Felix is glad to give the technical notes on his power. The sensation feels like this and that, and empowers these groups of effects at this rate and with this power.

(It is all very technically detailed guys, a lot of work was put into that explanation of how magic works.)

"Do you think sorcery divination would be able to help?"

Kaede drinks his explanation up, at some point asking Bar for writing implements and paper so she can take notes.

"Sorcery divination?"

"Sorcery doesn't have a great range, but once you have something close it can analyze things like magical properties. It could help with your metamagic squinting. I am not sure it will translate though."

"I can make it translate, I'm sure."

"We can set it up in an hour... Actually," he turns and asks Bar if she can sell things in specific arrangements, such as herbs drawing symbols on a plate; she can, "we can set it up in a few minutes."

She grins.

It takes less than ten minutes. This sorcery ritual is going to consume some of Kaede's wakefulness so Fernando gives her a cup of coffee or a bit of wakefulness, whichever she prefers. Then he guides her through the process of casting it.

The effect is very aesthetically different, but ultimately gives her a lot of detail of how magic works; she just needs to focus on a particular aspect and it reveals itself to her.

Wakefulness, she wants to see what that feels like.

"This is incredibly useful," she says. She squints metaphorically at the magic fuel of sorcery.

She feels rested and alert. Her mind perks up like she had a good night sleep, coffee and time to get fully awake and functional.

Magic fuel of sorcery is amenable to squinting, she can definitely see the structures that Felix explained earlier and can easily intuit the other aspects of lifeforce and how they could fuel magic. She can even tell that the four of them have more lifeforce than normal and there is a texture difference. The triplets' lifeforce looks... Folded on itself and Katur's looks segmented somehow.

...she tells them about these findings.

Then the spell is working properly! The "folded" and "segmented" lifeforces are to be expected, being a result of augmentation, and mean that while Katur has a lot of lifeforce he wouldn't be as good as magic as someone less augmented. The triplets are actually at a ridiculously optimal spot where sorcery and partial-augmentation give them a lot of power to work with.

Huh.

"Anyway, I can see the—four things. They're weird, it's like they're inside the sorcery thing, but also everywhere else, and part of—you, me, us?"

"Pretty much? At least for our kind of magic life and magic are one and the same. Do you think it is helping you understanding how our magic works so you can manipulate it?"

"Yeah. I'm—pretty sure I can manipulate it, but understanding is necessary for me to know what I'm doing, at least without destroying anything. Think of it like learning to speak a very personal language that belongs to you, personally, so that I can read the book that is your magic and then write on it and rearrange it."

"Do you think it would be safer to try on me? Since my lifeforce is segmented?"

"Hmm? Oh, I don't think it'd be unsafe at all—or rather, by the time I've squinted at any of you enough to know what to try I'll know what's safe and what isn't, I won't do anything before that."

"Okay. Do you think this cut off your hours long squinting at magic?"

"Oh, no, certainly not, but the superspeed might."

"I'm debating if we should ritual-boost your cognition, but it isn't as nearly as efficient as Felix's gift."

"Perhaps I should just try to borrow Felix's gift, then, see if that works."

Nod. "You probably shouldn't go up to actual a thousand times regular cognitive speed with it when you borrow it, but even a sixty times speed boost means minutes instead of hours."

"Why not go a thousand times?"

"Inefficiency. You start getting diminished returns from the lifeforce expenditure. Felix said he could reach that point but then he would pass out from the exhaustion and lose more time that way. Granted, you might bypass that problem."

"How long can he stay at one thousand, real time?"