And in walks an 8-feet tall man squinting at a clipboard.

"Okay, I am pretty sure yesterday's shipment is correct but-Gah! You're not Aross. What is this place?"

The girl whirls on her chair and grins. "Welcome to Milliways, the bar at the end of the universe!"

Katur is still confused, but he smiles politely. "Thank you? Did I just go through a double-portal that took me to the rim?"

"Nope! Milliways' door sometimes hijacks doors from other universes for reasons unknown. The bar is sentient and female and communicates via napkins, and time is paused in your home universe while you're here."

Katur comes closer and checks Bar's sentience. He is quickly corrected about his assumption that he needs to write on napkins too and accepts a free drink. Something bright red and frothy. "This is good. And this is the weirdest place I have seen or heard of in legend. I'm Katur by the way."

"Kaede. Nice to meet you. I was just about done interrogating Bar about stuff, if you have questions you can probably shoot them at me and I'll know."

"My pleasure. Any idea what kind of magic was used to create this place? Interworld transportation is always handy. What is the name of your world or universe?"

"Bar doesn't know how she was created or how old she is, and there isn't really a sense in which that question has an answer because the door can pick people from any universes at any point in their history. My world doesn't really have a name? My continent's called Galatea and people there call the planet the same thing but there are other continents. You seem much less surprised than I was by the whole multiversal shenaingans."

"I'm surprised this place exists as it is, but not that it could exist if someone was powerful enough? And multiversal shenanigans are a commonly known thing? My current residence is in a pocket world that is connected to five regular universes including my native one."

Blink. "Yeah mine isn't. This was really really new to me."

Nod. "Yeah, one of Elsewhere's features - the pocket world I mentioned - is that it sometimes abducts people from other worlds. At least this place offers free drinks and explanations."

"One free drink," she corrects, smiling. "It's a very helpful bar." She looks around. "Er, when I arrived it was kinda full. From what Bar tells me, this might've been on purpose."

"That is one more free drink than people that get lost in the wild get. And what do you mean with on purpose?"

"Sometimes it looks like the door grabs people who would for one reason or another be interesting? She can't directly communicate with it or whoever's in charge of it, but."

"Oh? Well, you are interesting to me. Not everyday I get to meet a person from a new universe. Also, is there some translation effect going on?"

"Yeah, there's blanket translation magic here, it's really cool."

"Extremely cool. So, do you have a sense of what Galatea is like when compared to other worlds?"

"Nope, I haven't asked Bar about other worlds, only about the bar itself and the door and stuff."

"Well, how would you describe it? I'm curious."

"That... depends on what your culture is like, really. My continent—Galatea—is basically the only inhabited one. There are lots of islands, and there's one other continent with a few people but not many. There are three kingdoms, and they're really different. There are—four types of magic."

"Why only three kingdoms? And what are the four types of magic?"

"Why only three is a long and complicated story but the magic types are Elementalism, Enchanting, Arcanism, and Metamancy. Elementalism is using magic on yourself, Enchanting on objects, Arcanism on symbols, and Metamancy on magic itself."

"Elementalism doesn't use magic on elements?" Pause. "Does your magic consume anything?"

"Elementalists are called that way because one of the magics elementalists can do to themselves—do you want, like, the full explanation?"

"How long is the full explanation? And can your magic be learned in the time period we are here? I'm still curious but not enough for a two hour lecture about magic I can't bring back with me."

"As far as I know my type of magic can't be learnt, you're born with it, but it won't take two hours, no, more like ten minutes."

"Sure, go ahead. I can give you a magic lecture about the types of magics I know about in return if you want to."

"I do! But okay, so, about one percent of people where I'm from are born with some kind of magic. About thirty-three percent are elementalists, another thirty-three are arcanists, another thirty-three are enchanters. Some people—it's hard to know how many—are metamancers instead. You don't know which kind of magic you have super early, though. To figure it out, you have to, like, actively try to do magic, and it's different for everyone so you won't ever know for sure you don't have magic—you could just have failed to find the right way to do it. Most people find theirs before they're twenty, but there have been some cases where a sixty-year-old managed to Express."

Nod. "Metamancers have a harder time to express their magic or are they just rare? No ways to detect it or only metamancers can do it or something else?"

"Only metamancers can detect magic—it's how we know people are born with it rather than just getting it later—but they're rare, and, er, there's a. Taboo. About metamancy."

"Taboo? Why?"

"The main religion says that there are four gods—Laoku the Enchanter, Teinn the Arcanist, Bezana the Elementalist, Vinkar the Metamancer—and Vinkar is opposed to everything that is good, and to all of creation. He manipulates people and gives them the magic that lets people manipulate other people." Shrug. "Historically, metamancers have been able to use—and steal—other people's magic, and build armies to try to conquer the world with their power. So they're said to be, er, 'tainted.' By Vinkar."

"Ah, ok. So religion and war also exist in your world, good to know. Is this universal or more focused where you live?"

"The Three Kingdoms formed after a war where a metamancer tried to conquer the continent. Each of the kingdoms is said to be blessed by one of the three main gods, and there haven't been any big wars—at least not large scale like that, there are local scuffles here and there—since they formed. But the religion thing, yeah, universal. I... take it you don't have anything like that where you're from?"

"I was noting that you have those too. My home world seems more fractured than yours, more religions and more kingdoms, not sure if we have more wars, but I'm guessing we never reached your level of military escalation. We only had one native form of magic, called Synth. Before Elsewhere was known, religions had all sorts of views on Synth, then we discovered the other kinds of magic and the opinions multipled to the point I don't think one would ever get enough traction to be universal."

"I mean, you don't have a taboo—although I guess with several religions some would—but not you, personally?"

Katur snorts. "Hell, no. My height isn't all natural, my ancestors were Synth-augmented and most cultures that have a problem with magic have a problem with that."

