Magical Girl Mechanical Heart

68. Friendship is Magic

"Hi Chloe! Mind if Castalia and I bring a friend over?" I 'say,' though I'm really more just sending audio data over the phone network to make Chloe's phone say it. "Luna!" Chloe's voice comes in over the phone line, a giant string of ones and zeroes that almost make more sense than the actual audio file once it's been played. "Oh gosh, it's so weird hearing you talk. Wait, is that okay to say?"

"Not at all. I'm extremely offended. We're not friends anymore," I joke. I can bring my friend Thea over to your house."

Thea, Castalia, and I are finally together outside the base again, just sort of hanging out in the alleyway that disguises the teleporter. I kinda realized the moment we left that I hadn't actually so… I'm doing that! On slightly short notice, admittedly, but Chloe is nothing if not flexible. We used to show up at each other's dorms all the time.

"Oh no! Well, I'd love to stay friends, but unfortunately we're not actually home right now," Chloe answers. "We're at Jim's place, but I can ask him if you can come over?"

Jim? Oh, right. Eliza's brother. Shit, I guess that makes sense. They learned a bunch of stuff yesterday. I don't really know the guy that well, but he seemed nice enough when I held him hostage for Anath.

…Oh. Oh shit, that's going to be really awkward.

"Um, can you tell him sorry for me when you do?" I ask.

"Uh, what do you mean?" Chloe asks. "Why would you want to tell him sorry?"

There's a pause, and I can hear chatter from the other side of the line.

"She did Chloe yelps. "Well, um, apparently she's sorry? And was also a slave and stuff like we said. …Yeah, uh-huh. Thanks, Jim. Hey Luna, yeah, he says you and Castalia can bring your friend."

"Cool, thanks," I say. "Send me the address of his house?"

"Oh yeah, sure thing, I'll send it when I hang up. See you soon!"

"See you, Chloe!"

"Luna?" Thea asks. "You've just kinda been standing there. Everything okay?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, sorry, I just hacked into the phone network to make the call for funzies. Well, for a certain definition of 'hacked,' anyway. I really just spoofed the credentials of the phone I already legally own. Or… legally insofar as any part of my identity is legal, given that it's all fake?"

"What are you gonna do if Nana like… undoes all of that, anyway?" Thea asks. "She made you your identity, so can't she take it away?"

"I don't think it works like that," I answer. "For starters, I can only imagine that making a new identity is a very complicated process of bribing people with the right system access, and I doubt undoing it would be any easier than doing it in the first place. Why would she spend all that money again just for spiiii…te. Hmm."

"Yeah?" Thea says.

"Yeah, you've got me there. It Nanaya," I concede. "I'll look into it. I'm sure I can phish a government employee or seven. But ultimately, I'm not worried, because she make me the identity. She hired somebody else to do it instead. Nana and I always went through a liaison for that kind of stuff, which… oh. Right, yeah. I should see if Uma'tama wants me to destroy the mafia."

"Do the what now?" Thea squeaks.

"The mafia! Or, maybe not the mafia specifically, just… whatever organized crime system is in charge of our liaison," I say. "They're the people we sold all the artifacts to. So… I imagine we're probably supposed to stop that."

"Yes," Castalia confirms. "We are. Let's go tonight."

"Okay," I agree with a shrug. "If they're smart, they'll be gone by now, but I can show you the place we always used to meet 'em. Jim's house first, though?"

"Yes," Castalia agrees. "I need to apologize to him."

Oh yeah, weren't the two sort of in touch a little? Until I exploded, anyway.

"I can't believe it's been eight whole months," I admit. "I got turned into a robot over a year ago, and I've only been conscious for like a of it."

"Hmm," Castalia says.

"Yeah?" I prompt.

"Well, I never thought I'd meet someone who sleeps more than I do," Castalia admits. "I'm not sure how I feel about it, so I'm trying to find out."

There's a pause.

"Sad, I think," she concludes.

"It's not great," I agree. "But hopefully I won't have that problem again?

