Bath was mildly annoyed by Eyrin's gullibility. For a verdora with a mysterious past and a double life, Eyrin seemed to have no doubts about the integrity of his "protege."

Bath knew he was being somewhat unfair: his black-hole of a shell prevented Eyrin from reading his intentions; moreover, his complete lack of political ties gave Eyrin no reason to be suspicious. And since he was also chosen for the vanguard by Juserin, Eyrin could take this as an additional vouch of character.

"I tire of Vast Desert," Bath sighed, inclining his head toward the Delelens.

Erzey elevated her brow crests. "I feel much the same...while training up our boons is a fulfilling way to pass the time, the omnipresent red is stifling."

Juselin stretched out in the sand, curving his spine upwards. "Do either of you know who tonight's public performers are?"

Bath cocked his head, his veil shifting downward over the side of his left maw. "Isn't Aberash singing in the Arena?"

"I hear she's one of the personal escorts of the Knight," Erzey said, blinking once. "Is this the first time she's singing for the vanguard?"

Bath shrugged. "I'm not sure. However, if she's the escort of the Knight, she must have a large amount of PP. If she's willing to do a public performance..."

Juselin inclined his head knowingly. "She's likely invested a good deal of it into relevant boons."

"It's decided then," Erzey smiled. "The Arena has already been open for an hour; why don't we secure good seats?"

---

The trio made their way to the Arena, passing through its towering, heavy front doors and climbing up one of three staircases leading to the right. Erzey's desire to go early to the Arena for the purpose of "securing good seats" was folly: as the Arena had the capacity to fit many thousands of sapients, the relatively small size of the vanguard (one-thousand sapients, with a few thousand more quasies) ensured that the entire vanguard had access to prime seats.

Bath did note that the Arena was slightly more full than usual, likely on account of Aberash's reputation. While Bath would never tell the Delelens, he knew that Aberash had actually invested much of her PP into the artist boon, specifically investing down pathways pertaining to vocal and string performance. As he and the Delelens sat in the Arena stands, Bath swept out essence tendrils to comb through the structure, searching for Aberash.

Found her, Bath thought as he narrowed in on the slight woman. She was currently within one of the Arena's dressing rooms. There, several squirrel quasies attended to her makeup and costume. A jerboa in a violet feather scarf and red fedora appeared to be ordering them around, her keen eyes appraising Aberash's budding aesthetic. Bath observed the scene for a minute, curious by the seemingly-massive effort that went into preparing Aberash for the stage.

Then, he let his essence drift into her body, pooling in her lungs. Essence strands internalized, Bath began to get a more accurate read on Aberash's PP investment.

He found that, aside from investing in the artist boon, Aberash had invested her PP into the director boon, enhancing the charisma and volume of her voice. Finally, Bath noticed that she had invested the remainder of her PP into the administrator path. Given the rest of her investment choices, Bath speculated that she was trying to adopt the administrator boon to work with her voice, the end result of which would be generating localized sonic booms. Or something. Bath wasn't really sure what it would look like since he hadn't originally thought to use the administrator boons for such a purpose.

He smiled. It's novel, unforeseen combinations of boon paths like this that affirm my decision to leave the path system so open-ended. Bath also disliked creating predetermined skills and linear ability progressions because doing so took time and patience: even though, ironically, Bath had an unlimited supply of both, he disdained the tedium of generating skills and abilities. The basic boons are enough: if people want more than that, they'll have to forge their own ways forward.

Wait...no way, Bath thought, steering his tiny disembodied eyes toward the door to the dressing room. Is that Dean?

"Abbie," he said, passing through the threshold. The heavy door clunked loudly behind him, causing the hands of an attending squirrel to falter.

This isn't particularly out of the ordinary, Bath reasoned, or else the quasies in the dressing room would have been more surprised to see him.

In Bath's mind, a more important issue needed addressing: Did Dean just call Aberash...Abbie!?

Bath suddenly felt quite out of the loop. He'd planned to keep his essence mostly internalized, keeping himself rooted to a physical body in a way he'd almost completely forgone when conquering Earth. Sure, he sent his essence out from time to time to spy on interesting sapients and communicate with Lisa, but that was a far cry from trying to monitor the goings-ons of an entire city of over fifty-thousand like Basalith.

In lieu of constant surveillance, Bath was trying to improve his intuitive and deductive reasoning skills. Let's see...he thought. Dean is alone in a foreign city, thrust into a position of power he never wanted...the metaphorical messiah to the people of Somalia, a failed state. He's socially awkward, probably finds it hard to make new friends, but he's a team player. So, he assembles around himself a team...

