"There's never just one of them," Celistar said, referring to the six or so people we'd just helped shuffle off the mortal coil.

"To be fair," I pointed out, "There was more than one in the first place."

She looked at me as if I had something unfortunate growing out of my forehead. I swung my eyes up just to make sure. Nope, I was good.

"You know what I mean," she said in a huff.

István gave a sly smile. "Knowing what you meant is a prerequisite, or her rejoinder would not have been effective."

Her mouth flapped open, then shut again, like a fish gasping for air. Gasping for water? That phrase never made any sense to me. What kind of fish gasps for air? Not sure I ever wanted to see such a thing.

Anyway.

We'd went looking for another encampment after spending the night (or the day; it was hard to tell) at the original one.

Celistar allowed us to have shifts for the watch this time, although that may have been because of the lack of a moon of any kind overhead. Considering I'd seen her literally summon the moon and the night on command, I didn't think that was such a barrier, but either way we were glad she allowed us to share the burden.

It perhaps gave her a little too much time to be with her thoughts, as I'd caught her ruminating while lying in her cot, staring up at the strange 'stars' on the not-a-sky sky. As a result, she seemed out of it all day, and a bit surly to boot.

Like we were the proximal cause of her problems and not these stains on the natural order we'd stacked up like so much cordwood over in the jungle, to be consumed by the plants again.

This new camp seemed pretty normal until we started digging around. You know how people sometimes make jerky? Well, they were doing the same thing here, but they had the entire carcass of the critter hanging up, and they looked… messed up.

The faces were all twisted up in an expression even I could read as horror. Like they'd seen their own grandma naked or something.

Ever give yourself an unfortunate mental image and regretted it the second you thought about it? I was now a member of that club.

Some of the unfortunate wildlife had wounds that looked almost self-inflicted, and the rest had sections of their bodies that looked rotten, but had still been left on the carcass for some reason.

"Totems," Celistar said, looking at them. "Not food."

I did my best to look disappointed, which got me a strange look indeed. Totally worth it.

"What is a totem, if you do not mind me asking?"

Elder Scholar, asking for permission to ask a question? Now I've seen everything and can die happy.

Minus the dying, of course. I'd like not to do that for a while yet.

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Celistar grasped at his question like a drowning woman. "Of course! I know an unfortunate amount about them thanks to the Umbral Covenant."

She grabbed one off the drying rack, looking a little like she regretted the action afterwards. Perhaps she had done so somewhat impulsively. She held it out to the rest of us, and pushed some of her power into it. A dim field, just barely visible to me, even with my special vision, popped into view.

It surrounded the 'totem' like a bubble, reaching out in all directions. She slammed it into the ground, tail first, like some sort of grotesque yard stake.

"Not much range, right?" She said, grabbing another two, and managing to avoid cringing directly. Looks like she'd realized she was in this demonstration for the long haul.

She put the two new ones at precise angles to the first, and the moment she did, the bubble grew drastically. It seemed to be at least nine times larger than it was originally, suggesting this was some sort of multiplicative change, although it could be different scaling if you look at the change in volume instead…

Wait, where the hell did that thought come from? That sounded way too smart for me. It was something that'd been happening more often lately; me being the smart. It was baffling. I kept remembering bits and pieces of stuff from school and putting them together better than I had at any point, even when I originally failed to learn them.

I suppose if Nebula could make my body work better, and make the Sect Master live longer, it could even do something as improbable as make me a vaguely competent human.

Phenomenal cosmic powers indeed, should that be the case.

She then made an image of the moon with her power, before setting it into the area of effect. Dozens of images of the moon appeared.

"It's basically a relay," she said, as the images quickly fell apart under the influence of whatever corruptive influence had been used to create the totems in the first place.

Celistar snapped her fingers, and the totems turned into ash, the area of effect disappearing shortly thereafter. I strongly suspected that the snapping was merely for effect, but I wasn't about to rain on her little science demonstration.

Especially not with Elder Scholar being so over the, uh, moon, about it. It seems he'd had a bunch of ideas all at once. I could almost sense his urge to run back to anything resembling a workshop to go try things out.

"Who knows," I said, looking at him. "Maybe you'll get lucky."

He nodded, knowing exactly what I was talking about, but Celistar seemed quite confused, even blushing a little. It took me a few moments to figure out what she was on about, then it was my turn to get a little red in the face.

It was amusing she'd have that misunderstanding, being in my head and all. Not like I was a stranger to ignoring things I knew for sure. Or ignoring the obvious.

Viktor walked over to the rack, pulled what looked like a squirrel off, and then took a big bite before anyone could stop him. Celistar's mouth hung open, and even István and I were a little put off. His 'snack' was doused in some sort of nasty energy to make it into a totem.

"That good?" I asked, failing to keep the disbelief out of my voice.

"Nah," he said chewing it thoroughly before tossing the rest away. "Needs garlic."

It didn't even occur to me until we'd already long since left.

"Where on earth did they get those animals anyway?" I asked no one in particular. The dense undergrowth we were carefully moving through had a complete lack of any such thing, which I'd already noted and forgot, somehow.

So much for being smarterer.

"That is… a very good question." István was the first to reply. I was honestly surprised that he hadn't thought of it before me, to be honest. Seemed like the kind of observation that was his forte.

"Maybe they brought them along," Viktor helpfully suggested, before immediately contradicting himself: "Well, no, it would be easier to just bring the finished products instead."

I patted him on the shoulder, which was high enough relative to my somewhat short stature that it was a slightly awkward reach. "Brains and brawn, you got it all, my friend."

It might have been just me, but I swear he blushed a little at the compliment.

"You could not have known this, but they are also more effective if they have a certain amount of resonance with the area they are used in, something you get from using local wildlife," she gave him a warm smile.

He definitely blushed that time.

Too cute.

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