"There's magic of several different types. The Cards themselves have a hierarchy, but personal magic isn't as neatly divided as that."

"Oh, huh. So, do I probably have a weird magic thing? Or is that, I dunno, rare and I have to poke it a bit or something to get it to show up, or…?"

"Weird magical things are usually just one of the ways latent magic finds to express itself when sorcery isn't actually pursued."

"...you never mentioned this."

"You never asked."

"We, um. We did ask about this before, pretty sure? We asked about other magic we could do and then how to do magic without cards, and you… didn't mention this, or at least maybe you did but said you couldn't help?"

He thiiinks?

"I don't know how to do magic without cards, you're the ones with weird magical things!"

"Okay, right, so do you have any idea how we might get started on it, even? Like, is it just a superhuge amount of meditation and then blindly fumbling my way through some stuff? Or do you not even have, like, any idea of how, is this a thing that we're gonna have to guess and hope at."

Tyler feels like sighing. They've already been over this: Kero is only helpful with respect to the cards, and even then, only to a very limited extent.

Ugh.

"I know there are rituals and spells with words on them. I don't know how you invent them or use them."

Theo rubs at his eye a bit. "Maybe we'll just have to use lots of trial and error," he says. "Sounds exciting."

Maya doesn't seem super thrilled. But anyway: magic.

"It does sound exciting, though! Inventing magic from scratch, it's like science but better!"

"Yeah! We can come up with whatever spells we want! We could have a spell for a death laser!"

Sadde looks at Juniper. "I think maybe she is the evil twin."

"Nonsense, we're both evil." She starts cackling.

Willow joins in.

"Okay, but if you want to be evil, you might want to try for something more general-purpose than a death ray. Like, a heat ray that has different intensities, that could work approximately the same and would allow for more varied use."

Jess gives Maya a bit of a look. "Aaaand why would you need a heat ray?"

"… I mean, I wouldn't. It's just, you know, probably more useful than a death ray."

"I feel like we have too many evil twins in the room?" says Theo. "It sounds a bit like we're outnumbered here, Sadde?"

Tyler: is still standing at the side of the room, rather passively.

"Don't look at me, I'm an evil twin all on my own," he says, and starts cackling himself. He throws Tyler a side glance but doesn't really have a way to do... anything about it right now, in a stranger's house.