The next morning I found myself having a nice breakfast at a charming little inn which catered to Gwyllthean’s wealthy class of travelers and reflecting on how damn surreal everything was. Life on Ephemera so far seemed to consist of cycles of tedium and terrifying violence. I’d spend all day on the road, pondering and chatting with my companions, occasionally casting a self-Heal because my legs were not accustomed to that kind of hiking, and then suddenly it was all bloodshed and fire in a dark tunnel under the city gates.

The inn was very nice, though. Primitive, but far more comfortable than North Watch. There were indoor toilets after all…sort of. I preferred to psych myself up for my next unavoidable visit to one by not thinking about it.

We had gotten inside the walls the evening before with no issue, after dipping our shoes in a canal to scrub the blood off and hustling back up to the city gates. I’d finally opted to take Biribo and Donon’s advice out of pragmatism and taken everything of value from our victims, which amounted to some pocket change from the bodyguard and his short sword, now hanging at Donon’s belt. Arider had had a collapsible telescope (I was interested to learn that this society had the technology to craft shaped glass lenses), a fancy ring with an engraved signet, and his rapier, which Donon carried thoroughly wrapped up in Geurild’s coat, in case someone recognized it.

And the money, of course. Obviously the disappearance of that amount of cash was going to piss someone off at least as much as Lord Arider’s untimely demise, but dammit, I needed funds. Anyway, I planned to be either safely inside the walls for the rest of this trip, until I had the opportunity to get out of Gwyllthean entirely.

The gates were manned by bored-looking soldiers in armor and with weapons, lounging about and giving half an eye to the people coming in and out of the gates—mostly in, at that hour. My unusual features had gotten a second glance, but no more than that. So Fflyr Dlemathlys was using soldiers instead of professional police, and to judge by the look of them, not even professional soldiers. I filed that away as something that seemed likely to be very relevant to my interests in the future.

In the nicer section of the city, finding an inn had been easy; this one was close to the gates and sizable, catering to the merchants and lower nobility. Evidently its common room doubled as a restaurant and was popular with more than those spending the night. Fflyr social stratification was fully in evidence in the accommodations; after seeing our (looted) money the management fell over themselves to find me a comfortable room, with smaller rooms adjacent for my two “servants.” The only slight trouble we ran into was that all the coins in Arider’s bag were of unusually large denominations. I let Aster handle the arrangements, and she gave them two platinum coins with bands of gold around their inner rims, which clearly took the innkeeper aback and resulted in service so effusively thorough it verged on annoying before I finally convinced the staff to go away and let me sleep.

Donon’s tiny bedroom was on one side of mine, Aster’s on the other. They’d put Aster in the one with a door connecting it to mine. Seeing this, she’d tightened her mouth and said nothing. I just took note of the social expectations on display here and tried to sleep, which despite our recent traumatic encounter in the Gutters came pretty easily. Between that and the whole day of walking, I was exhausted. And the bed was much comfier than Rocco’s.

So here I was, the next morning, having breakfast in the common room/restaurant. Not knowing my social rank due to my foreign features, the staff had placed me on the upper tier of the multi-leveled space which was reserved for higher nobles; there was a foursome of highborn youth off to my left meeting for breakfast, all of them pale and blonde. It seemed the custom for people of “our” rank was to be attended by our servants, even those like mine who were not trained to serve at meals, which resulted in me eating with Aster and Donon standing stiffly behind my chair. The nearby nobles had six retainers lurking behind them, actually bringing and clearing away dishes, unlike mine.

I did not care for this arrangement. Not for reasons of humility, which is a trait I do not possess, but because it’s creepy to have people looming over you in silence while you try to eat, or at least if you’re not raised to it. Aster assured me they’d been fed earlier in the kitchens, so at least I wasn’t neglecting them.

Breakfast was a bowl of spiced meat porridge (gross to look at or describe, but quite tasty), a piece of bread smeared with some kind of purple jam (bland and sour, respectively) and a tall cup of hot tea, crimson in color and with a strong spicy-sweet flavor (a little like citrus and cinnamon). I spent most of my meal sneaking glances at the noble kids at the next table over, who were carrying on as loudly as over-privileged teenagers in any culture on any planet.