"Oh okay good then I can just tell you I'm a metamancer."

"Sorry about your world religion... Are you okay?"

She waves a hand. "Fine. That's not even the worst part. Anyway, I was explaining how my magic works."

"Oh, right. Please continue."

"So. When you try to Express your magic you figure out what you are. Elementalists have 'blessings,' which are persistent states of magic they cast on themselves. An elementalist always has one and exactly one blessing active. So, a possible blessing is flight, and while an elementalist has flight active they can... fly. At will. But there's a mana cap, and if they run out of mana they can't fly anymore. Only way to recharge mana is by having a blessing active but not using it. They can only switch blessings out while they're not using them, too. They're called that way because it used to be really common to get blessings that control the elements."

"That explains the name. And they can have multiple inactive blessings? Do they have to learn individual blessings or they just wish for one? Is the mana cap fixed and the same for everyone?"

"All of the blessings they don't have active are inactive, and they always only have exactly the one blessing active. While a blessing is inactive the mana's frozen. Mana cap's fixed and the same for everyone and every blessing, inasmuch as that makes sense for blessings whose use costs less. They don't really have to learn blessings, they just have to think up what they want to have and switch to it. Very similar blessings get lumped together—like, antigrav and flight are the same thing."

"So it makes no difference if they pick weightlessness without native propulsion? Does "make an area zero-gravity" get lumped together with flight?"

"They can't make an area zero-gravity, blessings only work on themselves, and yeah, weightlessness and flight get the same thing, only difference is that propulsion costs more mana."

"Oh, right. I feel like annoyingly poking at each possible way blessings can or can't be lumped together, but I'm not going to annoy you with that. I do ask, is 'breathing fire' possible?"

"As part of fire control in general, yeah."

"So you can get fire control but not gravity control?"

"Yeah. Gravity is—a force? And not, like, a thing. Fire is a thing. So they can control fire. Elementalists can also get telekinesis."

Shrug. "I can understand that fire and gravity can be two categories such that magic might be able to pick one but not the other, but it's harder to intuit how gravity and flight can be different enough unless it's a raw power limitation?"

"No, raw power limitations just affect mana cost. The difference here is that elementalists can give themselves magic, and that magic can likewise only affect themselves or actual, like, things made of matter. An elementalist can't get power over electromagnetism or gravity but they can get better vision or magnetic senses or gravity senses or what-have-you. So flight is a power they get that affects themselves, and elementalism is a power they get over matter."

"Okay, I can see the," he waves, "underlying rules, I think. Can elementalists do mental things? Besides senses since those sort of count. Or have radioactive-themed blessings? Mess with time?"

"Elementalists can do mental things on themselves, yeah—memory, cognitive boosts, stuff like that—but what's 'radioactive' mean?"

"If I understand correctly... matter is made of tiny tiny bits held together by a force similar to gravity and sometimes when that force is broken dangerous energy is liberated."

"And... that energy's, er, 'radioactive'?"

"Yes. It is just called radioactivity, and radioactive is the adjective."

"How tiny are we talking, here? And what's it do? Is it just—does it make stuff attract other stuff, like gravity?"

"Absurdly, counter-intuitive, how-can-things-even-be-that-small tiny. Not sure the exact measurement, but I think you can't like, use light to see it because at that point light is too big. And depends how much radioactivity is liberated, but it can produce a lot of heat and make areas very toxic to life."

"—oh, like the poison rocks people found?"

"It might just be that, actually. They aren't poisonous in the traditional sense, I don't think."

"They're not magical, either, I checked, so probably that."

"How did you check?" he says alarmed. "Or, how far away did you check? Because the effect can be really subtle and slow acting."

"Pretty close, but after they realised what it was they used magic healing so I'm pretty sure I'm not poisoned."

He is relieved. "Good, I think to protect against radioactivity you need lead or a a lot of matter between it and you."

"Mmhm. Anyway, that's elementalists. Enchanters can make magical artefacts. They basically define the effect they want an object to have—and that's pretty much anything from a warm blanket to a golem, there are even legends of sapient golems—and pour mana into the object while going through the definition in their heads. They don't have a maximum amount of mana, it just continuously charges from the moment they're born, forever. Artefacts have a mana charge that runs down with time and needs to be periodically recharged."

"And any Enchanter can recharge it? If it reaches zero is the artifact is forever lost or does it just need a new charge? What counts as an object here? Could you make artefact ink and give people magical tattoos?"

"Yeah, any enchanter can recharge an artefact, and if if it runs out it just needs a new charge. There's a little problem here in that it's impossible sans metamancy to figure out that an object's an artefact and if an enchanter tries charging a nonmagical object thinking it's an artefact it will become one. Anything inanimate counts as an object; plants are more difficult but count, too; animals don't. Magical tattoos are totally a thing, people from Bezanab in particular like having those."

"Oooh, can enchanted plants pass the enchantment to their offspring?"

"More or less. Plant artefacts shed some mana when they produce seeds or what-have-you, and that mana is usually consumed before the new plants are grown enough to be of use. So, like, 'yes,' modulo an enchanter being willing to spend the necessary time and mana tending for multiple plants."

"Cool, we have magic that can do that, but let's talk about your system first. What is next?"

"Arcanism. They also have infinite mana, like enchanters, but they attach magic to symbols rather than objects or themselves. Words count as symbols, as well as gestures, or drawings or whatever—any action that conveys meaning. They also have to come up with a definition and when they've done that and attached it to a set of actions, whenever they perform those actions and have enough mana they will cast the spell no matter what. Spells are either instantaneous—like, I have one that makes me change biological sex—or temporary—a common one is a flight spell. When an arcanist attaches a spell to something it's stuck with that forever, so they should be careful with it. They can also create scrolls with spells they made, and other people can use those scrolls, but they're one use only, and are destroyed when they're used."

