A blob of magic seeps out of the ring into the air around Tanya's hand, already contoured into a complicated shape that resembles the pattern in the wires. She has an innate sense of its position and movement, but being able to see magic definitely helps. There's a knot sitting in her palm, which looks like it could be untied easily with both hands or with more difficulty using only the one wearing the ring.

And the motion Iomedae demonstrated was for untying the knot? Since when do you operate magic with your hands - wait, this is the version designed for non-mages to use, obviously they need to be able to do something like that.

Tanya tries 'untying' the knot directly. Can she affect it at all? Earth mages can't affect magic generated by other mages in their presence, so it's an unintuitive mental motion, but it's worth checking.

Trying to move the magic directly feels— maybe not completely impossible? It responds to Tanya's attention by shifting very slightly, but that's all. The parts of the blob in contact with her skin stick to her a little tighter, and the shear forces inside the fluid produce interesting patterns on the surface, but that's all. Trying to get it to do exactly what she wants is like trying to form a sculpture out of wet sand while wearing oven mitts.

At least some things are still impossible in this new world.

Tanya pokes at it with her finger. Can she simply move it around by pushing on it? With her hands? 

She can! It doesn't feel like it has any inertia or mass, so it's rather like trying to interact with an idealized substance. It moves effortlessly when she presses against it. It's not possible to tear or pierce the blob, but it's otherwise dead simple to manipulate.

...can she move it with a stick? Did they figure out how to make magic tangible - ok, no, they made something tangible and then made the magic follow it. This was implied by magic items usable by non-mages, but it's still pretty incredible to see.

Foreign bodies pass directly through it without interacting. As far as the blob is concerned, the only other tangible objects in the universe are Tanya's hands.

Not even the rest of her body! It's carefully built to do exactly one thing and has impressive failsafes.

Alright, she'll try 'untying' the knot in the magic. (Not using the exact hand-movement Iomedae demonstrated; she can see what she's doing, after all.)

Doing this releases multiple tension points hidden in the blob, causing it to swell dramatically as its outlying components cycle into a new position. Then the blob of magic disappears, and Tanya has a spell active! It crops up in her mind, and if she doesn't try to mentally hold on to it and direct it, it'll slip away again in no time. For the next minute and thirty seconds, Tanya can:

1. Pick up unattended objects and move them around, up to a maximum weight of maybe a hundred kilograms.
2. Try to manhandle other people, although that doesn't seem like it's going to be nearly as easy.
3. Spend the rest of the spell's energy in a single glorious burst and send nine (9) nearby objects flying around at high speed.

She tries out the first function. Carefully, on a small pebble. One does not recklessly play with novel spells that can fling hundred-kilograms paving stones around.

...even with a small mass, it's restricted to a very slow speed and a short range. More safeties; if you want to replace an actual cannon (railgun?) you need use the third variant. (Tanya approves! More spell designers should think about including safeties, especially in mass-market items people might use without rigorous training! This ring could be used by civilians!)

The really unfamiliar part is how it, once again, implants knowledge in her mind. She knows they have spells to do that and she still can't grasp the full implications.

"Very interesting," she says, returning the ring to Iomedae. "I could control the spell while it was ongoing just as if I had cast it, without feeding it mana. Hooking it up to my mind must be the actually complicated part of this particular spell; applying force to an object is simple and the amount of force is hardcoded, keyed to the object's inertia." She can see why the the local 'wizards' would need to do that complex work up front, to make spells available later and usable at a moment's notice. The ring must be performing any required calculations, although this particular spell wouldn't need much of that anyway; she's still not clear on how wizards do that part. Or - if they can bind magic to tangible forms, perhaps can they perform computations using the magic itself, and the magical structure that does it is what takes so long to set up? In that case, they actually have a very elegant solution that doesn't rely on external computation devices at all!

That doesn't sound right, but Iomedae doesn't know enough about spellcraft to dispute it. Unless Tanya is adjusting for the spell circle? Telekinesis is like a fifth-circle Mage Hand; it could be that the control aspect is the complicated part after you scaled it up by five circles.

"Now you know," she says, putting the ring back on. "The item does the hard part. Now, if you are good at using magic devices, you can bend the constraints—" which she demonstrates by wiggling her hand a bit, causing Telekinesis to all but cast itself without her saying her name or doing the unknotting, "— but those are just artifacts of magic item design. The hard part is getting the spellform into that initial state. Spells from Pharasma do not behave like that, the caster still needs to assemble them from a more base state."

