Where Sveneric is waiting outside for her. "Enjoying the city?"

"It seems like a nice city. I managed to buy some food."

He smiles at that, then gestures at his satchel. "I brought paper and ink. We can start if you're ready." He waits for Bella to let him inside.

"Sure. - any updates on the getting me home project?"

"No news. Hibern's first priority is assessing the potential consequences of the transfer magic that brought you here." In an apologetic tone, he adds, "The last person to arrive in similarly dramatic fashion set humanity back by millennia."

"...how so?"

He talks as they head upstairs for the study. "Ilerian and his followers initiated a war that depleted the world's magic reserves, erased all knowledge of magic, and nearly drove humankind extinct. Today's magic is still a pale imitation of what the Old Sartorans were capable of, yet it took thousands of years of painstaking trial and error to get here."

"Wow, somebody made the universe real mad, huh."

Blink. "What?"

"Enough that somebody like that would show up? I assume records of what exactly happened there are lost."

"They are, but Detlev was there. Ilerian was summoned to the world by one of his followers, not caused by the universe being—angry? I think an idiom might be getting mistranslated."

"Oh, I don't mean to like, confidently impute it specific mortal emotions or anything, just."

"…just?" He seems to have absolutely no clue what she's talking about.

"Just, like, it sounds like a bigger version of things that have happened in our history when people trifled with the world?"

Maybe this is one of those cosmological concepts unique to off-worlders, Sveneric thinks. Like religion or luck. It could still be important to know…

"I get the impression that 'trifled' is euphemistic, but I remain at a loss as to your actual meaning. You could try sending it mentally?"

"I don't know that will help but okay?" Hubris and science -

"That's…horrible," he says softly. "And it's a constant feature of your world—your plane?"

"It's not just the material plane, you can't hop off to the plane of water and start acting like you're a mad engineer from a cartoon."

"Whatever its other similarities to your world, this plane will not punish you for systematic experimentation."

"Then... why do you suppose some epic destroyer showed up to epically destroy?"

"Because he was brought here. By a sadistic man not content with a world at peace, who delighted in uncovering new modes of violence. Then Ilerian killed him, then my father killed Ilerian. Action and consequence.

"You don't have to take my word for it. I can introduce you to artisans and mages the world over who are working—rigorously, systematically—to advance their fields."

"Well, that'd -

- if you're not fucking with me about this then I can't go home."

"Not a joke," he says. "Promise."

(And to Detlev, Found it.)

"I don't know if it'd be safe to send my parents a message, either, my universe might or might not get touchy about - anything, from here."

"We'll have time to figure that out from here. Safely." He sits down. "If it's alright, I'd like to share something of my world that you might find helpful right now."