The foyer they stepped into was charged with a palpable energy. The clamor of pots and pans, rolling drawers, and sizzling fluids echoed from some distant kitchen.

Glass cabinets rounded the front half of the space, displaying trophies, newspaper cutouts, group photos, and pieces of old costumes.

Another one of those black cutouts in reality—a void person, Ryan thought of them—and a frog girl cleaned a coat check on the far left. Personal items and baskets lay in corners.

The building had the air of a city preparing for a festival, though the town square they had come from must not have been informed of that.

Jason led them in. He asked a few questions about the signout, waved a flier around, and they were led through a series of hallways to an underground amphitheater surrounding a large stage.

Ryan stared. Not because of its size—the arena they’d fought in had been larger than this—but because of the age of the rock around them.

Metal lanterns with hoods flooded the area in a warm, orange light. Wooden seats had been built onto the stone benches like some sort of outdoor garden exhibit. Wooden half-steps bridged the distance between the steps leading down to a stage.

In some places, the stone was cracked or missing corners. Those had been filled in with that same polished, dark wood or an amber resin that caught the light.

The amphitheater looked like it had existed first, a relic carved into the floor of this underground city, and they had built their community center on top of it.

Lisa inspected one of the lamps, opened its hood, and promptly got yelled at by a fire man.

“Hey, you! Yeah, you creep! DON’T BOTHER THE CHILDREN!”

Ryan caught a glimpse of a flame with eyes and a smile before she shut the hood. Her abashed expression was somehow more surprising than the contents of the lamps.

Navid needled her in the side as they followed the adventurers down the stairs. Sam, unable to bite the man who had yelled at her, targeted Navid instead.

By the time they managed to wrangle the angry Teacup Salamander away from his boot, they stumbled into Jason and Frederic’s backs at the base of the auditorium.

They were talking to a cat man—and Ryan’s brain said, Cat man.

He’d seen many strange monsters in his three years of climbing, but even the most humanoid ones still looked like monsters. This was a cat in the shape of a man.

His tail swished in irritation, though it seemed directed at the general commotion around them, not them, and his whiskers twitched while he spoke.

Ryan resisted the urge to hold out a hand and go, Pspsps.

Did Northerners look like that? If the green lizard kid was a Kobold then … What were the paper people? Or the fire people? The spirits that controlled golems in the Towers?

It’s all fake, Lisa had said, but the fact that they were surrounded by enemies wasn’t lost on him. Mythological beings and humanoid monsters practiced their choreography and ran lines in cheap costumes all around them.

If it’s all fake, see it as an adventure. Just go with it, he thought.

If it’s all fake, another part of him added, you don’t have to feel bad for thinking they are enemies. Or killing them if you must.

“We saw the sign,” Jason explained with confidence. “And Ymbre handed me a flier? Anything we can do, we are here to help.”

Sure, Ryan decided. Let’s go with that. All he had to do was wait for his cue and jump when his friends jumped off that bridge first.

“Come, come,” the cat man said. “The assistant director Veshim will want to speak with you to see if your offer holds any merit.”

Assistant director? Then where is …?

A quick search of the crowd revealed his answer. Ryan spotted an elderly paper man with a cane surrounded by a bubble of assistants on the stage. That had to be the director.

The assistant director sat in the front row, a disheveled paper man in a suit. He’d loosened his tie. His expression was difficult to read from the side, painted onto his head, but his shoulders were tense and he wrote furiously into a small journal …

… and received phantom comments on the opposite page. Arrows pointed. Question marks and comments annotated unfinished sentences. Annoyed, he scratched a few out, but vengeance came in the form of thick ink swarms that blotted out his words.

An enchanted journal, Ryan guessed, linked to a matching pair someplace else?

Whoever was on the other end, the paper man was clearly not happy with them. Nor they with him.

And they happened to arrive while it was happening. “What now!? I do not have the time to handle every little crisis, Igua,” he snarled.

His voice was deeper and richer than the paper girl they had spoken to, but it still sounded somehow distant, like he was in another room.

“They’re here because of the sign, sir.”

“The sign? The— the sign!” He shot up, both arms thrust out toward them. “Bless the Wells! Tell me you are here to ease my burdens, Travelers.”

They clustered like owls behind Jason. “We hope to. That depends on what burdens you.”

“What doesn’t? Monsters have infested the roads. Many of my actors and musicians have been delayed on their way, not to mention our ticket buyers! Some mugger is haunting the streets at night, and there is a rumor of an actual haunting going around, so people are afraid to stay out too late.

“That may as well be to save us the embarrassment. The understudies are … fine,” he said with a sideward glance at the stage, “but they cannot split themselves in half. Not to mention that our special effects director—my brother—claims he received faulty ingredients, though I doubt it …” The disdain was clear in his voice as he mumbled the final words.

“We were supposed to perform Haley tonight, a simple affair, if you will forgive my blasphemy, but this is a disaster. If nothing is done, I fear I must cancel the play …”

His mouth didn’t even breach the surface of his skin, but he huffed out an exhausted breath and shook his head as if he were at his wit’s end.

“No!” Jason said with surprising fervor. “The show must go on!”

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to him, his team and those rushing about the auditorium nearby, as if to ask in unison, Did you really just say that?

But the assistant director didn’t seem to mind. “So you will help us, then?”

“Of course! Uh, there’s a reward in it for us, right …?”

The man looked affronted, but rather than draw back, the face painted onto his paper skin did. It shrunk into the distance. “Do not take me for some grifter, Mr—?”

“Gale.” He held an arm out and, when the man shook it, turned to them. “And these are my teammates …”

Veshim, as he gave them his name, nodded and gave them an appraising look. “You have an assortment of talents, I see. I have an eye for such things. Here, let me instruct you where your help will have the most merit.”

He retrieved a pen and a stack of memo cards and began to scribble hasty notes, thrusting them out behind himself one by one. “Mr. Gale, for you. Frederic. Anne. Lisa—”

When it was Ryan’s turn, he accepted a card with two short instructions written in quivering ink:

Quest: Keep your teammates safe.

Side-quest: Consult with the special effects director of the play on how you may help him.

Reward: Free admission, 1x Meal voucher, 1x Drink voucher, 1x Snack voucher

“ … Huh.”

“Does anyone else have a ‘secret quest’?” Anne asked.

Frederic was reading his card when he said, “It’s not a secret if you tell us, dumbass,” and his eyes went wide with immediate regret. Shoulders tense, he avoided eye contact.

Anne spoke with the loose air of a quote but sounded too distracted to notice him, “Admitting there is a secret is not the same thing as revealing its contents.”

“What’s the secret?” Ryan leaned over.

She tucked the card away. “It’s personal. I don’t see why I would have to do it here … I doubt I even could do it yet …” She trailed off, clearly bothered, but Lisa moved on.

“I have one? It says to help Ryan complete his quest. I don’t know why that would be a secret.”

She showed him her card. It took him a second to decipher the handwriting, but her main quest read: ‘Clear the roads of the monster infestation.’ Ryan only caught a glimpse of a line below that before the ink vanished from the page.

