"Don't worry too much, I'm cheating."  She drops her illusion.  "...So.  What I've - deduced, so far, is that - things were quite alright, and then suddenly, somebody did something, or something unexpected happened, or there was some sort of attack, and it broke rather a lot considering that Su-Yeong saw your peacock in the flesh at least once.  And I have some bare theories on how I might - cause that sort of damage, not that I'd ever - and I'm working on the techniques that might allow me to fix it - but - do we need to worry about someone else getting hurt the same way, or - was it an experiment that exploded?"  She smooths out her tail, and lets it go back to its focused waving back-and-forth, like she's on the hunt for something.

Perhaps she is, for that matter; it's just less tangible than most.

The implications of what people have been saying belatedly catch up with Lucy.

"Wait, you're-"

Malliet nods sadly at them.

"A husk, yes."

He looks at Hali next.

"I may as well drop my own illusion…"

"I'm not a husk, I'm just from another cosmos.  Which is why you don't have anybody else who knows runes here."

Another cosmos? Rune-based magic? He wants to geek out, but - later. He drops his disguise.

"I don't think there's any need to fear others getting caught in my - blast radius, as it were. Not unless someone with less equanimity than you discovers us and panics. But I've taken pains to keep my secret…"

He shakes his head.

"I'm sorry. It's been - a while, since I've had anyone to talk to other than Ivy and Lucien. I'll try to be more direct."

Deep breath.

"I don't know exactly what happened - Lucien here was the trigger, in a way, but they were not responsible. How much do you already know, about how Lucien - they went by Morgan, then - came to live with me?"

"That's all I know, really.  Su-Yeong or Tobi might know more than I do, but I've been here for approximately a day; not much time to accumulate context."

"Well, Officer Rothart was looking with Tobi and Lucy and me for a while, so he noticed when Lucy's magic came in. And then you guys decided to apprentice him? That's basically it."

Fond smile at Su-Yeong, though there's pain when she brings up Officer Rothart.

"Exactly. In early March, Lucien fell ill. I didn't realize, at first, that they were exhibiting the early symptoms of the husk transformation, because - I didn't expect it, I'm afraid. It didn't match anything from our research. Joseph - my fiancé - went to the store, to fetch some things to help take care of Lucien in their illness. While he was out of the house, everything snowballed. I realized what was happening, but it was too late. I could see that their eyes were starting to change.

"In a fit of desperation, I removed their right eye and was overwhelmed by a sudden rush of magic. When I came to, Lucien's remaining eye was grey, our familiars were gone, and my hair was down to my waist. And the house was on fire. I grabbed them and climbed to the roof, and - I saw him. Joseph."

He starts to tear up, but pushes his breath out forcefully.

"...Joseph enters the house, to try and save you, and - passes, leaving Ivy behind, I - assume.  At which point you - improvise some sort of stabilization ritual, and take up the identity of Monsieur Rothart, with her collaboration.

"...if the knowledge of how - gods, 'husk' is a wrong word for it, familiar inversions work was more known...perhaps...

"Fuck.  I know I had no control over how and when I arrived here, but I'm sorry it wasn't sooner.

"I wish I could have stopped this tragedy before it started.

"I'd like to see your notes on the - original incident, sometime, but - I don't wish to push you to talk about it.  Emotional stability is important in managing your present condition, as I'm sure you know.  I'd certainly like to compare notes on our mitigations for that; I feel like I'm close to what I'd need already, but - more knowledge always helps."

"No, that's not what happened. Joe's - still alive, thank god. But-"

"I saw him in the street - we made eye contact, though I doubt he recognized me. It was too far away for that, and I was - unrecognizable. I fled into the night."

He shakes his head.

"You're remarkably compassionate and understanding of husks - I expect that's because you grew up without the concept of them, though of course your compassion shouldn't be discounted. Even I felt a surge of fear, of revulsion, when I realized what I had become, and I had spent years excitedly studying them. I'm sure that Su-Yeong is familiar with the feeling."

(Su-Yeong nods.)

"I wasn't - I couldn't bear the idea that he might hate me now, or worse, be forced to kill me as part of his guard duties. Instead that task fell to, well…"

A self-deprecating smile. He tilts his head towards Ivy.

"My sister."

"I don't really want to get into the details, but - I used to be human. We both had to fake our deaths - and Lucy's, too. I was told that my brother had died in a house fire and sent to kill the husk responsible. He found me, and we found a way for him to use up all the extra magic he was generating. It killed two birds with one stone, really, because… I would have been in big trouble, if I had let him get away. So we both just… disappeared. Being a cat is the perfect disguise, though - if I'm with Lucy, everyone assumes I'm their familiar, because as far as anyone knows, magic can't actually turn a human into a cat - I don't know why, but you can't shapeshift smaller than you started, even though husks can return to their original size after getting bigger. But if you have all the magic a husk can bring to bear, it's doable."

Nod.

"I also distribute the excess magic in these, when Ivy isn't available," he adds, hefting the sapphire necklace. "I'm… not very good at the emotional regulation and stability, though," he wryly adds.

"Probably 'cause you never talk to anyone," says Ivy, but she's rubbing up against him fondly.

