"Depends on the spell. Depends a lot on the spell. Like, I dunno - Area Search," he says, creating a little glowing sphere of mana that zooms to the top of the nearest stack of books and perches on it triumphantly. "That one's a ball of visible mana with a spell structure that basically says 'look for the thing', and when you cast it you fill in what the thing is and it goes looking. 'Nearest stack of books', in this case." He dismisses the mana ball.
"Then there's something like this," he deploys the little mana fountain he showed Leekath earlier, "which is a pointless waste of a tiny amount of mana, all it does is make little mana bubbles that jump up and then fade out. It has the diagram to kind of... help define the space. Spell diagrams like that are useful for a handful of things - if there's a spell that's going to be producing visible mana continuously, or if you need to define a flat surface with mana for a spot-shield or floor or something, or if you need to define a location like I did with the Read spell to target those specific books. Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting right this second. But in general a diagram's almost like a - mana proxy? Like, instead of going and physically picking up a book to magically read it, I put a spell diagram under it and do it that way. Or instead of - " he dismisses the mana fountain with its diagram and starts another one from the palm of his hand, "just doing this, I make a spell diagram that does it for me." He closes his hand and cuts off the fountain. "Is that the kind of thing you wanted to know?"
no subject
"Then there's something like this," he deploys the little mana fountain he showed Leekath earlier, "which is a pointless waste of a tiny amount of mana, all it does is make little mana bubbles that jump up and then fade out. It has the diagram to kind of... help define the space. Spell diagrams like that are useful for a handful of things - if there's a spell that's going to be producing visible mana continuously, or if you need to define a flat surface with mana for a spot-shield or floor or something, or if you need to define a location like I did with the Read spell to target those specific books. Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting right this second. But in general a diagram's almost like a - mana proxy? Like, instead of going and physically picking up a book to magically read it, I put a spell diagram under it and do it that way. Or instead of - " he dismisses the mana fountain with its diagram and starts another one from the palm of his hand, "just doing this, I make a spell diagram that does it for me." He closes his hand and cuts off the fountain. "Is that the kind of thing you wanted to know?"