As the conversation continued Cormac glanced towards Isla to see her reaction. If he wasn't meant to meet her after breakfast he might have opted to leave early as Cassandra had. He could use all the practice with mind walks he could get apparently judging by Rhiannon's success. And it wasn't as if the conversation wasn't interesting. It was quite fascinating but it wasn't doing him much good at his current level of skill.

So, he waited and listened. Maybe some of what he heard would be helpful in getting his own time down to a more reasonable level.

"Actually that's not quite what I said."
"What I actaully said was Summoning the Pattern in the proximity of another Pattern or Logrus user will automatically alert them to its use. If they weren't already aware as to why you may be doing so, then they may think the worst and act accordingly. The Pattern has many more uses than just looking at people's auras"

Isla appears to be eating her breakfast, allowing Madison to do the talking. She doesn't appear to be in any particualr rush to go anywhere.

"Ahhh. Thank you for that." Rhiannon nodded as it clarified in her head. Obviously some of those uses could be as some kind of weapon. "Very well and thank you. I will let my cousins catch up then while I study my volumes of trump lessons." She stood up. "I should see you all at lunch." She nodded and smiled at Cormac before returning to her room. The books weren't going to read themselves.

People will drift away from breakfast and return to their rooms.
Those semi left behind will hear Gabriel say "I'll see you all in a few days, assuming everything goes to plan."
Madison will say to Isla "Are you coming?" to which Isla will respond "No, need to sort some stuff out for Cormac, catch up at lunch."

Kenneth sighed, mostly to shake the creeping tension in his neck. He wasn't used to being the slowpoke of the group. He was used to being the smart one. The strong one. The tireless worker. Reliable when things got tough. But here, he struggled tremendously to accomplish... what? Picturing a symbol? Sure, it was magical. Or something.

He recalled someone mentioning that magic was something else entirely, as if the differentiation meant something.

Homesickness sat on his shoulders like a lead weight.

Whatever. There was work to do, and Kenneth wasn't one to shirk just because something was unpleasant. Like the others, he returned to his room to begin the process of bringing up the Pattern.

"I do," he replies, glancing around to see if anyone is close enough to be eavesdropping. He isn't certain why he does though. The others had already heard he had some experience with sorcery. It wouldn't be like a state secret or anything. It just seemed to be private and something he would rather keep to himself.

"An odd power manifested itself when my life was in danger back in my shadow of birth. Given time, and the timely finding of this device I was able to master some small part of that power. But I can't seem to use it here or in Cordelia's home world. She said you could explain the mechanics of that to me a bit."

With that he produced the small spell rack he had found and used before. Everywhere but his home shadow it seemed to be little more than a paper weight. He hoped though to regain the use of it soon.

"May I" she says extending her hand in the direction of the spell rack.

Assuming you hand it over to her she studies it for a couple of minutes.
"Interesting. They don't usually come with the defence against casual detection, but otherwise pretty much a standard spell rack for storing spells, so you can cast them quicker. You still need a magical energy source or Mana source for want of any better term to cast them. Assuming that a Shadow supports magic and it hasn't been turned off, then you can usually draw the energy required from the ambient environment, but how fast that happens depends on the degree to which the Shadow supports magic. It's really easy here, a little more difficult in Carnelian, and pretty poor to non-existent on most Shadow Earths."
"Now the reason why you can't cast your spells in Carnelian, is probably because they are shadow locked to your or very similar shadows, so you should find they work on most Shadow Earth variants, at least ones you're likely to  come across in the immediate future. In amongst all the arcane fluff that goes to make up a spell, are a number of key components, called lynchpins. It's generally these you leave out when you rack a spell. Amongst these are two that relate to Shadow, one relating to the base shadow type, and the other a shadow specific marker, a bit like a geographic tag. I think you call them something else sting code or something. Any way the probability is that the way you learnt how magic works on your shadow means that you implicitly learnt the two markers for your shadow without realizing what they were."
"Leaving aside the string code marker, the shadow type marker has more significance, especially here, as a the rules of magic change in different parts of shadow so you have to learn how to compensate for the difference in rules."
"Are you following me so far?"