"Nice, sounds a bit like sorcery rituals. Do arcanists have some sense of which actions are attached to spells or do they have to remember that normally? Is there any restriction to what symbols they have to use?"

"They have to remember it normally, and if they forget it can happen that they cast a spell accidentally. There are various techniques developed to prevent that, and mana cost is also related to how short or common a string of symbols is. I'm not sure what kind of restriction you have in mind, but a priori no."

"The restrictions I had in mind were if you could attach arbitrary words to spells, like flight could be activated by 'stay in the ground forever' or 'delicious swamp rain'. Or if spells have to share symbols if they are too similar."

"Yeah, it's arbitrary, and there are no restrictions like that. When an arcanist chooses a symbol for a spell it only works for them, so an arcanist could attach flight to the word 'ground' and another to the word 'sea' and another to raising their hands up to the skies and singing half of a song. There is a way the specific symbols affect the spell, which is that symbols that are related in meaning to the spell make it cost less—if you attached the flight spell to the word 'flight' it'd cost less mana than to the word 'sky' which would cost less mana than to the word 'ground.'"

"Does this mean you should avoid the word 'ground' altogether or do you get a benefit from using something like 'give me freedom from the ground' in a flight spell?"

"No, that one would be good, both because of the meaning and because it's longer."

"Cool, I have sooo many questions that are bound to be very introductory. Does the arcanist need to know the language? Do multiple languages work? Can you get a sense of how much mana a spell costs before attaching it for good? Do the symbols change things other than the mana cost? Duration, precision, speed and that sort of thing?"

"They don't need to know the language, but it helps create a spell that makes sense and costs less. Multiple languages do work, and you get a sense for how much a spell costs when you finish attaching it to the incantation, not before. Symbols only change mana cost, everything else needs to be defined when inventing the spell."

"Cool. These systems are straightforward versatile so far. How about the last one? Metamancy?"

"Metamancers do magic to magic. We can detect magic—in artefacts and people and things—and we can tweak it and we can steal it and we can convert it and we can optimise it and we can generally mess with it. I can see yours."

"You mean the wards? Or maybe you can see the augmentation?"

"I don't have enough knowledge to distinguish that yet, I can just see that there's some magic on you that's not ambient magic and not like my world's. If I squint for a few minutes I might be able to figure out how many things you have, but any more detail than that would take a very long time."

"At least some of that should be the augmentation, and then wards, I'm not sure if you can see the ability to do sorcery... do you want to squint at me for a few minutes to find out?"

"Sure."

Squint.

Katur takes this time to quiz the bar and get suitably more impressed with it's capabilities. He asks for a history book from a long dead civilization and skims through its contents.

"Huh," she says eventually.

"Anything unusual?"

"There are—" squint "—four things. Two of them are in you, two are sorta—around you. One of the first two is almost like a part of you, it's what you are. The other's sort of—attached? Like, it's in you, but in the same way your blood is in you, not like your bones and muscles and organs are."

"The ones around me... must be my protective wards. And I guess the augmentation is the one that I am because my biology runs on it. Not entirely sure about the last one, might be sorcery? I always assumed sorcery was a feature of reality, but..." he waves at the napkins, "reality is bigger than I expected."

She grins. "It is! Knowing a bit about what they are like could let me draw some more conclusions about it but, do you have any more questions about my magic before we move on to yours?"

"Most of what I would've asked is minutae. Or how the two kinds of magic would interact, but then it's back to moving to mine."

"And I'm pretty sure I can figure out how they interact if I squint at you long enough and understand your magic well enough. So, your turn to explain your magic."

"Sure! There are three, maybe four, kinds of magic, but of those only sorcery is actually versatile. The others are synth, heat manipulation and the fourth is a type of memory crystal that could be the result of sorcery. Do you want me start with sorcery or with the simpler ones?"

"Simpler ones, I think."

"Okay, the simplest is heat manipulation from Efross; people from there can drain heat and store it for later release. It has an element of trained skill and natural talent to it. Some animals have it too."

"Animals can do magic, too? That's... interesting. Do they have a sense of how much heat they still have in them or something?"

"Efross' fauna is the only known to have developed magical traits naturally. And they do have a sense of stored heat, both for themselves and others. When people came exploring it was considered a sign of peaceful intentions that the explorers had no stored heat."

"That's an interesting convention. Back home it's seen as rude to do magic in public, and somewhat sacrilegious. Can get old ladies yelling at you if you do it. Using artefacts is fine, though."

"Apparently absorbing heat takes time, hard to use offensively. Is that related to the religion thing? Efrossians wouldn't survive if they had that problem, their technology is really, really, really primitive. We introduced them to the wheel."

"Yeah, using magic's supposed to be sorta sacred. The theology's a bit muddled on this. And, wow, to the wheel. That is heavy. Why do they need it to survive? Cold world?"

"Cold world, the magic is inducing an ice age, which forces them to use more magic. You see how that spirals."

"There's magic other than what the humans use, or is it just because of them?"

"Just because of them as far anyone can tell. The world itself is more prone to getting into an ice ages."

"That sounds pretty terrible. Hmm..." She pauses. "I wonder if I can convert magic to heat, for these people."

"Convert how?" He asks interested.

"I can convert the three different types of mana into one another, maybe I can do that to other types of magic too." 

"Would you be able to do it large scale?"

"How exactly do you mean?"

"Well, I don't think you can trivially save however many Efrossians from freezing death, but it was worth asking to be sure."

"...not trivially but I think it could be done and perhaps more effectively than via direct magic conversion..."

"Sadly, I don't have an Efrossian at hand so we can't even test that."

"My magic system is very versatile. Especially with metas around. We could probably solve these problems with it."

"Would you be willing to?"

"Of course, helping people is what I'm for, as far as I'm concerned."

