[closed] book review

[anti_nonsense]

Who: Two gigantic magic nerds (Rita and Strange)
When: Near the end of the Summerlands visit
Where: Strange's trailer
What: Rita gives Strange's book back, with some critiques
Warnings: strong opinions

As promised, Rita read both Strange's book and the other one he lent her, A Child's History of the Raven King, in a timely manner. She even went back and reread several sections and took notes for herself to retain after returning them, which is what she's come to do now.

With the two books tucked under her arm, she arrives at the door to his trailer and knocks. She didn't bother arranging this meeting, but she did check the worker schedules to make sure he wasn't supposed to be on the job at this time. Assuming he didn't go out for some other reason, she figures there's a good chance he's here.

Comments

[kingsroads]

Strange still gets a little turned around sometime with some of Rita's jargon (how was mana more stable to begin with?). But he's able to follow along relatively well. The use of blastia tampered with the state of magic. Rita tried to fix it, but accidentally created a spirit instead.

And wow does Strange look downright interested as Rita continues talking. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the spirit is made up of mana, then wouldn't it mean the spirit was made of magic itself?"

If so? Good Lord, that was quite the discovery. Strange can't help but give Rita an impressed little nod. Coming up with the formula herself...that's certainly outside of his realm of expertise.

[anti_nonsense]

Rita nods excitedly. It seems he can appreciate, to some extent, the significance of her findings. "Yes, that's right. So far, we repeated the process three more times, creating elemental spirits of water, fire, earth and wind. The next step is to apply the formula on a large scale, converting all the blastia in the world into spirits."

It's a shame he probably wouldn't appreciate the details of the formula if she described them. As far as Rita's concerned, it's a work of mathematical genius in addition to its other qualities.

[kingsroads]

He's listening intently: Rita's excitement is contagious and Strange can't help but find himself getting excited as well. It's stupid to ask how Rita would convert all the blastia in the world to spirits, she obviously has a plan if she made it that far. Besides, Strange is more interested in the spirits themselves. "How much power over their respective elements do these spirits have? And can you communicate with them?"

It's obvious that Strange is putting together a theory of some sort, gears turning in his head as he talks with Rita. Because if her spirits were anything like the wind and rain of England, then perhaps magic wasn't entirely lost for Rita's world.

[anti_nonsense]

"I don't know how much power they have, exactly... but it's immense. They called themselves rulers of the elements." Which answers Strange's other question: they are sapient and capable of communication.

"They've agreed to help with our current plans, but while we can talk with them, they only show themselves when they want to. Fortunately, Estelle..." Rita stops herself, realizing she's never actually mentioned Estelle to him by name before. "...my friend, she has some kind of connection with them. She can probably reach them when needed."

[kingsroads]

"Well that's wonderful!" he adds, with a little laugh. And then, because Strange knows Rita's going to question what's wonderful, he just keeps yammering on. "That means that magic isn't lost for your world. You can still perform the spells, you'll just need to tweak the incantations, make an alliance with those spirits, and ask their help in order to do so! If you have someone who has a connection with them, I'm sure an arrangement can be reached."

Just said like that's a perfectly easy thing to do, no biggie, Rita's got this, she can certainly help create a whole new magic system out of scratch and working with spirits that she can barely reach in the first place.

[anti_nonsense]

Strange receives a confused look at first, but as he goes on, a smirk begins to tug at the corner of Rita's mouth. This is the closest she's been to laughing in a long time. It's interesting that he reached that conclusion so quickly... but it looks like he's underestimating her.

"Actually... research on spirit magic has already begun. When I told the other blastia researchers that their life's work was about to be obsolete, most of them told me off... but a few started looking into ways to use the power of spirits to create new spells. We're still in the early stages of figuring it out, but I've come up with one useful spell so far." Rita, of course, looks very pleased with herself.

[kingsroads]

Strange is just going to continue to feed that ego. Because conversations like this, where two equally talented magicians are talking about magic, exploring the ins and outs of their world's magic and learning just for the sake of learning? It's catnip to him. Strange could spend hours on these types of conversations and still come out of it with more questions.

"Well go on," he adds, with a small grin. "Tell me all about that spell." Of course Rita would want to talk about the spell. They already had a long conversation on the ins and outs of blastia magic in Rita's world, why not hypothesize about spirit magic as well.

[anti_nonsense]

"Well... the details about the formula are supposed to be an Aspian secret for the time being, but there should be no problem with discussing it in a general sense." Also, Rita kinda just wants to show off.

