Chapter 78 - 15-21

Chapter 15 Yoink [Day 27]

Day 27

I dug through the earth in the large barrel and discovered a half-fist sized rock buried therein. 

When I pulled the rock out of the barrel, the floating crab followed it. This confirmed my theory that the Astral Projections were pretty much attached to specific large crystal formations located within the soil. I integrated the rock into my armor, by tying a metal mesh-cage around it using thin copper wire.

Looking down at myself through the Astralscope I saw all sorts of blurry critters moving atop me or floating through the air right above me, as if I was a walking museum of ghostly curiosities.

I collected a bucketful of the fresh greenery that grew atop of the two barrels and took it to my new horses who were now housed in the stables at the back of the pub. I named the stallion Abott and the mare Castella. They appreciated the life-rad infused plants, munching on them quickly.

While I took care of the horses I considered why some things within my domain soil decomposed rapidly and why other things such as plants didn't die as quickly as they grew. The life cycle of living things wasn't simply accelerated, it was somehow specifically augmented to benefit me.

In a similar manner, metal experienced strengthening augmentation, while soap became better as a cleaning agent. Food became more nutritious and lasted longer if it simply sat or was buried within my domain. These were chemical and biological processes of such bewildering complexity and wide range that I had only one potential theory as to why they were happening. The distinctive crystalline matrices, different astral imprints were somehow performing separate, helpful jobs for me.

I had no idea who was doing what, since I had hundreds of crystals decorating my person and hundreds more lying undiscovered within the new piles of earth that I brought from the outside every morning.

"Thanks guys," I padded my chain-mail decorated with various rocks. "You're all doing a great job."

"Mrrr?" Stormy looked up at me.

"What? I am thanking my dedicated spirits like a proper witch," I said. "It pays to be nice to my ghostly assistants."

My fuzzy familiar rolled her eyes at me. She probably didn't understand why I was being cordial to Astral Projections.

"I'm not weird," I told her. "People name their cars! There's nothing wrong with personifying crystalline matrices."

The kitten shook her head. She had no idea what cars were.

"Why do I even have to justify my actions to you?" I asked. "You're a freaking kitten. Com'ere! Let's cook some elk bacon, I'm starving!"

I relocated Stormy to my shoulder and climbed into the pub's cold storage well to obtain delicious elk meats.

As I cooked bacon I contemplated who I really was.

Almost the entirety of my memories came from 21st century Earth, but my body no longer felt alien to me. 

I felt like... myself. Perhaps, I was really Ioan who traded all of his memories of his life in Svalbard to River Glinka in exchange for the memories of an adult biochemist from some distant beyond. Was I even a biochemist? Most of my knowledge dealt with biochemistry, but I couldn't recollect if I actually worked as such.

What was it that made us who we are? Our bodies or what we knew about ourselves and how we perceived and introduced ourselves to others?

I didn't feel much remorse when I killed two people in broad daylight, which was more of a Svalbard native thing than something a modern man would be perfectly content with.

I supposed that it didn't matter who I was before, what really mattered was my current journey and unlocking the secrets of the universe to survive and prosper.

As I looked down on myself and then at Stormy I realized that she too might need spirit protection and aid. Thus, after a filling breakfast I crafted the kitten a leather collar and harness decorated with small but vibrant violet rocks.

Stormy didn't seem to mind the additions.

"Are you feeling warmer?" I asked my feline friend as we stepped outside, instantly surrounded by a wave of frigid air.

"Mrwr," she nodded, jumping and climbing into my shoulder to give my neck a nuzzle.

"You're welcome," I smiled.

I slowly walked through the snow to the edge of the river. It wasn't hard to tell where the village boundary ended and where the river began. Column-like, tall boulders decorated what looked like Nordic runes marked the edge of the river.

One of the biggest boulders was carved up with large runes shaped like stylized waves. I slid my Astralscope goggles on.

A ghostly female figure was perched atop of the boulder, her long dress woven from rippling silver drops. Silver-blue hair floated through the air. She was a lot brighter, much more distinctive than any Astral Projection that I've ever seen, with the exception of Yaga Grandhilda.

"River Glinka, I presume?" I addressed the spirit.

Stormy tensed up on my shoulder, black fur bristling as she too spotted the girl woven from brilliant silver and blue shimmers.

When I came closer to Glinka, I noted that the girl didn't have a face. Rippling patterns of silver composed her dress, hair and figure, her face completely lacking defined characteristics.

I wasn't sure if she was looking at me or past me, but she made a small nod in my direction when Stormy and I approached.

I looked at the other rocks at the edge of the river. Silver-blue, barely discernible things shaped like fish flashed over them. I wondered if they were spirits of long dead fish that Glinka accidentally or purposefully attached to the rocks within her domain.

"Mind if I take a rock?" I asked.

The ghostly girl didn't make a noise, didn't move.

"Do you understand me?" I inquired.

No response followed. Perhaps the avatar of the river was less human than I thought, or maybe I needed to touch the river itself to communicate with her properly.

"Wave a hand if you can hear me," I said.

The ghost didn't move.

"I'm going to take that as a... yes," I commented.

I grabbed a shovel and quickly dug out a rock from the frosty shore. As it rested on my shovel, it sparkled with bright silver-blue lights. Large, drifting snowflakes slowed their flight, becoming momentarily suspended in the air.

Glinka's head suddenly snapped in my direction.

"I'm taking this rock," I said, looking at her as my heartbeat intensified. "Okay?"

No answer followed. I kept the rock on my shovel as I retreated away from the river spirit with a lopsided grin.

"This isn't a deal," I said. "I just want to understand spirits. I'm taking this rock. I, uh, need it for my garden."

The river spirit stared at me without eyes. Stormy made the smallest hiss at Glinka from my shoulder.

I secured the rock to the shovel with a net and took off, running back to the village. 

The river spirit didn't try to stop me, didn't move from her spot atop of the boulder. I wasn't sure if I was violating some sort of an ancient accord or if I pissed her off or if she even gave a damn about a random rock. 

She probably had millions of rocks at her disposal. It was impossible to tell if Glinka even had emotions since she lacked a face. The unnerving, uncanny valley feeling intensified as I ran.

"Mrbrm-b-mrrrr," Stormy commented as I slammed the door to the pub behind us.

"Yeah," I said. "She's effing creepy. I don't think I'll be making deals with her. She's shaped like a human, but she's definitely nothing like you and me. It looks like she's an idea of a river shoved into an approximation of a human body. Something completely extrinsic... without a human soul or life behind her."

"Mrbrrrrrrcshhh," Stormy sneezed.

"Do you think it would be some kind of blasphemy to dig out those big rune-marked rocks she's sitting on?" I asked. "There's definitely a lot of power in them… since they're anchoring an entire avatar of a concept of a river. What's she going to do if I take more rocks? It's not like she can redirect the river to drown me. She's buried under ice."

"Mrrrrrrmrm," Stormy shook her head. She jumped off my shoulder and buried herself in a pile of plants inside of one of the chests. Silver eyes tinted with a bit of violet looked up at me with a judging look.

"I'm not trying to make enemies with a river," I said.

The judging look intensified.

"I… okay, fine I don't really know what I'm doing. This is completely unexplored territory for me. Come on, it's just a rock!"

I deposited the rock with the silver-blue fish floating over it in a bucket in the corner of the pub with a small shudder. Then I sat down on my cozy, warm soil pile and quietly contemplated as to what my next step should be.

Chapter 16 The Unified Theory of the Radiosynthesis of Magic

I buried the fish-spirit rock in a pile of my witchy earth to see how my domain power would affect it. It felt… weird. Like a little fire that was invading my territory, a small electrical current that constantly tickled at my senses.

It confirmed to me that I was well connected with and could actually feel my domain, which was an entirely new experience, like having a 5th limb or a 3rd ear that I had never used before.

The fish-spirit belonging to River Glinka somehow clashed with my domain, was foreign to it like an invader, felt like a piece of popcorn stuck in a tooth that my tongue couldn't quite reach.

I dug the fish-spirit rock out and stared at it. 

The fish that floated above the rock sparked with silver-blue fire and radiated annoyance, which was incredibly weird because it was a fish. How could a fish even show emotions, humanemotions at that?

I contemplated this absurdity. Perhaps there was more to spirits and crystalline matrices that contained them. It was indeed strange that my domain performed a variety of jobs for me, many of which required a high level of function. Surely a task such as steel hardening could not be performed by a mere crab?

If I was to get to the bottom of this mystery, I would have to sift through my entire soil pile and separate it by placing different crystals into different parts of the pub, to see whether specific crystal matrices perform specific functions.

Stormy went to paw at the annoyed looking, silver-blue fish.

I sat on my pile of earth, made a few notes in my Codex and attempted meditation for the 48 time as I did every morning and evening, hoping that the sensation of the fish-spirit clashing with my domain could unlock my inner eye or whatever. Alas, this attempt resulted in failure too as the only thing I could sense was a mildly annoying dull spark buried in my domain. The spiritual senses of my body just didn't seem to be growing in the slightest. 

Maybe the Yaga was right about men being unable to simply observe nature spirits with their eyes, maybe there was genetic deviation of some kind, a magical or biological split between Nordstaii men and women. Maybe unlocking the inner eye required eating some mushrooms or licking a poisoned frog?

Alas, it was winter so there were no frogs around and my glade didn't grow any mushrooms, its biodiversity rather poor likely due to the cold and the white blight damaging the local ecosystem.