He beams. "I'm certainly willing to help with that."

"But at any rate time is paused there, probably, if that world is connected to yours, so tell me about more magic."

"Sure... um, I think next should be Synth, from my own native world Elan. Memory crystals are simple, but should be explained after sorcery, for context. Synth magic allows the combination of the traits of living things."

"It's the thing that makes you so... big?"

"Yup. Combine humans with other humans - or members of the same species - and you get augmented versions, which are physically improved; I'm even stronger than I look and should live nearly four times longer than the average non-augmented human. Combining different species is possible but the result is usually sterile."

"Huh. That's an oddly specific magic system."

Shrug. "I wouldn't know how the multiverse compares but we managed to be fairly creative with it, we've had the equivalent of vaccines for thousands years and can treat if not cure several chronic illnesses. Not to mention better livestock and crops - I have trees that give this amazing amalgamated fruit."

"Okay yeah I guess that's pretty awesome. Plus, it did manage to produce—" she gives him a once-over "—you."

"I'm flattered."

She grins. "Okay, next magic system?"

"Sorcery is very versatile, but it's fueled by lifeforce, which is divided into five aspects: breath; stamina; wakefulness; health; youth. Sorcery is divided into sorcery gifts and sorcery rituals. You can have up to five gifts, each associated with an aspect of lifeforce, being fueled by it; you get them by expending lifeforce effort. Sorcery rituals use symbols, except each school of sorcery is an alphabet or language artificially created by spending about a decade's worth of youth in a ritual - the first sorcery school was likely the result of some sorcerer gift - individual schools have different strengths, but they always have the capacity to create new schools."

"What exactly is a school?"

"I feel like saying they're like arcanist spell symbols externalized, but not quite? In a school there are series of rules to create magical effects. So in the Lor-ersian school of magic you can burn this herb and say these words to make your lifeforce power up a light spell, but in the Trimegistus school you have to write symbols with special inks to get the same effect. When someone makes a new school they can pick new rules, but the old school you used for the new school ritual influences the new one, your gifts influence it as well... Is that clear enough?"

"Yeah. How do you make a new school? How many schools are there? Can you get any kind of sorcery from all schools?"

"Creating a new school is a ritual - well, a series of rituals - the exact details aren't known to me, but you basically have to tell the magic that this or that thing is supposed to have this or that magical effect. There are at least 30 schools, probably no more than 50. Some schools are specialized, but the majority is generic enough to do anything that sorcery can do."

"Is there a reason to pick one school over the other? What determines who can do sorcery?"

"Some schools spend more resources to do certain things. Or are less straightforward for certain magic effects. Anyone can do sorcery, but the term sorcerer is synonymous with people that have extra lifeforce and thus can do sorcery more easily and safely. Some people find that they have an easier time with sorcery rituals of a certain school because the rules are more intuitive or they learned that school first or maybe they live somewhere with a tradition in that school and they can borrow from the work of others instead of coming up with rituals themselves."

"Could I do sorcery?"

"I don't see why not. Or at least it should be worth trying."

"Show me!"

Katur guides her. It turns out one needs to know a minimal set of rules from a school before casting anything with it, even if they're going to use just a small part of the relevant rules. After that introductory work, they both cast a small freezing spell. Katur's water glass freezes.

Kaede's doesn't.

She squints. "You have a thing I don't. One of the four things I said, the one that's in you but not a part of you."

"Maybe our lifeforces are too different? ...Maybe I could transfer some of mine to you and see if that allows you to spend it?"

"Go ahead."

Katur offers a hand and presuming she takes it, sends some health. The veins of his arm pop up oddly.

She still can't cast it.

"Yeah, nope. Can't do it."

"Damn..." He thinks. "I think the next step would be trying with external lifeforce which is rather costly and not often tried... I have a plant in my office that could work for that. If that doesn't work... maybe staring at me until you can copy it?"

"I can't really copy things—but I could borrow some, without needing to know much about it, probably."

"If you think that is safe. Or at least it will be faster than getting the plant and casting the spell again."

"I'm not sure if it's safe but I'll be able to tell before it becomes unsafe."

"Okay, anything I can do to help?"

"Nah, I just need to squint a bit." So she does.

Katur makes himself squintable.

The possibly-sorcery magic, as soon she starts to borrow it, latches onto her fully copied.

No it doesn't. As soon as it tries she stops it and holds it in her metaphorical hand. "This is trying to attach a copy of itself to me," she remarks, with the abstracted look of someone considering lofty thoughts.

"I can't say I've heard of it doing that. Are you okay?"

The thing metaphorically squirms in her hold.

"Yes. It's still trying to get to me, I think." She "looks" at it. "I will probably be able to get it off me if I need to so I'll just—let it do its thing." She lets go.

Katur snorts. "I'm jealous, your magic is awesome."

It laches itself onto her much in the same way it's attached to Katur.

"This is gonna be terrible to get off if I ever decide to," she says, and tries casting a spell.

It works! As expected she feels the tiniest bit of physical straining, like she just lifted a heavy object.

"Congratulations."

"Okay now I need to learn everything!"

"Of course you do. Any particular focus? I don't suppose you can share your magic as well?"

"Not—mine in particular. Metamancers are... I guess you could say we have negative magic? I can't share the complete absence of a thing, like that. And the other kinds—maybe? I haven't ever been able to make it stick on anyone who hadn't been born a mage, though."

"Fair. I wonder if you can stick sorcery to anyone then... Would I count as a mage for the purpose?"

"I was using 'mage' to mean someone born with one of the other three types of magic. But I suppose it doesn't hurt to try—" She tries. "Nope. No banana."

Shrug. "I wonder if someone with sorcery gifts counts, but I don't have those because the augmentation interferes with acquiring them and my boyfriends aren't nearby."

"Boyfriends, plural?"