"Is it simply granting them knowledge of how to cast the spell? You have knowledge-transfer spells, like Share Language; we don't know how to do something like that. And another component for letting them use magic at all." That is, a mana reservoir, and she knows they can do that because they do it with magic items; this hangs together neatly.

"They grant the capacity and… something like knowledge? There is no training necessary, but it is still possible to cast a spell in a better or worse fashion."

"The recipients probably would benefit from some training." Even if you can make the magic do what you want you need to make the right choices, notice the right things and react quickly. At least that means knowledge- and spell-granting doesn't entirely replace experience. What they can grant seems more like instincts than conscious verbal reasoning, and instincts are vital in a fight but you can't rely on them alone.

"Training helps, but it depends on which branch of magic you want to specialize in, and that depends on which role you want to fill. The shepherd we just spoke to will likely never see combat, so her training focuses on spells and skills useful for childcare and healing."

"Of course. And Pharasma is giving her spells suited to childcare, in order to promote it or because she was already working on it, so it would be irrational for her to change careers now."

Tanya feels like she should be in more of a hurry. Rushing to purchase valuable knowledge before she's sent back, or - 

"Could it be possible after all to find out if I'll spontaneously return home and when? Nazir couldn't tell, but perhaps someone else could. If I knew for sure, that would either justify or make unnecessary some possibly expensive preparations. Buying magic items and books to carry back, and maybe other things I haven't thought of yet." There ought to be more to do when preparing for possible inter-world contact! "Informing the right people ahead of time, maybe? Making sure I'm not harmed by the passage, if that's a concern." Taking someone with her, if possible, but she really can't predict how that would go and it might be wiser to keep these people out of Earth for now. Unless this is their only chance to get a wizard? They'd need someone to volunteer for potential exile...

Nazir's theory is that Tanya will go home once she is paid the amount specified by the Planar Ally caster. Sixteen thousand scarabs should cover any task that can be done in a single day by anyone less than a demigod, and Nazir has doubtless arranged for the cash to be transferred to her account by now, so if that money suffices to send her home it must be that she'll only leave once the payment is in her hands… that doesn't sound right either, called outsiders don't need to personally pick up a stack of gold that weighs more than they do before they leave, even when they've been paid with such a stack of gold. Maybe they need to talk to a wizard after all?

"I assure you that you will be safe if the spell ends— unless it removed you from danger, since it will send you back to wherever you came from. It has been long enough that a calling of fixed duration is improbable, so there must be some other mechanism keeping you here. If this is of the highest urgency, we should go back for Nazir and ask him to find conjurors who will offer you a consultation. If even this is too slow, I will take you shopping for magic items and sundries instead." If Tanya hasn't incidentally finished whatever she came to do by now, she probably won't do it by accident any time soon, but the decision isn't up to Iomedae.

"Nazir seemed to think the 'calling' could expire several days from now, without additional conditions. If there's a condition that we can deliberately trigger - or avoid - it seems even more important to learn about it, so I can be prepared when I do it." Tanya doesn't want to go back to fighting a doomed war, but learning what might cause her to do so is just common sense. "Can't we ask the wizard whose tower it was?" This is all his fault, really. "Failing that, it seems prudent to at least ask Nazir how quickly a consultation could be arranged and how much it might cost." Why is Nazir the best person to ask which experts to consult? He was there to observe the spell, so they'll want him as a witness, but that's not the same thing at all. Iomedae is probaly just used to deferring to him on certain subjects.

Or maybe he happens to be well-connected? Tanya knows some magic researchers from her weapons testing days, so it's not implausible... Hah, she never thought of herself as well-connected on account of probably being able to wrangle a meeting with Dr Schugel of all people. If she does go home she hopes her case isn't referred to him! Tanya probably wouldn't survive Dr Schugel trying to open an interdimensional portal! 

Calling someone like Tanya for days would cost a king's ransom. Why would Nazir mention that as a possibility to her? Even rogue wizards aren't that profligate! Unless… did Tanya tell him something while they were in the Mage's Private Sanctum that changed his mind? Well, if he did, he might have a good reason for not telling anyone else.

