There is a book held open with a rock and a wooden stake; and next to it a messenger bag; and beside these a teenage girl, painting goat blood onto the floor of a crypt.
"With this diagram." Ellie flips to the appropriate page in the notebook and passes it over. "It's a simplified version of the one you used this morning, so you can familiarize yourself with the layout of each component."
And lo, much exposition on the topic of summoning circles was laid forth.
Ellie does appreciate a clever student.
After the circle is learned, she can start on bindings. Here are the standard phrases you should memorize, this is why they're worded thus.
Does Bella want to practice writing out a few circles with bindings so Ellie can take a look at the books?
Sure. She will leave the circle part open until Ellie looks them over but otherwise practice practice.
So, these history books. Any obviously wrong references she can spot by flipping through the tables of contents?
Ellie will have to dig a little deeper, then.
The challenge is in remembering she should be skimming for discrepancies, not getting absorbed in the minutia of an era.
Political figures match. Musicians and artists all sound familiar or are obscure enough that it wouldn't be weird for her never to have heard of their counterparts. Geography is alike, science seems to be following a similar trajectory, all the wars are in the right places.
"I see no errors. Well done. My own efforts were sadly less successful. If there are differences in our histories, they are may be subtler than I can detect."
"Unfortunately I've never even heard a rumor to the effect that Shakespeare was a vampire or Da Vinci was a demon. I have heard that Bach was possessed?"
"I don't put a lot of stock in this because I think it's just someone who thinks it's insane that one dude could have had Bach's output, but yeah, could look into it."
"We may be out of luck finding something easily valuable, other than magic, which has its own hurdles. Fall back on the standard of long lists of obscure content producers."
"There are also books about magic, and local demons and stuff, which I imagine would not be duplicated. And the books about demons don't contain much practical information?"
"If they're amusing but useless, that should be safe. I am wary of spreading information about magic for approximately the same reasons you are about spreading summoning."