"If you're willing to loan out the reading glasses while you're here I can have promising things transcribed, but that still doesn't cover a library's worth of spells."

"Oh, sure, it's pretty high priority. Still irritating that you can't just get the whole thing... I mean, maybe you could ship a few dozen scribes into Milliways and have them transcribe using the ambient translation?"

"If that would work, I can absolutely do it. I am not short on scribes, although most of them aren't within particularly easy fetching distance of this house, so it would involve some door-holding."

"Sure it would. I'd recommend you keep the original copies around for incantations and stuff, I can teach you how to pronounce things in Latin so you don't have to make up new poetry that won't work as well for everything."

"Yes. So, letters to primes, in progress... pronunciation guide... trustworthy scribes on-call... general survey of the capabilities of magic and prioritization thereof... additional deliberate contagion of magical ability to me, Aleko, Jayce, probably other primes too."

"I can layer a ton of illusions on you to speed it up a bit. Any preferences for colors and/or features?"

"I'd rather not alarm the servants. Can they all add up to me looking as I normally do?"

"...I don't think so. Negating illusions with other illusions tends to have weird effects. I can make the illusions unobtrusive, though."

"You could make it look like I'm on fire. That won't alarm anyone."

"I mean, yeah, but that's just one illusion. I'm thinking- patches of different colored skin, altering the lengths of your individual fingernails, maybe some fur under your sleeves or something. Turning your hair a slightly different shade. That sort of thing."

"We could make it look like I painted my nails and add interesting colors and designs under my dress. Add red highlights to my hair, maybe, they'll go with my wardrobe and everything, sweela colors. Aleko, make suggestions."

"Make her hair look an inch longer? Make it look like she has ever looked at makeup with more than vague disdain - eyeliner, maybe, blush, lipstick? Make it look like she's wearing jewelry that she owns but isn't wearing?"

"All very good ideas. And I'll probably do similar things to you, so feel free to come up with something that works for you as well."

Leo begins muttering Latin at Kiri. It's mostly all the same flexible glamer that Aleko used on his teeth, minus the sigil because Leo is Actually A Witch and doesn't need components on a beginner's spell. Kiri gets very slightly different colors of nail polish on each finger (small differences make it less likely that the spell will just glom onto itself and turn into one spell), interesting beaded designs on her dress, highlights in her hair, slightly longer hair, a small amount of makeup.

"I've got my teeth thing, uh - I spend more time worrying about how she looks, really, that is one of the things that is both actually important for social status type reasons and formally delegated to me. Nice beads."

"He needs a haircut. Probably no one would notice if his ears were slightly differently shaped. Paint his nails - dark green - and I think he owns a shirt that style but two shades paler so that would work too. And Aleko, when that's done will you nip off and get Jayce?"

"He does need a haircut, good call," Leo affirms. Muttering takes place, as do relevant changes. Leo telekinetically lifts the stones from Aleko's array and dumps them into the cart. "Free to go."

Aleko waves and nips off to get Jayce.

"Nothing more useful than illusions available for the generic magic step of the process?" asks Kiri, still writing letters. She seals a second one.

"Uh- I mean, there's probably useful magic I could do to you, but I don't think more magic would speed up the process that much more than it's already sped up, you're kind of saturated."

"If you say so. Are there general principles at work here such that you can be sure you can't make more reading glasses without human sacrifice?"

"The general principle at work here with regards to my reading glasses is that they're way too complex for me to figure out how to make more of them at all for another decade or so, but human sacrifice is convenient enough for complex high-power enchantments that I'd be shocked if Grandma hadn't killed someone or other to make them."

"Why does human sacrifice help?"

"An immense amount of power is bound up in the human soul, and in tethering that soul to the lump of meat it goes around in. Ordinarily, when you kill somebody, that energy goes out into the environment like waste heat and adds to the ambient magic levels. With the proper procedure, you channel it into the thing you want it channeled into instead."

"I wonder if you could destroy, or for that matter just draw, blessing coins and get something out of that."

"They don't do anything for me. Which could just be selective magic, but my gut tells me it's actually you guys doing the heavy lifting on the magic and the coins are just a convenient application of it."