"I was doing a prototype for something void-related and this guy showed up in my room," she gestures at him, "after curfew, and we killed a bunch of mals and then he went into the hall and I stopped being bothered by them and he still survived the night. And he isn't Orion Lake. He says he can make material objects and he can back it up. He wants to stress-test his indestructibility on one of his wings before he starts messing with stuff, and, sorry, but you're better for that than I am."

"What the dickens are you supposed to be?" El asks him.

"It seems so far that I am a demon from an alternate universe."

"How's being indestructible work?"

"Part of the species package deal, sorry. I can replace my wing if you want to blast it off me."

"I should throw mana at this why?"

"Arbitrary material objects. Admittedly I didn't quiz him on how arbitrary and how he targets things so I don't actually know whether it just means 'abitrary artificing slash alchemy ingredients, non-poisoned food, clothing, and killing mals by making stuff where they are, or if he can also pull the Golden Sutras out of thin air, but it didn't seem necessary to establish this before dragging him down here."

"Would you like breakfast or something for your trouble."

"Is it any good?"

"Yeah! --Okay now I'm curious can you pull arbitrary spellbooks out of thin air--"

"If the spellbooks are not themselves magical or intelligent or something," Cam says. He hands El pancakes and bacon.

"Fucking hell," says El of pancakes and bacon.

"Quite."

"I know, right? Real food. --Wait, you can't make magical things?"

"Not that I have tried. Would you like to name a magical thing and see if I can do it with examples to copy?"

She pulls out her knife again. "This'll do. Or, like, my dress, if you're more comfy with defensive magic than offensive."

He attempts the dress.

He gets a black silk dress in a slightly-orientally-influenced style that looks mostly like the one Lucy is wearing except duller in a couple of places where she used dyes made of mal parts. 

She pokes it. "Yeah, not magic."

"So, yeah, the objects have to be material. And will turn out stupid even if there is no physical reason for this. But should cover books unless those are usually written on magical paper or something."

"No, they tend to acquire magic but the books themselves shouldn't fall apart without it."

El is still stuffing her face with pancakes very cheerily.

El is VALID. 

"--Oh man, imagine if we dumped a copy of the whole New York library in the middle of the open where everyone could see, the New Yorkers would be pissed and everyone else would be thrilled. I mean if we were going to do it we should probably do it with all the big enclaves or at least Shanghai but that's not super a downside from my point of view."

"I mean, it certainly looks like you guys are not eating well and are generally resource-poor in a way that doesn't strictly reduce to too much intellectual property."

"--I mean, too much intellectual property does a lot more damage when it's magic than when it's Disney bribing Congress to say their copyrights haven't run out."

"Yes, just, priorities seem to me like they might start with scaling up the pancakes and leave some time to negotiate about the spells and for me to learn what you want the spells for."