cooperation

[alicornucopia]

Two girls are moving their hands through the air and speaking together in perfect parallel.

Two girls are looking expectantly at a circle of red chalk on their floor.

Two girls have done something exceptionally stupid.

with Harry (andaisq)

with Isabella (Eva)

with Arcane (kappa)

with Miles (kappa)

with Nick (Rockeye)

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

So many books! Presumably some of them have things to say about his situation, unique though it is. Now if he can just find out which ones those are...

[alicornucopia]

Well, he can read all the signs labeling the sections and all the titles, thanks to his translation spell. Does he want "Interworld Wizardry"?

[thisvorlunatic]

He strongly suspects that he wants Interworld Wizardry!

[alicornucopia]

It's not a very big section. There are books about summoning and sending, of objects and people, according to various criteria, with and without the use of foci.

[thisvorlunatic]

He means to just do a brief overview of the subject, but between the unexpectedly interesting material and the unexpectedly interesting interaction between his Sense, his translation spell, and the written word, he loses track of time - and of the size of his growing book pile - pretty fast.

[alicornucopia]

"Hey, do you need World Proximity?" asks a fairly magical teenage boy.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Uh." He looks up from his current book. "Which one is that?"

[alicornucopia]

"This one." The boy, who has red eyes, taps a book halfway down the stack.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles squints at it. "Right... no, I don't need it urgently, you may have it."

[alicornucopia]

He takes it. "What are you researching, anyway?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, the problem I was originally trying to solve is how to end a co-cast summoning spell when neither caster has the CC to reverse it alone. But, uh." He looks ruefully at the stack. "Then I got distracted."

[alicornucopia]

"Co-casting is a mess," says the boy. "I mean, you could try a break, but co-casting makes that harder than usual and it's already really difficult."

[thisvorlunatic]

"It was a dumb stunt and they're lucky it turned out as well as it did," he says. "But, lacking anything much better to do, I figured I might as well read up on the local magic involved."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, you're an offworlder. Huh. Well, welcome to Elcenia, I guess."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Thanks. It's an interesting place! Very, um, magical."

[alicornucopia]

"Not so magical where you're from?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"To argue that it's magical at all would be going out on a limb," he says.

[alicornucopia]

"Really? Nothing? What's that like?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh, we get by. In the absence of magic, one develops highly sophisticated non-magical solutions to one's problems."

[alicornucopia]

"Does one? I guess Erubia's supposed to be all right, but they use some magic, just not wizardry or witchcraft. Ryganaav's a hellhole."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Completely without magic of any kind, we managed to leave our original planet and colonize a couple hundred more. And invent all sorts of marvellous things besides interplanetary conveyances."

[alicornucopia]

"Wow. And now you want to go home but some people who didn't know what they were doing co-cast a summon too big for either of 'em. Rough deal."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Actually it's even more bizarre than that, because before that happened, I was inexplicably shunted between worlds by a different mysterious force that didn't stick around to apologize afterward. Being stuck here with some hope of going home eventually is infinitely preferable to being stuck there on a planet devoid of food, water, people, and apart from the contents of a single building, air."

[alicornucopia]

"...Wait, what? I mean, I assume you don't know the answer, but how?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Indeed I do not. It is a bizarre mystery. I've been kind of hoping that somebody somewhere had a theory that would explain spontaneous interworld travel, but so far no luck."