.

"...It's not actively a story.  Not anymore.  Not if I can fucking help it."

Oh dear.  This is going to get...a way, if it keeps going like this.  Hm.

"You... can maybe help it?"

Would she want to stop... this world... from being a story if she could?  Well, not if -

"Without destroying this system of magic, I hope?  Just... not anymore, you said?  Not having a story actively changing things beyond the system set up?"

... She hasn't even begun to think about a story maybe doing that.  At first taste it feels worse than a binding spell.

She cuts in, before Alicia can try to guilt herself over having let a plot exist in potentia.

"...As far as we know, Alicia has broken the chains of fate by existing, and that's already been and done.  I'll thank you to refrain from inquiring further.

"As far as magic goes, though...

"You've already called magic to yourself.  You just need to shift your focus outside of your body when you're realizing the effect.  ...Watch what I do through Alicia's...whatever she just made.  The focus of my will might reach from my body, but it doesn't - evert - it doesn't dip beneath the world - until my will has reached beyond myself."

...what -

Good explanation of the thing, she supposes, but -

Well, it is an opsec matter, she supposes -

But shouldn't she take on the burden of having allowed plotting?  Because she did!  Ciara, why are you defending her from what should be the consequences of her own actions!

Alicia, so help her, stop blaming yourself for acts of random omnipotent beings.  You don't control them!  It's in the name!

But how can she just stop asking questions about "chains of fate"!?  It's so fundamental!  So important!  Especially if a mage - like Alicia - or herself - might be able to impact them!

... Still, there's magic.

"So... don't summon the magical power through myself, but... through the air or objects around me?  Is that what you're trying to picture?"

She reaches out for Alicia's monocle.

Alicia hands her the monocle!

"...It's not...through, anything, except in very specific circumstances.  Basic spells like these...are not those circumstances.  If you - refract the magic you call up through something, the effects will be...  Unpredictable, unless you understand that something's behavior extremely well."

"That's part of why it's so impressive that her highness has mastered magic that taps into two principles simultaneously, as you've already seen here," she gestures at the λ-monocle demonstratively.

"I mean, I wouldn't --"

"You have, and you will be acknowledged as you deserve."

"Yes, mastering two principles like that sounds significant!  Especially as young as you look - not that I'm patronizing you at all; too many people were doing that to me when I was about your age - but how young are you?"

(Aeslin is still confused about a lot of other things, but she looks at Alicia through the monocle while waiting for an answer or demonstration or both.)

"...That is a question that, for various reasons, has no true answer.  And I'm cheating anyway."

"...You are not.  That your cleverness is backed by a solid understanding of the way magic works does not make it any less clever."

... Some sort of magical sleep that she doesn't want to talk about?  Maybe it's a politically sensitive subject since she's a Princess - Aeslin doesn't really know how royal politics would work without an immortal queen reigning since time immemorial.

"If it works, the results aren't cheating.  Can you show us some of this double-magic?"

"That's what I just did to make that," she gestures to the monocle.  "Void and Order.  Possibilities constrained by rules."

Well yes; that could describe a whole lot of things.

"... Then I guess there're lots of different ways to be focusing on these ideals?  And what are these specks I'm seeing in the air around you?  The magical power that's formed the world?"

"Sort of.  Yes.  I suppose.  Aspect radiation, I guess.  The...being attuned to a concept brings that concept in tune with you and that resonates a bit even around you.  It's much more relevant on a nation-state scale.  Cultural affinities can shape the land to match, over long-enough timeframes.  ...You're not seeing all the magic because everything is magic, underneath.  You're seeing active magic."

Unconscious magic.  Background magic.  Magic weaving everything together.  Magic where the world is reacting to who you are.

"That's... wow.  You said everything was magic, but I didn't realize it was like that!  Where everything is reacting to everything like it's a spell building on itself!  Sort of like a body" (she folds her hand) "where all the muscles and blood and organs are reacting to each other!  Wow.  I - I can't assume anything isn't magic here, can I?  I mean, anything isn't actively magic in some way.

"And if the world is reacting to everyone... then it has to sort of average out different people, right?  Based on who's more in tune with the different concepts, and... are there other sorts of magical power or skill too?"

"I'm not sure how you mean the question."

"That - magical resonance from yourself - can affect anything around you?  And other people have that resonance too, if more or less of it?"

"Yes.  It's usually rather subtle."

"Unless one actively makes a show of it - but that is, in some senses, another form of subtlety, compared to spellcasting."

