"You said ceramic so I'm imagining it shattering, but maybe it's not prone to that?"

"It's a special ceramic, and it's a ceramic composite. Ceramic is only some of the layers in it, which include carbon nanotubes, kinetic-reactance fluids, and titanium-steel alloys. And my joiner will mend a crack in just about anything."

"...Okay. Huh, that could be really handy. The joiner."

"If you're thinking surgery, let me warn you that it's not meant for use on living things. Its power source will run out eventually, and I can't make more without infrastructure. But if you think it'll be useful, I can try to rig a way to recharge it. And join things."

"I was thinking busted staffs and armor and walls, actually. I have very basic field medic training but usually the idea is to get the dark things destroyed before they've hurt anyone."

"Staffs and armor it could definitely do. Walls are big, it might be better to try something else instead of using the joiner's limited power on them. I also have a bevy of sensors and scanners. I'm trying to teach them how to detect dark things with the example of that lich as a dark thing, but I don't think it's working."

"Well, liches aren't very common. It would be more useful if you could detect woke shadows, which can be very hard to find."

"Please describe woke shadows."

"They're made with a specific kind of candle, and whoever made them sends them after their enemies. They seldom directly kill people - they cause nightmares, intolerable ones that can sometimes cause literal death from fear, and they whisper to people, which in conjunction with the nightmares and/or sleep deprivation causes people to act very out of character."

"...That's intensely creepy. What form do they take, though?"

"They're shadows. They're insubstantial and can fold up in very small spaces. I have a probe in the shape of a Winter Light sigil to check people's ears for them."

"I'm not sure how shadows are supposed to map to physical properties. I think I'd need to see one to learn how to find them."

"That might be a little difficult, but maybe the next time we're out on a specific report or suspicion of woke shadows we could bring you along."

"Are they impossible to control? At all difficult to destroy? What I'm getting at is, would you be offended at the idea of summoning exactly one long enough for me to get a good look at it before killing the thing?"

"Possession of those candles is illegal, waking shadows is illegal, and I don't recommend talking like that around the other paladins."

"I figured as much." Silent staring-at-landscape time.

And eventually here is a campus of paladin-related buildings with walls around it, near a small city. Kaja lands.

And Nick clambers off. "What kind of things does one do for a living around here?"

"In the compound? One is a paladin or a novice or a retired paladin. Elsewhere? Farmers and shoemakers and moneylenders and stonemasons and carpenters and innkeepers and such things."

"Which leaves me wondering how I will afford food and raw materials and such. None of the devices I described to you can be built from nothingness."

"Well, there are the moneylenders I mentioned."

"But the question is, will they trust someone with strange devices promising unheard-of benefits enough to deem it worth the risk of me taking their silver and never being seen again? I suppose there's only one way to find out."

"You can show them the devices you do have," she points out.

"I think I will go find a moneylender, then." His computer can absorb enough of the language to be going with, in an hour of wandering around. "Thanks again for the ride."

"...You don't speak Cirth, do you?"