§093 Sunglaze Resort

Taylor — Sunglaze Basin, Twilight Realm

When Taylor and Saria first met, they made each other some promises. She promised to be his guide in the Twilight Realm, help him map gateways between there and Aarden, and source rare materials. Among other things, he promised her a night at the Sunglaze Resort, and the time had come to pay up. Springtime was said to be the ideal season, and he could feel her impatience through their bond. The battle at Uroda was two full weeks ago, and that had come on the heels of over two months of not doing much while he focused on Alchemy. The Army of Lightness wanted some action, and Taylor had an outstanding obligation to provide entertainment. 

Taylor arrived at the little town as he usually did, by sailing downriver from a gate near Bostkirk to the village across from the resort. His boat was well-known to the local spirits, and they waved down to him from a bridge as he pulled onto shore and set a ward. It wouldn't do anything, but if someone tried to 'borrow' his craft, it would display his sign so they knew whose property they were stealing. They would see a circle of light suspended in the air, with three poplar leaves arranged within. Spirits held keen respect for the notion of property, but only if the claim met certain conditions.

For instance, Taylor's ownership of his satchel would be recognized by any spirit, regardless of age or strength. He hunted for the materials and enchanted the bag himself. It was full of his magic and contained all his treasures. Any spirit who touched it would be imparted with the knowledge that it belonged to someone of Taylor's caliber, and that their prying was unwelcome. They could still choose to take it, but few would.

His sailboat exhibited a weaker form of ownership. Taylor purchased it with money and used it sporadically. He wasn't especially attached to it. However, if it wandered off, then he would be obliged to go looking for it. Hence, the ward.

He found the Army of Lightness at Saria's house, all dressed in patterned silk robes tied shut with wide sashes. Saria's was woven with patterns of waves, Tanya's was embroidered with trees, and Premi's was like clouds over a sunset.

Jalil was slightly different. He wore a white pleated skirt that fell to his ankles, belted over a lightweight robe the color of spring grass. He topped that with an open jacket in darker green that fell to his knees. His inner robe flashed iridescent colors against the light.

"You all look great."

Saria announced, "Jalil will help you dress."

"I dressed! What's wrong with what I have on?"

"You don't match," they all said together.

The clothes they prepared for him were like Jalil's but in different colors. The skirt was the color of bone, subtly woven with hexagonal patterns. The inner robe was the same blue as his hair, shot through with gold thread. The outer robe was an intense black and had a dramatic design on the back, of the sun in full eclipse with a blazing annulus that might have been embroidered in mithril. A pair of metal badges adorned the sleeves, each depicting three poplar leaves inside a circle, the same sign he used to mark his boat.

He liked the way the robes moved when he walked and turned, and admired them in Saria's too-small mirror. And that eclipse! It was impressive and ominous at once. It wasn't an outfit he could wear every day, but it felt right for special occasions.

"Are you done swishing around yet?" smiled Saria's reflection. "The rest of us would like to go now."

On the short walk to the resort, Taylor asked them, "Why are the spirits' fashion so much like the elves?"

"Our first summoners were elves." Premi was in her feathered dwarf form. "They kept the secrets of summoning to themselves for a long time. In the process, they got most of their culture from us. You wouldn't know it looking at them now, but they used to live in dirt huts."

A double line of barker girls stood near the bridge between the village and Sunglaze Resort. They wore human shapes and a uniform of robes in all the same pink color. Paper fans hid their faces under painted eyes and thin dark brows. "Welcome!" they said as each potential customer passed by, "Welcome to the Sunglaze Resort! There's music tonight! Fresh kori-kori! Games and dances!"

The resort sat at the far side of the bridge, on a foundation of worked stone. It looked like eight buildings stacked on top of each other, each one slightly smaller than the one below it, with eaves at every floor. Inside, a chorus of women sang with a stringed instrument. Behind the resort rose a low cliff topped with trees in bloom. Pink, white, and yellow petals fell down to them from above, drifting on spring zephyrs.

Taylor and the Army of Lightness stopped and let the petals fall around them. Most landed in the river and drifted away downstream. Some blew all the way across the river to scatter among the village rooftops. The flowers, the resort, the clothes. It all felt perfect.