She holds out her arm and looks at herself - does she see the sparkles there?

"Then I think I've got enough of a metaphor to cast again..."

There are, if not so many as surround either of the others.

"There's a lot of metaphors to magic to begin with.  Goodness knows even I don't know half of them.  That said - would you like to try again, then?"

"Sure!  I'll try to pick up -"  She glances around, deciding against the rope she used last time just in case the world remembers it's already got some magic attached.  "That book over there.  No channeling magic through my body; the magic's already in the world; I just need to get it to pay attention to me.  The world itself is my wand..."

She carefully folds her hands so she doesn't accidentally channel through them.  The world itself is her wand, even though she isn't touching the part of it she wants to use.  It's all already in tune with each other and with her soul; she just needs to tweak it the right way...

Yes, exactly.

"...There we go.  That's better.  Well done."  This time, the shimmering is focused around the book.

"That... wow.  It feels so counterintuitive for me to get into that frame of mind.  But if I can learn to get in it..."

"Not that I'm going to try, but - what's stopping me, or you, from picking up this whole castle?"

"Theoretically, nothing!  Practically, the level of focus required to encompass the entire castle, and the power draw you'd need to lift it, would be too much, as the castle wasn't built for it and neither is the reach of your soul infinite."

"Really, as far as levitation goes, while force to counter force is a reasonable option, it's death practitioners that have the best of it.  If you simply kill the effect of gravity..."

"Now, really, don't give away all my secrets."

"You've done far more than that."

"Have I?  You'll have to remind me, sometime."

"And death magic would be - a different way of thinking about what I'm doing when I have the world as my wand and I'm tweaking it?  I wouldn't want to do it with gravity on the castle anyway; I'd be too worried I'd accidentally turn it off all over the area - or maybe do it unevenly and make it collapse; that's probably more likely given my soul apparently has limited reach."

"But would it be safer to try turning off friction on this table...?"

...Huh.  She never explicitly implemented friction.  That said, she didn't think that she'd need to do that, but now she's wondering how it does work.  Probably something to do with probabilistic entanglements...

Ciara nudges her charge, before Alicia can get too distracted by whatever question she just asked herself.  Probably some bit of physics minutiae, knowing her.

"- ah - uh, yes, you should be fine attempting to make the table arbitrarily smooth?  And - spells that you're not strong enough for, some will just come out less strong, and others just won't work to begin with, fizzling out.  Sometimes there can be backlash, but that happens when you really try to push it to the point of - well, accidentally calling on chaos instead."

"...As for your other question..."

"I am not a practitioner of death magic; that's Ciara's thing and I do not have the knack.  But...

"No, it's not like that, because - judging from what you said there, you might be trying to treat death magic like you would order magic, and doing that just gets you order magic.  Other than that, though..."

"Hm.  Ciara, would you mind...?"

"Oh! And there are - ways to extend your reach that you can build in to spellwork to begin with, anyway."

Ciara lets out a fondly exasperated huff as Alicia's brain catches up to something five seconds after she was done with it once again.

"If this is something you wish to learn of, I could speak of what it feels like, to touch primordial death."

... does she want to touch primordial death?

Well, yes, she wants to learn all sorts of magic.  This new world is built on a tension between things including Death.

(down, existential weirdness, down, she is here with a body that is built on this, and she can't change it.  At least not today.)

...So she wants to learn Death too.

"Yes, tell me!"

She saw that.

...but, someone should tell her.

Goodness knows that blind fumbling will not work, is indeed actively antithetical - and that Aeslin might try and have who-knows-what happen if she doesn't.  (Probably Decay, if she's guessing.  She might still reach that anyway.  Death and Decay are, despite the crucial differences, all too easy to confuse, for the novice without any particular insight.)

"Listen carefully, and do not attempt to do anything with the information I am about to tell you until I say you have reached sufficient comprehension of it that you probably won't lose your grip, or even worse, grab hold of entirely the wrong thing.  Death magic is not Decay magic, just as Spirit magic is not Life magic, but to those uninitiated in either, it is sufficiently difficult to distinguish the two that precautions are necessary."

Aeslin nods emphatically.  She doesn't want to grasp out blindly here at all.

"The concepts are different at home too.  You can keep decay at bay from your body any number of individual ways, but the quest for immortality is still futile for humans - proverbially futile, even in the tales from the Days of Wonder.  Of course there're always a few people who've tried even though they should know better.  But what's the difference here?"