Two boys, two girls; about Yoshi’s age or a little bit more, at a guess. The boys were dressed as Arider had been: noblemen’s fashion was apparently tight pants and loose shirts (with ruffles, ugh) and a heavy, loose-cut overcoat which fell to mid-thigh, and knee-high leather boots. It seemed the coat and boots had to match. Women’s fashion here was more interesting to me as it had less analog to anything I’d seen on Earth. Both girls had on some kind of tight leotard or pants and shirt combo which covered them from ankles to wrists and halfway up the neck and seemed almost to conform to their skin, from what I could see of it. Over that they wore very loose kimono-like short robes, falling to the knee and elbow and open at the neck to an extent that would show a lot of cleavage if there wasn’t more tight fabric under it, the loose design offset by having the entire waist from hips to bust tightly wrapped by what looked like a single strip of incredibly long ribbon encircling them dozens of times.

Boys and girls alike wore jewelry, all of which was wood. Intricately cut and highly polished, but all wood, with no precious stones or metals in sight.

I was a little hung up on trying to figure out how exactly these people differed from the pale blond types I knew of on Earth. It was a small detail and not really important but it stuck in my mind and kept nagging at me. To briefly describe the Fflyr highborn, well, anybody would think I was talking about Swedes. They didn’t look at all European, though, and I was having trouble articulating exactly why. There was that funny eyebrow quirk everyone here seemed to have, and the fact that paler people had darker eyes in a reverse of the Earth norm, but other than that? Well, the highborn I’d seen so far tended to be slender and not too tall, in a divergence from Europeans who I was accustomed to thinking of as well-built. That, and the colors were different. Their skin was pale, yes, but it had subtle undertones of gold and pink and an almost translucent quality; it seemed to shift color depending on how the light fell on them, as if it were prismatic somehow. Their yellow hair also wasn’t the smooth, glossy blond of melanin-deprived European hair, being oddly matte in texture and apparently stiff enough that it seemed to fall naturally into spikes and distinct locks…rather like an anime character’s, actually.

That was all I could identify and it didn’t seem enough to account for the difference. Maybe if I’d been a biologist—or an artist, with a vocabulary for nuances of color—I could have put my finger on it. I was just a stymied musician, though.

“Stimion gone courting?” one of the boys suddenly said, looking directly at me. In fact, all four were looking at me, and I belatedly realized I’d forgotten to sneak glances and been staring at them.

Also, I had no idea what he’d just said. For a second I wondered if my Blessing of Wisdom had failed and I wasn’t translating actual words.

“Beg pardon?” I replied.

He smirked, his buddy guffawed, and both girls giggled shrilly. God, I hate teenagers.

“I see you’re new in Fflyr Dlemathlys, stranger,” he said, speaking slowly as if addressing a half-wit, to the visible mirth of his gang. “Around here, we try to gawk at young ladies with a little more discretion.”

Little shits, I could boil you alive in your fancy pants… That was no way to defuse a situation, though.

I stood up abruptly, causing all four to stiffen in alarm, but I repeated the gesture Lord Arider had used yesterday: right hand over heart, rotate it palm down, sweep to the left. I’d practiced it in my room last night, and probably still wasn’t doing it quite right but if they could tell I was a foreigner the effort would count for something.

“Sumimasendeshita. Humble apologies, kids, I’m terribly sorry to disturb your breakfast. Truth be told, I am new in Dount and trying to study how to fit in.”

“Aww,” the darker-haired of the girls cooed, smiling flirtatiously up at me, to the clear annoyance of the boy next to her.

“Conzart at the theater,” he muttered.

The other girl smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand, scowling in reproach and retorting, “Conzart takes the doorman’s oath! Honestly, Finneder, how often do we meet a foreigner with actual manners? Don’t be Lhaetha in the fields.”

“Welcome to Gwyllthean,” the first boy said to me, looking a little more relaxed. “Make sure you spend some time in the bookshops—the ones in the upper circle, if you’ve the means.”

I raised my eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. “You have bookshops here?”

All four burst out laughing, so loudly I almost didn’t hear Aster heaving a sigh behind me.

