“Please Sir, I’ll pay anything! Name your price. My best room, free food and service, a take from the till every night. Please! Please! Please just stay!” The manager begged me.

“...I’m truly sorry, but I have a passage booked to leave the island today and I have no intention of missing it.” I explained as calmly as I could to the desperate man.

The reason for this unbalanced conversation in the first place was that for the past three nights that I had played in the corner of this man's well to do tavern, every single time…

I brought down the house.

Not that I didn’t think I would have done so to begin with, but I was singing music this world had never known on an instrument they had never once heard of in their entire lives, and I had no absolute guarantee that my plan and all my hard work would pay off.

But it did.

The crowd was blown away. Hell, it may have even been the greatest night of their lives for a good many of them. I witnessed it all as I performed and saw the songs I played washing over them and changing their lives forever.

Proving that, to me at least, that the people of Calzyn may have the magic of mana, but the people of Earth will always have the magic of music.

“...Not to mention, last night, there were clearly ladies from the Bordello in the crowd. If I stay for another night they will most definitely approach me, and with how intense the crowd has been it's clear that even if I didn’t want to join the Bordello, no rejection I could give them will suffice.” I further explained to the man.

Hearing this, the man took the moment to consider my words and I could in that moment quickly see their effect playing out on his mind. His desperation to have me stay at his establishment was now in real time being replaced by the worry of possibly being in the middle of a Bank/Bordello dispute, all over one lowly musician.

He didn’t need that, and I especially didn’t need that.

So with some regret, but also gratitude, the bald portly manager of the tavern thanked me fervently for the past few days and wished me well and all the best on my travels.

I likewise thanked the man for his hospitality, put my case over my shoulder, picked up my bag, and briskly walked out of the place and onto the street to begin making my way over to docks as quickly and as sensibly as I could, so to make it in time for my departure.

The case in question was something I had made only a few years earlier in my workshop, sourced from a local wood that surrounded my farm and bound by a leather made from the pelts of my own cattle.

It was quite the clever piece of luggage if I do say so myself. I constructed it to be covertly divided into two separate sections, where each would either be opened from the front open side, or the disguised back side which also had the straps allowing it to be carried like a backpack.

The front section was used for my performances and housed my guitar as well as all my other musical necessities such as spare strings, my flutes, and a few other small tools and spare parts to replace whatever needs to be replaced on my guitar in the future.

The back section however, was covertly concealed to house my bow and arrows. At my hand and at the ready for whenever trouble rears its head. An eventuality that I’m sure is to occur.

But this is hardly what I’m thinking about right now as I make my way under the light of the rising Sun, walking down to the seashore to leave this city at last. What I am thinking about is as a matter of fact the sheer success the last few days had been for me, whether it be financially, musically or self-assuredly.

The first night had been a particularly more than usually busy night according to the manager when I grabbed the chance to talk to him the following morning. The place was almost completely full with a diverse range of well performing and high society citizens all about and even, surprisingly, a young Initiate stage Warrior, who it seemed was trying to be unnoticeable the entire night. But why he thought that would be possible was anyone’s guess.

With regards to my reception, well, they were dumbstruck. All these people had ever heard musically before were maybe a few folk songs, sea shanties and flute pieces, with the exception of maybe sometimes seeing something a bit more grandiose if they happened to have scored a visit to the Bordello.

But what I played… was out of this world.

Literally.

They were so caught up in all of what I was playing that they couldn’t even begin applauding until halfway through the night, and only then when they crossed that point did they really start getting into it

Clapping, dancing, smiling, crying, they were doing all of it. And in between they were tossing coins into my open case or buying me drinks which I either had to accept or when I had the chance have the bartender water down significantly.

The crowd was rowdy and enjoying themselves the whole night, and it was only in the early hours of the morning that everyone managed to leave and I could finally manage to (somewhat wobbly) get to bed and get some sleep.

The next night… was considerably more intense.

When I came down for a breakfast/lunch meal the next morning the place was already beginning to fill up. To the point that I had to take my meal upstairs and wait in my room for the day to roll around so as not to be disturbed and clear my head until I was ready to go downstairs and do my thing.

Remarkably, when I did go down, the place was a sea of bodies. It was busy the night before, but what I was seeing now was outlandish.

When I recovered from my surprise and came down, though they struggled, they parted like I was Moses before the red sea, forming a tight and narrow path of pressed up bodies that led me to my now sanctified stool that stood waiting for me untouched in the corner of the room.

As I sat down and pulled out my guitar for the second night, I heard a murmured chorus of whispers and oohs and aahs as they all examined my wondrous strange instrument.