"I think you have misunderstood something far more fundamental than I thought we would be having problems with - Decay, the process, is not strictly analogous to Decay, the magical force.  And mistaking the magic for the base linguistic label we put on it is not a good thing to do.  Even as these are the generally agreed-upon names for a reason, you will find important differences.  Alicia, this is really better suited for you, I should think."

"...I think you explained that better than I would have, my burning desire to go on a tangent about immortality aside."

Do they have immortality?

She's learned enough new things about souls in the last hour that she can't rule it out.

(She stares at Alicia for a moment.)

(And then turns back to Ciara.)

Of course the force Decay isn't the same as the naive meaning of the term.

"Now I'm wondering if I'm missing something about 'order' too, even though it's seemed similar enough so far," she says tentatively.  "What is the magical force of Decay, if you want to start there?  Or Death?  Either one?"

"The force of Decay is not something I consider myself to practice, for all that there are senses in which I could do so if I wished.  I practice Death magic near-exclusively.  And on that note..."

"Death magic is a magic of endings, of inevitabilities, of dooms.  Of the silence at the end of time.  It is also a critical component of soulstuff."

"It is not a magic of grasping for endings.  It is a magic of that which will end.  To cast it requires a fundamental certainty that is beyond many."

"But - what if you don't know what your doom is?  Or, I guess, the doom of what you're casting on?"

She pauses, checking if she can tell whether the thoughts connect - no, best to ask.  "Does this come from the narrative this universe was made with?"

"...I'm not sure I know what you're asking, but as far as your first two questions go 'the silence at the end of time' is usually sufficient."

"...The physics isn't particularly narrativized, Aeslin, except for a couple of just-so stories about why there is a universe built in."

"And to fend off a followup question I'm expecting in advance, there wasn't anything to be true about how the universe came to be, before it did, so any or all of them might be true or false and we can't know - but I'm partial to the Light/Void one."

"There's an end to time?... In silence?...  And you're saying that's not narrativized?  Not just the back cover of a book that doesn't have any story on it?"

"Perhaps not quite as literally -"

"...You're missing the point again.  Staring at the tree and missing the forest.  Because in most senses no there isn't, but there simultaneously is because that's how the magic works.  And the physics, and for that matter the metaphysics, is not part of the narrative structure of...Look, this is going to sound even more absurd, but the narrative I'm supposed to be in is a romance, not an excuse to explore magical worldbuilding - unless there's some other meta-level of story I'm not aware of, which, hell, maybe there is, I can't know, but I've seen enough stories that went the way this one's been going that I wouldn't be surprised -"

Aeslin was going to ask about how the magic was supposed to work with an ending that isn't there in most senses, but she ends up just staring at Alicia in shock, whispering, "A romance?... Supposed to be?..."

"...I was not given a true choice in whether I'd be part of this story.  But I was given some choice of how.  And I chose for there to be no fate but what we make, from the point it actually began."

"That's... good..." she breathes.  "But - what!?"

And then she plows ahead. "I never held to the idea of fate.  Nor liked it.  Not since that first time I saw that kids' book talking about how dragons were all doomed and lost like everything else from the Age of Wonders, but then Svarendar wasn't acting doomed or lost - and I wanted to be like him not like that book said he should be!"

Alicia is nodding approvingly.

"Well said.  Regardless...  The idea of fate existing or not is not part of magic.  Nor is Alicia's particular circumstance."

"...And... If I can help, or arrange for help for, your Queen, or Svarendar, in not being the last of their kind, I would like to.  There are, probably, ways.  Albeit highly...finicky ones, if I were to lay out how I'd hope to accomplish this from what I know."

"Yes... first we'd need to get home, out of this universe."

"And all right, dismiss the idea of fate... but then what is this silent end of time?  If that's what's important to the magic?  Just a picture, a possible vision?"

"Yes, something like that.  ...It doesn't have to be - real, or possible, to matter.  That's the entire theory of void magic."

"Wha - what?  Every impossible daydream matters?  Even the ones about pink dancing griffins?"

"I mean...Yes and no, because Void magic is a paradox even when it's simple, but, yes?  Anything that can or cannot be, is within Void's scope."

"So... everything?  Including all the other types of magic - oh, but Void means focusing on all the possibilities, or the sense of possibility?"

"I - hm - how can I put this in a way that makes sense to someone who isn't literally me, because I have specific insights here that don't translate very well..."

"Void magic is the magic of not-being so hard that you are anyway.  Even though you aren't.  ...Damn it, that surely doesn't make enough sense..."

"... No, because kids' bedrooms aren't deluged in pink dancing griffons.  Well, unless they are in this world."