“You are Tagamin among the wood, stranger,” said the more flirtatious of the girls. She leaned toward me, smirking and letting her eyes go half-lidded. “Why, maybe I should take you around on a tour myself. Hmm?” Finneder controlled his expression fairly well but his complexion was getting noticeably more red.

“I may take you up on that in about…four years, dear,” I replied, prompting a little moue of disappointment from her and a peal of laughter from the other girl. Even if the kid wasn’t way too young for me, I can tell when a girl is just trying to rile up her boyfriend. Some women will take that amazingly far but it’s always more trouble than is worth wading into. Right now, I found myself realizing how I could steer this conversation toward something actually useful. “To be truthful, I was admiring your attire. Fashions are very different where I am from, as you can see. I don’t suppose you kids could point me toward a good place to get myself more locally styled?”

Both girls and one of the boys perked up like children who’d been offered candy. “Ooooh!”

A little over an hour later, I was feeling much more charitable toward the noble teens. In fairness, it must be kind of annoying to have your breakfast interrupted by some foreign rando gawping at you. I’d half-expected them to send me to a tannery or garbage dump or something as a prank, but as it turned out they were genuinely excited at the prospect of sharing their cultural fashions with someone new to the country and had directed me right to a very good tailor.

Thus, I stepped back outside the tailor’s shop attired as a Fflyr nobleman, in a black pants-and-shirt combo with a deep crimson overcoat and boots trimmed with gold. I know, I know—black and red, how gratuitously edgelord. This was a compromise: it turned out that there was no such concept as “customer service” when you employed a Fflyr master craftsman, it was more of a negotiation as you expressed your needs and he decided how his expertise might best serve you. The guy in question was pale and brown-haired, so apparently he was accustomed to pushing people around in this country. This outfit was the plainest, most simple thing he’d been willing to sell to someone with the kind of money I’d flashed (first mistake), and it had taken all my skills of persuasion and bargaining to walk out of there in something with no ruffles and a minimal amount of gold trim and useless dangling chains.

It seemed the fashion for the rich and powerful in Fflyr Dlemathlys was what was called “dictator chic” back on Earth: lots of gold, wildly excessive decorative flourishes, and generally tacky and tasteless. The other aristocrats I’d seen looked like they were cosplaying JRPG characters.

Speaking of which…

“Hey, Aster,” I said as we paused on the street outside the shop.

“Lord Seiji?”

“Those female-shaped mannequins in there.” I glanced at the ornate door through which we’d just passed, bringing my trio to a stop outside where we weren’t obstructing it. “The ones wearing leather armor with nothing across the chest. What was up with that?”

“Ah.” She nodded, and touched the intricate collar of the chain mail tunic beneath her own new coat. “You noticed how this shifted to perfectly fit whoever put it on? Most artifact armor does that. But a lot of artifacts, when a woman wears them, will also physically change to only cover the boobs. So there’s crafted armor for female adventurers to supplement artifacts and protect our, y’know, organs. And modesty.”

I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly before opening them again. We were already getting fewer stares from passersby now that I was dressed like a local, but I had a feeling that shouting in the street about how the goddesses themselves were fucking otaku morons would still lead to unnecessary trouble. Aster and Donon were both giving me looks like they expected just such a rant, which I kind of resented. It’s not like I have no self-control at all.

Aster was in a new coat, a much higher-quality one which fit her better—dark gray, knee-length, and less shapeless. In fact, not being dressed in a hand-me-down potato sack emphasized that she was a pretty woman with a nice figure, which worried me a bit. I didn’t want people thinking I’d picked my bodyguard for looks, because then they might decide to have a go at us and I really preferred to get through this visit to Gwyllthean without killing anybody else. With less room under the coat itself, Biribo was safely nestled in one of its big external hip pockets. Transferring him had been tricky; the tailor was extremely exasperated at Aster’s insistence on having modesty to change her overcoat (couldn’t really blame him for that one), but by that point he was tired of arguing with me and they’d managed to make the switch behind a screen.

Master Thimiloch had opinions about social roles. He made it clear, with his nose in the air as if the very idea filled his shop with a mighty stink, that he did not sew for servants. Thus, Donon was still dressed as before, though he was now carrying satchels over his back full of my old store uniform and a few new outfits, as well as a longer one concealing the wrapped-up rapier. But as Aster was my vassal, whose clothing had been damaged in defending her lord (as was right and proper in Thimiloch’s view), and because her attire reflected upon me, he had deigned to sell her a coat made by one of his apprentices. All of this he had explained in more detail than I needed to hear.