Day 33

This morning, I was preoccupied with recording the outcomes of various gemstone arrangements. It appeared that my hypothesis concerning the gemstones was accurate. Within the crystal lattice, there seemed to be a rudimentary consciousness responsible for executing different tasks. By scratching out numbers on the surfaces, I carefully labeled and marked each stone to systematically track them.

Gemstone number 24 possessed an astral projection shaped like a long, ghostly millipede. The primary function of this gem boosted the saponification process, improving soap's ability to clean hard-to-remove grease from bacon pans. When I buried Gem 24 by itself in an earth-filled chest, I discovered that spearmint plants began to grow around it. 

Limonene was a naturally occurring compound found in spearmint, known scientifically as Mentha spicata. I knew that the addition of D-limonene to soap improved its performance when fighting oils and grease stains. The emergence of these spearmint plants led me to suspect that Gem 24 facilitated the extraction of spearmint as well as its constituents from the Astral Plane and encouraged their integration with soap at the molecular level. I surmised that this might be achieved through the gemstone's astral projection, which could traverse through a bar of soap.

Gemstone number 62 possessed the ability to strengthen metals. It had an innate capacity for intricate manipulation of the crystalline structure within the iron, which enhanced the metal's mechanical properties. Though I couldn't directly observe the process as it occurred while I slept, I managed to study the results using a magnifying glass I crafted by separating and polishing the bottoms of small bottles with the smithy's grinder.

Gem 62 appeared to modify iron possibly by means of grain refinement. Typically, this process involved regulating metal to create tiny, uniformly-sized grains or crystals. Alas, my incredibly crude magnifying glass and water microscope could not see iron grains. The iron bar placed next to Gem 62 did exhibit distinctive transformation in color that I could see with the naked eye. Intriguingly, 62's astral projection appeared like a small bird.

Gemstone number 112 displayed an astral projection resembling a large beetle. It had the unique ability to alter liquids inside glass bottles, transforming them into energy drinks. Through careful experimentation, I had developed a strong understanding of the gemstone's specific functions. By adding a minuscule amount of vodka—found in the pub's storage—to water and heating the solution on my water microscope glass shard slide, it generated beautiful, flower-like crystals. This observation indicated that the gemstone not only deionized the water, but it was also able to extract natural amino acids, such as Beta-Alanine and Glutamine, from the Astral. I was well aware that the formation of these specific crystals was typical when certain amino acids interacted with high-degree alcohol.

Additionally, when I placed food items next to Gem 112 within a glass jar, they became enriched with the same valuable amino acids, further demonstrating the gemstone's absurd ability for harnessing essential nutrients from the Astral Ocean.

Gem 51 located in a pickle jar seems to have done something to the glass itself, making the surface of the jar softer, more like rubber. 

The experiments with the various gemstones were quite fun. I decided to dub their effects 'The Unified Theory of the Radiosynthesis of Magic'.

I theorized that numerous other gems within my possession passively protected, healed, and enhanced me through their astral projections. Owning them was akin to having an unusual assortment of exceptionally specialized tools. For reasons I couldn't quite understand, when I handled the gemstones, I was inclined to trust the spirits attached to them. 

The crystals themselves felt warm to the touch and instilled in me a sense of connection and reassurance, as though I was a child clasping my mother's hand. I couldn't help but ponder over whether the souls of Ioan's parents or friends somehow became recorded within these crystals, allowing them to profoundly impact the physical world via the life-rad system as Astral Projections.

Considering the healing and supportive properties of my crystalline matrices, I couldn't help but wonder if cursed domains exhibited similar effects, such as inducing cancer or injecting harmful chemicals directly into people's bloodstreams through the power of astral projections. It was a rather morbid hypothesis, yet it somehow made sense considering what Yaga Grandhilda told me.

It was somewhat disheartening that I had no way to uncover the specific functions of the hundreds of other gems in my possession. However, by employing diligent testing and experimentation, I at least managed to understand the primary aspects of crystalline life. I felt confident that if I kept at it, I would uncover more evidence.

The witch's words about sinking through the earth gnawed the back of mind as I eyed the violet-tinted floorboards beneath my feet. The floorboards felt warmer, like they belonged to me. I cleared the earth away from the floor, sliced off a piece of wood and examined the wood fibers with my magnifying glass. There were visible fibrous crystalline structures within the wood now.

Could the floor become more malleable now? I had to know.

Pressing my palm against the floorboards, I focused my will on them. I imagined the packed earth, the roots and stones, and willed the wood to part, to allow my hand to pass through. Nothing happened. 

Annoying.

I grabbed gem 51 and squeezed it in my hand while trying to sink my hand through the floor. It felt like the wood beneath my hand felt marginally softer, but it didn't actually allow me to sink through it.

Bah!

I shoved gem 51 into my pocket and began to pace across the floor, pondering what I had to do to sink through solid matter.

Day 36

Another few days drifted by like a lazy snowflake reluctant to reach the ground.

Thanks to domain magic, my sleep became rather short, reduced to only 4 hours a night. With more free time to spare, I increased my meditation times to several times per day to no result.

I toiled tirelessly, my mind a whirlwind of theories and experiments. The barrels, once home to the earthly remains of the ill-fated bandits, now stood empty, their gruesome contents reclaimed by the relentless march of nature. 

I had exhumed the bodies of the bandits from the barrels. Only meticulously cleaned bones remained, stripped bare by the rapidly reproducing bacteria and microorganisms within.

The bones gleamed under the dim light of the pub, their surfaces no longer the dull off-white of calcium, but a vibrant, almost otherworldly, semi-transparent violet. I held my breath, my heart pounding with apprehension, as I used my Astralscope to thoroughly examine the bones.

The spaces within the ribcages, where hearts had once beat, now housed clusters of violet crystals that were pulsing faintly like miniature violet stars. I wondered if this was the essence of the bandits, their life force, distilled and concentrated into crystalline formations.

Stormy rubbed against my leg. The kitten had grown noticeably fluffier, fitter and more energetic since donning her crystal-studded collar. 

I considered that my witch Master was wearing an elk skull mask. Perhaps there was a scientific reason for her barbaric outfit?

Using the blacksmith's equipment, I painstakingly began to shear and shape the crystalline bones into thin, flat plates. The plan was to gradually weave them into a full-body outfit that resembled Siberian Laminar Armour.

After working on that for a while, a big pile of violet-tinted dust remained in the workshop. 

Stormy, ever curious, batted at the pile of the bone dust with a paw, violet-silver eyes gleaming with feline fascination.

"Don't play with that," I chided her gently, scooping the dust into a leather bag. "Who knows what kind of weird side effects it might have."

The kitten, her tail twitching with disappointment, climbed onto my shoulder and began to groom herself.

Chapter 17 Hexometer

I considered the violet dust in my bag and what to do with it. 

Ordinarily, human bones burned up in a crematorium at around 1,000 to 1,300 degrees Celsius becoming dry and brittle and turning into a grayish ash. I wondered what would happen if I heated this crystalline bone dust? Would it catch fire or maybe exhibit other unique properties?

I filled the base of the forge with coal and set it alight.

While the forge heated up, I retrieved a small clay crucible from a back shelf in the smithy. 

Then, I carefully placed a small mound of the bone dust into the crucible and set it atop the forge. The heart of the forge, fueled by coal and bellows, roared, bathing the smithy in a warm, orange glow. I turned the heat up high, my eyes never leaving the crucible as the bone dust within began to glow.

It didn't take long. Within moments, the bone dust melted as glass would, coalescing into a single, shimmering bead of liquid violet. I used a pair of tongs to remove the crucible from the forge.

The forge experiment showed that the crystalline bone dust had the property of vitrification when heated, aka sand turning into glass!

I dipped a metal rod into the molten bone dust and carefully extracted a small droplet. It cooled rapidly in the frigid air, hardening into a tiny, teardrop-shaped bead. 

As I stared at the glass bead made from human bone I realized that none of this should have been possible. I pulled the Witch's Codex from my bag and outlined my thoughts, trying to mentally sort what I discovered so far.

Domain-affected gemstones are malleable: Sapphires, and other hard crystals that should require extreme heat and pressure to reshape behave like soft clay. Crystals that were supposed to be harder on the Mohs scale are somehow easier to grind down.Human bones crystallizing: Upon contact with my domain, bandit remains transformed into violet, pulsing crystalline structures - a process that should be biologically impossible.Rapid Vitrification: The crystallized bone dust powder liquefied at temperatures far below what's required for making glass or melting metals.Rapid cooling without typical effects: The molten bone-glass cooled almost instantly without shattering or showing typical stress patterns.Transmutation of elements: The wooden floorboards were developing crystalline structures, implying a fundamental change in their atomic composition.As I wrote, a disturbing realization dawned on me. It was as if the distinction between different states of matter was blurring, and the energy required for phase transitions was being altered on a fundamental level. Solids behaved like liquids, organics transformed into inorganics, and the very atomic structure of materials seemed to be in flux.

I scribbled another line in the codex:

"A witch's domain appears to be rewriting the basic laws of thermodynamics and materials science. The energy barriers between different states of matter seem to have been drastically lowered or even eliminated entirely. This suggests a complete overhaul of how atoms and molecules interact within a witch's sphere of influence."

I stared at the grinding wheel. 

Water. 

My God, I'm an idiot sometimes!

In my exuberant state of mental flow, I completely forgot to use water to cool gemstones down as I ground them down! 

According to Yaga Grandhilda a witch could drown her enemies in her earth, sink through roots, solid rocks… this meant that a witch could liquefy everything that was beneath her feet, turn all solid matter into liquid at will.

