My new asshole friend Lord Arider of Clan Olumnach, whom I had no immediate plans to betray but had a feeling that was where this relationship would end up, took a step to the side and paced around the end of the ramp. Beckoning me with a courteous gesture, he proceeded into the space alongside it, which I now saw formed an alleyway between the side of the ramp and the arch of the city wall. Up ahead, the alley turned into a tunnel as it passed beneath the much larger ramp of the main road, directly below the gates.

I fell into step alongside him, keeping up my insouciant swagger and noting that he moved with a similar gait. Apparently there was some overlap between the mannerisms of aristocrats and rock stars, an observation which I didn’t particularly enjoy. Arider’s bodyguard came up behind us—uncomfortably close, actually, to the point I almost imagined I could feel his breath. Right; I’d stepped into what had been his position at his master’s side. I started to say something, but caught Arider glancing at me sidelong with a faint yet distinctly smug little smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, and immediately decided not to give him the satisfaction. Or any satisfaction, ever. Aster and Donon trailed along behind, so I held my peace, reasoning that if Muscle Man tried anything she’d see and take him out.

The tunnel loomed ahead, and I found, to my own displeased surprise, that I felt awkward with this silence. How exactly did you make small talk with a nobleman? On Earth those don’t even exist anymore, except in a couple of European backwaters, and it wasn’t as if I spent any time around modern rich people. In my short time on Ephemera I’d only had to deal with people who were either trying to kill me or under my command. But I had to say something; Arider was glancing at me again, that little smirk was increasing one tiny fraction at a time, and I was getting the impression he was testing me in some way.

This was confirmed when I opened my mouth to finally speak, and that was when he quickly interjected, like an asshole. “What country did you say you were from, Lord Seiji?”

The sudden switch caused me to hesitate. “Ah— Japan.”

“Oh? Did you forget, for a moment?” The smirk widened.

I naturally wanted to punch it off his face, but that was clearly the reaction he was digging for, so instead I gave him a cocky grin.

“We call it Nihon, but Japan is the…international name. I thought it might be more familiar to you.” I may not have been as skilled at conversational chess as an actual aristocrat, but I can definitely load my tone with a back-breaking weight of polite condescension.

Arider was too good at this game to react overtly, though his smirk went rigid on his face. “Ah? I can’t say I’ve heard of either name, and I have had the benefit of a proper education. How far is this country?”

Fortunately I’d gone over this in my head during the day-long walk to Gwyllthean. I had to tell people something, and despite my many excellent qualities I have always been an abysmally bad liar. Aside from the natural tendency of my actual opinions to tumble out of my mouth (which is even less appreciated in Japan than most places), regularly lying to people requires keeping track of what you’ve said to whom, and frankly, I can’t be arsed. Thus, I’d decided to be as straightforward as possible while avoiding the topic of goddesses and Dark Lords, which should be doable and raised the added prospect that if I met someone who has heard of Japan or Earth that might lead to something I could use in my quest to stick it to Virya.

“To be quite honest, I have no idea of either distance or direction. My arrival here… Well, it came at a convenient time for me to get out of the country, though this was not at all the method I would have chosen.” Not a lie, I’d been saving up for my move to the States for seven years years. “I encountered a, shall we say, magical mishap of a nature I could not have predicted.”

The plan here was to then play coy and try to leverage my vague hint to build mystery and interest, but Arider immediately nodded as if he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Ah, yes, several of my Clan have had that happen when giving unwise answers to the Spirit on our estate—mostly of the older generations, but one of my cousins got himself disappeared messing about with the wretched thing, as if he didn’t know better. My great-uncle is the only one to have made it back, years after the fact, and let us know the damned Spirit was sending people who annoyed it to the far end of the archipelago. You’re fortunate, Seiji; you might have ended up disintegrated instead of translocated. Spirits are not to be taken lightly.”

“Indeed, the goddess was watching over me,” I said solemnly, filing away this information. Biribo had mentioned Spirits, too. I didn’t know what that was, but stories about mischievous yokai or fae or whatever exist in most cultures; apparently on Ephemera they were a bit more literal. I’d have to ask my familiar once we could safely speak.

“Well, we shall soon see,” he replied, again putting on that knowing little smirk. Still in active performance mode, I didn’t tense up or make a face in reply, though my sense of danger heightened. Arider was obviously testing me—which wasn’t unreasonable in his position—but I was increasingly getting the impression he hoped I would fail whatever little trails he had coming up. So the nobleman with criminal connections turned out to be a dick, who’d have thought? “In fact, if you’ll indulge me, why not a little test of your vaunted abilities right now?”

