"Tricks, you say...why, I do believe this girl is more than she appears. This bird, those scars, these 'tricks'...say, can you do a trick where you make flames burst from your fingertips?"

"I can! It's so pretty, like a firework! Want to see?" 

How is that girl so cheerful about fire with those burn scars. It's admirable, in a way. 

"Thank you, not just now. Well, well, well..."

Lusilla gives Daeran a curious look but doesn't press. 

"Would you like to come with us? We can always use another pair of hands, and it's safer to stick together, and we're running errands from a place that's pretty well fortified against the demons."

"You cannot possibly be serious. Whatever little magic tricks this girl may possess, there's no way we'd be better off with this dirty little beggar among us." 

Lusilla had almost forgotten that Camellia was present. What a pleasant experience that was. 

"I'm not afraid to sit on you either." 

"I admit, that might be even more disgusting than having an urchin like this tagging along."

"Sure! Let's go!"

They reach the place where Terendelev died. 

It's not surprising that her body is gone. It is upsetting, seeing the great streak of gore where her body was apparently dragged away, presumably by demons. 

Lusilla remembers what the Storyteller said, about vestiges of a body being the difference between a really expensive resurrection spell and a fuckoff expensive one, and bends down to use a dagger to chip off some dried chunks of blood--there's so much of it, that it clotted and congealed into layers deep enough to make taking samples fairly easy--and also collects a couple of damaged scales that she thinks came off while the corpse was being hauled. 

You'd think that Camellia would once again be complaining about Lusilla doing Gross Things, but no; she's standing perfectly still, gazing at the great swathe of blood stained across the cobblestones, pupils dilated, breathing heavily. 

That might just be the most valid thing Camellia has ever done in her presence? Terendelev getting decapitated was fucking scary and being scared of the aftermath is so reasonable. 

(Daeran is much less fundamentally confused about what's going on than Lusilla is.)

Lusilla surveys the scene. If there really is something important here, she's not immediately seeing it...

But if it were obvious, something would have happened to it by now. 

So she changes into her other shape. 

...Whoah, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

There's something odd over to the right and up over that retaining wall, and something really odd ahead and a little to the right, and ahead and a little to the left is something extremely odd--well, no, there's two somethings, but it's harder for her to get a handle on how much weirdness is which one. 

That last one seems the most likely to be what the Storyteller was having weird vibes about, so she heads in that direction. 

There's--something there--she reaches out--

And in the future...

How--how utterly alien. She's seen it, she's been it now, and she still--can't understand how it could be possible to view the presence of demons as being worse than the actual consequences where they hurt people. The Aeon's vestige didn't really give room for introspection. 

Although--

Obviously she's going to take it up!!! She may not find the Aeon's perspective natural, let alone comfortable, but--it's what remains of a being that had a consciousness, an awakeness, whatever it may think of its own aliveness. How could she do anything else?

Lusilla allows herself to fwump dramatically out of the air and onto the stone of the street. She'd go back to human form just to fall to her knees, but--

--she actually really wants to keep looking at the stone knife she picked up. Not with the Aeon's judmgental gaze, considering it anathema for being starkly extraplanar, but with her own magical sight. 

It's magic, alright, but--there's something deeper to it, she thinks, than there was to the ring the Storyteller gave her. In some ways, it's more like Lariel's sword--she thinks that's probably not because they're just blades, either. Although, the Aeon might not have liked Lariel's sword, either: angels aren't native to this plane, after all. 

There's also something about it that reminds her of--

She returns to human form after all, comparing the magic dagger to the bracers on her forearms. Yes, there's a stylistic similarity between the engravings on the bracers and the handle of the knife. 

...Does that...mean...anything? If it does mean anything, Lusilla has no idea what; she still has no idea where these bracers come from.