"Well, yes? But if you don't have daemons and belong to a different species, I don't know what is basic to you? Like, we have one sun, one moon, my species, the," he makes a series of clicks and hisses that don't translate to anything more than his species' name, "are the only sapient species."

"Is there any magic other than daemons?"

"There are two kinds. One is perceptives." The word is very badly translated, but close enough that the translation goes for it after almost going for "sensitive". "I am a perceptive, I use it to see better. It can be used to make senses work better or differently or trick other perceptives. The other kind is halo-fliers." Another very bad translation, the use of halo instead of circle suggests a very vague religious significance, "That can make circles made of metal that float and move."

"...huh. That's very specific. How often do people have this magic, or does everyone always get one or the other?"

"Queens can make perceptives whenever but it's harder than a regular egg both the first time around and all the subsequent times. Halo-fliers are random as far anyone can tell. Perceptives are like two in sixteen, and halos-fliers are maybe sixteen times less than that." They have a hexadecimal number system so these values are likely rounded up. "I don't think it's impossible to be both, but I've never heard of it."

"Subsequent times? And harder how?"

"Oh, right alien biology. Uh, a queen can swallow someone's crystal-brain and then put it in a new egg to give them a new body. I don't know what it feels like, but making eggs takes effort and for perceptives the effort is greater."

"—wait do you mean your species is immortal?"

"No? If you destroy our crystal-brains we are gone for good."

"Does that happen often?"

"How often is often? I think the number is thousands per year and the world has a billion people? That can be more if there is a war."

"What sorts of things cause these deaths?"

"Usually something like fire or lighting. And strong enough force also does it, but it's rare for impacts like that to happen by accident. I guess acid could work too."

"So mostly accidents? Or, I guess, murder?"

Crystal shudders slightly.

"Yeah, or things like firefighting... which might count as accidents. There is little reason to kill people outside a war."

"I see." He frowns. "People in my world die of old age."

"Oh, I am so sorry."

"Yeah. They're fixing it—might've fixed it already, I've been away for... hundreds of years... I want to be of some assistance to this world, but I'm not sure I can be."

"I don't really know it myself. Maybe you could talk to a queen, she might know."

"That sounds like it could be useful, yes."

Crystal flutters back to the top of Sadde's head.

The mantis-person who has yet to introduce themself leads them to a stone-walled city that looks surprisingly human considering its decidedly non-human population. It becomes clear very quickly that there are specialized castes which the main difference being sizes. Sadde's guide is the second tallest caste and the heaviest.

Everyone looks confused at Sadde and Crystal. It takes surprisingly little to allow them into the city's central structure.

He pays attention to everything, and follows his guide. At some point he asks his guide's name.

Drone-their name is a series-of-clicks-followed-by-a-short-buzzing-sound. Drone-they appear to find "Sadde" very hard to pronounce.

The queen can be best described as a combination of the insectoid species, with something similar to the xenomorphs from the Aliens series and a couple of other vaguely Lovecraftian things and maybe a Pokémon to balance the ugliness out. She possesses a very long distended abdomen that spirals out of where her multi-limbed torso raises. She is covered in various veils and several daemons stand over her abdomen walking down through it. Sadde sees an egg being deposited and a daemon jumping on the sticky sphere that is then carried away by more insectoid aliens.