After a quick lunch of sandwiches and coffee at the cafe, the trio retreated to Remicra's loft in the lighthouse. Cedez immediately claimed the smith's narrow bed, sprawling across it dramatically.

"Make yourself at home, why don't you," Remicra grumbled at her.

"Thanks, I will!" Cedez replied cheerfully, snuggling deeper into the burlap sack pillow. “Mmm… smells like dragon.”

"That wasn't an invitation," the dragoness snapped.

Dave ignored their bickering as he sat at the simple wooden table beneath the round stained glass window, exhuming Lari's journal from his side bag. The leather-bound book pulsed with an inner light as he touched it, fractal gears spinning across the innards of the book visible in Healy-vision.

Just as Remicra sat down across him, having given up on trying to reclaim her bed, he opened the book.

There was an inked drawing of Saint Saria on the first page with the words below it.

‘Dedicated to David Horovits Walter. Wherever you are, I wish that we would meet again in Xandria.’”

“Me too.” He touched the text with a sigh.

The intricate star-like gears reached out to his hand from the innards of the book like shimmering ghostly appendages.

An 8-pointed star formed from dark ink bloomed into existence like a newborn flower beneath his index finger.

The dedication words melted away like liquid mercury, flowing across the page. The ghostly clockwork patterns danced across the entire portrait, making Lari's drawing ripple and shift.

Her eyes moved, drawn irises suddenly affixed themselves on Dave with an intensity that made his heart ache. The expression of the drawing changed from that of a stern woman to a soft smile belonging to his dead friend.

The text below the portrait reformed:

"Hello David.”

David choked, nearly dropping the book. Remicra stared at the portrait. The drawing stilled as soon as Dave’s finger left the page.

“Depictomancy,” the dark face of the fox appeared on the left side of Remicra’s head, gloved hands wrapping around the dragoness. “Press your finger against that hexagram to maintain the connection.”

Dave hesitantly touched the hexagram again. The portrait immediately reanimated, Lari's familiar smile beaming up at him.

"Don't be so nervous," the ink-Lari wrote from the other end of the page. "It's just me.”

“You?”

“Well, sort of me. A living recording of my Wish. A Cantigeist.”

"An echo that's been meddling with people's lives for centuries," Cedez commented, leaning on Remicra, her blue eyes narrowed. "Passing from girl to girl, orchestrating events, trying to erase my memories..."

“A fraction of me preserved in crystalline ink." The text dissolved and reformed letter by letter. "I'm sorry that I can't be there for you in person. I do hope that my current Maidenlyne is to your satisfaction.”

“Zero out of ten,” Cedez commented as Dave considered what to say.

The portrait's expression shifted to a frown, eyes turning to Cedez as she crossed her arms. "I do what I must to protect David."

“Murdering poor innocent foxgirls?” Cedez cut in.

“Erasing memories does not equate to murder.” The portrait's expression hardened. "You are far from an innocent, fragment of her Divine Shadow.”

“Are you arguing with a drawing?” Remicra tried to push the fox off herself.

“I’m judging and shaming,” Cedez glomped the dragoness harder. “She’s not just a drawing, she has grabby elkin arms and antlers armed with webbed Kitlix. Like some kind of book-shaped puppet master."

"I've been trying to help David!" the ink-Lari defended herself. "To prevent disaster. My Maidenlynes accept me willingly. I don’t infest newborn girls with Shadowmancy devouring them from within!”

Cedez growled in reply.

"Ladies," Dave interrupted, keeping his finger on the hexagram. "Can we focus on something constructive? Like maybe helping Cedez not decay into pure shadow? Lari, can you tell me how you made this artifact?”

“I hired a Depictomancer to animate this sketch of me. A surgeon cut a segment of my crystalline heart out and then an artificer ground it into dust and then a Space mage fused the dust to the pages of this book,” Saint Saria replied. “Then, an Animancer wrote the Cantigeist framework into the Astral for me to fill.”

"How'd you manage all of this while being collared?" Dave asked.

“The process took centuries as I had to hide it from Duke Lumir’s men,” Saint Saria explained. "I had to get... very creative. I worked with the Maidenlynes of Gorefield in secret. I assisted them and in exchange I learned how to anchor a Wish to objects, how to preserve consciousness through crystalline resonance."

“Gorefield cultists, eh?” Cedez pursed her lips. “Hang on… Aren’t those guys really bad, like end-of-the-world, unleash an eldritch calamity of all-devouring flesh, bad?”

“You know about them?” Remicra asked.

“Uh-huh. Pretty sure they eat adventurers for breakfast,” Cedez answered. “Known as the cult of the flesh. Psychos who try to merge all life into one grotesque mass of eternal, immortal blob.”

