Returning to the capital, I walked slowly towards the royal palace. The streets were empty. I glimpsed people sitting around inside their homes, making dinner, and doing other chores in near complete silence. Only the young dared make noise. A baby wailed, a toddler was laughing or crying I could not tell, and a small group of children were playing in a courtyard that I saw into for a moment from a large hole in the wall as I passed by.

There was only one guard outside the entrance to the royal palace. When I was last here, Kol had told me about rising crime, especially in the poorer parts of the city. The guards had already been thinned out by the phenomenon around the city, and now they were overstretched patrolling and following up on problems throughout the city. They were also needed at every food and grain distribution, since the people were getting hungrier and more desperate.

The guard saw me and his eyes lit up. His eyes fell on the wheeled cart that seemed to be following me by itself. The cart was piled high with supplies. The guard called his superior from inside the palace and I stopped using my magic hands spell, letting the cart settle in front of them. They thanked me and a bunch of other tired guards came out of the palace, probably the ones who were supposed to be resting right now. As I left for the throne room, the first batch of supplies were being divvied up and readied for distribution.

---

“There is a war up north?” said Kol.

“An army of beastmen invaded the Lux Republic, according to the reports in Tephon. The beastmen seemed to be targeting the cities closest to the Lux Republic’s borders with the Izlandi Kingdom. Most of the cities I visited did not seem to know about this at all. Only Bain Rusta in Tephon had received this information. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it from,” I said.

Kol rubbed her forehead. “Even if my spies had found out about this and managed to escape from the Singing Horde, they wouldn’t be able to get to me here in the capital. It’s a good thing the spies themselves are only supposed to pass along their information to the other people in the network. They won’t come all the way here, and the people in the spy network should know by now not to come to the capital, since you’ve been going around the kingdom telling them not to do that.”

“But they won’t know if that applies to them as spies, would they?” I asked.

“They will. It was a general order from me. If anything, there might be some foreign spies trying to get in who might end up disappearing, but by this point, I think it’s pretty clear the Singing Horde is involved with what is happening to us. Only the spies from the Lux Republic will be effected,” she said.

“Was the Singing Horde always this powerful?” I asked. “From what you’d told me before, I wouldn’t have thought them strong enough to invade either of your nations like this. Don’t they usually stick to raiding, rather than invading?”

Kol ordered one of her ministers to bring some scrolls for her. “I don’t know how they’re doing this. It has to be connected to what they’ve done to our capital city. There is no way those mostly nomadic warrior tribes could come up with a coordinated attack like this, much less execute it. They don’t even have any magic, like you do, although there are some stories that we found from around the city and in our collection that you might want to see.”

The ministers returned with their scrolls and spread them out on the floor for me to read. I walked around the room, carefully avoiding the monster hide scrolls as I squinted and used light magic to read what was written near my feet.

These were stories collected from spies, tradesmen, and travelers who had been to or who had come from the lands of the Singing Horde. Most of these stories were unremarkable, but after reading through a few of them, I began noticing some shared themes and motifs. In particular, there were references to their guardian deity, the God of Music.

I had long since suspected that the words “singing” and “music” in relation to the horde were being translated strangely by my translation magic. After all, the Singing Horde used a different language, and the words that I was hearing were in the demon language. This meant that it was the demons who called them “the Singing Horde” and their god the “God of Music,” although they also called him by many other titles, most of them meaning something like the false god. However, the translations were still technically accurate, at least on a literal level. But there were connotations that were being stripped by the translation.

Connotations are the subtle undefined meanings of words, things that one does not find in a dictionary, but which still serve to define the manner and use of the words in real life. Connotations also changed what words could mean or imply in different sentences of situations. Think about words like dazzling or flashy. Or about the situational differences and implications of the word ‘flamboyant.’ In this strange and complicated translation, one being filtered between three languages and across complex cultural and political dimensions, it made sense that seemingly simple words like ‘singing’ and ‘music’ would lose some of their subtle meanings.

And if these stories were anything to go by, what these words had lost had been a crucial piece of the puzzle connecting them to the immortal I feared most.

I began pacing around the room, speaking more to myself than to Kol and the ministers standing around with bated breaths. “What if singing was not the expression of varying emotions. Of sadness. Of happiness. Of melancholy, pain, angst, and grief. Of innocence, celebration, exuberance, and unbridled joy. What if there was only one kind of song to sing, and that song was a song of insanity, a song of the inexplicable, a song of the inexpressible, a song of paradox and contradiction.

“And what if music was not a bunch of sounds put together in continuity. What if there was no order to notes, no harmony, no rhythm, no melody. If sounds blended together like oil and water, and mashed against each other like sand grating on stone, with no beginning nor end. No sense of order or unity. Not bad music, mind you. Bad music might make your ears bleed or force you to clamp down on the sides of your head, but it is still definitively music. But what if music went from heavenly or hellish in moments, or perhaps was a bit of both at the same time.

“It seems the god that the Singing Horde worships is not a god of euphony, but a god of discordance. If there was any doubt left in my mind, it is gone. The Singing Horde worships and is being supported by the immortal who reins over the moon. The Immortal of Madness.”

“The one who sent you into the future?” asked Kol.

I nodded. “Your spy, Spot, said that the horde had not received the help of their god in the past. What changed? That is the question we need to answer. I can think of two possibilities.”

“What are they?” asked Kol.

“The immortals will sometimes have servants in this world. I have fought them before. The great oracle of the elves was one such servant. Or Ikon, as she called herself. The first possibility is that one of these Ikons has taken control of the Singing Horde. Ikons can receive magic and other powers from the immortals, which might explain the bubble around the capital city. These Ikons tend to be incredibly powerful, and there might be other servants or monsters under their control. If an Ikon is involved, things will be difficult, but I can rush back to the human tribes and gather up a small force of magic users. Together with your own army, we could unite with the army of the Lux Republic, and fight against the Ikon and the Singing Horde, together,” I said.

“Having the support of the humans would be a great relief. Are you sure they are willing to help us? We would not be able to stand against magic users like the Ikon or their helpers alone,” said Kol. “Maybe if you taught us magic like you taught the humans…”

“The humans said they were willing to fight. No, you do not need to worry about your people not knowing magic. At least not yet. I suspect you have already started teaching them elemental magic, and with the increasing trade between demons and humans, it is only a matter of time before demons begin learning more powerful magic. After all, haven’t some of the humans that I have been bringing with me, already begun exploring more personal relationships with the demons that they met here. No, Kol, the real problem lies in the second possibility behind why the Singing Horde is so powerful. The other way the Immortal of Madness could be helping the beastmen, is by showing up directly. And let me tell you something.

“If that devil has appeared in person, I will have no choice but to leave you all at his mercy and run far, far away.”