Meg led me up the stairs to a hall that went what looked like most of the length of the Merchant’s Rest, with doors on either side every so often. It looked just like a hotel hallway from Earth, except that there was no stained carpet on the floor or random bulk-purchase prints on the walls and every so often there was a lamp of some kind giving enough light to keep people from bumping into things. She opened the first door on the right, which had a “One” on it in some language I could read but didn’t know what it was called.

It’s annoying that I don’t know what language I’m speaking, I thought. My brain was acting pretty randomly except for the part that was keeping me steady - which was working harder than usual - and the part that was watching Meg, which was also working hard.

Meg stood by the open door patiently, with a nervous smile on her face. I felt bad that she was scared of me. She was so pretty. And she’d been nice to me. And she was so pretty.

“What language are we speaking, Meg?” I asked in a barely slurred voice.

“Gastonian, Master Chris,” she said, sounding very confused.

“It’s a nice language. Sounds very pretty. Especially when you talk,” I said. Then I realized what I’d said and panicked a little bit. Shit, she knows I don’t know what language I’m speaking! My brain, helpfully if a little late, then pointed out something else.

And did I just hit on her?

Turning red as… a very embarrassed person (I told you, I suck at metaphors.) Meg said, “Thank you, Master Chris.” There was an awkward pause. “This is your room. Unless you’d rather have another one? This is our best but I could help you go to the Duke’s Arms and…”

“No, I like it here,” I said, taking the hint and walking through the door. The room was small, but it had a nice window that looked over the square. It was dark outside but I could see lights of some kind. Between the open door and the window, enough light was coming in that I could see the basic shapes of the furniture, but not much more.

A pace behind me, Meg came in and touched something on the wall by the door. It started to glow. I saw the reflection in the window glass and spun around in surprise. I only stumbled a little. In my defense, there wasn’t a lot of room. The light had revealed a decent sized bed, a little stand next to it with a drawer, and two chairs with a small table between them next to the window. The window had cloth curtains, which were drawn back. The bed had a pillow and a coverlet. It all looked clean and neat.

“What’s that?” I said. I may have been a little too enthusiastic. Meg jumped at my sudden movement, and took a step back. “Sorry, sorry. It’s okay. Did you do that? Can you do magic?” Hey, wait, the Help thingie said everybody has a Resonance… is hers about lighting stuff up?

“No, Master Chris.” She shook her head. “I mean, yes, Master Chris. I mean, no, I didn’t make the light, but I did turn it on. It’s a glow stone. Uncle Peter bought it from a merchant, a Song Mage with the gift of Light made it. If you touch it it starts to glow. This is our best room so we have it here.” She looked a little proud. “You won’t need a candle in here!”

“So you can do magic but not light magic?” I said, proud of my logical analysis of what she’d said. I’m not so drink.

Meg didn’t look impressed. She looked very confused. “Of course, Master Chris. My gift is Water. But I’m not a Song Mage, I’m not even particularly powerful. I can make clean water for Aunt Miranda to cook with, and that’s about it.”

“That’s so cool!” I said, making her jump a little again. “Show me? Please?”

“A… all right,” she said. “It’s just a little Water, Master Chris, but if it pleases you.” She shut the door and walked over to the table. “May I sit down?”

“Of course,” I said, sitting in one of the chairs after another awkward pause. Once I was sitting, she sat as well and picked up a glass that was on the table next to a small pitcher which was apparently full of water. “I fill the pitchers every morning after breakfast,” she said with a small but proud smile. “The water is perfectly clean and safe. It even tastes good.”

“I bet you taste great,” I said without thinking. Then I winced. “I mean, the water you make. To drink. In the pitcher.” I was glad there was no mirror in the room, because I was probably as red as she had been a second ago.

For once, she didn’t blush. She giggled. It was adorable.

“Thank you, Master Chris. Here, I’ll make some water in the glass.” She looked at the glass, concentrating, and began to sing. Her note was surprisingly low-pitched, barely higher than my own. It sounded very strange coming from a vivacious young woman.