But how? How could witches cause phase transition in gems?!

My hand slid into my pocket as I contemplated the impossibilities presented to me. My fingers closed around something hard and I pulled out gemstone 51.

I stared at gemstone 51, turning it over in my hand as my mind raced. Suddenly, everything clicked into place.

"You!" I exclaimed, holding the large, brilliantly-violet gem up to my eyes. "You're not just softening glass, are you? You're altering matter itself! You're… causing phase transitions! Ordinarily a rock experiences phase transition, melts at temperatures around 1000°C to 1200°C, turning into magma. But… a witch can just sink anything through solid rock without heating it up, right?"

I stared at the gem. "You're lowering the energy barriers between different states of matter. That's why the glass becomes rubbery, why the bones crystallize, why everything seems to behave so... fluidly around me! You're the reason I can just grind a corundum gemstone without it cracking, breaking the grinding wheel or overheating!"

Stormy watched me with curious eyes as I continued my animated monologue. She probably thought me mad for yelling at a rock.

"Don't you see?" I turned to the kitten, gesturing wildly. "This gem, and probably many others like it, are fundamentally changing how atoms and molecules interact within my domain. They're rewriting the rules of physics on a quantum level!"

I scooped up Stormy and held her at eye level, my words tumbling out like raging river. "Stormy, this is revolutionary! This is a complete overhaul of the laws of thermodynamics!"

The kitten mewed softly, clearly not sharing my enthusiasm for quantum physics or being shaken in the air.

"Just think about it!" I continued. "If we can control these energy barriers, we could potentially transform any material into any other material. We could create substances with properties that shouldn't exist in nature. We could..."

I trailed off, my mind reeling with the possibilities. 

"Mmmrrrr," the kitten said. 

"Right," I set her down back onto the work table. "Just me then. You have no human hands, Miss Assistant."

I quickly bound gem 51 into a basic locket on my neck and set out to make extremely basic glass lenses from the human-bone-glass dust. 

When they were completed, I waited for the glass to cool and then polished it. The process was definitely faster and easier than it should have been had I been working with mundane glass, the material behaving almost like slightly softened clay.

After that was done, I added the produced lens to my Astralscope pliers and eyed Stormy through it. 

The kitten's black fur viewed through the lens of the bone-glass combined with a multitude of other crystal lenses, glowed with an ethereal, otherworldly radiance, covered in minute violet radial shimmers. 

Day 37

Attempt at meditation 98 resulted in no changes. Still, I persisted at it, meditating in the pub and outside of it at random locations while wearing the backpack.

Even if I couldn't open my inner eye or hear the spirits of the wind, it still gave me some time to think about things, to organize the thoughts in my head and to contemplate the nature of magic. 

From what I could observe with the Astralscope, my current hypothesis was that magic moved akin to electricity. Generally, in electrical wires, the speed of the electric signal was about 50% to 99% of the speed of light, which was approximately 150,000 to 297,000 kilometers per second. Magic, it seemed moved a lot slower, as if the medium it was traveling through was some kind of thick soup. 

Using a sand-clock I discovered in the ruins and various snips of copper wire that's been sitting in my witchy pile of earth from a few hours to 34 days, I determined that the speed of magic traveling through witch-earth-blessed copper depended on how much life-rad the copper absorbed. Copper wire infused with an hour of life-rad conducted magic through it an an abysmal rate of 3 centimeters an hour! I could actually watch the magical radiance crawl across the wire like a snail via the Astralscope.

Wire that sat in my domain for 10 days, possessed a slightly more respectable rate of magical conductivity of 37 centimeters per hour.

This was of course, approximate calculation based on a ruler I've created myself using abandoned boots I found in the village, approximating that the average human foot of an adult was 26.3 cm.

34-day old copper wire conducted magic through it at 0.3 millimeter per second!

Walking around the village while testing the speed of magical conductivity in copper resulted in weird deviations. Inside some of the ruined houses covered in snow and ashes, magical conductivity of 10-day copper fell to 11 centimeters per hour!

This experiment made me arrive at a conclusion that somehow my domain accelerated magical conductivity the closer I was to it and whatever the hell the dragon did completely screwed up magical conductivity in an area. 

Magic conductivity also fell dramatically when I placed the 10-day copper wire over Glinka's rock, moving at around 21 cm/hr. Basically, magic that wasn't aligned to me slowed/disrupted the magical conductivity of my copper wire.

Day 38

Eager to explore further magic smithing, I retrieved the two heart gems made from two bandits from the pile.

I melted the first heart gem down and created another set of Astralscope lenses from half of it, which further improved by observation of magic.

"Now… should I try to fuse these two using heat?" I grinned at Stormy, showing her the remainder of the heart-gem and gem 51. "Will doing that improve gem 51's functions or make it worse?"

"Mr-mrrr," Stormy said. I took her answer as more of a yes than no.

Back in the smithy I placed gem 51 and the bandit's heart-gem into the crucible.

It only took a few minutes under high heat for the two crystals to melt.

I poured a drop of 51 into a drop of heart gem, fusing the two together. When the combined drops cooled, I held the newly forged crystal up to the light, marveling at its iridescent sheen. The heart gem's deep violet-crimson had melded seamlessly with the translucent violet-blue of gem 51, creating a unique swirl of colors.

"What do you think, Stormy?" I asked, glancing down at my feline companion. 

"Mrow?" she chirped, violet eyes fixed on the newly produced crystal.

"Yeah, I'm not sure what it does either," I said. "Let's take a closer look."

I settled into a chair, pulling my Astralscope out. As I peered through the multitude of crystalline lenses, improved crystal 51-B seemed to pulse with an inner fire, tendrils of energy coiling and uncoiling within its depths, projecting out of the gem in distinctive radial patterns akin to seeing field lines around a bar magnet.

"Curious," I murmured. "But how do I measure this increase in magical potential? I need some way to quantify magical power..."

Stormy hopped onto the table, her tail swishing back and forth as she watched me think.

"That's it!" I exclaimed, snapping my fingers. Stormy startled, nearly falling off the table. "We're going to build a magical galvanometer! Well, I'm going to build it. You can watch and tell me if I'm going in the right direction, Miss future-seer."

"Brrrrrr," Stormy commented, possibly excited by the prospect of managing me. 

"Galvanometer time!" I said as I sketched out the diagram of the galvanometer in the Witch's Codex.

She tilted her head at the word galvanometer with a somewhat confused look.

"A galvanometer is an instrument used to detect and measure electric current," I explained, showing her the sketch. "It works by indicating the presence of a current and its direction. I think I'm going to call it a… Hexometer! Since it's going to measure hexes, aka the presence of magic and its direction."

I went back into the pub and rummaged through my collection of witch-affected materials, laying them out on the workbench. Stormy perched herself on a nearby table, her violet eyes tracking my every move.

"Galvanometers are made with a magnetic coil of wire. The coil is usually wound around a rectangular or cylindrical frame," I explained. "Positioned around or alongside the coil are one or more permanent magnets. These create a steady magnetic field in which the coil is situated. The interaction between the magnetic field generated by the current in the coil and the external magnetic field of the permanent magnets causes the coil to experience a torque."

Stormy squinted at me.

"The coil is typically attached to a lightweight pointer that moves over a scale," I explained, not sure if she even understood any of my words. "It's mounted on a pivot or a set of jewel bearings so that it can rotate freely. When current flows through the coil, the magnetic torque induces a rotation, which is translated into a movement of the pointer across the scale."

Stormy closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. Maybe she didn't understand anything and I was talking to myself like a crazy cat lady.

"Basically… There's a needle connected to the coil. This needle moves when there's electricity, or in our case when there's magic. Oh and there's a spring too which helps the needle return to the starting position when there's no electricity. Get it?" I explained things again, hoping that Stormy was sapient enough for my words.

"Mewlrr," Stormy sighed. 

"Alright, let's see what we've got here," I mused, going to the pile and sorting through the items. "We need something magically conductive for the coil... Ah! This copper wire should do nicely, yeah?"

Stormy ignored the copper and went to smack a gold chain that was tinted violet.

"This is for science, not for playing." I commented.

"Mrrp," Stormy replied smacking the gold chain again, with greater insistence.

"You want me to use gold for this?" I asked.

Stormy nodded.

"Okay, Miss Assistant," I nodded. 

I returned to the forge and melted the gold chain down, hammered the produced gold into a flat sheet. Then I drew the gold through a series of progressively smaller holes in an iron drawplate. The violet-tinted gold didn't seem to require annealing. Whatever gem 51 did on my neck was causing it to be more malleable and less brittle.

When I produced a golden-violet wire, I began winding the wire around a wooden spool, creating a tight coil. "The principle here is simple," I explained to my feline audience. "If magical energy behaves anything like electricity, it might create a field when it flows. This coil should hopefully be able to detect that field."

Stormy yawned widely.

"Everyone's a critic," I muttered. "Okay, smarty-paws, which crystal should we use for the needle?"

To my surprise, Stormy hopped down from her perch, ran left and right and then suddenly jumped at absolutely nothing at all, spinning through the air as kittens often do while playing. Then she looked left and right, hopped sideways for a bit and then pawed at one of the rocks in my pile and then grabbed the coral piece that I had extracted from one of the jewellery sets in her mouth. She dropped the coral atop of a random dark rock.

"Why this specific rock and the coral?" I asked her.

Stormy shrugged.

"Right, you don't know why something works, you just somehow know that it will," I muttered.

