"So if I end up writing the next world I should give it a stable, portable, side-effect-free magic system that does interdimensional transit. And if I end up saving this one - I don't know, maybe there's a long way around for magic system creation and I can make one anyway."

"How does magic here work?"

"I'm not an expert, but basic summary: by ritual, you can turn an object into a magic object. The more impressive the magic object, the more time and complexity is required. A swoop like this would've been maybe three or four months of work from a dedicated swoop manufacturer, and to be a swoop manufacturer you need a huge number of magical tools that each might take a month or more to make and aren't useful as anything except ritual components for making flying vehicles. Swoops and soars might be the most complicated magic objects in the world, but most of the other really useful stuff also needs magical tools to make, just not a hundred of them and not necessarily ones dedicated to making that specific thing and nothing else. I think light-stones and heat-stones and cold-stones all take the same set of tools to make, for example."

"...were all the rituals just written down in the library?"

"No, people keep inventing more of them, I think most of what was in the library was like - principles of ritual development and the rituals to make the tools to make better tools to make useful things with."

"That sounds like exactly what I would expect from the previous creator."

"What was the previous creator like?"

"I explained the situation to him as soon as I woke up. He spent ten minutes efficiently extracting everything I could tell him about the prospects for saving his world, determined that he wasn't confident enough in his ability to succeed for it to be worth trying, and from then until the end of the year he did nothing that was not strictly necessary to the project of making this world the best one he could possibly write. I have been doing this for a very long time and I have never met someone so dedicated."

"How are creators designated?"

"It's not clear. But - there does seem to be some selection at work. It's always... not necessarily someone who ends up doing a good job, but someone who could."

"And we know they're picked before the world actually ends, because - my first sign that something was wrong when I woke up yesterday morning, before I saw Telarin, was that I hadn't had any horrifying nightmares about the world coming to pieces that entire night. Which has not otherwise been the case for as long as I can remember. Apparently that's a thing with creators. And then the nightmares stop on the first day of the last year."

"...that's, uh, weird. Why would that be built in? How much of this was designed - is the, uh, world always the same shape -"

"Yes, it's always shaped exactly like this, although the size can vary; better-designed worlds are often bigger. It's hard to tell how much of what we see was deliberately included by the people who designed the system, and how much was accidental. I can't think of a good reason for the nightmares but it's possible they were meant to be something else, or not meant to happen at all, or that whoever designed them was the same person who included the chains and that's just the sort of person they were."

"It seems intuitively weird to me that the size varies but the shape doesn't. Maybe people and things are sometimes smaller?"

"Why would it be strange for worlds to vary in size but not shape?"

"Mostly because there's the constant outside stuff? If you can make a completely new thing amongst the void and chaos in the absence of this crystaly shape being here at all, I don't see why it would have to be another crystaly thing and not a differently shaped thing. If it's not completely new, it's not obvious how it would grow or shrink."

"Since the world changing shape was so much of the original problem, I imagine they arranged for the shape to be static when they were designing the cycle. It may very well be possible to create other things, but this system isn't built to allow for it."

"And I think having nine sides is - a property this world keeps even through the cycle of destruction, because of us. If you wanted to make something that had a different number of sides I think you would need a different set of spirits, or something else entirely."

"How do you guys work?"

"What do you mean?"

"My world doesn't have elemental spirits, gimme the elemental spirits introduction."

"Before the cycle, we had physical form, and could command our elements as easily as moving or breathing. We still retain a... much reduced version of that power. And... there is a sense in which we are the embodiments of our elements. The most important thing for any creator to record in the book is the spirits, because the more accurately we are represented in it, the more easily the creator can work with our elements in making the next world."

"Most creators can only work with - imperfect descriptions - when recording things. I'm told Riale leaves behind flawless images whenever he puts his hand to the page. Except of us, because he does not know us well enough yet."

"...is flawlessness a natural category?"

"Yes. When a creator puts things in the book, some of them write down descriptions, or make sketches; and some of them put their hands on the book and cause sketches or descriptions to appear in it, drawn from their thoughts; and if someone doing the second thing knows their chosen object very, very well, the book will show an image that looks like it could leap out of the page, and every detail of the object will be in the book, even the ones the creator did not personally observe. Most of them learn how by the end of their year. Managing it on the first attempt is impressive. On the first and every subsequent attempt, even more so."