I swallowed nervously.

“Thought so,” Moonalia’s eyes suddenly filled with sparks of tears. “I did tell that dummy not to chase after a stupid dream of a rugged barbarian, to just buy her own champion in Iridium from a respectable Drallus shop. Blargh."

“Why do you think that she’s…” I began.

“I don’t see any of her things,” Moonalia said. “I designed that orb myself, you know. It casts a small, but quite potent Identify pulse upon contact. I am only getting a single life sign there… that black kitten. I don’t know what in the Astral you are, Ioan… but you’re not alive. That is, it’s like… you’re pretending to be alive. There’s definitely a pulse there, but it’s wrong, off. Those plants are wrong too, like they’re propped into existence. They look right but aren’t right at all magically.”

The yellow eye came closer to the orb, looking at the book.

“Correction,” Moonalia added. “Something's wrong with that cat too. Normal cats don’t talk and don’t read. Those look like letters. Yep, definitely letters."

Shit. She was clever, dangerously clever.

The only option here was not to let her figure more things out, to run, to throw out this damn artifact into the North Sea before she called for backup and…

I reached for the orb.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Moonalia waved her talon-tipped hands. “Please, don’t!”

I paused, evaluating her distraught expression. Was this another deception? Was I only tightening the screws, helping the Arcanicx figure more things out?

My heart ached, it felt like I was shot in my chest.

Teya, I had to help Teya… everything else be damned. Teya was worth wrangling with the Arcanicx.

"Please," Moonalia continued. "I... I just want to understand what happened. Cali was my friend. My best friend. If she's gone, I deserve to know why. And if you're not who you claim to be, well... that's certainly very curious, isn't it?"

I glanced at Stormy, who was watching the exchange with keen interest. The kitten's paw remained firmly on [YES] in the Codex.

Taking a deep breath, I made a decision. "You're right," I admitted. "I'm not who you think I am. And Cali... she's dead. But it's not what you think. I didn't kill her."

Moonalia's feathers ruffled slightly, yellow gaze evaluating my every word. "Then explain," she said, her tone that of curiosity laced with suspicion. "What exactly are you, Ioan? And what happened to Cali?"

“What I am… is irrelevant,” I said. “Your Felix friend shouldn’t have come North, shouldn’t have bought a prophecy from Skulldug. Amari’s words led Callista Liesl to her doom, tangled her in a magical web woven by… an incredibly dangerous, insidious magical being.”

The yellow eyes of the Corvix slid down to the black snowflake hanging from my belt.

"That crystal..." she breathed. "Where did you get that?"

I hesitated, weighing how much to reveal. "It's complicated. Let's just say I acquired it from a very dangerous entity - the same one responsible for Cali's death."

Moonalia's feathers ruffled with agitation. "You need to tell me more. Please!”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t owe you or your people anything.”

“Urm,” The Corvix swallowed nervously. “What do you want in exchange? Gold? Magic? Knowledge?”

“Stormy,” I hissed at the kitten in English. “Evaluate her words for the truth for me, yeah?”

The kitten nodded my way.

"If you send a hunter after me, I'll abandon the sleigh and Cali's body to the ocean," I said firmly, meeting Moonalia's gaze through the orb.

"That's... that's not necessary," the crow-girl waved her hands. "I don't want to lose Cali's remains or the sleigh. Look, I just want to understand what happened. Maybe we can help each other out… trade information?”

“Are you going to see me as just a Champion, one to be collared, manipulated and tricked?” I asked her.

The Corvix blinked at me, yellow eyes flickering from me to the kitten.

“It is obvious that you are not a man, just like whatever that is… isn’t a common kitten,” she said after a deep pause. “The orb cannot identify you. You’re a magical zero on the Stacona Aetheric Scale. This is impossible... no, new. Possible and new. Valuable.”

“Oh?” I arched an eyebrow.

“Every mundane man, every Champion sucks magic into their soul,” Moonalia explained, tapping her beak with a dark talon. “I am not detecting any kind of Aetheric movement around you. It’s like you’re… solid rock, not really there. Either you’ve somehow messed up the scanner or you’re something new… something that no other Corvix has encountered before. This would make your value… astronomical.”