"Mahveen of Shiman-Sekh has been missing since 1912. The insurance adjusters will need to speak with her about the damage to her tower, which means they will track down someone familiar with her and initiate contact with a Sending. If she refuses to participate – or is dead – we will have limited formal recourse. We could arrange for a private investigation, but respectable wizards will want an appointment unless we can get it as a favor." They could theoretically walk into the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye and ask to see Nefreti Clepati about a fascinating magical anomaly, but Iomedae considers that seriously ill-advised at the best of times. "I think there is little harm in waiting, unless there is some task you imagine a wizard would go to great lengths to call you specifically to accomplish, which you might unwittingly finish as you go about your business. Nothing comes to my mind, other than the dragon."

Nazir didn't specifically say it could last several days, but he implied it could still run out after Tanya has had time to shop around for better beneficiaries to her will than Nazir, and maybe do something to enable communications after she's sent back, and that will presumably take longer than a few hours.

"I can't think of any such task because I barely know anything about this world. More importantly, it would have to be a task I would be more likely to accomplish by accident than if she had asked me to do it. Which means if I do learn what it is, I will be inclined not to carry it out; this is practically kidnapping and blackmail! Besides, why tie it to an unpredictable attack on her tower, one which I could have easily ended up not stopping if the dragon had not attacked me? The entire chain of events makes no sense. If there's no time pressure because the spell won't send me back on its own I can wait to get an appointment for an analysis, but I'd really like to make sure that's true. If getting an analysis quickly isn't possible, I should probably assume the worst and spend some time and money preparing to be sent back, and undo the preparations once enough time passes."

If she's returning to Earth and can't come back here she'd like to leave her money to fund a lawsuit against Mahveen's estate. ...this is petty, it's much better to leave it to a project trying to establish communications, but she's really quite upset with this unknown person who suddenly messed up her life! Even if she possibly took Tanya out of fighting a losing war and into comfortable retirement, you should ask people before you do that! She didn't know what Tanya wanted!

It sounds like the arcanists of Germania are more sensible than Golarionite wizards. Iomedae is not even remotely surprised that a necromancer in one of the few countries where that discipline is legal set up a chain reaction that seems to have failed spectacularly and at great cost. Ruined pyramids sometimes have a dozen of those on every floor.

And from how Tanya describes the urgency of it, it may be worth going to extremes. She glances at the sun to get a sense of the time. "We can contact you if you are sent home suddenly, but if you think that insufficient we could act quickly to prepare you right this instant. I can Teleport you to a market and loan you money against your windfall to cover supplies, if time is of the essence, but this is a bad use of our resources in every other respect. It is not clear to me whether you should wait or act now, but it occurs to me that we can pay to expedite a certain type of inquiry. Are you prepared to spend two hundred scarabs to know with absolute certainty in the next twenty minutes?" she asks ominously.

"...wait, you can already contact me if I'm sent home? Is that certain to work? Do I still need to buy books or can you just dictate them to me - no, that would take too long, but it means missing any one book is less bad and I should focus on getting an example magic item, which can be the one to read the books."

Two hundred scarabs are around one and a quarter percent of her wealth. She low-key assumed it might cost that much just to get an expedited appointment with an expert! If it saves her from buying expensive items and reselling them after a week, then at a 5% return rate not doing this will save her... sixty-something scarabs?

"Yes, that's a good idea if there are no downsides. How is it done?"

The downside is that Iomedae will take this as a cue to start sprinting back towards the bank without explaining herself! If Tanya wants to keep up she'll have to fly.

Tanya is already flying! Now she gets to fly higher and faster, which means she heats up less!

There must be something about to happen in twenty minutes that they need to be on time for?

The same quarter mile back up the road at full tilt while dodging pedestrians who are going the wrong way and won't get out of hers so they're going to get brushed past uncomfortably close "Sorry!" until they get to the bank where way too many people are standing in the entrance presumably because it's nice and shady how considerate but one of them's a halfling which means she can diving roll over his head with a full eighteen inches of clearance into the doorway and come up standing in the lobby that is pretty full despite it being close to the end of business hours so the sprint to the nearest counting room is a little less frantic whereupon nobody has the answer to "Has anyone seen Cicerone Nazir?!" because why would they be paying attention to that instead of their work or to Tanya who is the youngest flying wizard any of them have ever seen so they will simply have to go upstairs and start firing Messages into people's offices until they find— there he is!

"We should use one of the Commune questions for this evening," she says, not especially breathlessly.