At that moment, we passed into the darkness of the tunnel.

“What did you have in mind, Arider?” I kept my tone as light as my gait, but couldn’t shake the feeling he saw through my performance. People of his class lived by projecting carefully crafted impressions; he wasn’t going to be as easy to take in as the girls who hung around the rock venues I’d played.

“As your retainers informed you, this area of the Gutters caters to those on discreet business.”

“I did note the odd lack of warm bodies about on the street.”

“Mm, yes. A mix of factors; most business done here is held well after dark, and those I am out to visit encourage the locals to give us…privacy. For our advantage, and their own. But no one rules absolutely, least of all the elite among the scum. There are always dissident factions, and hidden motives.”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking of me, Arider. I think I mentioned I’m new here; I’m the last person who would know about the local factions.”

He stopped; I stopped. The bodyguard finally gave us a bit of space. Arider turned to look at me directly, the light from the tunnel’s entrance casting half his face in dramatic shadow. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him beyond shifting enough to keep his escort within my peripheral vision; only the shuffling of their footsteps reassured me that Aster and Donon were still at hand.

“What do you think of the architecture?”

It was dim, not dark. This tunnel was narrow enough to feel cramped with all of us in it, but it wasn’t long. The light in the Gutters beyond was low, thanks to the overhanging walls, but it was enough to reveal the path, if only just. Still, there were shadows, deep and nearly black ones, cast by the pillars and buttresses of carved akorthist holding up the weight of the main road over our heads.

“What little I can see of it?” I took my eyes off him to glance pointedly around the tunnel. “Seems to provide, shall we say, plenty of opportunity. I probably wouldn’t step foot in here without the escort of someone who knows the area, and my armed backup.”

“You have sharp eyes, and wits! But we already established that.” His smirk was an unsettling carnival mask in the half-lit dimness. “Let us say I am…curious. You are a man of unusual talents; do they include the ability to spot a foe in the darkness?”

I studied his eyes for a moment. They glinted amid the shadows, knowing and predatory. Then I took one deliberate step back from him, which almost put me against the wall of the tunnel—except that it didn’t. What I had taken for a wall was an alcove, black as outer space, between two support pillars. I finally tore my eyes off Arider’s and panned them around the tunnel, what I could see of it from this angle. Those pillars were closer together than it seemed like they should be, plus longer than they were wide, creating oddly deep gaps between them. At head height, just below where the tunnel’s ceiling began to arch, they were carved into moldings that formed a lip just barely wide enough for someone to brace a foot on, though the space above wasn’t big enough for a person to crouch there.

“Looks to me like anything could be hidden in here,” I said at last, glancing past Arider’s bodyguard to my own. Aster had one hand over her shoulder, clutching the handle of her greatsword, though she hadn’t drawn it yet. That huge thing would put her at a serious disadvantage in these tight quarters. So would Arider’s rapier, though the bodyguard’s cudgel and short sword were well-served by the space. “Frankly…you would have to tell me. It all comes down to who you expect might be lurking in here.”

“True enough, if elementary. Ah, well—pray don’t feel bad, Lord Seiji. It doesn’t reflect poorly upon you. One would need to be a goblin to spot anything hidden in this darkness,” said his words while his tone and expression mocked my inability. “And as you said! It all become so much more clear when one knows what to expect!”

Arider whipped around so fast I didn’t even realize what he was doing until there came a shrill cry from the darkness ahead, followed by a rustling thump, and the aristocrat was standing there holding out one arm and sneering victoriously.

I half-stepped forward, leaning around the pillar to look where he was pointing. A shape was curled up piteously on the ground, and I experienced the sickening realization of what I’d missed. An adult couldn’t hide in the shadows above the alcoves, but a child? There was room for that. And now, a child lay on the ground, curled around his midsection, having fallen facing us so that I could see what happened.

The handle of a knife stuck out of his belly. Arider had thrown a knife. He’d spotted the watcher, drawn and hurled the weapon with pinpoint accuracy in the dimness at an almost fully concealed target. There was enough light streaming in from the far exit of the tunnel to glint on the pool of blood spreading across the ground.

He’d knifed a child. The kid couldn’t have been ten years old, if that. He hadn’t even blinked; it had been faster than my eyes could follow.

My decision to fuck around with this guy might have been in error.

“Nightlady take me,” Donon whispered, the hoarse oath echoing in the tunnel.

“Now there’s a bit of local trivia it’ll behoove you to learn, Lord Seiji,” Arider drawled, casually as if he were chatting about fashion or his favorite food. “Here in the Gutters, the Gutter rats are always watching. Local orphans and castoffs, gathered up and put to work doing this and that. The man they answer to ostensibly works for…well, you’ll come to know her in time. But he is not above peddling information to other interested parties. They know every hiding place and bolt-hole; it’s all but impossible to evade their sneaking little eyes. And so, one must manage them.”

