He materializes in front of her.

"Hi again. —Oh, you should probably know, if you say my name anywhere on this mountain I'll hear it and whatever you say after it. In case you want my attention when I'm not around."

"Oh, all right. I'll remember. Was that teleporting away, turning to air, or something else?"

"Turning to air! I can't teleport. But I can ride the wind, and lightning if I'm in a hurry."

"I can teleport. To places I've been, anyway, and not too often."

"Sounds useful."

"So does your transportation method," she says, wryly. "I usually can't get to new places very quickly. Plane shift's my exception, but plane shift doesn't really do precision aiming."

"I'd say I could teach you my magic and you could build yourself windriding eventually, but I bet you won't go for that."

She considers.

"Well, would I be powering it directly through my own pain, or through a more esoteric method? Because I think I'd find it hard to focus well enough to keep control of magic while in agony, and I'm just. Not at all willing to torture people for magic."

"I could give you the power, I've got more than I could possibly use, but then you'd need to ask me every time you needed some."

"Could I, given time and practice, conceivably build myself a - a net to catch the power from myself to use later?"

"Yes, but if you figure out how to keep it stable in the long term I'd love to know, because solving that exact problem is what stands between me and not having to worry that my mountain will explode if I stop feeding it."

"... Right, yes. Sorry. Just thinking out loud. It doesn't sound like I should ignore it entirely, anyway."

"Hmm?"

"Avoid learning your magic, I mean. Occasionally exploding will be a bit tiresome, and I'd hate to pester you for magic too much, but I do want to learn it."

He laughs. "All right."

"If I explode in front of you, can you just funnel my pain into your mountain?"

Shrug. "Yeah."

"So there's a bright side to having to pester you for magic. If I explode in front of you, it can do something other than just be personally uncomfortable."

"This is true! So what would you like to do now? Learn magic? See my library? It's a very impressive library, at least locally, I have no idea if eight floors of books is impressive to you."

"Reasonably impressive," she says, amused. "I'd like to see it."

"This way," he says, grinning.

It's a short walk to the library, which does indeed have eight floors, with a round skylight over a central open space ringed by railings.

Atreia smiles brilliantly, and lets herself have a moment of delighted awe. It's a lot of books.

Serik beams at her.

After a moment, she turns her smile on Serik himself.

"Reasonably impressive," she asserts, again.

"I am delighted you think so."