"Are those Cocoa Puffs?"

“Those are absolutely Cocoa Puffs! Do you want to see my pocket dimension before having Cocoa Puffs, I have yet to test how induction-y it is.”

"- yeah, sure, I'm game."

And she holds out a hand and draws Aadhya into her very own panopticon.

In addition to the details present in the picture Kareen showed Bella, there’s a tank with a single baby agglo covered in googly eyes, new, and a chair made of the same sandstone as the room, well-cushioned and with an eye inlaid at the top of the back, in mother of pearl and abalone and slate, which was omitted because it was where she was sitting to get the view she handed Bella.

"- oh, it's nice here!"

“I need to maybe start including that in my initial announcement that I have a pocket dimension.” The Kareen on this side is wearing a different, less practical outfit.

"The gym used to be nice, supposedly?"

“I enjoyed the time I spent in the gym but not admittedly for any reasons intrinsic to it.”

"Yeah no it isn't very nice now, but it was at one point doing a... Japanese garden thing."

“Huh. Probably not worth trying very hard to fix at least until the mal population is cut down enough that people are willing to spend time there.”

"You look unscathed! I guess none of the scathing would have been, uh, cool enough?"

“Apparently! But Lightfoot and Battle Maiden helped too, I’m sure. Plus Orion Lake was down there with me and he caused at least as much carnage as I did even without bullshit notebook powers. Hey, does him being able to pull mana from mals he kills make any more sense when you’ve known about wizard stuff for more than twenty-four hours?”

"He can what? What the fuck. How is that even mana and not malia."

“Fuck if I know! But it goes into the crystals fine. I…think it would feel different if it were malia?” Really she should have been asking these questions last night instead of getting high on the Watching and the fear and the delicious mal life force. Whoops.

"I would think so?? I'm not really an expert. He like - saves people. Runs around killing mals that jump anyone who's near him at the time. So it would be weird if his anima were all moldy."

“Could you tell if mine were? I know he can do this because I Dragon Fairy Elf Witched him and now I can.”

"...does that mean it runs in his family or something? I guess if you give me some of it I can see if it seems normal..."

Kareen passes her some mana.

“I have no idea. Except that Dragon Fairy Elf Witch does work on stuff that isn’t normally hereditary, I did it to my parents and got stuff I didn’t have before. But I noticed he had more mana than made sense and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually tried D-F-E-W’ing a wizard yet, so I—did. And then the next time I killed a mal its life force was just there in a way it hadn’t been before, all—eatable.”

"This seems like normal mana to me," Aadhya reports. "I guess that explains why he's like that!"

“Jumping mals? Yeah, he’s—a hunter. A predator. I don’t know what’s going on with him but I know that much.”

"Well, if you figure out how he got that way I would want one when I get around to having kids! Seems useful."

“—Well. I have More Magic. And I did copy the eating thing off of him. So I could hand it out.”

"Maybe somebody should ask him what's up with that in case there's a catch but it seems really good! We could be on top of the food chain!"

“I will try to find out more about what’s up with him before I start handing it out like candy. But, given how Dragon Fairy Elf Witch works, I expect that even if there is a catch that I dodged it.”

"Will people you hand it out to also dodge it?"