“What the hell?”

“I know, meal vouchers?” Navid said. “Cheap.”

“Your rewards will be scaled to your contributions,” Veshim matched his tone, “and discretion is the better part of valor.”

Lisa smirked. “I guess my contributions to society have more merit than yours.”

“Food might be valuable,” Jason said, “assuming it’s real—”

“If you do not appreciate the work we are offering,” Veshim said, because he was still listening to their private conversation, “you are free to look for work elsewhere. If not, I suggest you watch your tone, Mr. Gale.”

Jason immediately ran damage control. Ryan scowled at the man. It was hard to be sincere when the person he was speaking to was an illusion. And wasn’t he supposed to be a busy illusion? He could go back to writing letters or something.

But they did need more information, and Jason asked follow-up questions about the city and his quest, ‘Escort the missing actors safely to the theatre in time for their performance.’

Then, everyone panicked when they found out they had seven hours to do that. “The play is tonight,” Veshim reminded them. “If you do not believe you can help us, tell me now so we can adjust our expectations.”

“No,” Jason insisted, “of course, we’ll do it. It’s just— You said they’re outside the city? How far away are they? How long is the trip? Do you have a map or a way for us to get there quickly? A coach, a train, even just some bicycles …?”

“You can purchase provision and hire a guide and horses for a small fee, of course, if you think you need them …?” He gave Lisa a sidelong glance.

She matched him with arched eyebrows.

Jason waited for a beat, then urged the man, “Yes.”

“Of course. Let me write you the addresses …” He left to scribble another note.

Anne made a face. “If we’re using horses, I might have to stay behind.”

Nobody seemed surprised by her comment. Lisa was reluctant to summon a group of mounts to carry them. Frederick seemed impressed that she could do combat mounts at all.

Before the conversation moved on, Ryan had to cut in, “Wait, do you not know how to ride a horse?”

“No, I do. It’s just— Oh.” Anne seemed surprised. “You didn’t know?”

“Animals don’t like Heswarens,” Frederick said.

“Because they stink,” Lisa added.

“We do not! It’s— I guess you could call it a curse?”

“The curse is real?” Ryan had heard of it, of course—Wardens, House Hayse, House Hesht, or any other off-brand version of their names were common figures in novels. He had just taken it about as seriously as all the other wild ideas authors came up with about them.

He was pretty sure they didn’t bathe in the blood of their enemies after all.

“It’s not a curse,” Lisa said. “Their magic is just so far removed from what is normal, it takes some time for nature to get used to them. Like putting a cat on a boat.”

Anne reluctantly nodded. “We train horses, but even trained horses, if they don’t know us, can still act out. It’s not safe. My main quest is to ‘ensure the play runs smoothly.’ I should be able to find work here?”

“I’m supposed to ‘capture the public’s attention’ to drum up business,” Frederic said. “Maybe we could stay behind to keep an eye on things …?”

“Split the party.” Navid nodded. “Terrific idea. I’m all for it.”

“You can still drum up business if you leave. If you clear the roads,” Veshim said as he and Jason rejoined them, “you can tell the travelers stuck outside that we sent you. If you catch the mugger or the ghost harassing the neighborhood, you can tell the press you will be attending and garner interest.

“We will, of course, reimburse you for any customers you send our way, but if you’d rather do something else, we could use some people to fill minor roles or join the orchestra? You seem like you would be quick on the ropes.”

Frederic stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “That’s the name of my Skill.”

[Quick on the Ropes]? That was his mom’s favorite Skill. Ryan hadn’t known adventurers could get that.

Veshim addressed all of them, “Do any others of you have theatre experience or know how to play an instrument? We have a Muse’s Manual to refresh your talents if need be.”

He gestured toward the band where a few of the members stood clustered around a single gilded book that stood out from their sheet music.

Manual … Was that like a spellbook, but for instruments?

None of them spoke up other than Frederic, who immediately nudged Anne. “I could audition for a role, and you could for the band. You can play the trumpet, right?”

Anne didn’t ask how he knew that. “I dabble, but I don't know if it would be the right thing to do with our time here … in the Theatre.”

Right. If the Theatre was supposed to test them and all she did was play music, how was she supposed to level as a [Paladin]?

“Whatever we do, we have to hurry,” Ryan reminded them. “I’m supposed to talk to this special effects director guy.”

“Me, too,” Navid said, holding up his card.

“And we need provisions,” Jason said. “How about Lisa and I go to the shop to check if— to buy some food?” He caught himself before he insulted the assistant director again.

“Anne and Frederick … I doubt you could learn your lines in seven hours, but if you want to audition or talk to the crew to gather information, you do that.

“Ryan and Navid can go speak to Veshim’s brother, and we meet up at the shop?”

It was a plan. Veshim pointed them in the right direction. Lisa gave them a fire lizard to crush in an emergency, and they split up.

As they climbed onto the stage, Ryan said to Navid, “I’m surprised you were allowed to come knowing we were hunting for a Theatre entrance.”

He still remembered how concerned Sion had seemed about the prospect of Navid leveling independently.

"But not enough to question me before we went inside?"

He shrugged. "You can find your own bridge to jump off."

"I like that. But no, Anne and I are due for a level up soon anyway, and our families weren't about to throw away a possible first-hand account of the Theatre. Although neither of us believed we would find an entrance, to be honest.”

They navigated through the crowds, and Ryan glanced back with raised eyebrows. "Your families are going to debrief you after this?"

"Her parents or cousin are likely going to. We hire Registrars for that. We like to keep eyes on opportunities like these, now and in the future looking back."

Family Paths. "So some sad sack is going to have to study your life in the future?"

“Not all of it. Events like today? Probably.” He raised his chin a fraction and took on a fake, haughty tone. “You may be grateful, peon, you’ll be immortalized through my memory. Are there any words you’d like to pass onto future generations of the Madin household?”

Ryan rolled his eyes, but he did consider it. True family Paths, the types to earn their name and last more than two generations, were like living time capsules.

Before they stepped into the shade of the backstage area, he paused and looked Navid in the eyes. He imagined he was speaking to some young Navid Madin the Third, a copy of hum a hundred years down the line, and said, “Don’t be a prick.”

“The wisdom of the masses.”

“That sentence alone is probably enough to double the value of your life story, isn’t it?”

Navid smiled. "Sure. Anything else? I don't mind decorating my legacy with yours.”

“Mm … Can’t think of anything right now. I’ll probably think of something good later, though, when I’m looking back on this conversation in the shower.”

"So you think of me in the shower, then?"

Ryan casually rolled his eyes, the memory of how Kyle had found him out still festering inside of him, and groaned, “Tell me that won’t be immortalized, too.”

He didn’t even know how an idiot like that had done it. Was it something he had done or said? Was it obvious to everyone else?

If he couldn’t be sure, he had to play it safe. He was just like any other guy.

“Relax,” Navid joked, “I’m flattered. I’d return the favor, but you’re not my type.” He overtook him to address a paper man working in the corner of the backstage area, where Veshim had told them they would find him.

