"I think so, unless I'm misreading this." She hands the book over. "I don't actually understand what you mean about anti-elements, but if you take all the aspects off magic, you get what you call Devoid, and what we call normal mana that you use for normal spellcasting."

"My liege, I cannot tell whether I am having trouble following this because I'm too stupid or too sleepy, but at least one of those two things is true.  To try to summarize the part that's relevant to my job as Companion, does this mean that if an upper-rank magician correctly identifies one of your spells as made of - mana the base state of reality with no affinity - they don't think 'recently arrived Summoned Hero' but 'shit that's Devoid mana she's an Uncreator'?"

"Well, I don't know which would seem more likely to them, and what might tip them off. But this spellform here? I know that spell. I've been using it to clean up the blood from my experiments."

He scrapes up a bit of extra concentration and reads, reasonably quickly.  "The spell at the very end of this book, that's the most advanced spell that Tier-4 Uncreation mages can learn to cast using the uncreated stuff that underlies all created things, to let a little of their own thoughts change reality?  Not bad.  I'd maybe take the pocket knife that lets the wielder do that, instead of the one that oneshots young dragons."

"Maybe next week. I want to figure out a couple other things first. Get some sleep; I want to see if I can pick up the rest of these elements."

"Is it considered part of my Companion job to say anything like that you should get some sleep too, my liege?"

"If you notice my being impaired, say so? But my kind of spellcaster, in our home world, can't cast at all without a full night of sleep, and I've been on active duty for most of the last six years. I can't actually remember the last time I stayed up all night studying magic, and there's now nothing to stop me. I'm going to try it this once."

"Awesome.  Stay up all night acquiring incredible powers that you can use to make me queen of a small country, my liege."

"You think you can only handle a small country?"

"I'm not going to be the diligent kind of queen."

"All right. Get some sleep. I've got some reading to finish."

He'll obey, of course.

When Carissa first arrived at the Worldwound they had an introductory briefing in which it was explained to them that half of them would serve out their ten years and half would die. 

She doesn't know if that statistic is the same as the one in the census records, or the same as the betting odds anyone would give, but she took it as what it was: a thing to think about, if you were considering being incompetent, or lazy, or stupid, or annoying. You'd die, if you did that. You might die even if you didn't. Cheliax has the greatest military in the world but this is because they do not tolerate weakness, not a reason to expect to get away with it.

She took the project of not dying very seriously; she expected to be nearly useless to Hell, if she died this young. She demonstrated prowess at magic item enchanting to keep herself generally off the front lines. She figured out who it was important to get to like you and was diligent and convenient to them. She didn't drink, and didn't waste her money she was saving for a headband, and refined her spells until she could fit more on the scaffold and got some for personal use.

And she still died, apparently. 

She is being less careful than that, right now. She isn't sure she has a choice. Everyone knows how to be a careful wizard at the Worldwound, it's an established kind of thing to be. You try to be valuable off the front lines and you try to be less annoying to your superiors than your replacement would be and you obey orders and you don't make any mistakes. And here she has no one to obey and she is a provocation by her very existence and she doesn't even know what counts as a mistake. It's terrifying. 

But, in her soul -- which she apparently no longer possesses -- in the hole in her where a soul should go - she is a wizard, and wizards really do all want phenomenal cosmic power. You can feel it at your fingertips. You always know it could be yours, if you live long enough.

She would like to try to pick up channeling all of the other kinds of aspected mana, and then she'd like to invent some spells with those and cast them repeatedly and burn herself for taking too long, and then she'd like to see if she can pick up any of the Tier-2s, and then she'd like to read through all the books and see if there's anything more about things Summoned Heroes always realize or always do, things that'd explain why they always leave, things that'd explain how they'd leave a world like this instead of just ascending like a normal fucking person. And then she'd like to do more magic until she's about to collapse from exhaustion, until the Rope Trick runs out and lets her crash, bloodied, to the inn floor. 

These are not books about Summoned Heroes; they are books about normal crafters doing normal things.  She'd have better luck picking up random books in Absalom, and having them explain how to do your laundry if you happen to be Nex or Iomedae.

She can pick up channeling all other kinds of Tier-1 aspected mana, sure, please don't expect anybody who's not the Summoned Hero to be able to do that by staring at affinity mats though.

She can invent her own simple spells with Tier-1 aspected mana, on the order of warming things up, making them slick, puffing on them with air.  She can fling sparks and ribbons of glowing light through the air, less responsive to her will and shorter-lasting than Dancing Lights but she's not limited to four of them and doesn't have to prep a spell to get them.  She can consume those same sparks in darkness, instead of waiting for them to go out.

She can't get any Tier-2s yet.  She doesn't even have any Tier-2 mats to look at.  It is literally her first day here, still.  What is she thinking.

She's thinking that she probably isn't trying hard enough! You can get a Tier-2 by combining your Tier-1s, someone must have done it that way in the first place, therefore she should be able to figure it out tonight!!

(Six hours in, she crashes out of her Rope Trick.)

The following sequence of events should be considered as happening very quickly.

"...sorry."

There's only a little blood on Carissa's throat.

No that's completely reasonable, she'd do the same, it'd honestly be more concerning if he didn't. 

She taps herself with an Infernal Healing. "No apology required, that was on me. - is the crash going to attract attention?" Prestidigitate the blood away, just in case.

"Possibly.  I can't think of anything smarter to tell them than that I - no, that you fell out of the bed while sleeping restlessly.  Kramsi blames that on Groya even if it actually was his fault."

His knife has already disappeared to somewhere about his person.

Groya will climb into bed, then, and wait a bit to see if anyone comes. 

There's indeed a knock at the door a few minutes later; and Kramsi giving his version of the story, sounding somewhat defensive about it; and a brief stern lecture about disturbing other patrons of the inn; and a suggestion that "Groya" sleep on the floor over a thick blanket, accompanied by a sharp glance at Kramsi himself.

Bluff check passed, possibly?