He blushes. "Three and they're triplets and amazing."

"D'aaaawwwwww that's adorable."

"Thanks. It's not usual for my world, but they're unusual people. They would love seeing this place."

"Well why don't you go get them? Or, hold the door while I do."

"For how long are you able to fly? It's a bit of a walk... you could just tell Aross to give them a message to come here."

"I could fly for a while, I have some mana on me. Who's Aross?"

"Employee and assistant. I run a shipping company that belongs to my family, boring job, but pays the bills. Which means they can learn magic."

He doesn't call it an honest job; it's honest now but it wasn't until he took it.

"Okay, so you could hold the door and we could call them."

"Sure, just fly out of the window into the room next to my office. Aross will be there."

He holds the door and she can open the window.

There are three...

...identical young men walking...

...towards the building.

One is holding a wicker basket.

She lands in front of them. "Hi! I'm from another universe and your boyfriend is holding the door to an interdimensional bar, wanna come?"

Stunned pause.

"Of course, please lead the way and please don't explain any further."

So she does.

They are led. This involves going back through the window, but they soon are greeted by Katur who invites them in.

"Okay, what the hell?" Fernando says at the supernovas.

"I don't think we caught your name?" Felix asks Kaede.

"Kaede.—I'm not sure I ever even introduced to him, either."

"You did. I don't think I said my full name. Katur Namazzo. These are the Vaesteri, Fernando, Felix and Thomas," he says poiting at the relevant siblings. "Kaede has interesting metamagic and we were talking about interesting interactions between the two systems. How did she find you so fast?"

"We were bringing you lunch," Felix explains raising the basket. Katur hugs him. Fernando is reading the napkins.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she says, metaphorically squinting at them.

"She is taking a look at your magic," Katur explains before updating the triplets.

Felix reads the pile of napkins in an instant and quizzes Bar about things (by writing using superspeed) while drinking something from a crazy straw.

"You three have the same infectious thing he does and I got, probably the sorcery thing, except it's—deeper, somehow? Like his augmentation, and there's something extra there, too. And you have two other different things each, and I can't tell what they do at a glance but they're all distinct."

"That must be the extra lifeforce we have?" Fernando says on the first thing. "And we have two sorcerer gifts each. One for breath and one for stamina. Are you capable of more detail if you stare for longer?"

"If you tell me all you know I might be able to start getting some more useful stuff after a few hours."

"It might be worth staying here for a few hours. We have three wards each, one mental, one anti-magic - those Katur also has - and one anti-injury ward that isn't worth casting on other people. My sorcery gifts are flight powered by stamina and a heat-absorbing touch powered by breath. Felix's gifts are superspeed powered by stamina and a small fire powered by breath. Thomas' are-"

"Weird super-strength and the ability to sense density. And Felix's anti-injury ward is modified so his shoes don't burn up from going too fast."

"How do sorcery gifts work, exactly? Why do you have extra lifeforce? What exactly is lifeforce? I'd need to know everything about your magic—and is that a good idea at the time, anyway?"

"When you use one it spends the relevant lifeforce atribute. When a universe gets closer to Elsewhere, people in it spontaneously develop extra lifeforce which is then passed on to their descendants. Lifeforce is an energy that all living things have. And what would be a good idea at the time?"

"I'm not sure, Katur and I were telling each other about magic and if I stare at you guys to figure more details of your magic out I'm gonna spend several hours doing just that so if there's anything else we should do—or talk about—we should do it before."

"Will you lose all your progress? It might be wise to take a break and discuss more about our magics and how our worlds might benefit from each other in general before doing anything for that long," Fernando suggests.

"Do you know if you can copy Milliways' door or sorcery rituals without the lifeforce expenditure? Or the holy grail of sorcery: regenerate youth?"

"Can't copy the door, but I won't lose any progress, figuring out magic is a purely cognitive process, it's learning. Once I learn I at most get rusty. And I dunno if I can regenerate youth, but if it's magic fuel my guess would be 'yes.'"

"Well, it is magic fuel, but maybe you could only do... magic-fuel-youth, not keeps-one-young-youth? We could test that with another lifeforce aspect, youth is still distinct but if you can't restore someone's actual stamina or wakefulness that is a strong indicator that you can't do the same for youth."

"I can't see any of those yet, so I don't know whether I can restore them."

"Right. And we need to teach you more about our magic. Would learning how to get sorcery gifts help or should we focus on the why? If llearning is a cognitive process then you should try copying my superspeed, it does mental speed as well."

"What do you mean by 'why'? And how fast does this superspeed go?"

"The mechanisms of how sorcery gifts manifest... Less how to get the power and more understanding why the power happens? And I haven't run into a speed limit besides the fact that I don't have infinite stamina, should hit a thousand times faster at least."

"Okay this superspeed thing is way good if I can actually convert different sorcery things, how does stamina convert to it?"

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?"

"Felix never actually tried, but he should stay about ten seconds and then pass out from sheer exhaustion."

"That's ten thousand seconds subjective, which is a bit less than three hours, possibly not enough for me to figure anything out—at five hundred how long would he be able to stay?"

"About twenty one seconds. Lasting more than twice the time when he goes at five hundred at least. Before you ask: going at two hundred lasts a minute; one hundred lasts two and a half minutes; fifty lasts nearly six minutes and a half. And Felix can keep up at ten for one and a half hours." He clearly memorized these numbers.

She does some quick arithmetic and—" I'm torn between going at ten or fifty. If I stay like half an hour at ten that's five hours subjective."

"Your total stamina should be about a third of his," Fernando says because he didn't make that clear earlier, "but we can lend you some of ours."

"So half an hour at ten would drain me completely, but five hours should be way more than enough for me to figure out whether I can convert..."

"There is also the time learning the gift itself, but figuring out youth conversion is about the most important thing we can achieve short of maybe stoping the dead city infection."

