"Am gooood. Got ingot power." Erase erase swat! It writes everything out nicely for me!

"Oh, good for you! Okay, world, hello... goodness, there's a lot of magic around here."

"The apartment is a bit saturated, sorry. We do a lot of craft projects."

"It's all right, technically what I'm doing to look at the world is different from what I'm doing to see the magic. We'd want Lazarus if we wanted a detailed look at your spellcraft anyway. The system looks interesting, though. Angela, don't look them in the eye."

"I've been warned."

"How polite. The world is not a very nice world. Just barely shy of Sunshine. Not the same family, not Wellspring-style magic, just - not friendly. Is this a sheaf?"

Erase swat. Yes, there's another subworld called the Nevernever. Ari took me there to get clothes and a hiding spell for my wings.

"But a smaller sheaf than a Sunshine world. Basically this is a crepe to Sunshine's pancake."

"Tasty," comments Micaiah.

"Anyway. I see you've already warded the Janegems. I recommend being very thorough and quick about that - maybe conjure the gems and points with pentagons or hexes in the first place, or ward them before entering the world - because I don't know how much the effect might travel through the ansible, but you've been lucky so far. But nothing's going to sneak around the wards, particularly - sufficient brute force doesn't look abundant and the world isn't perverse like Materia, just sort of unpleasant to live in if you're not positioned right. Did you only want a generic diagnosis or is there anything else I should look at?"

"If I knew where the Outer Gates were I'd try to get you to take a look at those, see if there's something you could do to shore them up... Do you think you can cure dark magic corruption? Or maybe prevent it from happening in the first place? I mean, not that I'd want to break the Laws willy-nilly, but Peter's necromantic shit sure was useful."

"...I can teleport to well-specified locations, so you not knowing how to get somewhere may not be an obstacle, though if they're the sort of thing that requires shoring up I might want to know more before I turn up at them. Just in case. I can have a look at your friend."

Dark magic corruption sounds like the kind of thing Keziah and Céleste could fix.

"Pen's sister Keziah and her alt Céleste," explains Angela, "have slightly different flavors of the same ingot power, which lets them magically decontaminate things. I'd like to have Lazarus look at anything they're going to touch first, of course. What Laws do you mean?"

"You will probably want to know more about the Gates, yes. They protect our world from an endless sea of horrible sanity-rending monstrosities. The Laws of Magic are seven rules that designate the types of magic that inevitably corrupt the souls of any who use them. The distinction between legal code and physical law is fairly thin in this case. We could... brainphone Peter and see if he's doing anything, then just summon him up? I assume you can summon people."

"It's slightly more efficient to teleport to people and pick them up, usually, but yes. Glass, is this like the Sunshine addiction thing?"

"Not... really? I mean, it's the obvious analogue, but they're not closely similar."

Ari tilts his head. "Peter's free. He says that he's 'creeped out, but unsurprised' that I accidentally tripped over an interdimensional cabal of omnipotent clones."

"We're alts, not clones. We know some clones and they don't turn out as alts of their originals," laughs Glass. "Should I go get him?"

"Yep. I use wrong words for ease of conceptual access, sue me."

Glass snorts and pops off to where Peter is.

"Yep. All set?"