"Dean," Aberash said, pushing herself up from her seat. The squirrels around her chattered in what Bath perceived to be routine annoyance.

She called him Dean, not Knight, Bath noted.

"You look beautiful," Dean said, smiling.

Bath couldn't remember ever seeing Dean give anyone this kind of smile. If he'd ever thought one of Dean's smiles genuine before, those smiles paled before the smile he now gave Aberash.

It's so...real. Bare.

Aberash let out a snort of quiet laughter. "Stop; there are people watching," she said, raising an eyebrow, smiling mischievously.

Uh... Bath thought nervously.

Dean laughed. "Don't mind the squirrels," he said. "You guys can keep a secret, right?"

"How many signatures?" one of them asked, walking forward.

Dean fingered his lip, amusement glinting in his eyes. "One-hundred?"

The squirrel let out a sigh. "Last time you gave us ninety; the time before you gave us fifty."

Dean smirked. "Fine, how about one-hundred and twenty?"

"Deal," the squirrel replied, holding out her bushy tail. Dean walked forward and grasped it in his hand.

"Alright, now...scram," he joked, making a shooing gesture. The squirrels glanced at each other, a few beating their eye lashes and giving Dean coy smiles. The jerboa in charge of the dressing room left with the squirrels, though not before shooting Dean a knowing look.

Bath was currently monitoring the heart rates of everyone in the room, and noticed that Dean's jumped when the jerboa looked his way, an almost imperceptible bit of red coloring his dark cheeks.

Aberash took the initiative, walking towards Dean. She had to step over a few pairs of clothes on the way, her bare feet padding lightly over the carpeted hard wood floor. Bath generated a second pair of eyes so that he had two vision inputs: a Dean-cam and an Abbie-cam.

Aberash gave Dean a lopsided grin as she reached his position, placing a hand on her hip. Dean rolled his eyes and pulled her into his chest, the two of them hugging.

Wow, this is absolute gold, Bath thought, grinning deviously to himself.

Then, Dean pulled away. "I know you'll sound great."

Huh?

"I really appreciate your support," she said, her eyes crinkling. "You coming out to the desert to hear me practice alone..." she inhaled deeply, a serious expression coming over her features. "It means a lot."

"It's nothing," Dean replied dismissively. "Only takes me like, two minutes to get to your practice area."

Aberash let loose a giggle. "It would only take you two minutes. Anyways, thanks for being such a good friend."

Dean cocked an eyebrow. "You better be as good on the stage as you were last night," he said, his voice carrying a note of humorous menace.

"Yeah yeah, captain," she snorted. "Now get out so the squirrels can finish getting me ready."

"You sure look ready to me," he replied, backing up and turning toward the door. "Well, I'll see you in a few."

The two of them waved, Dean opening the door and deftly exiting the immediate premises.

What the hell was that? he wondered. I could have sworn this room was dripping with sexual tension; their heart rates were completely erratic, and then..."Thank for being a good friend." Am I that obtuse about human social behavior? For the millionth time since setting out on the vanguard, Bath wished Lisa were with him. She'd know what's happening.

Moreover, Bath was confused over why Dean had literally bribed the squirrel quasies to leave the premises and keep quiet about him meeting Aberash. A hug doesn't warrant one-hundred and twenty Knight signatures.

Seemingly alone in the room, Aberash surprised Bath by suddenly speaking out loud. "Damn," she said, sighing as she walked over to her dressing chair. She slid into it, splaying her legs out to the sides. "He's so nice," she murmured. She slid her arms onto the desk in front of the chair, leaning forward so that her face reflected back in the mirror. "And he's ripped as all hell...not even COTD muscles, which are kinda fake, but real muscles." She grinned, playing with a curl of hair.

Real muscles? Bath thought, confused. But...isn't it all the same? Muscle is muscle.

Aberash sighed against, this time more pronounced. "It's too bad."

"Too bad" what, damn it?

Despite Bath's raging curiosity, Aberash chose this moment to shut up: the quasies re-entered the room, cutting off her monolog.

Bath sighed, dispelling his disembodied eyes to focus on small talk with the Delelens. Fifteen minutes later, the ambient phosphorescent lighting in the stadium flared. Everyone began to holler in anticipation; after a minute or so, the stadium broke out into rhythmic clapping that steadily increased in tempo until, as Aberash stepped onto the dragonleaf platform elevated over the field, the tempo became so fast as to self-destruct like a bomb, the hundreds of clapping hands falling suddenly silent.

