"The ambassador suite is your best option. Both of you can stay there as my guests until the winner of the tournament is crowned as the new ruler of Elkia. After that, if you aren't the winner and I lose my title, I have enough in personal savings to support three people for a few months."

"Don't worry about it. We've got this."

"No time like the present. Let's go check out Castle Gormenghast."

By noon Elkia is hot, verging past uncomfortable towards intolerable. The princess knows the ways from one end of the city to the other, passing only between shadows while the sun beats furiously on the canopy of the city, but the price of this deliberate routing is an indirect path from point A to point B.

The most popular activity seems to be getting in the water to escape the heat. The party stops at a street vendor, where Stephanie buys them each a bowl full of diced fruits and vegetables drizzled with vinegar for lunch, and they rest a while on a stone bench overlooking a pool the size of a train station. Thirty or forty bathers lounge in the pool, towels balanced atop their heads. They have passed a few such public pools with similar occupants.

The castle is closer, although it's hard to tell given its sheer size and the awkward angles they've been viewing it from.

Shiro eats her sour salad and endeavors to think of it as lunch. The jet lag is going to hit like a truck, better to get it over with all at once.

"Are any of those people sirens?" she asks, waving at the people below them in the pool.

"Does your homeworld not have sirens?"

"Only humans. There are people who disagree but I considered their objections fundamentally unserious prior to this week."

"Must be nice," Stephanie says wistfully. "No, none of them are. Sirens have the upper body of a human woman and the lower body of a fish. They can breathe air but can't walk. All of the other races in their natural form are easily distinguishable from humans, apart from some werebeasts."

Sora finishes picking the berries out of his salad before he inhales it. It's an unusual flavor, but a good one.

This last comment has caught his interest. He finishes eating before speaking.

"Are all sirens female? Are they「parthenogenetic」— uh, do they have children by copying themselves?"

"All female as far as I know. Their offspring are sired by other races. Mostly vampires, but they also challenge sailors over it. Ships that pass over deeper waters have to be captained by women for security. I suppose sirens could have self-copying magic in addition to that, I wouldn't know for sure. Their cities are built deep beneath the surface, where sunlight doesn't reach, and their government is officially disinterested in what happens on land."

Their offspring are sired by other races.

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. What could possibly be going on behind the scenes to make sense of that?

Shiro is still watching the pool. "Are there any native non-humans in Elkia, or only foreigners?"

These two are full of questions. Fortunately, they're questions that Stephanie is equipped to answer.

"There were a few on the last census. No more than a rounding error. We've tried to make Elkia attractive for expatriates, but we're not nearly as wealthy as Elven Gard or Vvardenfell so it's an uphill struggle. I do think we could plausibly be missing a sub-population of werebeasts. The president of the Eastern Union when I was a little girl looked completely human apart from his eyes; if he'd wanted to he could've lied on our census and we wouldn't notice. Otherwise, no. You've been summoned to the last of the true human realms."

Sora has a sinking feeling that he may not be the protagonist of a JRPG after all. This is starting to look like the opening phase of a dating sim. Not that he has an intrinsic objection to the premise, being a warm-blooded boy of a certain age, but player two is his younger sister. He would rather not.

Time for a change of subject. "Mind if I buy one of those desserts?"

"Two, please!"

Stephanie doesn't feel like counting out change. She takes out her coin purse and lobs it at Sora. It's much heftier than it looks, presumably because it's filled with 22-karat gold coins two inches in diameter. Sora is welcome to buy dessert for himself and his sister.

The dessert in question comes in the form of an elaborate sphere of some gelatinous substance, studded with brown nuts and tiny sugar crystals and smelling a bit like elderflower. There's an entire shelf of them on display near this vendor's cart, each sphere a different primary color. They look labor-intensive and delicious. Mostly labor-intensive. There's a sign on the shelf written in an indecipherable script, although it's not much of a stretch to assume that it names the product and its price.

Sora picks up one of the desserts. It wobbles a bit in his grasp. Smells enticing, especially compared to the trail rations they've been eating.

Can he take a bite out of it?

No. He can put it back or he can pay for it.

Interesting. Can he not take a bite out of it because something is stopping him? He tries to bring it closer to his face.

There is nothing stopping him from taking a deep whiff of elderflower off this desert. It sure smells good. Nevertheless, he is not going to take a bite until he buys it. That is not an available action, for much the same reason that spontaneously transmogrifying into a pigeon is not an available action. That would be theft.

'Theft' has been grayed-out on Sora's metaphorical options menu. That part of the Covenant is also undeniably real. It's a little unnerving, not being able to command his limbs in such a specific way, but he can see the appeal of running a universe this way.

He goes to speak with the vendor.

There's no building attached to the pool. People leave their clothes on the side of the road, including their purses and shoes, and when they get out they dry off and leave with no fanfare. Coin lockers don't seem to be necessary.

Most online games are like this, in Shiro's experience. Sometimes thief classes have the opportunity to 'pickpocket' a finite amount of money from NPCs, but rarely other players. Ownership is hard-coded into the experience by the developers.

Stephanie has never thought much about this. Wondering what a world with theft would be like is a job for fiction authors and archaeologists.

There's one other question that's been on Shiro's mind ever since Tet scooped her out of her bedroom and deposited her into the stratosphere.

"How does magic work? The translation for that word in my native language refers to a mythical phenomenon; I don't have a useful point of reference. You mentioned that humans can't use it – is that because no humans have been observed to learn magic, or do you believe it for other reasons?"