Getting back to the inn was much easier than getting out. To Dallion’s relief, no one had noticed that had gone anywhere. Harp had failed to get Jiroh’s attention, which meant he didn’t have to worry about grumpiness. On the flip side, there was no chance of finding anything more about the mage as well.

According to Nil, it all had to be an elaborate hoax. Mages—as he claimed—never bothered threatening people. When they wanted to send a message, they did so openly with exceeding force and humiliation. The last time something of the sort had happened in Nerosal had been over a decade ago, when a group of mage apprentices from the Academy had come to the city for some fun and gotten into a bar fight. During the fight, someone managed to strike a mage in the face. The person who had done so was awakened, and that hadn’t helped in the least. The apprentice had burned out the entire tavern only to scorch the person in question, then used his magic to heal everyone else and rebuild the building to its former state.

No crime had been reported that day. Neither the city guard nor the local nobles had said a thing, sweeping the whole incident under the rug. The guild of the awakened had promptly expelled the person from their organization and transported him to the nearest shrine of the Order where he could heal.

The echo’s logic was flawless, however, there was one small detail that Dallion had chosen not to share—the mage was from Earth. Like Dallion and his grandfather, he had somehow found his way to this world and managed to gain quite the rare skill. That had to be the reason that Dallion had gotten away with nothing more than a warning. Despite personal plans, they shared one and the same bond, stranded in a fantasy world without any explanation. The only people Dallion had met had done pretty well for themselves: his grandfather had gone on to become a noble, and the mysterious old man was a mage. That gave Dallion hope that he would also amount to something great. What if the Star was also from Earth, though?

The thought made Dallion’s stomach churn with revulsion. Something terrible must have happened to deform a person to such a state. After all, the Star itself had said he was extremely powerful, second only to the Moon. Could it be he was the first Earthling to appear in this world? The thought was outright terrifying. Still, Dallion had to admit that even Arthurows had made him a similar offer: “back off and I’ll leave you alone.” Did that prove anything?

You’re overthinking it, Gen said. And even if you’re right, the only way for you to find out is to enter the world item.

I can still try to find him.

Find a mage in this world? You can’t find a member of the mirror pool without help. What chance do you have with a mage?

I have the kaleidervisto.

At that single moment, both Dallion and his echo grinned. This wasn’t just a matter of him finding a tool to locate a copyette, it was a way to see echoes in everything around, and that was worth exploring.

The first thing Dallion tried was to look at his reflection in the mirror. According to basic physics, that was supposed to be enough to let him see the echoes within his own realm. Sadly, as it turned out, the laws of physics were somewhat shifty when it came to magic. As he looked at the mirror, the only thing he saw was the rough outline of the mirror itself… or rather something that had been forgotten in the mirror.

To Dallion’s shock and surprise, there was nothing less than an echo already there. The echo probably belonged to one of the previous tenants of the room—a red-haired woman in her thirties, if the echo was any indication. It appeared that the woman had placed an echo in the mirror half a decade ago and simply forgotten about it. Since then, the echo had been living a mostly boring life along with the guardian of the object.

Hearing that made Dallion feel bad more than anything else, to the point that he offered to move the echo out and into a new realm. As it soon turned out, this wasn’t the only echo forgotten in the room. Apparently, a lot of the awakened were slobs, scattering echoes and forgetting about them. There were two more echoes in the furniture, one in the room’s lantern, and one in the door. There were no echoes in the bed, thankfully, but having five echoes laying about was alarming enough.

Nil insisted to simply kill them off, referring to the process as cleaning. To his astonishment, the echoes didn’t seem against the idea, some even welcomed it, but Dallion was firm—he was going to find a way to get them out of there and into some place else.

The more Dallion used the artifact, the worse things got. It soon turned out that his room wasn’t the only place infested with echoes. The inn was practically swimming with them. There were echoes in chairs, in tables, in cutlery, causing Dallion to wonder what sort of awakened would place an echo in food utensils.

The good news was that neither Hannah nor the Luors had any echoes. At one point, Dallion even sneaked into the kitchen to check on Aspan and found things to be in order there.

Initially, Dallion considered shaking his findings with the innkeeper. After a brief moment of reflection, though, he decided against it. At best, Hannah was going to say that it wasn’t an issue since the item guardians were doing the same thing, and there was no getting rid of them; and at worst she was going to have him kill every echo in the inn, which wasn’t something Dallion was willing to do. The compromise was to leave things as they were until Dallion passed his next awakening gate when supposedly he would be able to move echoes between realms. In theory he had the option to invite them to his realm and keep them there, but that wasn’t something Dallion or anyone linked to him was willing to do.

After breakfast, and the usual grumbling from Hannah, Dallion and the Luors went to the guild to do some jobs before the lunch shift.

“Will you seriously stop doing that?” Gloria said from the corner of her mouth. “People are staring.”

“People are always staring,” Veil shrugged. The fact that most in the neighborhood, and the city itself, had gotten used to the Luors’ presence hadn’t diminished their interest.

“I was just checking something.” Dallion lowered the kaleidervisto. Most of the streets had less to lose echoes, although upon passing by an inn, tavern, or shop frequented by awakened, a few would usually pop out.

If the city nobility were able to see the state of things, it was very likely that they would hire at all guilds to de-echo the city and all the buildings.

“Did your grandfather ever talk about magic?” Dallion asked all of a sudden.

“Not particularly,” Gloria said. Dallion could tell she was lying by the new set of emotions that started ringing in her. “He said that there still were people with magic in the cities and that’s why we had to keep away.”

