“They don’t?” Strange makes a noise, a kind of unimpressed and dismissive snort, huffing. “Well, then it’s their loss. I’d love to hear it. This sort of thing is fascinating. A lot of our own magic is rune-based as well: sigils and mandalas, concentric circles with geometric angles and shapes denoting different aspects and components to the spell.”

He’s slipping back into that old cadence to his voice, the eagerness to discuss magic, the enthusiasm with which he drinks up this particular subject.

“Although a lot of it is— distressingly theoretical, now.” He gestures a hand, helplessly. “The order of sorcerers I belong to, we draw our energy from the multiverse. Siphoning power from the cracks between the dimensions. Something’s different here and I can’t sense it any longer. My spells don’t behave the same way.”

He tamps it down relatively well, but the disappointment still reverberates through the man’s dry voice. Like someone mourning a lost limb.