It was a long walk back to the Duke’s residence, long enough that Serenity was surprised the Duke hadn’t chosen to use some form of transportation. Serenity assumed the nobleman liked to walk, and he wasn’t at all unhappy about it either. It gave him a chance to get an idea of the city he was in.

He’d need that if he were to find the lost Earthlings. Right now, he was a stranger in a strange land, though at least it was more familiar to him than Earth was to Valentine Michael Smith.

The streets were full of animal-drawn vehicles; most seemed to be transports, but there were a number of carriages as well. That was not something Serenity was used to in the larger universe; he was used to travel being done using flyers of one sort or another, the way he’d seen on Tzintkra. There were a few as they got farther along, closer to the richer part of town, but even in what had to be the Noble Quarter most of the transportation was animal-drawn.

There were four different general types of animal drawing the vehicles around. The two most common, mules and horses, were both well-known on Earth. Serenity saw a few donkeys, as well, but he didn’t count them separately. The third most common dray animal was a magical beast, the erkal; technically, they were monsters, but since they rarely rose above Tier One, the giant lizards were common on a number of planets.

Serenity didn’t see the last beast of burden until they were close to their destination. It was a monstrous flightless bird that Serenity didn’t recognize; they looked more like an emu than a chocobo, and he only saw them as single animals pulling carriages that seemed far lighter than what the others were pulling. Even though there were some horses being ridden by then, none of the birds had riders.

The buildings had also changed; near the Hiring Hall, they were blocky, functional stone or wood boxes. In the Noble Quarter, they were fancy, often with wildly varying details. The one thing that was common to most of them, as well as the buildings back where they started, was the high, sloping roofs. Serenity assumed that probably meant that Zenith could get heavy snow. There were a few buildings in the Noble Quarter with flat roofs, but they were always either extremely fancy or in terrible shape; they were probably built with a magical method to handle the snow, but it was clear they hadn’t all been maintained.

A few of the properties were instead surrounded by a high wall that Serenity couldn’t see over. It was while they were passing by one of the walls that one of the bird-drawn carriages pulled up next to them.

“Duke Lowpeak.” The speaker was a woman, visibly older than the Duke. She shared the same pale golden-tinted skin and dark hair as nearly everyone on the street, but her irises were red. Probably a bloodline, though Serenity couldn’t tell which one; there were several that would change the color of the irises to red, the same way his draconic blood made his purple normally. “Such a pleasure to see you here on the street.”

Her words were pleasant enough, but her voice was filled with venom and Serenity could feel her flare her aura at the Duke. It was an obvious ploy to draw attention, so Serenity let the Duke deal with her while he watched for anyone else approaching. This would be the perfect time for an ambush; the wall and carriage blocked the view of almost everyone.

There was no one in the direction they’d been heading, so Serenity unfocused his eyes and paid attention to his Eyeless Sight instead. While it was nominally a Sight ability and usually showed him the same field of view he expected for whatever form he was in, it wasn’t actually limited by what his eyes could see.

There, walking slowly and carefully but not seeming to try to hide, from behind them. He was holding something; it didn’t seem like a knife, but he held it like he was afraid it would bite him. That wasn’t a good sign.

The approaching man moved off the direct line so he wouldn’t run into Serenity and came around towards the Duke from right next to Serenity. Serenity suppressed a grin; that would make this easier.

Once he should have come into sight, Serenity could only see a shimmer in the air. It was obvious enough since he knew to look, but it would be easy to overlook when distracted. Serenity casually reached out and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding whatever the item was in a firm grip.

Startled, the man dropped the item. Serenity could see it was a long, thin spike with a handle. It didn’t look sturdy enough to be a weapon meant for fighting, but if it were magical that wasn’t necessarily true.

He tried to pull away from Serenity, but didn’t have good leverage. He pulled straight back, instead of twisting his wrist, and accomplished little. Serenity glanced back at the pair of nobles; the Duke seemed to have noticed that something was happening, but the woman didn’t react. She was almost certainly simply a better actor than the Duke.

“This was a pleasant chat,” the Duke told the lady, “perhaps we can continue it at a more opportune moment?”

The woman nodded. “I shall await the chance.” She turned, still without giving a clear look at Serenity or the struggling man he was holding, then climbed back into her carriage.

The Duke turned towards Serenity. “Let whoever it is go. No point in trying to hold him here.”

Serenity let go. The Duke should know the city better than Serenity did, after all, and Serenity was confident this had been an attempt to get at the Duke rather than himself. He looked down at the needle, then back up at the Duke. “Is this why you chose to walk?”

