Conjuring

Kismet had commenced the process of discovery.

Samuel had to conjure as he had for Lucan, beginning with small items, gradually progressing to larger. Kismet supplied requirements that ruled out the likelihood of chance success. Asking for a stone was to conjure a stone, nothing else.

Samuel brought forth that stone, a pot, a bag of potatoes, a framed mirror, and was then asked to explain from where these objects heralded. He didn’t know. Kismet proceeded to enlighten him. Either objects were summoned from a known location, or they were transported out of the ether, and Samuel, in fact, achieved both. The lifeless objects, always abiotic, the stone, the pot, the mirror, were called from sites on Valaris. He asked Samuel to bring forth an item from his home, something unique to him, and Samuel sent for his diamond cutter, knowing it was engraved with his name, and it came, proving the theory of known, existing sites and objects.

That, apparently, was the easier mode of conjuring. He held the cutter in his hands, bemused. He was a jeweller by trade, and here he was dabbling in magic.

The potatoes, Kismet revealed, a biological object, were summoned from the ether, for nowhere on Valaris presently was such a mundane thing in existence. Potatoes had recently been ferried in by Beacon…by the barrel. He added that it didn’t necessarily follow abiotic was local and biotic from elsewhere; he merely employed the difference to prove the two locations. It was an unconscious force, he explained, unless you were specific in your creation, something the Enchanter had mastered a long time ago.

Samuel then had to banish what he brought forth and did so, asking whether the items returned to their original places. The stone, yes, Kismet agreed, it being part of natural magic, but the rest went to a place for banished things, a kind of realm for unwanted goods.

Samuel balked at that, saying it had to be impossible, and how? He mourned the loss of his cutter, then.

Kismet merely smiled, saying the realm was a treasure trove, if one knew how to access it. The pocket of potatoes, for instance, would never spoil.