I grabbed the rock and the coral and went back to the forge. Both melted and fused quite nicely in the innards of the forge. I poured the superheated drop into the form of a needle and waited for it to cool.

"Let's give it a try." I nodded, picking up the crystalline needle.

I carefully suspended the needle from a thin thread, positioning it at the center of the coil. 

"Now for the magnet," I said, eyeing the pile of rocks.

Stormy pawed at a rock hanging from my rock collection atop of my shirt.

"This one, huh?" I asked.

"Mrrrrrwrrl," she affirmed.

"Thanks," I said and went to melt the rock in the crucible, pouring and then slowly shaping it into a curved magnet required for the tool I was making. 

Day 39

After thirty minutes of meditation, which gave me no new powers, I spend a few hours carefully assembling the hexometer's base using a slab of wood from the outside, so it would not interfere with measuring magic. Then, I spend the rest of the day putting the entire hexometer together, testing and calibrating it so the thing would work properly. It was hard working with medieval tools but I persisted at it, my hands working tirelessly and rather precisely, thanks to the powers of my domain.

"Now for the moment of truth," I announced, reaching for a slightly purple iron flake. "If this works, the crystal should move when exposed to magical energy."

I placed the flake on the measuring plate and pointed two of the gold wires at it from two directions, watching as magic danced across them via the Astralscope.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, ever so slightly, the crystal needle began to twitch.

"Ha!" I exclaimed triumphantly. "Look at that! It works! Magic has a current!"

Stormy meowed excitedly, her tail swishing back and forth.

"You're right," I agreed. "We need to calibrate it. Let's try different materials and see how they affect the needle."

Over the next few hours, Stormy and I tested various objects from the pub. Mundane items didn't move the needle, organic things made slight twitches, while witch-grass and other magically infused materials caused more pronounced movements. The heart-gem belonging to the 2nd bandit made the needle go wild.

"Fascinating," I muttered, scribbling notes in the Codex. "It seems the strength of the reaction correlates with the level of magical saturation. Magical saturation matters. I wonder if some witches are more powerful if they place their domain inside an area that has greater... uhh... Aetheric density? Maybe places where the barrier between the physical and the Astral is thin are easier to do magic in? What do you think, Miss assistant?"

I saw that Stormy was purring contentedly, curled up next to the Hexometer. She did lots of running today. Managing me was clearly a tough job!

"You know," I said, scratching her behind the ears, "I couldn't have done this without you. You're a pretty good lab assistant!"

"Mrow," Stormy replied, her eyes half-closed in contentment.

I went back to refining the design of the Hexometer, my end goal to make it more ergonomic, more responsive and less flimsy.

Day 40

I rubbed gem 51-B against a magic-infused wooden board, observing the interaction of two magic waves radiating from gem 51-B and the wood with the Astralscope. Gem 51-B was a definite improvement in magical power compared to gem 51. I knew now why some witches turned evil. Killing people for their crystalline hearts increased the efficacy of other magical crystals in a witch's garden where the bodies were buried.

I still couldn't pass my hand through solid wood, but the surface of the wood interacting with 51-B seemed a lot softer now, almost like rubber when I pressed hard against it. 

"I think that I'm onto something here, Stormy," I commented.

Stormy tilted her head, letting out a curious "Mrrrww?"

"Piezoelectricity is when certain materials generate an electric charge in response to applied mechanical stress. It's how some lighters work, or how record players turn the vibrations in the grooves into sound," I said.

"Mrrp," Stormy replied, padding over to sit on my lap.

"Exactly!" I said, as if she'd made a profound point. "Material-softening gemstone 51 isn't quite the same as basic quartz which is piezoelectric and can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. It's responding to magical energy and my fingers in some specific way, not mechanical stress. Instead of generating electricity, 51 is somehow altering the properties of materials around it... making them more malleable.

"I think I'm going to call this effect… the Arcanoelastic Resonance," I announced to no-one in particular, writing the term into my Codex.

"Brrr brrr," Stormy shrugged. She didn't care for how things were named.

Day 41

"Alright, little miss future-seer, let's tackle this Arcanoelastic Resonance problem head-on," I got off my work table in the pub, stretching. 

Stormy's tail swished back and forth as she lazily pawed at one of the spirits.

"I think that what I'm going to need is a remote control of sorts for gem 51-B," I explained. "I can't speak to spirits like a witch does via the astral, sooo… I'm going to make a remote for it!"

Stormy tilted her head my way.

"A remote control is a device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly," I explained. "All of these spirits stuck within the rocks are performing specific functions within my witchy domain. Gem 51 can somehow make hard materials softer, so it stands to reason that this effect can potentially be controlled remotely, amplified, reduced, reversed. It's just a matter of figuring out how to order gem 51 to do what I want without talking to it through meditation or whatever it is female witches can do that I can't seem to perform no matter how many times I try it."

Chapter 18 Arcanoelastic Resonator

"Right," I said. "So… today we're going to attempt to build a remote control using 51-B," I explained, gathering my tools. "First thing's first, we need a base. More specifically, a non-magical material that will contain the phase shift resonance that gem 51-B casts without being influenced by it."

Stormy tilted her head at me.

"I'm thinking… wood? Which one do you think will work best? This one maybe?" I picked up an oak board.

I watched as Stormy got up and trotted to my pile of scrap wood, stopping at a piece of birch.

"Thanks," I picked up the birch. It was strange working with a kitten who somehow sensed what I was going to do in the near future. It skipped a lot of steps and time consuming days or weeks that would be required for testing specific materials otherwise with the hexometer to figure out which one would be the most optimal for my purpose. I wondered exactly how Stormy's power worked and why. Did Stormy want me to complete the remote sooner? If so, how did that benefit a cat? Cats weren't exactly instantly devotedly-obedient like dogs.

"Mrrp," Stormy commented looking quite pleased with herself as she paced beside me tail up in the air, her gemstone-covered harness and collar glittering like violet stardust nebulae against her lush black fur.

"Yes, yes, you're the boss," I winked at her.

I carefully sawed the birch piece into a rectangular shape, about the size of my palm.

Next, I reached for my carving tools pilfered from a woodworker's shop, but Stormy let out a disapproving "Mrow!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

Stormy pawed at the Hexometer, then at the wood.

"Ah, I see," I nodded, understanding dawning on me. "You want me to use the Hexometer to guide the carving process? I was thinking about that earlier, yeah, okay, that makes more sense than simply trying to copy an existing design of a basic remote switch from Earth."

Stormy shook her head and then pawed at gem 51-B.

"You want to connect the hexometer to 51-B?" I asked. "You think that each gem produces a unique magical signature, right? I was thinking about this for the past two weeks, the slight deviation in the radial wave-patterns projected by each gem might result in specific shape."

"Purrrr," Stormy confirmed, looking smug.

It took me a bit of fiddling but eventually I was able to adjust the hexometer to host gem 51-B.

After that was done, I placed the wood on the Hexometer's plate and watched as the needle twitched and swayed. Following its movements, I grabbed a chalk piece and started to draw dots on the wood that seemed to align with the specifically strong flow of magical energy projected by 51-B in uneven waves that I could see with my Astralscope.

The hexometer allowed me to define where exactly the waves landed on the wood dot by dot. It took me almost the entire day of poking the wood with the chalk until a coherent pattern began to emerge.

"Huh," I commented when I was done with my drawing. "This is sort of like creating a circuit board or a two dimensional representation… for the Auric Signature of gem 51-B. Specifically, the pattern for Arcanoelastic Resonance aka the phase transition causing magical pattern.

The chalk drawing on the wood appeared to be a fractal-like snowflake made up from converging pyramid-like shapes. It somewhat reminded me of the hexagram that Yaga Grandhilda drew on my chest, but was a lot more complex, featured more fractal-like triangle notches that folded into themselves. Did magic, like the shape of trees and mountains operate on specific fractals? 

"Right," I said. "I'm going to use the smallest knife to carve this pattern into the wood as precisely as I can manage."

Stormy yawned and closed her eyes as I worked slowly. I wanted to make the pattern as precisely as possible so I took my time, spending the rest of daylight on it.

Day 42

Once the carving was complete, I held up the base, admiring the snowflake hexagram and contemplated how the remote would work best. I went back to the smithy and melted the entirety of gem 51 down once again, fusing 95% of it with the crystalline hearts and leaving 5% of it for future experiments as a small glass pebble in my necklace. I poured about a third of the resulting melted gem 51-B into the grooves in the wood, watching as it solidified.

"I think I'm going to call this crystalline material… witchglass," I commented. "Sounds nicer than 51-B, yeah?"

"Mrrrp," Stormy chirped.

When the crystalline snowflake hexagram was finished, the hexometer needle went absolutely wild dancing over it. 

"Now for the tricky part," I tapped my chin. "I need to create a switch mechanism."

"Brrr?" Stormy asked.

I pondered for a moment, then snapped my fingers. "Right. I'll use 51-B for it too."

I melted and reshaped a piece of gem 51-B, and fitted it into a groove at the top of the wooden base with a spring to create a button that I could press with a finger. "This should act as our on/off switch," I explained to Stormy, who was watching intently.

"Mrow?" Stormy questioned.

"Right, we can't forget the star of the show," I nodded. "We need to integrate more of 51-B into the circuit somehow as a separate piece..."

I examined the carved channels in the wood, then had an idea. I heated up a small metal rod in the forge and used it to carefully melt a depression in the center of the wooden base. Once it had cooled, I fitted a large piece of 51-B snugly into the central hollow so that it could move up and down and touch more or less of the snowflake, its descent controlled by a wooden dial.