"Saria? Where did you get these clothes?"

"They're gifts from Mata'ari."

"The great spirit of Sunglaze River Mata'ari? How do you know him?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm a tributary by way of Fingers Lake. And I live here, when I'm not in my own river."

"Did we do anything for him?"

"Most of the Army of Darkness is from here. Do you know how much mana you've put into Sunglaze Basin? And that's not counting the two rifts you closed over his territory. If you don't want to receive gifts from greater spirits, you need to take more treasure from your hunts. They keep track."

"I'm not sure how the accounting even works."

Premi headed for the resort's front doors. "He's not paying for tonight, though. That's on you!"

Spirits got paid in mana when they were summoned, in the form of colorful marbles. Mana also grew on plants, if they were healthy enough, and could be collected like dewdrops that solidified when removed from their host. Spirits could eat the mana, use it to power their magic, and employ it in crafting. Because of its many uses, they also used it as currency.

Taylor had learned the trick of turning his own mana into marbles. Actually, he could turn his mana into prismatic little ingots, or strands of gold, or any of a number of desirable things. The trick only worked in Twilight, but within the realm, it was a handy way to purchase goods while draining his mana.

He'd saved up his marbles for tonight, stashing them in a bucket at Saria's house. She had the bucket with her and plopped it down on the greeter's podium with the words, "Dux Twilight and the Army of Lightness have arrived."

"It's an honor to have you tonight." The greeter, a four-tailed foxkin man, weighed the bucket on a nearby scale that conveniently tallied the quantity of mana rather than the weight. He entered an amount into a ledger and handed over a tall stack of colored disks. "Please enjoy your evening."

Saria steered Taylor through another set of doors, laquered red and dotted with brass rivets, that opened to receive them. The space beyond the doors was a cross between a carnival and a casino. They spent the next two hours mostly at silly games that wouldn't have been much fun alone, but were entertaining as a group. There was a ring-toss game, with fairies in tiny boats as the targets. If a player could get the ring around a fairy without capsizing it or knocking it over, then they won a prize. The game was challenging because the fairies were giant hams. The lightest touch from the ring would send them diving into the water as if their lives depended on it, and they insulted the players at inventive length. 

In another game, stick spirits played the part of bowling pins. They cried gruesomely when they were struck down, as if they'd been unfairly murdered. But woe to the player who didn't roll the ball hard enough: the vengeful little twigs would kick it back hard enough to injure the player. For all their caterwauling when they got knocked down, limping away while nursing their broken limbs tied together with bits of string, the same spirits appeared in another lane in under a minute, perfectly healthy.

Dice and cards were available in great variety for small stakes. Taylor and Saria spent a productive half hour playing against a gang of tattooed vegetables, only to lose it all to a six-foot-tall sheep.

The second floor was the bathhouse, but Saria explained that most spirits used it during cold weather or after a difficult summoning. They went directly to the third floor for music and food. They sat at a low table, on comfortable cushions, drinking warm rice wine while a trio of spirits danced for the room, accompanied by a flute and a stringed instrument like a banjo. The women were like the barkers outside, and Taylor finally got to see their faces as they moved their fans around as part of the dance. His companions seemed enchanted by their appearance, but to him, they had strangely long faces and tiny mouths. Premi explained they were all bird spirits and were just as noisy in their native forms as they were in the resort. "For someone so broad-minded, I'm surprised you can't see how beautiful they are."

"I think it would be different if they weren't so close to human faces. My brain keeps wanting them to be human, but they're just slightly wrong. If they were more different, they'd be easier to consider on their own merits. But they dance well," he said, trying to be more generous. "They're very graceful."

They dined on all kinds of foods, most of which Taylor didn't recognize. The servers kept coming with more dishes and rice wine, and his companions had their fill, talking about the fights they'd had and the places they'd been.