The Corvix’s gold eyes widened, lit up from within. She looked left and right with a shifty look and then leaned towards the orb.

"Listen," she whispered. "I'll do anything to meet you. Can I meet you? Can I see you in person? I'll rent a flying Champion and..."

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have no interest in meeting you or any other Arcanicx in person on the account that you think that I’m just a Champion to be collared.”

“I’d never! Do I look like a Felix? That is to say, it’s not my job to collar champions,” Mooni shook her head. “I… I don’t have the talent for binding men, that’s a Felix thing! I don’t even have a thrall of my own, on the account that I haven’t invented or discovered anything of great value for Iridium yet.”

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I eyed Stormy. The kitten’s paw was firmly planted on [YES].

"Alright," I said, turning back to Moonalia. "Let's say I believe you. What exactly do you do in Iridium?"

"Oh, I'm a researcher! I study magical artifacts, try to understand how they work, and sometimes attempt to recreate or improve upon them. It's fascinating work, really. There's so much we don't understand about the magic of this world, especially the primogenitor tools."

Mooni’s yellow eyes drilled the snowflake.

"And you've never bound a Champion of your own?" I asked.

She shook her head, looking a bit embarrassed and clicking her talons against each other. "No, I... well, I haven't really had the opportunity. Or the inclination, to be honest. I'm more interested in my work than in... that sort of thing. Honestly, if… if you were just a barbarian Champion I definitely wouldn’t even bother to ask to meet you. But you’re not a champion. You’re a shiny rock. The shiniest rock on… all of Thornwild!”

It looked like she was drooling a bit, eyes unfocused for a moment.

I glanced at Stormy again, who was still indicating truthfulness.

Moonalia's eyes refocused, darted between me and the kitten.

"I like eating thornberries," she said.

The kitten's paw slid over to [NO].

"I want to know more forever," she said.

Stormy's paw relocated to [YES].

"You're... you're using that kitten to judge my honesty, aren't you? How fascinating! Is it some kind of truth-detecting creature?" The talon clicking intensified.

I squinted at her. She was good at dissecting the truth.

“I am going to be extra truthful because I don’t want this conversation to end,” she confessed. “I… want to dissect whatever you are. I want this more than anything.”

I frowned at her words.

“Bad corvi, bad!” Mooni suddenly slapped herself. “Wrong words! Wrong! I’m sorry! Only questions. No cutting the shiny gem being!”

She grabbed the orb and fluttered away from the wide open space of the workshop into a dark alcove. Shiftily she looked left and right again, looking like a magpie that was trying to conceal a snack.

“Anything,” she whispered rapidly, leaving no pauses between words. “I’ll tell you anything and everything I know. I’m just a tier five Artificer, so I don’t know much, but I’ll share. I promise. Just… tell me what you are. One clue. Tiniest, smallest clue. Allow me to understand you!”

A yellow eye filled the entire orb staring at me with an unnerving intensity.

“What exactly do you know about the North?” I probed.

“The North is... not well understood by us Arcanicx,” the eye retreated, the view now featuring Mooni huddled in the alcove, black and white feathers wrapped around the orb. “It is a dangerous place and only brave or stupid Felixes go there.”

“Like Cali,” I commented.

“Yeah,” Mooni sighed. “Like my dummy... Cali. Can you show me her body? Do you have her body?”

I picked the orb from its spot on the shelf and opened the barrel with Cali’s corpse.

Yellow eyes flashed at Cali’s body and then back to me.

“What…” Moonalia whisper-choked. “By the all-uncovering Mundus, that’s not… Could you bring her hand to the orb, please?”

I grabbed Cali’s pale, cold hand from the life-water barrel and made it touch the glass orb.

The yellow eyes of the Corvix blinked, her expression confused, then thoughtful, then confused again.

“Well?” I asked. “What can you tell from your end?”

