Experiment One.

A soft thunder followed the man as he let the sand flow out of the blue-grey pot he held at his side while he walked.  It made a circle on the floor, covering up the guidelines that had been drawn out in chalk in the hours beforehand.  The man's wrists were still sore from the painstaking attention to detail he had put into the angles that linked the complicated yet graceful pattern into one whole interconnected design.  Now he walked with an uninterested gait, almost lost in thought as he paced across the cold floor next to each line.  The sand didn't stop flowing, had reached a volume on the floor that easily tripled the capacity of the jar, but this was normal for things found in a wizard's castle.  It's plain nature fought against the ostentatious nature of some of the other practitioners of the art, as did the plain pants and shirt that the man wore, the spectacles upon his nose, and the shoes that would have seemed perfectly normal besides the fact that they did not make a sound.  When the flow cut off, the mouth of the jar tipped up just as the sand-line reconnected with itself where the man had started, the chamber was quiet.  Setting the jar aside to pick up a small dagger from a podium, the man backed away from the circle.  He frowned through his closely trimmed beard, brownish blonde like the sand on the floor.  He bit his lip a second, then with a quick glance to his hand, pricked his finger.  A toss dropped the dagger next to the jar, in the corner, clattering as it slid and bumped across and into the grey stone tiles.  Gingerly stepping around the sand, the man picked his way to the center of the design, keeping the single drop of blood perched upon his finger.  Spinning in place, slowly double checking his handiwork, he nodded to himself.  Then the drop fell, crimson and shimmering down into the sand.  Soaking out, then streaking along, the sand turned all a bright red.  Every line seemed inundated with it, staying at first the dark red of blood then lightening, and finally shining a bright white, casting a dark shadow of the podium and the jar and the dagger on the rounded walls of the chamber.  The man left no shadow, standing in the middle.  His figgure was illumined, almost seeming to glow itself with the light that shone around.  Ignition.  White flame catching on the sand to dance and flow through the circular design.  The sand below it melted into red glass, holding its form, but not its substance.  The man's frown curled up, a smile growing along with the flames.  He clapped his hands and the flames themselves melted, flowing across the floor into pools of light, some caught in the design and other bits lapping at the walls.  Some pooled around the man's shoes.  There was no podium, no jar, and no dagger.  Just the man and the circle and the glowing water.  "It worked."  His smile was beaming now.  Running to the door, he threw it open.  Down the hall, past the stairs and to another wooden door the brother of the other room's.  This one he also threw open.  Inside there was a circle just the same as the other he had left, the glowing pools, and sitting in the corner where he left them, the podium, the jar and the dagger.  "It worked!"  Now it was to the stairway, up and up and up to the top tower.  He scribbled notes, drew out careful diagrams, and smiled to himself.  "Now to figure out how to do it without a receiving circle.  Can't expect other planets to set those up for me beforehand, can I?"  It was the start to a long decade.