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[Corwin]

Seira studies the orb, asking Kascha, "What do you think?"

[Anastasia]

"It's pretty," Kascha says, as...

Orb of Yesterday

This orb allows yesterday to be seen, all within 20ft of it. Any creatures that touches it sees the last 24 hours around the orb instantly.

[Corwin]

Seira uses the orb to take a peek at yesterday, before picking it up and rewinding time with her own powers to test the difference in experience.

[Anastasia]

Yesterday was fairly boring besides your meeting there with Chrona.

The orb is like watching it as you lived it, while the magic is much the same, but somehow...more? Perhaps simply more intimate.

[Corwin]

"Here you go," Seira tells Kascha, passing the orb over.

Glancing over at Chrona, she asks, "How would you set up an attack against Kascha in the past? A spell like forcecage, say, which would execute in the present without any of the trappings of casting?" Aside from curiosity at such techniques, Seira also wants to see whether Kascha would spot such preparations with her orb.

[Anastasia]

"The simplest way? I'd change history without meeting her, so that I win without making a single attack. That would be ineffective now, but far better to change the path when it is easy than to change it the hard way."

[Corwin]

"Well yes, but I'm trying to experience the more direct attack. It's like evocation, which is ultimately weaker than its subtler alternatives, but since it's pretty and fun it's in fairly wide use. Just like how you closed off the way here in the past, I'm wondering if there's a way to emulate all the metamagic that eliminates signs of casting and the time it takes to cast by shunting all of that process into the past. Then, I want to see how it works so that I'm ready for it if it's ever used against me."

[Anastasia]

"Oh yes, that can be done. It's not easy - Silent and Stilled spells are easier," Chrona admits, "But it can be done. Would you like a demonstration?"

[Corwin]

"Yes, please," Seira says, nodding to Kascha so that she remains attentive with that orb. Removing gestures and sounds, disguising any visible spell effects and greatly reducing casting time are all possible with metamagic, as she'd told Chrona, but there is always a chance for her to counterspell those. It remains to be seen whether she'll get such a chance now!

[Anastasia]

Chrona focuses - and magic surrounds him. Potent magic, something to temporally displace a few bits of himself. Sublimely powerful and difficult work, but suddenly it begins to rain in the room. No signs, no hints, nothing. It just happens.

"Oh, I saw it in the past, just a little bit ago," Kascha says, "What circle was that trick?"

"12th," Chrona dismisses the rain after a few seconds, "Doing so and doing it in the Weave properly doesn't require overwhelming power, but overwhelming finesse instead, as you're working with the building blocks of magic."

[Corwin]

"Can you walk me through it?" Seira requests, interested in trying to cast something similar. She delivers the concept of a flower suddenly appearing in Kascha's free hand, intending to seed the spell in the past.

Incidentally, would Instant Counterspell work there? It's immediate action, but I'm not sure how it interacts with this stuff.

[Anastasia]

If you aren't aware of it, no, because you don't know to use it in the first place. You can't counterspell if you aren't aware there's something to counterspell. If you saw through the trickery you could use it as normal.

It's like...shunting back and forward and you're pretty sure even your divine will can't do it, only precise spell work. You grasp the theory of it at least with some demonstration - it's like casting the spell in the past and the present at once, dividing parts of it as needed.

[Corwin]

"It feels sort of like a spell completion item," Seira muses, borrowing the orb from Kascha. "Hit me with another one from a week ago? I'll try to counter it."

Intent is to see whether Instant Counterspell will work with the orb even if the spell itself was from much earlier, and to try and actually counterspell a Chronomancy spell with chain counterspell.

[Anastasia]

No rolling needed since it's purely testing.

Once you know the spell is coming and from when, countering it isn't any harder than a normal spell. That's the big if, admittedly.

[Corwin]

Well then! Time for them to explore the last stairway!