The sky of Ephemera was weird. During the day it was a deep purple, with stars faintly visible even when the sun was high, fading to a rosy pink all around the horizon. I had my first clear sight of this when we emerged from the khora forest, along with some more pleasant details.

“Plants!” I exclaimed, unable to contain my relief. “There are plants!”

“Yes, Lord Seiji,” Aster replied in the carefully neutral tone of someone whose dangerous boss is being laughably stupid.

“Hey, I’m not crazy. Virya dropped me right in North Watch and I haven’t seen anything but the khora forest. I thought that was just what everything was like here.”

“Oh. Well, no, khora forests aren’t uncommon but they are sort of unique. Most places where people live have more green plants.”

Not that the plants in question were impressive specimens, being scraggly weeds and scrub bushes that started to appear along the sides of the road as it emerged from the alien overgrowth of the khora biome, and rather unassuming fields of grass to either side. I was just relieved to see more familiar green foliage, even as the rest of the scenery was actually more interesting.

There were still khora out here, but instead of growing in the wild profusion of the forest, they were in neat rows marching into the distance to either side of the road, with wide spacing between them filled with nothing but field grass. To my right were orderly domes of what looked like house-sized brain coral, complete with lazily waving fronds emerging from between the lumped folds of their hard shells; to the left rose a veritable orchard of antler-like structures that towered over three stories in height, deep gold in color and topped with flat fins from which sprouted moving tendrils. This could only mean one thing.

“So…you farm these khora things, then? What are they for?”

I made it several more steps before I realized they’d both stopped. Turning around, I beheld Aster and Donon staring at me as if I’d sprouted a second head.

Biribo cackled, zooming in circles above me. “Guys, I really wasn’t kidding! The boss is gonna need some really basic stuff explained to him.”

Aster cleared her throat. “Right, well… Um, khora are used for everything, Lord Seiji. There are a few species that’re edible or have medicinal properties—the flesh inside, that is—but mostly we use the shells.”

“Right, so there’s three kinds,” Donon cut in, nodding eagerly. “Akorthist is the heaviest and hardest, and comes in the biggest chunks. It’s also brittle, though, so it’s tricky to carve without breaking it. Akorshil is softer and slightly flexible. I think the official standard for akorshil is it’s soft enough to hammer nails into, but you can also carve it into more complicated shapes without breaking it. And akornin is the hardest yet, but it’s more likely to bend than fracture if you push it too hard.”

“Also, akornin doesn’t come from khora,” Aster added. “It’s from the shells of animals. So, it only comes in smaller pieces, and it’s rarer and more expensive. The hardest to work with, as well. Basically any blades you see will be made of akornin.” She pulled the greatsword from its harness, holding it up so the deep blue color gleamed in the sun. “The ones not made from metal, that is, but those are pretty uncommon.”

I looked back and forth at the two fields flanking the road. “So…which is…”

“Those’re both akorthist khora, boss,” said Biribo. “These are categories, not species. There are hundreds of kinds of khora; people divide them up based on what they’re used for.”

“So…North Watch is made from…”

“The walls are akorthist blocks,” he said. “Akorshil is used for the beams, the floors, some of the inner supports and wall panels. And doors, stuff like that.”

In other words, these people relied on crustacean-based analogues for stone, wood, and metal. Wait, why would they need a biological alternative to wood? I couldn’t help noticing I hadn’t seen a single tree in this alleged “forest.” For that matter…

“Why not just build with stone? Surely it’s more durable.” North Watch’s state of erosion made it look like it had been abandoned considerably longer than a hundred years.

“Stone?” Somehow, the two of them looked even more aghast; Donon held up his hands in a crossed gesture in front of his throat while speaking. “You mean, like the ground is made of?”

“Ah, boss…” Biribo buzzed lower to speak right in my ear. “You may’ve noticed on the way down that Ephemera is made of archipelagos, suspended above an empty space of a planet with a fiery core far below. In basically every culture on this world, digging up the ground is a major taboo.”

“How do you lay foundations for buildings, then?”

Aster shrugged. “Nobody builds where they’d have to cut deep into the living stone, Lord Seiji. Moving dirt around is fine; you have to do that to farm, anyway. I guess it’s not too much of a problem as long as it doesn’t go too deep. Not sure, I’m not an architect. Even so, foundation-laying involves lots of prayers from priests and will often have people Blessed with Magic supervising in case something goes wrong, like if you crack the bedrock by mistake. The early stages of construction always involve a big ceremony.”

