And she shall read the magicbook!

It's nice, to be reading with new friends.

As promised, after fifteen minutes or so, Crin takes her survey book upstairs with her.

Ishaza stays behind.

The monograph is pretty technically complex and uses specialized Reikspiel vocabulary, but fortunately Alethia has Omniglot. 

The method of shaping Shyish to speak with the spirit from a fresh corpse is not too complex, though finnicky in practice. And of course it needs a sentient and recently dead creature to call the spirit back, so it's quite difficult to practice. Here are some tips for beginners to get it right the first time... 

Alethia will read and learn and attempt to Figure Things Out as much as she can! For she reads A Magic Book.

Eventually she runs out of monograph to read.

Ishaza's still reading her romance novel.

Hmm. More monograph? There are in fact others.

You know- she'd actually be interested in reading a Hysh monograph. She can't (probably) manipulate it yet, but she's still interested in it.

"Ishaza?"

Ishaza looks up from her book. "Yes?"

"I seem to have finished my monograph. Do you have any Hysh monographs you'd recommend me? Or, perhaps an interesting history? I- honestly kind of want to have some fun reading a romance novel but I should probably save that for some other day."

"There's a Riekspiel monograph on crystal-singing in the Hysh records. It's not as good as a primary source, of course, but it's probably more legible to you."

Does she just want to be open that she can read anything some? Yeah, she does.

"I don't actually read Riekspeil any better than I'd read the Draenei tongue, actually, if that changes your recommendation."

Ishaza raises an eyebrow. "Then you should read The Properties of Hysh Crystal."

She shrugs.

"It's one of the flavors of oddness it wouldn't be bad for you to know about, were you secretly evil, a hypothesis I am increasingly only entertaining to do my due diligence rather than any specific doubts. And this particular oddness flavor does in fact matter, and also it and similar oddnesses are- small bits of evidence I will be able to point to later when I give the answer that resolves the ongoing improbability tower."

As she explains, she gets up to grab the recommended book.

"I'm looking forward to it."

Ishaza goes back to her book rather than pursue the thread of inquiry. 

The true height of the improbability tower has been slightly more revealed, but she has also reinforced its base somewhat!

Also! New interesting magic book! About magical crystals!

She is pleased.

She returns to her seat, excited to read.

And this book will happily inform her about all kinds of useful applications for Hysh crystal, ranging from lighting to explosives.

Reading through it is fun! She's learning so much about what Hysh crystal can do! It's interestingly versatile.

Is there any experimentation going on on using it for smokeless firearms?

Indeed, small quantities of concentrated Hysh Crystal can be used in a not-dissimilar way to percussion caps. Though at present they're using it to ignite traditional black powder rather than using Hysh Crystal itself as a charge. 

Interesting! 

Hmm, probably Hysh crystal can be used in, well- quite a few of the standard fossil fuel manners? Which is good news for the world as a whole's ability to fully industrialize without causing quite as much ecological damage as back home.

Wait, she's being silly. Before enough time has passed for that to be an operative concern she'll probably be able to do an end run around the problem. Still, an interesting thought.

Absent a reason to do elsewise she's just going to finish the entire book. Hysh crystal seems important and she wants to understand it.

Then the book will be delighted to give her all sorts of information which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Magic book! Magic book of also engineering and some degree of logistics! Magic book of grand interestingness!

The Alethia will finally, after some number of hours she is too engrossed in her book to notice, absent as she is her old signals of time passing such as "becoming hungry" or "needing to use the restroom", finish her monograph and, uh- look up at the room she's in for the first time in a While.

Uh- where is she again? Right, the library. In Crin's tower.

My goodness, it's been some time she's fallen that far into hyperfocus.

However, clearly she cannot be blamed, because Magic Book.

Ishaza's set her book aside and... seems to be dozing in her chair, actually.

Cute! Very cute, in fact.

It is also a sign that probably quite a bit of time has passed. Or Ishaza is just the napping type.

She looks back to her book. Her rather thick book. Eyeballing the page number, considering that once she got into the swing of things she tends to read about a sixty to a hundred pages an hour-

Yeah, no, it's late.

This leaves her the question of what she should do now.