I realized belatedly that I’d let shock crack my facade, and Arider’s sneer was as much for my lack of composure as the great victory he’d just achieved by knifing a child. The boy’s raspy breathing filled my ears, far louder than it actually was, punctuated by whimpers of pain and terror.

Lord Arider drew his rapier and flicked its tip in lazy figure eights a centimeter above the ground while he continued to lecture me.

“It does not do to be too heavy-handed with them, you see. Rats are easy enough to kill, but the nest remembers. Business becomes unnecessarily complicated if they are all stirred up against you. On the other hand, one cannot allow them to get the idea that they can interfere with impunity. The method I have hit upon is to…roll the dice, let us say.” The shadows made his grin a gargoyle’s sneer as he flicked the sword contemptuously at the wounded child. “Maim a Rat and let him stagger home, if he can. Sometimes they die, but what of it? Nothing of value is lost, and the rest of them expect no better from life. Sometimes they live, and if you’ve given them a prominent enough scar, why, such badges of piteousness are quite the asset in the beggar’s trade. It’s an elegant solution, if I do say so myself! Reinforcing their proper position while providing them a means to profit by it, if they have the strength to survive.”

“What an…imaginative people you are, after all,” I heard myself say in a wooden voice. Funny; I actually don’t remember deciding to answer him out loud.

Arider’s grin widened, glinting in the faint light. “Well, I suppose you have a point. But alas! In this case, I seem to have erred. A clean stab through the gut might kill, or might not; it’s tricky to predict these things. If he lives, though, that is hardly a useful scar. He’d have to go about half-naked to capitalize upon it—surely an excessive indignity, even for a beggar brat. No, we must leave him a more fitting badge of honor. Geurild, break the rat’s arm. Make it complicated enough that it won’t heal properly. The left arm, mind—let us not be needlessly cruel.”

The beefy man’s shoulders moved in a sigh and he clenched his jaw. Clearly not as sadistic as his master, he was not enjoying this prospect. But he obeyed, pulling out his cudgel and trudging around behind Arider toward the fallen boy.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” I said, stepping fully out of the alcove. I was well within the rapier’s reach, but Arider just held it to the side, watching me smugly. “You’ve made your point, Lord Arider. Call off your dog.”

“Why, Lord Seiji,” he purred, “of all things, I would not have taken you for a soft-hearted man.”

“Soft?” I whispered. “You think I’m soft?”

“It’s just a Gutter rat,” he sneered. “They’ll only take advantage if you throw them a crumb. Don’t worry; we’ll harden you up quickly. That, or you won’t survive.”

It was the strangest sensation, the terrifying icy calm which suddenly hung over me like a weighted blanket. Beyond it I could distantly feel confusion, panic, revulsion, but they didn’t affect me. My body moved, my mouth worked on its own, and the weight of a spell coalesced in my consciousness, pushing to the forefront, begging to be unleashed.

“In my mother’s country, they have a proverb,” I said. “A piece of advice from one of their greatest leaders. ‘Speak softly, and carry a big stick.’”

Lord Arider’s face went blank, and I found I could read him far more clearly, all of a sudden. The tension of his grip on the sword, his intent expression free of mockery… He had seen the change in my demeanor and suddenly intuited that despite my alleged soft-heartedness and lack of a visible weapon, he was in danger.

Time seemed to freeze around us, one second drawing out almost as it had in Akihabara Station. This was no magic, though, but a trick played by the human brain in response to immediate peril. Aster had gone rigid, sword half-drawn, her eyes darting between Arider and myself. Geurild, almost at the fallen Gutter rat, paused and turned back toward us, sensing a threat.

The boy let out a muffled sob, squelching in his own blood as he curled up.

Arider’s arm twitched; a trained swordsman, he was fast enough to kill in a split second, but the sword never reached me. With my eyes intent on him and my mind alight with that strange dissociative clarity, he was not faster than thought.

Immolate, you son of a bitch.

Cheery firelight blossomed in the tunnel, driving away the shadows to the accompaniment of Lord Arider’s scream of agony. The sword clanged to the ground and he staggered back, holding up his hands before his face as if he could still see them turn to charred meat on blackened sticks of bone with his eyeballs already boiled away. Back he stumbled, falling to his knees in the alcove opposite me, and it was strange how, despite everything, I couldn’t find any satisfaction in finally burning that smirk off his face.