He was fussing over a toolbox filled with spell components rather than tools, and a witch’s cauldron. A small tower of four more cauldrons stood stacked like bowls behind him.

“The special effects director, I take it?”

The man brushed past him to retrieve a bottle of Teacup Salamander shavings from a second toolbox, if Ryan wasn’t mistaken, saying, “Excuse me, I’m busy.”

“That’s why we’re here. I believe you have a business opportunity for us?”

He looked up. There were bags under his painted eyes, but they had the same appraising look as his older brother. As his father maybe. He looked at them like he’d been briefed on them and given a file of what to expect.

Some Skills worked like that, Ryan knew, but he didn’t know if these people were even supposed to have Skills.

Still, the resemblance to the other two men was uncanny, and Ryan looked around at the sheer amount of people involved in this. He doubted it was a family business.

And Navid … noticed, too, he realized as the guy straightened his spine and adjusted his armor. He looked like he’d rather be wearing a suit. This has to hit close to home for him.

“Ahh. Travelers, I take it? My brother must have sent you.”

“Navid Madin.” He slipped a glove off and offered his hand.

As the paper man shook it, he took in his designer armor, his groomed appearance—perfect teeth, eyebrows, haircut, and even stubble—and his clean scabbard, and his eyes brushed past him to settle on Ryan instead.

“Demir,” he said. “And yes, yes I believe you can help me.”

“We can’t afford anything here,” Lisa said. “We have to rent the horses, too. Let’s do that first, we can come back after we get paid.”

“Assuming we will be allowed to stay that long,” Jason said. “We could be thrown out of the Theatre the moment we complete our quests.”

She held up her card. “Our reward wouldn’t be free admission to the play then, would it?” Being home for most of the summer hadn’t kept her in the loop on Tower gossip, but her argument was sound.

Jason still cast a longing glance through the shop window.

The shopkeeper, a feminine marble golem, eyed them back from the corner of her eye.

Most of the stuff inside of her shop was fake. It would cease to exist the moment they left the Theatre. But on the shelves behind her, there were real magic items. And quality ones, too. Tenth floor and up, if she had to take a guess. Lisa had been as surprised as him.

Physical objects ruled out a dream space. This had to be a kind of pocket dimension, then.

But the items were just as expensive as any curated shop in Hadica, and they needed to save their limited funds, crystals and marbles, to pay for necessities. If they’d looted the hoard first … but no, the Kobolds had barely had any crystals anyway.

“Jason, we’re on a time limit.”

“We have to wait for the others to catch up anyway,” Jason said, “just five minutes, maybe if we pool our funds, we can find something useful. Even the temporary ones; the Tower wouldn’t be offering us these items if they didn’t have value.”

'The Tower.'

Lisa pressed her lips into a line and sighed. “How about this? You browse and wait for the others. I’ll go ahead.” His mouth opened to argue, but she cut him off, “It’s a social setting, and the address isn’t that far off from where we are.”

She glanced at a street sign on the corner of the nearest intersection to be sure, then nodded to herself.

“You went climbing on your own during summer break, too, didn’t you?”

Jason visibly struggled with himself but said, “Five minutes. I’ll meet you there.”

He opened the door, the bell rang, and the shopkeeper lit up. “Ah, so you want to make a selection after all—?” As the door shut, it cut her off.

Lisa planted a few fire lizards around the area, linked herself to them, and turned the other way. This was better anyway. She wasn’t used to having to look up at some humans again.

Horses. She could smell the stables from afar, credit to whoever had created this space, or had created the tool to create this space.

She wanted to explore it. She wanted to analyze the magic that went into the setting. She wanted to fly.

Lisa hadn’t known how limiting it would feel to be stuck inside of a human body again, and she was beginning to realize she couldn’t live like this forever.

Maybe she could find a private corner of the Tower to fly around in sometime … She could take Garen and Allison and her family to make a day of it.

Even so, she’d taken a boat for the first half of her journey home, hired a carriage past Trest at the Rock, and then, once she’d been far enough from the nearest settlement, simply sprinted north.

Her ‘body’ only needed magic to keep going, and she only needed food and mana potions to provide it with that.

If someone spotted her by accident, enough couriers sprinted across long distances like that to avoid immediate suspicion.

If she couldn’t fly, she at least wanted to do the same thing here, but she had her teammates to consider. And Sam.

It was keeping pace with her with hurried, tiny steps and looked up when it noticed her looking.

It was a little late to scold it. Its brain wouldn’t connect her present words to its earlier actions, but she had to try, “You can’t just bite people because they are mean to you or me, Sam.”

It was mostly harmless on its own for now, but if her siblings escaped from their Nest, they could raze villages, and they would eat a human child the same as any other predator.

She couldn’t let Sam be the same if she wanted them to be different.

“Navid and I like to tease each other,” she said conversationally. “It’s mutually self-deprecating humor.” It definitely wouldn’t understand what that meant, but neither would her siblings.

Sam stared at her blankly and glanced around in case she wanted it to fetch something for her.

She opened the door to the coach service building. The sign, the empty coaches out front, and the dried horse apples stuck to the road told her she was in the right place.

Yet another bell dinged overhead as she walked in. The building was quiet but homely, with a surprising amount of wood for an underground city.

Family photos of a group of dog beastkin hung on the walls—was this a family business?—and framed prize photos of their horses, medals, and writs of pedigree hung front and center over the counter.

What looked like a full-blooded Salamander beastkin—a blood-red alligator with fiery scales in the shape of a man—leaned on the wood with one arm.

His smile revealed fanged teeth. His eyes were bright yellow with streaks of lime, and he greeted her like he had known to expect her, “Hey, beautiful.”

“I can play the drums and trumpet. I’ve learned to play the piano but uh … I doubt I could learn a new song in seven hours.”

“Drums are good!” Tierah insisted with a nasal tone. She looked like a humanoid frog. Anne wondered if she was supposed to be a land troll.

She’d met city trolls before. They looked similar to humans but generally shorter and with green skin. Some of her family members told her ocean trolls reminded them of sharks. And land trolls were supposed to be more varied based on the spirits they bonded with, but she wasn’t sure.

… Frog beastkin didn’t exist, did they? If so, that had to be artificial— Well, new. All beastkin were artificial in a manner of speaking. New.

Maybe she was just a tall, more humanoid version of the frog monsters in and around the sewer floors …

Tierah led her to a snare drum, thrust the sticks in her hand, and led her through a few basic beats to see if she’d told the truth, which, of course, she had.

What was more unnerving was that she wasn’t sure if Tierah was telling the truth. Or any of the figures here for that matter.

Tierah’s skin looked a healthy, murky green. She had a pink tongue, dark eyes, and wore a dress where her heart should have been. The assistant director Veshim’s paper was an aged tan color. Igua, the cat man, had glossy grey fur.

None of them changed colors when they moved or spoke. It was weird. Anne felt like she was in a fever dream. It should have been terrifying. So why was she nodding in rhythm to the drum beats?

She caught herself smiling and stopped.

