"Yep. And quitting wouldn't even help, because one of the lesser-known Slayer powers is 'mystical trouble magnet'. It's a problem."

"Sounds like it. Maybe if you continue to favorably impress me I will make you a snazzy suit of armor or something."

"Hi. Cam," says Cam.

"Nice to meet you. C'mon in. I hear you might have questions about magic?"

"I don't currently have anything specific enough to be a question. I have confusions about magic. Can I get the introductory syllabus?"

"Okay," she says. "I think a good way to explain the basics might be: Over the course of human history, every so often, somebody has invented a way to do magic based on what made sense to them at the time or what they thought would work from hearing about other people's real or imagined successes. And some of these things, but not all of them, have turned out to actually work. And whenever somebody found one that did - and sometimes when they found one that didn't and just misinterpreted the results - they stuck with it and elaborated on it and taught it to other people who elaborated some more and forgot parts and changed details and generally messed around. And again, some of those changes stuck around, but not all of them, and the original methods usually weren't completely erased in the process. So now, after however many thousands of years of this, the state of the world's magic is an enormous clusterfuck. It would be like if the outcomes of scientific experiments were decided by rolling dice and the universe stuck to its guns on them afterward, occasionally even when they contradicted each other. That's basically the underlying foundations of magic."

"That sounds exasperating. With all that I'm glad mine still works here."

"It can be a pain. My great trick is that I kept researching different traditions until I found a handful that suited me, and then I invented my own out of those and a few other things that seemed to make sense. So now I have a nice, reasonably tidy, reasonably flexible structure to work with."

"How long did that take?"

"A while. I was partway through it by the time I was eighteen and much farther along by the time I was twenty-five. It's not really something that stops; I'm still making progress on what I've got and keeping an eye out for other things I could integrate."

"So if I don't stay longer than I had planned it seems sort of unlikely to be an ideal use of my time to do the same thing."

"Yeah, it's a pretty big time investment. But you could potentially pick up a few tricks from me. And I wouldn't mind doing a spell or two for you in exchange for more diamonds or interesting chess sets."

"Suggest some tricks?" says Cam. "And what makes a chess set interesting?"

"Interesting chess sets are made of unusual materials, or have pieces in weird shapes," she says. "I collect them. They're magically useful. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe I just don't know enough about the kinds of trouble you're planning to get into while you're here."

"I am planning to be constructive and helpful on large scales, which will reportedly attract all sorts of ire on top of the racism."

"Gimme a nice chess set or two and I'll cast some protection spells that should help with that," says Chris. "As a bonus, you'll get to see me cast spells, which should be interesting and informative."

"Sure. Requests or should I make stuff up?"

"Oh, make stuff up, that sounds much more fun."

"Sure." He nibbles on his lip thoughtfully while looking for a good place to put a chess set.

There's a mostly empty coffee table right over there in the living room!

And now on that coffee table is a chessboard with squares in sardonyx and malachite, with the banding neatly matching up at the borders between them, and pieces made of emerald and ruby with normal chess-style tops on twisted spiraly bases that make them resemble glass more than precious jewels.

"Nice," says Chris approvingly.

"Christmasy," says Cam. "Spells?"