"Well, that's a thought, but no--I think it's too fragile for that, right now. What I was hoping to do was transfer it to someone else who would be a more suitable and stable host. I'm afraid of hurting it if I keep it."

"And so you came to offer it to me? If it is as you describe I'd be a fool to turn it down, but in the current state of the city paying you back would be rather more difficult than usual."

"I would do it just for the sake of it. This is the last fragment of the consciousness of a person, and I want them safe. As safe as anyone is in this city right now, anyway. If you want to repay me, I won't argue, but you can do it later if now isn't convenient." 

"I see. Do you mind us paying a visit to the Feducia and seeing if he has Abadar's truth available? I'll pay for the casting, of course, but it would be a rather foolish risk on my part not to check before accepting something into my soul."

"I don't object at all, that makes perfect sense." 

"Excellent."

Aravashnial uncrosses his legs, gets to his feet, and then heads down from the rooftop and into the inn. A short negotiation with the cleric in question later, Feducia Rathimus agrees to his purchase.

"Before I cast this on you, I need to be clear that this is with your permission. When you are under the effect of Abadar's truth, you will be unable to lie, and resisting the spell to overcome it is easily noticed. The effect will last for minutes, and while you are free to not answer questions people will often consider that cause for suspicion. Does this match your understanding of what you are getting into?"

"Yes it does." 

"Very well. I advise not resisting, since it's not the most difficult spell to throw off and doing so would necessitate a second casting."

He chants a short prayer to Abadar asking the god to guarantee the truth of the words spoken, and then a brush of enchantment later the image of a key appears on Luzai's forehead.

Luzai does not resist the spell. 

(She soooooo wants an arcane version of that spell, but if that were easy to achieve it would have been done by now, and she has higher priorities for her research projects. Still, her fingers itch to take notes.)

"Thank you. To the best of your recollection, have you lied to me or knowingly attempted to mislead me? Do you maintain that you have the fragments of an Aeon? Do you plan to use this to harm me, or to use me as a method to harm someone else?"

"To the best of my recollection I have not lied to or attempted to mislead you. As far as I can tell it's one fragment but otherwise, yes, the remains of an Aeon. I have no intentions or intimations that anyone will be harmed by this, possibly except for demons depending on how useful the Aeon's vision is." 

"Thank you, that will suffice for me. Now, how do I help you transport it?"

"I'm not sure, I've never done this before...give me your hand and let me look into your eyes." 

She tries to nudge the fragment of Aeon. It's not a part of her, not really, it's just sort of resting on her substrate. Here is this other substrate that it could rest on! It's a comfier substrate!

The aeon does not, properly speaking, have anything best described as a sense of self preservation. It has something like a desire to achieve its goals, certainly, and ways the world could be that it would prefer or disprefer, but it only values its own existence to the extent that it being intact makes those instrumentally more likely to happen. That would normally still suffice for it to safeguard its existence, but in its present state there's sufficiently little it can do to affect the world that the amount it prioritizes such is extremely minimal. 

Fortunately even if it doesn't evince any particular desire to jet over to Aravashnial, this also results in it not strongly trying to stick to Luzai, and after some prodding the fragment floats in the air between them.

He... can't actually see the Aeon fragment, but it's easy enough to follow Luzai's gaze to where it presumably now hovers instead of needing to waste his arcane bond on locate creature. Drawing it in is a rather unique experience, but he knows the theory for communing with spirits even if he never practiced it enough to pick up the knack and there are certain similarities.

"Fascinating."

Luzai beams and bounces. "Isn't it?" 

Even if the Aeon doesn't have a sense of self-preservation, Luzai can have a sense of it-preservation! That's just how she rolls!

"Yes. It'll take some time to figure out the extent of what it can do, but I already have some ideas. Now, I know you're a wizard; have you happened to hit second circle yet?"

"Not unless it happened today! Which is possible, it was a very busy day." 

"Well, once you do you should find me to learn web. In urban areas like these, there aren't many better spells to prepare."

"Okay! Thank you!" Luzai LOVES NEW SPELLS. 

It is with this euphoria, and that of finding the Aeon-fragment a more suitable home, that she goes off to find Nenio and propose a series of non-magical experiments for tomorrow so that Nenio can save her spells for the demon attack in the evening. 

(There is no literal twirling involved, but only because the whole place is crowded enough that she doesn't have room to do it without maybe hitting someone.)

Nenio is sufficiently enthusiastic about this that she wants to start them now and simply stay up until they've done all of them.

Luzai’s first instinct is to protest this but on second thought if Nenio wakes up and prepares spells not long before the attack that could work actually.

Luzai will not however be able to assist with those experiments right now—she will lightly imply that that was why she initially suggested doing the experiments tomorrow—because she is busy. With her own research. On things like the Aeon fragment.

That makes sense, they can get more science done at once that way.

Cool cool cool!

Camellia! Hi! Saving tomorrow’s spells for the big demon attack, y/n?