“Speaking of which, Lord Seiji,” Aster continued, still watching me warily, “you remember I told you about the King’s Guild, right?”

“Ah, yes, the adventurer thing. You want to go there next?”

“If you don’t have anything more immediate to do, my lord. I do have something I need to do there, and I think getting a look at how the adventurers operate will be useful for your, ah…goals.”

It was still pretty early, and my sense of time was kind of skewed—I wasn’t even sure Ephemera had twenty-four hour days. But the tailor was open, so…

“Sounds like as good a starting point as any. Lead the way. You going to be okay with all that, Donon?” I asked over my shoulder as we set out up the street. “We’ve got a long walk back.”

“Kind of you to ask, Lord Seiji, but no need to worry about me!” he said with a grin. “None of this is heavy. Not even awkward, the way it hangs on my back.”

“Right on. Let me know if you have any trouble.” I suspected people around here might find it odd a nobleman would express concern for one of his servants, if my impression of how this place ran so far was correct, but nobody was paying us much attention. Also, fuck ‘em. Donon was a good dude. “So, Aster, you can start with the name. Why isn’t it called the Adventurer’s Guild?”

“Bit of a story, that,” she began to narrate as we walked. “Fflyr Dlemathlys didn’t use to have any real organization for adventurers. Some of the bigger parties had political pull and the Clans would sponsor Blessed individuals, but on the whole it was kind of a free-for-all. The King’s Guild is one of the reforms launched by Lord Vanderhoen. It was…ten years ago? Nine or ten. Supposedly he modeled it on the Lancor system. Now there’s government funding, it’s all organized, there are rules… Adventurers get protection from political crap the Clans pull, and citizens get protection from rogue adventurers. That used to be a big problem; some of the more infamous parties were practically bandit gangs.”

I had tuned out most of the latter part of her speech, my attention having hung on one earlier detail. “Lord who, now?”

“Oh, Lord Vanderhoen,” she said in a disinterested tone. “He’s some foreigner who turned up about twelve…fifteen years ago? Something like that. Somehow he got popular and got a position as the King’s advisor. He’s done a lot of reforms, most of them pretty well-liked with the people, though the Clans don’t care for him as much. Like the King’s Guild, a lot of his programs have transferred power from them back toward the Crown.” She lowered her voice. “Some people say he basically runs Fflyr Dlemathlys, but I’d be careful where you repeat that.”

“Hm. What else can you tell me about him?”

Aster shrugged, giving me a bemused sidelong look. “That, basically. This guy hangs out with the King, I have no idea how he lives his life. I thought we were talking about the Guild?”

“Right, of course.”

It was…probably a coincidence. Names were just collections of sounds, and similar ones could pop up independently, in different places and languages. I’d already met one guy here called Harold. So a guy shows up from nowhere, weasels his way into the King’s ear, starts reorganizing the whole kingdom to its betterment—that was a thing real people had done in historical times. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had a distinctive Dutch surname it probably wouldn’t even occur to me to question it.

Obviously, there was some means of transit between Ephemera and Earth. Virya had made it sound like this Hero versus Dark Lord thing was the only show in town, but might she and Sanora be running more than one game at a time? A planet is an awfully big playing field, even a shattered remnant of one like this. For that matter… What if they weren’t the only two players?

I definitely needed to learn more about this Vanderhoen character.

Belatedly I realized Aster was still talking.

“…shouldn’t be a problem, given the terms of the party’s charter. Jarind didn’t have any family, so it’d be customary for the artifacts to fall to the surviving party member anyway. The only question is me being able to use them; the Guild keeps records of who is and isn’t Blessed. What, ah, would you like to tell them, Lord Seiji?”

“What…do you think we should tell them?” I ventured.

“As little as possible. It’s plausible if you don’t want to reveal how you got me a Blessing. The Clans all have their secrets; just say you’re a nobleman and they’ll probably let it go. I’d…like to not lie any more than we absolutely have to. Not that I’m going soft on you!” she hastily added.

