"Have fun with your horrific lava monsters and propaganda books!"

"...Propaganda?"

"The various books about magic. Nothing helpful in any of them, just scary things," informs Darren. "Fire and brimstone and all that? I'm pretty sure it's propaganda."

"Propaganda implies something a bit more systematic, doesn't it?"

"True, but... Eh, I don't like people having information and then not sharing it, at least on this sort of scale. So I call it propaganda because it kind of feels like it sometimes."

Bella nods. "Well, I'll see if there's anything useful in there to extract, anyway."

"Mhm. I'll go back to reading about dead things."

So Bella goes back to her reading.

Darren does, too. Dead things, hurray!

And eventually Charlie talks his way back into the Avalon and presents Bella with a shiny new refurbished laptop, which she is overjoyed to receive, and then some more eventually later, the group departs!

Darren gives Bella an overview of extinct creatures, much to Savannah's dismay. In summary - dragons are large and scary, but didn't have the magical talent sphinxes did and were jealous. The two groups proceeded to try to kill each other, and this is largely responsible for a large chunk of magical knowledge being missing. How nice.

"Jealousy. Swell reasoning," snorts Bella.

"I know, right?" sighs Darren. "But that's the official story."

"Is it just me or does that story sound like it was written by somebody who wanted the sphinxes to win?"

"It's not just you. I noticed, too. It could be because they're healers and people wanted them on their side?"

"Maybe. We also know for a fact that sphinxes aren't extinct, and I'm wondering how commonly known that was."

"That could be another reason. 'Write us well in the history books or suffer the wrath of the sphinxes' and all."

"Rawr."

Darren laughs. "Hey now, I haven't written anything bad about sphinxes, I have done nothing to earn any wrath from any sphinxes. I think."

More laughter. "What have I done to deserve your sleepy wrath, oh great sphinx?"

"Oh, I don't know, probably something."

"'Something.' You realize that if you don't tell me I'll probably unknowingly do it again."

Savannah knows what he's done to earn the wrath of the perytons. Not kissing Bella Swan, that's what.

"Then I'll just have to keep magicflopping on you, won't I? Till you learn better."