"It is good to be full of hope," Castalia agrees sagely.

"I certainly can't recommend the alternative!" I say, receiving a ping in my brain. "Oh! Chloe sent over the address. Thataway, my psychic steed!"

I point and Castalia lifts us all up into the air, Thea only whimpering slightly as we accelerate to speeds that likely wouldn't be safe for other people. We land on Jim's porch, which… you know, first of all, I'm surprised he a porch? Doesn't he work part-time at a pet store? How can he afford a mortgage? He must have another source of income from somewhere… hmm. It's probably related to how neither of them live with their parents anymore. Does he get child support from them? Would that have been suspended when she turned eighteen?

Second of all… his porch has bloodstains on it. They're very faded at this point, but given what I've heard about Eliza getting shot, I have a suspicion I know exactly where they came from. What an ominous reminder of what he must be going through right now. I shouldn't have come here. I'm just being selfish again.

Oh, well. Too late now.

Castalia rings the doorbell with her mind, and we only have to wait a few seconds before someone's at the door, opening it up partway. Jim smiles at us the moment he sees us, pulling the door open the rest of the way to let us in. He's… perhaps not the most traditionally attractive man, but I doubt anyone would call him ugly. He's mostly just almost bony, with a smooth face and sharp jaw that are easy to miss thanks to his big round glasses. He looks kind of like a traditional nerd, but he doesn't really carry himself that way; his wide smile is anything but shy.

"Hey!" he greets us. "It's been a while, Castalia. And Luna, it's great to see one of Eliza's friends. Which means… you must be Thea. Are you, uh, a friend of Anath's, by any chance? How is she doing?"

Thea flinches, hiding behind me slightly as Jim glances briefly at her tail and legs. I grab her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

"I, um, I lived with Anath, but we were never super close," Thea answers. "I don't know how she's doing. I haven't seen her in months."

"Yeah…" Jim says, his smile faltering. "Me neither. Well, come on in. Make yourselves at home. This place has been way too big for me, haha!"

He steps aside, and we squeeze inside. I glance around, noting a lot of damage to the walls and carpet. Is that… ammonia in the air?

"Sorry if it smells a little," he says apologetically. "For a while I had a bunch of the animals from the store living here so I could watch them during the lockdown. They made a bit of a mess of the place, but cleaning has kept me busy, at least."

"Don't worry about it," I say. "I can just turn off my nose if I wanna."

"Turn off your… oh, right. Chloe mentioned that," Jim says hesitantly. "So a year ago, that was you with Anath…?"

"Yeah," I confirm. "Sorry. I wasn't fully in control of my own actions, but I still feel terrible."

"Don't," Jim says. "Actually, I wanted to thank you. You protected me, right? Anath was having a really bad day that time. I probably would have gotten hurt without you there."

O-oh. Huh. I stare at him, trying to figure out if he's serious, and he just grins at me. There's not a drop of hesitancy or self-awareness on his twinky little face.

LunaLightOTK: I approve of your union. Marry this idiot ASAP.

"The fuck?" I hear Bean mumble from the other room. "Wh—

"Hiiiii Bean!" I say, popping my head around the corner and seeing my best friend blushing from their spot on the couch. "How are you doooing?"

There's an interesting room here, sort of a joint kitchen/dining/living room thing where it's all one big space divvied up kind of arbitrarily. The kitchen and the dining room are divided by an island, while the dining room and the living room are divided by a transition from tile to carpet, but you can still easily see from one end of the house to the complete opposite end. While I admire the layout, though, Bean quickly puts their phone back in their pocket and stands up, pointing an accusatory finger at me.

"You…! No. Okay? No," Bean groans.

"Okayyyy," I regretfully allow. "But only because I love you, and I've been the worst friend ever for like, an entire year. less than that, and you would be teased until the end of time."

"Why are we teasing Bean? Can I get in on this?" Jim teases.

"No!" Bean insists.

"Yes," I squeak before I can stop myself, causing Bean to strike me down forever with their signature patented mega-ultra death glare. Trust me, I know it's both signature patented despite never seeing it before today. It's just got those vibes.