When Tierah was satisfied, she assumed, she explained the scope of their expectations, playing characters in and out, emphasizing their lines and exchanges; there were even a few songs, though they insisted this was not a musical.

Anne checked her eyes, her mouth, her heart, her hands out of habit but found none of the cues was used to finding there. She couldn’t even hear a ring of truth to her words, not that listening was her focus anyway.

All she had were Tierah’s words to go by, so she turned away from her entirely, to be polite, picked up the sheet music, and savored the sound of her voice as she leafed through the pages.

“So, what do you think?”

Anne blew out a heavy sigh, letting her lips flap with satisfying skepticism. The notes seemed simple enough and yet … “Does the muse manual encompass the drums?”

Tierah took her by the shoulders to return her to her spot. Sheet music in place, drum sticks in hand. “Why don’t we do a test run before we make any decisions, okay?”

She snapped her fingers and sent someone to talk to the director about a trial run for the auditions. They seemed desperate … Anne didn’t stop them.

Frederic caught her eye as he was ushered to his marker with a script in hand. Anne didn’t know what to do about him, either.

At least, his tongue was still silver. Her teammates looked the same as they ever did. She could see through his shirt and skin how quickly his gilded heart was beating. There was earnest excitement and worry there.

That worry sometimes bled into his eyes, and he would cast a glance around the room as if searching for threats, but it happened less and less often. Like Anne, he was quickly adjusting to this unfamiliar environment.

She hadn’t adjusted to him yet. She wasn’t a complete idiot. She knew he was interested in her. Not romantically. Not quite for clout, either; she didn’t think.

Enough people like that had approached her throughout her life for her to notice the signs. They wanted to befriend her, or for their children to befriend her, to earn the favor of a new generation of Heswarens.

Their family was small and new to the Five Cities, but they had been instrumental in bringing down the Church and the Explorer’s Company both, ending two of the three Tower monopolies to have existed so far—not counting their nation’s own.

But most of those people’s intentions were egotistical, or else they did it on someone else’s behalf.

Frederic looked at her the way Micah looked at Ryan.

He wasn’t completely altruistic or honest. He knew more about her than he let on, more than he should know for someone who had pretended not to remember her name.

She only knew him as a distant classmate who was friends with some of her friends, who had scored higher than her on the entrance exam, and who’d slowly orbited closer and closer throughout the school year. They maybe shared a class or two, and they’d maybe spoken once or twice in all that time.

So why did he look at her like that?

Who are you? And why can’t I remember you?

She went on ‘excursions’ with her family sometimes. To gain practical experience. If she had helped him out of a bad situation, once, and couldn’t even remember him now …

How she wished she could just ask.

They went through the scene step by step. Someone fed the lines. Veshim delegated his journal to one of his father’s assistants to direct them with a surprisingly delicate hand.

Anne caught her cue. As the actors broke into a frantic ‘run’ through the midnight woods, she followed the sheet music as best as she could to bring their pounding hearts to life.

“Cue the sheep,” Veshim said. His brother would cast a spell to create an illusion of a stampeding sheep herd. “And the monster—”

Low to the ground, a person in a black cloak stole across the stage. The orchestra reached a fever pitch, then went silent with bated breath.

Frederic didn’t miss his line. “There’s a monster in the forest,” he whispered to the audience, voice choking on fear, “and it’s taking the sheep!”

They underlined his statement with a thunderous drum roll, like the rolling thunder of the approaching storm, and the scene ended.

He was auditioning for the role of a side character. He would have three scenes and half a dozen lines in the entire play, he had [Charming Smile] and [Quick on the Ropes], stayed in character when he was in the background, and he listened to directions well.

“It’ll do!” Veshim declared, though anxiety still creased his brows. “We’ll run through the festival song in five! You”—he pointed at Frederic—”show me your script; we’ll cut you out of the background wherever we can.

“And you”—he pointed at Anne—”take the manual for five minutes. Familiarize yourself with the score. We’ll take it easy for your first try, but we need to know if we have to simplify the music for tonight or not.”

“Understood.”

The manual was like a proper spellbook. It adjusted its contents to the reader’s level of understanding and its enchantment assisted them specifically to turn that understanding into proficiency, Tierah explained to her.

“It turns theory into praxis. What the brain knows into what the body can do.”

Anne was familiar with similar effects. She could probably attempt something like that of her own.

“I’m sort of hoping it won’t stack with my blessing,” she said conversationally. “I wouldn’t want to steal the book from those who need it, and it might be better if the assistant director decides to do something simpler tonight.”

Tierah froze. “You’ve earned a traveler’s blessing?”

“I, uh— No, but I can give a blessing to people. Including myself. A weak, temporary one?”

“Oh, so like a spell? Hm … and it would improve musical talent?” She could hear the growing interest in the rise of her voice.

“I haven’t attempted instrumental talent before, but there are others things I can do. Dexterity, focus, hand-to-eye coordination, absolute pitch, rhythm … I’ll probably go with that for myself.”

“How many people can you affect? If you could cast that on the entire orchestra …”

“It’s a resource that regenerates over time, so it depends on the quantity, quality, and duration of the effect. I’ve never blessed a large group before, but I would be willing to try?”

“Sure, do you need us to group up or—”

“No, no— Just, do what you do. I’ll probably have to concentrate to make it work, so I’ll see if I need the manual later.”

“Good work!” Her smile widened, then vanished as she turned to manage her musicians.

Friendly folk. Anne adjusted her seat and sheet music, the drums she was borrowing, and tried to relax as she meditated on the subtle ringing of the truth essence around her.

Although, thinking of it as ‘truth essence’ was in and of itself a lie. It would only weaken her. So, as always, she admitted to herself the secret her family kept: they weren’t sorcerers.

Their magic was not passed from parent to child, had not been passed from her dad to her; it was a blessing they were steeped in since birth.

Functionally, it was similar to the silver blessing—what Micah, and now Lisa, called Tower essence—foreign essences she had allowed to intermingle with her own, and which in turn she was allowed the privilege of controlling.

Her ten-times-great grandmother had used to give boons, she knew, but something had made her change her approach over time.

The tricky part was getting two separate blessings to intermingle, but if Ryan could teach himself to do it with only one blessing, without training, she could do it with two! She’d been trained to control her power for all her life.

She imagined her blessing as a mandala spiraling out from her skull. It wasn’t a concrete thing, but an ephemeral idea that blurred and fled from her attention. That was fine.

Gently, she pushed the blurry edges of her blessing out in wobbling pulses to a silent beat, attuning the four by four time signature of the sheet music, and with the ‘edges’ of her silver blessing, she caught that beat and carried it out around herself.

With one thought, she maintained the beat, with the other, her makeshift aura, and with the last, she waited for her cue—

Hama’s actor called a toast. Someone laughed. A crowd spilled onto the stage while a choir sang in a language she did not recognize. Anne played the drum.

She spotted Frederick awkwardly dancing on the edges of the stage, confusion painted clear on his face. So did the assistant director.

