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In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.
In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)
Matilda in Elcenia
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lialen
"Channeling capacity is pretty well understood practically speaking. Wizards know how to use it, how to tell how much of it someone has, we even have a half an idea of why some people have more of it than others, we can increase our supply by getting familiars - and nobody knows what it is. Firebirds are a... bird. That does fire. They live near the sun. Wolfriders are two parallel species, wolves and riders, who have natural mindlinks with their opposite numbers starting when they're a couple days old."
missnicegirl
"Well, let's figure all these things out," Matilda says brightly. "What sorts of wizard spells could you cast to teach ialdae how to look at channeling capacity or find out where conjured matter comes from? Do you think it might be from the same place dragons and vampires keep the forms they're not using? I think those are the same place; I wasn't paying specific attention to it at the time but I've seen dragons and vampires and their shapeshifting magic seemed kind of similar in a lot of ways."
lialen
"...I have hypothesized that those are the same place but I was doing it about twenty percent because of a novel I read and wasn't sure if I was overweighting it because it was elegantly describable," says Kaylo, starting to bounce one leg excitedly. "I can cast the CC-checking spell. On me or you, which will work better?" He dives for his bookcase.
missnicegirl
"Well, I'm not sure. I've had my CC checked before and my ialdae didn't pick up how to do it, but maybe it'll catch on if it sees it a few more times..."
lialen
Kaylo finds the spell. "I'll do it on myself, maybe it'll work better if it sees, you know, a result." He casts. He gets a respectably high result. "Behold my livelihood. Eh?"
missnicegirl
"Hmm."
Matilda reads the number, then peers at him.
"I can sometimes teach my ialdae to see things just by concentrating at it, I haven't found anyone else who can do the same thing but it can't hurt to try and I can tell you what I find out even if yours doesn't pick up the trick..."
So she concentrates on seeing Kaylo's channeling capacity, now that she knows its magnitude.
Matilda reads the number, then peers at him.
"I can sometimes teach my ialdae to see things just by concentrating at it, I haven't found anyone else who can do the same thing but it can't hurt to try and I can tell you what I find out even if yours doesn't pick up the trick..."
So she concentrates on seeing Kaylo's channeling capacity, now that she knows its magnitude.
lialen
The number floating in the air vanishes presently. Kaylo sits, open for inspection.
missnicegirl
Some ticks pass by.
"...I think I've got it," she says. "It's... well, it's a something. It has a magnitude. And it represents the size of wizard spell you can cast. And if you meet or exceed it you die? That's kind of terrible!"
"...I think I've got it," she says. "It's... well, it's a something. It has a magnitude. And it represents the size of wizard spell you can cast. And if you meet or exceed it you die? That's kind of terrible!"
missnicegirl
"That sounds like the sort of thing I would like to figure out how to fix," says Matilda.
lialen
"That would be pretty swell. I would still like to know what it is you're fixing, somewhere in there."
missnicegirl
"That usually goes along with figuring out how to fix things. I figured out plenty of things about dragons in the course of fixing all those dragon-related problems!"
missnicegirl
"Well, the thing that happens when a dragon dies of old age is that all their magic spontaneously evaporates," she says. "And the thing that happens when a baby dragon dies for seemingly no reason is that they never had any to begin with. Dragon magic comes in a bunch of different sections, and one of them has the job of keeping the dragon alive, and that's the one that loses magic first if there's any magic missing. I learned how to replace that section with ialdae first, because that's how I cured shrens; their problem was that their stay-alive sections weren't quite full and their magic was pulling all the strength out of their wings to make up for it. But then one of the cured people had all his dragon magic vanish because he was old, so all he had left was the ialdae in the stay-alive section, and I had to figure out how to replace the rest so he could talk and shapeshift and breathe fire and so forth again."
lialen
"Huh." Kaylo begins furiously note-taking. "That explains the weird memos from the council."
lialen
"I'm not particularly important in the eyes of the dragon council so I didn't get a lot of details. Basically, 'infant mortality and old age and shrens have been cured; if you know anyone who may benefit from this contact your line rep'."
missnicegirl
"Well, I did cure shrens and old age and infant mortality, in that order. I only heard about the infant mortality problem once I had started on old age."
lialen
"And there's going to be a lot of them this year and the next and then fewer and then I guess it'll stabilize, although clutch sizes probably mean a steady population increase if they all live..."
missnicegirl
"That makes sense, yes... anyway, we were figuring out CC. I haven't really had wizard magic explained to me yet. The wizard in Linnip who summoned me doesn't quite realize that I can understand things, so when I ask her about wizardry she doesn't explain it very well. What sorts of things are known about how CC and wizardry generally work?"