It's... possible that Kaylo should not stay up all night and skip all his meals and cut all his classes to work on a spell and then try to cast it right then.

He does think it's a testament to his brilliance that the mistake he made did not kill him and instead he just confused the focus and subject components of the diagram horribly, but he's still... wherever he is.

Also exhausted.

He shifts to natural form so he'll feel slightly less exposed sleeping outdoors, then flops to the ground and does exactly that.

His sleep is not disturbed, overnight or into the morning. It does, however, do a fair amount of disturbing. It disturbs:

The 10-year-old son of the nearest farmer

His father

The rest of their family

Their fastest horse

The town watch of Aknesi

The mayor of Aknesi

The sheriff of Aknesi

The local stablemaster with the best horses

And the one courier currently in town.

It will probably disturb everyone else in Aknesi and the government of the nearest city (Helerion) by the end of tomorrow. For now, however, the sheriff and his deputy are carefully approaching on horseback. (The farming family has fled. Their neighbors are being evacuated.)

Kaylo wakes up after about ten hours. He shifts down, in case there's a summon that can only work if he's small enough to fit in a normal sized circle.

Nada.

He sits on the ground to consider his predicament. Is he desperate enough to song his aunt? No. Can he... remember Keo's song? ...no, you're really not supposed to need Keo's song, this is the only situation in which that might be called for. Heck.

The sheriff observes this and turns to his deputy.

"Dragons shapeshift?"

"Probably, it's in enough stories. Could be an illusion, but out here that would be unlikely and anything that can do that casually can still probably overpower us easily."

"Appeasement it is. You hang back."

The older of the two men edges his horse forward.

"Hello! Sir Dragon? What can we do for you?"

"Oh. Uh. Hi. Am I in the way? This was an accident, I'll be happy to go home but can't do that myself for technical reasons."

"We'd be happy to help you however you can, but anything a dragon can't manage is probably beyond our capacities. We could ask the city's experts?"

"I mostly just need to wait and then somebody on my end will fix it. If you've got interworld magic here I guess that could cause someone to notice I'm missing sooner."

"I may be misunderstanding you, sir, but from what I learned in church school mortals can only go inward, and dragons can travel either way freely."

"If you have dragons here they're probably different from me."

"I'm...getting that sense, yes."

"Your color of dragon here is known for insatiable hunger and for enjoying destruction and slaughter for their own sake."

"Uh, no. My color of dragon likes fire but not in the arson way just in the fire is neat way. I am actually hungry but that is because I skipped breakfast lunch and dinner yesterday, which you will note is a normal number of meals."

"...would one of those meals be more along the lines of 'several cows' or 'a mutton sandwich'?"

"Second thing. If you're having a famine or something I can get by with an orange, if I turn into a bird."

"No, the farms here are having good years by and large. Also I doubt we have oranges, those can't stand our winters.

If you can come back to town with me I'll be happy to get you a good meal. But if you turn back into your - natural? - form you'll terrify everyone. Can you ride?"

"No, I don't even know how to ride the animals we have back home."

"Well, if it wouldn't offend your dignity, you could ride behind me. Or you could stay in the farmhouse here; you seem friendly to me,"

His eyes flick back to his deputy. Sam nods.

"but I doubt the family will be back within a week, whatever I tell them, so it's no trouble.

Oh, I should introduce myself. Artur Pendrack, sheriff of Aknesi Township."

"Kaylobesayn, wizard, charmed I'm sure. If they want to... lend out their house while they're on vacation? - then I can crash there, it shouldn't be too much longer before someone gets ahold of me. I guess it might take almost a week allowing for slower spell dev time of people who are not me but Aar Camlenn can probably come up with an interworld home reset soon as they know what went wrong."

"When we see a twenty-foot red dragon we assume destruction, slaughter, etc., and you gave their son quite a shock this morning, so they're pretty well terrified. If I tell them you'll be gone in a fortnight and won't eat any of their livestock, they'll be ecstatic just as soon as they believe me. But they won't, even with me ordained by the Nostrians."

The deputy calls out from behind him "Nostrians can't lie! He won't know that, Artur."

"Oh, of course, he's from very far away. Yes, if I deliberately lie to someone I'll be shunned by the priesthood and lose the magic Nostris gives me."

"How exciting. I'm not gonna hurt anybody, I just like a layer of scales between me and the elements if I have to sleep outdoors. Is twenty feet big for a dragon here?"