A sense of ineffable rightness, sure, as if I’d restored some upset balance, but no personal pleasure. In that moment, the thought suddenly in the forefront of my mind was that Virya was wasting an awful lot of time and energy bringing me here from across the galaxy to play Dark Lord when Ephemera already had people as evil as this just walking around.

Fortunately Aster was more attentive to our surroundings than I, and my next sight was her dashing across the light source Arider made to intercept Geurild, who’d come at me with both weapons. She had managed to get the greatsword out and immediately drove him back.

The sight of it commanded my attention for a moment. By all logic she shouldn’t have been able to wield that thing at all in such tight confines; it was about as long as she was tall. Not for nothing was it an artifact, though, and with the master swordsmanship it gave her, she made do. Aster spun like a gyroscope, keeping the huge length of the blade folded practically against her body and using her own constant pivoting and spinning to compensate for the inability to properly swing it. Geurild was much better able to deploy his short sword and club, not to mention standing head and shoulders taller than he, but he found himself trying to fight a very angry woman-sized drill bit and giving ground as she spun at him, deflecting his blows and forcing him onto the defensive.

A bellow of pain echoed in the tunnel as she inflicted a cut on his arm. That sword should have taken the arm off and gone halfway through his torso if she’d been able to give it a full swing, but even the acute angle at which she moved it made blood splatter the wall and caused him to lose his grip on the cudgel.

The light was beginning to fade as Arider started to peter out. Experience had taught me he’d only burn for a few more seconds, but I took the risk of turning my back to him because there was something more important to deal with. Aster had pushed Geurild back past the fallen Gutter rat, meaning I could get close without risking a sword in the face. I stepped over to him, ignoring the bloody squelching around my shoes, and knelt down.

The boy grimaced and tried to back away. I grabbed his shoulder.

“It’s okay. You’re gonna be all right. I need you to hold still, okay? This is gonna hurt like a bitch for a second, but I’ll fix it.”

You never, ever pull out the foreign object impaling someone. I wasn’t actually trained in first aid, but even I knew that: the knife was the only thing preventing him from bleeding out. Leave it for the medical professionals to handle. But that was advice for people who don’t have bullshit overpowered healing magic, which I couldn’t exactly use with the weapon still in him.

Grabbing the handle, I yanked it free, flinging the knife away behind me with the same motion. I grimaced, he screamed, and I seized the magic before the blood loss could take him any further.

Heal!

Pink light burst in the tunnel, overwhelming the last flickers of Arider’s Immolation. The boy gasped, and with amazing speed, skittered to his feet, clutching his suddenly un-wounded stomach. His expression a twisted blend of panic and awe, he looked down at it, then back at me.

“There we go,” I said, realizing I was breathing heavily as if I’d just done something actually difficult. “You should be—”

He turned and scampered, dashing past Aster out the opposite end of the tunnel.

“…ingrate,” I accused. Well, on the other hand, I guess I couldn’t begrudge the kid that reaction. Getting the hell out of there was just good sense.

Only belatedly did I realized quiet had descended. Slowly, I straightened back up, taking stock.

Geurild was dead, slumped half into one of the alcoves in his own spreading pool of blood. I couldn’t even see what the fatal wound was, but he didn’t appear to be breathing and that was a lot of blood. Aster stood over him, sword at the ready, her whole body heaving as she regained her own breath. There was a noticeable rent in her jacket, baring the unmarred chain mail beneath it; the artifact had done its job well.

From behind me, silence. I turned slowly, already dreading what I would find.

Arider was no longer burning. He was, in fact, no longer doing much of anything except lying on the floor with Donon standing over him, blood dripping from his hands. The long, thin knife Arider had thrown at the orphan boy was now buried up to its hilt in his left eye.

Donon was also struggling to breathe, though his problem appeared to be nerves. He was shaking violently, wide-eyed and aghast, his hands trembling hard enough to cause droplets of noble blood to flicker across the ground.

Biribo landed on my shoulder, causing me to jump. I hadn’t even noticed when he’d left Aster’s jacket. Given what she’d just been up to, that was clearly a wise decision, though.

“Welcome to Gwyllthean, boss,” my familiar said. “Hope you enjoy your fuckin’ stay.”

I inhaled slowly, just to be sure I could do it smoothly. Yep, minimal trembling and no sign of any damage. To me, anyway. God, this whole place stank of blood now.

“I…I…he…we were fightin’ them,” Donon stammered. “It’s…m’lord, I didn’t…he was gonna kill a kid. For fun! Even Rocco didn’t do shit like that, and, and, you don’t wanna know what Rocco…”

“Donon.” I made my voice even, projecting from the diaphragm. It echoed powerfully in the tunnel, cutting him off. “Thanks for having my back. Good work. Biribo, are we… I mean, were there any other witnesses?”

