"I was imagining you doing the actual development, since as you said you aren't sold on teaching me magic." He noms up the last of the snacks, and drains his tea. "I'll try to sink the rest of the dead city's borders, come back in another few hours, give you time to decide whether mass-summoning fairies to do it in a reasonable amount of time is a good idea."

"Cooperation with someone that actually goes there would be good. Anyway, I will think about it. Oh, and remember that while the disturbing sensation you feel in the dead city is real, any sense of being watched or seeing ghosts are purely imaginary."

"I haven't felt watched or seen ghosts, but I'll remember that, thanks."

Aaaand he's off. He flies high enough to take video to feed to his tablet's mapping software along the way, this time.

Dead city: Be sunk, piece by piece. Wanton destruction is still fun.

In that case, Nick will have an extremely fun destructive/productive time. He finds two more cases of across-the-chasm infections, but those can be dealt with easily

...Just how big is this thing? He flies up continuously until he can tell, or it gets obscured.

It is hard to tell, but a combination of his computer, observation and guessing leads him to believe it covers about ten thousand square miles. It's shape is semi-regular, shaped away by the creation of chasms. Near the "center" he might see dead remains left behind, decades old.

He's definitely far too high to see that. But wow, that is a big disaster zone/world cancer. More fairies are going to be necessary, or he'll be at this for a month.

He goes back to Temple's place.

Temple has since acquired a potted berrybush and even more arcane charts.

"Ooh, shiny."

"...I ran the numbers, and it will take me a month, perhaps two, to sink the dead city by myself. I think a small army of fairies is your best bet."

"How many is an army? And how much it would cost per fairy?"

"You'd have to negotiate with the individual fairies, but some medium quantity of food and trinkets are usually enough for your average fairy. I asked for a magic plant because I knew it'd take a lot longer than normal. A hundred or so could do it in a day. A dozen could do it in two or three."

"I prefer a dozen, sounds more manageable. Any reason why I couldn't rotate them? Use fairies in turns and take a week total or so?"

"You could do that, sure. I've already smashed out a wider chasm around the entire border of the dead city - there were a few spots where the infection had crossed the chasm, by the way. But there's a lot of dead city."

"No need to tell me that." Temple snorts. "Do you want to take a nap or another snack break? Or summon the other fairies? I need to finish my train of thought if we do the latter."

"I'd just as soon have more tea than a nap, but if you need to protect your supply I understand. And we may as well hash out the summoning plan now."

"I'm going to need to resupply anyway. Let me finish this first." Temple makes notes and re-organizing charts, it doesn't take long.

More tea is made, more snacks are served as needed.

Tea is delicious. Snacks are delicious. Nick looks up a few things on his tablet. His notes on fairy-summoning circles.

Temple is curious about these notes, also about angel and demon summoning.

"Hm, not sure I should explain it fully. You said my lifeforce is a potential disaster. Less than ideally competent summoning is, too. You already know it involves drawing circles then negotiating deals. Usually the circles have bindings, defining things the summoned daeva cannot do. The summoner and daeva work out a deal, when it's agreed to the bindings relax enough to let the daeva do their part, then the daeva cannot be unsummoned until the summoner's part of the deal is fulfilled. I decline to explain how to design summoning circles at this time."

Temple nods along that explanation. "I understand. I grew up with the dead city story - it was an acident caused by a research team - nineteen people got their lifeforce completely drained out and the magic spit that city out. You should wait until a better lifeforce analyzes before deciding if you really want to learn."

"Nasty stuff. I'm pretty sure about wanting to learn, but caution is definitely the order of the day."

"Indeed. How is the fairy summoning going to take place? Remembering diagrams is one of my fundamental work skills. Do I need to be blindfolded?"

"Seeing one valid diagram does not necessarily lead you to figuring out how to make more. But I was thinking invisible ink if you have any."

"I will have it if you give me two minutes to cast the spell."

"By all means. I still have to find a binding that fits the task at hand." Read, read, read. If Temple does sneak a look at the notes they're not in any language he recognizes.