"Dead city infection?"

"Oh? I think I completely forgot to explain that. Or Elsewhere in general, I will start with that. Elsewhere isn't a regular world... it isn't a planet, a large spherical rock; instead it is a a floating plane of rock a few miles thick. The atmosphere, light and gravity are all handled by magic. The dead city infection was the result of a serious magical mistake; it corrupts the ambient magic and passively drains life, replacing any terrain with a city made of stone that can't sustain life."

"The current best method of containment is literally cutting off the infected parts by digging all the way through to the underside."

"—yikes. And yet another thing I bet I can help with."

"I should've mentioned earlier, but got side-tracked. I didn't even get around explaing the memory crystals."

Fernando hugs Katur.

"Awwww!" She wants to pet him, but he is way too tall to be petted. "It's okay, time's stopped over there."

"And bringing us here to figure out how to exploit both systems was a necessary step anyway," Fernando says, floating up to kiss Katur's forehead.

"Yeah. Okay, so I think next thing we ought to do is—well, I ought to try and borrow Felix's superspeed and see if that one works?"

"Reasonable. Will you need anything while you do that? Our plan is going to be spending the time reading or buying stuff from Bar; we can be quiet even if we discover something interestingly exploitable."

"When he's supersped does he need more food or water or whatever?"

"Yes, but it doesn't scale that directly with the speed and it shouldn't be a concern."

"I mean, I'm planning on spending five subjective hours under, that should make me hungry if it were objective hours."

"Yeah, what I'm trying to say is you won't get five hours of hunger, that is harder to measure, but I don't think Felix has ever complained of more than the equivalent of being hungrier an hour earlier after an intensive afternoon of testing."

"Gotcha. Okay, then. Felix?"

Felix is here and ready to be squinted at!

Squint!

Felix's magic remains squintable. Meanwhile, the four of them are sharing lunch and the task to read books. They make some interesting discoveries. Felix pushes a piece of sandwich Kaedewards in case she wants some.

"Can you speed up a bit so I can get a better sense of how it works?"

"Of course. Tell me which speed is optimal," Felix says and he starts ramping up speed, presumably at a rate that Kaede can comment on.

"You can stop, I just wanted to see it at work. Hmm."

She tries... taking a wisp of the thing she just saw move, as little as possible, stopping as soon as she starts in case he sees any sign of damage in the original magic.

Felix shivers. "That felt weird but not... bad?"

The original magic doesn't appear damaged.

So if she pulls a bit more it's still... complete?

It is like... a piece is missing, but then it regenerates and is whole again.

The superspeed bits that she pulled are trying to latch onto her. What a clingy sort of magic system.

Isn't it just.

She lets them.

It starts taking "root", producing a shivery sensation all over her body. it isn't unpleasant, but hard to describe with words. Once rooted; it starts growing, it should be a few minutes until it reaches the size of the original.

"So how is it going?"

"I'm getting it," she says, grinning. "I wonder if I'll be able to share these gifts with other people."

"I wonder if you can have more than one gift per lifeforce aspect?"

"Maybe! But in any case, let's see if you can lend me some stamina?"

"Sure thing," Thomas says and he lends her some extra stamina.

And so does Fernando, since neither his or Thomas' gift should be useful at the moment.

So she tries speeding up.

It works. Time doesn't slow down, but rather it expands.

...expands?

A second still feels the same, she isn't going to mistake it for a longer time period, but it is like there is more to a second than there was before, she can act and think more during that time period and fractions of that second are more distinct. This effect scales up as she uses more and more stamina to get faster.

Yep, she'll get up to tenfold speed.

Then she will squint away.

And after enough of that it becomes clear that she... can in fact convert her own kind of magic into lifeforce!

Awesome!

...but that's not nearly everything she wants to know. Can she convert one fuel into the other? How much can she manipulate this? What's similar and what's different between the four of them?

Yes. In what ways does she want to manipulate it besides conversion and transfer? She can probably "smooth" over Katur's lifeforce so it stops being segmented. The five lifeforce aspects have different strenghts and capabilities, besides the relevant things they represent: breath is good for stuff that can perform automatic reactions; stamina is good for the physical and direct; wakefulness is good for mental and sensory things; health is good for the biological and complex; youth is good at resisting things and having a lasting effect. None of these associations are absolute, the superspeed is stamina-based but affects her mentally just fine.

By the time she knows this much it has been a few subjective hours, and she pulls back to reality.

They give her another stamina boost. "How did it go?"

"I can totally convert between your lifeforce aspects."

They can barely contain themselves. "Okay, this is probably the best thing ever."

Thomas clears his throat.

"I meant event, not people," Katur says kissing the top of Thomas' head.

"You four are just too adorable," she giggles.

Felix beams. "Thank you, we try."

"This was kinda exhausting, though, so why don't you tell me more about stuff other than magic from your worlds?"

"What sort of things would you like to know? Katur is from Elan, the world, me and my brothers are born on Earth, but our parents are originally from Elan too."

"Well all of it? What's Elan like, what's Earth like, political organisation, geography, history, technology..."

Here is Earth 101. Not the worst place one could live in, definitely needs improvement. The triplets were born in the country of Brazil and then the family moved to the United States, so they have an interesting view of both countries and their histories. Here are also the most recent technological developments. Earth is the most technologically and industrially advanced world among the ones connected to Elsewhere. One given reason why Earth should be kept in the dark about the other worlds is the fear that it could conquer those places.

Fascinating. "They did all of that with no magic at all?"

"No magic at all, it is not even known to exist except in the form of stories and superstition."

"Basically, when Elsewhere annexed Earth and new sorcerers from Earth started to show up in Elsewhere, the only option was to either stay or be returned to a completely random location on Earth. Most didn't pick the second option. And by the time Earth invented global transportation, the period during which new sorcerers show up was over."

