"If anyone'd be a natural shapeshifter it'd be me. What's that? And can you just—use any medallions or would we have to touch every medallion ever to figure it out? And wouldn't we then be stuck in that form unless we could, like, acquire the medallions somehow?"

"What's what? False negatives? Medallions are species specific, so we can tell when you are critter by binding to the right one, but maybe your species' medallion is not available, obscure or destroyed."

"Medallions are sold in specific shops on Avalons and they are bound to you for life. You show that you have the money, ask the shopkeeper to try some out and if one sticks you buy it. Avalons are self-ruled by a council and if there is some issue they can be called, and the issues tend to be resolved such that you are allowed to keep the medallion, given it's useless to anyone else."

"That's cool, I kinda wanna test some medallions. Also, I meant to ask what natural shapeshifters are."

"There are critters that are naturally capable of changing shape, sometimes any shape or a limited set. Off the top of my head I remember Pookas and Totems being capable of such."

"Oh. I'm probably not that."

"Some have to be old enough before they get the power, or have special ways to trigger the transformation. But most of those start out in the critter form."

Temple, who has been quiet this whole while, finally speaks up. "So... any chance I could get in contact with my dad?"

"...it kinda makes me wonder why he said the sorcerer clan would want to drain your magic, though. I did say it sounded weirdly suspicious."

"It is very suspicious. Do you know if he belonged to the Graynorth clan? They are sort of isolationist and paranoid, which might factor into whatever was the reason why he did it. But I doubt the situation is literally draining you of your magic. That capability would make the clan a much bigger problem."

"A common form of sorcery training is feeding mana to foci to make your own mana capacity grow larger. But calling that draining magic would be misleading, at best."

Temple nods. "I am going to need to tell this to my mom," Temple says hugging his knees.

"Do you need a hug?" Felix asks.

Temple nods. Felix hugs him.

Sadde sighs. "What else can you tell us about this Graynorth clan?"

"Not much, they are somewhat territorial and keep to themselves. Allegedly artifact makers, but don't trade with other clans. Believed to use magic to help their mundane business behind the scenes, but what that means is unknown and might just be a rumour. Are very suspicious of other sorcerers and make it clear they don't want Avalons or critters in their territory."

"...can they even control whether there are critters in their territory? Sounds not very feasible."

"They must have some way to do it. At least for critters with medallions. Those can be detected."

"Really? How? And why do they not want critters around?"

Felix shrugs. "They aren't forthcoming with their reasons and much less their methods. We are pretty sure that they haven't noticed us or the cards, but we are kind of on the edge of their claimed territory."

"How absurd. Do you have a map of their territory or something?"

"Also, what exactly do they do with trespassers?"

"We actually do," Fenris tells Sadde, pulling a paper map from his pocket. "They are centered in a small village over here," he points. "These concentric circles show how likely it is that you are going to get their attention for being obviously magical in their vicinity."

Their city is half inside the outermost circle: low chance of showing up unless someone tries to permanently settle there.

To Temple he adds, "it depends, if you are anywhere except the innermost circle they tend to let you go with a warning the first time, threaten you the second time, put a mild curse the third time and escalate from there. They allegedly burned down someone's attempt to create an Avalon a couple of decades ago."

"How charming," he sighs. "But at least we're far away—except we are in fact permanently settled here."

"Maybe my dad is involved?"

"That was what I was thinking, yeah."