chalk | Glowfic Constellation

"But you're still here. And out of your circle. And you have a cafeteria pass."

cardistry

"They can't send me back until somebody gets a familiar, apparently? And I don't really care, here's as good as anywhere. I like the food. Food is new and awesome."

Speaking of which: food! Food food food food food. Mmmmmm. It's so food.

"Why would they not be able to - did they co-cast? Co-casting is idiotic for anything you're going to need to reverse."

cardistry

Nomty nom - mm. Okay, he can take a break long enough to say, "I wouldn't know. I think that's what they did, though, yeah. Why, what's the difference?"

"Co-casting is when you split the power draw of a spell between two people to cut sting or fit a big spell in under their CCs, but it's only useful if you're not going to have to undo it."

cardistry

"Guess they made a pretty dumb mistake, then. What's sting?"

"Casting spells more than half the size you can manage hurts."

cardistry

"Weird way for magic to work," says Brilliance. "Mine doesn't do that."

"I would really like to hear more about your magic." The red-eyed boy sits down at Brilliance's table.

cardistry

"Okay," he says agreeably. "Like what?"

(Hopefully the red-eyed boy will not mind if Brilliance continues to eat in between saying things, and sometimes does little chair-dances when he tastes something especially nice. Food is the best.)

"Everything. I'm specializing in magic theory - in full generality, the fact that this is a wizard school aside."

cardistry

Happy food-related chair-dancing concludes for now. "'Everything' doesn't give me much of a starting point," says Brilliance. "Like - I know there's nobody on this planet who can do my kind of magic, because if there was I'd be able to tell, and I'm almost positive there's nobody in the universe who can, because this place is so weird and full of weird magic and none of it's a kind I can sense. Although I kind of wonder if that's just a compatibility thing, like, maybe I could design a module that would let me sense - wizardry? And whatever else? But I'm not exactly an expert in that kind of thing, I was built as a combat Device."

Kaylo has a bag on his person; he pulls a notepad out of it and starts writing things down. "What is a Device?"

cardistry

"Well, me, for one," he says. "It's like this: there's human mages, who can generate and access mana and use it to do magic. They create Devices, which help with that - make spells cheaper, store and record them, protect our wielders from damage, stuff like that. The more complicated a Device's functions, and the more powerful the Device, the more intelligent and autonomous it is. So a one-form one-spell Device that doesn't even have to turn on and off, just maintain its one spell indefinitely, will have about as much brain as a, what's something biological and not conscious, a blade of grass - but I'm complicated and powerful, so I'm a person."

And now he has done lots of talking and will have a bite of ice cream instead. Mmmm, ice cream. Ice cream is fantastic.

"Would this be easier to talk about in your native language?" asks the red-eyed boy, jotting down notes.

cardistry

"I kind of don't have one," he says. "Why, can you speak them all too?"

"Yeah, I'm a dragon. Guys with funny-colored eyes and girls with funny-colored hair are more likely than not dragons. In what way do you not have one?"

cardistry

"Is that a funny eye colour?" he inquires, peering into the relevant set of eyes. "It's rare on some planets, I guess. Anyway, Devices speak and understand all languages. There's a language I heard first but it's not really any more mine than any of the others and it's not my favourite. How about..." he thinks for a few seconds, then switches languages, "English, they spoke it in parts of the planet I was just on and it has a lot of the right technical vocabulary for some reason even though barely anybody there could do magic and most people didn't even know it was a thing."

"Funny colored for a human," says Kaylo. "English, fine. What makes somebody able to use your kind of magic - are all mages humans?"

cardistry

"Humans are it for intelligent biological life, in the worlds I'm used to," he says. "And plenty of them have red eyes. So yeah, all mages are humans, but that's not necessarily because people aren't humans can't be mages, it's because people who aren't humans aren't even there. And the thing that mages have that lets them use mana is called a linker core. It's a... I have no idea how to describe it in any language, I don't think I've ever heard one that had good words for Device magical senses. I can sense them, anyway. They are magic."

And now, more ice cream. He hugs his spoon. It is a good spoon. It makes eating ice cream easier and that is great.

"...Do you speak Draconic by any chance?" inquires the dragon.

cardistry

"Is it a language? Then yes," he says, ceasing to hug his spoon and instead spooning some more ice cream with it. "I have to hear some before I can use it, though, just the name in a different language won't work."

Nom!

"This is a sentence in Draconic," says the dragon, sounding skeptical. "It is useful for talking about things."

cardistry

"...Whoa," says Brilliance, also in Draconic. "Yeah, that's a lot of vocabulary, all right. Why does it have words for this stuff? It's a dragon language, not a Device language. Is it magic? It's totally magic."