The day had been long. Too long.
To put all of that behind him, he put his mind to work on thinking about magic.
The moment he’d fired his first fire bullet, a thought struck him: Does it need air?
Bullet spells were cheap and easy to use. In Kalender’s eyes, however, they made quite a few things evident about magic’s capabilities. He got down to testing things out in the evenings when nothing much was happening.
He didn’t know how magic did things, but that’s a word meant for scientists to answer. He wasn’t a scientist, but an engineer—a software engineer, but an engineer nonetheless—and an engineer needed to identify the whats more than anything—the “what goes in vs. what goes out” of a program.
Wind magic’s interesting. A wind bullet was a lot more difficult to perform than an earth bullet, at least from a physics-based engineering perspective, so why did it cost less than an earth bullet to fire? Being able to compress, propel, and preserve the pressure gradient along any amount of distance was an incredibly complicated thing to do.
Fire magic’s whack. He wondered whether it was actually fire, since, strictly speaking, fire was just plasma, so was magic just turning the closest bit of matter straight into plasma? So it didn’t need air?
Summoning a candle-sized fire bullet inside a cup of water confirmed that theory pretty quickly—and blew a bright blue fireball above the cup. It wasn’t a dangerous explosion, but it sure did get complaints from Jyn, who nearly jumped out of the bath.
He had to bribe her with information about another eatery that offered a lot more meat for cheap, cheaper than Boar & Bed. Good thing he’d chatted with the owner downstairs for a bit just a while ago.
Putting his mind back to the experiment, he figured the water molecules had split into hydrogen and oxygen, the result of being ripped apart at the molecular level. The surrounding water must have rushed to fill the void, only to be ripped apart once more—ending in a hydrogen explosion. Note to self: fire magic and water make more than just a steam explosion.
There was also light magic. People in this world normally used it as a flashlight, and only seldom as a weapon. Where does the light come from? Converting matter into pure energy? Re-emitting existing light? There was a glassblower in town, so he got the guy to make an evacuated globe. He enscribed a circle on it that magicked a point light source in the middle of the globe, got Jyn to fuel the thing with a whole bunch of her MP, and tossed it into the darkest part of the closet. After a full twenty-four hours, it was still going, which meant to him that it wasn’t consuming air or anything to run. Still, it was problematic. The vacuum could’ve been too weak, and there might have even been a leak somewhere, but it still raised the “Comes from another dimension” theory by half a rank.
Earth and water magic were all, conceptually, a lot simpler than wind magic. There wasn’t a strong need to maintain a pressure gradient for water—just the minimum to keep the blob together—and no need at all for earth magic. He still tried out manipulating individual grains of sand, anyway, which worked just about as expected. Interestingly, an equivalent mass of sand took just as much MP as an equivalent mass of gravel to shoot.
It became obvious to him, at that point, that the MP costs for bullets were strongly correlated with the amount of mass involved. The cost of fire bullets, however, also kicked up the possibility that MP was also currency to buying pure thermal energy. Light magic, which featured neither, could be isolated as its own sort of “purchaseable” energy.
In short, MP was used to buy energy and place it within any geometry in space. Right now, he just had these few facts:
***
Can do kinetic energy manipulation " " " thermal energy manipulation " " " electromagnetic energy manipulation Has particle(?)-level accuracy (Could just be molecular?)***
From these facts, all the different elemental magics were possible. Complicated stuff like maintaining a pressure gradient for wind magic was probably just more kinetic energy shenanigans.
Kinetic energy, huh… Was it possible to precisely move an object from point A, and make it stop at exactly point B? It was. It worked on a glass cup. It worked down to the milimeter, or even better, as far as he could see. All he needed now was a Ouija board and he was all set to scare Jyn.
Or not. She might still be upset from a while ago.
He’d noted that the glass accelerated and decelerated properly, in that the velocity didn’t go from zero to whatever in zero seconds. Maybe it was more appropriate to think of kinetic energy manipulation as an application of “force manipulation” which summoned a force from nowhere? He rewrote his notes.
***
Can do kinetic energy manipulation force manipulation " " " thermal energy manipulation " " " electromagnetic energy manipulation Has particle(?)-level accuracy (Could just be molecular?)***
Wait, in that case, wouldn’t it be possible to negate friction forces? With a test setup of two boards, each one with penciled-on magic circles marking each other as its frictionless pair—just to make sure they’d only slip on each other and nothing else—he confirmed it all the same. It was like sliding melting ice slabs over each other.
Wait… Can I negate intermolecular forces? The thought of melting wood with his bare hands was … scary. He did the next not-so-scary thing and thought of turning wood into putty. At least it had as much shock factor as “You thought this was wood? No, it’s cake.”
It worked. He now had a board with his hand imprint on it. Magic’s force manipulation was too scary.
He didn’t want to turn these discoveries into weapons to point at other people with, but the thought ate at him: There must be someone else out there who can do these things. He couldn’t hope that that “someone” was someone kind, or even sane. Making the first move against them was ideal, but it wasn’t always possible. He needed some way to defend against magic. He needed to be able to take a hit.
He looked at the cuffs he was wearing. These things absorbed charm magic. How did it define “charm magic”? How did it detect it? How did it absorb it? There were little runes on it, he’d noticed. He tried reading them, and … huh? All-Language Fluency wasn’t triggering.
… It’s not a language? T-that's enough experimenting for one day…
KeeperAbra (2022-11-22) Guh—looking back, this extra chapter's pretty clunky the way I just shoved it in. Fixing the way magic is explored is quickly climbing my priority list…
The day had been long. Too long.
