Yeah, that you wouldn't get for a while. Still. A while is a lot different from never.

Yeah. Having more metamancers who we can trust... would be amazing.

It really would. ...Bet you can get a spell to detect metamancers.

Ooooh!

Probably much more easily, too.

Yeah, probably. Anyway, ready to go?

Yeah. You?

Yup, let's go.

She grins and scoops him up and takes to the sky.

Eeeeeeee!

So how was your day?

It was fun! Artefacts are ridiculously complex, I'd take months to write anything that complicated and push it.

How long does it usually take?

It depends on the artefact? We have to, like, come up with a complete algorithm—sort of like a computer program—and then think it at the artefact straight through, no pauses—we can read it or cheat or whatever—and a metamancer can keep the artefact "paused" to allow the enchanter to rest, but otherwise it has to be one sitting so most of the more complex modern ones don't take longer than a few hours to make.

Wow.

Yeah.

Sounds kinda like enchanters are hella more crippled by the meta ban than the other two.

I think they're the more obviously crippled, but binding spells is a similar process to making artefacts and likewise time-constrained, and elementalists have fundamental limits to how much magic they can do which metas can help work around.

Sigh. Yeah.

I wonder if you could get a spell to make people non-meta 'mancers.

Like, other kinds of mages? That'd scale better than lots of metamancers, I guess.

Yeah, and metamancers are probably way more useful with the other kinds of mage than by themselves, even here.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, one meta for ten mages sounds like a reasonable ratio.

Nod. If you could turn people into any kind of mage from your world...

Depends on context? Here I think an enchanter would be most useful.

Yeah--not actually what I meant, though, I was--wondering which one I'd choose if I were able.