“I’m guessing you people don’t have cellars, then.”

“What’s a cellar?”

I stared at her for a moment, processing, then turned and resumed walking. Seconds later, footsteps hastened along behind me as they caught up.

“So, there are no oceans,” I murmured. “Where do you get your water from?”

“Rain, and natural springs. Those feed streams and rivers. An ocean is a source of water, then?”

“Hmm. Do you do much fishing?”

“Fishing?”

I looked back at her, pantomiming casting a rod. “You know, to get fish. Animals that live in the water. For food.”

Aster frowned in puzzlement; it was Donon who answered in a hesitant voice. “There are animals that go in the water? Some of them are edible. I know geese like to swim. Also there are predatory shellbacks that hide in streams and jump out to grab you. I never heard of anything that just lives underwater all the time.”

I scrubbed at my eyes with both fists. “And I don’t suppose you eat any, say, grain crops that grow in the water.”

“Grain? From water?” Aster frowned even harder. “What country do you come from, Lord Seiji?”

“So, no fish, and no rice. This is hell. I am in hell. Wait, these springs you mentioned. Are there any onsen?” Oh, that was a bad sign; the Japanese word came out of my mouth automatically, which probably meant this language didn’t have a word for the concept. I tried combining two more basic ones. “Hot springs?”

Again, my two followers exchanged an incredulous look.

“Why would a spring ever be hot?” Donon asked.

I just trudged on down the road, adding another tally to the list of crimes for which I meant to punish Virya someday. Obviously, the water cycle wouldn’t function normally on a broken shell of a planet like this, so the goddesses were using their magic to cheat and keep everybody alive. You’d think they could have done more than the bare minimum.

The farther we went, the less weird it got, though the weirdness never went away fully. After a couple of hours of walking, we left the khora fields behind us—which was apparently for a reason, as according to my companions khora spread through some kind of underground root network and while they could be encouraged to grow in relatively orderly formations, you couldn’t cultivate them anywhere except near a wild khora forest. Once past them there were other fields, growing recognizable crops such as barley and corn, along with other things that looked as alien as the khora. Which of course was because they literally were alien, but like the khora, people had apparently learned to use and cultivate these plants. Humans are adaptable, I have to give them that.

The livestock we passed were the same. There were pens of sheep, ponds in which geese paddled, and paddocks of horses, interspersed with herds of misbegotten monstrosities that looked like smaller two-legged yaks, big feathery velociraptor-looking lizard-birds that Aster said were for riding, and actual lizards (or amphibians, I didn’t get close enough to look) that were proportioned like salamanders big enough to swallow a person. Also a surprising number of the livestock enclosures we passed had a single or pair of donkeys in with the other animals. Aster claimed they were excellent guard animals, which made me wonder whether this was a unique Ephemera breed or donkeys were just like that and for whatever reason didn’t get used that way as much on Earth.

I was developing a theory that the goddesses had taken this alien planet and even before they wrecked it beyond all recognition, tried to plunk down Earth-like biospheres around centers of habitation so they could play their world-sized JRPG in a familiar environment. Obviously that would have more complicated effects than they planned on, but was that due to negligence on their part? Lack of fine control over the world? Or was this the result they were aiming for? Not questions that impacted my survival at this moment, but I would keep them in mind and keep my eyes open. Understanding how Sanora and Virya worked and controlled Ephemera was crucial if I was going to successfully stick it to them.

My two local companions knew the roads well and took me on a careful path far from villages. I didn’t need to tell them to try to avoid people. That was easy enough early on, though of course as we drew closer to civilization and the roads grew broader and more well-traveled, it eventually ceased to be a prospect. We had neglected to bring any satchels or carrying devices, as I had failed to consider the importance of concealing Biribo. But as the familiar pointed out, keeping the Blessing of Wisdom secret made its information-gathering assets more useful against my enemies, not to mention that if anybody who knew what a familiar was saw me with him and saw me cast a spell, they’d be able to figure out who (or at least what) I was before I was ready to announce myself.

So he ended up tucked inside Aster’s coat, as it was the only garment between the three of us big enough to conceal him. Even so he made for a suspicious bulge at her waist when he squirmed around, but at least the garment was baggy enough below the ribs to hide him so long as she kept it buttoned.

“I could do with less complaining,” she commented after we had to endure his muffled grumbling for the first few minutes. “Plenty would kill to be in your position, little man.”

Biribo’s triangular black head popped out of the neckline of the jacket. “Lady, I’m a magical flying lizard. What do I care about a pair of tits? I can tell you from here that they’re a lot less soft when covered in freaking chain mail!”