"Oh, Elsewhere attachment is temporary?"

"No, but it comes in something like stages, and once the annexation is complete new sorcerers without sorcerer ancestors don't pop up randomly anymore. Or if they still show up, it's pretty rare. In Earth's case most Earth-originated sorcerers found Elsewhere and then stayed because they lacked better options."

"Aaand, did I explain about 'finding' Elsewhere? It's a figure of speech, sorcerers that have never been to Elsewhere are spontaneously transported, sometimes bringing other people along."

"So why'd you three," she gestures at the triplets, "return to the Earth?"

"We didn't really? We are of Elan-descent, but our parents wanted to escape our grandparents."

"—escape?"

"Our grandparents are so intense about parenting that their eldest decided to take his own life," Thomas says lightly, albeit there is definitely an edge of something else there. "And our parents decided to flee to a different universe without knowing things like, the local language. And that is how screwed up the proud Vaesteri family is."

"Our grandparents are... very dedicated to the community," Felix says with some uncertainity.

"...okay, do the three of you want hugs?"

"I would hardly deny a girl like you the priviliege. I think Katur would need it more than we do. Our grandparents are extremely disapproving of him."

"Why are they? ...the polyamory thing?"

"The polyamory thing, the bisexual thing, the his-ancestors-oppressed-our-people thing. Our relationship is an endless source of delightful grandparental disapproval in every possible angle and we are not even trying for that."

"I think I should give the four of you hugs."

Thomas pulls Katur into a half-hug with one arm and offers the other to Kaede. "Group hug? Katur is the one that needs it the most."

Group hug!

Group hug. Katur kisses the top of Thomas' head. "Love you."

Awwwwww.

"The Vaesteri elders reacted badly, but my ancestors were pretty terrible to their ancestors, including forming harems which is the offending point of the situation."

"Their behavior wasn't excusable," Fernando says squeezing the hug.

"No... but I guess I can see where they're coming from. Still, they should ask."

"The most absurdly ironic thing about the situation is that their response to believing we have been manipulated into a relationship was trying to arrange marriages for us."

"...did you point the irony out to them?"

"We've already discussed the topic in depth."

"I mean, I did technically scream something to the effect that arranged marriage is like slavery."

"I expect they did not take that very well."

"Nope! But once you start throwing glasses at my boyfriend, I can only assume you aren't taking well at all."

"I maintain the opinion that was an accident."

"Okaaaay this sounds uncomfortable and unpleasant, how about we switch conversation topics?"

"Of course... better not talk about Elan then. Well, I could talk about Eidos and the memory crystals that I neglected the first time around."

"Why not Elan?"

"Because it would be hard to discuss Elan's history without going back to the topic of why the Vaesteri elders dislike my people so much?"

"It's not the racism and oppression I wanted to change subjects from, it's the Vaesteri elders being..." She pauses, groping for a word. "Well, abusive, frankly."

"Your honesty and ability to notice the glaringly terrible is appreciated. Anyway, Elan... it has eight continents, most countries are democracies or monarchies that are on their bloody way to becomig democracies. The situation with the augmented varies around the world, some places have been ruled by them but in others they are the slaves..."

And then they delve into the specifics. Most cultures have accepted Synth as a useful tool one way or another. Basically only the people in this isolated but thriving peninsula still have a civilization that shuns it. Some religions view it as a divine tool that can only used by the "holy", or having Synth makes you holy, royalty, or a combination of both.

But closer to heart there are the continents of Lor-ersi and Gi-ersi. Lor-ersi was mainly populated by the Govis people, divided between the non-augmented lower class Govite and the fully-augmented ruling class Govad. Partially augmented outcasts don't really belong to either group. But other groups called the continent home, including the Daliath nomads, who followed the Daliad faith and accepted partial-augments and other outcasts. Soon the faith became synonymous with partial-augments and persecuted by both Govis classes.

And that persecution was terrible, there was a point when Daliath's were seen as worth next to nothing, useful as heavy workers for the Govad and hated by the Govite. During the peak of the persecution the Daliath would either live away from civilization or be owned as slaves. History books would often say that during that time period the safest and most comfortable life a Daliath could hope for would be as part of a harem owned by a Govad noble. This is only a partially biased way to present the situation, mostly because the situation was really dire.

Then Elsewhere started to annex Elan, which caused people to become sorcerers all around the world, with partial-augments being better sorcerers than non-augments or full-augments.

(Fun fact: one way to get sorcery gifts is by putting your lifeforce under a lot of stress, such as various forms of torture and physical exhaustion. It's unreliable and unlikely but many Daliath got their gifts this way.)

A group of sorcerers found Elsewhere, then each other, and managed to uncover the secrets of ritual sorcery, finally managing to open a portal that landed near a Daliath settlement. Since some of the group were Daliath themselves they decided to help the local Daliath population, leading to a revolt and the destruction of the Govad's kingdoms. Lor-ersi not only never recovered, but finds itself too fragmented to recover its former glory, divided between Govad and Govite, who segregate themselves to the point that you can find neighboring towns that have population from one group but not the other. The remaining Daliath population was still hated by them, so most of them emigrated to the Gi-ersi continent, braving through the dangerous mountains and navigating the stormy ocean that they couldn't cross before having magic and pillaged resources.

While Gi-ersi was populated, the natives were so few and the Daliath bounty was so generous that they managed to pacifically co-exist [citation needed] and the Daliath built their own thriving cities, such as Milirevi, where the triplets' grandparents live, but that may stray too close to the forbidden topic.

"The only reason I don't want to talk about that is not to upset you four," she clarifies.

Fernando and Thomas shrug. Katur and Felix do a sort of uncomfortable shrug gesture.