Thankfully, I'm saved from an untimely demise by Thea shyly poking her head around the corner behind me, positioning her body in such a way that her legs still can't be seen. Failure, failure, failure I fucked up bad but she said she was doing it anyway so I have to live with it! Aaaaah!

"Um, hello," she says softly.

Bean and Chloe both stop what they're doing, staring at the green-skinned girl with one monstrous eye and gemstones on her cheek. They, unlike Jim, have only seen mutated humans very briefly or not at all: Chloe that one time in the mall where I maced Anath, and Bean perhaps on blurry videos but never in person.

It is, I'll admit, a bit of a jarring sight seeing it close-up for the first time. It's almost like going to the zoo and seeing an exotic animal up close, which… is not the most flattering comparison, but it's accurate. Seeing videos and pictures of a living thing is nothing like actually meeting one in person. You can't the size of an elephant or the strength of a tiger or the adorableness of a penguin in quite the same way until you're physically near one. There's a tangible difference in the intensity of the experience that I can't quite describe any other way.

With Thea, I think, they're probably going through both extremes of that experience. When I hold out my hand to her and encourage her to emerge fully out of the hallway, her tiny claws clack on the tile floor like a pet dog. With the way her whole body shakes with nervousness and the general Thea cuteness inherent to my lovely master, there's certainly part of Chloe and Bean's brains that is full up entirely with 'aaaaaaaw!'

Yet on the other hand… the human brain isn't totally stupid. Lions can be cute, but hardly anyone can get close to one without being deeply, aware of the strength and danger they represent. Thea's tail slides into the room a split-second behind her, the sharp crystal blade at the end as large as a human head. The asymmetry of her body gives off the impression of something unnatural, or perhaps something not quite finished, and while it's a bit hard to see any muscle on her despite how much weight she's lost, I know she could crush almost anything in this room with her bare hands, and I suspect some part of the humans knows this, too. Despite the shaking, she carries herself too gracefully, too to truly be discounted as a physical threat. Her tail sways back and forth behind her, yet never makes contact with anything, always perfectly aware of its surroundings even when she isn't looking. Perhaps especially then. She has a calm soul, but her body is made for violence.

Sure, against another magical girl, Thea's close-quarters-combat skill is honestly pretty bad. But against a human? She's nothing short of a monster.

"Hi," Chloe says, her expression shifting easily into her well-practiced smile the moment her surprise wears off. "You're Thea, right? I'm Chloe. It's nice to meet you."

"Bean," Bean introduces themself. "You're from that place Luna was kept, right?"

"U-um, yeah, I guess so," Thea admits awkwardly, glancing away.

I lean over and wrap my arm around her shoulders, causing her to stiffen.

here is my mechanic! And my friend! I probably wouldn't be alive if not for her," I say, coming to my master's defense. "Plus, as my friend, I couldn't tell her any more than I told any of you. She defected to come help me once she found out what was really going on. She's awesome."

That seems to placate Bean considerably, and Chloe's smile manages to become a bit less fake. Good! There we go. I'm getting Thea friends like I'm to be doing. That feels better.

"You're her… mechanic?" Bean asks. "I kinda figured Luna's body was so advanced it may as well be magic."

"It is, but Thea can do magic too, so she figured it out anyway," I brag on her behalf.

"Is that… how magic works?" Bean says suspiciously.

"No," Thea answers, still a bit quiet. "It isn't. I spent six years figuring out how Antipathy artifacts work, and I still don't know as much as I'd like to. Luna's body mostly just repaired which… was cool, but it also makes her a bit hard to modify sometimes."

"'Modify?'" Bean presses.

"Like giving me the ability to talk," I clarify. "Factory default robo-Luna couldn't communicate, with sign language. My radio transmitter and speakers and all that jazz are voiding my warranty big time."