D? I wondered. I think that’s a D. And I think I do have perfect pitch. I could tell what the note was without a lot of trouble. After a second or two, the note… changed. It didn’t change pitch, not at all, but it acquired more.. depth? I don’t know a good word for it. It was a familiar feeling, though. It felt like I had felt when I had put Breath into my song.

Water slowly started to appear in the glass. Meg smiled but held her note. The water was forming at a visible rate, but it would obviously take several seconds for her to fill the glass. Without thinking, I held out my hand and sang my own note. Something in the sound of her note pulled at me, and I infused Breath into my song.

A text box appeared. I blinked.

Harmonize with Meg Brightman? This will automatically add her to the Band. You may remove her from the Band at any time.

Yes, I thought in wonder. I had no idea what was happening but this sounded super cool.

The water in the glass started to swirl. Meg almost dropped it, looking at me in in wide-eyed surprise. She kept singing for a second, then stopped. The glass was about half full. It had water in it, but the water looked a little… dim. It didn’t pass the light of the glow stone the way you would have thought it should.

“What… what did you do, Master Chris?” She put the glass down carefully, looking away only long enough to lower her shaking hand to the table. “Was that Song Magery? What did you put in the water?”

“I didn’t put anything in it,” I said, also looking surprised, but not sure why she seemed so upset. “I just sang when you did.”

“Well, then, you put whatever your gift is in the glass while I was putting the water in it,” she replied, still looking at me like I had horns or a halo. Or both. “But it felt so… odd.”

Deciding that I might as well share a little, I said, “I… um, my gift is Shadow.”

She nodded and looked at the glass, her eyes furrowing. “You didn’t sing another gift?” I shook my head. I had no idea what that meant but I definitely sang my main note. “Then why wasn’t there a shadow in the water? And why didn’t it go away when you stopped singing? There’s a light right there. It’s even a Light glow stone.” Don’t ask me how I could hear the difference between light and Light. I don’t know. I suspect that they weren’t really the same word in Gastonian, whatever the Hell that was.

“The water’s kinda dark? Maybe a little?” I said hesitantly.

“It is,” she said, staring at it. “But why?”

“Maybe I did something to it when I sang?” I offered.

“You can’t affect someone else’s magic by singing,” she said, looking at me with more confusion yet. “You can set your singing against theirs, but you can’t do anything about their Manifestations.” There was that ‘How do you not know that?’ tone I was already getting used to. “So what did you do?”

I shrugged. “Got me.” It’s not like I have any idea about how all this magic music stuff works, I just got here today.

Meg looked at the glass of water in wonder. Singing her note, she held her hand to the glass.

“It’s water… but it isn’t,” she said after a moment, barely breathing. “There’s nothing in it, if there was I could pull the water away from it. But it’s… part of the water. I can’t separate them like I could if it was dirty or salty.”

Before I could stop her, or even think to stop her, or think that I should think to stop her, Meg put her finger in the glass. Her eyes grew big.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said, her words slow and stumbling.

And then she passed out.

But it was a slow-motion passing-out, if there is such a thing. Well, there was now. Her eyes closed and she sort of folded onto the table. Her head was neatly nestled in the crook of her arms, even. It would have been adorable if I hadn’t been worried she was about to die. She hadn’t sounded scared or anything. And she had time to catch herself before she went all the way unconscious, it seemed like, but not time to do or say anything else. Her voice had just been… really sleepy.

I, on the other hand, had most of the drunk shocked right the Hell out of me. I mean, I probably still wasn’t safe to drive, but the adrenalin kicked my slow-motion thoughts right in the butt. And I didn’t have a car anyway.

Oh crap ohcrap ohCRAP what did I do? What is that stuff? Did I make it with magic? If I did it’ll be a spell on my sheet right?

After making sure she was breathing - she was, slow and steady - I said, “Character Sheet.” I didn’t have to speak aloud to get at the System, but it helped me focus.

