"I guess, but I'm not sure I'll have much use for currency here, either—the school will cover food and lodging and at least basic necessities like clothes and there's the library so at least in the short-term future I don't expect to need anything. And yeah, I can try to help you come up with an analysis like that."

"Awesome," says Kaylo. "Now, a drawback of analyses is that they do have to reduce information about many magical properties to just location and color; what properties should I be assigning what level of obviousness in those modalities?"

"Hmm... well, there should be three colour groups, I think, one for each type of mage. If you can manage to see metamancy, too, go ahead and make that a colour as well, but I'm not sure to what extent it's distinct enough in the same dimension for that. Beyond that, artefacts' charge is fairly important, and which part of their physical aspects are being affected by magic; quantity of mana in general would be interesting to know; I'm not sure if you can identify with that which or at least how many spells an arcanist has bound or an elementalist has found..."

Kaylo takes notes. "Are you imagining it would be possible to get ahold of more mages of various types to look at to refine the analysis?"

"...not if you tell them you're working with a metamancer, and I'm not positive revealing the existence of another world like that is likely to go smoothly—I suppose more smoothly given that the ability to control who goes between worlds when will be limited to people from here..."

"What's the problem exactly?"

"People see magic as a gift from the gods, there are a bunch of taboos about using it in public at all except under some special or specific circumstances, and metamancy in particular is seen as evil—I'm not at all sure how they'll react to an entirely different world with different magic contacting them."

"...well that's just damned inconvenient."

"Yeah. But on the other hand, like I said, if Elcenia holds the power to send and summon people, it's not like Galatea can do anything Elcenia can't stop."

"Sure, I'm not worried they'll start a holy war, I'm worried they'll be irritating to research."

He snorts. "I'm sure you'll be able to find a couple of arcanists and enchanters who'll be delighted to help with research. Elementalists as a group tend to be less academically-inclined, though."

"Why's that?"

"Their magic is more personal—elementalists have blessings, which are magical powers on themselves. Stuff like flight or controlling the elements or telekinesis or sped up cognition or breathing underwater. They can only have one blessing active at a time, and have a lot of intuitive access to it—there isn't a whole lot of experimentation you need to do as an elementalist, you just think of a power and switch to it and it works like you expect it to."

"Huh. What makes something 'one power'? Like, here people who control the elements get one element per."

"Yeah, one element per is how it works for us, too, and it's—complicated? And changes from person to person, sometimes, but basically if two 'different powers' are just basically different descriptions of the same thing, then they're the same power—like, flight and levitation and selective immunity to gravity are the same thing. The different elements are distinct powers, and telekinesis is distinct from them, but controlling heat is usually the same as pyrokinesis, for instance."

"...and these people aren't experimental types? What a waste."

He shrugs. "It's a cultural thing, probably. The fact that there are so few of us and as far as anyone can tell chosen randomly from the general population means that there are not a lot of mages who would naturally pursue research, and without a strong pro-research meta-culture like arcanists in general have it'll be hard to find. But metamancers can mimic pretty much any kind of mage—I can convert the different types of mana to one another and be indistinguishable from the real thing if all my mana is converted to a single type."

"I'll definitely want a look at that once I have a rudimentary analysis."

"Cool. Meantime, want some accelerated perception?"

"Probably best saved for when I have a specific use for it as long as you might have a limited supply."

"Yeah. On the other hand accelerated perception as an elementalist blessing is way cheaper than as an arcanist spell so I think I want to watch you cast a few wizardry spells while I'm accelerated."

"Okay, what spells?"

"I'm not sure what spells there are but I guess ones that are sufficiently distinct? And a couple that sting, too. Maybe start with just that number spell so I can calibrate how fast I have to be to reasonably detect the power going through."

"Is it cheaper to do this at a stretch than in short bursts so I should have a list in advance -?"

"Would be if it were a spell, but for the blessing short bursts are better."