"Yeah, I had to set up a slightly jank hardware bypass which… er, actually, sorry, I shouldn't say. Luna's body might compel her to undo my changes if she understands them," Thea says. "Or… at least that's what Mel told me, which should have tipped me off about all of this, but… well, I'm a stupid freaking idiot."

She squirms with her hands, picking at the webbing between her fingers.

"Hey, no, you're not an idiot, Thea," I protest, gently grabbing both of her hands with my own so she doesn't hurt herself. "It's not your fault. She practically you. We've been over this."

"Y-yeah," Thea agrees unconvincingly.

I synthesize a sigh and turn to my other friends. It's probably best to just be honest here.

"Thea has basically been living with the same three people for the past six years, with no outside contact whatsoever," I tell them bluntly. "She needs sunlight, friendship, and warm food. I know I owe you all more than you owe me, but can I get your help with all of that?"

"Of you can, Luna," Chloe agrees immediately.

"Yeah, I get it," Bean sighs. "She's a cult survivor, basically? Actually, that pretty much describes everyone with a magic rock, doesn't it?"

"Arguably," I concede. "But I like to hope that our current cult will be less prone to slavery and war crimes."

"Just slightly?" Bean asks, raising an eyebrow.

"I like to keep my hopes realistic," I answer.

"The Preservers aren't evil," Castalia insists.

"I'm starting to believe that Uma'tama isn't evil, but jury's out on the rest of them," I say. "But that's neither here nor there. Thea! Chloe! Bean! Friend fun time activate! Oh and Jim too I guess, thanks for having a house or something."

"It's one of my better qualities," Jim nods sagely. "But in all seriousness, please make yourselves at home. In return, I'd just like to pick your brain for anything you can tell me about Eliza."

Oh, uh… hmm. Jim walks off into the kitchen before I can formulate an answer, putting some water to boil in an electric kettle.

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"Would anybody like tea?" he asks.

"Sure!" Chloe says.

"Why not?" Bean groans, flopping back onto the couch.

"If that's okay," Thea confirms.

"Castalia? Luna?" Jim offers.

"No thank you," Castalia says. "Unless you have any that isn't caffeinated?"

"Yeah, absolutely," Jim confirms. "Luna?"

"Oh, I don't… drink things," I say. "Or eat things. Or taste things."

"Right," Jim says. "Sorry."

"It's fine, I don't miss it," I admit.

"Really?" he asks, pulling various tea bags out of his cupboards and preparing mugs alongside them.

"Yeah, I dunno, I was never much of a foodie," I admit. "I was pretty depressed most of my life, and I guess some people eat when they're depressed, but personally I just had a eating. It's more something I did to stay alive than something I did because I liked it. Sure, some food was really good, and I might miss a few things, but… it's never really been a big part of my life."

"Mmm. Eliza was the same way," Jim says. "It was hard keeping her fed sometimes, even when she rushing off to fight through mealtimes."

He says it so… casually. I can feel the sadness he's producing, but even that is less than I'd expect. Still…

"Are you… okay?" I ask. "I'm sorry, I know this has to be harder for you than anyone, and my role in everything that happened was… not a helpful one."

He doesn't answer at first, instead just picking up the kettle and pouring boiling water into the mugs. Each movement is slow, deliberate, and careful.

"…I've spent a decade worrying she wouldn't come home," he eventually answers. "When it finally happened, it wasn't a shock. Chloe and Bean said that said there was a chance she's still alive, though."

He places the mugs on a tray alongside a glass of milk and a few sugar packets for people to share, walking back into the dining room.

"Should I be putting faith in that?" he asks me bluntly.

Which… oh, god. I don't know. But I guess the honest answer is the only possible correct one, here.

"That's not up to me, Jim," I say. "Sorry, I… I'm a bad friend. I was a bad friend to her, and I've been one ever since I woke up, I barely… a lot has been going on. I shouldn't have said something like that so carelessly."

"Is that a no, then?" he asks.