“You can feel free to bellyflop on him if the whining gets too bad,” I told her.

“I will take that under advisement, Lord Seiji,” Aster said gravely.

By the time we turned off the last back country lane onto a broad, paved road (paved in blocks of dull yellow akorthist; Aster and Donon failed to understand why I laughed), there was no avoiding people. It wasn’t crowded, exactly, Dount being the backwater it was, but there were pedestrians, farmers in carts, and merchant trains. The most popular choice of animal for pulling vehicles were burly things that looked like stocky, bowlegged goats almost the size of cows. Occasionally a person would ride past on a horse, and once I saw a woman in armor dash past astride one of those raptor-bird things.

Aster stepped close to me and began speaking in a quiet tone, unprompted. “Fflyr Dlemathlys belongs to the elves, Lord Seiji.”

I glanced up and down the road. “Elves? I don’t see any.” Goblins and elves. Someone had clearly tried to recreate a standard sword-and-sorcery world here without removing the native flora and fauna first. Dear god, were there any people on this planet before Virya and Sanora arrived? I didn’t doubt for a second they’d drop a genocide from orbit on whoever was in the way of their fun…

“Believe me, if an elf were on the road, you’d know, though you still might not see them. They’d be in a carriage or palanquin, with a whole procession of servants and armed guards. It’s possible to never encounter an elf at all, if you’re poor enough; there aren’t that many of them and they move exclusively in the upper echelons of society. That’s my point, all Fflyr elves are nobility, automatically. I’m telling you this, my lord, because you need to watch for people’s coloration. See that man, the one on the horse?”

She didn’t rudely point, just jerking her head, and I followed the gesture to a fellow astride a sleek black mare, wearing clothing much fancier than mine. He was also blond, and quite pale, with a broad-brimmed hat protecting his complexion from the sun. I caught a glimpse of his features as he glanced to one side while riding on ahead; though his coloring was practically Scandanavian, I wouldn’t quite peg him as European. The eyes were the wrong shape, cheekbones too high and prominent, with an oddly pointed yet understated nose and chin and sharply defined jawline. Plus those weird quirked eyebrows like all the Dount people seemed to have.

“Pale skin, straight yellow hair, and dark eyes are signs of elvish blood,” Aster continued quietly. “A person’s social rank is determined by how much elf they have in them. Someone colored like that is a nobleman by default. Be careful around people with lighter but not pale skin and brown hair rather than black; it can be hard to tell their rank at a glance and they can get you in trouble if they don’t feel you’ve been respectful enough. But if you show them too much deference that can offend a higher-ranking noble if they happen to see it.”

“A racial caste system,” I muttered. “Okay, Ephemera, you can stop. I already hate you, I don’t need a new reason every ten minutes.”

Aster just nodded, her expression grim. I wanted to make a wisecrack about white people, but there was no point when I was the only person on the planet who’d get it. Something told me even Yoshi wasn’t that well-versed in Earth’s history. And let’s face it, these were an entirely different ethnicity with coincidentally similar coloring and there just wasn’t any fun in it when there were no actual Caucasians around to take offense. Instead, I took a quick look around at the people passing along the road with fresh eyes.

Most were like Aster and the bandits: brown, sharp-featured, with curly black hair. So, commoners. I saw a few more indeterminate individuals such as she’d mentioned, with a lighter coffee-and-cream complexion and hair that was straighter and lighter without approaching blonde. Notably, they were all better-dressed than the commoners, which afforded me the opportunity to observe that the Fflyr standard of “well-dressed” was straight up tacky, based around vivid jewel colors and excessive, gaudy embellishments. There were no other nobles about, now that that guy on the horse had disappeared over the rise ahead. A few others I couldn’t place on this scale, people whose features and clothing didn’t match the rest of the crowd. Notably, most of these outliers seemed to be attached to one of the wagon trains passing by.

People were also giving the three of us a decently wide berth, and not staring despite the fact I was the only person in sight with Asian features. I’d put that down to my well-made clothing and Aster’s big sword, plus a peasant’s fear of antagonizing a rich man with his own personal thug, but now I had to wonder.

“So where do I fit on this sliding scale, exactly?”

“Foreigners aren’t considered part of the system,” she explained. “There’s a whole lot of Fflyr history I can go into if you want—”

“Hard pass, don’t care.”

