"Not especially, but I bet we can find someone who can do it."

Henry nods. "So... my situation is that this kind of magic can be used to duplicate people. Me and others used a crystal that turns you into crystal to survive things, then reconstitutes you when things are safe. But something went wrong and now the crystal keeps creating more copies of mes and others. On a desert island far away from any civilization. It's not an ideal situation."

"Ooh. We should go see, maybe I can figure out how to stop it." He seems excited at the prospect.

"That was what I was thinking. We can use my crystals to slow the process, but haven't managed to stop it indefinitely. Do you want to warn your friend first?"

"I should, yeah. He's probably out back, I'll go check." And he goes.

Henry waits.

When Wilston returns, Henry is no longer alone.

He trots back up to the table. "Who's your friend?"

"Gabe, you're the one that steals magic?" Gabe is tall even for a tall person, so even sitting down he has to lean in to see Wilston eye-to-eye.

"That's me!" he gives a playfully fancy bow. "And I research it in general; there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to figure out your thing."

"That would be good. The two of us get along with ourselves, but we would like to not be stuck in the middle of nowhere."

"You couldn't find your friend?"

"He's busy, we can come back and get him if we need him."

"Alright, do you want to visit our world and take a look at the cloning crystal... actually, hold on. We should see how you interact with an object matrix first."

He produces a dark-blue crystal from a pocket, vaguely coin shaped.

"This is a crystallized ration bar." He demonstrates by making a tiny bit of a golden nutty bar extrude out of the coin. "See if you can absorb the information? That tells the crystal how to turn back into food?"

"Sure." He pokes it.

It feels different from the other crystal, some subtle difference in the structure, maybe?

Hm. Yoink?

He gets... some kind of physical shield? If he is sensing it right. 

"Weird." Push, just a little one?

It expands, though, this time it is a barrier with a surface instead of a volume, fuzzy around the edges.

"Huh, my shield? I do physical stuff, while Henry does anti-magic."

"I guess I should've remembered that it wasn't my crystal, sorry. Uh, you at least can absorb more than one kind of crystal power. Can you sense anything else in the crystal to pick up?"

"Sure." He folds the shield back down and tries again. Yoink?

He gets something different! His magic sense is not translating it directly into the ration bar he saw... it feels... folded? Or unfolded. There is definitely something to it that feels more physical and like some kind of transmutation.

"I got something, let me see..." Fiddle fiddle...

The palm of his hand starts to acquire an interesting growth...

"uh, does it hurt?"