Ranvir forged a way forward, the children and kitten following in his wake. Slowly, though the resistance was significant, the father forced a path into existence. Struggling against the foreign surroundings, he scowled and lead with his single arm.

Glancing down at the tiny slip of paper in his hand, Ranvir noted on the numbers, then the numbers on the chairs. With a great sigh of relief, he realized their journey was over.

“These are ours,” he said, stepping back to let the lesser humans pass him by. “Seats 36, 34, and 32.”

Vasso stumbled into Frija as she froze before turning to glare at Ranvir with accusatory eyes. “There’s no seat for Menace?”

Sighing, Ranvir vaguely shrugged. “He can sit in your lap.”

Frija angrily put her hands on her hips in an odd mimicry of an adult. “Daddy, he can’t see anything from there.”

Vasso, deciding he didn’t want a part in this fight, skirted around Frija and took the farthest seat. Ranvir eyed the youth with longing eyes before turning back to his obstinant daughter. “Then he won’t be able to see from a seat, either.”

Frija pouted, temporarily stymied by his logic. Smiling, Ranvir tussled her hair and took the middle spot, so he could have a child on either side. Still, Frija struggled to counter his argument with more nonsense. “Come Firehearth,” Ranvir said. “Sit and enjoy the show.”

Estri, the snake lady magistrate, had gotten them tickets to this show for the children’s entertainment. Ranvir wasn’t sure if he was going to enjoy it, but he still needed a bit of time to process some of the information she’d given him.

A kitten was plopped into his lap. Menace, looking a little puzzled, but with his baby-animal eyes out in full force, looked up at him, ears tucked back as his orbs glistened with unshed tears.

“There!” Frija exclaimed. “You’re much bigger than us! He’ll see better from there.”

Ranvir rolled his eyes and gently patted down the kitten’s fur. Though the noise drowned it out, he could feel Menace purring slightly.

What felt like a full flare, but was probably less than a quarter, passed as Ranvir continuously reassured both children that the show was beginning. ‘You’ve already gone to the bathroom’, ‘no, you can’t get your snacks yet’, ‘you’d eat them too fast’, ‘they shouldn’t run off just because they were getting bored’, ‘yes, the show will begin any minute now’, ‘you should act more like Menace and just relax’, and a hundred more. Finally, the lights dimmed. Instantly, like they’d rehearsed it together, Vasso and Frija grew quiet and still.

Ranvir turned his attention to the stage. The whole arena reminded Ranvir of the amphitheaters that littered the Elusrian countrysides. Except it was all indoors with controlled lighting. As it grew dark, Frija grabbed onto the outer coat Ranvir’d put on to avoid getting everything around him too wet. He also offered his hand to Vasso to who patted it once before waving it off.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

“Daddy, can I have my snacks now?” Frija said at the same moment.

“In a moment, sweetie,” Ranvir replied, and squeezed Vasso’s arm before returning it to Menace.

As the lights dimmed, Ranvir sensed others sitting on the rafters preparing their mana. He tensed before realizing they were aiming at the stage. Others, wet without being water, primed underneath the stage. This was already far more elaborate than any of the plays the villagers would put on back home and they hadn’t even done anything.

“Welcome one and all!” A man cried out as he burst onto the scene. Light speared onto him in a cone, illuminating him from above. The man wore an elaborate layered outfit, with a long coat and a pair of pants ending at hairy knees that back bend like a wolf’s. All but his face was covered in hair, that didn’t quite qualify as fur, though from the tufts appearing at his neck suggested it would be close elsewhere.

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“Children and old! Woman and man! Welcome to the Moonlight grove!” as he named the show, the lights turned from yellow to white and mist rushed up from the stage. In moments, he was shrouded to the waist, and the moonlight darkened his shadows considerably. “A storyteller’s night. Be wary thee who hold no fright!”

Another set of mana burned, and slowly the sounds of a forest coming alive with the night drifted up from the stage. Owl hooting, foxes growling, and occasionally the shout of something bigger.