“—but the short version is the elves consider it their religious duty to keep the local people in line and what other groups of humans do isn’t their business. So, as long as you don’t overtly insult or offend a noble, nobody’s going to expect you to know your place. Donon and I can probably get away with a bit more, too, since we’re obviously your servants, but even so I wouldn’t push it.”

That last was delivered over her shoulder to Donon, who raised his hands in surrender.

“Hey, I’m not an idiot! Nobody wants trouble with the pales. I thought we were tryin’ to avoid attention, anyway.”

“Too right,” I agreed, then fell silent as we topped the hill and I beheld my first sight of the city of Gwyllthean.

City? Town? I had no frame of reference for how big or important this was relative to a medieval society. It was certainly smaller than a mid-sized Japanese town, but far more dense; I wasn’t sure how to guess how many people lived there, but I figured at least ten thousand, maybe twice that? Also the class system I’d just been learning about was obvious at a glance in its construction.

Gwyllthean was built on a broad, domed hill, with an outer wall around what looked like its base. Outside the wall was an untidy sprawl of buildings that seemed to consist of most of the city’s total size; inside there was another, smaller wall halfway up the hill marking off an interior district from the middle ring. The buildings inside each tier of walls grew progressively fancier, and rising up from the center was a towering palace. That much looked normal enough, as medieval towns went. But because this was Ephemera, the city not only got richer but weirder as it climbed toward its apex.

The lowest, poorest section looked normal enough, though more colorful than I’d have expected of a medieval town due to being made of khora rather than wood and stone. The real strangeness began with the walls; both tiers were pale blue, buttressed by dull reddish columns and topped by a violet strip of battlements. Also, they arced outward a considerable distance, leaving the areas below them in the shadow of a convex overhang. The effect was visually very cool; it didn’t look particularly stable, but I figured the shape would make them basically impossible to climb, so it did serve a defensive purpose. Inside the first ring of walls were domes and spires with odd, organic-looking trim. Rooftops were all that was visible, so I couldn’t tell anything of the buildings below from this angle. The next tier up made the effect more pronounced, as the buildings there rose higher over the walls, and were even more fanciful in their shape and color, consisting entirely of curved forms like seashells and river-carved rocks. And above it all loomed the palace.

One of my childhood treasures was a set of English-language Dr. Seuss books given to me by my grandmother in California; the structure at the center of Gwyllthean looked to me like something he would have designed. It was all gold and ivory and blue and purple, all irregular and organic shapes, overall a sweeping spiral structure like a seashell standing on its broad end but embellished with more spiraling towers, colonnades, protruding and overhanging wings whose purpose I couldn’t see, and a lot of it sticking out from the base in sweeping curves rather like the walls to loom menacingly over the uppermost tier of the town.

Clearly they didn’t have earthquakes here.

“Hey, Aster. What am I looking at?”

“That’s Gwyllthean, Lord Seiji.”

I bit back a retort, which was somewhat against my nature, but we were trying to be discreet and there was no point in hiding Biribo if I was just gonna start a fracas right in the middle of traffic.

“Yes, I got that, thank you,” I replied with admirable patience. “Leaving aside how there’s no way in hell this was built without deep foundations… Why does it go from being built like a normal city to…whatever the hell is going on with that big building in the middle?”

She glanced at me, then around. Nobody was walking close or looking at us, but she still lowered her voice. Probably for the best; it wouldn’t do to broadcast to all and sundry that Lord Seiji didn’t understand how anything worked.

“The section of the city outside the walls is the poorest district, my lord.” I almost snapped at her that time, but it turned out she wasn’t stopping, just pausing to gather her thoughts, and continued before I could find something sufficiently spiteful to say. “Traditional Fflyr architecture emphasizes using the least individual pieces of akorthist and akorshil possible. The reasons are…well, complicated, I’ll explain it in more detail sometime if you’re interested. So basically, people down in the Gutters just build out of whatever bricks and planks they can get. As you go higher up toward the palace, the people get richer and so they can afford to buy and transport larger pieces of natural akorthist, and pay architects to design around whatever big chunks they obtain. So those buildings end up shaped more like the natural khora. Basically, the richer a building’s owners are, the more organic it’ll look.”

“Huh.” Made sense; the palace really did look like something that had grown naturally, or been shaped by wind and rain. And now that I squinted, even from this distance it looked like the walls were single huge chunks of pale blue akorthist, connected by the red columns. That would help explain their odd shape. And in fact, they weren’t quite as regular as city walls in historical illustrations, varying slightly in height along the battlements.