"Not-being isn't the same thing as simply not being.  Because if it worked like that, they would be, which they can't, because they aren't."

"...Alicia, dear.  She hasn't seen the Glitch, or however you put it."

"...Ah.  Yes.  Right.  Excuse me.  Um.  Hm.  How..."

"Voidstuff is not, dancing griffons.  It is the idea that dancing griffons behave in certain ways.  If...that makes sense."

"I... still don't think so?  Unless you're saying it only creates possibilities for existing things, in which case I'm guessing every child's room has toy animals coming alive."

"...No.  It creates possibilities for things existing, which is not the same thing as possibilities for existing things.  But realizing those possibilities, that's...

"I'm going to get a bit sidetracked back into creation myths and hope that makes sense of something.

"The Twisting Nether, the primordial chaos that underlies creation and from which all order arises, was made.

"Because once upon a time, there was only nothing.  And then there was light.  Illuminating, realizing, revealing.  Unifying.  Or rather, attempting to.

"Because in the nothing, there were not-things, and none of the not-things were the same as any other.  And none of the not-things could be unified in truth.

"Creation longs to return to the calm darkness of the Void," Alicia murmurs, a shadowy purple orb of irradiance cupped in her hands, even as she prepares her next demonstration.  "But the Light will not let it.  It will filter through the reflection of what Is Not, striving to make something that Is - for all that what Is is fundamentally in contradiction with its nature; the beautiful shining thing at the core of the Light is of the Void too."  She shakes her head, even as a spark of Light flares from and consumes the Voidstuff like it was never even there, reflecting a million impossible things in the scattered images it reveals.  "And it is exploiting this tension that powers both magics, not that many practitioners of either consider the subject.  Not that many even know."

"...Do you truly think that that is a feat of children?"

...Sometimes, she almost forgets that Alicia isn't more than an unbearably (adorably) precocious changeling-child who has had a vision of a future that won't happen.

Then, Alicia does something like this and reminds her that the woman who sits before her could be said to be a creator god, albeit one at the whims of greater forces still, and she thanks anyone who's listening that the woman who defined their world is not the same person as the Princess ever was.

It sounds really poetic.

It doesn't sound like anything more.

It doesn't sound like something you can pick up and do something with - though apparently you can somehow do magic with it?

"That... I'm sorry, but that feels like the sort of pastel story children tell and feel profound.  Maybe there's something meaningful in it, but I still don't understand what any of those terms really mean.

"Because you can't.  Because I can't and I do things with them.  Magic is not going to neatly settle itself into comprehensibility just because we think it should!"

"I don't know how else to explain this.  It's just something that is.  Or is Not, as the case may be."

"Do you have - I don't know.  Anybody that goes around posing seemingly absurd questions like 'what is the sound of one hand clapping'?  Where you're from."

Oh.  She's never encountered any magic like this.

"So... meditate on the uncomprehensibility.  Or something.  Or - yeah, the Alnessites have a few stories about absurdities like that.  I never liked them, but..."

"More of an or something, but we may be getting somewhere."  Thank goodness.  "...Really, almost everything has meditation involved at some point in the learning, though.  You need to have - a very sharp will.  If that makes sense."

"But yeah.  Void magic is the absurd."

Magic shouldn't work that way.  It's just preposterous.

"That's really not how any magic works that I've ever heard of before."

"Well.  Yes, because you're not from around here and your magic is all Order-shaped.  But trust me, somewhere in the multiverse are things stranger still."

"I'm not really sure I'm explaining this properly, to be honest.  I just know how it works, but I don't really know the words.

"Though, I suppose, if you wanted a practical demonstration, I could try saying them anyway."

Aeslin likes Order.  She never really realized how much she likes it until she ended up here, where she's suddenly being bewildered yet again at how her body can be holding together.

"I don't think I want to cast this one... I don't think I'll be able to cast it.  At least not for a while.  If I was trying, I'd be saying something like 'the heaviness of air and wisdom of birds' - but that wouldn't even work; my mind's already been searching out how that might make sense."

"I mean.  Even I do prefer to pull on Order as a... filter layer, to keep things from working their way in at the edges.  But those things could work, as λ-things."

(λ, of course, being pronounced most similarly to 'not', but clearly meaning something not just not but instead Not.)

"It's all in how you think about it, I guess.  But I'll take your word for it that you'd have trouble."

She shakes herself.

"But before we got on this, we were talking about Death magic?  Or - what do you work with most yourself?"

