After returning from Chalk Catacombs, Qing is intercepted by Dr. Pike, who has gotten her experiment involving the half-transformed cave lizard she acquired. The goal is to see if 'innervating' it with a conjured spirit will end its suspended animation or not.

Natasha attends as well, as Pike brings them to a secure lab where the lizard is kept in a sturdy cage with a nutrient tube fed down its throat. Qing conjures a vaguely reptilian spirit, and Natasha wards the room against any spirits leaving or entering.

With everything in place, Qing's spirit creature possesses the cave lizard, and the transformation of its flesh resumes, after 10 years of dormancy. As it progresses, though, it transforms the lizard into something unexpected: instead of just changing its flesh or becoming another Aeolun form, it turns into a small white-and-gold hornless dragon.

This excites Dr. Pike, since it hints at some kind of encoded form within the alien cells that hadn't been detected before, or else the possibility that the form is based on some kind of idealization of the base lizard form.

As expected, the creature shows limited signs of awareness and action, unless Qing directs the underlying spirit to move. A cut-test with a scalpel shows that it has the same regenerative powers that Envoy does.

The mages wonder at the consequences of this. Is the creature alive? Is it immortal? Is it a perfect zombie? Without putting in a spirit that can communicate, there is no way to tell.

This is solved by Qing removing the lizard construct and Natasha implanted her more complex familiar, which has an actual personality. This is much more effective, as the familiar can describe what it feels like. The exciting bit is that it feels like it could grow – to learn new things without them being implanted.

Qing realizes that they've gotten the experiment backwards. The test was to see if the animated creature could maintain a spirit – but he thinks they've found that the spirit itself is what guides the body. That in time, the blank-state brain would become imprinted by the spirit and allow the spirit to learn, until it actually fused with the creature.

This brings up all sorts of philosophical issues. Could a living spirit by transplanted into it and become an immortal version of the original person, for instance. Pike notes that since they only have one specimen and no way (as yet) to create more, it doesn't count as a real breakthrough. She needs to perform more tests to see if the process can still be replicated in another body, and to try and find out what aspects of the alien cells allowed normal cells to go into suspended animation with no signs of decay or deterioration.

The Mages also agree to look over the notes left by Orifice on his creation of homunculi. While Pike and Natasha go to the kitchen, Igor asks Qing to come to the great hall where the notes are. Once there, the Skreek speaks in Imperial, and tells Qing to be careful of his choices, because it is no mere coincidence that he's there in Stonebarrow. Certain things only seem possible in this area, the Skreek explains, and the land calls to its chosen people.