Looking back up into the crowd, I could see a lot of excited familiar faces from the night before, now all pretty much next to one or two other people who are instead looking at me with doubt, expectation, curiosity or confusion, as they waited with bated breath for what their friends and relatives have obviously raved about to them with great enthusiasm.

I played a few notes to get myself ready for the music, hearing the crowd go quiet enough to hear a pin drop as I ready myself for my performance.

Then, I started playing…

And once more, many peoples lives were changed forever.

I stayed to the same repertoire as I had the night before essentially, with a few new songs for the previous night’s crowd added in there for their benefit. And like the night before, much of the reactions were the same if only amplified by what must have been over four hundred people, all squished together, in what began in absolute silence (with the exception of a few gasps and exclamations escaping through peoples lips occasionally) and ended in absolute bedlam.

Shockingly, at some point during the middle, some voices started humming or murmuring along to songs that they had only just heard the night ago, and the music seemed to carry through the crowd now with a greater depth of feeling than it had the night previous.

I played happy songs, I played sad songs, I played songs that made you want to get up and dance, and the people around me shared in it all from the moment I began all the way into the early morning when I finished off drunk, exhausted, and with a case full of Bits. And under the covers happy.

The third night however… was terrifying.

The crowd had somewhat thinned out comparatively I saw when I came down for my third and final performance, but not because of my reduced popularity I quickly deduced.

No. They thinned out because of who had now joined the audience.

…Warriors.

Not many. Only a dozen so. But Warriors nonetheless.

Somehow, my fame had even exceeded what I had thought possible, as even the Warriors of the Coalition had stepped down from their customary place of respite, the Pleasure Association Branch, to come down to this low and mortal establishment to hear music that had supposedly never been heard before.

At least from what I could gather from the whispers of the ordinary people who had enough clout and backing to remain within the same crowd as the Warriors and listen alongside them.

Tentatively, I came down on the third night under the scrutiny of some very powerful men and women, who I could tell with every movement were scrutinising me and trying to decipher what about me had caused such a fuss that even they had been disturbed from their higher place in the world and had to come down and investigate.

That night, I of course played my most serious performance yet, afraid of whatever might happen if I were to make some mistake, and throughout it all I kept watching the faces of the distinguished members of my audience from the corner of my eye to confirm to myself that I was doing okay.

I saw enjoyment, I saw some impassivity, I even saw sparkles of wonder. And in the eyes of what I knew were the ladies of the Bordello, all I saw was a blatant greed which caused a cold sweat to creep down my back as the night went on.

With no other option though… I just kept playing.

And thankfully as the night reached its deepest and I came to the end of my playing, the Warriors got up one by one… and complimented me on my music before leaving one after the other.

As good an honour as society would deem them to bestow when appreciating the work of a peasant it would seem.

I was just glad it was over though, so swiftly after they left I escaped to my room to get my last bit of rest before my long journey the following morning, fitful though it was.

It was with these ruminations and reflections bouncing around in my head that I approached the ship that would be the vessel hosting me for the start of my journey to the New Continent in the early hours of the day.

At the ramp up to the deck I met Captain Koll who greeted me and checked me off to note that I had indeed arrived. Directing me afterward to one of his crewmen who would show me to my cabin.

Following the man I went further up the ramp onto the deck, walked along one of the paths on the ship's sides, and was finally given a key to the room that was now open before me after the sailor had ensured that everything was satisfactory and that he could return to his duty.

I went into my small little room which solely contained a cot and a manalight lamp, put down my bags and case, and took the load off my legs as I sat down on what would be my bed for the next few months.

After ensuring there was nothing wrong and that my bags would be safe and untouched in my absence, I pulled out one of my flutes and wandered out onto the deck to await the ship's departure.

I had been on a couple of boats back in the Before, but never one like this. A wooden sailing ship, comparable in size to a cruise liner, with sails so high and massive that they filled me with wonder for my new adventure as they lightly billowed and glimmered in the higher up gales above me.

Eager to see the launch, I found a good place by the outer railing to look out over the city and the docks in preparation, taking in the different yet familiar sight as I readied myself to say goodbye to it all for one last time.

In the strong salty air of the sea all around me, much the same as I had breathed upon my last departure for a great adventure, I brought the flute in my hands up to my lips, and started playing a tune that I’m proud to say was completely my own.

I hadn’t had the chance to practice it the few nights before, what with the sheer amount of attention my guitar playing garnered. So with this moment in the wind on this fateful day, I took the moment to blow out a tune over the city and the water as a parting farewell.

“Hhhhuuuu!” someone gasped.

What?

Turning around, I discovered that standing before me was a nice looking extravagantly dressed young man, who for some reason had a quite astonishing completely flabbergasted look on his face as he stared right back at me.

For some reason… he looked kind of familiar.