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...that's not Sadde's apartment. He's pretty certain his apartment should not have all those tables and a counter and—he's pretty certain his apartment shouldn't be a bar. He has perfect memory, he'd know. Which has several implications, but the most interesting one is "Cool there's a bar where my apartment used to be!" so he walks in, walking at human speed towards the bar. He takes a seat, just for appearances' sake, and then there's a napkin: "Welcome to Milliways! I'm the bar, I can take requests and I talk via napkin. Your first drink is free. Female pronouns, please." "...this is the coolest thing. Do you answer questions or just take orders?" "I can answer questions." And of course an entirely predictable string of those succeeds. This is probably the state one will find the oddly pale man for the next while.
Flora has finished reading her notes.
"So, are you ready for the analysis spell, Willow?"
There are strings of light coming from a bright crystal at the base of her throat, connecting it to her limbs and head. The body has... not an artificial feel to it, but definitely a somewhat superfluous one. It's very clear that the crystal is the source of, well, almost everything there, and that there is a level of taint in it, something corrupting it.
She doesn't let go of the analysis yet and says, "Your crystal is the source of your magic, and it is... corrupted with something. Also, your body looks a bit... redundant?... somehow. I'm going to keep looking."
"Yes, it's corrupted with despair. When I use magic it gets filled with that, and killing a witch gives me an artifact that I can use to transfer the despair to. What do you mean by redundant?"
As she keeps looking... well, everything about Willow is magical. Her body's clearly animated by magic, her outfit's magic, her katanas are magic. There's also a... connection to something else. Like a link made of light and darkness, entwined, coming from within her metaphorical heart and feeding everything, including the crystal.
"It's animated by magic, that's odd. The crystal is powered by your metaphorical heart through some sort of link." She keeps looking, what's the link like?
It's difficult to discern. The darkness of the link is definitely recognizable as the "taint," the despair, and it's in equal quantities with something else, something like its diametrical opposite. They're in an almost symbiotic relationship, one generates the other at the same time as it feeds on it. However, the light aspect also feeds her magic, so there's some leftover despair that's not being used for anything.
She clutches her crystal. "My body's animated by magic? It didn't—change when I became a magical girl. What do you mean, metaphorical heart? Um, I did get powers by making a wish."
"Yes, but it's totally fine otherwise. It's not like an inferius, that is, an animated corpse, or anything like that, it has all its functions, you can still do everything like a normal human, the only thing is, don't get out of its range.
Also, I think it might let you survive your body's death.
Metaphorical heart is basically where emotions come from, in magical terms.
...The link is made of despair and its... opposite, some form of happiness, probably. Maybe excitement or hope? That opposite powers your magic, and the despair remains left over as the taint in your crystal."
Still looking, what else can she find out?
"Wait wait wait, hold the heck up. Don't get out of whose range? Survive my body's death? What?"
That's pretty much it, no more details become immediately apparent.
"I mean the crystal's range.
It seems like if you die but your crystal is still okay, someone else could get you a new body and hook it up to your crystal, and then you could continue right where you left off. That gets a lot cooler if it combines with vampirism in interesting ways."
"Okay you're gonna have to be a little more specific than that. I'm—new body? I'm, what, a lich or something?"
"What's a lich? You are that crystal over there, your body is just a thing that lets you affect the world."
"Yes, that's what a lich is. Like, undead thing, soul is in a phylactery, usually a jewel, can control body from afar and regenerate it when it dies, if the phylactery is destroyed the lich dies, too."
"Yeah, you're that, except you yourself can't regenerate the body from nothing, you need someone else's help. I don't quite get how another magical girl might go about making you a new body, but it looks possible, if costly."
"Well, they don't exactly have to do it out of the goodness of their heart, you could trade them valuable things or information. Like, this information that we just found out, or something."
"...that's worrying. Why are they mean? That kinda runs counter the fictional stereotype, says the pot to the kettle."
"Witches are a scarce resource, we need them to survive, so magical girls often compete and fight for them."