"I can show you some of them. Or I can try teaching you a cantrip in our style of magic, if you'd like, the Velgarth mages I know mostly didn't want to bother but picked it up quickly if they did try."

Urtho lights up. "I would love to learn one! Even if it is inferior to my Gift in most ways, it is still an entirely different approach to magic, and a fascinating one!" He's practically vibrating with enthusiasm about it. 

Magic merits such enthusiasm!! They'll need a good ink and they'll need a spellbook and then she can walk him through how to prepare spells in general, and then how to wrap his mind around this cantrip in particular, and then she can prepare a spell into a left-empty slot while he watches, and then he can try it.

Urtho is fascinated with the spellbook. He's also very clever, and has the significant advantage of having been able to watch the structure of all her spells as she cast them and prepared one for a demonstration. He gets Prestidigitation on the second try, and is so happy about it! 

Neat! She can copy some other ones over for him, if he'd like to try those too, if he were a child Ma'ar's age starting wizard school he'd probably not be able to get another one the same day but that's because he'd have almost no reserves, and instead he's a Velgarth mage and if he could stabilize a fourth-circle spell he probably wouldn't have a problem feeding it.

He's eager to try it! He cannot get the fourth-circle spell to stabilize even with a couple of tries, his instincts are all trained on Velgarth magic and so the way he tries to manipulate it when it's not working right is wrong, but the power in fact isn't a problem for him. When he goes back to easier spells, he can prepare and cast Mage Armour without difficulty, and then he moves on to second-level spells and after five determined tries in a row is able to prepare Invisibility. 

He's so excited!!! This is incredible!!! 

- also, goodness, he's entirely lost track of the time and didn't even notice the bell going, it's past lunchtime, Carissa must be hungry. 

Actually she has a ring for that!

"How fascinating! May I have a closer look at it? I am not sure you could do that at all, with our magic." 

"If I take it off it'll get dysregulated but you're welcome to look at it." She offers her hand. "It also makes me require less sleep, though it's been less effective at that lately, probably because I'm expecting a baby."

Urtho examines the spell up close, diving in deeper with his mage-sight. "How intriguing." 

"I can make our kind of magic items, even ones I haven't seen before, if I have spellsilver and it can be mined.  But I can't make the rings because they use divine magic, and we're too far from our gods to use their power here. I could...dupe it with Limited Wish, I guess, if I get that powerful."

"How much more powerful can wizards get? And what do you need to do to get there?" 

" - very, in principle. Spells go up to ninth circle, there aren't higher stable configurations, and at ninth you can - raise the dead, stop time, make a personal demiplane where magic works differently, Wish, Gate between planes or Teleport between planets within a plane... to get there I have to do lots of research and refine my spells and get good at stabilizing them, but I'd also have to get into fights, is the thing, past a certain point wizards don't improve if they're not using their magic when their life depends on it."

"Really? And that's not just for the combat spells? Being in fights is certainly a skill in itself, I know many very talented mages who I would never send to a battlefield because they'd panic and forget half of what they know. But it sounds as though you mean something more than that." 

"Yes. Even if you mostly want to make, I don't know, Quickened Extended Silent Still Minor Images, that's ninth circle but it's not hard and it's got nothing to do with combat, you won't have the channeling capacity, you'll lose hold of it. And if you get into enough situations where you're using magic when in real danger, you'll get more capacity. People can get somewhere with sparring but they don't get to ninth with sparring. I think even the reserves that a Gifted mage has don't get you there - I've seen a ninth-circle wizard prepare spells and he was moving more magic than Vanyel - who is, uh, the most powerful mage in Velgarth history. Or will be. In two thousand years. ...I guess he almost definitely won't be in two thousand years, since it happened to him for reasons that are going to be obviated."

"Huh. How odd." 

There's a knock on the door. "Master Urtho, are you going to teach the session this afternoon or would you like me to ask someone else?" 

Urtho scrambles up. "No, no, I am so sorry! You can tell them I will be right over." He turns back to Carissa. "My apologies, it seems I must go." 

"Of course. Thank you." 

Outside of Urtho's workshop, some older students are hurrying to Work Room practices. Down on the main classroom level, the hall is packed with younger children trying to make it to their afternoon classes before the lunch break is over. Ma'ar is not obviously among them. 

She looks around for a little while, but it's entirely possible he made it to his afternoon class already, and very unlikely that he's seriously hurt. 

(Ma'ar has in fact been at his afternoon classroom for half an hour; the dining hall is so crowded and loud and he's still having trouble consistently shielding his Gifts on purpose, so being there for long gives him a headache. He likes Lady Cinnabar, though, she's friendly and much less terrifying than most of the others.) 

It's a beautiful day outside. Through the hallway window, a number of hertasi appear to be setting up the aforementioned outdoor market in the courtyard. 

She kind of wants to be outside, being in a building all the time feels weird. She swipes a slice of bread in case her Ring's not accounting for her wanting to gain weight right now and wanders out to see it.

It's a glorious summer day, the air pleasantly warm without being uncomfortably hot, and just a hint of a breeze. The hertasi and some human farmers are manning various tables heaped with gorgeous farm-produce, loaves of bread of a dozen kinds, fresh fish laid on a magical cooling slab to keep them from smelling. There are also a couple of stalls handing out cooked food. Various hertasi call out to her, cheerfully.