"Now, we need to connect everything," I picked up my gold wire. I carefully wove it through the carved channels, circling the snowflake and connecting the witchglass switch to gem 51.

"Should I also use gold for the place where the remote touches my hand?" I asked Stormy.

The kitten ran to the pile and smacked a silver chain. 

"Silver it is," I said, trusting her instincts.

Then, I modified the wooden dial on the remote once again so that it allowed me to control how much of my hand touched the silver coil and how much gem 51 touched the entire magical snowflake pattern.

"Almost there," I muttered, making the final connections. "Now we just need to test it."

"Br br," the kitten rolled over.

"Yeah, it does look like a paddle," I said, staring at the remote in my hand. "Don't judge my remote design, you!"

Stormy rolled her eyes at me.

I took a deep breath, pressed the witchglass switch and spun the dial, looking at the remote through the Astralscope. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, a soft violet glow projected itself from gem 51, rushing across the entire snowflake witchglass pattern.

"It's working… I think!" I exclaimed, grinning at Stormy. "But how do I control what it's pointed at?"

Stormy got up and went to paw at the chalk and then at the pile of bone dust.

"Chalk cannot be melted in a forge," I said. "This is because chalk is primarily composed of calcium carbonate which does not melt; instead, it decomposes when heated to high temperatures."

"Brbrrr," Stormy shook her head, tapping the chalk harder with her fuzzy black paw.

"Right… vitrification," I muttered. "I think I do have a piece of witch-magic infused chalk that's been buried for weeks in my pile."

I went to the earth pile and with Stormy's help found a violet-tinted piece of chalk. 

Stormy followed me, tail sticking upright as I put the crystallized chalk and the second human crystalline heart and the remains of gem 51 into the forge, producing a unique fusion of the three. Then, I poured the result into an approximate form of the chalk and cooled it with water.

I had run out of human heart gems. It somewhat bothered me that I would have to kill again, to build more tools. 

Maybe I didn't necessarily have to kill people. Perhaps, I could figure out how to kill a Jotun. The bones of such a beast have to be extra-magical, otherwise our Yaga wouldn't be wearing them.

"Behold, I have created witchchalk," I said as I picked up the resulting chalk.

"Mrrrrrr," Stormy yawned.

"Now what Miss assistant?" I asked her.

The kitten looked at the hexagram on the remote and then the magic chalk and then pawed the floor.

"Gotcha! Of course!" I declared and began to sketch an exact copy of the triangle-populated copy of the fractal snowflake from the remote on the floor with the chalk. It took me a bit of time to do so using a square framework sketched out with regular chalk first.

"Moment of truth," I said as I put the Astralscope in front of my left eye.

I pointed the remote at the hexagram on the floor and turned the knob, permitting greater flow of magic through the hexagram. Through the Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of violet energy beginning to coalesce around the edges of the chalk-drawn snowflake, noting clear interaction between the snowflake in the remote and one on the floor.

Suddenly, the floor within the hexagram's radius began to shimmer, as if viewed through a heat haze. I reached out with a stick and poked the floor. The wooden planks, once solid and unyielding, started to ripple like the surface of a disturbed pond. The ripple effect spread outward from the area I poked, bouncing off the edges of the snowflake on the floor.

"Yess!" I fist-pumped.

"Rock testing time!" I declared and rushed outside to grab a pocketful of small pebbles.

Upon return, I placed the first test pebble onto the floor snowflake. 

The plain, unremarkable stone began to sink slowly into the now semi-liquid floor. It was as if the wood had transformed into a viscous fluid, its molecular structure completely altered by the arcane energies flowing through it.

I pressed the switch to disable the flow of magic through the remote. The floor instantly solidified, suspending the pebble ¾ of the way in solid wood. I leaned down and tapped the wood and the rock in fascination with my fingers. Then, I turned the dial on the remote forward all the way and turned it on once again.

I watched, transfixed, as the stone descended deeper into the floor. The wood seemed to part around it, flowing like molasses. 

As the stone sank and vanished into the liquefied wooden floor, I noticed that the liquefied wood didn't splash or splatter. Instead, it moved with an eerie, almost fluidity, as if consciously making way for the intruding object. This behavior reminded me somewhat of Non-Newtonian Fluid.

I pointed the remote away from the chalk hexagram on the floor. The floor didn't stop rippling. 

I walked to the far end of the pub and tried to throw another pebble into the hexagram. The pebble bounced off. I moved closer, throwing pebbles at the hexagram. This permitted me to calculate that the range of my remote was approximately 2.2 meters. 

The Astralscope showed me that the pulsating waves of energy emanating from gem 51-B on the remote, perfectly synchronized with the ripples in the floor. It was as if the gem and the snowflake were conducting an orchestra of arcane forces, bending reality to its will.

I turned to Stormy.

"Did you see that?" I gesticulated. "The Arcanoelastic Resonator bloody works! I did it! Ha ha! Science: 4, Witchy mysticism: 0!"

Stormy, for her part, looked utterly unimpressed at my score-keeping. 

She yawned widely, stretched, and then curled up for a nap next to the burning fireplace, as if to say, "Of course it worked. What did you expect? Girl witches can simply sink into their domain without any of this remote nonsense."

I tapped my chin in thought and snipped a flower from one of the metal cases and dropped it into the liquid floor to see if the non-Newtonian-wood would absorb organic material or if something light would just float atop it. The lightweight flower gradually sank into liquefied wood and vanished into the floor.

"And that's how witches drown people," I commented with a slight shudder.

As I giddily paced across the pub, I noticed the bucket with Glinka's fish-rock.

"Time for another experiment," I grinned. "Let's see how you feel about swimming in my domain, little river-fish spirit!"

I fished the rock out of the bucket, feeling it prickle ever so slightly against my fingers and then dropped it from the air onto the liquefied floor section turning the remote dial to its lowest setting.

The moment the stone made contact with the wood, the surface rippled outward like a pond disturbed by a pebble. Through my Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of blue-green energy, distinct from the violet hues of my domain, emanating from the rock as it began to sink.

The descent of the fish-rock was noticeably different from that of the mundane stone. It seemed to resist the pull of the liquefied wood, as if struggling against an unseen current that tried to pull it under. The blue-green aura surrounding the rock pulsed and flickered, creating small eddies in the violet energy field of my domain.

The wooden floor around the sinking rock began to undulate slightly, creating concentric circles that radiated outward.

Through the multi-lens of Astralscope, I observed the interplay of energies. The violet tendrils of my domain's magic seemed to be attempting to envelop the blue-green aura of the fish spirit, but they couldn't quite manage to penetrate it. Instead, they swirled around it, creating a mesmerizing dance of colors.

The rock continued its descent, but at a much slower pace than the mundane stone. It was as if the liquid-wood itself was reluctant to accept this intruder. I could clearly sense the fish spirit's presence within my domain, a small pocket of foreign energy, a prickling bothersome spark.

Suddenly, about halfway through the floor, the rock's descent halted. It hung there, suspended in the wood refusing to sink in fully. 

"Observation: Magic interferes with magic," I wrote in the Witch's Codex.

I grabbed the rock from the semi-liquid floor and tied a bit of string to it.

"Now, let's give it more oomph!" I said as I placed the rock back into the wooden pond and cranked up the amount of phase transition on the remote to the max.

Glinka's pebble flashed with silver-blue sparks, vanishing in the depths of the floor. 

I still sensed it somehow, but its magic now felt greatly reduced, almost gone, contained. From what I felt, it stopped somewhere in the depths of the floor. 

"Fascinating," I muttered, making notes in my Codex. "The tiny river spirit seems to be contained within my domain, but not assimilated, nor dead. It's like... like an encapsulated foreign body in a living organism. Guess it's harder to kill a spirit in a rock on the account that they don't need to breathe."

I pulled the rock with the rope and then measured the distance it went in. 

From my test, Glinka's rock had stopped sinking exactly 30 cm into the floor, which was the exact radius of my chalk hexagram. 

The fish spirit looked at me with what was possibly a very annoyed expression as it swam circles around the rock.

Stormy paid neither me nor the perturbed fish spirit any attention, busy snoozing by the fire.

"I'm going to make myself Astralscope goggles using the remote to soften, carve out or maybe liquefy and reshape a small wooden board on its lowest setting," I said, looking at my chonky and terribly unergonomic Astralscope in my left hand. "Iron pliers with gem lenses tied to them are not comfortable to lug around everywhere."

Chapter 19 Callista Liesl

[Day 43]

Stormy's sudden, loud "Mraurwww!" from the windowsill interrupted my scribbling. I set down my Witchcraft Codex and walked up to the window.

Stormy's superior feline senses were right on target. 

In a few minutes a massive, carriage-style, covered wooden sleigh rolled into Svalbard pulled by four horses, moving over the frozen river. I rushed to pull my crystal-reinforced armor and face-covering helmet on, making sure that the arbalests were armed and ready.

The sleigh slid about ten meters into town and stopped facing my tree-fortification. 

As I pulled the window open, aiming the arbalest I saw that a girl in a lush, furry white coat and fluffy hat was holding the reins of the horses.

"Lo, Nordstaii ungmenni!" She called out with a slight accent as she noticed me in the window. 

After a second of delay my brain interpreted her words as an overly-formal greeting addressing a young man of the Nordstaii tribes. 

"Please lower your weapon," she yelled. "I am a merchant! My name is Callista Liesl and I come to your village because of a request made by Ioan. His message reached me through Cecil of Bernt. Are you Ioan?"