After Taylor's second tiny cup of watered-down wine, something clicked. It was an old, old memory, from a first life that he could barely remember. The robes. The fans. Paper lanterns and tiny cups of wine. People used to be crazy about all of it. What were their names? Gilbert and Sullivan. They had that musical that virtually every person in London had seen at least twice. It ran for years. He had an English girlfriend for a while, and she played in the orchestra, so he got to watch the rehearsals as many times as he wanted. When Taylor died, the show was still running.

"Japan!"

"What's that?" asked Tanya.

"All of this is from Japan! Your whole culture. All of it! Right down to the cherry blossoms! It's Japanese! All you need now is three little schoolgirls!"

"He's cracked," laughed Jalil.

"No more wine for you." Saria took his cup and poured its contents into hers. "Let me take that off your hands."

At some point, someone else from Earth had been to Twilight and given them Japanese culture, and Twilight had exported it to the elves.

Customers formed an exuberant line and were dancing around the dining hall to a jaunty tune, with the barker women liberally mixed in with customers, cheering them on. Taylor could identify several members of the Army of Darkness and the Praxium Brigade. Apparently, his roster received payoffs good enough to afford the occasional night on the town.

A small bear spirit in the resort's uniform came to their table and bowed to them, which in itself was unusual. The servers were unobtrusive, and the barker women were cheerfully chatty. This was something else.

"Wen-Mata'ari invites you all to join him in his private dining room."

"We'd love to!" Saria answered for all of them, but it wasn't like any of them would object. They followed the bear to an elevator (the first Taylor had seen in this world) and rode it to the seventh floor, where it opened into a large room with a view of the river, the village, and the lands beyond. A single long table graced the room, lacquered black and low to the ground, with powerful spirits gathered around it. Wen-Ra-Turi was there, along with the Wen-Nivermere (but only six feet tall instead of her usual twelve), Hermes the Ghost Butler (who was on Taylor's roster as a liaison to the great spirits), and several proctor-level spirits he didn't recognize.

An orange-haired arc sat at the head of the table, lounging against cushions and smoking a pipe that filled the air with oak and something like myrrh. Nobody with any mana sense could mistake whose home this was, or the power of his visitors.

Taylor offered a brief bow, as Saria had taught him to do when meeting great spirits in an informal setting. "Thank you for the invitation. Didn't you follow me once, while I was sailing by?"

"That was me," confessed the arc, "in my native form. It was your first day in Twilight, and I gave serious thought to eating the human who strayed into my land. But you left such a nice gift by the shore. So few humans leave me gifts anymore." He pulled on his pipe. "Turn around, turn around! Let me see your outfits properly."

The five of them spun in unison, twice around, to appreciative sounds from the other spirits.

"These are splendid gifts. Thank you!" Taylor bowed again.

"Saria said it was the most you were likely to accept. They did turn out well, didn't they? Come! You sit here," he pointed to the space next to him with the stem of his pipe, "and the rest of you find empty spaces wherever."

Taylor was surprised to discover Wen-Uroda across from him, in her alternate form of a bright yellow minxkin. He thought the volcano spirit was resting, and she did seem more subdued than the others, but apparently, she was well enough to travel. Taylor greeted the spirits he knew, received introductions to those he didn't, and soon found himself having a good time. The proctors and greater spirits were just as lively as the customers downstairs, and were capable of putting away a surprising amount of food. Taylor had already eaten, but he couldn't resist tasting a little of everything. There were dishes made from ingredients all around the empire.

"Do you have spirits who go into Aarden to buy things?"

"On occasion, but it's risky," admitted Mata'ari. "We would welcome a more stable arrangement. Since you're already obtaining weapons, why not add a few luxuries to the shipments?"

"I have my hands full right now," Taylor reminded him, "but send me a short list and I'll see what I can do."

"True, you have been busy." The smoking arc nodded and clapped Uroda on the shoulder. "You brought back one of our own. It's been centuries since the empire did a thorough job of anything."

"I'm giving them better tools. We'll see what they choose to do with them."

Mata'ari nodded vigorously. "Here's hoping. But that's enough serious talk for now. Let's have some music!"

Ten minutes later, Taylor was in a dance line with the most powerful spirits in Twilight, his hands on the Deep Lady's hips in front of him, and pulling Hermes behind him, singing a nonsense tune at the top of his lungs.