"I follow in a general sort of way," he admitted. Since my first manifestation of power was a spontaneous thing, brought on by a near death experience, it seems that I learned a way to access power instinctively. Not knowing the rules as you say I was then ill equipped to figure out on my own how to access the same power elsewhere. So, how do I go about figuring out what those markers I need are from shadow to shadow?"

He had a suspicion that it would have a lot to do with becoming more attuned to the pattern and getting his mind walk time down to a reasonable rate.

"From your perspective there's the hard way and the impossible way. The hard way is to find a Mage in the Shadow you're in and convince them to show you how they put their spells together. If you know the rules and which lynchpin is which you can work out the ones you need. Were you able to cast magic in the Shadow then you could cast a spell to translate a written version of their spells into a form you understand, which also means you can then learn the spell yourself, should you want to. The problem is most Mages are a secretive lot and winkling spells out of them is like getting blood from a stone.
"The impossible way, although that is a temporary thing, is to analyse the Shadow using the Pattern, and once you know what you're looking for,, deduce the relevant lynchpins yourself. Once you are capable of forming the Pattern in a manner that allows you to Shadow Walk I can show you how to modify the instance to allow you to deduce the relevant parameters and implicit in that whether the Shadow supports magic and to what degree."
"Neither are probably the answers you wanted to hear, but magic is not as simple a power as people make out. That said if you're in a hurry to practice magic here, then I can show you how to modify your spells to do so. But I would need you to do is to write out the simplest spell you know. I can then use a pair of spells, one to translate it to the form I'm familiar with, so that I can modify it, and then one to translate it back so that it's in the form you can read. You can then compare the two versions and be able to see the modifications required to then make any of your spells work here. Doing the modification to make them work in Carnelian here is more complicated,, and I would specifically need to prepare spells to do so, which would take some time, well considerably more time than the basic versions."

As she explained things Cormac frowned. The further she got in the explanation the more it became apparent that in this, like so many other things, he was just royally screwed. Truth be told he was frustrated. Not so much angry with Isla or her explanation as he was with the mind numbing, glacial pace of his education.

"So, long story short then, I need to continue my practice with the Pattern till I reach a point that I'll be able to instinctively understand the lynchpins and how to change them? Otherwise I'll need to beg the help of someone already practiced in sorcery for any given shadow to work any sort of magic?"

He sighed, weighing her words marveling at how terribly complex it all was.

"Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate the help you've graciously given. It just feels a little bit like we are all fish trapped in a dried out pond. Sort of flailing around helplessly and trying to learn enough not to be completely helpless."

"You're conflating two or three separate things. You're self taught primarily if I'm correct. You're an archaeologist, so most likely stumbled into Sorcery by accident. It's likely that from what ever source you learnt about sorcery, had some details of Lynchpins, but unless the details were recorded by an entity capable of Shadow traversal the Shadow specific element and the rules based on Shadow type, will be just be a fixed element of the spell structure. Unless you know what you're looking then you won't recognise it for what it is,, even if you know how to use the Pattern to analyse the structure of Shadow."
"You're not the first family member to discover what they thought they knew about Sorcery neglected some fundamentals, including the basic differences in rules created, for want of a better description, by Pattern based or Logrus based shadows. Amber, Carnelian, and your Shadow Earths are all Pattern based shadows you current knowledge of the rules of magic relate to them. This Shadow, along with those in the near vicinity, like those around the Courts are all Logrus based, so have different rules, and the rules in the Weys of the Courts can be even more variable."
"There is no instinctive way to learn the alternate rule set, other than either by spending years studying the Shadow and by trial and error, trying to convince a Mage resident in the Shadow and therefore inherently already familiar with the rules to reveal what he knows, or by being taught or shown what the modifications are, and which elements of the spells you already know relates to which lynchpins and which rules."
"Once you know how to modify your spells to work in different shadows, then the ability to determine the characteristics of a given Shadow using the Pattern becomes far more relevant."


