"Uh...fey, demons, things from beyond the world that we don't really understand properly, minor gods, especially powerful - uh - spirits..." She nearly said 'undead', there. Probably better to avoid panicking the nice Amentans unnecessarily. 

"Someone mentioned physics, a minute ago? Um, the things beyond the world...sometimes break the laws of physics. They look like things that shouldn't exist, that don't make sense with your understanding of reality. And I think there's other things as well, but it's hard to study because everyone who interacts with them goes mad. Mad people aren't the best at accurately reporting their experiences for posterity!"

"...magic? I think it varies from one to the next; some might make it so the warlock literally has to carry out their end of the bargain, and others might just have them lose their powers if they don't."

"When you say 'goes mad' what do you mean, what disorder do they have and how does it affect them - we can make optical illusions, they don't make people crazy -"

"I don't know!" Puna admits.

"It affects everyone differently, but it doesn't happen frequently enough that we know why - it might be that they encountered a different entity, or that it's dependent on the phases of the moon or something!"

"...the moon?"

She blinks.

"Yes, the moon! Why, do you not have - "

She flickers.

"Oooooh, you have more than one moon! That's so cool!"

"Yes, but why would even a single moon affect - anything -"

"Plenty of magic things are affected by the moon!" 

She thinks for a second.

"Even some non-magic things are affected by the moon - do you not have tides?"

"We have tides but that's very different from mental illness."

"You don't have magic," she repeats patiently.

"A lot of things work differently on Corth. A minute ago you were surprised that anything could affect luck, now you're surprised again that something might affect the mind!"

"...is your moon itself magic?"

...she checks.

"I don't think so. Well, it is, but only in the sense that there's ambient magic in everything on Corth, including the planet itself."

"Ambient magic?"

"Is just what it sounds like! Magic is everywhere! There might be some leaking through the portal, actually, I should check that - "

She flickers again.

"Yeah, just a little bit. It shouldn't do any harm, and it'll take years before it gets to levels where it would do anything interesting at all." 

"...what will it do?"

"It might eventually make it possible for Amentans to become magic-users?" she guesses.

"I don't know for certain - this has never happened before! But whatever happens, it's not going to be any time soon." 

"It still seems worth being ready for."

"That's a pretty sensible attitude," she admits.

"But it's hard to prepare for something when we're not sure what the something will be. I do think the most likely outcome is 'some Amentans start being born with the capability to become magic-users', though, and it'll probably start happening close to the portal before it happens anywhere else." 

"Those of them who are born there, or conceived there, or whose parents spend some of the pregnancy there, or -"

"No idea! Like I said, this has never happened before!" Puna reminds them.

"All the places we knew about already had ambient magic, so we don't know what happens when a place suddenly gets magic."

"I see."

She grins. "It'll be fun to find out!"

A few moments' thought about the differences between Amenta and Corth prompts the question, "Are there any other sapient species in this world, or is it just Amentans?" 

"Just us on this planet. We haven't gone far into space but haven't seen anybody else through telescopes or heard them through radio."

"Telescopes I know about, but what's radio?" 

Puna bounces, turning the word over in her head.

"Something to do with listening...does it let you hear things at a distance?" she guesses.

"Sort of. Sound can be converted to radio and back with machines. So can other signals."

"Ooooooh." Yet another thing she'll have to learn about at some point, because it sounds ridiculously useful.

"...is that how pocket everythings work?"