I continued studying Gwyllthean as we drew closer, noting more interesting features. Some tufts of greenery were visible poking up between buildings in the uppermost tier, even a couple in the middle section. Trees, finally? Also, I hadn’t initially noticed as the color of the walls obscured it, but there was a lot of flowing water. In several spots it actually cascaded over lips in the upper ring of walls; from the lower ones it came out of tall grates cut into their bases. I couldn’t see what manner of canals cut through the poor district, though there were three visible rivers snaking away from Gwyllthean. Evidently the major water source in this area was in the city itself, apparently up in the highest, middle section. That plus the defensible shape of the hill explained its location. Also why the poor district was apparently called the Gutters.

Aster cleared her throat and shifted to walk closer to me again before speaking in the same soft tone as before. “So, Lord Seiji, I hope I’m not being presumptuous and please don’t think I’m challenging you. I didn’t want to give that impression, but we’re almost there, and I can’t help—”

“Just spit it out, woman. I’m not going to punish anybody for asking reasonable questions, that would be insane.”

She gave me a loaded look. “Your definition of insanity is common practice for nobles in this country, my lord. But thank you, if you don’t mind… What exactly do you intend to do in Gwyllthean? I could probably be more helpful if I knew what your plan was.”

Well…that actually was putting me on the spot. There was the concern that I barely knew either of the people following me and wasn’t willing to reveal my full plans to them just yet, but that dilemma was made much easier by the fact that I had no plans to speak of, just a selection of half-baked ideas.

“I don’t know if you’ve picked this up from context, but I am not from around here.”

“I’ve had that impression, my lord,” she said solemnly.

I also glanced around, discreetly, making sure there was no one nearby. A merchant wagon train was lumbering past on the opposite side of the road; the noise of the wheels and animals made a nice cover. “By ‘here’ I mean Ephemera.”

Aster gave me a surprised look, but not as surprised as I might have expected. “Oh. It’s true, then?”

“That depends on what ‘it’ is.”

“That Heroes and Dark Lords are called from another world? There haven’t been any since before I was born, and I don’t think ever in this country, so at this point there’s just myth and rumor…”

“Well, it’s certainly true this time. So to answer your question… I want to get a look around.”

“That’s…” She frowned quizzically. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. I need to understand…what I’m working with. Everything. Politics, economics. Military. What commoners’ lives are like. More other subjects than I can even think of to name. Before I can make concrete plans, I need to understand what’s happening here, how this country works and how I can operate within and against it. And I don’t have time to dawdle. It’ll be my ass if Virya gets bored waiting for me to do something. Not to mention the Hero is out there, and I wouldn’t put it past that dumbass to let himself get manipulated into murdering me even if all I do is walk around petting puppies and feeding orphans.”

“I see,” she murmured. “Well…there are some things I can show you, of course, and explain. There’s a lot I don’t know, but some things I imagine could be useful. You should see the King’s Guild, to begin with. I also need to stop there at some point soon. With your permission, my lord.”

I gave her a sidelong look, considering.

“Why are you so willing to help, Aster? Just gratitude that I saved you from the bandits?”

“You didn’t save me from the bandits,” she said softly. “You gave me the power to save myself from them. That makes all the difference in the world. Aside from the fact that I only keep my Blessing if I work for you? I won’t deny I have reservations, Lord Seiji. Everything I’ve been taught since I was old enough to hear it makes Virya and her Dark Lords out to be the very essence of evil. Destruction, suffering, all of that.”

She trailed off, frowning ahead into the distance in deep thought.

“But?” I prompted after a moment.

“But,” Aster agreed, “having met you, and having thought about how Fflyr Dlemathlys already works… Maybe I’m rushing to conclusions, but I can’t help wondering if you wouldn’t actually be better than the way things are now. I’m already pretty sure you wouldn’t be worse.”

“Hm. It’s that bad, huh?”

Her expression darkened further. “If you’re not a noble, or at least rich? And a man, to boot? It isn’t great.”

“It’s a pretty shit country, Lord Seiji,” Donon agreed from behind us, not troubling to moderate his voice. “Why, the nobles—”

We both turned to glare at him and he broke off, eyes going wide. Then he glanced furtively about. Fortunately we were somewhat distant from any pedestrians, but one of the armored guards riding along the tail end of the passing merchant caravan gave Donon an amused look and shook his head.

“Also,” I amended my stated agenda, “let’s try to avoid getting ourselves arrested, murdered, or otherwise inconvenienced by the powers that be, yeah?”

A muffled but clearly derisive noise emerged from inside Aster’s jacket.