"Myself?  Order, and Void.  I'm halfway sure I'm going to pick up Spirit out of self-defense at this point - or Decay, more likely, because I'm not good at, negotiating cooperation, and suchlike; enough of what I do touches on the edges of what those do.  Ciara works Death magic."

"Negotiating cooperation?  That's decay?  I guess I can see the analogy... it's chewing down their original adamant positions... but 'decay' feels like it has bad connotations there."

"No, uh, negotiating cooperation is spirit magic, decay is more of a 'whack the universe with a big stick until it gives up' sort of thing.

"Or...Well, that's not a good explanation either, so let me just...

"You may recall that I showed you that diagram with the three axes of magic and their interactions?  Spirit and Decay are kind of special, in those terms, because they're composites - like, but not-like, the elements.  Spirit magic is Life-Light-Order.  Decay is Void-Chaos-Death."

"Oh - I guess I misunderstood what you were saying there -  Does that mean our souls are related to life, light, and order; or is that just a coincidence of the naming?"

"Spirit magic is not actually directly related to souls; souls are composite Light/Order/Death."

"Oh wow!"

They do know souls; and they know them so well that they even know what they're made of!

... At least, that's what they're made of here.  In this universe.

"... But that magic only works in this universe, right?  Do you know anything about what souls are made of outside this universe?"

Like hers.

"I have absolutely no idea and indeed live in a state of perpetual existential uncertainty on the matter."

"...Would Lila -"

"I really don't think so.  And it's not like we can ask her right now."

"Did my soul change?" she wonders aloud.  "That'd make the most sense - except how could the spell that sent me here change my soul?  That's impossible for any magic in my world to do!  Well, any known magic -"

Her musing drops to a murmur.  "- and there are those annoying claims from the Days of Wonder that we all dismissed as the Fay bragging, but if they weren't --  Or it would make more sense for this universe to have rewritten my soul; it's already stated that it can do magic with souls -- Or would it make more sense for it to have rewritten my soul, or just made a new soul --

"-- a new soul, new body made from magic like everything in this universe --"

She freezes dead-still for a moment, and then slowly, gingerly, raises her hand.

Who is she now?

"...Ah.  And we arrive at the existential questions.  I'm sorry about that.  I think you're still you, if that matters.  You think, therefore you are, you know?"

She half-automatically answers, breaking through her existential doubt, "That's silly; even golems can think!"

But when she first showed up and heard this universe was all magical, she was wondering if she was a golem...

"... am I a golem?...  If my soul's like yours now, then by my own universe's standards, I would be..."

"... but now... that isn't really what matters.  What matters is, am I the same Aeslin as was existing before?"

She has a tiny doubt whether that is what matters, but she can't put her finger on any better question.

"I think you are, or else I'm not me.  And that would just be silly."

She wrinkles her nose.  It does feel silly, in a way.  Either if she is herself, or if she's a golem - if she was told about this happening to someone else, it would sound a little silly if she heard that someone else was in serious consternation over the question.

Better for whoever it was to be designing experiments to answer the question.

Which might involve getting her back home... back to where she remembers as being home, at least.  Where she wants to be home.

Or there's another approach that might yield some information.

"Can we look at my soul?  What could it tell you if we did?"

"...I think we could.  I'm not really sure it would tell us all that much that we don't already know?"

"I don't expect that we will get more information than whether your soul is new, but that could be informative."

"Yes.  That.

"And it'd also tell you if it is the sort of soul that involves your magic system."

"i think it would kind of have to be no matter what else you might have?  But I'll admit, you're rather an outside context problem."

"...Concert casting or ritual, what do you think," she turns to Ciara with the question of how they should do this.

"I believe concert work would be more versatile, and we can surely do it.  Don't forget that you need to ask Aeslin, though, I know you're about to just start casting - she will likely be able to follow a ritual setup better."

"- ah.  Yeah.  Right.  I really need to get around to drilling medical ethics into my head properly if this is going to keep happening.  So.  Aeslin.  We have two options, here, for how we do this.  One of them is an Arcane ritual that taps other relevant forces for contrast, which will only do what we know how to tell it to do even if that's not necessarily the best option in a situation of not knowing what we don't know.  The other is that between Ciara and myself, we have sufficient command of the forces in play to do something that can respond to the unexpected.  Which would you prefer?"

"What sort of unexpected things would be likely to happen?  Do you mean, if my soul turns out to be something unexpected -"

- which would actually be a good thing here, she reminds herself, because it would be something not created for this sub-reality -

"- you might be able to look more into it in ways you hadn't thought of in advance?  More easily than casting another ritual?"