"Thank you all for coming to the Arena tonight," she announced, her director-enhanced voice carrying well through the now-quiet stadium. "I don't claim my performance is going to be the most interesting you've had the pleasure of seeing," she began, "but I hope you enjoy it."

Aberash held out her hand, stirring the dragonleaf of the platform. In a matter of seconds, she had a set of three drums, and a harp arrayed before her.

"What's that string instrument?" Erzey whispered. "Does anyone know?"

"I believe it's called a harp," Bath replied.

Erzey sighed. "Those humans you discovered by Illusta...they told you about everything, even stuff absent from planet 39123's encyclopedia entries."

"Shh," Juselin murmured. "I want to see her play."

This is a vocal concert, Bath recalled. The drums make sense, however, the harp...an interesting accompaniment choice. He couldn't imagine Aberash having access to harp lessons before COTD: she must be new to the instrument. His boons would enable her to rapidly learn the harp, but why would she waste her time and energy?

Aberash' flowing white and pink gown drifted along her arms as she sat before the harp on a seat of leaves. Bath thought the gown resembled a lotus flower with its coloring and folded material. Her brown eyes were outlined in a phosphorescent red paint, making them pop in the falling light of the evening.

She smiled, placed her hand on the bodice of the harp for support, and began to pluck.

Those must be tight strings, Bath marveled, appreciating how easy the motion looked when the Aberash must have been exerting significant force through her fingertips. Even though sound she produced was easily three times louder than a standard harp, it still possessed the grace and elegance of the standard instrument.

While Aberash's harp playing by itself was beautiful...Bath found himself growing ever more curious about where Aberash's performance would go.

After finishing the harp song, Aberash smiled and bowed her head. Without stopping to talk, she continued playing the harp. However, while she kept her hands in position over the harp's arching frame and strings, she angled the rest of her body outward. Soon, she was playing the harp while her head was looking the other way, towards the drums.

Then, she opened her mouth.

"This is it," Bath said, anticipating the beginning of a vocal melody.

...And the drums began to sound.

"What is she doing?" Juselin asked. "Is she...blowing on the drums?"

"No," Erzey replied, shaking her head, "she's sending some kind of shock way at them to set them off."

It's a soundless shockwave...until I expand my range of hearing to ultra-high frequencies. She's blasting the drums with short, high-energy pops. From two or so feet away, I'm not surprised she gets this much volume.

This song featured an odd combination of harp playing in tandem with three East-African-style drums. While the tenor of the drums moved in beat with the harp to make a harmonious whole, Bath wasn't satisfied.

I'm still waiting for her to sing.

The song elapsed; this time, Aberash stood and bowed, twirling in her flowing robes. Continuing her trend of not speaking, Aberash walked over to the drums and adjusted their position so that they lay directly to the side of the harp, elevating them on a two-foot tall block of dragonleaf and angling them at thirty degrees to the horizontal. She sat back down on her seat, resuming a typical harp playing posture. Now, when she faced the drums, she peered straight into the audience by the Arena's front doors such that Bath and the Delelens had a view of her left side.

This time, before plucking, she turned her face away and began to sing. Bath sighed in contentment: Aberash's PP investment into her voice was certainly paying dividends. While all but the most musically challenged could, after obtaining all their boons, sing in key and with good technique, these were only basic fundamentals. To truly excel at vocal performance, Aberash had no-doubt spent countless hours perfecting her technique and tweaking her voice.

Moreover, and perhaps more important than any of those technical efforts, was the fact that her voice was stunning: Its exquisiteness went beyond charisma PP investment, which would make one's voice sound more appealing to the ear.

Dean gets a private show? Of this? Bath coughed lightly, mildly jealous.

However, after only thirty seconds of pure vocals, Aberash pivoted her head to face the drums. Now, when she sang, her voice struck the drums, causing them to vibrate as they did in the previous song. However, this time when they rang, their tenor was lower, slower, warm and dark. They complemented her voice, seeming almost to harmonize with her in a lower octave.

If the first part of the song seemed haunting in its beauty, this part sounded mellifluous and calm. Two minutes into the song, Aberash decrescendoed. In seconds, only the residual thrumming of the drums was audible.

Then, Aberash smiled, her stern concentration melting away. She placed her hands on the harp and plucked.

The result was magic.