A very short man with pointed ears, looking a bit weathered for his apparent age of late-twenties, comes down the stairs from the hotel portion of the establishment, scans the room, and makes his way over to the crystal-laden table. "What's that?" he asks, without preamble.

He looks up and puts his not-quite-salesman face boosted by his honest magic-geek smile and waves at the various structures. "Magically created crystals." He holds up a hand, the fingertips made of the same crystal.

One of the fingertips extends and makes contact with a chalice shaped crystal, and then it changes into a dull metal gray.

"It's my own world's native magic. Interested?"

"Ooh, very. Safe to touch?" He's already reaching for the chalice.

He pushes the chalice towards him. "It's non-magical steel. I am Henry, by the way."

"Wilston." He pokes the chalice. "Huh, not even a trace."

"Of magic? Or crystal? I am trying to refine to get the pure material."

"Magic. Usually there's at least a little." He pokes one of the other crystals.

"Those should be magic, though, they should have at least traces of anti-magic. I am not sure how it would work for your senses."

He pulls his hand back after a couple of seconds and shakes it out a bit. "Yeah that's anti-magic, all right. So why are you trying to make steel when Bar'll just sell it to you?"

"It's a skill, so I can make my own objects at home, and a precursor to using this kind of magic for healing if I decide to specialize in that."

"Oh, healing, nice. How do you guys do it? Wizards can't yet, where I'm from, I'd love to take a technique home."

"Got anything to trade for? And one of the primary applications of this magic is duplication. And if you have enough control, you can replace a damaged part with a healthy part."

"I can teach you spellthievery but it's not quick to learn - it'd be worth it for healing a wizard can do though and that might work if it's not just transmutation."

"The magical terminology might not align, so I don't know for sure if it's not just transmutation, or what that implies. What is spellthievery do?"

"The short version is that it lets me take spell effects or uncast spells from other people or things and have them or cast them myself."

"Might not be very useful where I am from, even if it does work with our magic. Though, I am curious enough to give it a try. What is a 'spell', exactly? All our magic comes from these." He waves. "Different people can make different kinds with different effects, though everyone can use them to duplicate materials."

"I'd expect to be able to borrow the ability to make them, then - might be able to mix kinds, too. In my world magic comes in discrete bits, a wizard will prepare a summoning spell or a polymorph spell or whatever and it just does that one thing once when they use it - or when I do - and they can prepare something different in its place the next day."

"Interesting. We can create each other's crystals if we have a sample to duplicate, but it is, too, a skill, easier than working on living matter, though not that much easier. Our magic doesn't do discrete bits like that? The more of the right kind of crystal you have around, the stronger is the effect. Or how much energy you put behind it. Can anyone learn this back where are you from?"

"Yeah. Wizardry, too, but that's not really useful without our libraries - wizards need their spells written down to prepare them."

"Huh, are the books magical? Maybe bars can sell those? Or... you don't use the books yourself?"

"Nope, spellthievery's different, I don't prepare my own spells at all. Though I do have a few, at this point. Anyway Bar can't sell the books, the inks they use aren't completely mundane."

"Too bad, still... can you try stealing from these? Would you expect to make them lose their power?"

"I can try, I'm not sure it'd settle right on me though - if you can usually put it on humanoids it will, otherwise I'd have to try it and see. And either way it'll depower them for like ten minutes if I do."

"Maybe not as useful for the purpose, I was thinking, but still useful. Do you want to take a shot then?" He takes a vaguely rectangular crystal and offers it to him.

"Sure." Yoink?

Yoink! Definitely anti-magic, and something about is less structured than a wizard's spells, but also more flexible.

"Yeah, that worked. It almost feels like I should be able to do something with it?"

"Yeah, you can put your life energy into it to create a sphere of anti-magic around you." He gestures towards the yoinked crystal. "Let me see if it feels different?"

"Yeah, here," he passes it back. "How's the life energy thing work?"

"The regular way is just to use your connection with the crystal to push the energy into it, which would be intuitive, are you feeling anything like that?"

He inspects the crystal, extending the fingertips to connect to it. "Weird."

"Yeah, just - life energy's the kind of thing it's a good idea to be careful with, at least where I'm from." He shrugs, and pushes just a tiny bit in.

"Using the crystals is uncomfortable enough that it's hard for us not to be careful, but excellent point."

Just the tiny bit of life energy is enough to "inflate" the magical structure and expand it like a hot air balloon. It covers the entirety of  the space between Wilston and Henry, plus a few inches. There is a sense that the structure is flexible and occupying that much area makes it... weak, like this wouldn't stop any magic that isn't a cantrip, just diminish slightly.

And if he puts in a little more?

He can feel the fuel moving through from the center of the anti-magic sphere like a wave, then reaching the outer wall and adding a couple more inches.

Huh. Can he... squish it closer?

The bubble trembles... but fails to change.

"What are you trying to do?"

"It looks like it'd be stronger if it wasn't as big? So I'm trying to make it smaller. I'll get it in a minute, probably."

"Ah," he nods. "Might be easier if you pick a specific point instead to direct into, instead of working on the whole thing? That is what is like for me."

Hm, like this? No.... Like this? Not quite... How about this?

No... nope! And... now that works! The anti-magic becomes less uniform in shape and effect, but clearly more efficient. This could be used as quite a decent shield.

Nice. "I'd be interested in taking one of those home if you're up for selling them. Assuming the effect sticks around."

"I don't mind. I am hanging out here for that purpose, actually. And the effects stay, assuming tapping them for magic doesn't render them powerless."

"It shouldn't. Like, I'll want to see what that one's looking like in ten minutes," he nods at the crystal he tapped earlier, "but it never does at home. Anyway, what would you want for one?"

"Learning spellthievery would be good. Things you can't buy from Bar would also be good. If you world is extremely nice to live in, I might know some people who wouldn't mind moving out of the island we are stuck in."

"Oh, you need to talk to Tarstil - do you see him around? Human, heavy, tall, short beard, grey robes? He was going for a walk out back but he might have come back in."

Henry stands up to look around and try to remember if he has seen anyone fitting that description. It isn't at all weird given Milliways typical patrons.

He doesn't seem to be around.

Henry shakes his head. "Does he have any particular expertise on the topic?"

"Yeah, he's a cleric of Fharlanghn, our god of travel. Not, like, a very good one, magically, more of a wizard, but it's still his job to help people who're stuck places."

"Oh, that sounds helpful. Is his - and for the matters yours - magic good at transporting large objects?"

"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?"

"Uh. No, but..." Can he undo that?

The growth turns back into the magical pattern. "Oh, good. Using the crystals is usually uncomfortable."

"Might be a species difference," he shrugs. "Anyway, that seems like it answers it."

"I wouldn't expect for it to be a species difference, but who knows?"

"Not me! I guess we can go and see if he can stop our world from being blessed with multiple usses?"

"Sounds like a plan!"

"Alright, Gabe, tell the others that we will be leaving," Henry stands up and invites Wilston towards the door. "It's a short walk."