"Thank you!"

Really, this has been a great day so far for science!

If they're going to be staying here for a bit, Wenduag will stay by Ember. This Finnean seems to have once been a capable adventurer, and learning how to make her weapon change shape could be very useful.

Fyllamen is pretty confident by now those gloves are a kind of magic item he's never even heard of before! It's incredibly difficult to puzzle out, but he's hardly going to ask any of them to leave before he manages it and if they stay they might decide to make another purchase.

Brenda has a bunch more questions for the golem! She wants to find out their digit span and reverse digit span and how they do on the stroop test (being part notebook is very handy for administering this) and incidentally how does Nenio do on all of these and how does she do now that she has the best headband and can she come up with a decent shape rotation task and and and . . . 

(But eventually (in a surprisingly small number of actual minutes) she gets out of the snuggle pit science hole and pays for the cloaks and leaves.)

If the golem has a digit span; it's not something she'll manage to find in a casual examination; it is perfectly capable of repeating back hundred number strings to her, including if she gives another string in between. They don't even seem to notice the incongruities of the stroop test either, but the reverse digit span gives them a lot of trouble until she finds the right way to phrase it and it becomes as easy as the first string. Nenio fares significantly less well on the digits, though they do seem to have a relatively normal human memory at least while the test is ongoing, but does nearly as well on stroop testing and can solve any shape rotations almost as quickly as Brenda can come up with them.

While none of the individual things Brenda did today were especially time consuming, by the time she heads out of the store it is nonetheless mid evening and the sun hangs low in the southwest sky.

She hopes and intends that telling both Woljif and the Eagle Watch all the relevant information she learned from the golem and Frulliatros will be the last errand of the day, a leaf-node of the errand-tree from which she can exit to her room at the inn and not talk to anyone (other than Alpina) or do any tasks (other than study magic) for several hours, and maybe also sleep.

There are always more things she could do. The church of Desna is holding an evening vigil for the dead, rumor has it count Arendae decided to take the demons being driven off as an excuse to throw a party, and the eagle’s watch is still keeping a guard on the wardstone, to name but a few. None of them require or expect her involvement, however, and if there are expected to be any lives on the line it’s only in the form of tail risks.

Then she will choose: none of those things! She hopes the rest of her party has a lovely evening doing any or all or none of them without her.

She's been keeping Alpina apprised of her various shenanigans in real time, but it's nice to sit down with her in the peace and quiet of a little bedroom and give her her full attention.

Hi! I think I am finally out of short-term quests for today. I'm sure I'll get more soon, though--and I think I'm actually looking forward to it? It's nice to be useful even if some of the things are ridiculous.

That makes sense. It's nice to be able to help people!

How have you been doing? What do you think of the things you've learned and the people you've met and the heritage you've gained? Or would you rather not talk about it and just take the time to relax?

I know it literally says in the description that Dragon Fairy Elf Witch is always benefits and not drawbacks but I keep being surprised by how cool it is! I should mentally review all the enemies I've fought lately and copy all most of them (the ghouls and zombies didn't really seem to have anything going for them). But right now I want to experiment with spell scrolls!

Experimenting with spell scrolls sounds really exciting! What experiments are you thinking of?

I want to see if either of us can copy them! Also whether you can tell what they do without my telling you, just from looking at the magic while it's attached to you.

I was right, that is exciting! Let's try it.

Brenda adds a little smiley face next to "that is exciting" and slips one of the scrolls of Sleep between her pages.

That's so pretty... I'm not sure what it does but I really like looking at it!

So the next thing is to find out if I can copy it, right? Let me see... oh, that's tricky... ⏳

Brenda bounces excitedly and contemplates which demons she should DFEW. The shadow, maybe, while focusing hard on not wanting to look creepy all the time. Also those big ones that teleported behind her during that first fight and injured her; the teleportation might have been another sorcerous bloodline and anyway they were strong enough they probably had something awesome going on. Nothing the succubus was doing was appealing at all and she doesn't trust her subconscious enough to be sure she wouldn't get any of it, especially if she didn't have anything else. She should probably do Deskari but she wants to know more about what his deal is first; she doesn't want bug powers or to be kaiju-sized, but there's no way that's all he's got.

I did it! Wow, that was really hard. I think that might have been the hardest formatting job I've ever, ever done. But I did it and it's there now! ✨ And now that I've done it once, I bet it'll be easier the second time...

Yay! That's so cool! And both versions show up to Detect Magic so I think I could cast it from either one! Do you know whether, if I cast from your copy, you'd be able to make another one without looking at the original again or if you'd have to have it on hand page every time?

It might have been pretty difficult to reconstruct it from memory before I copied it myself, it's much harder to work with magic than ink, but now that I've copied it once I can do it again no problem. My memory and the contents of my pages are sort of a little bit the same thing.

That's so cool and impressive of you! I want to try casting something, but that scroll I gave you is actually for making people fall asleep and I don't want to go to sleep yet, I just gave you that one because I had a bunch of it so it would be okay if you needed multiple tries. Can I give you another scroll that's for getting a summary of a book by touching it, so I can try casting that on one of the magic books?

Yes! Wow, what a neat spell!

Right? I'm so excited to try it!

Spell scroll!

⏳

Done! I think this one is even prettier than the last. Spell structures are so lovely!

They're so great! I'm gonna cast it!

And about three seconds later:

Eeee this spell is so neat! Side effects may include wanting to read the entire book immediately. Fortunately I have nowhere to be for the rest of tonight and not much tomorrow either.

Unless Alpina evinces a preference for something different to happen, the next hour will involve a lot of liveblogging of The Principles of Abjuration and their Applications to Spells of the First Four Circles: Being a Treatise in Six Parts with Exercises for the Diligent Student of Arcana.

Who could possibly have a preference for something different than this? What a fantastic way to spend an hour!