who will be coming?

[small_magics]

Aianon has made a plant in the open airless space above the surface of Thilanushinyel. It is a very, very large plant - some dragons will be attending the party, after all, even if Ansharil in particular is going to be assorted small things and stay on Sarion's person the bulk of the time.

The locals will be Sarion, her beloveds, their other beloved, the five conjured dragons (and their Bondmates, where applicable: Virgivere and Lissa), and Liselen - Magania has, as usual, declined, and so far no Bell party has featured Bell parents.

Amariah is bringing her boyfriend and spontaneous daughter and two of the spontaneous daughter's friends, as well as an Alethian instance of the Rupert template.

Shell Bell is bringing Pearl and Screwdriver.

Golden is bringing her usual large contingent, as usual not including her husband but including her daughter and daughter's grown fosterling (the other remaining at home) and his wolf, both mothers-in-law and one father-in-law, adopted siblings, staff members including the Joker and Nathan, and the children of the aforementioned.

Glass is bringing both wives, all three daughters, Kanim, and her cat. She invited Icarin and Valeria, but their parents are not willing to let them gallivant into other worlds unsupervised and had a scheduling conflict.

Stella's bringing a smattering of people including Alice, Anna, Sandy, Libby, Bridget, her college roommate Janine, and Lazarus.

Tab is bringing Aelise (but not Kers) and Luhan.

Etty is bringing only Nona.

Aether, likewise, brings no one but Celo.

Pattern comes with Ripper, Slipstick, Queenie, and Ghosty.

Aegis is accompanied by her four-bodied boyfriend, Merryweather, Whitlock, and Howlett.

Aurora comes with Brilliance, Lexi with her Device Persica, Agent Honey with her Device Adularia, and Beth.

Rose brings her husband and three children and her former apprentice, Luc.

Angela brings her husband, her four children, several of her friends, and some of those friends' children and grandchildren with and without wings. Keziah also brings a friend.

Juliet shows up with Soph, Minus, Red, Giles, James, Virginia, Minnie, Ike, and Val.

Cam brings Jellybean and Tilly and stops there.

And from unBelled worlds hail additional Sherlocks and Tonies, Darcy, Matilda, Pepper, and Eights.

Comments

[bellfounding]

"I hope it is noise, this theory here predicts that me and Angela and possibly even Aegis get nada just like Shell Bell."

[withmypowers]

"We'll see about that too," says Agent Honey.



It turns out that Aether is next after that.

"Interesting," says Matilda. "Your entanglement is about on par with Sarion's, but everything else is coming in just under Juliet."

[subtly_artistic]

"I haven't actually gotten the rundown on what these statistics mean," Aether mentions. "I can guess based on the names, but what are the details?"

[withmypowers]

Matilda volunteers an explanation.

"The working stats - handling, storage, and generation - respectively measure how much magic you can work with directly at once, how much magic you can have in your personal store without using it immediately, and how fast that personal store refills over time. People with high generation and low storage tend to leave a trail of loose magic wherever they go, but it's not harmful, just handy for your neighbours. Entanglement is how easily you can create or affect patterns—magic strongly prefers to work in ways it's already been used, and the higher your entanglement, the better you are at getting it to work in new ways and the more of an impression you'll make when you do."

"The theory is that Wellspring has had this kind of magic all along," Tilly puts in, "but Matilda was the first person in human history with a high enough entanglement to get it to work for her when it hadn't ever been used before and there weren't any existing patterns to go on."

"Or at least the first person with a high enough entanglement who really, really tried," says Matilda. "Magic was pretty hard work for me in the early days. And lastly, perception is how well you can tell what patterns are available, and it also relates to magic-seeing in general. If you have high perception, you won't need to rely on spell descriptions as much, because you'll be able to read the patterns intuitively."

[dark_light]

"And meanwhile Sunshine and its siblings were infested with enough demons that some of them got to it first."

[withmypowers]

"Yes," says Matilda. "And it seems like they went the opposite direction from Wellspring - in Wellspring, the available patterns are so overwhelmingly positive that it's hard to use magic destructively. In Sunshine... they seem to have it the other way around."

[small_magics]

"If I understand correctly, we now have Wellspring patterns and not Sunshine ones."

[withmypowers]

The Matildas nod.

"There's plenty of available reading material to conjure, if you want to know more about exactly how it all works," says Tilly. "In Wellspring, that is. I have no idea what the literature is like in Sunshine."

[small_magics]

Sarion nods. She swaps her book.

[withmypowers]

Next up is Stella.

"Another one about on Juliet's level," says Agent Honey as Stella's feet touch the floor. "With no surprises this time."

[self_composed]

"Well, that's my ambition right there, unsurprisingness." New book.

[withmypowers]

After that comes Tab, whom the Matildas declare to be part of the same group as Stella and Juliet.

[giftedandtalented]

"If Golden's next I'd guess opacity would have to do with it."

[withmypowers]

Golden is not next! Aegis is next.

"Less than Tab or Stella - about the same as Cam," says Tilly.

[autokinetic]

"Opacity could still have to do with it," Aegis says, celebrating not floating under someone else's power anymore with a backflip and then zero-g-aura-ing her way back into a more self-powered float. She opts to read up on Wellspring magic on a desk instead of paper.

[small_magics]

"Even if we assume I count, now, Glass has no such thing."

[withmypowers]

And the next one after that is still not Golden; it's Pattern.

"Barely anything," says Agent Honey.

"Even less than Cam," says Tilly.

[bellfounding]

"But not as little as Shell Bell?" says Pattern.

[withmypowers]

"No," says Matilda, "not as little as Shell Bell."

[bellfounding]

"Well, that's something, then."

[withmypowers]

And then Angela, and last of all Golden, both with similarly tiny-but-not-quite-functionally-worthless amounts.

[luminous_regnant]

"How fortunate that we don't expect this to make or break any practical projects."

[withmypowers]

Matildas shrug.