"Eternal blob sounds pretty bad," Dave commented, keeping his finger on the hexagram. "Lari, why would you work with people like that?"

"Gorefield was like me," the ink-Lari replied, her expression solemn. "Something that does not die. Duke Lumir kept me alive for centuries, forcing me to heal his men, to serve him. I couldn't die, couldn't escape. Gorefield… understood me.”

"Being pals with the Ocean of Flesh," Cedez commented dryly. "That's not concerning at all."

"I adapted their techniques," the ink-Lari defended. "Made them less... Alien."

"Could I create a Phylactery to help Cedez, to reinforce what she is?" Dave asked.

The portrait's expression became thoughtful. "Perhaps. The problem is that… Cedez isn't... alive."

"Hey!" Cedez protested. "I'm alive-adjacent!"

“I saw what you are through the crystalline eyes of Maydenline Terri’s Klitlix,” the drawing sighed. “Cedez Astra… You’re a projection, a cardboard cutout, Shadowmancy masquarading as a person. You don’t have a crystalline core to grind down or to bind into a book.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I, uhh," Cedez bit her lower lip. "I have purified mana gems. Lots of em."

"And that's the problem," the drawing said. "You're photocopying what you are, but each copy loses information, and is progressively more faded. You're a dead thing using dead things to try to be alive."

“You're the one to talk, you're a freaking book!" Cedez huffed.

"I am more than a book," the drawing replied. "A Phylactery by itself is insufficient."

“Eh?” Cedez blinked.

"To truly be alive you need living things to persist on," Saint Saria explained.

"Maidenlynes," Remicra said. “She’s talking about Terri.”

"I'm not making freaking Maidenlynes! Ain’t nobody got time for that," Cedez growled. "Who would even..."

“The dragoness seems rather close to you.” The drawing glanced at Remicra. “Perhaps she could…”

"No," Remicra's scales flashed brilliant orange. "Absolutely not! She’s already all over my personal space like a very large, annoying moth that I can’t get rid of, why would I want her in my head?”

“For once I agree with Remy,” Cedez nodded. “I don’t want to live in her head. That cuts a bit too close to what the Shadowbeast-me wants to do. Why did the first Gootali even agree to host your Wish-self in her head?”

“Ah,” the drawing replied. “Yes. That. The first Lady Gootali was a flesh-shell, an exact copy of me, a doppelganger. Her compatibility with me was absolute.”

"A flesh-shell?!" Cedez sputtered. "You... you made a copy of yourself?”

"Yes," the drawing replied. "The first Maidenlyne was literally me, my exact duplicate. A perfectly compatible vessel grown in a vat of living flesh, created by Gorefield.”

"What, like a clone?” Dave asked, keeping his index finger on the hexagram.

"Yes. The flesh-copy integrated perfectly with my Cantigeist because she was me. Each subsequent generation of Maidenlynes inherited a fraction of that compatibility,” the drawing explained. “Terri’s mother wasn’t even able to host me and my connection with Terri is imperfect, rough like a jacket that doesn’t quite fit. It activated only when Terri heard your full name, David.”

Cedez opened and closed her mouth and then frowned.

“Cedez cannot be cloned because there is no flesh there to duplicate,” the Depictomancy sketch explained.

“Wah,” Cedez whined, “and here I was hoping for an easy solution.”

“Hrm,” Remicra considered. “So a brain is needed to process new memories. If you’re a book, how do you store memories?”

“My Maidenlynes write things down in me,” the drawing answered. “They keep a journal of their lives. Alas, because of this I often don’t have a full picture of things and know only what they put down on paper.”

“I see,” Dave said.

"Perhaps you could visit Gorefield," the drawing suggested. "Offer him a service in exchange for knowledge. The Ocean of Flesh wields elder knowledge of many arcane secrets. Perhaps he can bring back that which has been dead for a decade.”

"Oh sure, let's just just pop over to the evil flesh cult and make a deal with them," Cedez rolled her eyes. "I'm sure they'd love to help a shadow princess fragment become more alive. This totally won’t backfire horribly.”

Saint Saria squinted at her.

“You know, I’ve already had very little trust in you, Miss Book, and now you’ve managed to hammer that into the negative,” the fox commented at the drawing.

“The worshippers of Gorefield aren’t evil.” The drawing shrugged. “Just different… misunderstood.”

"Misunderstood?" Remicra's scales flickered orange. "Really? Is that why they hide in the deep catacombs?”

"Now, let’s not judge the flesh worshippers, Rems. Maybe they don't like sunburns and just want everyone to get really, really close,” Cedez wiggled her jet-black eyebrows and fluffy ears nuzzling into the blacksmith’s side.

“Is everything a joke to you?” The dragoness tried to swat the fox.

“Just trying to lighten the situation,” Cedez stuck a pink tongue out at the dragoness.