“Nope, I’m totally with you on that one. Lies require maintenance. They lead to more lies and ultimately a big pain in the ass to keep running. I’d much rather keep things simple.”

Aster nodded, then pitched her voice lower. “It’s just up ahead, Lord Seiji. We should probably think about being overheard from here.”

It was pretty early in the day and nobody on the sparsely-populated street was paying us any mind; it was positively magical how much difference being attired as a local made. I guess Gwyllthean saw enough foreigners that only the exotic clothing was interesting enough to gawk at. The building she nodded at had a couple of people out front, though, chatting quietly—people wearing incongruously mismatched outfits of gorgeously elaborate pieces of armor over far plainer ensembles of leather and cloth, and displaying weapons. I would’ve been able to guess those Final Fantasy-looking scraps were artifacts even without the subtle glow they put off to my Blessed eyes.

The King’s Guild reminded me of an upended conch shell, pale blue in color and made from huge spiraling pieces of akorthist with walls built between them, windows peeking out at irregular points wherever there was a gap for them and the whole thing twined about with those climbing vines which put off tufts of fern-like leaves. Those were what was visible from outside the city; there were still no trees in here, to my disappointment. Inside the walls they were everywhere, climbing a lot of buildings and most of the lamp posts.

Aster took the lead as we stepped inside, passing the loitering adventurers with an exchange of mute nods, and I let her; this was her familiar turf, after all. Just into the building, she paused, turning to me and speaking in a low voice.

“I’ll be as quick as I can, Lord Seiji, but dealing with clerks and bureaucrats is…well…”

“Say no more.”

“The front area here is open to visitors, so feel free to look around. You might learn something useful. Just don’t try to go up or down the stairs at the back and no one will question you. And Donon…don’t touch anything. I’ll be done as quick as I can.”

“What does that mean?” Donon asked in a hushed but irked tone as Aster hustled off toward a row of occupied desks. “Does she think I’m some kind of idiot? Do I seem like an idiot?”

“I think she’s just nervous. Don’t take it personally.”

“If you say so, Lord Seiji.”

I wandered aimlessly off to the side, just to be out of the doorway, peering about. The room was quite spacious and pretty well-lit, morning sunlight beaming in through irregularly placed round windows near the ceiling. There was a clear path from the door to the stairs at the back dividing the open ground floor, with support pillars lining it. On one side of the room were tables and benches, and a counter in the back—clearly a tavern or restaurant, most likely catering to the adventurers who had business here. Even at this hour of the morning there were a handful sitting at the tables. On the other side of the room, the half in which I stood, was actual adventuring business. Mirroring the bar counter on the tavern side was the row of desks toward which Aster now strode.

I had to chuckle at the sight: there were three clerks on duty, a sour-faced old man, a middle-aged fellow who was the first overweight person I’d seen on Ephemera, and a scrawny, nervous-looking youth who was my age at the absolute most. I had only seen a few fantasy anime featuring adventurer guilds, but the trope always seemed to include cute girls working behind the desks. I guess the people who make anime didn’t stop to consider what kind of person historically ended up working in a government-run bureaucracy in medieval times.

And speaking of anime…

“Whoah, check out Goblin Slayer over there,” I murmured.

“Lord Seiji?” Donon asked uncertainly. I just shook my head, still studying the man standing in front of the desks clad from head to toe in gleaming plate armor that looked as if it could have been wrought from pure silver. Black chain mail showed through the gaps at the joints, and he had a visor down covering his face, with only eyeslits to see through. Not a centimeter of skin showed. It was fancy armor, with silver wings on the helmet, extravagant engravings on every piece, golden embellishments, and a dashing tabard of crimson and white trimmed with more gold over it. I didn’t need the subtle glow around him to know that armor was made entirely of artifacts. Or maybe was a single artifact made of multiple pieces?

Red, white, and gold…the colors Sanora had been wearing. I decided to give this guy a wide berth.

The armored man was speaking with the chubby clerk; the young clerk leaned on his elbow, visibly bored, while Aster talked with the old one. I couldn’t tell if he was unhappy with what he was hearing or just unhappy in general, as older people stuck in desk jobs tended to get.