To put all of that behind him, he put his mind to work on thinking about magic.
The moment he’d fired his first fire bullet, a thought struck him: Does it need air?
Bullet spells were cheap and easy to use. In Kalender’s eyes, however, they made quite a few things evident about magic’s capabilities. He got down to testing things out in the evenings when nothing much was happening.
He didn’t know how magic did things, but that’s a word meant for scientists to answer. He wasn’t a scientist, but an engineer—a software engineer, but an engineer nonetheless—and an engineer needed to identify the whats more than anything—the “what goes in vs. what goes out” of a program.
Wind magic’s interesting. A wind bullet was a lot more difficult to perform than an earth bullet, at least from a physics-based engineering perspective, so why did it cost less than an earth bullet to fire? Being able to compress, propel, and preserve the pressure gradient along any amount of distance was an incredibly complicated thing to do.
Fire magic’s whack. He wondered whether it was actually fire, since, strictly speaking, fire was just plasma, so was magic just turning the closest bit of matter straight into plasma? So it didn’t need air?
Summoning a candle-sized fire bullet inside a cup of water confirmed that theory pretty quickly—and blew a bright blue fireball above the cup. It wasn’t a dangerous explosion, but it sure did get complaints from Jyn, who nearly jumped out of the bath.
He had to bribe her with information about another eatery that offered a lot more meat for cheap, cheaper than Boar & Bed. Good thing he’d chatted with the owner downstairs for a bit just a while ago.
Putting his mind back to the experiment, he figured the water molecules had split into hydrogen and oxygen, the result of being ripped apart at the molecular level. The surrounding water must have rushed to fill the void, only to be ripped apart once more—ending in a hydrogen explosion. Note to self: fire magic and water make more than just a steam explosion.
There was also light magic. People in this world normally used it as a flashlight, and only seldom as a weapon. Where does the light come from? Converting matter into pure energy? Re-emitting existing light? There was a glassblower in town, so he got the guy to make an evacuated globe. He enscribed a circle on it that magicked a point light source in the middle of the globe, got Jyn to fuel the thing with a whole bunch of her MP, and tossed it into the darkest part of the closet. After a full twenty-four hours, it was still going, which meant to him that it wasn’t consuming air or anything to run. Still, it was problematic. The vacuum could’ve been too weak, and there might have even been a leak somewhere, but it still raised the “Comes from another dimension” theory by half a rank.
Earth and water magic were all, conceptually, a lot simpler than wind magic. There wasn’t a strong need to maintain a pressure gradient for water—just the minimum to keep the blob together—and no need at all for earth magic. He still tried out manipulating individual grains of sand, anyway, which worked just about as expected. Interestingly, an equivalent mass of sand took just as much MP as an equivalent mass of gravel to shoot.
It became obvious to him, at that point, that the MP costs for bullets were strongly correlated with the amount of mass involved. The cost of fire bullets, however, also kicked up the possibility that MP was also currency to buying pure thermal energy. Light magic, which featured neither, could be isolated as its own sort of “purchaseable” energy.
In short, MP was used to buy energy and place it within any geometry in space. Right now, he just had these few facts:
***
Can do kinetic energy manipulation " " " thermal energy manipulation " " " electromagnetic energy manipulation Has particle(?)-level accuracy (Could just be molecular?)***
From these facts, all the different elemental magics were possible. Complicated stuff like maintaining a pressure gradient for wind magic was probably just more kinetic energy shenanigans.
Kinetic energy, huh… Was it possible to precisely move an object from point A, and make it stop at exactly point B? It was. It worked on a glass cup. It worked down to the milimeter, or even better, as far as he could see. All he needed now was a Ouija board and he was all set to scare Jyn.
Or not. She might still be upset from a while ago.
He’d noted that the glass accelerated and decelerated properly, in that the velocity didn’t go from zero to whatever in zero seconds. Maybe it was more appropriate to think of kinetic energy manipulation as an application of “force manipulation” which summoned a force from nowhere? He rewrote his notes.
***
Can do kinetic energy manipulation force manipulation " " " thermal energy manipulation " " " electromagnetic energy manipulation Has particle(?)-level accuracy (Could just be molecular?)***
Wait, in that case, wouldn’t it be possible to negate friction forces? With a test setup of two boards, each one with penciled-on magic circles marking each other as its frictionless pair—just to make sure they’d only slip on each other and nothing else—he confirmed it all the same. It was like sliding melting ice slabs over each other.
Wait… Can I negate intermolecular forces? The thought of melting wood with his bare hands was … scary. He did the next not-so-scary thing and thought of turning wood into putty. At least it had as much shock factor as “You thought this was wood? No, it’s cake.”
It worked. He now had a board with his hand imprint on it. Magic’s force manipulation was too scary.
He didn’t want to turn these discoveries into weapons to point at other people with, but the thought ate at him: There must be someone else out there who can do these things. He couldn’t hope that that “someone” was someone kind, or even sane. Making the first move against them was ideal, but it wasn’t always possible. He needed some way to defend against magic. He needed to be able to take a hit.
He looked at the cuffs he was wearing. These things absorbed charm magic. How did it define “charm magic”? How did it detect it? How did it absorb it? There were little runes on it, he’d noticed. He tried reading them, and … huh? All-Language Fluency wasn’t triggering.
… It’s not a language? T-that's enough experimenting for one day…
KeeperAbra (2022-11-22) Guh—looking back, this extra chapter's pretty clunky the way I just shoved it in. Fixing the way magic is explored is quickly climbing my priority list…
