He nods. "Okay, time to turn into a girl." And he starts describing in lots of detail how his spell is going to turn him into a girl-bodied person. She can notice his mana reacting to this, again.

She takes the chance to observe arcanist-magic some more. Not trying to copy it, just trying to feel for the mechanics, like she did with artifacts. Probably won't get any useful detail yet...

There doesn't seem to be a lot of mechanism to it, or not a lot that's separate from just how his brain functions. There's the pool of mana there, and it's... swirling... or something, while he speaks the words, and when he's done—

—a chunk of the mana leaves the swirling pool to cause him to change.

The so-called "diplomacy training" kicks in. When in doubt about the proper reaction, have no reaction. She has no reaction. Deliberately.

He furrows his brows. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing at all," She almost sing-songs.

"Uh huh," he says, raising an eyebrow, but lets it go.

Now if he tries converting some of his own mana into witch mana?

"If you really want to know, my brain did a bunny hop because... I expected to stop thinking you're a little cute when you changed and didn't."

Fiiine she can make some Witch mana. It still leaks pretty fast out of her, but not instantly.

"—I'm flattered?" he says. "You're, erm, a bit too young for me."

"And I'm a bit too on-a-service-contract for anyone. You looked like you wanted to know what I was thinking."

"Right. Anyway—it seems to be okay with me converting but it still leaks away?"

"...Huh. Well you still have enough to turn it back to enchanter power with me watching carefully."

So he does that!

Grab the thing that just happened. Does it work?

Nope. It's like trying to grab the action of mentally turning a pink elephant into a blue elephant: depends a lot on Kaede's particular thoughts and isn't all that grabbable anyway.

"Well, that didn't help. Maybe if I watch you do enough artifact-making it'll eventually click. No rush though."

He nods. "Anyway, I should turn back—" And he starts doing the reverse spell.

She goes back to peering at the door and whatever the other things here are. She was always good at seeing what things will do unless it's completely foreign to her...

The walls and tablets seem to have some... communicative purpose... somehow...

What, like a telegraph? She keeps paying attention.

Poke, poke, poke. Sketch spell structure in her notebook. As much as she can even make it out since this magic doesn't structure things like Witches do.

No, not communication with outside. More like there's information there and it can be communicated to whoever's inside, somehow.

So it's a magic book.

How does she read it, is the question.

Good question! This magic has several moving parts, it's not obvious at all.

Right, but she has practice figuring out unfamiliar magic. The natural magics, she's done a dozen of those. And only really deciphered them by actually triggering them, but still.

If she sort of - bends her mana - she can get it to almost feel like Kaede's when he was charging the door. Will the door accept further charge? The magic book? (It's not full or anything, is it?)