"No, it's not a no," I say. "It's an 'I don't know.' It's entirely possible for strong magic users to survive in the Dark World without food or water. It's entirely possible she got dumped out months ago on the complete opposite side of the planet with no idea how to get back home. It's entirely possible that Melpomene stuck her in a second robot, dressed her up in a maid outfit, and forced her to clean the castle. We can't know until we find her or her body, and while Veritas has been looking for it, we've found nothing so far."

Jim passes out tea mugs as I talk, handing Castalia's over first so it doesn't get mixed in with the others. He doesn't answer when I'm done, instead sitting down in an armchair and sipping his own mug.

"I can't believe the savior of the planet drinks decaff," Bean says, trying and failing to lighten the mood.

"There are several medical and public safety concerns that make me hesitant to imbibe stimulants," Castalia says. "I teetotal for similar reasons."

"You do what?" Thea asks.

"Teetotal. Adjective. Choosing or characterized by an abstinence from alcohol," I define. "Though Castalia used the word as a verb, so I suppose in that context it would be defined as 'to dedicate one's self to abstinence' or something."

"Yes, though I abstain from more than just alcohol," Castalia says. "Caffeine would… not be at all harmful were I to ingest it, but it is generally best to disrupt my real body's chemical balance as little as possible. It makes things much easier to sustain."

"I swear I've seen you eating chocolate," I say.

"Yes," Castalia confirms. "Would that be… bad?"

"Chocolate has caffeine," I answer.

"Oh," Castalia says.

The conversation trails off again, though it leaves me with a burning question I'm both afraid to ask and afraid to ask.

"Are you… likely to die, Castalia?" I blurt. "Soon, I mean. Are you okay?"

The question surprises her in the middle of a sip, causing her to spill a little tea as she pulls the cup away from her mouth. The falling liquid halts before it reaches the ground, spiraling up like a tiny snake and getting quickly licked out of the air.

"The doctors think I won't live for much longer," she answers, "but they have a difficult time predicting anything accurately when it comes to my body. Physically and otherwise, my remaining strength has little to do with my biology."

Ah. That makes sense. I already knew Castalia's magic has been sustaining her, I just… I'm worried.

"If anyone else had said 'the doctors say I'm not doing well but they don't know what they're talking about,' I would have called an ambulance," Bean deadpans. "But I guess if it's you, we just have to roll with it."

"Eliza got shot twice in her human form one time," Jim comments. "She caught one of the bullets with her shoulder, but she caught the other bullet with her hand. As in, she caught it. It cut open her skin but the wound wasn't anywhere as deep as you'd expect. I can only imagine Castalia's human body is even stronger."

"In some ways, yes," Castalia clarifies. "In most ways, no. I am severely disabled."

"Oh," Jim says, and again the conversation lulls into silence.

It's doubly awkward for me, since everyone else is sitting down and nursing a drink to keep themselves busy, but I'm standing up and have nothing to visibly occupy myself with. Mentally, at least, I have no such issues. I've tapped into several nearby wireless networks and have been piggybacking off of them to download large swaths of useful-seeming chunks of internet data (like dictionaries in as many languages I can find), all while scouring the net for my Antipathy-English dictionary and removing it from everywhere I'm able to.

'Everywhere I'm able to' is, admittedly, not a whole lot; as predicted, it has been downloaded and reuploaded several times to other websites, and no matter how overwhelmingly good I am at cracking encryption, I can't just magically hack into whatever I want. Computer security is complicated and full of redundancies, so while chewing through encryption is enough, particularly when it comes to wireless communications, I can't ignore things like two-factor authentication or administrator access. An enormous amount of hacking is locked behind a person physically present at the computer agreeing to run a program as administrator. This is why phishing is such a huge thing: while you need someone to agree to run your program, you need that person to have an accurate idea of what the program they're running

You can get all kinds of actionable information by just pretending to be someone you're not and sending emails, but you can also trick people into giving you remote access to their entire computer if they're gullible enough. I have a pretty vested interest in keeping an eye on my identity—and for that matter, government opinion and policy on magical threats as a whole—so I spend a while searching through social media sites for employees who seem like they both have the access necessary to let me look at what I want the stupidity necessary to actually hand over the metaphorical keys to me. And, well, this is the government after all, so I find several promising candidates as I inhale the available data. I precisely craft a few emails to test the waters and send them off. Nothing more I can do there until I get a response.

