... Huh! That's all really interesting. She makes the mental note to use platinum for organizing and coloring things, because she knows herself and she's going to use that so much, and then she'll start poking at some alloys. Probably what she's going to end up with is some sort of complicated interconnected machine thing with different bits of metal doing different things, sort of like what she did with the communication pendants.

Electrum! Invar! Actual iron, because she totally skipped that because for some reason she thinks of steel before iron! Bronze! Uh... Tin and nickel and zinc by themselves, she hadn't thought of those, wow she's not very good at remembering either alloys or the periodic table. Her minecraft mod knowledge is running a bit dry. Um. Shit, this is hard. Gold alloyed with various other metals? Including platinum?

Electrum works better than gold -- allowing her to get the glasses pretty thin, if not yet down to wire-frame sizes.

Invar seems like it should work really well (and it almost beats gold), but the concepts are too ... bendy, for lack of a better word. If they were just slightly stiffer, they might click into place the way these ideas did with platinum.

Iron works about as well as stone, actually. Better than copper, otherwise not remarkably special.

Bronze performs similarly to brass, but slightly worse overall.

Tin works somewhat like platinum -- the magic does the same 'clicking' into place -- but it's much easier for magic to work itself loose, so it ends up being comparable to steel.

Nickel doesn't quite to the same thing. It ends up being even worse than copper on its own.

Zinc doesn't have special affinity with the magic at all, but it does do a bit better than copper. Something about it feels smoother than some of the other metals.

To summarize, her researches have produced the following ordered list of compatibilities for this specific magic: nickel, copper, zinc, titanium, stone, iron, silver, bronze, brass, steel, tin, gold, invar, electrum, platinum.

She’s going to need to take notes. Probably where Kose can’t see, because literacy seems like it’d be really alarming from a dungeon. So, uh. One of her walls, but on the opposite side from what adventurers and fairies see. In her puzzle room, that’s nicely out of the way. And she’s definitely going to keep a little material library to test with. If only she could make a proper spreadsheet. Alas, she’ll just have to do the best she can with her bullshit dungeon powers.

So, there is something of a pattern, so far; alloys perform better than pure minerals. Interestingly, the combinations will often do much better than the sum of their mineral parts. For example, nickel is kind of garbage on its own, but in invar it’s one of the best she’s found so far. ‘Best’ also seems to be relative, it feels like some materials are better at holding certain concepts than others.

Unrelated to her glasses project, but in the interests of science, can she enchant invar with something like ‘strength’? Or maybe that kinetic redirection idea she had?

"Strength" is interesting. It takes reasonably well to the general idea. How does she test the behavior of the strengthened material?

Kinetic reduction doesn't want to click at first, but if she tries some variations on the theme she will quickly discover that invar is well suited to turning it into heat. In fact, a chunk of invar enchanted to resist motion generally will fall slowly, as though falling through a strong magnetic field, and become ever so slightly hotter as it does so.

Oh, damn. She’s going to need to make a secret experimental lab space, isn’t she. She can’t actually test this properly at all. Mrrrrh. That’ll need to wait until she’s got more slack to work with, she’s kind of blowing a lot of her budget on materials. Again.

She will make the note that invar seems correlated to heat in her sadly-not-an-actual-spreadsheet, and then she’ll go back to fairy approved projects. Platinum was one of the best metals for this particular type of magic, so: how does it do when it’s alloyed with, er. For lack of a better idea she’ll go for strength. Iron, and carbon, and titanium, in little separate experiments that she can directly compare to one another.

…. Oh, and separately, she should make and add aluminum to her library. As it occurs to her, because she wants to do that before she forgets that it exists or something.

Platinum/iron gives her an alloy that does slightly better than plain platinum. But it stops 'clicking' with the magic as well. It still does, but the click has less ... depth to it, maybe? She gets the feeling that there is some other concept which this alloy would take readily.

Platinum/carbon works very well! The magic clicks just as well with the platinum, but she can wind it around the carbon to secure it much more tightly, letting her pack it into quite stylish frames. If she thinks to do a drop-test, though, she will note that platinum/carbon is fairly brittle compared to other metals.

Platinum/titanium also works quite well. The magic clicks, she can wind around the titanium inclusions, and the overall strength is comparable to other metals. She can make a hard-wearing yet thin-rimmed and light pair of glasses with this mixture.

Aluminum is weird. It feels in some ways like a metal, and in some ways almost like ... very smooth wood? It reacts strangely to the magic, casting ghostly shadows around the visible images. She gets the same feeling that it would take very well to something that isn't this.

Note: aluminum is weird. To test later, possibly when she has a proper mad scientist lair.

She does totally think to do a small drop test (in her puzzle room, away from prying fairies) to figure out which of her platinum alloys is stronger, and then promptly crowns platinum/titanium the winner of this contest. She can probably make a set of pretty-enough glasses with just the frames, but, hm. The lenses are part of this construct too, aren't they? She should start testing types of glass. She.... knows next to nothing about types of glass. Shit. Um. Well, can she lean on how completely bullshit her matter conjuration abilities are, and aim specifically for the glass used in her specific set of glasses that she really actually wore, and, uh, what's that one super famous baking glassware... Pyrex! Can she cheat outrageously and summon Pyrex?