"Not enormous, but adult size. A couple centuries old, give or take. And dragons are exempt from the normal limits on power, so a native dragon your size could fight the whole country's army and probably win."

"I'm a pacifist! And an adolescent!"

"I mostly just mention so you understand why the farmers were terrified. That's what they thought fell asleep next to their pasture."

"Do I even look that much like a native dragon?"

"Honestly, I couldn't tell you. We don't get many dragons of any type, even the friendlier types. You were big, red, scaly, and winged. And apparently breathe fire, though that one they didn't see. That hits about everything country folk know about dragons."

The other man walks his horse closer. "I'm more well-traveled than anyone in town, and I've only seen two other dragons, one from a mile away. You looked similar enough, like two different breeds of dog."

"I don't know what a dog is." Sigh. "I am happy to crash at the farmhouse not bothering anyone until my people find a way to grab me out of here."

"Cats? Goats? Chickens? Songbirds? In any case, we can get you a meal at the farmhouse. I hold all the sheriff's curiosity for him, so I'd love to hear more about your type of dragon while we eat."

Sam dismounts and gestures toward the farmhouse. Artur turns his horse around, headed back the way the two of them came.

"I know what cats and goats and chickens and songbirds are. What do you wanna know?" Kaylo asks.

"Well, you're clearly not like ours. What do you do with your time? How would someone recognize dragons from your country? Do dragons participate in normal humanoid society there?"

"I go to school, a - normal humanoid school, if that's how you wanna describe it. Dragons from my world come in thirty colors and the colors are different shapes too, different horns and spines and so on, so there's no single way to tell, especially since I don't know what yours look like. It's not a matter of what country we're from, dragons are the same all over the world we live in."

"I think we have a dozen types? I remember gold, silver, bronze, red, green, and black. They're very rare, though, especially in this shell. We mostly only see hatchlings and they usually leave when they hit a century or so. I've heard of them shapeshifting, but not young ones, and if they participate in - let's call it 'non-dragon civilization' - they never let on. Our dragons, even the nice ones, are very secretive."

"They just... leave their babies lying around? We have all those kinds except bronze."

"I think they wait to watch them hatch? But a newly-hatched one is the size of a big goat, as clever as a dumb man, and tougher than a bear; they're not in any danger.

Like, if you'd walked into town in human form last night instead of sleeping out here, everyone would know you weren't Formene but you'd pass for human effortlessly. If our dragons shapeshifted into a human form and walked into a town, they'd have to work very hard to pass for human. They're...not people in the same way humans, dwarves, or even goblins are."

"We don't have goblins. Also Elcenian dragon hatchlings start about two feet long."

"Then yes, it would be bad to leave them to fend for themselves. Um, goblins are short, greenish, mostly thieves and raiders rather than growing or making things for themselves."

"Gotcha. Uh, are people going to panic if I do other magic here? Only some of mine is broken."

"Please don't. Too much power is literally dangerous to the fabric of reality, and our dragons get an exception to that but i have no idea if yours do.

Most forms of power it would be dangerous just to have the capability, and I'm still me so that hasn't happened. But wizards and some scholars are only dangerous when they do magic, so I'd really rather not bet our lives on it."

"You're... still you?"

"So Spark is this thing everyone has, a mix of power and importance to the universe. If you have too big a difference, people around you start to be supporting characters in your story rather than independent people. It's extremely creepy."

"That does sound extremely creepy! I will try not to do anything too important here at least until I know more about that!"

"I am not the guy to explain the details, you'd have to go to the city and ask at the university. If you do need to do magic, stick to the beginner stuff as much as you can; if anything's safe, that will be."

"Okay. Uh, I'm not gonna promise not to fix it if I get seriously injured or something though."

"Oh, that's something i have a good sense of, practical experience. Healing limbs outright isn't doable safely, but fixing disease or blindness, repairing organs, closing wounds, and replacing lost blood is safe if done slowly. Bringing back the dead is never safe here, but most things short of that will be."

"And you're sure that's going to apply to my magic too?"

"Not..completely? But we have a couple different forms of magic and limits are pretty consistent between them."

"I don't expect to lose a limb while I'm crashing in a farmhouse for a week waiting for my teacher to come up with an interworld-castable version of a spell he came up with earlier but if I do I either heal it, let the form bleed to death, or shapeshift, and my third form is a bird. They don't have hands."

