Excellent! The little dragon grins, in so far as dragon mouths grin. "I believe this creature would agree its life has been enriched."

The imp nods fervently. Nodnodnodnodnod. 

...hmm, the rubber arm was funny for a bit but it should probably revert back to having functioning bones now. It tries extruding dragon-like wings from its back instead. Does it have to move mass from elsewhere in its body, or can it just grow wings? Let's find out! 

It does need to shift mass around to form wings if it wants them right now, but the imp also helpfully knows now that if it's willing to wait a while, it could absorb mass from the air instead. It also knows, unintrusively and intuitively, how to shape and connect the underlying structure of the wings so that they're actually usable, ensuring they're flexible and mobile enough to not get in the way, and lots of other details that just make things smoother and more functional.

The little dragon looks from the imp to Zuragazh. "So, what do you think?"

What does he think?

Well. The imp seems satisfied—gleeful, in fact—but Zuragazh doesn't trust its judgment to notice if something was wrong. That it didn't seem to have any problem putting its arm back to normal is reassuring, though. 

"It appears to function as you described," he concedes out loud, watching the imp slowly grow wings. Still, caution urges him to wait. "Will you be terribly offended if I take a few days to think it over before accepting your offer myself?" 

“Not at all, that seems like a reasonably cautious course of action. Would you be willing to leave some reading material within view of this circle? I’d like to apprise myself of this world’s history and present situation in the meantime, if possible.”

"Of course. I shall select some titles from my personal collection, and leave you this imp to turn the pages. Is there anything else you require to be comfortable—cushions? Food? More or less light?" (The cave is, indeed, quite dimly lit.) 

"No, I'm perfectly comfortable as it is, though thank you for your consideration."

"Good. I will return shortly with some reading material for you."

Zuragazh leaves, after reminding the imp once again not to cross the chalk circle. He winds through the tunnels of his lair to the room where he keeps his books: history, geography, and natural sciences on one bookcase, and tomes of magic on another. Selecting a few works he judges both reliable and representative, he pulls them off the shelves with a whispered spell and stacks them in a basket to carry back. 

The whole trip only takes him about a quarter of an hour, and then he's back with his basket of books. 

By the time he gets back, the imp has wings big enough to fly with and is gleefully zipping in circles around the cavern. 

This little scamp is just adorable. Seeing people truly enjoy the gift of the coils warms the Fallen One’s heart.

“Thank you again. I hope that whatever endeavors you pursue during this time go well.”

With that, unless Zuragazh has anything else to ask of the little dragon, they will request the imp to show them the provided books, lining them up around the chalk circle. Several small, black pits form on the little dragon’s head, and they then direct the imp to open the books and begin flipping the pages, as fast as the pages can be flipped without risking any damage to them. The little dragon evidently has no issue reading several pages of dense text simultaneously.

All together, the Fallen One is looking to develop a good understanding of this world’s magic and high-level political situation, with an eye towards how it’s constituent peoples have reacted to other major magical happenings, and on the off-chance there’s some particularly strong parallel, how they might react to the Fallen One and their gift in particular.

The imp is going to zoom around the circle flipping pages as it passes them. Wheeeee! 

It turns out that this is not the most efficient method of flipping pages as fast as possible, and also flying takes energy. After a bit, the imp lands and swaps out the wings for a bunch of extra-long arms with which to turn pages. This is somewhat faster. 

The imp's simple joy and growing use of the Coils is delightful, prompting a modest chuckle from the little dragon. It's not much of a distraction either, they're more than capable of dividing their attention across all the books and keep watch of the imp at the same time. While the Fallen One makes a habit of trying to absorb information quickly, they're not going to chastise the imp for having some fun, and they doubt that such a relatively minor slowdown will actually impact their ability to read all these books during this trial period.

The Fallen One can glean the following information from their reading: 

The inhabitants of this world call it Kelovea. They believe it to be shaped like a vast boat floating on an even larger ocean. These books contain three contradictory stories of how this situation came to be, although all of them are presented by the authors as myths with no factual basis. 

There are widely agreed to be seven species of sapients living on the boat. They're listed in one book as (in approximate order of population): humans, dragons, stoneborn, merfolk, sirens, dreamers, and the 'hidden folk', which might or might not be the same as the species another book refers to as the 'little folk'. Every species has its own innate magic, separate from the kinds of magic that can be taught and learned by anyone. 

