Symin points at some spacious corner.

"Are there ways to make circles more or less powerful? Like if you chisel them into lodestone, or write them in thicker ink?"

"...no, they're completely medium-agnostic - more powerful how, what are you imagining that could possibly do?"

"—well, if the problem is that you can only be summoned when the boundaries between worlds are thin, then it suggests there may be competing factors of summoning power and summoning resistance! So a more powerful circle would be one that can summon daeva in a wider time window, or eventually at any time if powerful enough."

"Oh. Well, on Earth they are completely medium-agnostic and it makes no difference if you draw the entire thing in leftover duck sauce but you could conceivably experiment here."

"There are cheap tests—"

"But we don't need to do them right now! Rightyo, where were we at?"

"Basics of task delineation - when in doubt, specify everything. You can fall back on 'except as prohibited by the circle' and probably should a lot. Bindings and tasks can only limit daeva behavior, not compel it - there is never, ever anything forcibly preventing a daeva from stopping in the middle of a task and ignoring you, although a good circle including these ones will prevent starting something that they don't at the time mean to finish if abandoning it might be unsafe.

"Payments! Fairies are going to want fairly normal trade goods as far as that goes - not things that would be cheap in Fairyland, and that's going to include, say, ordinary fabric or most gemstones, but you can sell them on trinkets and books and art and exotic foods and stuff like that. Angels are more likely to want things like potted plants, live animals, stuff they can't just make; they'll take books too. Demons are hardest to pay because we can just copy anything we get an inkling of existing. Some will work for book recommendations, or for tourism opportunities, and sometimes they'll also take live animals because we have some weird limitations around live animals. Preferentially female animals. However, some demons might be holding out for, euphemistically, intangibles. Souls are conventional. You shouldn't realistically take my word for it but demons can't actually collect souls, it doesn't do anything, and it's safe to offer - but they're mostly doing it for the thrill of scaring people so if you don't seem scared they might lose interest. Some of them want sex. That wants another reminder to specify everything you might be in doubt about at all but if it appeals and you pay in advance, it's not risky. You could probably get a savvy demon to take a charged Sheikah slate, though possibly not if they don't like the idea of it running down eventually - how long do they last, anyway -"

    "They don't run out," says Symin. "Most ancient technology contains an ancient core, which is at once a battery and ancient energy condenser. What's special about an ancient furnace is—well, its throughput, but also its overpotential, which is—this is hard to explain."

"A normal ancient core doesn't exhibit a positive acting potential, so ancient energy won't naturally flow out of it. So it will recharge itself, but you need a lot of specialized equipment to charge something else off of it."

    "Sheikah Slate can get temporarily spent from extended intensive use, but safeties will cut it off before the core is fully exhausted, and then it'll be full again in a few minutes to hours. For normal everyday usage it can be used continuously indefinitely."

"That's why I was surprised you managed to run it completely dry!"

"...But we don't know what's up with Hell and your other worlds. There might not be planar energies there for a Sheikah Slate to recharge off. In which case it'd die in... hm. It's a bit hard to quantify. Fifty uses of Stasis?"

"That'll appeal to some and not to others but it's worth floating as a possibility."

"If extraordinary food works on you, that could be easier to come by on short notice. Even if demons can make the Sheikah Slates by the batch for us, it takes infrastructure and time to charge and configure them one by one."

"Do you have some I can try?"

Link pulls a stick of something from a pouch on his hip.

"Weak strength buff," he says.

If Cam unwraps the paper, underneath looks like some sort of mushroom risotto packed in dried, fragrant leaf.

"Does one eat the leaf part?"

"Yes."

He chomps into it like it's a dolma.

It tastes surprisingly good! The leaf is a bit like seaweed, crisp with a hint of salt and umami. The mushroom is flavorful and blends with the rice, juicy and not overly chewy. There might be some sauce in there; it's hard to tell. It settles heavy and warm in his stomach, like he's drinking hot soup.

"It takes a minute to kick in."

"It's already remarkably warm for a food stored at room temperature." He manifests a smallish weight he can already one-arm with effort and starts hoisting it up and down to see if that effort drops.

He can feel some sort of sensation in his muscles, but it doesn't seem to get easier.

- what if he lets it through, does that help?

Yes! After a few seconds, his muscles feel more solid and the weight seems significantly lighter. The boost will keep climbing slowly for a while; there doesn't seem to be a sharp cap.

"Okay, it works but I have to let it, I felt something before I did that but afterwards I think this is probably the full effect."

"Great! That's also promising for resistance against physical vectors of mind control."