"The shapeshifting is definitely fine, you did that while we were here."

"Yes... but they don't have hands. Birds, I mean. I suppose I really don't expect to chop off a leg while I'm crashing in this farmhouse but I'm saying if I do I might fix it."

"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."

"And one day you're gonna... tolerate something too risky and start mind-controlling people and have to find some way of going to the next shell."

"We've gotten somewhat better in the centuries since Llanech's day. There's a group called the Guardian Eyes, and they have fancy equipment they set up on mountaintops to look for people who are getting dangerous.

But also, I got tired of adventure. That's why I'm the sheriff's fixer here instead. Short of a new Dreadwar I expect I'll spend the rest of my life in Formene."

"So this doesn't happen to most people, that's good. How many people does it happen to?"

"Like, one per ten thousand? Maybe less."

"Uh-huh. How many people are there in... this shell?"

"Formene has a million, I think the various countries on the Circle Sea have about forty million between them, the rest of this coast is probably another five million, the other coast is less dense, maybe half that including the elves, inland maybe another fifteen million - no, with the dwarven mountains it would get up to twenty-five -, maybe a million on the islands in the Great Sea...that's probably it. So, hundred, hundred twenty million civilized people in the world? Probably? With a pretty broad view of 'civilized', I think that includes everyone who ever does trade or speaks the common."

"Do goblins and stuff ever get too - cool?"

"'Great' is the usual word. Goblins mostly speak the common and some places even build towns, one of Formene's neighbors has several goblin towns. And they do achieve Greatness, sometimes. Outright monsters like ogres or manticores, who mostly only interact with us to kill or be killed, probably less. A few times a century one of them gets powerful and goes on a rampage until the local heroes organize a posse and take them out. The ones that are at least a bit smart, usually. There are others that are just scarily-magic animals, really dumb, but i don't remember any becoming dangerously Great; probably they can only do it by accident."

"And you can't make somebody leave, so if somebody liked the idea of making everybody around them subordinate characters you just have to kill them?"

"That's what a Dreadwar is. Everyone gangs up, marches up to their territory, and asks them politely to Depart. And then kills them when they decline to do so." 

"This is not a great place, this here."

"To be clear, it's very rare it comes to that. I think it's been twelve centuries? It's just...most people who would be dissuaded by the army at the gates instead skip that and move on when they get the first strongly-worded letter from the Guardian Eyes."

"I mean, even if it doesn't come to that. Not a great place. I wonder if this is a thing about you or about the place, like, you were expecting me to have maybe had some effect that I didn't have, right?"

"I'd guess the place? But that's based on half-remembered doctrine from church school. Artur would know better than me, his church usually runs the schools because they're very big on honesty."

"Why is this a theological subject at all?"

"The gods are much more powerful, but more importantly much better-informed than we are. Only some of them have any interest in sharing, mind, but Nostris is one of them."

"I guess that sort of makes sense."

"I'm not terribly religious myself, but church magic is better than anyone else at healing so I've run with a few priests in my day. Artur's a good guy to have your back, and not preachy."

"I guess that's better than the alternative. I really don't expect it to take that long for someone to notice I'm gone and figure out what went wrong and come up with the obvious idea for a spell to fix it and then cast the spell to bring me home and hopefully I will spend that entire time writing down questions on the paper you're going to get for me and maybe using that to inform some research on your world conducted from safely outside of it."

"I honestly think you're overestimating how much effect this has on anyone here. We're not a utopia or anything but it's not holding us back that much."

Are they at the farmhouse? Sam hopes they are at the farmhouse so he can show him the kitchen, this is rapidly ceasing to be fun.

Kaylo is not the arbiter of distances to farmhouses! He is not even driving this quadruped. "You don't actually know what it would be like here if this thing were not the case!"

"Eh, I guess. I think we'd be in more danger without it, though. Maybe we'd all be way better off day to day and live twice as long but the level of random fatal raids by, i don't know, feral supermanticores, would be higher too. Normal manticores are scary enough."

"Surely the feral supermanticores aren't polite enough to exit the shell of their own accord?"

"Normal manticores aree close to the limit, and they don't get scarier from there. I...don't know why, actually."

Someone in the world has heard of evolution, but it sure isn't Sam.

"So it could be something else stopping them and you'd have greater locals around to go stab them or whatever."

"Yeah, that could be. Maybe your world is just far more friendly and well-mannered than ours."

"I guess."