As Ike paced the open carpeted space around the stairway his stomach rumbled. Just another reminder that he wasn’t making any progress here at all. Would his plan fall apart now? Where the hell was the food in this place? What was the butlers deal?

The second floor of the palace was built like two rectangles attached to the other. That deep burgundy carpet covered every inch of the floor, but spectacularly clean. Everything was. Clean and calm, earth tone colors on the walls and simple wooden accents giving the place a very homely feel to it all. Not to mention it smelled more like a summer morning than the back shed of a stablehouse. There was more that intrigued him though, that touched on that little part of his brain that had an incredible ability to ignore consequences and reach out to sate its curious desires. Doors.

He counted seven, including one which was actually more of an open wall on the other side of the building. The rest were shut tight, and the only one Ike had seen the inside of was the bar.

He pushed himself off the railing and decided to do a little investigation. After all, who knew what could be inside this place? Everyone seemed fond of acting like this was the most important and dangerous place on earth. Someone had to snoop around. Make sure nothing was tucked away in the shadows, lurking in a hastily closed broom closet in wait for an unsuspecting visitor to come by. Nerinai was probably off doing her own snooping and though he hated to admit it, was fine without him. Nerinai wasn’t the only person here though.

That little boost of confidence- convincing himself he was a proud Guardian- was enough to mask his hunger. It coated his mind as he walked between the opening above the foyer and the stairs, and turned into a sweet burning in his chest when he stopped in front of the first door.

“Ah. Damn,” Ike said, staring down at the locked handle. Such a simple and pathetic thing was a doorknob and yet he found himself pausing in front of it. Could he have broken it with the shovel hanging on his shoulder? Yeah. Would he? No.

The power of a clean and tidy building on his psyche was bothering him. He just moved on, feeling like an idiot for spending so long on a doorknob.

The next door, thankfully, opened with a soft click and steady groan. The inside was dark, but fumbling on the side of the door revealed a switch that lit up some ring lights in the ceiling. To his left, a fireplace lit up and cast tender glowing warmth on the room. Ike’s fingers brushed against the door as he walked in, pushing it closed while he stood there and took everything in.

Colors and riches were thrown around the room so casually it might’ve been a joke. A very expensive, very tasteful joke by the designer and occupant of this bedroom for a dozen. The bed in the middle was huge. Four posts held up a glossy green drapery with golden tassels, and under that was a bed that looked like sleeping in heaven. Ike only watched up and touched the soft white blanket instead of jumping in and falling asleep. He felt that might be a tad disrespectful.

He moved on to the fireplace wall. There were two seats close enough to touch in front of it, a little ottoman with a few faceless books sitting on top next to an empty cup.

Above that was painting. Ike felt his breath wash out of his chest upon looking at it. a lush forest, packed with brushes of thick greens and pockets of sky peering through that leaked into something like a temple. White marble arches, ornately cut stone that continued into a staircase heading down to the rocky beach on the right. The whole thing perfectly flowed from side to side with its color and its brush. Ike had never been a painter, never seen somebody paint, but he could tell that this was perfect. Even that made him a bit sick.

The painting made him wonder what the world must have looked like before the blight. Was it all as beautiful as this? Instead of the dead fields of mud and fleshy beasts, were there forests and rivers? Did people build for beauty more than guessing how many people they could pack into a room?

It was nothing like the monastery's paintings. There were a few, he’d usually just glance at them and move on. They were all harsh. Fields of bodies where only the Carrion Cross brought salvation. Some portraits of Raveness’s, tons of religious imagery, all about as cheery as a robbed graveyard with rain pushing its guts from the pits.

Nerinai would like the painting. Maybe it’d remind her why she was here. Ike, for one, was desperate to see a world like that.

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He moved to checking all the timid corners of the room. He snooped through a few furniture pieces, finding nothing but some dust, but he was seriously starting to wonder. This place was almost entirely clean. But there was a cup by the chairs, and the room smelled lived in. Sweat and skin, dirty clothes and coffee, the hints of life were all there without the life itself.