The actors cycled around the stage, performing simple moves and singing the occasional line while the background dancers performed a more impressive choreography.

Trying to hide back there, Frederic stood out like a sore thumb.

“Awkward is good, but you have to move! Stick to your friends! The three of you are supposed to be a trio of rascals!”

The ink girl playing Haley’s coworker strayed to take his arm and led him in a simple circle dance around the stage. He looked flustered, but she sang to him to capture his eyes and spun, ink flowing to the rhythm of the beat.

Then, she passed him on to the actor playing Haley herself and stole the one playing her secret father from her.

Off-script, but a hundred percent in-character. Haley danced with him for one revolution, sang her single line, and Frederic got the hang of it when he passed her on to the hunter her character had a crush on. He found his next partner himself.

More and more people began to sing in that foreign language, the actors and band members alike. The two girls sitting next to her sang the chorus in a loud voice, clearly enunciating the words with the lips until Anne got the hang of them.

When she sang a passable line for the first time, one of them thrust an arm up with a cheer, then immediately joined the music again in time to catch the beat—

The beat of blessing pulsing out, joining them all together.

Oh, that’s why … She’d let herself slip. Her aura enveloped the entire stage rather than just the orchestra and was draining more power than she’d been willing to give, but she was enjoying herself too much to stop. She knew what she wanted her next date with Sy to be.

Could this … she brushed the edges of a thought like a bruise, but her neighbor leaned into her, and the contact sent her spiraling into it.

Could this have been me?

She almost missed a beat. Her blessing caught her, carried her forward, and it only made the pain worse.

If she had been anyone else, anyone without this magic, she would have gone off rhythm just then and there. Maybe she wouldn't have recovered. Would she have felt self-conscious about that?

In a year, maybe, she tried to reassure herself, she could do this in a tavern. With all her friends, getting drunk, playing music and singing. There was still time.

She told herself that, and it should have been true, so why then did the thought of it hurt like a spoken lie?

Anne thought of the card she’d tucked away. Her quest.

‘Swear your oath.’

I can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Tierah said. “I shouldn’t have asked—”

Anne rushed to finish her sip from her water bottle and cut her off, “Don’t be! Seven hours will be more than enough to recover.”

“I wasn’t expecting the spell to be so powerful. You said weak and temporary!”

“It was! That was mostly you. I just gave you a little push. There is this other … ‘ability’ some people have where I come from, [Singalong]. That’s way more impressive, trust me.”

She had tried to mimic a similar effect for a few minutes and already, she was close to tapped. Her blessing was a lot like mana in that regard. With practice, she could lower the cost, but she mostly practiced concentrating it into hitting stuff.

Frederic shot her a concerned look. He hovered on the edge of the stage, slowly having led the assistant director and the other two members of his ‘trio’ over with a series of ‘mm-hmm’ sounds and pacing steps.

She gave him a reassuring smile.

Also like mana, there were repercussions to overuse. To her, it made her feel like a cracked flask. Like all that was ‘her’ was spilling onto the ground. Anne just wanted to log-roll into a corner and sleep.

She would be fine in a minute but … she had to do this now. “Tierah, uh, I’m not sure I can play tonight— I can still offer my blessing, of course!”

The woman’s throat had inflated and she had opened her mouth, eyes wide. Anne cut her off. “I promise I’ll try to be here on time and to save as much as I can for you, but if my friends are going to fight monsters, I should be there to protect them.”

She deflated. “I understand. Truthfully, your spell might be more valuable than just another player. If you can do what you did just now tonight, I’m sure the assistant director will compensate you—”

“I wouldn’t do it for the money. You were friendly to us. Thank you for letting me join in for a song. It was fun.”

Anne looked over her shoulder, and Tierah followed her eyes to where Ryan and Navid stood in the exit stage left. Their hearts beat so much slower than everyone around her. Had they been watching?

They saw the break in their conversation and headed over, dropping from the stage with casual ease.

Ryan, as always, looked like a revenant torn out of a painting. He was drenched purple and black with the festering lies he told himself and others, in words and action.

Here and there, other colors caught the light. Like scratches on metal or cracks in geodes that revealed gemstones within. There were more of them now than the last time she had seen him, which was a good sign.

Sometimes, when he moved or did certain things, his outline caught a nimbus of light that contrasted against his darker self, gentle sunbeams breaking up storm clouds.

In short, he looked like the archetypical grim knight, the purple man who lied to hide a heart of gold.

He was one of the few boys Anne and her friends had been able to agree on she found attractive before she had gotten to know him. But then she had, and she had quickly been able to see his flaws for what they were.

What was attractive in the books her grandma wrote was not always attractive in real life.

At least, he was stained by few of the colors she was used to from other liars his age, envy, pride, and tall tales told to impress friends. And he still was less purple than Micah.

Next to him, Navid looked almost the opposite. A silvered pastel sketch—the colors, not the medium. Thin lines, pale colors, and silver leaf. A person unfinished.

His Shadow followed him as always, an inch off from the white outline of his body. A slightly larger echo of himself, like a [Blur] spell. It was made from colored inks—blues, pinks, and yellows that appeared black—and swayed when he stood still as if impatient. It waited for the day it could color him in and wear his skin.

“So, when are you running away with the carnival?” Navid asked. His tongue glittered silver, because he wouldn’t care even if she did run away with the carnival, but his Shadow split into half a dozen other faces that mouthed the potential words he could have said.

Anne ignored him. “Did you find a quest?”

“Yep.” He flashed his card. “Fetch quest. We are to gather ingredients for the wizard. I suppose it is a fitting quest for a not-a-[Ranger] ranger and a ehe-hu-huaha!—” He cleared his throat to not have to name his Classes. “Pardon me.”

His words sounded a little too friendly. She caught a hint of boredom, and Ryan didn’t look much happier.

Something had dampened both of their moods in the short time they had been gone. Disappointment, maybe, because their quests were so simple?

That was about as unhappy as Navid got, but Ryan … When he adjusted his posture and looked away, she caught a silver sheen pass over him like light over scuffed metal, and it wasn’t a lie of indifference. There was something he was not saying.

Had he gotten a secret quest, too?

“Are we going to check in on the others?” Frederick asked. Behind him, the assistant director watched.

Anne nodded to Frederick, and called over to Veshim, “We’ll be back, or send one of us back, to inform you of our group plan as soon as possible!”

He jerked his head toward the door. “You have less than seven hours!”

“Do you have a reference?” Navid took the list of spell components Demir wanted in. “Of course, we are familiar with most of these—under different names, no doubt—but we would not want to repeat the same mistake your last supplier made.”

“Of course, of course,” Demir said and made a shooing motion with one hand without looking and continued mixing powders in a bowl. “My assistant will avail himself to you. Alam, if you could show our guest to my study to retrieve my journals. Hurry, please.”

He said it as if he were too preoccupied to even look away, but Ryan had spent enough time in the workshop to wonder what he was even doing?

If he really had been given faulty supplies, he shouldn’t have had anything to work with.