Let's see… how's the mood of the room? Still silent? Cool. Cool cool cool. I guess I'll work on some spell projects to protect Thea with. Replicating Melpomene's stealth spell is going to be since I can only theorize how it actually works, but c'est la vie. Time to fuck around with spell formulae.

It's in times like these that I feel the least human, even in contrast to when I'm ripping through the internet to devour and parse raw data into meaning. Because all of that, every last detail, is still something that the human me could understand. It might not have been something I could and certainly not as quickly as I do it now, but the principles of modern computer science are known to me. I understand how exactly ones and zeroes translate all the way down the line into vast websites full of images, videos, text, and more. I can use to do all the work, just accelerated to a speed where it doesn't take an eternity to pull off.

Magic, though? I'm not doing that. isn't doing that. Luna is nothing more than the power source for the cage.

The parameters of my objective are clear: construct a spell that prevents all conventional magical and mundane detection, then create a countermeasure. Construct something without weakness, then find its weakness. Easy. We're starting with a basic idea: a barrier-like sphere that keeps excess magical energy inside while diverting light and sound around itself.

My head with information, so much that I can barely keep up. of me understands it all; I begin to assemble the outline of a magical circle in my mind, filling it in with more and more complex details as the basic concept of the spell takes place. Making sure the light and sound are redirected at the perfect angle isn't difficult—it's mostly just math—and just like that, my first prototype is complete. All that I have to do is name it.

"[T ᴀ ᴄ ᴛ ɪ ᴄ ᴀ ʟ E s ᴘ ɪ ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ɢ ᴇ A ᴄ ᴛ ɪ ᴏ ɴ]"

Immediately, everything goes black and silent. Which… wow. You know what, I definitely should have thought of that. That's my bad. Still, the spell seems impermeable to magical energy, given how I can't sense anyone else around me right—oop!

Castalia's telekinesis picks me up and shakes me around a little, so I drop the spell, making me once again visible to everyone else and vice versa. Almost everyone is staring at me in shock, which… actually makes perfect sense now that I think about it. Oopsies.

"Luna…? Are you okay?" Thea squeaks.

"That was a reference," Bean says flatly. "She's fine."

"Well the spell I used most often to beat up children is a reference, so that's not actually a reliable measure of my current sanity," I correct. "But yeah I'm fine, sorry. I got bored and tried to figure out if I could replicate Melpomene's stealth spell. I want to make countermeasures."

"Oh," Castalia says, dropping me back to the ground. "Stealth spell?"

"Have I not mentioned this…?" I ask. "Well, yeah, she's got a crazy good one. It can block off magical signatures and everything."

"Mmm. I couldn't feel you anymore once you cast that, but I still feel your spell," Castalia informs me. "I could also feel you with my telekinesis."

"Oh neat, is that a separate sense for you?" I ask. "Does it have its own qualia? That's awesome. But also bad. I'm like, ninety percent sure Mel has used this spell to stalk you, so I must not be getting it right."

"Stalk… me?" Castalia asks.

"Yeahhhh, 'lil bit," I nod. "It just makes sense, right? She's crazy and obsessed with you in a bad way, and it's also the only reason I can think of that would have allowed her to meet Like sure, I have an 'above average soul' or whatever, but I'm hardly the only person who does. She also somehow knew I was a former Earth Guardian candidate, but if was why she sought me out, how did she find me? Did Nanaya hire a PI or something? Seems like a lot of work for what ultimately like something she did on a whim, given how awful her pitch was. I was in several classes with you back when I had my other body, so it feels more in-character for her to try and impulse buy me after noticing how much of an easy target I was."

"Oh yeah, how that visit to your body go?" Thea asks. "That's where Uma'tama took you, right?"

