"I would expect at minimum that if he tries to dispel my magic he will usually succeed because he's significantly more powerful than I am. If you have a technique for dispelling magic that isn't mostly about power we could try it, see whether it works? I can put up Glitterdust or something."

"Sure, could give that a go." 

"This spell is meant to be debilitating but not actually dangerous," he warns them, and then pulls one of his magic-forms into being and - fills the air around them with intensely bright reflective shards of light, which makes looking at anything kind of like looking at the sun.

Vanyel scrunches his eyes shut, and instead opens all of his Sight, looking at the magic itself. 

It looks kind of almost like a mage-light would if it were scattered into thousands of pieces.

Huh. It looks like he could brute-force shove it away or shred it, but - is there a more efficient way that isn't just about power?

He tries to see if there's any remaining underlying structure to the spell, now that it's been cast and released. 

There's a ghost of the spellform still hanging in the air, gradually dissolving of its own accord. It looks like it'll last a couple minutes, if that.

Does anything happen if he reaches in and sort of snips it apart? 

It resists that a little but not very much and then the glitterdust is gone. 

"Huh," Mahdi says, "that is not what it would look like if I were dispelling magic. - I guess it makes sense that sorcerers would have finer control on counterspells, what with being able to decide what you're doing in the moment, the dispel spell I know is just a general attempt to shred magic with force."

"Right, you need to prepare everything in advance. I - have basically an arbitrary degree of control? I mean, my control for illusions and things like that is worse than some people, because I've practiced less and my Gift is really powerful which makes delicate work harder. Also I can see the structure of your spell, so I've got an idea of what to poke. Can you see it?" 

"When I have Detect Magic up, but I can't concentrate on Detect Magic and casting at the same time."

"...Wait. So you can have mage-sight or you can do magic but not both at the same time?" It sounds infuriating. "Also, mage-sight isn't a spell for us. It's - a sense, like eyesight, I can 'close' it and it takes a little bit of effort to have it 'open' but - not really concentration the way a difficult casting does. Does that mean you can't cast two spells at once either?" 

"I definitely cannot do that, no one can do that! You can do that?"

"Yes? I mean, not two really hard ones at once. If it takes a lot of power, or concentration, it needs my full attention; I can't Gate while holding a shield, for example. But I can hold a shield and throw fireballs at the same time, those are both easy, I did it in the dragon fight. Actually, I was doing both and mage-sight, so I could analyze how to even fight the dragon, so I think that would be three things in your system. And I can Mindspeak at the same time, that's another Gift entirely - I mean, it can be distracting, but the same amount as talking out loud." 

"Our shields don't require concentration once you cast them - well, the ones I know don't, because I wouldn't bother learning one that did. I can have them up while I throw fireballs. I can fly and shield and throw fireballs but those are - at one point I cast a shield, which will then last all day, at a later point I cast Fly, which will last nine minutes, and then I throw some fireballs, and I can't throw two at once though if I knew how to throw quickened fireballs I could cast them faster than I could count aloud - I don't, getting a spell that fast makes it higher-circle and it's rarely worth it."

Nod. "A shield takes a little concentration to maintain, for me, but that's because I can feed more power in, and reinforce it if it's damaged. I can also cast a barrier and leave it, but it'll only hold against attack to a certain point. Most of my longer lasting spells aren't cast-and-leave-it, like that, I can fiddle with them as I hold them." 

"Huh! That makes sense and isn't how most wizard spells are designed. Not only can I not put more power in once it's up, I can't even put more power in while I'm casting it, it has to be exactly what I prepared that morning."

"Are the sorcerers in your world more like me?" 

"They are definitely more like you in that they can put more power into a spell as they cast it, or tap a node nearby for extra power if they've been taught how - I can do that only if I prepared the spell that morning shaped for the extra power, which is a stupid thing to do if you don't know where you'll be travelling. I haven't heard of anyone who can adjust a shield while it's up but sorcerers usually have a very restricted range of spells they know, and I haven't talked about magic with more than a handful of them."

"Right. I can tap nodes too. I...suspect it's easier for me to learn a new technique than it is for sorcerers, if they don't tend to know many? I mean, it takes years to get it really engrained, say, to learn a complicated shield well enough that I can cast it under battle conditions reliably, and even then I might fumble it if I got distracted at the wrong moment - but I can learn the basics in a day or two of drilling."

He frowns, thoughtfully. "I think in general our magic is less - discrete units of spell - than yours? I can take a shield technique and modify it a bit on the fly, for example. It's hard, most mages couldn't pull that off reliably, but I've had, um, a lot of field experience." 

"I think sorcerers are mostly alone. Wizards have tons of techniques because there are, what, probably a million wizards in the world, and more from history. Most sorcerers are one of a handful of people like them they've heard of. If everyone in your world is a sorcerer of course you'd have refined your magic a lot and they'd have as wide a range of techniques and spell types as our wizards do.

There's also something to the observation about being less discrete, though. It makes me wonder if there are researchers exploring how to make our spells more adaptable on the fly."

Hagan, bored by this conversation, has shot down a goose and built a campfire to cook it. 

"I didn't realize sorcerers were that much rarer here. Makes sense."

"There are hundreds of kinds and I don't think they can learn from each other, at least not more usefully than you and I can."

"...Huh. Bizarre. I guess my world does have kinds of Gifts, and a Healer couldn't learn very usefully from a Mindspeaker, for example, we just don't have that many and they're in very obvious clusters."