The ritual definitely feels more comfortable to her in advance, more than maybe letting these very new friends get a look at her soul in ways she doesn't really understand.  But, she does want answers.

"And for that matter, what forces are in play here you'd be tapping into or commanding to do this?"

"More easily than creating another ritual that answers those questions, which is what we would likely have to do.  It's...

"Damn, all my metaphors are useless because they're premised upon knowledge of things nobody has.  Yet.  Except the gnomes, I guess.

"...It's the difference between giving someone a sheet of paper with instructions on it, and actively supervising someone as they carry out instructions."

There is a brief look between Ciara and Alicia, as Alicia starts to wind up to answer Aeslin's other question.

Ciara speaks, instead.

"Arcane magic is the magic you are used to, magic drawing on the primordial principle of Order.  Death magic draws, similarly, on the primordial principle of - Well.  Death.  Stillness, cessation...Hunger, as well."

Shiver.

"... and you'd be peering into my soul with death magic?"

"...I understand your trepidation.  Especially in dealing with such uncertain circumstances.  I am, nonetheless, a professional - and it takes effort to make death magic do anything.  Frankly, life magic running rampant is far more trouble."

"Which is to say that frankly you should be more worried about me fucking up.  Not that that's likely either, but seriously, death magic won't kill you if it can instead self-terminate."

"Well then," she says with a nervous sigh, "I won't rule it out.  I was risking my life far worse right before I ended up here."

"... But what sort of things would you see in my soul?  If it is the sort of soul you're used to, at least?  Would you see what sort of person I am - my memories - how I make decisions - things like that?"

"...No.  I mean, with enough effort anything is theoretically possible, but that's a very large theoretical.  No, if anything that's spirit magic that does that.  And barely."

"Your 'theoretically possible's have far too much implicit 'if you were a god'.  And not even the normal sort of gods."

"But.  I can, indeed, confirm, that I would need to be intending to look at that sort of thing to have the first chance of finding it - and even then, only in its broadest strokes."

Good.  The relief is obvious on her face.

"So what would you be seeing?

"... also, maybe anything's possible here, but it isn't where I'm from.  Even in theory.  Well, as closely as we can tell.  I already mentioned immortality - there're also other things like, well, traveling to the past and restoring something destroyed beyond memory."

"...Something like a measure of the strength of your soul, if it behaves similarly to what we're already used to.

"...I shouldn't let myself get sidetracked from determining what soul(s) you may have by dumping a bunch of theoretical time travel stuff on you.

"...I really, really shouldn't sidetrack myself with time travel.  Even though it's not as completely impossible as you might think if magic can break certain physical laws of your world, under the assumption that your physics generally replicates a physics I know more than I should about.

"I appear to have gotten sidetracked anyway."

She stares in amazement at Alicia talking about time travel, and then breaks out in a huge wide-eyed joyful grin.

" -- You can time travel?  That changes everything --

"-- well, if we can get back where I'm from, and if time travel here means time travel there too, we could get to the Days of Wonder!  And learn everything!"

"... uh, if your time-travel spells work to go back maybe six hundred years of my world?  Which currently we have no idea how that translates into years here.  But even if the spells are shorter-range, would it work to go back and watch more about what magic happened when I appeared here?  Or would that be impossible since you didn't already notice whatever monitoring might've been done?"

"Well, the first problem is getting you back to the right universe.  The second problem is actually figuring out how to make your native magic aid and abet a shenanigan against the laws of physics that I can't say I even fully understand.  The third problem is that the extent of my knowledge is knowing that people have done math about this and not knowing what math they did."

"The fourth problem is that for all I know the math might not accurately reflect your reality to begin with.  It's...

"Well, it's all highly theoretical.

"...

"...bloody hell, I hadn't been thinking about local time travel.

"I don't...

"But space is the same...

"...But it's atop an explicitly atemporal mess...

"...Well, damn, I guess we can.  Shit.  That's more than I wanted to deal with.  And I may or may not be eaten by a grue if I start trying to mess with time.  ...I wouldn't bet on time travel here corresponding to time travel in your universe, regardless.  Just to be clear.  Different reference frames."

Aeslin looks confused for a minute when Alicia's talking about math, but then she guesses where that might come in.  Magic doesn't usually use math, but if you're making a reservoir of magical power or an artifact that discharges over time, that can involve math.  Maybe time travel is like that?

