The city is beautiful. Lush gardens, broad streets, cozy houses and elegant towers. The palace is especially lovely, but it seems... very much a part of the city, more like a flower blooming on a vine than a gem set in a ring.

Riale squints up at Kastimund as the last couple of boxes are packed away into the swoop's cargo compartment. Simm hands him the finished checklist, and someone else asserts that all the vehicle's mechanisms have been checked over and verified to be in good working order. Last of all, a messenger comes out onto the roof and hands over a wrapped paper package, which Riale tucks in his pocket.

Kastimund finishes writing whatever it was he was writing, and floats down to sit in the swoop. The paper and pen disappear into his fiery clothing. He'll write more as they fly, he thinks, but for now he'd like to avoid the questions.

Riale climbs the ladder up the side of the swoop, closes and latches the trapdoor into the cargo area, and settles himself in the pilot's seat at the front.

"Where are you going?" someone calls up to him.

"To save the world!"

Grins break out on every visible face. "Good luck!"

"Thanks!" he says, grinning back down at them, and then he starts flipping switches. A ripple of magic spreads out over the swoop's hull, a pale green glimmer, lingering particularly in the wings. It hums softly and rises into the air. Riale hauls on a lever; the swoop turns east.

Kastimund considers commenting on the wisdom of telling people that are doomed by fate that Riale's going to save the world, and then decides against it.

He retrieves the papers again, and resumes writing. He looks at the city and the swoop, both.

As he writes, he asks, "Are we to go to Dawnbrook as quickly as possible, without stopping to examine anything on the way?"

"Probably. Depends what we see on the way."

As soon as they're high enough to clear all visible roofs by a very generous margin, Riale checks a compass and a map and adjusts the swoop's heading one more time, then opens the book in his lap and starts putting remembered items into it, every one flawless and shimmering. Even the books. It's a rare creator who can make a true copy of a book, even one that's right in front of them, let alone one that's presumably sitting in some palace library while Riale pulls it from his memory.

His chained fire spirit companion studies him occasionally while he works. When Riale makes the first book, he raises his eyebrows slightly.

"Is it important to you in some way?"

"Mm?" he asks distractedly.

"The book you brought to life. Is it important to you, or just a book you read years ago and remember well enough to put to its fellow?"

"Oh. More the latter. ...I guess that's probably impressive, huh?"

"Probably," he agrees, and then he goes back to writing whatever he's writing, uncaring.

Riale snorts.

He continues filling the pages with remembered objects. Piece by piece, he builds up the palace; eventually he has enough pieces to assemble a true copy of the entire palace itself, which is an interestingly novel variant on the process but pretty straightforward to accomplish.

He puts this swoop in the book. This gets him on a magic objects kick - he is not himself a professional witch, he only barely knows the principles behind a standard wand, but he's curious enough to be in the habit of soliciting explanations for how things work, so his knowledge of interesting magic objects he has seen in his life is complete enough to satisfy the book.

"How does the magic work?" Kastimund asks, when he's done writing. For now.

"I'm missing a bunch of the specific practical details, but the basic idea is, with time and effort and slightly weird rituals you can turn stuff into magic stuff. Most really useful magic items, like the light-stones in the lamps, need a bunch of other magic items in the rituals to make them, so it gets kind of involved. Swoops and soars are ridiculously complex that way, part of the reason they're so expensive is because it takes something like three months of complicated ritual to build one once you have all the tools and some of the tools take a month to make and aren't useful for anything other than making flying vehicles."

"How..." he pauses to search for the correct word to describe what he thinks. "Tame. I would almost call it a pity. Some of the magics of the previous worlds were not so tidy."

"Yeah? The same ones that were really unreliable?"

"Ha. Some of them, yes. But many of them were there when it counted. They would play tricks on new practitioners, jest with the old ones. But when there was need..." He has a somewhat far off look in his eyes. "They'd twist and bend for their mortal charges, a wild force scarcely at their practitioner's call. But come, they would."

"That does sound appealing. But it's also nice to have something that just works," he says.

"I did say almost a pity. But I am free to mourn the death of the more adventurous magic. I suppose I'll get to see something less tamed eventually."

"Maybe so," he says serenely. A beautiful chandelier he remembers from one of the First City's libraries goes in the book.

It's hard to toy with Riale's anger when he's not being angry at all. Kastim is slightly disappointed.

He sighs. "So, what adventures did you have in the palace? You seemed memorable."

"I was a huge pest as a kid. Constantly in search of bigger trouble to get into. Taking apart magic stuff to see how it worked, trying to dig a tunnel out of the palace basement... it got to the point where it was practically reflex among the palace staff, anytime something weird happened: 'where's Riale?' And now that I'm not twelve anymore, it's gradually becoming my job to solve bizarre problems rather than create them."

"Ah, but creating them is the best part. But if anyone would know how to solve them, it would be someone that once caused them. Or does still."

"That's more or less the idea. So now, if something bizarre is happening and I'm obviously handling it, no one worries."

"Hm. Convenient." He considers. "I wonder if Esere managed to write it that way."

"Managed to write it what way?"