Name: Chris Erikson

Class: Song Mage

Level: 3

Health: 100

Breath: 130

Stamina: 100

Strength: 10

Intelligence: 16

Wisdom: 12

Dexterity: 14

Constitution: 9

Charisma: 12

Resonance: C#

Element: Shadow / Thought

Stat Points: 2

Known Manifestations:

Call Shadows, Slow Thought

Known Harmony Manifestations:

Create Dream Water (C#/D)

Special Skills:

Omniglot, Leader of the Band

Band Members:

Meg Brightman (D)

I froze up for a second. Not only were there new things on the sheet, there were new kinds of things on the sheet. Why wasn’t all that on there before? Is this one of those super annoying games where you don’t even know what kinds of things you can do until you do them? Fuck! First I have to figure out what the Hell I did to Meg.

“Help Create Dream Water.”

Create Dream Water: A Harmony Manifestation that creates Dream Water. 5 Breath per liter. Element: Water. Domain: Thought.

Holy. Shit. It’s not Shadow in the water. It’s Thought. “Help Dream Water.”

Dream Water: Created by a Harmony Manifestation, Dream Water gives people extremely vivid and enjoyable dreams the next time they sleep. If a person who is not asleep is exposed to Dream Water, they will likely fall asleep very quickly. A person who is dreaming a Dream Water dream will not wake up before the dream ends, which will take at least one hour.

I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. She was just asleep. She was going to be fine. And this Dream Water stuff sounded kind of cool, really. Instant sleep potion! And nice dreams to boot. So why was she so freaked out? And wait a minute, Level 3? Stat points?

Meg was going to be asleep for a while, so I had time to mess with my character sheet before I addressed the freak-out question. “Help Stat Points.”

Stat Points: Short for “Statistics Points,” Stat Points can be used to increase any of the six base characteristics.

“Yes!” I said, a little too loudly. I flinched and looked at Meg, but she didn’t so much as twitch. “Okay. Let’s see here…” I reviewed the sheet. “What I’m lowest on is Con. If I increased Intelligence I might get more Breath or something, but I am going to have to fight at some point, I bet.” After a short pause, I said very deliberately, “One Stat Point to Constitution.”

Nothing happened, but checking my sheet again, I saw that my Constitution had gone up one… and my Health had gone up ten. Which was weird, because if it was ten HP per Con, why was it 100 before and 110 now and not 90 and 100?

“Help Level.”

Level: A rough approximation of how well an individual uses their overall power and ability. Levels are awarded for accomplishing difficult things.

“Wait, what? I just get a Level for… doing something? No experience points or anything else?” Another pause. “Help Experience.”

Experience: Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. Levels are not related to experience, because Levels are what you get when you did get what you wanted, if it was hard to get.

I paused yet again, but this time to curse the faceless voice that had put me here, because I was pretty sure they were the ones who were trolling me with these so-called Help Text boxes. But anyway, Stat Points weren’t the only new thing that had appeared on my Character Sheet. It didn’t say there was a time limit so I left the other Stat Point alone for now.

Let’s figure out this Band thing. “Help Band.”

Band: People who are allied with the Leader of the Band can become members of the Band. Band members can Harmonize with the Leader of the Band and with each other. Other benefits may also be available. Band Members may be removed from the Band at any time by the Leader of the Band or may remove themselves.

Okay, it’s a party system. That seems simple enough. Have to see if it has chat or shared status or whatever, but let’s wait for Meg to wake up first. I was beginning to suspect that my Isekai Cheat Power - there’s always an Isekai Cheat Power - wasn’t being a Song Mage, but being the Leader of the Band, whatever that turned out to mean. Moving along.

“Help Harmony Manifestation.”

Harmony Manifestation: Harmony Manifestations are Manifestations created by Harmonizing.

There may have been more cursing. “Help Harmonizing.”

Harmonizing: Harmonizing occurs when two or more Breath-infused notes are sung in harmony.

There was definitely more cursing that time. Obviously that’s what harmony was. You didn’t need nearly a month of Musical Theory to know that. But why had it freaked Meg out so much? It was a mystery. A question with no apparent answer. An important question. But not nearly as important as another question that suddenly manifested itself.

Specifically, the question of what to do about the fact that someone was knocking on the door.

“Master Chris? Meg? Is everything all right?”

Oh, shit.