Dave observed the magical gears of the Phylactery artifact, half listening to the conversation, while mentally conferring with Sherlock.

"A rather curious design," the detective commented in his mind. "The phylactery uses crystalline ink to store consciousness, but requires external processing power - the Maidenlynes' brains - to form new memories and adapt."

"Could something similar help Cedez?" Dave asked internally.

"Perhaps," Sherlock mused. "Today's incident was telling. When Shady fused with her, Cedez maintained partial consciousness during her shadow transformation and was able to draw on much more power. The Kitlix's crystalline matrix seems to have provided additional structure to her being, which allowed the Shadow to assert herself more during the day.”

"So if we put more Intelligence and Wisdom into Shady..."

"It could help Cedez retain more of herself," Sherlock finished. "Or it could also make the Shadowbeast more dangerous - more capable of complex thought and strategy rather than just predatory instinct."

"Yeah. She was both Cedez and Shadow at once.” Dave recalled the monstrous creature looming over him and Remicra.

"There are several potential approaches we could explore to solve this issue," Sherlock continued his deductions. "First, we could enhance Shady's crystalline matrix through dimensional fusion by combining it with crystals from Cedez’s dress.”

“True,” Dave nodded. “That should align Shady more towards Cedez-ness.”

“Second. We could also experiment with creating dimensional anchors within Shady - stable points that could 'tether' Cedez's consciousness during transformations. The principle would be similar to how dimensional storage bags maintain their connection to our reality."

“Right,” Dave agreed.

"Furthermore," Sherlock added. "From what I observed during Healy’s split, a Kitlix shatters when her crystalline matrix becomes over-saturated with different types of competing magical energies. The crystal structure can only maintain stability with a certain number of different alignments before it's forced to divide.”

“Hrm,” Dave considered. “So a multiclass Kitlix is impossible… unless…”

"Unless we create 'card slots' inside a dimensional bubble within the Kitlix itself," Sherlock resumed.

Dave thought excitedly. "Like RAM slots in a computer! The crystalline matrix itself wouldn't have to hold multiple alignments - it would just need to maintain the dimensional space where we could store different types of magical energy!"

"Precisely," Sherlock agreed. "Multiple 'cards' of different alignments. This could potentially allow for a much greater variety of abilities without forcing the Kitlix to split.”

“It would have to be a very stable extradimensional space,” Dave considered.

“Yes, I reckon that purified mana would be needed to power it from within,” Sherlock agreed. “Perhaps a twin-Kitlix is needed–one to manage the frontend and the other to manage the backend extradimensional space data cards.”

“Oh yeah, I like the sound of tha…”

Dave's attention was drawn back from his mental conversation as Cedez poked his cheek.

"Cedez to Dave," the foxgirl said. “Stop muttering to ghosts and tell us what the plan is.”

"Sorry," Dave replied, removing his finger from the hexagram. The animated portrait immediately stilled. "I was thinking about a different approach. What if instead of making you a Phylactery, we modify Shady to better support your consciousness?"

"How?" Cedez's ears perked up.

"When you fused with Shady earlier today, you maintained more awareness than usual during your shadow form, right?"

"Yeah," Cedez nodded. "It was... different. Usually, when I transform, everything gets fuzzy and distant. But with Shady, I was more... present. Though also pretty crazy and murdery. But you're right - I was more... me, even if that 'me' just wanted to harvest everyone's cores."

"I think we could enhance Shady's ability to maintain your consciousness," Dave explained. "Make her into a more stable anchor for your being. Sort of like how Lari's book works, but using a Kitlix instead."

"How exactly?" Remicra asked.

Dave outlined his idea about creating dimensional "slots" within Shady to store different aspects of Cedez's being, similar to how computer memory works. He explained how this could potentially allow Cedez to maintain more of herself during transformations.

"So, it would need a lot of purified mana crystals to power it,” Remicra commented.

“Yes,” Dave nodded. “To keep the extradimensional space from imploding. It’ll need more than just mana crystals. We need to create a stable framework first, then gradually enhance it."

"Like building a house?" Remicra asked.

"More like building a computer," Dave smiled.

“I don’t know what that is, but that sounds expensive,” the dragoness frowned.

“We just took down seven Thundersnargs," Cedez perked up, her tail swishing excitedly. "And that was just me being hangry! Think about what we could do together as a proper party with proper armor and proper plans!”

“How exactly are we going to make armor without any metal?” Remicra huffed. “Unless you forgot, the storage room is completely empty.”

Cedez turned her big blue eyes at Dave like a lost puppy looking for support.

"Actually..." Dave began, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. "We might not need metal for armor. On Earth, we had this material called plastic - it's lightweight but can be quite strong. Maybe… we could make plastic armor!”