The wonder just got worse when he stepped into the bathroom. The room was a very clean, sanitized white. Everything was gone except a bar of soap and toothbrush by the sink.

Outside the room was a closet by the bed. Filled with clothes. Coats, trousers, lot’s of pale browns and thin fabric that Ike wouldn't get caught dead in. Strange design, too. He grabbed the sleeve of one shirt and brought it to his nose for a sniff.

“Weird,” he muttered to himself, let the shirt drop and closed the door up again.

Without Nerinai he felt like a blind kid stumbling through a city looking for his parents, hopelessly grabbing at every hint or hem for a pointer in the right direction. It wasn’t even just the room, what was with the butler? At the front door he seemed approachable, then Ike found him again in the bar and he acted like that.

Something the butler said came back to him, too. The old man mentioned having seen other Ravenesses come and go. Mentioned Nerinai having promise, having a plan. How much did he know about her and her about him? Nobody should be able to live that long.

All these questions were starting to put pressure on his skull. Without watching where he was going he ended up walking to the door and slamming his boot into the night table. While he stumbled back grabbing his toe, something fell out of the space between drawers.

“Ach! Stupid mother-” Ike stopped and looked. “Book?”?” He looked at the thing in a fit, balanced himself off one of the bed posts and shook off the throbbing pain in his toe for a better look.

He held it up to the light. Black leather casing that looks mysteriously wrinkled? Check. Big red runic symbol on the front? Check. Hidden in a hard to find spot? Double check. Whatever he found was shamanic. Not Nerinai’s though, he would’ve known if it was hers. This was something that probably came well before his mother’s grandmother’s father was a twinkle in the eye of the heavens.

What to do with it? Now he wasn’t so worried about the broken rune. Who cared about a stuffy old relic? He had a thing. An important thing.

The only issue was Nerinai having left and being incredibly unlikely to return. She didn’t even leave a note, just asked him to do the one thing he was not right now. Frankly, she should have expected less. Ike walked out of the room with a pep in his step he hadn’t had that morning.

He was passing the balcony on his way back to the room when a voice stopped him dead in his tracks. “Ho! Dear boy, I don’t believe we’ve met!”

Ike felt a sudden drop in his stomach, then looked over the ballister to whoever was below. It was a group; three people sitting in chairs around a coffee table covered in weapons. He blinked, and realized they were all wearing padded armor. Their swords had runes scribed into the metal.

Ike was sharing a building with Arcani warriors.

The realization that he was just standing there hit him like a heavy brick. He had to fight to find his voice again. “I, hi! You‘re- sorry. I don’t think we have!”

The old man- the one who called him in the first place- chuckled. “Then we ought to remedy that, yes? Come down. Let’s have a drink.”

Ike really wasn’t sure about a drink. The last person who offered started acting weird.

These were strangers, and ones that Nerinai was very worried about. But they were also Arcani. Who the hell was Ike to turn them down on anything? He was a maggot to their cobra. He was a seed to their mighty oak. Really he ought to be bowing to them from the second floor.

That might’ve been awkward, but he was desperate not to disappoint so he rushed away from the railing and to the stairs taking them two at a time.

Respect was a joke in this world. A thing so easily shifted from place to place, left behind and dwindled more than ash from a fire spread in the wind. Finding a thing to look at and gawk at for its reputation in this broken world was rare. Nothing carried that pride across continents like the Arcani. Nobody held the standard like they did.

The only person Ike would ever trust more than them was Nerinai, and that was simply because he was an idiot. It did give him a bit of pause though, at the bottom of the stairs before he could go to the sitting room and meet the warriors. He looked down at the book in his hands, but what would he do with it?

Nothing. Just like sitting in the room, on ‘guard duty’. Ike was just another bag of luggage left behind for Nerinai to go off and be the hero everyone expected her to be. Well, Ike though, he could do stuff too. Then he followed the still-unwashed footprints to go and meet his childhood heroes.