"Greetings, Callista," I replied as I lowered my arbalest. Cecil had done his job. "I am Ioan Starfall of Svalbard!"

"Ahh," the girl quickly disembarked from the sleigh, raising her empty hands in the air to indicate she was unarmed. I secured the arbalest to my side, and she approached the pub. I couldn't help but notice her somewhat feline features and brilliant snow-white hair.

"Could I stay in town for the night?" she inquired with a friendly smile. "My Stormseer tells me that a snowstorm is brewing."

"Do you need a room?" I asked. "Unfortunately, a dragon demolished our inn."

"That's alright," she reassured me. "I can sleep in my sleigh. Are the stables beside the pub still intact?"

"They are," I confirmed with a nod.

"Wonderful," she beamed. "Might I come into your pub for a drink? We can talk business–I have chicken eggs as you requested and many other supplies from the south which might aid in your… situation."

"You alone in that sleigh?" I asked.

"Sure am," she nodded, walking closer to my tree fortification. "So can you lead this weary merchant inside to warm up?"

I eyed the merchant girl evaluating her. She looked around nineteen at most and appeared harmless. There were no weapons on her as far as I could see. 

"Fine," I said. "Put your horses into the stables and then we can talk business inside. Give me a bit of time to get the pub ready for you, it's a bit of a mess."

I retreated from the window and quickly concealed the greenery that was blooming within the chests, by pulling old, grimy cloths or Band banners over the far too obvious green plants or by simply shutting the chests closed.

When the pub became presentable-ish, leaving only randomly strewn earth piles, I came out of the side door and showed Callista the safe passage through the narrow path in my tree barricade. 

"That's quite a fiendish, albeit simple tree-fence you've got there," she commented, avoiding the jagged branches as she followed me, leaning down low. "Cecil told me that you're alone in Svalbard, Ioan?"

"Yeah," I replied, feeling no need to lie to the merchant. "Just me and my cat survived the dragon."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.

"So what brings you to Svalbard, Callista?" I asked conversationally as we emerged from the tight tree-tunnel and stepped inside the warm pub.

"Trade of course," she said with another soft, friendly smile that put me entirely at ease. 

Callista was the first person that wasn't trying to kill me and her soft, feminine soprano chatter was a nice change of pace from listening to my own voice. 

Stormy hissed at the girl as she removed her thick, white fur coat, revealing a simple yet elegant white leather dress. I noticed a fanciful, white gold and blue gemstone lavaliere-style necklace was decorating the merchant's pale, slender neck. Glancing at her curves made my heartbeat accelerate for a moment.

When she pulled off her white furry hat, it revealed a pair of white, exceptionally fluffy cat ears and curvy, white, sparkling hair. I stared at her cat-like ears, not believing my own eyes. 

She looked just like the illustration from the book of monsters!

The girl wiggled her ears in my direction with a sly grin, swaying her white tail slightly.

Stormy let out a small growl. She was probably just feeling bothered that another cat… person invaded her feline domain. Indoor cats didn't get along well with other cats from the outside, so this was probably normal.

"Haven't seen a Felix Arcanicx before, have you?" Callista asked me, winking at Stormy.

"Nope," I shook my head, blushing ever so slightly as Callista pulled off her white gloves. She unbuttoned her blouse further, basking in the heat of the fireplace.

"Are there… other people like you in the South?" I asked the merchant, ignoring Stormy's 'what is this questionable big cat doing in my house?!' glare.

"Oh there are all kinds of arcanicx," the merchant nodded with a smile. "The gals living close to cometfall tend to end up with all sorts of quirky features."

"Cometfall?" I asked.

"I hail from Iridium, the city of mercantile trade," Callista said. "It stands at the edge of the Fern Archipelago which is itself on the edge of the Castian Sea. The Castian Sea, which connects to the wider Azure Ocean isn't natural–it's the result of Cometfall or Starfall as the Nordstaii tribes call it."

"Starfall," I thought, considering the sudden relevance of my last name.

"It wasn't that long ago that a shard of the Wormwood Star sheared our world and brought about the age of winter to Thornwild," Callista said with a bit of a sad look in her deep, blue eyes. "The great, slowly moving glaciers advancing from the North have upheaved many, making them forsake their homes. The Nordstaii tribes of your people arose from a fusion of a multitude of distinctive cultures that had to retreat from the North, West and East. The lives of many were filled with a great deal of strife because of Starfall day."

I simply stared at her. Callista seemed to wield a great deal of history, spoke with crystalline clarity and seemed a lot more educated and classy compared to the ancient, domain-bound Yaga Grandhilda.

"It is actually the end of summer now here in Ninitza peninsula," the merchant revealed. "Autumn is yet to arrive and winter will be harsher yet."

I gulped as Stormy's claws dug into my shoulder. This was the end of summer?! Thornwild was experiencing an Ice Age because a comet crashed into the planet?!

I shuddered momentarily and then remembered that I was a witch. No matter how cold it would get, I would be immune to it. Still, it was a bit of foreboding news.

I shook my head, driving dark thoughts away and gestured towards a pair of simple chairs and table near the fireplace that I had left in the pub for myself and stormy to eat on. "Have a seat. Can I offer you an elk steak and some wine?"

Callista gracefully lowered herself onto the bench. "Elk steak and wine? I wouldn't mind that at all, Ioan!"

I went to fetch the food and drinks. Stormy remained perched on my shoulder, keeping a wary eye on our guest. I quickly fried the meat for all three of us and then brought it to the table with some cheese, and a bottle of wine. 

"Quite a festive place you've got here," the arcanicx girl commented, leaning forward and eyeing the piles of earth and Zemy's banners hanging from the ceiling and walls all around us. "It must be lonely here for you, no?"

"Yeah," I confessed, staring at the opulent, blue, glittering jewels on her chest. "It does get a bit lonely here."

"Mrrrrr?" Stormy commented, pawing at my face as if saying, 'What about me? I'm good company, no?'

I scratched her behind the ear.

"So, tell me, Ioan, what sort of supplies are you most in need of other than the eggs?" The merchant smiled.

"Well, I could use some proper tools," I admitted. "The smithy here is decent, but finer instruments would be nice… if you have such."

Callista's eyes lit up. "Oh, I have just the thing! I've got a set of Castian magisteel tools that would make any Nordstaii craftsman weep with joy. They're a bit pricey, but..." She winked conspiratorially. "For you, I might be willing to cut a deal."

I went to the pile of earth and grabbed a bunch of gold chains that had remained after my jewellery dismantling. During the past weeks I had also excavated about 75 gold, 122 silver and 522 copper coins from the ruins of Svalbard. I placed about twenty gold coins onto the table in front of the merchant.

"Will gold work?" I asked.

"Yep," She nodded. "I definitely accept gold. Also, feel free to call me Cali!"

"Sounds good, what else have you got?" I asked.

The Felix Arcanicx began listing her wares, from medicine, to exotic spices, to finely woven fabrics, listing the prices. The amount of gold I had was more than enough to purchase what I wanted and Cali seemed genuinely interested in helping a poor orphaned boy out.

I found myself relaxing further and further as we chatted, Callista's easygoing, relaxed manner making me feel somehow more at ease than I had in weeks.

"That's quite a big assortment you've got," I commented as she listed out a multitude of handy supplies that a teenage boy might need to survive the incredibly long and brutal winter of Svalbard. "How does all this stuff even fit into your enclosed sleigh?"

"Ah that," Cali smiled. "Magic's easier to weave closer to cometfall, you see. The Sleigh of Ancorra is a tad bigger on the inside."

"Bigger on the inside?" I blinked. "How is that even possible?"

Chapter 20 Felix Arcanicx

"My sled is an artifact made by fine ladies of the Iridium Istria Magellanum," Cali revealed. "It utilizes a small shard of the Wormwood Star to power the runework. The Artificer-Sorceresses of my homeland are quite talented!"

I nodded, wondering if there were actual wizards in the south or if women had somehow monopolized the global domain of magic leaving the men to focus on cultivation of strength.

Callista continued to regale me with tales of her homeland, the wonders of Iridium and the use of Wormwood Star shards to power all sorts of magical gadgetry. Her animated gestures and infectious laughter made the gloomy pub feel brighter.

"I once traded a crate of Castian wine for a talking parrot," Cali chatted, "Can you believe it? The bird knew more curse words than a drunken sailor!"

"Did you keep it?" I asked.

"Oh heavens, no!" she giggled, her white cat ears twitching adorably. "I sold it to a pirate captain for twice what I paid. Last I heard, it was teaching the entire crew how to swear in three different languages!"

As we shared a laugh, I noticed Stormy's tail swishing. She let out a deeper growl, which Cali seemed to find amusing.

"Oh my," she cooed, "I think someone's feeling a bit left out. Is your little fuzzy friend always this protective?"

I glanced at Stormy, who was glaring daggers at Cali. "Stormy's usually less grumpy," I said, feeling a bit embarrassed. "I guess she's not used to visitors."

Cali waved her hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure she's just jealous that another kitten is monopolizing your attention." She winked at me, causing my cheeks to flush slightly.

"Oh?" I asked. "You're just a kitten then, are you?"

"That's what my mom calls me," Cali laughed. "Her little adventure-seeking kitten. I'm nineteen but thanks to the comet shard, I won't age much."

"That's pretty nifty," I said, nearly confessing that I wouldn't age much either. 

As our conversation continued, I found myself sharing more about my situation in Svalbard than I'd initially intended, describing my battle with the bandits from Bernt with greatly exaggerated detail. Cali listened with rapt attention, her blue eyes wide with sympathy.