If he was using an emergency stash or something like alternative ingredients, he shouldn’t have started a new mixture that required his constant attention while speaking to them, and shouldn’t have been working in a backstage area besides.

They had seven hours. He wasn’t even a real alchemist. He was a component caster, their prep time was much shorter.

So, this had to be a ruse or he wasn’t very good at his job. Or both, if nepotism had been the primary reason for his employment. Maybe the Theatre was leaning on the stereotype that people without Skills were supposed to be grossly incompetent.

Still, Navid followed his assistant without question, and the moment he was out of earshot, Demir looked after him with an incredulous look that seemed to ask, Was it that easy?

He turned to Ryan. “Are you indentured to him?”

“He’s a friend of a friend … Are you indentured to your older brother?”

Demir scoffed, “No.” He glanced after Navid once more and shook his head. “Side character. He merely does as he is told. There isn’t a single line of italics in the pages of his life.

“The play is doomed, you know. I warned my brother not to let his actors go to that party and now they’re stuck outside the city. The best-case scenario would have been that they return with hangovers, which they probably will have, even if you do rescue them.

“I warned my father not to let my brother direct the play and now he’ll cost us a fortune. If he will be forced to refund tickets, do you think he’ll have any money left to pay transients with?”

Ryan frowned. He wasn’t seeing his quest here. “Are you saying if we don’t all succeed on our quests, none of us will get paid …?”

“I’m saying that you may want to start searching for alternatives.”

“Such as?”

He stood. “Working for me. If you bring me the right ingredients, and a few others besides that we will keep between us, I can claim you got them wrong—an honest mistake—and sell them for profit. My brother will not pay you either way. I will give you a cut of what I will earn, and it will be more than what you would have earned otherwise.”

“Would it be more than what Mr. Side Character and I would have earned together?”

His eyebrows shot up. “My mistake! I did not know you were sharing funds. Is today laundry day for you? Are you wearing his silk shirt underneath your armor?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t matter in— on our travels. We’re a team. We don’t stab each other in the back.”

“No, you maim each other with a thousand cuts and pinpricks. You don’t honestly believe you will stay teammates forever, do you?”

Of course, not. A week ago, Ryan had assumed he would end up on some above-average team and have to find a way to be happy with that.

Now, he wanted to try out doing something he enjoyed first, like being a show fighter.

Classmates didn’t stay best friends forever, especially if they couldn’t keep up in the same field, but if they all found their own paths, maybe they could stay friendly acquaintances.

This guy was an idiot if he thought he could use his jealousy and this villainous younger brother spiel to manipulate him.

Anne and Navid had fought by his side; helped save his and his friends' lives … Well, they had endangered them in the first place, but it wasn’t like Ryan had voted not to go after the Collector.

Maybe if Demir had known about Micah, he could have used his feelings about what Anne had done to manipulate him, but tough luck. He wasn’t buying it.

The paper man must have seen the reluctance in his face, because he sighed, tilted his painted head—but not his paper head—and spoke in a softer voice, “Look, you’re misunderstanding me. You are not going to be paid anyway. I am offering you the chance to provide for your team when my brother fails them. If you check your card, I think you will find the sum I am offering more than generous—”

They’d already seen it happen earlier, so Ryan wasn’t surprised to find the ink on the card Veshim had given him change:

Secret Quest: Discreetly gather additional ingredients for the special effects director: butterfly ink, wind sheep horns, pestilence leaves …

He skimmed the list until he spotted the reward and dismissed it. “Your currency means nothing to me if I can only use it in your city.”

What was a ‘ruby thread’ supposed to be? Or a ‘quarter-bolt’? Could you eat them?

“I wouldn’t say that.” Demir began to rummage around in his coat pocket. “You can exchange it in the next city you come to, or you could spend it in one night? I’m sure many things would interest a young man such as yourself. A place to sleep? Fine cuisine? A new sword—or spear in your case? Clothes like your friend-of-a-friend has, or a magic item?”

He barely had his attention even with the mention of magic items, but he caught a thin, worn thread of his interest as he pulled something out of his pocket: a red crystal.

“I am willing to pay you part in advance to buy your confidence.”

“Wait, you use crystals as money? Are they real?”

He seemed confused. “They are not gemstones if that is what you are asking. They are cut monster crystals—”

“Can I see? Just for a second?”

Demir hesitated, then placed the crystal in his hand with a shrug. “Of course.”

Ryan pulled his glove off to feel its heat. He thought he recognized it … fourth-floor true Salamander guardian crystal, maybe …?

It had been cut into a rounded pentagon shape, almost like a scale, so it was hard to tell, but if he focused …

He wasn’t Lisa, and he definitely wasn’t a merchant, but he could grope his way around the edges of this. He felt its heat, compared it to his fire affinity, imagined using it to fuel a spell, tried to feel how long it would take to paint something like it on the Argent Path …

If everything else here was conjured from magic, well, monster crystals were nothing more than hardened magic, either. The currency might be ‘real.’ Some of it.

“How much is this worth? Like, in comparison to your tickets— or a loaf of bread— No. Wait.” He squinted, remembering they were underground. “A dozen eggs?”

Normal chicken eggs were not among the goods they could harvest from the Gardens. He thought he’d spent enough time around the egg and milk business in Westhill to guestimate a comparison.

“Eggs? You want to spend my bribe money on eggs?”

Ryan almost smacked his forehead. He was an idiot! It didn’t matter what they were worth. They didn’t have a Tower, so he was working with two variables—

Wait, they didn’t, right? That child had said they were in ‘Hadica’ …

He felt a jolt and crowded the man, holding the crystal up. “Where do you get these from!?”

What if there was a Tower within the Theatre? A Tower within the Tower.

He held his hands up as if Ryan had threatened him with a knife. “Ranches, maybe? I’m not sure how our money is made, I only know the cut is important to spot a forgery—”

He grimaced. “Nevermind. Just tell me how many of these are in here.” He waved the crystal at the reward listed on his card. Assuming they were real, he could work the rest out himself. And if Lisa said they weren’t real, conversion didn’t matter.

“Twenty-two and a half,” the man said, surprise turning to insult. He pulled back and gave Ryan a dirty look as he adjusted the collar of his shirt.

Ryan made a face and checked his card, pushing his ignorance past the border of genuine into an act.

He hadn’t known what to expect from the Theatre, but they had gotten quests—quests!—and now this? It … sucked, if he was being honest. And this guy wasn’t real anyway, so who cared if he was an asshole to him?

But if he suddenly stopped, that would be telling.

Twenty-two and a half fourth-floor guardian chamber crystals for a day’s work. Sure, they would have to rent the horses and he wasn’t getting any of the other loot involved with Tower climbing. Lesser crystals, monster parts, possible treasure chests. Still …

It was a lot of money.

And if he did this … he would level? Somehow?

Fighting monsters on the road, collecting ingredients, identifying the right ones; they seemed like appropriate quests for his Classes. Maybe.

He just didn’t understand why he had to lie, why his quest was a secret given to him by someone like Demir … It wasn’t like he was a [Rogue] …

“Why can’t I tell Navid? He seems like the type to encourage embezzling funds from a rival company, and I’ll probably split the reward with the rest of my team anyway.”