"Interesting analogy, but yes you've all got a lot to learn. We all did once."

Lunch will be served from 12:30. Whilst yesterday a full meal was served as you were coming from a day in Carnelian, today's lunch is much simpler, consisting of fresh bread, cheese, cold fish, cold meats, hard boiled eggs, and various pickles.

Madison and Isla will arrive about 12:40.
Natalie, Alana, Cormac, Winter, Cathal, and Natsuki will arrive between 12:35 and 12:40.
Edward will arrive at about 12:50 with Blake arriving at about 12:55.
Kenneth doesn't complete his Mind Walk till about 13:10, so he won't make it to lunch until about 13:20, looking somewhat tired.

After spending all morning deep in her Trump books, Rhiannon found a reasonable stopping place. There was so much more to study, but she had a good start. The initial lessons all made sense. She kind of knew some of it, but having it fully explained really hit home. Ready for the break, she went down for lunch.

Arriving at just before 12:30, she was the first one there. She went through and bread cheese and hard boiled eggs were not what she would have picked if she were back on campus, or if she was in downtown Dublin, but it made for a full meal. When her cousins arrived, she greeted them cheerily.

"Early bird getting the best bread then?" Cathal says in a teasing greeting.
"You either didn't get anywhere this morning or you've finished everything already.. he continues in his usual upbeat manner.

Cassandra drops into lunch greeting the others as she takes a seat. She swiftly takes a selection of the offerings and stacks them into a sandwich. "I think you're all just extroverts," she says looking at Cathal and Rhiannon.

In reply to Cathal O'Donoghue (msg # 31):

"Good afternoon, Cathal. I do like my pick of the fresh bread." Rhiannon giggled. "Truth be told, my practice at summoning the pattern has hit a plateau. It take me about ten minutes and I don't think I can improve on that right now. Since the next step requires the rest of you, I'm focusing on the trump studies while you lot catch up. Though I spent a fair bit of the morning just getting set up. Finding a comfy spot 50 feet away from trump sources in a mostly empty tower is not so easy."

Rhiannon smiled to Cassandra when she appeared. "Yes. Well I daresay I do prefer to socialize. If  had my way, these stodgy castles and mansions would all be equipped with night clubs. Though I doubt the band would know how to play rock and roll."

"Well, it would be an interesting experiment," Cassandra said with a laugh "I'm glad your practicing has been going well."

"Cordelia already sort of owns a night club, although it's on Earth not in her basement. She also apparently has some sort of relationship with the owners of a second, at least according to Jing-Wei

"Well, that sounds like a place I have to visit. One day. Maybe she has a trump for it."

Quietly and her usual manner Natsuki says "You do know all our Assistants work there, and they're all courtesans."

Rhiannon raised her eyebrows, turning towards Natsuki. "Are you serious? They're all courtesans?" Her jaw dropped in utter disbelief. "Is that one of their services, I wonder." ...

"Does that make Cousin Cordy a madame?"

"As I understand it from Jing-Wei, the club, like her motorcycle shop are Triad fronts, but she has the freedom to run them as she sees fit. They don't dare interfere, at least any longer. They've apparently tried in the past and paid a high price for their failure."

"Yes.. but you need to ask. Most of them have Master's degrees, the exception being Xia who is a qualified Makeup Artist."

"Oh dear Lord, no." Rhiannon giggled. "Don't get me wrong. I was just curious. I won't be asking Kassidy for anything other than fresh towels. He's cute, but just asking for sex like that sounds rather unfulfilling. I mean, I'm sure he's quite good at it, but still..." ...

"Okay, fine. Now that I'm thinking about it, I am curious about how good. But still..."



Thank you Cathal for that easy diversion.

"I imagine even the triads aren't prepared to go against a demigod who can literally make people completely disappear or raise an actual army. The power we are born into still boggles my imagination."