"We don't have anything like them.  The name - or whatever translation effect is letting me talk to everyone is translating it to - is descriptive, though.  I've figured out that they're the glowy outfit that you were wearing, and probably the one that Healer Zenos is wearing too.  Are they always existent, but pulled out of somewhere when you want them, or do you make them when you put them on?  And I gather they cover your entire body in a barrier, not just what looks clothlike, right?"  

Eelesia nods.

"That's correct. The clothlike and jewel-like parts serve as anchors and fulcrums for several flavors of integrated protective phase barrier, yes. The physical parts are made of our own mana but we don't conjure them each time. They're extremely massive relative to even a high mana capacity like mine, so typically one's Device grows and maintains one's Barrier Jacket in the same hyperspace pocket where it keeps most of its other machinery."

"We also don't have Devices." She thinks back.  Some of these terms are blurring together to her.  "Those are the things that let people cast 'spells' which are maybe something like daemon moves?"

"Thinking of those, I'd be interested in seeing if Araeneve using Reflect or Rest shows up on the scans.  Or the other two they know, but those might be destructive."

"Effects don't usually."

Eelesia nods again. "Spell is our colloquialism for a pre-programmed technology-aided thaumobaric resonance pattern. High-energy mana-driven field effect shaping, in other words. I can explain how that works when we're done here, if you'd like."

"I'd appreciate that.  Was there anything else to do, other than scans?  I'd kind of like to know what the snake-looking-things in the scans were or meant." 

She suspects this is all a bit out of the range of normal for here, but she also doesn't know how much variation linker cores have in their appearance, only ever seeing one normal image.

"I couldn't begin to guess. It may simply be the normal ontobiological anatomy of a daemon, but since Araeneve is the only daemon I've ever examined there's no way to be sure."

"And no, we're all done here. Medically speaking, you're free to go wherever or do whatever."

"Oh, good."  That would be following Eelesia around.  They look towards her for the cue to leave.  

Eelesia exchanges pleasantries with Healer Zenos and then they can head back out into the lobby. She meanders in the general direction of the teleportation area.

"So, that was all interesting, and revealed nothing urgent. How are you feeling about things?"

"It's interesting!  I think I'm seeing the general shape of things here, though I still have a lot of questions."

Araeneve is practically bouncing with energy beside them.  "You mentioned explaining spells?  This time in smaller words?"

"I can do that! Before I do that, are you, like, hungry or anything else in that genre."

She instinctively checks her pockets for a phone, but doesn't have it with her.  "Uh, I ate about an hour before the mirror-thing ate me," she says.  She's not sure how long that's been.  "I don't feel especially hungry yet, but if it's normally lunchtime here I can start adapting to the local schedule."

"Just checking."

They reach the teleport area. Her blazing violet Circle unfurls and constructs itself under their feet, flush with the floor, and she uses it to transport them all back to her comfortably furnished work pit in the space tower.

"So, does your society know anything at all about mana respiration or should I start with the really basic stuff?"

"We don't know anything about it."

"Okay. So... firstly. Mana itself. Raw mana is actually a relatively simple form of exotic matter. A proton and an anti-proton bound together by four reptrons. Atomic mass of six, atomic weight of negative two. Neutrally charged, non-reactive to both matter and anti-matter."

"Secondly, time-crystals. It's possible to take a photon and fold it into higher dimensions as well as temporally to create a repeating pattern in space-time that can function as a sub-atomic 'fuse' that our linker cores can chain onto the mana passing through itself. A linker core can set this fuse with extreme precision, down to the picosecond. This is the fundamental primitive action of casting. You respire mana, prime that mana, and then release it onto our plane, after which the fuse will break the reptron bonds and allow the proton and anti-proton to touch and annihilate into energy. The light produced is polarized by the time-crystals, which constrain it to a particular wavelength within your linker core's chromaprint. Commonly called manalight or mana color."

"The final fundamental action is producing what we call volatile mana. The exact wavelength of light released by annihilating mana is a function of your chromaprint and the exact length of the time-crystal fuse, and with practice one can prime mana in a way that makes the fuse reactive instead of on a timer. It'll be as stable as unprimed mana, until it is hit by a photon corresponding to the annihilation of only one possible length of timed fuse. Follow so far?"

She needs to go over this in her head for a full minute.

"So, raw mana is a particle that can make a matter-antimatter interaction if the reptron bits are removed, and the linker core can make fuses that remove them after a very specific time.  The fuses are called time-crystals.  Spellcasting is getting mana, putting the fuses on it, sending it to this plane, and letting the fuses go off.  The light's color depends on your 'chromaprint', and how long the fuse is.  You can also make mana that has a fuse that you can then set off only by hitting it with a very specific color of light later on.  Is that correct?

"Also, what's a chromaprint?"

"Oversimplifying, it's what color your linker core is. Everyone's is unique. And no, I haven't even gotten to spellcasting yet."

She nods, correcting her mental image.  "Do different people have different colors, or can you change the color?  Does the color of the chromaprint change what things you can do?"

"It's entirely cosmetic, but you're born with yours and it is uniquely identifying."

More nodding.  "Okay, what comes after that?"

"Math!"

Eelesia laughs a little.

"Probabilistic geometry, to start with. Alongside control exercises."

She holds out a hand to demonstrate. The air above her palm starts to sparkle, then glow, then it blazes like a purple sun.

"This is a basic shell technique. What I'm doing right now is releasing primed mana from a point in a steady stream while simultaneously scattering volatile mana into the air around it to create an inward force and sharpen the boundary. The really useful part is what happens to the reptrons after annihilation. Reptrons can't exist naively in a three-plus-one darkskein, so the instant they're freed they decompose and punch back into the dimensional sea. This can have all myriads of useful effects, but the simplest is a sort of kinetic recoil. Creating interference patterns or amplification patterns in that recoil is the basis of using thaumobaric resonance."

Math.  She sort of knows geometry and probability separately.

"Volatile mana that the primed mana is setting off?  What happens if someone makes volatile mana and doesn't set it off for a while?  

"Is it sort of like how things falling into water will make ripples that can interact with each other?"  

"That is a popular introductory analogy. Nothing happens to loose mana, though. It eventually drifts into space and away from all gravity wells."

She lets the shell of manalight fade.

"In this exercise, I used the interaction between the timing and the positioning of the volatile mana to actually get a stable boundary. The velocity of released mana is always small and very imprecise; it varies with your respiration and with conditions in the dimensional sea."

Nods.  "Do you immediately get the mana from the sea then use it, or do you have some kind of pool that you can draw from and run out of if you use too much before it refills?"

"Neither. The introductory analogy is that it is actually a lot like breathing. You can breath faster to process more oxygen but the amount of oxygen you can process is only loosely correlated to the volume and rate of atmosphere passing in and out of your body. The analogy kind of breaks down beyond that, though. The ontobiology is complicated, and there are several different limiting factors. The energy to produce the time crystals is metabollically sourced, for one. Respiring too hard can cause other exotic particles besides mana to leak into your linker core, which hurts a lot and can have subsequent effects ranging from nerve damage to radiation sickness, for another."