"I don't know exactly, but there are many more possible reasons why he might end up not your brother than why your mother or grandparents might end up displaced, because a brother will be closer to the plot."

She looks at Raivethrani. "Are you suggesting that you could use some of your own reincarnation slots to bring people in from Lucy's world for Lucy? That's... I'm not sure it's quite unprecedented, but I can't recall seeing it done before. In theory it should work, though..."

"Is that really what you meant?" Lucy asks Raive, sounding awestruck and hopeful and stunned. 

"It costs me very little to provide it, so I don't see why not. Why don't you bring your mother and brother and whichever grandparent you feel more strongly about, and I will bring the other grandparent and anyone else you think of who you might like to have along?"

"Grandpa. I never met Grandma, she died before I was born, but all of Mama and Grandpa's stories about her were good. I don't have anyone but the four of them... I guess I know anyone else's name." She considers this. "Abdul Al-Hazred." 

"Then I will bring those two. Who is Abdul Al-Hazred?"

"He wrote the Necronomicon! Which is, like, the best book about stuff people mostly don't know about. There are others but the Necronomicon was really good. We had a copy but it was damaged--before we got it--and some important stuff was missing, Wilbur was trying to do research in an undamaged copy when he. When he probably died."

"I see! That does sound like an interesting person to have around."

Bounce bounce. "Can my magic work too in the new world?"

"What kinds of magic do you have, and how do you want them to work?"

"Uhhhh most of it involves drawing on, like, the Outer Gods for power, so I guess probably the new world would just need to be in reach of the Outer Gods?"

"Unfortunately I can't offer you that; worlds created in this way have to be isolated from preexisting worlds for regulatory reasons. But if you'd like, you could invent a similar magic system that works differently, or even has a different set of Outer Gods which you also invented!"

"...Ooh. Can you get, like, copies of books from my universe, for me to use as reference material?"

"I should be able to do that! Which books would you like?"

Bounce bounce. "I'd like the Necronomicon, and the Book of Eibon in Latin, and the Pnakotic Manuscripts in Aklo, and De Vermis Mysteriis and the Books of Hsan in English...I assume you can't make me know other languages."

"Let me see what I can do. I won't be able to produce translations that no one in your world has actually written," she cautions, before leaning down to the lower drawers of her desk and opening one to start pulling books out of it.

"What do all these books cover? I don't believe I'm familiar with your 'Outer Gods'."

"That's why I didn't just ask for all of them in English!" she asserts. "The books are about how to do magic, and what kinds of people there are or used to be and what those people did, and what people have observed or guessed about the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods. The Outer Gods are really powerful beings who don't much notice or care about our plane of reality, and the Great Old Ones are beings who exist much more closely to our reality than the Outer Gods do but also more closely to the Outer Gods' reality than we do. They do care about what goes on in our plane of reality sometimes, often not to the benefit of those who live there."

"I am not sure that I want a magic system entangled with the existence of such people. What if one of them noticed me and didn't like what I was up to?"

"Well, if I'm designing the magic system, I'd leave out the Great Old Ones entirely and just keep the Outer Gods."

"I'm still not sure I like it. In my experience, very powerful beings are not always comfortable to have around even when they're on your side, let alone when they're just indifferent. And if our only protection is that they aren't paying any attention, how do we draw on their power to do things? Will they really never notice, not even if we become fairly powerful ourselves and begin exploring nearby worlds?"

"I feel like, if anyone ever managed to piss off an Outer God, there would be stories about it, and there aren't."

"That is much less assurance than I would need to be comfortable with them, I think. Perhaps your magic could work in a different way? What is the function of the Outer Gods, and how might it be replaced?"

"They...are the source of the power? Like...reservoirs. They could all be like Azathoth, I guess. Or like how I think Azathoth is. I guess there are other interpretations of 'blind idiot god' but I always sort of assumed that Azathoth was like...not a conscious being. Like, still organisms, but like, plants, or mushrooms, instead of people."

"A mushroom does sound easier to outwit than a god," she acknowledges. "How would we draw power from these mushrooms, then?"

"With...spells. Sometimes you just have to say an incantation, and sometimes there's a more complicated ritual, but you say or do something that includes an approximation of the god's name, and then the thing you're doing magic about happens."