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Emiko looked around the new research outpost. It was fairly small by Starlight's standards but it could be expanded later if necessary. The station was a mere 2 kilometers in diameter and only the same amount wide making for an inner surface of about 12 square kilometers. For now it was mostly park land and some small farms. There was constant soft illumination through the transparent siding of the station's outer ring from the silver mist outside and fusion powered lights provided brighter illumination on a daily cycle. The strange mist didn't seem to be affected by gravity and was close to uniform in every direction they'd sent probes out for at least a few million kilometers. A magecrafter had come through and determined that the mist was probably harmless but none of them were currently available for follow-up tests so at least for now the team here would be relying on resonators and good old-fashioned physics.
"So if I've answered your immediate questions could you explain what the four substances that make up your body and possessions are?"
"Oh. That's simple. Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Air is the gas my bubble is filled with. My waterskin is full of Water. The inert solid objects on my person are primarily made of various forms of Earth, with the metal components being the purest. And I don't have any active flames going, but there's Fire throughout, otherwise I'd be far too cold to do anything, and I have some substances particularly rich in stored Fire on me."
"That's odd, we have legends on our world that classify things the same way. Though in our world at least there isn't any basis to that. Are Gold and Silver types of metal in your world? Your language seems to suggest they are. What are those composed of and how do they differ from other metals?"
"They are composed of Earth atoms. Different metals are different arrangements of Earth atoms. I do not know the precise details of any specific metal, I am no alchemist."
"I wonder if it has the same properties as our gold. For us gold is what we call an element. Each atom of gold is made from exactly 79 protons. An average of 117 neutrons and exactly 79 electrons.
"Even if those numbers somehow corresponded to my world's gold, I really wouldn't be able to confirm that. I do have gold coins on my person, though they'll destabilize rapidly outside of my bubble. You probably don't consider coins made of exotic material that disintegrate outside of specialized storage to be a usable currency, do you, but they still seem like currency to me and I do consider it appropriate to compensate people who save my life, if I can. Getting more of the same substance has diminishing informational value, though."
"Given your bubble it seems like it's for the best that all your things stay with you. As for compensating us, what we'd find most useful is your help in our research. In most circumstances, physical substances aren't our constraint as a society. We aim for a fairly closed loop with the exception of new construction. Our currency to the extent we have it is mostly used to allow people to purchase energy and something else you don't have a word for. I think the closest explanation would be the capacity for non-person constructs to solve well defined problems."
"I would be willing to help you with your research, but I would like details on your capacity to prevent the widespread distribution of such information should you determine the potential for misuse is too great. If you trust your organization's decision-making procedures, I will be inclined to as well."
"We have separate storage areas for dangerous research which require authorization to access and audit logs to keep track of which authorized individuals have used that access and which specific files they've accessed. After that access has occurred we use a combination of random spot-checks using mind-reading to determine whether people have shared that information with unauthorized individuals. We also try to create detection methods so we can notice when someone is building a dangerous device or enacting a dangerous magic before they finish it and stop them."
"Alright. If you consider that sufficient for your safety, I am comfortable sharing any information that is a matter of public record in my world, and furthermore likely to be comfortable sharing anything that, in my judgment, Charon probably already knows. But if there are no matters that are urgent on the order of hours, I need to finish a spellwork task to keep my body and possessions stable. You may look over my shoulder while I do this, if you like."
"Nothing is urgent, please take care of whatever you need to. Also, is that a more general permission to observe or only specifically permission to visually watch?"
"You may also use other senses, but this is just going to be me taking notes and drawing diagrams, not me performing a ritual, so there probably won't be much to see."
Griffie gets out their pencil and journal again, and picks up where they left off, drawing diagrams and taking notes. The notes are not in Sylvan or Chraiqun, but in another language. After a moment, Griffie blinks. "If you acquired knowledge of the language in these notes from me, I would ask you to discard that knowledge, as the Druidic language is private. Once I am finished with this task, I will be willing to explain the spell structure, though, there's nothing worth keeping secret about an element-stabilizing 'Life Bubble' spell. You may look at the diagrams, if you find them of interest."
"I'll mark it as a private language in our archives and list you as the only authorized person. I don't think anyone's actually started learned the language yet, most people use something a bit like a spell to speak languages they're unfamiliar with which is what I've been doing but I'll send out a notice asking people to remove that knowledge if they have. Deleting it entirely isn't something we can do because the Heart refuses to allow anything to be deleted and our language magic is tied into its archive."
Spell re-development time! After a few more hours, Griffie thinks they have it down.
"I'm going to meditate for 15 minutes to prepare the spell, and then cast it to make sure it works. If it fails, it should fail harmlessly, since it will be redundant with my current bubble. You may observe this process."
"Sounds good." She makes a small gesture and about ten seconds later a construct drops off another crystal sphere which she holds in her hand. This resonator is a sensor system, it records nearby magical fields for later research.
There is a significant amount of formed and unformed magic within Griffith. During the meditation process, an unformed segment gets 'sculpted' or 'folded' or 'woven' into a structure. When Griffith stops meditating and begins 'casting' the spell, the gestures, including interaction with sprigs of holly and mistletoe, and the syllables spoken seem to trigger the structure at various points, and it goes into action, forming a 1-inch magical shell around Griffith. The shell is a perfect copy of the shell they already had, and the two are redundant.
"I agree. And now, as long as I cast that spell twice a day, the elements composing me will remain stable. And I'll have air, that's important too."
"Well, you've introduced a number of new research projects with your presence. Before you arrived we were trying to study the Astral Mist but we hadn't made much progress. So far we've been able to concentrate it enough to be a useful light source but not much else."