“Do that, if you must, but afterward. I’m paying for your confidence and I say I do not trust him. He reminds me too much of what I could have been.”

Ryan grunted. “Fine. I’ll get you your illegal drugs—”

“They’re not drugs.”

He sighed. “I honestly don’t care, man. I’ll get you those, and the normal ingredients, but I’m not stabbing Navid in the back. I’m getting you the ingredients so you can use them for the performance tonight. Nothing else. Understood?”

In the corner of his eye, the number on his card shrunk. This time, it used the currency he was familiar with. From twenty-two and a half to seventeen and a half. That was fine.

“Fine,” Demir spat. “But if, and when, your friend-of-a-friend disappoints you, let me know that you have changed your mind as soon as you can.”

“Deal.”

“Found something to say.” They hurried out of the community center, their boots thumping off the corners of the stone steps.

Normally, Ryan might have taken the lead, but Frederic had rushed ahead to get the door for Anne. He flagged down Navid instead and let them take the lead.

“A little birdie mentioned in passing once you are something called a backup son?”

Navid looked at him curiously. “Is this an actual bird or …?”

“Lisa. It was Lisa. To prove a point.”

“Ah, well, you never know with wild cards like you. An above-average number of witches attend our school, too. So, what was your question?”

Ryan watched him without trying to look like he was watching him. He didn’t sound uncomfortable speaking about the topic. He shrugged. “No real question. I was just curious what that was about.”

“Tradition. Although, I don’t know if you can call it tradition if it’s less than a century old. Families like ours, we invest in people, you know? And sometimes, accidents happen. In the Tower, at sea, at a bar after drinking too much, in more ignominious ways. That’s where I come in. Insurance.” He leaned in with a condescending smile. “It’s in the name, Payne.”

“I could have answered that much myself.”

“Then what do you want to know?”

More, Ryan thought, about your slice of life.

At school, Navid could be loud, boisterous, invade his personal space, and speak poorly of the poor.

When he was alone … Ryan thought of him in that cafe. He’d seemed like the type of person to meditate recreationally without telling anyone about it. Quiet. Still.

With Sion around, he at least had an air of importance beyond his clothes and the way he held himself. His best friend had been raised as his bodyguard. He had to be worth protecting.

And when they’d fought the Collector, Ryan had caught a glimpse of humanity when he had put himself on the line to protect them with his father’s sword.

Now … He’d been given a fetch quest. He was leaning hard on the way he acted with Lisa and seemed somehow absent.

Ryan didn’t know what to think of him, or if he would have felt bad if he had accepted Demir’s offer.

“What that’s like, how it works? What, does your training focus on inheritance Classes? [Heir], [Apprentice], [Student], that sort of thing?”

“Two out of three, I’m impressed.”

“If you are a squire, are you apprenticed to a knight? Is that one of your older siblings? I don’t understand how being a [Knight] and a [Business Manager] could overlap.”

“They barely do. You would get a what, third consolidation out of that on average?”

“You measure that?”

“Of course,” he scoffed, “but I am not trained to manage a business for long. I am trained to douse fires and clean messes. Although calling it ‘training’ may be generous. I am taught the basics of various fields and help out on special occasions. That is all. By design.

“Then— Let’s say my aunt has three Skills that maximize our profits. Hypothetically. I am a [Gardener] in case she passes ahead of schedule. She does. I do her job, helping our harvesters and their managers navigate her passing, nothing but stress, everyone is running around screaming. In a week, I inherit one of her Skills and the rest of my support Skills help us minimize our losses until a true heir can be found.

“I’m a [Squire] in case my older cousin kicks the bucket, and though I have little experience managing security, other people—people like our friend Sion—do. Same deal as with my aunt. I can inherit one of my cousin’s Skills and until I do, I can allow Sion to turn his expertise into management through me.

“I have other Classes for similar situations, they all support each other, and help me support others.”

They reached the end of the town square. Ryan stopped. Anne and Frederic continued on ahead, absorbed in their own discussion, but he was too distracted to listen in.

“Wait,” he said, “so your entire purpose is to just ... wait around until one of your family members dies and clean up the mess?"

Navid must have heard the horror in his voice. He didn’t look insulted or defensive. He seemed more concerned for Ryan, or propriety maybe, than the future he was describing for himself.

“It's not so bad. It’s the reason why I was allowed to attend school with you all rather than being sent off to Silver Sun or someplace else."

“Lucky us? And afterward, or after a ‘true heir’ is found, what will you do with your life?”

Navid stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled ahead. “It’s not like I won’t do anything with my time. I will further my education for most of my life. I will be expected to run the occasional errand, to make public appearances, and find projects to support in my free time.

“For example,” his voice picked up, “we often send people on secondments into positions they aren’t equipped to handle. A level thirty fleet manager wants to go on vacation for a month? We find someone who is around level seventeen to put in their position for the time. Often, they’ll see it as an opportunity to make ‘big changes’ and prove their worth to us—”

He gave Ryan a look. “They fail miserably, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Well, nine times out of ten. But the stress of the challenge helps them level and it gives us insight into their true worth. It’s an investment. Afterward, somebody like me will be sent in to douse the flames before the manager gets back. Getting lunch, doing paperwork, facilitating communication, talking to the locals or even the guards depending on how bad it was.”

With his voice, he made it out to be something exciting. Ryan hesitated, waiting for more, then demanded, “ … That’s it?”

Eyes forward, Navid took a deep breath. “I think many people would find it enviable to ‘work’ minimal hours for good pay, ‘have to’ make appearances at parties, switch through charities and hobbies like clothes, wake up at ten a.m. and have all day to drink themselves under the table with friends.

“I can do that for most of my life, Ryan, so long as I do not sully the family name and keep to the Skills and Classes I was prescribed.”

“And if you don’t?”

He shrugged. “Then my existence will be quietly swept under the rug until my accomplishments become something to brag about in casual conversation. Say, if I decided my life’s passion were to help others and I became a [Doctor]. The nobility! Of course, if I were to become a [Nurse] for the same reason, I would be disowned.”

“Of course,” he scoffed. “So you’re not allowed to do anything with your life.”

“Better than wanting to do something with your life and not being able to, don’t you think?”

Ryan thought that was the same thing but … maybe he was being a hypocrite again. Because if that was what made his family proud, wouldn’t he do the same thing …?

Wasn’t he doing the same thing?

Saga and Lisa had both shot him down. So he was planning on asking Thea out … maybe. She undressed him with her eyes sometimes. What if she actually tried to undress him?

He also didn’t like the way she gossiped about people behind their backs, but if he didn’t ask her out, the only other girl he was close to was Myra.

“Maybe you’re right …” he mumbled, frowned, and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Navid put on a haughty tone, hiding a smile, “I wouldn’t expect the poor to understand the burdens of riches.”

He was being facetious, but the comment still pissed Ryan off. Had he been talking to a wall this entire time? He sped up to join the others.

