The [Smith] and [Cellist] focused on Cara. The [Singer] was blank. What she wanted? Well…of course! If someone had given her an option, she’d have taken this, hands down. She couldn’t counterfeit money with it unless she was really clever, but this appealed to her acting sensibilities so much. It was a free prop! A way to cover mistakes or add to a scene. Or—

She had a thought. The butterfly vanished. Cara closed her eyes.

“No way this can work. No way. But maybe…just maybe…”

Violetta and Idelt stared at her. They saw Cara open her eyes, and then stare past them. The two turned—

And then they saw something hovering in the air. It was…well…

A yellow smiley face. Like one of the emojis, but 2D. It floated there, completely stylized. Transparent if you got close. But real. A hologram in the world. And then—it opened its mouth. And Can’t Stop This Feeling began to play, as if Cara’s iPhone was working.

The smiley-face winked at Violetta as the song began to play. The [Cellist] stared at it, open-mouthed.

Then she screamed.

“What is that thing? Get it away! Get it away!”

The song stopped when Cara stopped concentrating and Violetta ran screaming and Idelt punched the face, missed, and hit the wall hard enough to crack the wood. But—

It was music.

——

Lord Lantal of House Afiele was stressed. Playing host to a [Princess] was costly. As his children knew—

as his people and fellow nobility and the Gloomwrens in their coops knew—Afiele was not rich.

Productive, yes. But Lantal knew the problem lay in the productivity of Afiele itself. It produced tomatoes, wheat, various herbs for [Alchemists]—and it made too much of everything.

Noelictus was a great land for growing crops, which surprised many people who didn’t know of its reputation. But it was one of the agricultural giants of the world, along with Oteslia in Izril, or one of those Lizardfolk jungle-farms. And Afiele produced a lot even by Noelictus’ standards. Their [Farmers]

weren’t the highest-leveled, but they didn’t need to be.

Afiele had a secret. The same secret buried beneath the other verdant areas of soil across Noelictus. The crops, the earth, perhaps even the people and animals thrived on the magic generated by the sacred dead.

Beneath Afiele lay the old tomb, which had for millennia buried the dead. That had ceased, oh, four thousand years back. Lantal remembered the old records talking about the dangers of the dead returning. No doubt [Necromancers] were a significant threat, so the tomb had been sealed.

But the magic remained. And it provided the abundance that let crops sprout up almost overnight.

Lantal was a [Lord of the Fields], Level 16. Not high-level. In fact, rather low for a [Lord]. On the other hand, he was a [Deathkeeper], a class owned by all of Noelictus’ nobility. A class for undead slayers.