If she is familiar enough with Pyrex to know what distinguishes it from other types of glass, yes!

Pyrex feels like it has some of the same thing going on that invar does. But it otherwise isn't very suited to holding magic, being unable to hold very much before other bits start coming lose.

The glass her glasses were made of -- or at least, what she got when trying to conjure that -- turns out to be one kind of crystal coated in another substance. The outer substance doesn't hold magic hardly at all, and makes every 5th piece of magic invisible. The inner substance holds magic a little, but not as well as the plain glass which she has been getting so far in her experiments.

On the other hand, the inner substance shows magic further away (if she doesn't concentrate on a specific range) for some reason.

Score one for bullshit conjuration powers! There's just one problem: she has no idea how to work with any of this! At least in regards to how to leverage it for her current fairy-sanctioned project. The high refraction index of her glasses would be excellent for binoculars or microscopes or the like, and Pyrex's uses are obvious, but nothing she hit on in her vague glass related flailing has gotten her anything that really works well with magic. So, uh. Cool, cool, they go into the library, and she can maybe one day figure out how to use them properly. Current winner for lenses is Pyrex, probably, but maybe there's something stronger she can come up with.

Hmm. Can she also conjure bulletproof (actually resistant, nothing is truly bullet proof, but that's the name) glass?

She can conjure a different kind of glass, certainly. It also turns out to be made out of a few different layers. One layer is similar to the outer coating on her glasses, but doesn't appear to do anything interesting when used as a lens. Another layer feels a bit like wood, and takes magic better than the 'generic' glass which she had previously been conjuring. It is also a bit lighter. The last layer seems to be more like the generic glass she's been conjuring, but with a different ... flavor? It seems ... newer, insofar as she can put words on it.

Neat! These will... also go into the library, for lack of a better idea. In order, because the layering is important, even if she's got barely any idea what the different layers actually do besides 'different things to stop bullets.' And then she will, er. Test the newer glass as compared to the generic, and Pyrex, all at similar sizes. By, er. Shoving them into her copious amounts of dirt and then 'punching' them with other materials. To soften the inevitable sound of breaking glass. Kose would probably be okay with it, but she suspects this kind of systematic testing is what a fairy might find 'alarming.' So. Secret tests it is.

"... is all I'm saying," a voice interrupts her, drifting down her entryway.

    "We all know what you're saying, Perkre," Tanth replies in a weary tone, entering just behind the other man.

Perkre is built like a castle -- carefully and methodically, with the clear implication that he will pour boiling oil on you if you try to prop a ladder against him.

"So this is the dungeon, is it?" he asks, casting his gaze around the decorated entryway. "Interesting arches."

Kose pokes her head into the corridor to see who has arrived, and then hums under her breath.

"That's a new puzzle," Tanth remarks. "We should probably make sure to try it before we leave."

Perkre is valid, she will also pour boiling oil on people if they try to break into her. Er. Metaphorically. Practically speaking she is built a bit more like a delicate flower, and boiling oil is inefficient in comparison to the powers of velocity.

"It offers something to see magic with," she ventures, a little shyly, "to better tell how well things I make hold up outside. Hello."

Tanth raises an eyebrow at that description.

"That sounds mighty useful," Perkre responds, stroking his chin. "What gave you the idea?"

"Kose, and how she - so she showed me a magical item that had been fraying? And I want the things I make to be the best there are, which will only really work if I know what's going on. And then it was obvious that you could all see how it was fraying, too, if I just gave you the ability to. So, please check things I make and then get back to me on how well they hold up outside, I can't test it by myself."

Hoooow does she break into 'and also I will fix any and all magical items you ask me to for free,' that sounds hard, she will. See how they react to this before she breaks into that part.

"I can certainly understand pride in your creations," he replies, patting the handle of the hammer strapped to his back. "Is that what you want to do, make the best possible magic items?"

"Pretty much," she agrees, immediately and sincerely. "And also make pretty and structurally sound things, but. ... It's in the same vein of making things that last?"

He and Tanth exchange a look.

"That's good," Perkre claims, turning back to address her. "There's awfully few things that do."

He claps his hands and turns to the newest puzzle.

"Well, it sounds like if we want to see what you've made, we'd best solve some puzzles. Do you mind if I take a first stab at it, Tanth?"

"Go right ahead," Tanth agrees, moving to stand where he can watch the rest of the corridor.

"Did seeing that 'frayed' magic item give you any other ideas?" he asks conversationally.

Subtle, Tanth. Really subtle. Master of subterfuge, this man.

"Yes!" she says, accepting the opening despite how this is getting into dangerous territory, "Um, so it's actually really easy to just. Fix? At least if it's not all unraveled, I haven't seen anything that's been completely rubbed off. So if there are magical items you want fixed, I'd be happy to."

The muscles in Kose's neck tighten the slightest amount as she refrains from facepalming or otherwise reacting.

Tanth whistles.

"That'd certainly be useful," he agrees. "I suppose you're planning to put in a puzzle for it?"

".... why," she says, a little blankly. "It doesn't cost me anything to do?"