Adrian followed the hulking abomination of a man named Kai out into the narrow streets of the circus. Souls swarmed everywhere and the cast members and performers herded them into one tent or another. Adrian caught a glimpse of the interior of one nearby tent and he stopped in the street to hold the gaze. It looked like there was snow falling inside. Snow falling on a forest of miniature trees, each perhaps as tall as his boots.

  "This way," Kai insisted.

  Adrian went on, followed shortly by Algot Gunn. The marine still had his rifle and his sidearm, so Adrian assumed there was no prohibition against such items.

  They arrived at a short tent, though even from outside Adrian could tell it was quite large from the visible length and depth. The interior of the tent was well-lit and unlike the rest of the circus it was very colorful. The area near the entrance was filled with the pearlescent light of ten-color chandeliers. Ten candles each of a different color, with complements across the middle which Adrian recognized as evoking the colors of the Elemental Domains. Red/Blue, Turquoise/Umber, Silvery-White/Lavender, Green/Indigo, and Gold/Black. And it was the final candle which drew his eye, burning with something like anti-light to create a black void into which nothing escaped.

  There were two display cases by the entrance held aloft by two cast members, one male in a dark suit, and one female in a pale dress. The display cases were both open and they were marked with gray plaques written in a language Adrian could not understand. However, upon reading the plaques, the meaning forced itself into his mind. The first plaque read: "The first rifle from the Physical Realm to enter the Domain of Souls." The second plaque announced the first pistol as such.

  "Your weapons, please," Kai said with a flourish, pointing to the display cases. "Come on now. Replicas will be provided if necessary."

  "That will not be necessary," Adrian said. "Soldier, put your weapons in the case."

  Algot Gunn placed both weapons in their proper spots in the display cases. The cast members closed the lids and locked them and then marched off to parts unknown. The abomination cleared his throat.

  "Very good. Thank you. Those artifacts will now be on display here at the Gray Museum for all eternity. Firearms can be quite popular with certain types of souls, you know."

  "So this is a museum?" Adrian asked.

  "Just so. This is the Physical Realm Artifacts section. Other areas of the museum specialize in artifacts from the various Elemental Domains. Extinct plants and insects from the Domain of Life, carefully preserved in vacuum-sealed boxes. A blade crafted from the unobtanium found only in the primordial Domain of Metal. A chunk of the asteroid that destroyed the Shattered Planet in the Domain of Heaven."

  "So this is what you wanted to show me?"

  "This way. It isn't far."

  When they arrived at the exhibit, Algot Gunn let out a low whistle. It was clearly some type of flying machine. It looked like one of the early prototypes that Algot Gunn had designed with Glenice. Wooden spars connected by long ribs and coated in a thin layer of treated cloth. Adrian even recognized that the craft had an empennage in the back with elevators and a rudder.

  "When was this made?" Algot Gunn asked.

  "This is the very first flying machine invented by humanity in this universe," Kai said. "It was constructed roughly seventeen hundred years ago. It is the first example to feature three-axis control and three-axis stability, capable of leaving the ground and flying of its own power. Landing is a bit tricky but the inventor was able to pull it off."

  "Can I inspect it?"

  "Certainly. Just don't touch anything."

  Kai called out to a nearby woman. One of the museum curators, no doubt. After a brief exchange the curator led Algot Gunn into a secret passage which led into the glass display chamber. Without touching the artifact, Algot Gunn began to carefully inspect it from a variety of angles.

  "I have a question," Kai said.

  "Yeah?"

  "It seems you were born into the wrong era. Perhaps your ancestors would have reacted the way you did, but I did not anticipate anyone alive in the Physical Realm would have lashed out against the banks like you did."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Is that a question?"

  "I would like to know why."

  Adrian sighed. Inside the exhibit Algot Gunn reached out and almost touched the artifact, but he held his hand short after the shrill voice of the curator scolded him. She put her hands on her hips and pouted. Her hair was the color of blood and her lips were painted the same color. Adrian was taken back six years, in a painful remembrance of the first time he laid eyes on the girl in the red robes. His conversation a few months later with Old King Varelion.

  "The Old King once asked me, 'Why do we share the world with these charlatans?' He was referring to the banks."

  "What did you say?" Kai asked.

