"I'm telling you, I shouldn't need any of that. it gets in the way of the flow." Jal was getting impatient at this point. sure, Kerra was older, more experienced, but she was so careful, so meticulous about her spellwork. so boring, Jal thought.
Kerra sighed, and Jal could already tell she was revving up a lecture. "kid, you need to use the error handlers. when something goes wrong, you need it caught and safely dealt with, or all that energy is going to need to go somewhere, and that spells trouble for you, and anyone else around you."
Jal prickled at this, straightening his big pointy hat. "it gets in the way! I like to improvise. sure, maybe something will go wrong with it sometime, but I'll deal with it when I see it!" besides, I'm no kid, you're like three years older than me, tops, he thankfully avoided saying out loud.
"this isn't a "maybe" it's a "will," here. if you're going to mess around with raw aether and not even use a safety net, I'm gonna be in the other room. away from any explosions. if you need help, cry out to me." and with that, she walked off, the click of hard leather on stone fading slowly as she left the lab.
as soon as her footsteps had stopped, Jal cracked his knuckles, twiddled the wand's little honey-dipper into the metal dust ink on his desk, and practically beamed as he drew the sigils that summoned the spell-checker. he pulled up only the parts needed to see what his magic was doing as he went, not bothering with the pre-checks, as usual. today he was going to make an apple pie from scratch, and the universe was just going to have to deal with it.
once he'd grabbed some more of the glittering sky-ink from the complicated glassware taking up the back wall of his lab, he sketched slapdash symbols in the air. mechanical action grind grain to flour, transmutation forming seed and leaf into apple, transmutation forming wood dust into sugar-- wait. "what. what"
the last part wasn't acting on the wood dust at all. it was just, spinning in place. the spell kept recalling the same section over and over. the spell-checker rapidly filled up with its readout, showing it calling in more aether and converting it to transmutative essence in a glowing green ball floating in front of his wand, until...
NOTICE: ERROR. STACK OVERFLOW. CORE DUMPED.
"core dumped? what does that m..."
and then it exploded, globs of glowing essence covering everything it could reach, glassware shattering as it turned into rocks and leaked acrid reagents all over the back counter, the wooden desk suddenly sprouting leaves, and Jal... Jal disappeared under his big hat, his wand clattering to the floor.
"Jal? Jal are you alright?" as Kerra ran back into the lab, she heard a very upset muffled squeaking came from inside the hat, as it pressed outward slightly from something small inside it. she carefully plucked it off the floor, to reveal a frightened brown and white weasel, not even as long as her arm, flopping down from the hat's felt and whining at her.
"that you, Jal?" the weasel nodded rapidly, as Kerra frowned, then looked up at the fading spell checker messages, still floating over the desk-tree in the middle of the half-ruined lab.
"core dump, huh?" she groaned, then leaned down to pick up her little newly-mustelid friend. "this is what I warned you about. good thing smart critters like us can control what we turn into, at least a bit." Jal gave protesting little squeaks, and she couldn't help but laugh. "no I'm not saying you wanted to be shaped like this, if that's what you're trying to say now! just, if your last thought before getting hit by the wave was "I hope I don't turn into a weasel or something", well... that's what'll happen." at that, Jal went limp in her hand, and she put him up on her shoulder where he'd be safe.
"come on, little pupil of mine. we'll have you set right in no time. your lab might take a bit more work, though, sorry. we'll have the gardeners in here in a day or two." and surely, they'll have plenty to say about it too. wizards, you never know what to expect with them.