Magic that can be taught and learned falls into various traditions with very few principles in common. Some of them rely on drawing symbols and diagrams, or on writing out the effect they want to achieve. Others operate by chanting, reciting, or singing. Some combine diagrams and chanting, and so on. One of the few consistencies is that all of these kinds of magic have an element of ritual: spells take time to set up and cast, and the stronger the spell the longer and more complex the ritual is likely to be.  

Politics-wise, the boat is divided into dozens to hundreds (depending on how you count) of separate states, most of which have been to war with most of their neighbours at various points in their history. Some of those wars are ongoing as of the latest publication date. Many of the states could be described as monarchies, others as oligarchies, and there's more than one theocracy. Most polities are mixed species, although merfolk tend to do their own thing due to incompatible environmental preferences.

It seems to be relatively common for a single dragon to rule a small nation-state with a mixed population of mostly or entirely non-dragons, although humans are the most frequent rulers of mixed populations—disproportionate to their overall numbers, in both cases, if the Fallen One is counting. Places where members of the same species cluster together tend to be ruled by one (or more) of their own. Dragons ruling over dragons is, oddly, rarer, and the state that comes closest also seems to be the closest thing to a democracy described in these books. 

Interesting, that's certainly not a world-shape the Fallen One has encountered before. It's unfortunate but not unexpected given the metaphysics present that the political environment has reached this particular equilibrium.

Regardless, they'll see if they can prompt the Imp to indicate where on the map the cave system they seem to be inside of is located, and then consider the particular polities, groups, and powerful individuals that might be nearby. Do any of them have a standing relationship with the Fallen One's summoner, for example?

They are...here!

The cave is in the mountains, bordered on one side by a relatively large and stable kingdom with a human monarchy, and on the other by a sparsely-inhabited desert. It looks like Zuragazh is effectively the ruler of his own little domain here, and has been for centuries. A few other dragons have their own small territories with varying levels of independence from the crown. There are colonies of stoneborn and dreamers within the kingdom that are still subject to the king but, reading between the lines, seem to be largely self-governing in practice. 

Notable powerful individuals living in the kingdom include Malovade, a centuries-old dragon who runs a world-renowned school of wizardry and is generally considered to be one of the greatest wizards ever to live. There are also multiple religious organizations with some level of social and political power in the kingdom. It seems that many gods are worshipped alongside each other in this land, although the histories reveal some wars in the past motivated by religious differences. 

The Fallen One makes a note to send a body to meet this Malovade character, as well to the capital of the kingdom and the most major population centers of its semi-autonomous subdivisions assuming he can find the locations of these in the books, once they're free to travel. Religious groups may be relevant, but they're hesitant to make the first move with regards to them. Too powerful a stranger, bearing too incredible a gift, can create negative outcomes, or at least that is the sense the Fallen One gets. There probably isn't much explicit record of which places have the most need for their gift, the weak and the sick and the hungry are often not the most interesting populations for historiographers, but hopefully such information will be more forthcoming once they can gather it in-person.

Internally, the Fallen One will continue to construct plans for how to disseminate their gift and come to terms with the local powers and forces. Externally, they'll gesture to the imp that they've completed their reading and ask, "Would you like to play any sort of game until Zuragazh comes back?"

"Game?" it asks eagerly. "Do you know any good ones?" 

Do they? "There is a game from the place I come from, that involves shapeshifting, we could try."

It'll need some adapting, since the Fallen One's gift can't be used on others, and because they and the imp are separated by the magical barrier. After accounting for all of that, it will mostly just be a slightly more formalized version of the 'making increasing weird faces at each other' game they had played earlier, taking turns inventing tricky shapes that the other has to mimic and then add onto. It will serve as a suitable framework for the imp to experiment and more deeply integrate the shapeshifting portion of the gift, assuming it finds the game as fun as its earlier iteration.

Absolutely! The imp takes a possibly unreasonable amount of delight in coming up with sillier and sillier shapes for the Fallen One to turn into. It seems to be optimising for humour over technical difficulty. 

That's entirely fair, the Fallen One is somewhat doubtful that the imp would be able to take a form that would be beyond the Fallen One's capacity, given that they are the source of the imp's own shapeshifting (barring any innate ability to do so without their gift, at least).

When it's the Fallen One's turn to add something to the form, they'll be careful to balance what seems like it would amuse the imp, and what will (gently) push the boundaries of its displayed skill with shapeshifting and encourage it to tap into more of the gifted knowledge.