“There were some notes in his books,” Veil added. “But the old man burned them up pretty quick. I managed to take a glance before that. Just a lot of pictures and symbols.”

A lot of pictures and symbols. That was quite similar to what Dallion had seen when mending the brooch.

“I guess he fancied learning magic at some point, even if you can’t.”

“Maybe he was hoping he’d get the stat at some point.”

“You don’t get stats,” Gloria said darkly. “Maybe things were different in the past, but what was taken away cannot be returned.”

“Maybe. Anyone else mention anything?” Dallion persisted. “One of the merchants that visited you, or—”

“No one said anything about magic.” Gloria quickened her pace, rushing deliberately forward.

Dallion tried to catch up, but he soon felt Veil’s hand on his shoulder.

“Give her some space. She’s been cranky lately. All to do with her theatre thing.”

“You know about that?” Dallion whispered.

“Sure, I do. Do you think I’m an idiot?” The blond frowned. “Of course I do, and that’s not the only thing I know. You helped, didn’t you?”

Dallion didn’t reply. The only thing in his mind was the question: how much did Veil really know? Also, had he found out on his own or had the mirror pool approached him. It definitely sounded like something they would do.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” Veil gave Dallion a pat on the back. “She’ll find that she doesn’t have the skill level for it and give up. At least this way she’ll have no regrets.”

This was a dark thing to say. Dallion wanted to continue the conversation, but given how close they were to the Icepicker guildhall, he decided to leave it for later when they were somewhere more private.

The number of people at the guild was half the usual amount. With the festival approaching, more and more had to focus on other jobs. Even the elites were spending less and less time.

Every fiber of his body screamed for him to behave as normally as possible, however, curiosity got the upper hand forcing the kaleidervisto back in front of his right eye. Almost in fear, Dallion looked around the entrance of the guild. To his relief, there were no echoes to be seen.

“That thing still?” Veil shook his head.

“Just checking stuff.”

“Right. Well, I’ll be off to help out in a few jobs. See you at lunch.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Dallion?” Falkner's voice asked beside him.

Instinctively, Dallion turned around, the vase-like artefact still in front of his face. When he did, he was just as surprised as he was when looking at the mirror in his room.

Falkner had echoes in him, and more than one. Dallion was able to count at least half a dozen before the boy pushed the artifact to the side.

“Six…” Dallion managed to say.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Falkner interrupted. It seemed he knew what the kaleidervisto did and was also quite worried about it. Fear rang throughout him, emitting a sound like a tuning fork.

“Sure.” It wasn’t like Dallion had any jobs he had to take. “Here?”

The boy nodded. Dallion offered his free hand. Moments later, Falkner grabbed it.

ITEM AWAKENING

The item they had entered, according to the blue rectangle, was a Locket. Even so, it was a very impressive locket. For one thing, it was made from sky silver. For another, it was level ten. Despite that, the realm itself looked like some kind of a memorial hall with large portraits covering the walls. Most of them had a silver frame. Some had a glowing golden one.

“Quite the place,” Dallion said.

“It’s a gift from my aunt,” the boy said. “I’m required to always carry it with me.”

“That doesn’t sound fun.”

“It’s not.” Falkner looked away. “Please don’t tell anyone what you saw.”

“You know what a kaleidervisto is?”

“My father knows what it can do. That means I know as well, when he deems it necessary to tell me.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Dallion thought.

Indeed, he is, Nil said.

“He’s one of those who saw inside me. The rest are tutors my family fired to teach me. Each of them has an echo of my own in their realms back home. That way they can follow my progress as well as be apprised of everything I’m doing here.”

“Your family is spying on you?”

“No, they aren’t spying, they just want to ensure my well-being. There are a lot of expectations riding on me, so they must be sure that I’m going in the right direction. That’s why I have their echoes and they have mine.”

A mobile phone, Dallion thought. They had created the equivalent of the mobile phone! Or rather, an echo-phone. With each of the echoes knowing instantly what the other did, it was possible to have a conversation when both parties exchanged echoes. Not that Dallion would be tempted to do anything remotely similar, but he was intrigued by the idea nonetheless. It was both fascinating and horrifying.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about…”

“I know what you want to talk to me about,” Dallion said. Among the layers of confusion, fear, and pragmatism visible in Falkner’s chest, there was also a ball of love… and it was as big as a grapefruit.

“Of course. Your music skills would tell you… Still, I must ask openly. Will you help me with this?”

“Look, I really don’t think it’ll work. I’ve talked to her and—”

“I won’t ask you to use your music skills on her,” Falkner interrupted. “It won’t build a stable relationship. I want you to keep her same for a few years… until I earn my title.”

Dallion swallowed. Thanks to the Stone Garden job, he had read up somewhat on nobles and etiquette. What Falkner was referring to was his twenty-first birthday. Legally, it was at that age that he would move from being a son of a noble to a full noble himself. The celebration required that he reach a certain level by then. Even so, it was pretty much a given that he would earn his title upon fully coming of age.

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

“I am. If the Moons are willing and Gloria hasn’t found anyone by then, I’ll do all in my power to have her join my family.”

“You know, a few years is a lot of time.”

“I don’t have a choice. My father has forbidden me to attempt now. When I become of age, I won’t have to obey him any more in such matters.”

Wow. That sounds really depressive.

It’s the way of the world, dear boy. Nothing that could be done about it.

Then one day I’ll do something about it!