The Corvix fluttered slightly as she processed what she was seeing. "This is... extraordinary," she breathed, tapping her talons. "According to my readings, Cali is both dead and alive at the same time. Her body shows no signs of life, her heart is missing and her blood isn’t moving at all… yet there's a faint magical signature still present, radiating, breathing magic out. It's as if her soul is being preserved somehow, suspended in her body. How is this possible? Why didn’t she sink into the Astral Ocean yet?”

“Sink to where?” I asked.

“Straight… to her Divine Beast, uh, Goldara,” Mooni replied. “The anchor of all Felix Arcanicx. Oh.”

“Oh, what?” I demanded.

“If her soul reached Goldara, then we’d know that she was dead,” Moonalia stuttered out a rapid conclusion. “If we knew that she was dead, a hunter team would already be on their way to enact vengeance.”

“Vengeance?” I asked. “What kind of vengeance?”

“A most brutal kind,” the Corvix replied. “Very little talking. Lots of punching and slapping out of existence. Depending on the level of threat assessment, it’d be anywhere from ten to thirty flying Champions. The more the target resists, the more Champions are sent. I don’t participate in these things. I mean, she’s a freaking Liesl! Her family would pay a barrel of gold to dispose of whomever killed her. Nobody unmakes a Liesl and gets away with it.”

I squinted at her.

“No, no, no,” Mooni waved her hands, losing spaces between words again. “Don’t want gold! Only want secrets of magic! Only want to take things apart, unravel how things work! Don’t seek vengeance, especially if you saved her, preserved her somehow!"

“Cali told me that a Star-Eater hurt her,” I said.

“The Liesl Prima-Mother probably buried that Eater under a mountain and then unburied him and sliced him phalanx by phalanx” Moonalia shrugged. “It’s just how things go. Anyone who hurts a Felix Seeker is eventually found and unmade. Sometimes we get to pick through the bones. Nasty business that… usually not very much left to dissect.”

“Really wish they’d dealt with… George,” I sighed. “That’d be one less problem for me.”

“George?” Moonalia blinked.

“George’s man… Bob was the one who punched right through Cali,” I revealed. “Crushed her heart right in front of my eyes.”

“George is a Northern Sorceress and Bob is her champion, yes?” The Corvix guessed.

I nodded.

“George has at least seven flying men,” I said. “And a lot of unkillable… flesh beasts. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

Moonalia’s eyes went wide, talons tapping like mad as the gears of understanding spun in her head.

“Poor lovely gem,” she said, yellow eyes staring at me with increasingly deep focus. “All alone against the world… all the way North, beset by monstrous enemies. I’d give anything just to touch you…”

I felt a twinge of growing unease at her assessment of my situation, accurate though it was.

“No, bad corvi, no touching shiny without permission!” Mooni slapped herself again, rapidly stuttering. “Sorry! Bad answer! Bad answer! Didn’t mean it!”

I squinted at her.

Hypothesis: Moonalia constantly dissected her own behavior to optimize it based on my expressions.

“You have allies, yes?” She asked, yellow eyes sparkling. “Other northern beings… like that kitten, yes?”

I nodded warily.

The Corvix leaned closer to the orb, her feathers fluttering with excitement. "Are they as unique as you?"

"Yes," I said carefully, trying not to think about Teya’s condition.

“Is one of them hurt?” the Corvix guessed somehow. “Badly hurt. Worrying you lots. Maybe dying? Like Cali, but not Cali. You want to save Cali too… or you wouldn’t keep her in that barrel, right? But, you don’t want to help Cali… not as much as whomever else.”

I squinted at the stuttering, fluttering magpie-girl.

Damn it, how was she doing this? Did her brain have some kind of an innate lie detector in it, a magical extrapolator that pulled answers from my micro-expressions and brief answers?

Moonalia's eyes flashed again. "They’re dying, right? How fascinating! Uhh… no, no… Bad comment! I mean, terrible, of course. But perhaps I could help? If… if you just let me meet you. Pretty please? I’ll be nice… extra, super, duper nice. No touchy. No cutting. Only… looking. Only talking! Please?”