"... oh," she says aloud at the end.  "So time travel here doesn't mean anything about my universe... and you think it'd work there, but that's based on your theories of how my universe might work?  Which, you obviously know something about some other universe, but I'm just thinking of them as theories because it seems to me my universe might not work the same as either of the ones you know.

"Or it might.  We don't know enough about it that I can say one way or the other."

"It's definitely possible that your universe simply says No to something like negative energy.  If it's even running the right sort of physics for the math to be viable.

"Wouldn't want to bet either way, though."

"...Actually, I bet we could isolate your unique universe with Light/Void...  Where's Great-Aunt Ophelia when you need her, anyway...  ...That's a joke, by the way," she says to seemingly empty space, "you're busy doing important things, I'm sure, even if there's science to be done.

"...Oh, I should not recursively distract myself.  And portals are well-developed anyways...

"...Should definitely dig up the reference texts for those.  We'll need them.  ...Probably.  I mean, 'infinitely long rotating cylinder' is not a portal, for example, but wormholes already kind of break time..."

Ciara seems quite amused by Alicia's propitiation of the assumed-omniscient Duchess of Thorn, though she doesn't let on that she's in on the joke.

"...Anyway.

"I don't...want to suddenly encounter dragons.  There's a very peculiar dread looming that suggests that trying that sort of thing will end in tears for all involved.  So I'm not going to poke time here.

"But, I'll see if can get you something for when you're home."

"... that's another thing magic can't do at home, actual infinities.  And I don't know what 'negative energy' is, unless you mean a sort of projective antimagic?"

Aeslin has weird associations with dragons.  Svarendar was her first close friend (except her sister), as well as teacher and role model.  If she suddenly encountered a dragon - well, right now, she's imagining she'd cry with relief at the sense of home in this new world.

Even though she intellectually knows a lot of dragons weren't like him.

"... was that just a figure of speech?" she says aloud.  "About dragons?  If there're real dragons here, I might like to talk with one.  Non-suddenly.  If it's safe."

"But yes, if you're worried about time travel, then let's drop the issue and talk about..."

"... looking at my soul."

"Well of course you can't have an actual infinity unless you're doing something impossible, the universe is finite.

"The dragons are very probably metaphorical and-or irreal.  We don't actually have any."  Despite dragons being cool.  She didn't want to retraumatize Lila.  "Not really going to stop the time police from biting my face off though.  So let's, yeah, back to the whole soul thing."

(Elsewhere, a collection of semi-omnipotent beings exhale.  They weren't supposed to have to deal with time travel in this one!  Sure, they had some things in mind, and the preliminary notes had adjacencies - but it wasn't fleshed out, and they'd just be embarrassed to have to patch this in in production.  Even if the problem is that something broke into their universe somehow and sent things off in unanticipated directions, and that wasn't their department.)

... Not that they would have fixed it with a sudden army of dragons.  There are more subtle ways, of course.  But it's best when those aren't required either.

"There're a few more implications.  Say, infinite series can't complete in finite time because the magic computes within the finite-so-far universe.

"But anyway.  Back to souls.  You said it measures the strength of my soul.  Would that mean my lifespan?  My willpower?  Something else?"

"...But can't you short-circuit those problems somehow anyway?  ...Sometimes.  I haven't gotten to that math, and might never, really, but I remember something about an infinite sum over - was it naturals, integers, or reals... - somehow coming out to negative 1/12th."

"...More 'willpower' than 'lifespan', but not necessarily either of those.  It's..."

She waves the explanation at Ciara, seeming a bit lost for words herself.

"It rather directly measures the amount of power one can draw."

"Ah.  Power from any element, Order or Death or anything else?  The amount of power someone can draw is the same from any of those?  Given an equally-good focus and visualization?

"And that would tell you... what?  That my soul fits into that system?  But we already know that since I can cast from it."

"...Hmm.  The answer to your question about whether the power one can draw from any element is the same, assuming sufficient knowledge, is - well, the answer is, we have our suspicions, but we don't exactly have a direct comparative measure of affinity to begin with!  Not to mention the hypothesized neutral thaum."

She succeeds in not getting distracted by the "hypothesized neutral thaum" because she's already chasing another question.  "But as far as you can tell it all relates to this one quality of someone's soul?  That makes sense.  Especially since souls presumably have too many free parameters for it to be at all easy to exhaustively prove.  All right; and the second question?  About what good it does to measure this?"

"On its own...

"Not all that much, though we can take an affinity measure.

"Which is why we want to do the not-predetermined spell, so we can measure the things that surprise us."