"Milirevi is one of the most important cities in the world," Fernando continues like a sort of consensus was reached. "My family didn't found it, but have been their patrons since day one. Recently the Vaesteri have been dealing with politics indirectly, so they could be neutral enough to tug whoever is in power, which is more complicated than one might expect. It's the biggest connection to Lor-ersi and due to some complicated historical happenings, it houses a large group of Govis population and the politicians' decided to 'solve'-" Fernando makes air quotes then realizes Kaede wouldn't understand, "sorry, that gesture is meant to convey extreme sarcasm. So the politicians incredibly stupid solution to the ethnic-related attrition on Milirevi and nearby cities was a complicated system of segregated districts, the basic rule being that someone could only own property or sleep in their assigned district but had otherwise freedom of movement."

"There was a series of natural disasters, Milirevi needed to rebuild itself, the Govis needed a place to go because of the disasters and being kicked by other Govis during a invasion. Anyway, the policy wasn't completely abolished yet, Milirevi is mostly neutral areas but not completely and the segregation has shift from being ethnically based to more class based."

She nods.

"And that was part of the proud history of Elan. Fun isn't it?"

"It's... bad. I'm not sure it's significantly worse than my world's."

Shrug. "I figure not. But it is context."

"Yeah," she sighs.

"Does your world get pretty bad?"

"Yyyyeah. Erm—are you done with the histories of your universes?"

"Well, Elsewhere might count as its own world, but most of its modern history is a branch of Elan's. We can research Elsewhere's ancient history from Bar, but..." Felix shrugs.

"Well, tell me about how it continues? And then we can figure it out via Bar, and then I guess I can tell you about my world."

Katur continues the history. The most notable points were three wars that erupted around the world. Elsewhere was only a little affected because "destroy the portals" was one of the key practices of the first war and due to the nature of the portals (you can't really pick where they land, only try randomly until you get something useful). During the third war Elsewhere completely closed itself off from Elan well in advance. During this time Earth - which was already annexed to Elsewhere at this point and was regarded as somewhat backwater - managed to go through the industrial revolution, which prompted the interested of an enclave of Elsewhere-based groups. This enclave managed to hold nearly-exclusive monopoly on the transportation between worlds; specifically, the transport of Earth's industrialized products to Elan.

"Is that true to this day?"

"Yes, honestly, the status quo is a bit ridiculous and harmful, but no one feels compelled to change things and has the power to do so correctly."

"Why can't other people just open their own portals?"

"Portal-making isn't an absolute secret, but it is a well-guarded one, enough that most people that have it will have economic incentives to keep it a secret. There are smugglers though, my family for example. Portal-making is lifeforce intensive too and the other end of the portal is pretty much random, so it isn't something that you can do trivially."

"Also, revealing magic to Earth would be trivial, doing so responsibly or safely would be the problem. Which doesn't mean that open relations between worlds wouldn't be beneficial."

"...so I could help with that, huh?"

"I love the way you think."

"I firmly maintain that it's the only sensible way to think."

"It most certainly is. Even if all you could do was replicating portals that would help immensely."

"Isn't it good that I can probably do a lot more than just that?"

"I think he is trying not keeping his hopes up, because he might pass out with joy if you can do targeted portals."

"I'm not sure I could get quite there, but at the very least I can replace lost vitality things, yeah."

"Any help is appreciated, a whole lot."

She grins. "Any more history?"

"We pretty much ran out of things to say about our worlds. How about yours?"

"Mmmine, right. So there are four types of mage, and with one potentially huge exception, all magic in my world was produced by one, and none of it can have permanent effects. People are born a certain kind, and mine cannot produce any magic natively, but we can see and manipulate all sorts of magic. Also there's a religious taboo about it and if anyone in the theocracy that is my world discovers you doing metamancy you are excommunicated and executed."

Katur nods solemnly; he received most of the explanation earlier. "Is that the only religion? How would they react to sorcery and our worlds cluster?"

"It's pretty much the only religion. There might've been others, but not for hundreds of years. Or, I guess it's a religion template—there are local variants with minor gods and saints here and there. It's just, everyone agrees that there are the four main gods, one for each kind of mage, and the metamancer one is evil." She shrugs. "I'm not sure how they'd react. They might conclude other worlds have other gods and therefore work differently—there certainly are enough economic incentives for this, here."

"Nothing like a little money to make everyone become a better person."

"Well, there are some people that are not moved by economic incentives, but we can at least outcompete them by virtue of all the shiny new magic and technology that we can distribute to everyone that is more sensible."

"That might nnnnot be that easy. The cultural taboo is really strong, and there were some wars in the past where a single metamancer was a match for an army. A lot of history was lost, then, and because of the taboo. Now my continent has exactly three countries, except they're pretty much the same political unit."

"I was thinking more in terms of how they would react to sorcery and possibly the other kinds of magic."

"I know, and I mean they might get suspicious of you on similar grounds, that your magic is evil or something."

"Simply because it's weird and new or something else? Maybe the lifeforce cost? Any idea on how we could make them think positively of our magic?"

"Maybe we could use Daliad or some other faith to portray sorcery on a positive light?"

"I think it's because it can do large-scale stuff that our magic can't and that's always been by default what metamancers can do. Starting with your limitations might help, like, what you can't in fact do—or with ours, like, your magic can do permanent effects, right? Ours can't, so that's obviously not a metamancer thing and not automatically bad."

"Yeah, if you want to be technical about it. We can do long-lasting things, but considering they can reach millions of years."

"And some of Synth's bio-manipulations are hereditary, so there is that too."

"Yeah, probably open with that." Pause. "I just realised Bar might have books on the actual history of my world."

That causes a reaction on the triplets and Katur.

"Bar might have books on the history of all of our worlds. Even the origin of Elsewhere itself."

She asks and "Bar can make anything that was actually published so maybe not—" some more questions and "—it's about licit access to the work, apparently, where that's relevant."