"Well, I'm not sure if it's inherently magic or not, but it's...everywhere," he says.

"...now I kinda wanna try to look for it, but there's no guarantee I'd find it even if it was in principle findable by metamancy."

"By all means try, if it costs you nothing."

"Costs time, there won't be a point where I'll go, 'yep, can't do it,' it can be arbitrarily hard to find. But I can look for five minutes..."

Squint.

nope

"Yeah, if I'm able to see it at all it's not obvious."

He nods, accepting this.

"Anything else I should know, do you think?"

"I believe you are most likely sufficiently well-enough informed."

"Then I'm ready to begin."

He gestures to a squashy chair. "I recommend sitting down first; the beginning can be--startling."

She does.

He doesn't do anything visible to normal sight, but after a moment there is a twist of magic in the air, that mirrors itself into a three-dimensional projection over Kaede's body. It begins doing--something--and a faint burning sensation starts up over her whole body, intensifying slowly but steadily after the first moments.

That's enough advance warning that she doesn't startle, but—she does squirm uncomfortably. And squints at what the magic's doing in her body.

The magic is...doing something...to her skin and ears and eyes and nose and tongue and so on.

...this feels uncomfortable.

This feels very uncomfortable.

It's moving on from uncomfortable to painful. She does not like this. She stares at it and tries to figure it out because it is very uncomfortable.

It is definitely doing a thing to her.

...She can sort of almost feel the very edges of...something?

Okay something is better than nothing, what is it?

...She's not feeling it with her metamancer senses.

...she isn't?

Nope. It's its own thing--she can see it, a little bit, and hear it, a little bit, and feel it, a little bit, but mostly it's its own thing and not very distinct at that.

Is it becoming more distinct the more pain she's in. She bets it is.

It definitely is.

Ugh.

Distractions, distractions, now that she can perceive the edges of this whatever can she see this whatever with her metamancy? (She's betting this whatever is the patterns Horace mentioned.)

Hmmmmnope have some more pain instead.