The Crystal That Should Not Exist

In the guild pet stables Prepotente lets Carl hold Apito's memorial crystal, which reads as zero percent charged. It is meant to be fixed to jewelry or a weapon and fed by kills the way Carl's patch is, then emptied of the spells and knowledge stored inside; Osvaldo wore it and stockpiled it and got nothing, and near the end of Faction Wars it flared into the sky on its own without ever charging. Carl times that flare to Yarilo's escape from the Nothing and to his own Scavenger's Daughter patch misfiring, and lays out the rest of the tangle: Apito is not dead, so a memorial to her should not exist; she is sibling to Scolopendra, possibly halves of one entity; and his standing quest is to name the crawler-for-hire who murdered Emberus's son Geyrun, which Amayon claims to know. Prepotente explains the Midnight Epicure, an apocalyptic patron of prey animals that began as a story told to frighten non-caprid children, and his own quest, which is simply to keep the crystal until he knows what it is for. Rosetta's theory holds: no god can reach anyone inside the stables. Samantha barges in without Grigori, and Donut cheerfully describes Carl's endgame plan to her as an elaborate suicide.

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