"I mean... you'll have to translate for me anyway, right? And I can probably make more use of the contents anyway. So if we want to minimize suffering between the two of us it probably makes more sense if I'm the only one who reads it." She holds up the map stack, focuses for a couple of seconds, and it vanishes. "I put the maps on the table we were using in your Bevin."

"It is convenient yet also concerning how you can do that. —and, you see, if it is mostly full of upsetting things, probably there is not much to be learned from the upsetting parts? So I could tell you about all the parts that aren't upsetting, faster than you could hear about them on your own."

"Well... hm." She sends the binder with the copied maps to her own Bevin. "I mean..." She looks at her. "It has tongue removal and its use in some sort of magic bell... are you sure? I can absolutely handle it."

"That sounds icky. I think I'll be okay, though? This won't be the only spooky book I've ever read. It might turn out to be the spookiest but I still think I'll be okay."

"Well..." She sounds uncertain. "Be my guest." She waves at the book between them.

She picks it up and tucks it into her bag.

"Alright, well, we should figure out what our next move is. I should investigate the bridges, you said something about another Conduit, and you had a book with a list of worlds?"

"Yes. Fib sometimes visits the Academy, usually accompanied by an explosion and some sort of minor disaster—he has a problem where bad things happen when he crosses a bridge. I sell him winebark bags in return for interesting plants. He's interested in hearing about all the different worlds, so he might want you to tell him about the ones you've found. There are usually people with him; there's some world or other where he found a lot of people having a bad time and he rescues them when he can, and sometimes they travel with him to help him out. Investigating the bridges is a good idea. I should find where my list of worlds has got to and see about keeping it updated with new information, and see if your rainy world and city world are on it."

"Ok... Do you know what bridge he uses to get here? And does he have a schedule or does he just come by at random?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it a schedule, but I usually see him about once a day, from the same bridge he originally came through. Sometimes I miss a visit because he doesn't stay long and I'm not always near that bridge, and sometimes he doesn't come by on some particular day because he has urgent business elsewhere."

"Oh, I somehow expected him to come by less frequently than that. Especially if its a small disaster every time he comes through a bridge?"

"In addition to the exploding bridge problem he also has a problem where if he doesn't spend equal time in all his connected worlds he starts getting forcibly dragged through bridges to make up the imbalance. He is having a difficult time. —and the Rim runs on a different scale of time, so it's less insane than it sounds to be making a circuit of every known world once a day. I think he said it was fifty times faster? So an hour outside the Rim is about two days inside it."

"F— Fifty times?!"

"Fifty times. But you don't accumulate power faster there to match. So getting a year's worth of power in the Rim takes fifty Rim years."

"Woof. Ok, so there are pros and cons. Still! An anime protagonist could get so much training there!"

"An anime protagonist such as yourself?"

"I'm a magical girl! Of course I'm a protagonist!"

"I see the logic. Well, if you hang around that one bridge, you'll probably run into Fib and can see about hitching a ride."

"Well, yeah, ok, good plan. So we should probably wait for him, in the meanwhile, we could check up on that list of worlds?"

"Do you want to come look through my library with me? Or, I suppose more accurately, do you want to drag me through the bridge into my own house and then look through my library with me?"

"I would love that, yeah." She puts a hand on Groundskeeper's shoulder, takes aim, pushes her into her Bevin, then follows.

She leads the way into her library, which is absolutely stuffed full of bookshelves which are in turn absolutely stuffed full of books. "You can browse the shelves if you want while I'm digging through my desk."

"Ooh." She runs a finger over the spines of the books. "So a power makes these books appear? Where do they come from?"

"Some of them come from other Conduits, and I think some of the rest are from... any book that gets lost or destroyed in worlds I'm connected to? I'm not sure, that's just the feeling I get."

"That's really handy! And fantastic for preservation, I'm a fan." She pulls out a book. "Is this it?"