“Do you want to buy something or not?” Lisa asked Jason, and it didn’t sound like the first time she had asked that question.

They were gathered outside of a shop. Ryan glanced inside and his attention was drawn to the colorful weapons and armor on the shelves behind the counter, then the woman made of stone eyeing them.

“I don’t know. I just thought … I can’t afford anything in there on my own, but some of the minor magic items might useful for completing our quest?”

Frederic sounded disgusted, “You want to borrow money?”

“I said I don’t know. The mintsteel blade looks nice and it’s cheap, but the sundance greaves sound powerful … they’re also more expensive. They sell the journals Veshim uses, and they’re fake, but they would help with our quest if we split up—”

“I told you we should wait until we get back,” Lisa said. “I already paid for a guide and horses. It was surprisingly cheap, but I want my money back from all of—” She spotted Ryan and her eyes went wide. “You. I think you’ll like him.”

“The guide?”

“Yep. His name is Pepper. It’s a surprise.”

“Uh …?” Ryan wasn’t looking forward to meeting a new person, and he didn’t like surprises, but he supposed he trusted Lisa of all people.

Jason was still stuck to the shop window, paralyzed by indecision. “I don’t even know if I could afford some of the more expensive items I might want with my quest reward …”

On a whim, Ryan decided, “Navid and I will front you.”

Navid’s eyebrows shot up. “I will?”

“You’re looking for projects to support in your free time?”

“And I will choose them myself, thank you very much.”

“Jason will pay us back with his share of the hoard,” he pointed out, pointing at him. “And take the short straw on picking out an item like last time …?”

Jason perked up. “Yeah, of course. That sounds fair to me.”

Navid raised his chin a fraction. “We’ll see.”

Not really, he thought but he didn’t press the issue. Either he could help out and loan Jason the money he needed—which he would pay back immediately anyway, so why not? It wasn’t like Navid needed to buy anything here—or Ryan could accept Demir’s offer and do it himself.

The decision was easy, really. Not that Navid needed to know. They had been given fetch quests, but there was no reason Ryan couldn’t find his own quests for them.

“We’ll go shopping later, then?” he told Jason. “I want to browse, too, even if I don’t buy anything and Lisa’s right, you’ll be able to afford more expensive stuff then.”

He hesitated but nodded. “Alright.”

“Right, then let’s leave,” Lisa urged them.

“Uhm, Anne and I are staying behind,” Frederic said.

“Huh?”

“I want to audition as a backup in case you can’t get the actors here in time, but they can’t babysit me all day. I figured Anne could use some backup while she hunts a thief …?”

“I’m supposed to ensure the play runs smoothly,” Anne said, “I think that means I’m supposed to ensure we complete as many of our quests as possible. Plus, y’know, even in my armor, I don’t want to get bitten by a horse.”

“It’s looking more and more like the horses here are made of the stuff real horses hate about you,” Lisa countered.

Ryan’s eyebrows shot up in curiosity but he didn’t interrupt.

“Wouldn’t they still act like real horses, then?”

“Maybe? We can’t know for sure. Don’t you want to come with to test it first …?”

Anne struggled with herself, squinted at Lisa, then rolled her eyes with sigh.

“You’re asking because you want to know, aren’t you? I can welcome you when you come back, but I think we should divide and conquer.”

Lisa sighed. “Fine! Stay safe.”

Jason stared at Frederic with a weird intensity. “Are you sure you will be safe?”

“I’ve climbed on my one tons of times.”

“And I have caught actual [Thieves] before,” Anne added.

Jason looked unconvinced. “As a Heswaren, are you safe from more … esoteric threats? There’s also supposed to be a ghost haunting the area …”

She cocked her head curiously but nodded. “Yeah, we’re good at fighting ghosts.”

He sighed. “Okay, then. Use your luck.”

Ryan gave her a nod of acknowledgment, which she returned, and they parted ways.

Lisa, Navid, Jason, and him caught each other up. Only two streets over, the smell of horses hit Ryan like a rainwall.

A building stood in the distance like a stereotypical saloon. A gate was attached to the side, leading to a backward where he spotted the roof of an outdoor stable and a larger riding hall in the distance.

He also thought he could already see the ‘surprise’ Lisa had mentioned. She sped up to walk backward in front of him, saying, “Okay, so, I know I wanted to help you study true Salamanders for your Path and we … didn’t get to do that on the way in. Not my fault, by the way.”

“Aha?”

“Well, I happened to stumble on something even better. Tadaa.” She held on arm out in a casual reveal.

A man, in his twenties maybe going by body size alone, was preparing a group of seven leashed horses in front of the gate for them. Or trying to, at least.

Just like Igua, the cat man, he looked like a fire Salamander in the shape of a man.

One of the horses tried to bite him. He pulled back and snarled at it, and the horse quieted down.

It’s the thought that counts, Ryan thought with a fond smile. Because, just like summons, he assumed the ‘fake’ creatures of the Theatre would have less value to his Path.

That made more sense to him now, too. If he had to distill his own stilted view of their conceptual essence, that would be harder to do it they were already imitations … right? But weren’t summons just someone else’s stilted view of a creature?

Maybe it wasn’t a question of authenticity, but perspective, and he’d been thinking about it wrong this whole time …

But that was the point: he had been thinking about his Path a lot lately. Everyone had limits. How many more paintings could he create before he reached his?

He would rather continue exploring the Path he had neglected, for now. Because of that, his eyes wandered to where his mind was still stuck, on Navid.

If he had to paint him, how would he do it? Focus on the role he had been given in life? Navid sometimes seemed like a shadow for a person, but he had a lot of stored potential.

The only appeal Ryan could see there was his relationship to his family, and he didn’t want to paint someone else’s relationship with their family over his own.

He didn’t want ‘potential’ either. He wanted to realize his as quickly as he could so he could finally be at peace and make his family proud.

Focus on the brief glimpse of humanity he had seen, then? Navid standing atop a titanic automaton, hacking into it with the sword his father had given him for their sake?

That was only a tiny part of who he was. If he wanted to paint people, did Ryan want to focus on those moments of glory or their entirety? Could he do one without the other?

If he—tried to—paint Navid in his entirety, wouldn’t the rest of his self drown his moment of glory out? If he tried to create a Skill from that moment, wouldn’t it wash away like a drop of color in a storm?

Do I only want to paint people if they have something to offer me? Skills?

… No. No, that didn’t seem right.

The first painting he had wanted to make. His friends and him sitting on that bridge, shoulder to shoulder. Swimming in the water. A drop of summer. He wanted to find that in all things.

Ryan didn’t want to paint Navid anyway—not now—but it seemed important to consider how, knife to his back, he would go about it if he were forced to.

If he knew how he would paint Navid, he could better understand how to paint Lisa. The Salamander man, Pepper, wasn’t so interesting to him on his own. Lisa holding an arm out to reveal a secret he could already see? Because she wanted to help him? It was a bit off from her usual behavior, but it was the small things that could matter the most, sometimes.

Ryan remembered this moment so he could add it to her painting later.