"The basic gist of it is that some of the mages figured out a formula to draw in the power of spirits, isolate the fire attribute from that accumulated energy, and... ignite it, you could say. The initial result was just a small spark of a flame, but with a little tweaking, I was able to modify it into a spell to summon burning rocks from the sky. Meteors, basically." She grins. For her first spell using a spirit formula, it's certainly promising.

[kingsroads]

Hell yeah, give it up for team show-off. Strange believe what Rita's saying a hundred percent and honestly, isn't surprised to hear the result. Of course she would manage to modify that spell from something small into something powerful enough to summon burning rocks. She's almost as talented a magician as he is!

"If you're able to summon meteors with your first spell, then I cannot wait to see what the state of your world's magic will become once you figure out more spells!"

[anti_nonsense]

"Yeah... it'll be a whole new era of magic." Rita closes her eyes, taking a moment to imagine what the world may look like in a few years.

But she can't afford to take it easy just because she had a few successes. "It's going to be tough, though. Right now, people rely on blastia for all kinds of necessities. They're going to lose their way of life, and we're going to be racing to come up with spells and technology to make up for it." As grim a thought as it is, there's no doubt that some people will die during the transition. Not as many as would die without the change, but it's a cost that can't be ignored. "But that's why I'm here."

[kingsroads]

Tough doesn't mean impossible. Yes, it would be tough for people to lose their way of life and he's not entirely certain how long the change will take (and also how well people would tolerate the change), but it must be doable. Because really, what else could they do? They needed to adapt to the new way of magic because it certainly wasn't going anywhere.

"If you wish my help on any of this, you simply need to ask. I'm confident you'll be able to change the world yourself, but it never hurts to have a second pair of eyes."

[anti_nonsense]

It shouldn't be all that unexpected for Strange to offer his help, given his enthusiasm for magic in general, but there's a brief flicker of surprise in Rita's expression before she promptly glances away.

"Thanks," she says after a moment, and she means it.

"Right now, I'm trying to collect information on other systems of magic and technology... ways that people live without blastia. That kind of information can go towards short-term solutions while we develop new formulas... or it might help us in working out the mechanisms and applications of spirit magic itself, speeding up the process." If Strange is willing to help, he might be able to keep an eye out for that kind of information for her. Maybe he even has some relevant data somewhere in these piles of notes. "We'll need ways to produce clean water, heating, lighting, transportation, and to protect against monsters."

[kingsroads]

"Well, you already know how my world works without blastia," he says, as he gestures to his book. And really, she'd get a much clearer understanding of English magic from his book than from Strange trying to explain it himself. Proofreaders are amazing.

"I don't think my travel through mirrors spell will work in your world--it's an adaptation of a spell that uses the king's roads, which I'm finding to be annoyingly world specific." The king's roads: the roads built by the Raven King from England to Faerie, hidden behind the mirrors until Strange pushed through and rediscovered them. Something he talked about in his book and something with absolutely beautiful engravings of in said book.

"I do know a weather spell to bring forth a storm. Perhaps that could help with your clean water problem?"

[anti_nonsense]

"I feel like we'd end up with a lot of social issues if everyone started walking through mirrors to get around, anyway," Rita comments dryly, picturing someone like Strange waltzing out a mirror in some noblewoman's bedchamber, or the imperial palace, or... it's probably best to stop picturing it.

"Your rain magic, though..." She taps a finger against her chin, considering it. Rita's seen that spell in action before. "Something like that could come in handy. It wouldn't be too difficult to rig up some rainwater harvesting systems." In fact, they probably should set up a few of those anyway if they're going to lose the aque blastia. It's still unclear if anyone from Terca Lumireis can reproduce English magic in any capacity, but... "Think you could write down that incantation for me?"

[kingsroads]

"That's only assuming the rest of your world is as reckless as I am," Strange teases in return. While he doesn't think he's reckless (he makes nothing but perfectly sensible decisions, thank you very much), so many different people have called him reckless that there's probably a slight bit of truth to the matter.

Still, the rain spell. Walking over to the table, Strange flips a few pieces of paper over until he finds one that doesn't have anything important written on it. A moment later, he takes a pencil from his pocket. Turning the paper over, Strange starts to scribble the incantation on the back, trying to keep everything legible. Because obviously he's going to write the incantation down now, why wouldn't he? The incantation is more of asking the rain itself to start, drawing upon alliances already put in place between the magician and that of nature...with a good chunk of 1800s formality thrown in.

"Here," he says, with a grin as he finishes writing down the incantation and hands it over to Rita. "I honestly hope it works."