  Adrian shook his head. "Even now I am not happy with my answer. I said that they didn't understand war. That they were weak men who thought they could lead with convincing arguments. Of course, all of that is true, but still I am unsatisfied. Now, six years later, I have actual experience living in a world without them. I wish the Old King was still alive so I could give him a better answer."

  "I'm sure I can find his soul around the Domain of True Death," Kai mused. "I don't think he's left the universe yet. If I find him I'll give him your new answer."

  "You can do that?"

  "Certainly."

  "Very well," Adrian said. "In railroading, the engines are equipped with what they call a 'dead man's switch' which will cause the train to stop. One thing I noticed during the purges was that the various parties left dead man's switches. Kill a college professor and the price of beans increases by ten thousand percent. Kill a journalist and the press releases an embarrassing article about a member of my family.

  "I asked Algot to investigate these incidents. He discovered a network of contracts, each witnessed by Light Elementals and therefore impossible to modify or forgive. The banks contemplated I would attack their allies. They created the dead man's switches. They thought I would hesitate to destroy the economy. They thought I would hesitate to embarrass my family. In both cases they were wrong.

  "So to answer the Old King's question, I would say that we share the world with these charlatans because they are not stupid. Instead of learning how to use weapons, they learn how to create dead man's switches. The intelligentsia is a figurative intelligence service tasked with recruiting and training economic saboteurs. The press is an actual intelligence service tasked with accumulating dirt on the officers in the government. I'm shocked that my ancestors tolerated either of these institutions."

  "So what did you do?" Kai asked.

  "That's easy. I strengthened my own intelligence services. The Foreign Intelligence Authority and the Domestic Intelligence Authority. They both saw increased budgets and expanded powers. I also formalized the navy spies into the Navy Intelligence Service, which is independent of the FIA, and I granted the FIA the ability to recruit marines. Spies from the DIA are more active at universities, recruiting students as assets to spy on their teachers. The press has been mostly abolished. All the printing presses in the entire empire are accounted for and under the control of the DIA. The people who knew how to make printing presses have all been recruited."

  "It seems like you've saved Klara a lot of effort."

  "I know almost nothing about that girl," Adrian said.

  "She has a High Daughter," Kai said. "Two of them, actually. Like me. The High Daughters bind her to the Elemental Queens. The bonds slowly erode her humanity."

  "What do you mean, it 'erodes her humanity?'"

  "Souls are not supposed to be exposed to Divine Power. If a person directly touches Divine Power they will be instantly killed because the soul will be forced to skirt the edges of the Ideal World. The Queen of True Death would be able to catch such souls. In theory. It's never happened before. But I digress, carrying a bond with a High Daughter slowly causes a soul to change.

  "For female souls, long exposure to a High Daughter will transform them into a prototype archon. An entity that is so tied to the goddess that if the universe unravels they will be sucked into the body of the goddess forever. For male souls it's much worse. When the universe unravels the fractures in the soul will go unfilled, creating a hollow. They will be cursed to wander the Outer Dark, forever exiled from the Ideal World."

  Adrian assumed this was a bad thing. He let the silence linger as he detected that Algot Gunn was almost done. Indeed, the man quickly finished his inspections and vanished from view. A few moments later he reappeared with the curator.

  "Excuse me," he said. "Do you have any other flying machines I could look at?"

  "Unfortunately not," Kai said. "This is the only one I preserved, to my eternal regret. How was I supposed to know the banks would scar the Dark Half? How was I supposed to know the fighter jets would all be liquified by Metal Elementals? But not all is lost. Come with me."

  They went to a separate exhibit which resembled a library. The curator rolled a ladder across the room and climbed up to fetch a particular book from one of the higher shelves. Unlike The Book of Dead Pilots, this book was not bound in leather. In fact, it appeared to have been mass-produced, perhaps in a bindery not unlike those in the Heylin Empire. Kai offered the book to Algot Gunn.

  "We have several copies of this book, so I am willing to part with this one."

  "What is it?" Algot Gunn asked.

  "A treatise on aeronautical engineering," Kai replied. "Including a primer on differential equations. You might need to find a translator for the commentary, but the mathematical notation hasn't changed since this was written."

  "Why are you giving us this now?"

  "Because you need it."

  "I mean," Algot said, clearly exasperated, "why didn't you give us this book right away?"

  "This is a book of answers," Kai said. "Before I was willing to part with an artifact like this, I needed to know you were asking the right questions."

  "Emperor."

  "Yes?" Adrian asked.

  "We need to get this to Glenice."