"Yep. Dormitory rooms are for sleeping in, right? I don't sleep."

"Device thing or you thing?"

"Device thing. I guess it's possible there's some Device somewhere that sleeps, but I don't think it's common - it's the kind of thing you'd have to build in a function for on purpose, and why would you?"

"But eating is new and you have a function for that even though it's nonessential; why?"

"It comes with the form in a way that sleeping apparently doesn't, and it's not useless - I'm getting mana from all this."

"Interesting. What's the conversion rate like - what kind of quantities and units does mana come in?"

"It's not huge, but it's not nothing. And I might just be thinking it's not huge because I'm kind of huge. I'm getting about - this is an estimate, also why does this language have a unit system for mana, I love this language - fifteen to twenty thaums from a bite of ice cream. A little spell like the one I floated my tray with is about ten thaums to cast, with negligible upkeep. A high-damage personal combat spell is maybe five or six thousand thaums. My base power level is about fifteen orders of magnitude bigger than that. It's hard to get the numbers very precise because I'm sensing it all directly, not measuring it, and I can't 'eyeball'" (of course there is a Draconic word for that concept applied specifically to his mana sense, he loves this language) "the big stuff that well."

"That's amazing. How big are most Devices, most mages?"

"Most mages... between fifty or a hundred thousand thaums and a few million. I've sensed a few that I think might have gone up to a hundred million, but none any bigger than that. A hundred million is pretty powerful for a Device; most of the ones I've sensed were maybe one or two million. I've never sensed one that came remotely close to being as powerful as me. But I could probably hide my mana capacity from casual observation if I felt like it, so maybe all the other Devices this powerful do that automatically."

"Why're you so big? Does that make you smarter, what with the thing where the smaller ones are not even people?"

"Yep. And helpfully removed the control program that was trying to make me destroy planets. I do not wanna destroy planets, I like planets, some of them have people and I like people and some of them have ice cream and I think you can tell how I feel about ice cream."

"I can tell you feel pretty positively about ice cream," agrees Kaylo. "Okay good. How hard would it've been to make you?"

"Extremely. The people who did it were on the cutting edge, granted that it was about four hundred years ago so the cutting edge has probably moved."

"What kind of lifespan have you got there?"

"Indefinite. Devices just keep going until we're destroyed."

"I'm gathering you don't starve - what would do it?"

"Uh, if I took enough magical damage, or if somebody got into my systems and dismantled me, and I guess there's probably an amount of physical damage that would take me out but it'd be a lot. And I know some Devices have design flaws or unstable modules that mean they damage themselves when they cast spells close to their power limit, but lucky me, I'm good on that front. So basically there is nothing in this universe that can kill me, unless it's some of your weird magic."

"Describe 'magical damage'?"

"Blast enough mana at something and you can destroy it," he says. "Different combat spells are modulated differently, so some of them have almost no spillover and only hit magically defended things like Devices and mages wearing Barrier Jackets; by default, though, they'll hit undefended stuff a lot harder. A combat spell with enough raw power to flatten this school would knock me back a long way, but it wouldn't damage me much. Physical damage, like, I dunno, big rocks falling on me, accidentally stabbing myself with a fork - it'll damage my form but mostly superficially. It hurts some and it takes mana to repair, but getting crushed by rocks wouldn't be dangerous the way it would be if I took enough magical damage to make it look like I'd been crushed by rocks."

"Interesting. Is one of your forms default?"

"Not really. They all have different sets of functions," he says. "I like this one the most because it has the most - sensory depth? It also has direct access to high-power spells, which my other two forms don't. Staff form can cast them but needs a wielder to do it; dormant form can't do it at all. So I guess this one is sort of a default that way. But dormant form feels more defaulty."

"Why those three forms?"

"Dormant form's small and portable, staff form's wield-able, human form's autonomous."