"It was creepy and disturbing, and I don't wanna talk about it or think about it ever again," I answer. "I wanna figure out stealth spells."

"You are correct to note that there are several people with souls large enough to make them prospective Earth Guardian candidates that I had classes with," Castalia says. "So why would she pick you, specifically?"

"I dunno, maybe she's a chaser?" I say, and then I think about that for one nanosecond. "Actually, I've decided I don't wanna know the answer to that question ever. She probably just chose me because I was vulnerable. I wasn't in contact with any family or friends other than Bean, and they had no ability to start an investigation into my whereabouts or whatever. The Lunas at that college were free, and she could just take them."

Thea shrinks in on herself a bit as I theorize. Even Castalia wrinkles her nose slightly. Ugh. I need to be a bit more gentle when I talk about the whole 'kidnapping and slavery' thing.

"My telekinesis has a fairly limited range," Castalia says. "As long as she didn't get close to me, she could most likely avoid detection. I doubt she was confident in her ability to hide from me at close range. She never used magic like that in our fight, so she must not have thought it would be an effective method of fooling me."

"That's… true," I admit. "Though I'm still not sure what that means re: how to replicate her spell and develop countermeasures for everyone else."

"Are you sure it's a spell?" Castalia asks. "Wouldn't it be easier to just use magic?"

I feel an instinct to respond, but her words completely derail my train of thought.

"Huh?" I say. "What?"

"I said it would be easier to use magic instead of a spell," Castalia repeats herself.

"Are spells… not magic…?" I manage.

"They're powered by magic," Castalia says, "but they're spells."

"What's the difference?" I ask.

"The difference is… that they're different…?" Castalia tries, seeming confused.

"I think she's trying to create a distinction between magic cast via spell circles and incantations versus magic cast them, like her telekinesis," Thea says, looking thoughtful. "Formalized spellcasting versus casting with raw willpower."

"Kind… of?" Castalia says hesitantly. "Mmm. Yes. That's mostly right. That sort of thing would be easier to do without a spell."

"How?" I ask. "Isn't the whole of spell circles to make magic easier?"

"No," Castalia says.

"Wh… what do they do, then?" I ask.

"They cast spells."

Castalia I love you but what the fuck are you talking about.

"Magic is like lightning," Jim suddenly says. "I think I get it."

"Okay, well I'm glad does, because I'm totally lost," Chloe admits.

"It's what Eliza said when I asked her what having magic is like," Jim explains. "She said magic is like lightning. It's controlled only by its nature. It's raw power that heads straight for the ground But when you take lightning and you put it in wires, run it through houses, create all this complicated technology to harness it… then, all of a sudden, the lightning is completely different. It's being used for something outside its purpose, but it fulfills that purpose anyway because it has been reshaped to do so."

"Right," Thea says, seeming to come to an epiphany of their own. "Right! Why haven't I thought of that!? Spells don't make magic easier, they make it And those two things are going to be the same for people, but they're not always the same!"

"Yes. Correct," Castalia confirms, perking up a little. "I do not fly with spells. I fly with My flight is powered by my love for flight, so it allows me to fly. It requires no spell because its purpose matches its nature."

"Magic is lightning, and spells are wires," I repeat. "Okay, yeah, I think I get it, too. Spells are a framework that you can put arbitrary emotions into in order to get specific outputs. My spells don't care if I'm sad because I'm being forced to hurt people; as long as they're configured to work the magic can be forced away from its original purpose. It can be manipulated by understanding its nature. But if you shove a different emotion into the same spell configuration, it might burn the whole thing out."

I… knew that already, to some extent. It fits my understanding of how magic works, I just never even considered that casting magic would be able to yield different results.

"Spells have waste," Castalia says. "Always. The more in line it is with the purpose of the magic powering it, the less waste a spell has, but if a spell was perfectly aligned with its power source, you would not require a spell at all. You could just let the magic free, and it would fulfil its purpose of its own accord."

Which means you could create a barrier that blocks magical senses because there would be literally zero waste. But that's a pretty major problem. I was hoping that by understanding the framework of the stealth spell, I could investigate its weaknesses from a theoretical perspective.

