What.

Yeah, it's a religious thing, there are—care to listen to a whole spiel on how magic works here?

Since I'm apparently not going back home right now - I do need to know how things work around here, yes.

Okay so pretty much all magic—one exception, I'll get to that—is human-made. Some people, randomly, are born with one of the four kinds, with the overwhelming majority being one of the three that aren't metamancy. This magic is dormant until the potential mage tries to voluntarily use it, and since no one knows who has magic in advance and the way to do it is very idiosyncratic and ineffable everyone tries. About one out of two hundred people do in fact end up succeeding, but there are probably lots who are mages but just haven't found the right way to do it.

There's religion involved in all of this, and people believe each kind of mage is blessed—or cursed—by one god, with the three non-metamancer kinds being blessed by the good gods and the fourth by the evil god. Questions so far?

There's only one religion? Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam were all trying to get into that position in my world. Plus a bunch of less popular ones.

Yeah, the whole continent's a theocracy, no one can reach the northern hemisphere, western continent is mostly uninhabited, southern continent is ice.

For us, Christianity dominates the northern continent, Islam the southern and the central not-quite-a-continent, Hinduism the eastern continent, which is huge, and the far west two continents have a bunch of different ones. But this is a sidetrack.

Yeah. Anyway, so, four kinds of mage are metamancer, arcanist, enchanter, and elementalist. Metamancers can see and manipulate and destroy and borrow and steal magic, but we cannot produce any of our own. Understanding magic that we didn't shape is also incredibly difficult and takes a long time and lots of study and concentration. We can help the other mages be more effective and efficient, but we can also wreak havoc with their magic and there were some pretty nasty wars and every now and then an evil metamancer shows up—or at least a rumour does—that wants to take over everything, just to keep the fear alive in everyone's hearts.

...Honestly this situation, despite being pretty shitty for metamancers and wasteful of resources, sounds preferable to what my world has going on right now. No offense.

...really? What's up with your world?

The Neuroi war. Omnicidal monsters showed up out of nowhere and started burning cities, towns, farmsteads, expanding and replicating. They created a giant permanent storm. And continued to advance. The world got its act together to oppose them - badly at first - now they are barely contained by the combined might of half the Witches of the world and what seems like half the world's industry to supply us with weapons and food and other support. Current estimates say... One point five billion people have died directly or indirectly because of it in the last twelve years.

...giant permanent storm?

Yes. I don't know the details of how anyone studied it - but they're reasonably sure and have science to point at it that they are actively maintaining the storm and it didn't just happen when they showed up. It screws up farming for much of Europa and Orussia.

Okaaay that is kinda bizarre because we also have a giant permanent storm. It's why no one can go explore the northern hemisphere.

She squints. I need to try to pull farsight out of my memory... I know how to look for Neuroi in a storm. I really, really hope you don't have any.

We don't—I don't think so? We don't have any monsters, just humans.

I'm going to worry about it until I check. Neuroi are really damn scary. So I'll check.

Fair enough. Er, but the storm is rather far away, it'll take several days flying.

Far, farsight. It has a range measured in thousands of miles - mental impression of one mile, of a hundred - 

- oh. Yeah you can probably—just aim north, you'll eventually find it.

When she eventually digs out the right memory in enough detail, her magic does - something - and now a piece of the blurry chaotic foam is firm and still and active.

She looks north. And more north. And more north. Not great resolution on this, but a storm would be hard to miss.

It really, really would. It's enormous and everywhere, it literally encircles the globe—which is about the size of the Earth, and the continent they're on is only slightly smaller than Africa—and it's devoid of Neuroi.

The storm - it's not a giant hurricane? It's just... Everywhere except the local couple of continents?

It might not be everywhere because past a certain point her farsight just—refuses to go on. It's a huge storm, no hurricanes, just thunder and clouds and huge ocean waves and something that completely prevents her from being able to see any farther.

She probably looks weird at this point - and her mana is fizzing down steadily - she looks up, into space if necessary, how far up does the 'nope' region extend?