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It is a lovely Saturday morning. Feathered children are watching cartoons; furred adults are eating brunch; scaled teenagers - one scaled teenager in particular, actually - is arguing with the proprietor of a magic shop.
"How did these items get made if there's no way to learn magic? Are the magicians homeschooling their children and not writing any books? How did you learn?"
"Half this stuff is antiques," says the shopkeep. "Look, asking me a dozen times isn't gonna make the answer more to your liking. I don't have Hogwarts in the basement, deal with it."
"But where do you get the stuff that isn't antique - who made the Avalon itself? - isn't anybody panicking about the medallion supply? -"
"Kid, nobody knows how to make medallions."
"But some people apparently know how to make luck charms and protection amulets!"
"I'm not going to give out my suppliers' personal information. I wouldn't do it even if you weren't annoying."
"There have to be books -"
"Does this look like a library to you?"
maybeso
asteptotheright
"I admit I'm slightly curious what precisely is wrong with your legs, but I'm also aware that that might be a discourteous question, so I apologize if it's unwelcome."
maybeso
"Nothing's wrong with my legs in particular. My diagnosis is so vague you could drive a really clumsy monster truck through it, but it's probably neurological, and it'd affect my arms enough too if I decided I wanted to try wheelchair basketball but thankfully doesn't affect my handwriting or ability to brush my hair or anything like that. I could probably get by without the wheelchair if I were really determined and masochistic, except in wintertime - and since I have to have one to get anywhere in wintertime, I bust it out whenever I feel like it."
maybeso
"Yep." Ah look, one of those park chess tables, unoccupied by chess. May rolls up to the side of it rather than transfer onto the bench, and plunks down the magic books and a notebook produced from the bag on the back of her chair. "All right, let's see what runecasting is all about."
maybeso
"I hope we don't read at radically different speeds."
It turns out May reads very fast but also believes in heavy notetaking. Runecasting (as she notes, due to it being what the book says) is about drawing designs and then saying things to the designs in foreign languages. It is important to use foreign languages or you'll overpower the spell and maybe die; it is important to say the entire thing you were going to say or you will "eat" the spell and maybe die; it is important to draw the design right or you will fuck up the spell and maybe die. Side effects of fucking up spells and not dying include turning into a critter, possibly a novel kind, if you were not one already - or, if you were, becoming a new sort of critter and disconnecting from your medallion and thereafter being (technically speaking) "a monster".
It goes into quite a lot of detail about how runecasting is really dangerous and you probably shouldn't do it without supervision.
"Pfft," May says when she gets to that part. "Yeah, no problem, we can run down to the Hogwarts the magic shop guy keeps in his basement and get supervision there, it'll be easy."
It turns out May reads very fast but also believes in heavy notetaking. Runecasting (as she notes, due to it being what the book says) is about drawing designs and then saying things to the designs in foreign languages. It is important to use foreign languages or you'll overpower the spell and maybe die; it is important to say the entire thing you were going to say or you will "eat" the spell and maybe die; it is important to draw the design right or you will fuck up the spell and maybe die. Side effects of fucking up spells and not dying include turning into a critter, possibly a novel kind, if you were not one already - or, if you were, becoming a new sort of critter and disconnecting from your medallion and thereafter being (technically speaking) "a monster".
It goes into quite a lot of detail about how runecasting is really dangerous and you probably shouldn't do it without supervision.
"Pfft," May says when she gets to that part. "Yeah, no problem, we can run down to the Hogwarts the magic shop guy keeps in his basement and get supervision there, it'll be easy."
asteptotheright
Kanimir is also a fast reader and a firm believer in heavy notetaking! "I suppose having each other to check our work is better than nothing, but yes, safety precautions are rather useless when they don't tell you how to find the blasted safety measure. Perhaps this was written in a more friendly time." He checks the publication date.
asteptotheright
"I expect that depends on how old they were when they wrote this. Unfortunately, even if they are, I wouldn't expect them to necessarily be easy to locate."
asteptotheright
"And if they were writing textbooks in 1965, they probably don't have a significant internet footprint."
maybeso
"It's worth checking, but yeah. We could try to get ahold of them through the publisher, maybe."
asteptotheright
"That would most likely be the most reliable method, although I suppose we should be prepared that they might be as unhelpful as the man in that shop."
maybeso
"I'm hoping he's an isolated outlier... from an admittedly worrying general trend, but trends have two tails."
asteptotheright
"That would certainly be best, although I've found that expecting people to be helpful does not have...consistent results."
maybeso
"Hoping isn't expecting. It's worth figuring out where the stamps in my house are and sending the publisher a letter, all I'm saying."
She turns a page, which describes "circumscriptions": the shapes that surround the rest of a spell design. By default, these are rectangles or squares, although other shapes can be used. May starts a chart.
She turns a page, which describes "circumscriptions": the shapes that surround the rest of a spell design. By default, these are rectangles or squares, although other shapes can be used. May starts a chart.
asteptotheright
"Certainly." He waves a hand. "Pardon my cynicism, my sister says I have a tendency to get it on things."
Charts. Kanimir adds a note to his reminding himself to look up the etymology of the word circumscription, since it apparently doesn't need to have anything to do with circles.
Charts. Kanimir adds a note to his reminding himself to look up the etymology of the word circumscription, since it apparently doesn't need to have anything to do with circles.
maybeso
It may have to do with all the magical design terms having -scription in them. Later pages refer to "description" (the runes describing the positive effect of the spell), "proscription" (cancellations for unwanted effects of versatile symbols), and "superscription" and "subscription" (effectively, footnotes for the major runes). The author likes to call the words you speak to cast a spell "inscriptions" and the entire process of spell development or copying "scribing", too.
maybeso
There are many principles at work when laying out the components of a spell, which the author describes at very great length and May writes down at somewhat lesser length.
asteptotheright
Kanimir's notes are periodically annotated, mostly with notes-to-self to look up some connection or other to a similarity between something he noticed in the book and something he recalls from elsewhere.