"That must have been terrifying," she said softly when I concluded. "You're incredibly brave to stay here all alone, Ioan."

I shrugged, feeling a pitch of embarrassment at her praise. "I didn't really have much choice," I admitted.

"Still," Cali insisted, leaning towards me and revealing more of her curves, "it takes a special kind of person to face such... adversity. You should be proud of yourself, Ioan!"

Stormy let out another hiss, but this time, I barely noticed it, too engrossed at staring at the merchant's goods.

"I think your little guardian here might be plotting my demise." She nodded towards Stormy, who was now pacing back and forth on the table, tail lashing.

I chuckled, reaching out to scratch Stormy behind the ears. "Come on, girl. Cali's our guest. Be nice!"

Stormy let out a disgruntled "Mrow!" at me, batting at my hand.

"What?" I asked. 

"Merrr-mer-mrwrrrrrwww," Stormy spat out an entire tirade of cat language at me. I had no idea what her problem was, so I simply pushed the kitten off the table. 

"You're pretty brave yourself there, Cali," I said as Stormy climbed up my leg and then leapt back onto my shoulder. "Traveling to the frozen North alone in a magic sled just to trade with small villages like ours? Isn't that… dangerous?"

"Ehh," the merchant shrugged, scratching a large scar on her cheek. "I wanted to prove myself to my family so they don't just marry me off to some pompous idiot pirate."

As the evening wore on, my initial wariness and general paranoia had vanished completely. 

Cali's presence felt... right, somehow. Natural. Like we'd known each other for years instead of hours. Like she belonged here in my pub.

"You know," Cali said, leaning in close, "I've met a lot of people in my travels, but there's something verrrry special about you, Ioan."

I felt my cheeks flush, partly from the wine and partly from her words. "Oh? What do you mean?"

She smiled, suddenly reaching out to touch my hand. "You've got this... spark. Like there's more to you than meets the eye. It's intriguing. People usually turn into sniveling idiots around me."

"Do they?" I asked.

"Yeppers," she nodded with a blush. "Just part of the Felix Arcanicx charm, I suppose. You're speaking clearly after all that wine and talking to me for over an hour, consider me impressed!"

Stormy let out another low, murderous hiss from her perch on my shoulder, but I wasn't paying attention. I was too caught up in Cali's big blue eyes that sparkled like distant, deep, blue ocean waves.

"I... thanks," I stammered at my feline guest. "You're pretty special yourself, Cali."

She giggled, her cat ears twitching adorably. "Oh, you charmer. But seriously, Ioan, have you ever thought about leaving Svalbard? There's a whole world out there!"

As Cali's words washed over me, I found myself nodding along, feeling entranced by her melodious voice and the promise of adventure. The idea of leaving Svalbard, of exploring the world beyond the snow-covered ruins I currently inhabited, suddenly seemed not just appealing, but absolutely irresistible.

"Think about it," Cali said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I could use someone like you in my trade. Someone clever, brave, resourceful, special... strong." She reached into her coat's pocket and pulled out a small, ornate gold scroll case.

"What's that?" I asked, my voice sounding weirdly distant even to my own ears.

Cali smiled wide, her eyes sparkling like sapphires. "Just a little agreement. A formality, really. It would make you my... business partner, of sorts, just until we reach the ocean."

She unrolled the scroll, revealing a complex document filled with intricate script. I squinted at the scroll. I had no idea what was written there.

"Don't worry about the details," Cali purred, producing an elegant, gold-wrapped, onyx-coloured pen with a wickedly sharp tip from the other end of the golden tube. "It's all standard contract stuff. Just add a little signature to seal the deal, right here and we can be on our way to grand adventures in a day or two! Why hide out here all alone, waiting for the glaciers to engulf this forsaken land when you could enjoy coconut milk on a sunny beach listening to the waves lapping against the shore along with… me?"

My hand reached out, almost of its own accord, towards the pen. 

Something in the back of my mind nagged me that this was wrong, stupid, that I should read the contract, that I should be more careful. But Cali's eyes were so blue, so deep, and I felt like I was drowning in them, my thoughts scattering like leaves in the wind.

Just as my fingers were about to close around the pen, I felt a sharp pain in my hand. Stormy, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past few minutes, suddenly sprang into action. Her tiny teeth sank into my flesh, and with surprising strength, she yanked my hand away from the pen.

The sudden pain of the bite cut through the fog of calmness engulfing my mind. I blinked rapidly, feeling as though I was waking from a deep sleep. The fingers of my hand, forcefully guided by Stormy's insistent tugging, brushed against the cool surface of my Astralscope goggles sticking from my pocket. 

When did I put it there? Why did I put it there? I couldn't recall when I pulled it off my head. Why didn't I look at the merchant with the Astralscope to begin with... when she was clearly a creature from the book of monsters! 

"W-what sort of a pen is that?" I blinked at the gold-encrusted pen held in the merchant's fingers, trying to focus my scattering thoughts.

"That? That's just an ordinary pen," Cali's expression flickered, a flash of frustration crossing her features before her smile returned, albeit slightly strained. "Oh, Ioan. Don't you trust me? It's just a little signature between partners, an agreement, a fair trade… just a bit of service for me, in exchange for the multitude of southern wonders I could show you."

Stormy hissed loudly, her fur standing on end as she jumped onto my shoulder. 

I slid the Astralscope goggles atop of my eyes and quickly retreated from my seat, staring straight at Callista. Blue, shimmering strands stretched out from the pulsing gemstone on her neck, crawling across the entire pub akin to the legs of gargantuan alien spider, reaching out to me like some sort of living thread.

"What's wrong, Ioan?" The merchant saw my aghast expression. She stood up from her seat too, leaving the gold tube, the contract page and the golden pen sitting on the wooden table.

"Listen," I said, trying to remain calm as I retreated back to my pile of blessed earth. "I'm not signing whatever that is. I can't read that language and I don't want to be bound into anything I cannot fulfill."

"Come on! It's just a basic mercantile agreement!" Callista insisted, her voice filling with frustration, her blue eyes boring into mine. "It just makes sure that you remain loyal and respectful. A simple contract, binding you to my mercantile endeavors, for, say… a year or two? You're young, if a bit thin. It's a small price to pay for the opportunity to unlock your true potential, don't you think, Ioan?"

The gemstone collar on her neck ignited with radial silver-blue shimmers, wriggly threads dancing across the entire pub like parasitic worms. My mind suddenly went blank, my feet taking a step towards her on their own accord.

"That's it," Cali sang, her voice perfect, her figure alluringly captivating. "Come here and sign the contract."

I idly noticed that my feet took another step forward. The rational part of my brain was suddenly gone, lost somewhere in the depths of distant space.

Chapter 21 Witchy Lie Detector

Stormy nipped my ear and then swatted her paws in front of my face from my shoulder, somehow disrupting the silver-blue threads of the necklace-spider.

"Say, that's a pretty necklace," I growled, retreating further back from Cali as I stared at the convergence of silver and blue lines on her chest.

"This old thing?" Cali asked, walking towards me, her slender fingers lightly caressing the cool, smooth surface of the biggest crystal hanging on her chest. "Just a family heirloom. Passed down through generations of merchants on my mother's side. Legend has it that it brings good fortune in trade." 

She smiled at me with sharp feline chompers, purposefully advancing in my direction.

"Come on," she sang. "Come back to the table and sign the contract for me, Ioan! Pretty please?"

"No," I retreated further back.

"Sign the contract," Callista's face strained, the smile sliding off it. "I order you to sign it!"

The silver-blue flare visible in my Astralscope coming from her chest intensified, became a hundred times more solid, struck at me with threads flailing across the air like octopus feelers. 

My mind became a mire once again at her words, but then Zemy's Band banners above and all around us suddenly shimmered with gold, green and blue radiant flashes and the hundreds of the spider-leg threads stretched between Cali and me simply shattered in the air, turning into blue motes of stardust.

Before Cali could say another order or rebuild her mind-control threads, I reached the Arcanoelastic remote in my pocket and pointed it at the massive hexagram on the floor beneath her feet. I had drawn this oversized hexagram on the floor a few days ago to test to see how deep my domain extended under the pub using Glinka's fish spirit tied to a string. 

"Is that… a paddle?" The merchant blinked at the remote. "What's that for?"

I turned the remote knob to its maximum setting and pressed the activator switch with my thumb just as Callista stepped into the center of the barely visible chalk hexagram.

"Drown," I said simply.

The word left my lips not with a shout, not with the righteous fury of a hero, but with the calculating finality of a scientific statement. Survival in Thornwild was a brutal, uncompromising game, one best played with a cool head and a steady hand wielding a matter-manipulating remote.

As the word echoed through the room, a tremor ran through the floor of the pub. The circle of three meters of pub's floor, planks that had stood firm for generations suddenly became malleable. The sturdy oak beneath Callista's feet rippled and twisted, transforming from solid wood into a churning vortex of liquid mire.

"Goldara's tits! What the shit?!" Callista shrieked. Her eyes widened with disbelief as her white leather boots suddenly sunk into the floor. 

She thrashed wildly, her arms flailing as she struggled to free herself from the grasping muck. 

The more she fought, the deeper she sank, the viscous ooze clinging to her with an almost sentient hunger, dragging her down towards the cold, dark heart of the earth.

I watched her descent with a detached curiosity.

"How? What?!" Callista choked, her voice barely a gurgle as the mire rose to her waist. "You're just a… a… b-boy!" 