The Duke had followed Serenity’s gaze downward, but hadn’t looked back up when Serenity did. “I wasn’t expecting this. Something, yes, but not this. This is unusually blatant, even for the Night Sky Court.” He pulled a square of cloth out of a pocket and used it to pick up the weapon. “Thank you for the backup; that would have been more difficult to handle alone.”

“The Night Sky Court? Are -”

The Duke gestured sharply with his right hand. “We can talk at the house.” He headed off at exactly the same speed as before, but Serenity noticed that the cloth-wrapped weapon had disappeared.

Fair enough. Serenity decided to change the topic to something safe that he’d wondered about anyway. “Why are there so few flyers?”

“What do you mean? There are quite a few recently.” The Duke gestured towards one that happened to be headed the opposite direction they were, which was getting close to them. “There’s one now. I remember when they were a truly rare sight, even in Zenith.”

The Duke cleared his throat; it sounded uncomfortable. “I don’t know how the Courts are affording them, but that’s who is buying them these days. They’re expensive, since they’re made offworld and we have to buy the ones that can run on mana since we don’t have the magic stones the crafters expect us to use.”

“Magic stones?” Serenity was confused by that. Magic stones weren’t required for flyers; it would be silly to add rocks to a flyer.

Serenity had a sudden mental image of a floating castle. He’d seen a few over the years; they were either ostentatious displays of power or they were from a world with significant amounts of floatstone or something similar. Floatstone was definitely the sort of magic rock that would be in a flyer, but surely it would be built in.

Why would it be necessary to replace floatstone with mana? That didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like floatstone deteriorated; if it did, there wouldn’t be worlds with so much of it. Plus, even if they did replace the floatstone, that was no reason to have to run the floater on mana; while there were spells to cause something to float, there were also enchantments that would do it.

The only reason you would convert a floater to use mana was if you wanted to power it yourself instead of using monster cores. There were people who did that, but as far as Serenity was concerned it was a fool’s game. He wasn’t sure why, but they were more expensive and had the reputation for breaking down faster.

That still wasn’t replacing magic stones with mana.

Unless he didn’t know what a monster core was?

Serenity glanced towards the Duke. “You don't mean magic crystals, do you? Usually called monster cores?”

Duke Lowpeak nodded. “That sounds right. They’re not found on Zon. I hear they come from specific dungeons, and we apparently don’t have the right ones. It’s the source of a lot of problems, since they’re used for almost everything, offworld.”

“What do you mean they aren’t found on Zon? Most of the monsters I’ve seen here have had cores. A little over half, at a guess, and probably tiny, but they’re there.” Serenity couldn’t believe no one had found them.

This time the Duke didn’t manage to hide his surprise. He did manage to say that it was something else to talk about once they were at the house.

Fortunately, it wasn’t far.

The Duke’s house had a small library. For an individual, it was a fairly decent collection; eight bookcases, all filled with books, covering the walls of what had to be his study. Most of them seemed to be either records or references; there were a couple of shelves that held brightly-colored works that were probably fiction and one entire bookcase that held things that didn’t seem to belong in a set, but the rest seemed to be stuff that was grouped in sets of at least four, usually more.

When they entered, the Duke waved at one of the two chairs next to the table. “Go ahead and have a seat.”

Why were there two chairs at the table? The room seemed to be fairly clearly set up for one, and the chairs didn’t match. Maybe it was for his daughter? He’d mentioned one at some point.

The Duke pulled two of the larger books off the non-set bookcase and brought them over to the table before sitting down himself. While they were both large, they didn’t match each other; one was bound in black leather, tall and wide but only a couple of inches thick, while the other had a green leather cover and was shorter and not as wide but closer to five inches thick than two. They both had other pieces of paper stuck in them at various places and looked well-used. “First of all, what monsters have you seen?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “The erkal and the birds - I’m not sure what they’re called. I think they’re probably native to Zon?”

The nobleman seemed startled. “Erkal? You mean freight-lizards are actually monsters? They can be pretty mean, but anyone can handle them if they know how. Only feral ones attack people.”

“Monsters can be tamed…” Serenity stopped short as the door to the study slammed open and a young woman barreled into the room.

After another look, Serenity had to correct himself. She wasn’t just a young woman, she was a young lady. There was a clear family resemblance between her and the Duke.

“Dad! Where were you, you didn’t say you’d be gone for hours!” The young woman looked like she wanted to either hug the Duke or hit him; Serenity wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know if she was certain, either.