Eventually they get back to Theo's place, and Tyler walks in through the door, and then he proceeds to stand at the edge of the room.
It seems like he's doing this a lot right now.
He sighs.
Eventually they get back to Theo's place, and Tyler walks in through the door, and then he proceeds to stand at the edge of the room.
It seems like he's doing this a lot right now.
He sighs.
The timers turn out not to be very useful because neither the Fire nor the Earth parts work on their own.
"Huh," says Juniper, floating close to the ceiling.
… Well they can see if there's any discrepancy between the two other times, which there probably will be because there has been with the previous phrasings?
But okay, they probably don't stack neatly. Noted.
The more elaborate chant does, in fact, last longer than the simpler one, even though the extra parts in themselves don't seem to actually do much. Or anything at all.
"Okay, so this is possibly not just additive."
"Maybe we should try calling upon like, paper or something that might be call-upon-able but is unlikely to add any value even in theoretical combination with wind? See if it's literally just the extra words that aren't repetitions that improve the strength of the spell?"
Sadde tries that. It lasts exactly as much as the previous, paperless version.
And she stumbles on landing, a little bit. "I am kinda tired, write this down, it's way too early for me to be tired, this might be relevant."
"Maybe you should continue and see how tired you can get. And if it affects how long the spell lasts."
"Yeah, but we can multitask, so y'all should do stuff too." She repeats the incantation and takes flight again.
"So, apparently the fire and earth things are relevant in themselves to the spell, not just as extra words, since the paper thing added nothing, but they're not... sufficient. Just repeating a sentence many times doesn't help, we should try to figure out a spell made of parts that are all individually potent and that are nonoverlapping but I'm not quite sure how."
"Wind, grant me lift! Wind, give me flight! Moon, raise me up and make me weightless!" She is of course completely magicless so that does jack and shit.
"Oh, good idea," says Maya. "We could call upon the same element in different ways and see if that stacks at all?"
Juniper tries the long version, since Sadde is now testing whether the tiredness has anything to do with anything. Up she goes.
Tyler tries, "Wind, grant me lift. Wind, give me flight."
Perhaps the two different ways of saying it will stack.
Sadde lands before any of the other three do. Juniper's version lasts more than Sadde's did, which lasts more than Tyler's, which lasts more than Theo's. Furthermore, Juniper's version lasts more than Theo's plus Tyler's.
"So it's nonlinear, and it's apparently better to try to use a large spell than many small ones."
"Unless it varies between different spell types – which presumably exist – or perhaps different things stack differently, but yeah."
"Well, if it varies between different spell types I think it's reasonable to say that in general it's nonlinear."
"Yeah, but for the 'large spell vs many small' bit, it might end up working differently with some small spells – maybe they bounce off each other in some ways if you get a good combination." She shrugs. "It's still nonlinear, though, yeah."
"I have kinda a huge list of things to try," says Maya, then she looks through it a bit. "I think we were going to try symbols and stuff next, see if they affect things since the bear says that guy used paper thingies, and we should possibly see if they do it – if they do it at all – by passively being in the area, or if you need to call on them, or hold them, or what."