an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.
"Getting back to the original point, Glass, what do you think about increasing Witches' mana?"
"...Hm? Oh, that looks totally straightforward. It's a substance, you want there to be more of it, we should be able to do that and if it turns out we can't trying won't hurt anything."
"A booster will be enough to get us home, but out of curiosity, could you make us generate more? It's inconvenient to nearly fall over every time I do a difficult teleport."
"Eh, probably take a higher grade of coin. Not really out of your price range since you brought Pen back but you might want to know more about what your options for things to spend the favors on are before you pick?"
"Torching is already worth it. But by all means, tell me about the kinds of goodies I can get."
"...Name ethically-in-the-clear things that operate on a planetary scale or smaller and I'll let you know if you hit something we can't pull off."
Gren comments, "Besides ending the Neuroi and bringing a few people back from your afterlife, I think I just want more mana and a better ability to hold on to things I copy long-term."
"The Neuroi are probably an afternoon's work unless they're really weird in some way I can't see from looking at you two, healing's easy, enchanting's doable, the magically operated house you probably either want to give us a design or wind up with something sort of generic, ash is easy, if you just want Europa restored to its original condition we can do that but it might inconvenience people in the ruins, and we don't know yet if we can copy and add Witch stuff to other people, even preexisting Witches, but it's about even odds. We can do dead people if you have a good place to put them but that's a real concern - large-scale resurrection is a hassle and people who know it's available tend to both want some and tell all their friends. More mana looks simple, more ability to hold stuff might not be but looks safe to try."
"I can almost guarantee there's nobody in the ruins. The Neuroi kill anyone who approaches. You can try to give me more mana now, I teleport everyone into our world and we can deal with the Neuroi before moving on to the rest of the stuff. Should've done that five minutes ago, really."
Lytee perks up. "Woah. That definitely worked. Who-all am I bringing besides myself and Gren?"
"You, Gren, and a Janegem," Rose materializes a thing, detaches it from itself, and hands over the half that doesn't disappear to Lytee, "will do, and actually you can even leave Gren behind and Jane can take her."
Lytee takes the gem and disappears to the fields outside a certain castle/military base.
It's definitely on the meaner side as worlds go, though it's not as bad as the Sunshine family. It's high-stakes in a similar way to Gift, but not going out of its way to be mean. Once fixed, it'll probably stay fixed. The only magic here is Witches - Neuroi run on physics, apparently - but they're very common compared to Aurum witches or ingots. It's vaguely Earth-ish, but strongly off standard in a lot of new and old ways.
"Earthalike, Witches are the only local magic, more Gift problems than Sunshine problems, go nuts," Glass diagnoses to Angela, and then she disappears.
"If they are, we can't tell. Empaths can't feel them, every way we've tried to contact them doesn't work. And the way they act is almost random. I don't think they're intelligent... Though it's probably worth checking, given how easy it is for you to do that."
The Neuroi language she gets is naturally rendered in different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. The brainphone can provide an interpretation that she can understand.
And then she speeds up everything in the universe except herself and all the Neuroi. The Neuroi get to go slower than her.
[Excuse me,] she says. To all the Neuroi.