"That...could be really bad. I think that might be 'tear a hole in the world' bad. Um. Turn into a bird and fly east across the Direbog first, maybe? There's a ruined city, Restyw, which already had a Spark disaster. It still wouldn't definitely be safe for you but no one else would be hurt."

"How the heck would doing kamai on myself with my own lifeforce do this? I'm not gonna try it, I can turn into a bird and fly away if it's really that big a deal, but how is it that big a deal?"

"You'd have to ask a scholar. But some people cause problems like this without using magic at all, just by being really, really good at mundane things. The founder of the thieves' guild I was in when I was younger, Llanech Silvertongue, convinced the prince of a small country that Llanech was actually the king and therefore should be allowed to take anything from the royal treasury he wanted. Two weeks later someone noticed he was causing the supporting-character thing to other people in the guild, and when he was told, he left and was never seen again."

"What happens to supporting characters when their main character leaves?"

"As best as I remember? They're like...automatons. They can go through the motions of their life as long as they don't need to learn or do anything new. Maybe they keep more if you catch it early, I don't know. But I've never heard of one recovering."

"Yuck. Where do people go, when they start having this problem?"

"Inward, to the Second Shell. How you go about doing that varies; knights or warrior-monks usually go pick a fight with a nasty dragon, spellcasters go somewhere remote and cast a Great Working. Master craftsmen usually set up a hermitage workshop and make a Masterpiece. Thieves, hunters, that kind of people just vanish, no one's sure how. At least one professor of cosmiology, Timotheus Bambagia, vanished overnight, too."

"...and these things... transport you somewhere."

"Yeah. I mentioned Shells? They're worlds within worlds. Each one has a higher level of baseline greatness than the one outside. Go far enough and you're hanging out with gods, supposedly, but I don't know whether that's like three or five thousand. And the power difference thing is relative to your surroundings, so in there they're fine, up to another point where it's too much for them." 

"I think I need paper to organize all the questions I have about that on, and I assume you don't want me to do that with magic."

"You're pretty close to the edge of my knowledge anyway. But if, like, a kid who was new to your magic - kamai? - and not particularly talented could do it, it's probably fine."

"Nah, it's kind of intermediate, I'd be turning some nearby woody plant into the paper. Maybe I could get basic enough with image kamai if I don't make it tactile?"

"If you think you can get it that basic and try it first out here rather than in town, go for it. But probably hold off unless you can get to a scholar who knows more about this."

"Also, like, I'd be fine with paper. Normal paper from wherever you get paper."

"Paper is mostly a specialist good. But I can get you some by tonight if you really want, it's not too niche."

"Yeah, I really want it, this is important. Especially if I can't just fly to the nearest library at any worthwhile speed because I will somehow mind-control everybody."

"Then sure, I'll go ask. But let's make sure you can make a meal from the kitchen first."

"...yes. Your kitchen implements are probably weird."

"It sounds like your world has a lot more safe magic so probably, yes"

"I mean, all the magical kitchen implements had to be invented, we didn't always have them."

"Yeah, but we...mostly can't. Making things that you can spread is hard, and there just aren't that many people who can do it."

"Because inventing has this problem?"

"Maybe? I think making durably magic things that, I don't know, cast light when you say 'light!' is harder than just, making a light yourself. And it's the same muscle as you flex to do bigger magic? Or something. It certainly isn't that no one will pay for it, people who have to deal with monsters are willing to pay. I certainly did, I had an everlasting torch when I was a professional delver."

"That doesn't sound like it makes economic sense but I'm not an economist."

"There is probably an economist somewhere in Formene who could tell you whether you're right. I'm not one, my only real mental talent is high risk tolerance."