There is a house, and in the house is a bed, and in the bed is a girl. She sleeps soundly, curled up very small under her blanket, while a steady accumulation of snow makes round soft piles on the roof and against the outsides of the walls.
"Would you like me to leave you alone now? It's undoubtably been rather a shock for you, so if you'd rather not talk more right now..."
"I want to see magic things that might be useful more than I want to sit by myself and be unhappy."
"That's the spirit! Should I bring the magic things here, or bring you to the magic things? The first one would probably be faster, because, you know, teleporting."
"It might take me a few moments to gather everything, but don't worry, I'll right back!"
Ishmerai smiles, and disappears.
A few minutes later, there is a 'clank' from the balcony. Ishmerai has appeared again, carrying a backpack full of things that are very complicated beneath selfsight.
Ishmerai steps in with a nod to Riya, and drops the backpack down next to the bed with another loud clank. Unzipping it, she efficiently lays out various instruments of destruction on the sheets.
"Sorry, I would use a table if we had one big enough... I'll have to bring one over here when we're done with the weaponry."
"Powerful magical weapons, found or retrieved from the shadows."
She taps an impressively ornamented longsword.
"The Bastard of Dalheim. Powerfully holy. Causes pain in those who lie while it is unsheathed, and cuts through the Shadows' defenses like butter."
She brushes the notched handle of a rusted revolver.
"Spite. A vicious gun, which seems to guide its envenomed bullets to its opponents' weakest points. Only six shots, though."
A double-edged knife.
"The Lady. A fated blade that draws its bearer towards great dangers - with even greater rewards."
A scimitar, curved like a treble clef.
"Dirge. Sings when unsheathed with intent to kill. The more that enemies fear its bearer, the weaker and more helpless they become."
A battleaxe, heavy as a stone, sharp as a razor.
"Gloryseeker. Grants immense strength and fortitude, deflects incoming missiles, and a canny awareness of one's environment. Unfortunately, none of these enchantments will function for anyone who has ever lied."
She studies the items, and their reflections. How are they put together? How can she take them apart?
They appear to be made of thin skeins of enchantment, layered and layered atop mundane metal.
Hmm...
The battleaxe sounded like it had the things she wanted most. She gently peels the reflection apart, picking up the layers for 'immense strength and fortitude' and transferring them to herself as carefully as possible. She doesn't care at all about the lying criterion, and the reflected copy of it is shredded to uselessness in short order.
Meanwhile, her real body stands there blankly.
"Immense Fortitude" comes easily, but then "Immense Strength" starts peeling a little at the edges - what she ends up with is more like "pretty decent strength."
That's... acceptable.
She pulls at the rest of the axe's reflected magic and manages to get a nearly perfect copy of the missile-deflecting aura effect, wrecking the situational awareness part in the process.
Then she says, "That was useful."
She stands there for a few moments, trying to figure out how to explain.
Then she says, "...I can... copy magic. Parts of magic. I copied parts of that one," she points at the axe. "Do you have more magic things?"
"These are most of the ones I can carry with me. Were you looking for anything specific?"
"I don't know what things there are. But I want to be able to get rid of the shadows." She looks at the other weapons. "Maybe I will copy some things from the others of these too. But it's hard to figure out what being holy is made of exactly. Do you think it would be useful to be holy?"
She nods thoughtfully.
Then she says, "I wonder what happens if you take the axe away and then bring it back..."
Ishmerai picks up the ax again, and vanishes for a moment: then she reappears.
"Did that do anything?"
"I'm not sure. It might have changed the reflection a little. But it didn't fix all the things I took out."
She looks at the holy sword and tries to figure out how its holiness is implemented and whether it would be a good idea to copy it.
The holiness is rather complex. It's 'destroy evil in general' and 'speak honestly' and 'strengthen the righteous' and 'destroy demons specifically' and a half-dozen other things, all tied together in intricate knots that reinforce each other. It looks rather likely to shred if she pulls at it.