There was a notice board, which I wandered over to peruse. Rather than the chaotic jumble of posters and fliers I’d expected, it was very orderly—in fact, half of it was under glass, indicating those messages did not get changed often, if ever. They revealed the reason why, being mostly a list of the King’s Guild’s rules and policies, the procedures for joining or submitting a quest, and an instruction in large print that jobs were issued by the clerks according to a registered adventurer’s standing with the Guild. The other side of it held neatly arranged notices of current events, which I read carefully.

There was a standing bounty for information that led to the apprehension of Void cultists, and another for intelligence on dark elves. Unusual goblin activity had been noted recently, including rumor that a Goblin King had risen; adventurers were advised to be cautious in anti-goblin operations until more was known. In the southwest region of Dount near the khora forests there continued to be sightings of undead indicating a potential pattern. The King’s Guild suspected a necromancer and was interested in funding an expedition to investigate, but would only pay for confirmation and success, so I suspected that notice was going to sit there untouched until there was a much bigger mess to clean up than a few stray zombies. Also, something called Soulfire had appeared on the estates of Clan Ardyllen, which was making it accessible to anyone interested. That was it, no further detail; apparently everyone was just expected to understand what that meant.

So, a peek into the significant goings-on around Dount, though my most immediately relevant observation was that the written form of the Dlemyl language resembled Sanskrit. The public posting of written notices, plus the comment about bookshops, suggested this was a very literate culture. Which surprised me, in the context of everything else I’d seen.

Then I turned around, saw something on the other side of the room which had been out of view from the door, and forgot everything else.

I crossed the chamber as swiftly as I could manage without breaking into a run, coming to a stop before the object positioned against one outer wall of the tavern area, tucked away in a little alcove made by the rippling shape of the great khora shell from which the building was made.

They had a piano.

Sort of.

The keys were made of khora, of course—the “white” ones were a dull yellow like old ivory, the “black” a purple so dark it was almost black, with lighter striations of blue. The keyboard itself had an odd shape, too, arranged in a slightly concave arc, as if in an effort to be ergonomic. Also, the sounds presumably came from the hammers hidden behind its body striking the great fan of blades rising up from the back like the pipes of an organ, fanning outward in a configuration that reminded me of a peacock’s spread tail. They were mostly of a pale blue material (akorshil? Akornin?), inset with panels of a deeper midnight blue. Differences aside, it had obviously been designed along the pattern of an Earth piano.

Almost hesitantly, I stepped up to the instrument, reached out, and pressed an upper C.

One of the blades vibrated and its tone filled the air. It was definitely not quite a piano. The sound was something between a xylophone and a steel drum. I tapped it more gently and then harder—good, it had weighted keys to enable volume control. No pedals, I discovered upon leaning over to check.

“Ugh. Why does every clod who wanders in here feel the need to poke at that thing? If you don’t know how to play it, kindly don’t fill the room with discordant noise. It’s too early.”

Slowly, I turned around to confront whatever fresh pest this was.

She was a woman in her twenties, wearing narrow spectacles and a garment in a similar style to the young noblewomen from the inn: a heavy, kimono-like affair with an enormous length of narrow ribbon wrapped countless times around the waist to form a de facto external corset. Her robe had longer skirts and sleeves than theirs, though, and a higher neckline. It was white with gold trim, the ribbon scarlet and also with golden edges. Again, Sanora’s colors.

I took note of her complexion: a few shades lighter than Aster’s, her hair brown with a slight curl, eyes likewise a medium brown. So…on the cusp of lower nobility from upper peasantry? I did not know the nuances of this stupid caste system and was personally offended by the reality that sooner or later I was going to have to learn them.

“Do you play?” I asked.

“Do I look like a musician?” she countered, arching one eyebrow.

“You don’t look like much of anything,” I replied. “You sound like one of those people with more opinions than knowledge. Or do you normally start your day criticizing people for things you can’t do?”

I turned my back on her incensed stammering, sat down on the stool placed before the quasi-piano, and placed my hands on the keys.

The keyboard’s arced shape made it different, but not too badly. I flexed my hand, and filled the room with music.