"Then yes - just don't get near my memories or decisions or things like that - but do it!"

"...Alright."

"This is your last chance to back out before we start."

"...Well I mean I should probably still say that you should try to stay relatively still, before we get started?  Find somewhere..."  She takes a moment to look at her laboratory.

"...Less uncomfortable than everywhere else."

Aeslin nods, reluctant to delay now but seeing the point, and looks around the room.  If she sees a chair without anything on it, she'll take it; otherwise, she'll ask which chair or settee is simplest and safest to clear off.

There's rather a paucity of those, in favor of stools - but there are enough of those for everybody to have one.

Well, if she's supposed to be comfortable, that demands something more than just a stool, doesn't it?  Given that, unlike a dragon, she has an upright back?

(It was her big sister who first taught her this lesson.  Not that she remembers it well enough in general, but she does once reminded.)

But after a questioning glance around the chair-free room, she settles for pulling up a stool and sitting on it, and looking over expectantly..

Alicia busies herself laying out parts of a magic circle, calling forth four of the six primordial forces around Aeslin's position - those that will not be represented, and controlled, by Ciara and herself.

Ciara, meanwhile, explains what they're doing, and what it might feel like.

"What Alicia is setting up right now is - support structure, because to get a good look at what's going on, we might need to check everything - but the soul divination is just going to involve a bit of Light, in addition to our contributions.  You might feel a sense of oneness; that's an indication of Light sensitivity."

Aeslin watches Alicia's preparations with avid curiosity, if hardly any experience!  She wants to ask questions about every bit of it, but she's not going to bother her in the middle of laying out her circle!

"Is the light magic - to tell how well my soul measures up to other people's?  Or something like that?"

"...You're thinking too small.  It's not inaccurate to say that the presence of the Light here is for that purpose, but that's not what the Light does.  It's there as - access to the ability to make that comparison; it is not - the comparison in and of itself.

"Magic requires a strong will - a strong mind - and a strong vision^[1], no matter which force one taps into, because it will do what it wants, and not what you want, unless you can make it want what you want."

([1]: 'Vision', here, being the closest gloss of a somewhat untranslateable concept of strength of self that could also be translated as 'hubris'.)

"... Ah, yes.  That does fit more with how you've described this universe's magic.  I need to get out of my old habits of thought.

"I think I might like this magic system once I wrap my head around it... and once I feel at home here.  Somehow.  People have told me I have a lot of vision."

"...yeah."

There is a surprising weight to the agreement.

"Once, or if.  If you want to bend your efforts to the task of sending yourself home - it may be wiser not to forge bonds that may have to break all over again.

"Not that I don't intend to be making a better solution for this than a one-way trip would be.  But...

"I do feel for your out-of-placeness here, as absurd as that might sound."

"That... is a valid point. But I don't want to not wrap my mind around things here just in case I'll get home with bad habits."

"Who knows, maybe you can take the magic with you.  I don't see why it wouldn't respond if we're in the same sheaf of multiverse..."

She hasn't forgotten Alicia's vague words about having been in another universe.

"You've worked with the same magic across different universes?"

"No, but - you did get here because of a point of contact between your world and mine, so that proves interaction."

"Well yes, but couldn't the magic just as well be defined by something specific to your universe?  Though of course the magic from my own universe does seem to work here, which is at least one point of evidence against that theory...

"... but anyway, you were going to look at my soul?"

"It's a fundamental particle but it is a particle, you can take it with you if it's possible to transmit mass at all.  But yes.  Yes, we were."

"Tell me what you're doing!  Do I need to do anything?"

"....Right.  Well.  As far as the ritual goes - oh, but I can't use that analogy because you wouldn't really - I mean maybe you might -

"The general idea is to determine your - resonance, I guess, by exciting the fundamental...."  She waves a hand.  "Magic-ness of existing as something that even can interact with our physics.   -- I'm providing the interpretation, the organization and measurement; Ciara is providing the actual gathering force."

"... and that resonance will show you my soul?  I could imagine something like that conceivably working in my home - I could've explored in that direction if I'd wanted, but I decided to take other opportunities.  Or is that resonance my soul?"

"The former, more than the latter, but - the latter's not entirely wrong, either."

"Huh!  That feels sort of... fragile, for a soul."

"It is, and it isn't?  Which is entirely unhelpful to say, I know, but -"

"It's true?  Is all I can say."

"Souls..."

"There are things that can hurt them, yes.  But they're built out of some of the most - resilient - primal forces."