But opens up a totally different weakness. Melpomene's stealth spell is And that bitch's mental health is stable.

"So Melpomene's weakness," I summarize, "is that she can only hide if she wants to hide."

A pause.

"Which. Does not sound very much like a weakness now that I say it out loud," I admit. "But it is one! If she's angry enough, she probably can't go invisible."

"And if I want to find her enough, she won't be able to hide," Castalia says softly. "The power to find is no stronger or weaker than the power to hide, and I have magic of my own. But she was right. I didn't keep her in my thoughts."

For a moment, the ever-present pressure of joy transforming into a near-crushing weight of regret. Chloe and Bean don't react, though Thea and I both instinctively stiffen up. The force of changing in the air is more than enough to trigger our fight or flight responses. To my surprise, Jim gets a little tense as well, though I'm not sure whether it's because he's concerned by Castalia's words or genuinely capable of feeling magic a little after living with Eliza for so long.

"…It's not your fault, Castalia," I reassure her. "You had no way to know she was even around to look for."

"But would it have even been hard?" Castalia asks. "An errant thought might have been all it took. Surely, if she was there, there was a part of her that wanted to be found…"

I say nothing. I can't deny it, after all. Melpomene standing around and getting increasingly bitter about the fact that her ex isn't trying to see through the invisibility spell she doesn't know is there? Yeah, that sound like something she'd do. Castalia and I just have different opinions on how much that's actually Castalia's fault. My attention is pulled away from my irritation when Thea lets out a shuddering breath.

"Mel was away from the castle a lot," she says. "Her mutations would have progressed a lot faster if all of that time was spent in the Dark World. She was definitely on Earth."

Castalia nods quietly, her grief suffocating the room for a few more moments before the joy suddenly returns like someone flipped a switch.

"Thank you for helping me explain, Jim," she says, nodding at him. "I am not good at it."

"I just happened to remember something that someone else said, that's all," he dismisses. "What do people think about taking a break from all the heavy talk and watching a movie? Or I have a few board games, if people prefer."

"I like board games, assuming we can find one Luna doesn't cheat at just by existing," Bean offers.

"Just by… oh, robot, right," Jim hums. "Maybe like, Werewolf or something? It's not really a game, but…"

I let them all discuss what to do next; I don't really care as long as it seems like Thea's interested in trying it. I'm busy considering a much more concerning problem.

Why can't I use magic?

I can cast spells, obviously, but I've never been able to I can't just directly convert my wants and desires into actions. Even when I cast spells without speaking them out loud, I'm activating my spell core and putting together the formula I need. My whole runs on spell formulae, for that matter. That's why I eventually fill up with magical gases; they're the 'waste' Castalia was talking about. They're the exhaust fumes of my emotions. They never anything for me.

How could they? My soul is trapped. My soul is All the power inside of me, every scream and cry, is stolen and converted into either power or waste. If I hated it enough, could I break my cage from the inside? Could I shove myself full of so much desire to be free that I break myself apart? From what Castalia said, it seems like I could.

So am I just too weak, or do I just

No. No, that can't be it. I have to just be too weak. After all, I'm pretty sure the Cage was originally designed to convert Preserver PoWs into weapons against their own kind. If this thing is graded to contain a Preserver soul, there's no way can break out of it. Not unless I become stronger. A stronger. Strong enough to if anything like what Melpomene did to me happens again.

Would Thea want me to do that? …No, it doesn't even matter, does it? After all, there's no greater betrayal of my laws than to allow my laws to be changed, right? There's no greater betrayal of my master than to make them not my master any longer. …No. Maybe if Melpomene were still in charge, I could believe that, but Thea wouldn't want me to kill myself no matter what. I should still become stronger, but only because I might need to protect her against people a lot stronger than me. That's not the only reason, but it's an reason. My soul is too weak, so it must become stronger.

The fact that it might let me free myself, through death or otherwise, is just an unfortunate side effect.