“Y’mean, other than the one you let get away?” Biribo’s wings buzzed and he departed my shoulder to hover around as usual. “Nope, we got privacy. I wouldn’t expect to have it long, so might I suggest not standing around over the two freshly-murdered corpses any longer than necessary?”

“Uh huh, so, you’ve got pretty keen senses, then? You’re sure?”

He flicked out his tongue at me in annoyance. “I’m a familiar, boss. Information gathering is what I do. It’s what I am.”

“And are there ways to interfere with your…ability?”

“Well…I mean, there are artifacts and spells that can mess with familiars’ senses, and Void magic is… That is, I’d be really surprised to find anybody with skills like that skulking around the slums of a mid-sized border town, boss. We’re as clear as we can reasonably expect to be. For now.”

I nodded, taking another steadying breath. Through my mouth, trying to ignore the stink of blood. “Right. Well. Yep, this turned into a grand champion fuckup.”

“Lord Seiji, you walked up to a rich criminal and asked to be recruited,” Aster said in exasperation. “The surprising part is not that the whole thing went tits up in the weeds, it’s that for a couple minutes there it was working.”

I just nodded again, not trusting my voice. The revelation that she was right had shaken me more than I wanted to reveal. This, I could not deny, had been an unnecessary disaster caused by me recklessly trying to seize what I thought might be an opportunity, with no plan and zero knowledge of the situation. I went off half-cocked, and now two people were dead.

Next time, it might be my people.

Or me.

“Hell’s revels,” Donon exclaimed. I turned to find him holding a hefty sack, which I assumed had been previously hidden inside the loose cut of Lord Arider’s coat, based on the fact that said coat was now spread open and half-pulled off him.

“Christ on a bike, man, are you looting the bodies?!”

“He may as well,” Biribo opined. “If you leave ‘em lyin’ in a place like this they’ll be stripped bare in minutes anyway. Might as well be by us, since we actually did the killing.”

“We?” Aster muttered.

“Lord Seiji, you really should see this.” Donon held up the sack, opening its top. “This, uh… This is a lot of money.”

I stepped over, craning my neck to look. Then frowned, reached forward, and grabbed a few coins.

The sack was full of coins. It was bulging, and bigger than a grapefruit. For the moment, though, I didn’t think about their value, or how the hell Arider had been concealing this so well I hadn’t noticed the bulge in his coat… I held up the coins to the light, studying them.

They were gleaming and glossy as if freshly minted. Their weight suggested metal, but the color… All of them, in different denominations, were made of at least two metals fused together. Some pale material like platinum seemed to predominate, but there were outer rims and inlaid patterns of crimson, gold, white, and even blue. They had neatly ridged edges, intricate cutouts, highly detailed engravings, and all of them were utterly flawless, not even dingy from use.

“Are these…normal coins, here?” I asked.

“Those are all higher-value denominations,” Aster replied, her own eyes practically bulging. “Hell’s revels, I’ve never actually seen a white halo in person. Lord Seiji, this is…this is a lot of money.”

“But they’re normal coins?”

“Normal? I mean, they’re coins. I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

No, she wouldn’t be. But I was standing here, in a medieval society which appeared not to have indoor plumbing and which built its buildings out of shells and didn’t even use metal for weapons, looking at an example of metallurgy so sophisticated I was pretty sure the national treasuries of twenty-first century Earth could not have produced anything this elaborate and flawless.

Every new thing I learned about Ephemera was either grotesquely fucked up or just plain weird. Why couldn’t I have landed in one of those bog standard quasi-European fantasy isekai Yoshi probably liked? I’d have had a better idea what to do with that, at least. Why did it all have to be so fucking weird?

I cleared my throat. “As someone who’s new here and has no mental frame of reference for the value of coinage… How much money are we looking at here? Put it in context for me.”

Aster and Donon shared a loaded look, apparently lost for words. It was Biribo who answered.

“For this? On the Fflyr mainland you could buy a comfortable manor in the countryside with enough grounds to be self-sustaining, furnish it, and pay a staff to work the fields until the harvests came in and it could support itself.”

My two henchpeople nodded gravely, still apparently tongue-tied by the wealth on display before them.

“And this,” I said slowly, “was being carried by a nobleman…on a mysterious errand…to the criminal district of town.”

They nodded again.

I took another long look at the bodies we’d left lying in the Gutters.

“…I think we should get the fuck outta here.”

Biribo buzzed his wings furiously. “Oh, do ya think so?”