It feels like being smarter. Ideas come together a little faster, and some might be able to all sit in his head at once where they couldn't before. Mental math is easier. It's just - better.

This is incredible.

Leareth goes to Carissa the next day and asks how far off she is from being able to make the most powerful version of the headband. They have a mine for the spellsilver ore now; they can get her as much as she needs and more, so she can afford to experiment with it when it might not work.

"Twenty days, if I do it full-time. A bit longer if I'm doing spell research too. Should I start on it? Headbands are great, I was saving up for one when...stuff...happened."

"I can imagine they are excellent to have! Yes, I would like you to start on it, though I do not think it need be a huge rush; you can keep doing spell research as you judge fit."

"Of course. - the next thing I'd like to have is pearls. You can enchant them to recall lost spell slots, which will let me get lots more research done in a day, and I don't know how to do it but I bet it's not harder to figure out than headbands." Which in the end took her less than two months. 

"I agree, that sounds like a valuable next priority. Would you need any special materials other than spellsilver?"

"Yes, you need pearls. From oysters - I guess I don't know if you even have those here - uh, they're going to be hard to substitute if not..."

"...We have oysters, yes. Though not cheaply obtainable in this region. How large and high-quality do the pearls need to be?"

"I'm not sure. The pearls of power I've seen were this big." She holds her hand to gesture about half an inch.

"Ah. I think that ought be feasible, though it would be much cheaper in a month when spring arrives and trade from the southern coast can happen without needing Gates everywhere. If it will take you longer than twenty days of work for the most-powerful headband anyway, I am inclined to wait for that."

"Of course. I'll keep doing the spell research and you can put in an order when it's convenient." She is not-thinking several things.

This would be unsurprising to Leareth even if he were right then reading her mind, which he isn't; he and a few others do read her at random a few times a day, and check her room with mage-sight, but he's not doing anything more systematic than that.

Leareth nods, thanks her, and goes back to his work. He tries to figure out the maximum number of times he can prepare Fox's Cunning per day.

He can manage it three times. Maybe if he spent a while optimizing the spell stabilizations he could get four.

Leareth has an advantage to that, since he has mage-sight and almost two thousand years of experience, and he is totally going to optimize how many times a day he can make himself smarter, while he waits for Carissa to figure out the permanent version of it.

She's working on it. 

Half the time.

The other half the time she's working on Nondetection, which should make her mind harder to read, she hates how everything she's doing could fall apart in a second if anyone reads her, and testing whether if she Alters Self into her boyfriend she has Healing (she does not), and trying to figure out a variant of Alter Self where she would, which explodes so violently and repeatedly that she eventually concludes if it's doable at all she has the wrong angle on it. 

There is no way she can siphon enough spellsilver for Boots of Teleport but she sketches designs for them anyway; trying to figure them out isn't a suspicious thing to do. Actual plans she continues to consider only during sex. You can make magic items cheaper by making them worse. Making them crowd out every other magic item on your body with a loud obnoxious interfering aura is one way, but that would also make them really conspicuous. Making them one-use-only, maybe - more like a scroll of teleport than a magic item - using the spell-diagram for Teleport she used for Leareth's teleporting dagger...

- it's a criminal use of spellsilver, designing a single-use sewing needle of teleport, but it might work.

There's the fact she's apparently under a compulsion not to leave. She's not sure how that works or whether casting Dispel Magic on herself would make it go away. 

She makes Calib a spellbook and walks him through cantrips and then scribes Charm Person for him as a first-level spell to practice. "Does Velgarth have anything like that - I know Leareth did something to make me not run away but I don't think it worked by making me like everybody..."

"...Oh, right, I guess you wouldn't have gotten the run-down on that." He looks sheepish and awkward about it. "Mages can do compulsions - Leareth is very good at it, apparently, guess he has lots of practice. Uh, everyone who works in this base has one, mine's not as intense as the research staff's but it was part of my contract, I can't share anything I learn here with people not cleared to the same level, or sabotage any projects I'm aware of." Shrug. "Not like I'd want to, right, it's half just to make sure no one does stupid stuff when they're drunk on holiday. And the other half is that Leareth is a paranoid bugger. - You don't count, as someone off the base I mean, since you're right here."

"Oh, that makes me feel better about it, if it's something he did to everybody and not just to me." She squeezes his hand. "I mean, I guess mine might still be different, but. It's not an entirely different class of thing? If that makes any sense?"

"I think that makes sense. It's the same kind of spell."

(If Carissa reads his mind, Calib is thinking that it does seem pretty different whether you signed a contract on paper first saying you were signing up for this life, because you thought it was worth the restrictions, versus being dropped out of the sky from another world and snatched up by Leareth before you could make a splash anywhere else - it's probably still for the best, for Velgarth, Carissa wouldn't exactly be better off anywhere else, but...it does eat at him a little bit, that she didn't sign a piece of paper first to agree to this.)

Snuggle. "I wonder whether they show up to Enchantment Sight. - the charm one I showed you does, you're all glowy if someone's charmed you, they use it to make sure no one's, say, signing away their life savings under an enchantment or something."

"Oh, huh, what's Enchantment Sight? Compulsions show up to mage-sight like any magic does, but they're low power so apparently it takes a close look to notice. Also I don't have mage-sight anyway so it's not like I could tell."

"I wish I had mage-sight!" Sigh. "I can only see magic when I directly Detect it and I don't get a lot of detail and I can't really see myself. ...I guess you could cast Detect Magic, as a cantrip, and look at me, and see if anything shows up."

Calib sighs. "Now I wish I could show you Healing-Sight that easily! It's so beautiful. But...sure, I'll give that a go."

He gets out his spellbook for reference, stares at the cantrip in fierce concentration. Casts it, and looks intently at Carissa.

"...No, sorry, I don't think I see it?"

Shrug. "No worries. I bet it needs Enchantment Sight, which is heavier duty. And it's not really a big deal at all, only it's weird, right, having something in my head and not knowing."

"I guess so? You could ask Leareth about the details, I'm sure he'd tell you." Calib snuggles up closer, as though trying to reassure her just with his physical presence.

Kiss. "He's so scary, though."