"...It's probably partially as you say, and partly - the way I arrived here.  But it's also - the panicked animals behind what most call husks, they're just - scared.  It's not...I've seen monsters.  I can smack them about just fine.  And husks aren't monsters, even if they look the type.  They're not - omnicidal bastards.  Just...panicked and hurting.  And I saw that, and I can't unsee it without - becoming the sort of person who I'd fight with all my breath.  Killing because it's more convenient than otherwise...No."

...She's going to take a closer look at that spellwork around Ivy, because - what the fuck?

"...What the heck kind of magic are they teaching you that you don't have Baleful Polymorph, anyway?  And even, like, Alter Self, can make you bigger or smaller as you'd prefer!  That's basic wizarding!  Where I'm from.

"And I'm not even a wizard and I've got shrinking-spells."

"It's a very good disguise, by the way, to be a cat, though perhaps I'm a bit biased."

And then Hali was a calico.  She doesn't stay that way, but she does smug about it.

Magically speaking, the spellwork around Ivy is made of duct tape. It's well-made, to be clear - the equivalent of a wallet or even a prom dress made with the kind of duct tape that comes in pretty colors or fun patterns with no stickiness or fraying threads exposed - but it's clear that, though there's obvious skill and care in the construction of the spells, they only work because of the sheer amount of force a husk's magical overdrive can provide.

Underneath, she's a normal magician with sky-blue magic. She's even got a familiar who's unaffected by the transformation: a frog that's been sitting on the windowsill.

"Around here, magic requires more than simply describing with words the effect one wishes to cause," Thierry says with raised eyebrows, though he's also smiling. "And I wouldn't - I wouldn't inflict that on anyone without asking, not unless circumstances were… dire."

He glances over at Lucy, then sighs.

"Which I'm afraid leads conveniently into something I've been putting off for far too long. I'm sorry, Lucien. For - for everything. The last five years. Hiding so much from you. Being… distant and cutting. Everything."

"… I get it. Mostly."

They shake their head, trying to keep their breathing level.

"I get why you - pretended to be an old man, and hid all your huskiness from me, and let me think Ivy was your familiar. But…"

Ivy climbs into Lucy's lap.

"You let me think that I was a failure. That there was something wrong with me, that I couldn't do the most basic magic. That I wasn't trying hard enough. And-"

They shake their head.

"...You didn't even tell them that there had been a horrible accident and their magic had probably consequently broken?"

Hali pinches the bridge of her nose, frustratedly.  "That's just bad mentorship!

"And - while I admit that I do benefit from the relatively forgiving nature of runes often enough, it's not actually as simple as it looks, when you want to do something that's not - quick, cheap, basic.  Doing something complex, like the way Su-Yeong's familiar was rendered physical, took - quite a bit of applied theory of mana topology, knowing just the right stylistic elements to use to draw out the correct connotations from the rune-linguistic perspective, whereas the biggest trick I use day-to-day is actually cheating those limits by having been worked into me like a muscle - there's something in the blood, apparently, or else I wouldn't have such an eager knife with so little runework.  And equally my tattoos enable me to do the same work I'd otherwise have to do with pens or sticks or what-have-you a lot faster, for that matter.

"And - still, your spellcraft sucks.  Like - this could be so much more elegant!  Why on earth do you have -"

Annnnd Hali is absolutely going to construct an eyewatering model of several things she thinks are easy fixes about the construction of the cat spell, increasing - 

Oh, hmm, efficiency seems counterindicated, actually, but what if -

Ye-es, that ought to increase the resiliency of it, while actually incorporating space for a hypothetical human alt-form.

You just need to stop limiting yourself to three dimensions.

Well.  If the details work the same way.  Some of them definitely do, but - she needs to confirm that.

This is an exercise involving what looks like poking a ball of light with knitting-needles, until it most definitely no longer resembles a ball whatsoever.

Both Thierry and Lucy open their mouths; Ivy gives both of them a silencing look.

"Without getting too far into something that should really be a long, private, hard conversation - yes, Thierry made a lot of mistakes in how he handled the situation. He's a husk. That doesn't mean that his choices didn't hurt Lucy, or weren't mistakes, but… it's happened already. We're going to work on moving on instead of retreading the past, 'kay?"

She watches Hali work.

"Mm… I'm not a magic theorist, and I really don't know how your magic works, but - yours looks like magic is raw materials that you use to make things. For us, magic is like… flexing a muscle. It's more complicated than that, obviously, maybe it's more that magic is our whole body, but there's still… sinew and tendons and bones, and sometimes they get in the way."

Hopping down from Lucy's lap, she pads over to sniff at the light.

"All that said, I wouldn't say no to a more elegant cat disguise. Especially if it would, say, let me switch it on and off from time to time."

"...A-ha.  It's wizards versus sorcerers.  That explains it."

"That said, I've definitely seen some tricks that'd work to make the spellform I've figured possible for you to cast - you'll need to work at a level of indirection, most likely, but it's certainly possible to do that in the first place.  My cat transformation is cheating, but I know how these spells work in the general case; I've enchanted them before."