At first I kept my eyes opened and focused on where I was putting my fingers. Between the curved keyboard and the fact that the keys were a bit stiffer and heavier than I was used to, it demanded some concentration. It did not impede me, though. I’ve been playing since I’ve been speaking; I have fingers like steel springs and know a keyboard more intimately than my own body.

And after the last two days, I wasn’t about to screw around with a warmup. I went straight to one of my favorites: Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, one of those pieces so beloved as to be almost cliché. Of course, only hipsters care about nonsense like that. It is well-known for a reason, one of those rare compositions that never loses its power, no matter how often it is heard. The pure expression of gentle passion in musical form, swelling and undulating in a perfect flow.

I started off a tad wooden, I must admit, due to the unfamiliar instrument and myself being two days out of practice. And the experience was somewhat diminished by the strange, almost metallic tone, which…well, it worked. It was different, definitely, but not worse. Quickly enough I fell back into it, and just blissfully lost myself. My eyes drifted shut, my fingers knowing their work and settling into the new arrangement after only a few infinitesimal missteps. Everything fell away—Ephemera, Virya, all of this horrible nonsense. There was just the purity of music. The bliss.

It was almost disorienting when the piece ended. I felt…lighter, and yet somewhat drained. It’s strange how different a familiar experience like playing the piano can become after a series of events that leaves you desperately longing for some kind of familiarity.

I had really needed that.

Applause met the end of my performance, from several corners of the room. There were only a handful of people present so early in the day, but at least a few of them appreciated Rachmaninoff. Which they had damn well better.

“You’re good,” the woman in glasses said; to my surprise she had not stormed off in a huff and was still standing right there, now studying me with an appraising look.

“I know,” I replied.

Her mouth tugged to one side in an almost-grimace. “Did it have to be so…schmaltzy, though? Don’t you know any proper music?”

“Has anyone ever told you that your lips are the perfect shape for slapping?”

She curled the aforementioned lips up into a sneer. “Nobody says things like that.”

“They will, if this is how you normally talk to people. Very well, then!” I shook my fingers and hovered them over the keys, looking up at her expectantly. “What, in your opinion, constitutes proper music?”

“Nothing so…overwrought.” Folding her arms, she sniffed imperiously at me. “Haven’t you ever been to a temple service? Keyboard music is meant to be transcendent. Elevating the mind and spirit above base passions, not…indulging and inflaming them like that.”

“Ahh, I catch your drift. Well, how about this?”

If it’s church music you want, you can’t go wrong with J.S. Bach, so I gave her his Prelude in C Major. Classical, mathematical, simple, a piece upon which centuries of young pianists have trained as they learned their way around a keyboard. A plain series of ascending arpeggios, five notes each, with never more than three keys pressed down at a time. Simple, but still lovely.

I’d chosen it in part to mock her, though I expected the joke to soar over her head; only someone moderately versed in classical music would recognize how mechanistic and easy this prelude is compared to Rachmaninoff. I had to admit, though, this piece actually sounded better in this instrument’s slightly metallic voice than the more intricate Russian number. Which made sense, in hindsight; Bach was before the pianoforte became widespread and actually wrote for the harpsichord. We play his music on pianos now because almost nobody has a harpsichord, and good riddance to them. There was one at my university that I got to play a few times; I must say I didn’t care for it. I doubt there are more than a handful of the things in Japan.

I got more applause at the end of it, though less than previously, which I didn’t mind. I liked Rachmaninoff better, too.

“Now, that was lovely,” my prickly new acquaintance said, finally giving me a smile. “You should play more like that one.”

“Lady, I don’t tell you how to stand around being snippy at people—and believe me, I could. Kindly don’t tell me how to play the keyboard. You can, however, ask me. I do take requests, when I’m in the mood.”

“Ah, Lord Seiji?” Donon poked his head around the corner. “That was really pretty, but I think you may wanna come look at this.”

Following his gesture, I swiveled around on the stool to behold Aster still standing at the desk, staring over at me with a wide-eyed, helpless expression. The elderly clerk was scowling at her, the younger one had come over and was scribbling furiously on documents at the same desk, and the guy in the shiny armor had now joined them, looming ominously over Aster.

Well, crap.

“Ugh.” I stood up, giving the keys one last, regretful caress as I stepped away from them. “I have to do everything myself.”