"Yeah, I barely remember her, but, yeah, that's why my childhood was like that."

"--I really am sorry those were the choices available."

"It's not great! I am hoping for some interdimensional synergy that fixes it all right up."

"I'm entirely in favor. Is there some resource an abundance of which might do some immediate good, or other obvious low-hanging fruit?"

"I had some preliminary extremely tentative results with shoestring-budget research on a harmless sort of mal called agglos - I have the writeup I was going to publish on me, actually - but in terms of things witches could help with, wizards are constantly short of mana and can be hired to do things for and with it, aren't ever immortal and are accordingly more risk-averse than witches, and seem so far in most respects to have an inferior state of the art in many areas of magic."

"--Okay, well, providing us with new mana storage would definitely increase our ability to help with that, I--well technically Jaromira but we tend to pool resources--have access to a mint, which is also good--can I see your writeup?" She bounces slightly on her heels. 

On the Translation of Methods of Pest Control

Abstract: Although agglomerating vermin ("agglos") do not take mana against resistance, making them safe to handle and experiment on, they have sufficient resemblances to typical maleficaria in their ecological niche (subsisting off mana in a scavenging/parasitic fashion, requiring no traditional calories, etc.) that it is probable some results may generalize. I put a quantity of small adult agglos in four compartments and observed them under four conditions (control, starvation, poison, and contraceptive). Over the course of the experiment thus far, since handed down to my junior clavemate Emma Lee, I found that agglos do not starve in this time frame, though starved agglos exhibit behavioral changes; that some though not all poisons harm them, and that some but not all poisons successfully harm other mals which eat the poison-bearing agglo; and that the condition wherein they were given various birth control did exhibit a smaller next generation than the control.

Setup: Thanks to Franklin Leister of Boston, I acquired an agglo terrarium (design attached). The poison condition agglos were rotated out, while the others had static populations after an initial agglo collection period. For tracking convenience each agglo was named for a distinctive item attached to it at the time of capture and then randomly assigned (except later poison condition additions). Controls: 9 agglos (Knucklebone, Woodchip, Vial, Shoelace, Pen, Ingot, Spoon, Scrunchie, and Locket)....

Katarzyna devours the paper (figuratively). 

"This is brilliant, I love it." 

"Thank you! - you do seem a lot like Kanimir."

"Is that a good thing?" She hugs the paper briefly before offering it back to Bella. 

"Yeah, we're friends - were - I hope he's alive."

"--I hope so too. If he isn't, how retrievable do you expect the body would be, assuming we can kill whatever ate him and dissect its stomach."

"Uh. I don't know how warranted that assumption is, most people who die graduating probably wind up in multiple stomachs."

"Okay, good to know. Honestly I assume that if we're killing something in that room we're killing everything--I'm not assuming we can, necessarily, but Helena doesn't seem to have had much trouble with the siren-spider sight unseen, so I think it's at least worth considering the possibility that an intelligently-assembled team of witches can clear the area without catastrophic casualties."

"There's maw-mouths in there. Everything else is mostly only a problem for a prepared adult wizard because of their quantity, but. Maw-mouths are almost unkillable. One guy did it one time and he had to do it from the inside with a circle of backup and it took him days."

"What is a maw-mouth."

"Giant ooze covered in eyes. People who have been eaten by one are, uh. Still reachable with communication spells."

"--Well that's unfortunate. Do they consume anything besides organic matter?"

"Arguable if other mals are organic matter, sometimes, and they do eat those, most mals will."

"If it's made up of flesh what I'm wondering is if a witch made of water or fire or metal would be, if not impervious, at least only at risk of death by these creatures."

"Oh. I wouldn't bet on it, some mals are exotic materials like that and I wouldn't expect a maw-mouth to turn up its noses."

"Unfortunate...what do you know about the methods by which this person killed one? I can imagine someone willing to take the risk if it could be guaranteed that the thing would die not long after..."

"We don't know much else about it, Dominus Li was the guy who did it and he's Chinese. But he's still alive, maybe he could be talked into explaining."

"A promising avenue of investigation." 

"I wonder what would happen if we managed to interest the Celestial Codex."