Frija gasped, grabbing Ranvir’s coat with both hands. Vasso leaned forwards, both eyes locked on the man. Ranvir was more fascinated by the application of mana outside of general combative utility.

“It was at dark, near morn,” the man said, slowly stepping to the side as a girl ran onto the other end of the circular stage. “A child left low and forlorn,” the child’s cries could be heard in the silent arena. “On the planet of Bruskar, someone had taken her heart and a jar. A foul, cruel man had absconded, taken with him her bonded,” A man, carrying a glass vase with a fish inside it, whispered across the back of the stage.

Ranvir leaned back in his seat as the story’s premise unfolded. A child had her bonded taken from her before they could finish and she had to get it back so they could finish the process. It was to be a fairly standard adventure, a tale of heroes closer to the ones of Vednar than Korfyi, Ranvir surmised. Happy endings, rather than tragedies. Might be a pleasant change of pace for Vasso, though Frija’d grown up on a mix of tales from both Limclea and Elusria.

However, while the story of an eight-year-old going out to fight against an evil group of villainous scum was interesting and their presentation even more so, it wasn’t really why Ranvir’d taken the children to a show. He’d gone to buy some time to think and consider.

Back home, he’d worried that he didn’t know enough to predict people’s behavior, so he’d been forced to take it slowly, make his plans after arrival. He’d been correct. Estri had called him a god, or at least ken to the divine. Ranvir assumed it was related to his power.

From what he’d scoured of the place so far, there weren’t any people stronger than him. Presumably, their Lord King may be. But like in Elusria, there might be other circumstances related. Queen Minul wasn’t the strongest tethered despite her monarchy. Something similar might be happening here. Either way, Ranvir couldn’t immediately detect them.

Either way, he didn’t want to linger too long in the city because of this. If it truly turned out that they thought Ranvir was a god, then people might soon come for him. Ranvir might be a match for anybody on Vednar, but after meeting Kyriake and knowing she wasn’t even at the peak of power on Korfyi, he somehow doubted it. He could probably match a master for power, but he didn’t know how strong Saleema was.

All of that was to say, that an entire world shard of people and no one was stronger than the average fighter on Korfyi or Vednar? Highly unlikely.

Then again, they seemed to have a highly unintuitive system here. Kids, irrelevant of gender, bonded their animal between the ages of eight to nine. Whereas Amanaris could be initiated by an experienced braced at anytime, tethers didn’t work reliably before children transition into adults.

Again, there were other differences. The bonded didn’t seem to have distinct levels of power. Definitely no Tiers or Set, nor the stages of a tethered. Perhaps this was another symptom of them using their system wrong. Ranvir wasn’t yet ready to call that shot, however.

Unfortunately, it seemed unlikely that he could witness an actual bonding. Apparently, it was a highly spiritual experience, held between parents and child. Together, they would seek an animal for the child to bond, usually a baby. The kid would subdue its will and bring it back.

Over the next two years, the child would raise and care for the animal. Until finally, at the two-year mark, they would start another fight and merge into one being. Ranvir scratched at his chin as he considered the implications.

Estri hadn't mentioned if they got access to their creature’s mana before the bonding was finalized, or if it was only upon completion. If it was on completion, then it fit closer to when girls went through the tether-ceremony back home.

Ranvir would need to inspect their first Lord King’s rules when they returned to their quarters. He had a feeling the people had lost something in the time since their ruler had them written.

The biggest clue to this conclusion seemed to be the lack of growth after the bonding. After the bonded had merged with their animal, they would no longer grow in power. That was why so many of the guards had the same in level of power. They were bonded to the same kind of animal, from the same place.

One thing Ranvir was sure of, however, was that he wasn’t waiting two years to stop being wet all the time. Ranvir would return to Korfyi and he would do it drier than a bonfire.

“Daddy, I gotta pee,” Frija whispered. Ranvir glanced at her once, seeing her shimmy on her seat to understand it was a little more urgent than she made it sound.

“Come, Firehearth,” Ranvir said, handing the translation stone to Vasso, so he could continue enjoying the show.