Her words dissolved into a strangled gasp as the floor swallowed her waist and then chest.

"Oh Gods, what vile sorcery is this?! Let go of me!" She clawed at the floor, eyes filled with terror, but there was nothing for her to grab onto. The viscous mire of the liquefied floor suspended somewhere between solid and liquid, held her tight, wasn't conducive for swimming in.

"Please, No!" Callista's desperate voice reached me from the floor. The mire had reached her neck, her beautiful face now contorted into a mask of pure terror. 

Her gaudy blue gemstone necklace vanished in the liquefied soil and wood and its mind-manipulating power suddenly extinguished, now feeling like a mildly annoying silver-blue spark buried in the depths of my domain.

With it gone under, the red threads reaching out to me vanished. My mind cleared completely. I watched dispassionately as Cali flailed, wept and begged, sinking deeper with each second.

A strangled cry escaped her lips as the viscous muck threatened to engulf her completely, leaving only a pair of pale hands, their manicured fingers scrabbling desperately at the edges of the churning wood. For a moment, as her head rose above the floor for one last breath, I saw a flicker of my own mortality reflected in her blue eyes, a stark reminder of the fragility of life, the brutal indifference of the forces that governed our existence in an incomprehensibly vast universe.

"Solidify," I said, flicking the switch off just a second before her face fully vanished under.

The transformation was sudden and absolute. The churning mire seized, the pub's floor transforming back into solid wood, albeit now slightly warped and uneven due to the girl's mad thrashing.

Callista's terrified face stared up at me from the floor, her body trapped up to her chin in the now once again solid wood. Her carefully-coiffed white hair was now matted with earth, fused into the dirty floor. Her hands were sticking out to her wrists from the floor, pale fingers grasping at the air.

Gone was the overly-friendly merchant, the master manipulator who had effortlessly bent me to her will. In its place was just a scared girl, looking up at me with wide eyes. For a moment, we simply stared at each other, the only sound the crackling of the fire and the frantic thudding of my own heart. 

I walked to the stove and grabbed the biggest kitchen knife I could find, its bone handle cold and smooth in my palm. 

Stormy growled from my shoulder as I approached the entombed merchant. The kitten's silver-violet eyes were fixed on Callista with a chilling intensity that mirrored the predatory instinct I felt stirring within my own soul.

"P-p-please," Cali whispered, her blue eyes filling with tears as she stared at the knife in my hand.

I crouched beside Callista, bringing my face close to hers. The scent of her expensive perfume or shampoo, a cloying blend of exotic flowers, did little to mask the underlying tang of fear that now clung to her like a shroud.

"Please, what?" I asked.

Her ocean-blue, wide eyes flashed left and right and then settled back on mine.

"P-Please d-don't," she repeated as I struck the knife into the floor next to her pretty face, making her flinch.

"Don't what?" I arched an eyebrow.

"Please, d-d-don't k-kill me," she choked out. "I… I didn't mean anything by it. The contract… it was just a jest. A b-bit of fun!"

"Fun?" I asked. "Do tell me, Callista–what's so fun about using mind-controlling artifacts to manipulate a poor, dragon-orphaned boy to sign questionable paperwork?"

Callista's breath emerged in short, panicked gasps. "I... I'm sorry," she whimpered, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. "It's just... it's how we do things in Iridium. Every g-gal uses a little... p-persuasion. I didn't mean any harm, truly!"

I leaned in closer, my voice low and cold. "And what exactly were you planning to do with me once I signed that contract of yours?"

She swallowed hard, her cat ears flattening against her head. "J-just... just take you South. To Iridium."

"Why?" I arched an eyebrow.

"T-to make you mine," Cali choked out.

"Yours?" I growled.

"Y-yes!" She nodded.

"You're just like those bastards from Bernt then… and here I thought that you were actually nice! Ha, my mistake for trusting a pretty face, I guess. Is this what you do, collect slaves?"

Callista flinched at the word. "N-no! Not slaves. These contracts create... in-indentured servants. It's t-temporary! And they're treated well, I swear! I thought that you could make a good sailor… b-because… you resisted my charm for so long!"

She was probably lying again.

I stood up, looking down at her trapped form. "You know, Callista, maybe I should leave you in the floor. Or chop you up and feed you to my plants? What do you think, Stormy?"

"Grrrwwrrr," Stormy replied.

"W-what plants?!" the Felix Arcanicx stammered.

I went across the pub, pulling cloths off the garden and opening cases to reveal violet tinted flowers, moss and grass.

"What the shit," Cali's eyes became as big as two teacups. "That's impossible… How are all these flowers even alive?! The White Blight and the cold… it should have killed everything green here!"

"Here, does this flower feel dead to you?" I nipped a violet-tinted Lilium candidum from the flower patch and slid it in front of her ear as a decoration. It seemed fitting. The merchant stared at the flower with a shocked expression.

Stormy jumped off my shoulder and sat down next to Cali's head. She started licking herself in front of the incredibly confused and terrified merchant.

"It… it hurts," Cali whimpered. "Please… p-pull me out! I can't breathe! My chest is constricted by the… the floor. I… I don't want to die here!"

"Let's test something," I said. "Stormy, you can sniff the future… so, if she lies about a statement, slap her face. Otherwise, let her be."

"Mrrrwwrr," the kitten replied, raising a paw.

Cali swallowed.

I grabbed the contract and the pen from the table and dangled them in front of her face.

"How long is this 'indentured servant' contract for?" I asked.

"Just for a few yea…" Cali began which earned her a swat of kitten paw across the face.

"If you lie again, I'm going to tell Stormy to use claws and aim for your eyes," I said. "And if you lie to me twice, I'm just going to make you drown and claim your sled and everything within it for myself. I don't appreciate being deceived, merchant."

"I… I won't lie again, I swe-swear!" the Arcanicx swallowed, staring at the black kitten.

Stormy's paw, which now featured sharp, extended claws, didn't strike her face this time.

"See, isn't honesty fun? Now, how does this contract work?" I asked, my voice as sharp as steel. "Explain everything and don't skip on the details."

Callista's eyes darted between me and Stormy, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. 

"The... the contract," she began hesitantly, "is a b-blood pact. The g-gold pen extracts the blood of the signer. When signed, it binds the signer's blood to the holder of the contract's scroll tube."

I raised an eyebrow. Stormy's paw remained still.

"Go on," I prompted. "How long is this contract for?"

"It's... it's permanent," Cali continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "The man who signs it becomes a t-thrall, bound to obey the contract holder's every command. Disobedience to their owner's orders isn't permitted."

Stormy's tail swished in agitation, but her paw didn't move.

"And what happens to thralls in Iridium after they sign such contracts?" I asked.

Cali swallowed hard. "They're... they're generally sold at the flesh auction along with the golden tube artifact. To the highest bidder. Some become gladiators or warriors, others... entertainment or bodyguards. The wealthy of Iridium always want new playthings."

I clenched my fists, disgust and anger roiling in my gut. "How many Nordstaii people have you enslaved like this, Callista?"

Her eyes filled with more tears. "None so far," she whispered. "I… you were supposed to be my first big catch! I wanted to keep you f-for myself! You're a Nordstaii Champion born from dragonfire, one who will grow in strength and b-be m-my personal bodyguard!"

"Who told you that I was a hero?" I asked.

"Cecil of Bernt," she said. "He saw you take down two men with impossible speed. Mortals don't survive dragon attacks!"

"Are there any other slaves in your sled?" I demanded.

"N-no," the Arcanicx shook her head. 

I crossed my arms.

"It's far better to be a bodyguard in the South than to die here from starvation! There's no escape from the White Blight! Don't you understand it?" She cried. "Every tree in your village is dead, Ioan! The White Blight feeds on plants and is unknowingly spread by humans! Only sunlight can harm it and there's just not enough of that here!"

Stormy's paw remained still, confirming the horrifying truth of her words.

"And the necklace?" I asked, gesturing to the blue gem amalgamation now buried in the floor. "What does it do?"

"It's a Liesl lavaliere… a Sorceress-made d-device binding the shard of the W-Wormwood S-star I carry!" Cali explained, her voice trembling. "It... it enhances my natural charm, makes people more susceptible to s-suggestions and orders. Combined with my Felix Arcanicx Charisma, it's... it's nearly irresistible. It's a familial weapon, created to p-protect me!"

I nodded slowly, pieces falling into place. "And that's why you were so surprised I could resist it for so long."

Cali nodded as much as her trapped position would allow. "Yes. You're... you're different somehow. Special. The way you dealt with men from Bernt… I thought you were a young, clueless Dyrkjarl… b-but you also ordered the floor to become liquid and that… that's just not possible, that's s-some kind of magic and men cannot do magic!"

I crouched down next to her again, my voice low and dangerous. "You have no idea how special I truly am, Callista. Now, tell me why I shouldn't just drown you."

"Please," she begged, "I... I can be useful! I know things, trade routes, secrets! I can help you! I can take you South, without any contract! I can read and write in Nordstaii, Terelec, Monganesh, Scallirian, Iridian… I am an omniglot and I know nearly every language of every tribe from the Castian Sea to the glacier-engulfed North!"

Stormy's paw twitched but didn't strike.

I considered her words carefully. "And why should I trust anything you say?"

"I…" Cali trembled. 

Stormy growled at the merchant, claw armed and ready, pulling it back for the swat. My familiar was sensing an inevitable future lie.

I slid the contract over to the merchant and put the blood pen into her trembling fingers.

"Sign it on the dotted line," I said simply as I wrapped my fingers around the golden tube.