nobility coming over to see the foreigners, so they’ve kept the event rather low-key. Fortunately, that means fewer problems for us, as well. Nobody wants to be ogled, so I understand why they’re doing a smaller dinner than usual.”
“I wonder what they’re like,” the maid murmured. “The vampires, I mean. I hear they’re a lot like you, the Aeternae, but that they can’t be in the sunlight.”
“Yes. How sad is that, huh? To never feel the warmth on your skin?”
The maid chuckled softly. “To be fair, Visio isn’t all that sunny, anyway. There is something about your skies that I have yet to get used to. It makes everything look a bit darker… even hazy. Have you ever been to Rimia?”
“A couple of times, yes,” the cook replied, smiling. “It is sunnier, indeed. But also hotter. I don’t know how you people can stand it. I felt like I was suffocating.”
The maid pinched her forearm. “Thick skin, sir. We deal with it differently.”
“I, for one, wonder what they’re doing here,” the cook said, pursing his lips. “I’m having a hard time buying the whole ‘we were just gazing out into space and we found you, so we thought we’d come and say hello’ shtick, to be honest. There has to be more.”
The maid frowned. “Why do you say that?”
Good question, I thought. I had found their official motives rather convincing, especially since the Aeternae did not know about the tracking spells used to identify their world as the origin for the day-walking protein.
The other cooks and maids eavesdropped on the conversation, but none participated. They kept working, preparing dishes for the servants to eat tonight after the Lord and Lady Supreme’s dinner. From their rushed conversations, I understood that once they were done clearing out the guests’ table, the servants would then retreat into their own mess hall to eat. They got the food out of the way now, since some of the guests were not Aeternae or vampire, so that they would have to fire up the ovens and stoves only once.
“Think about it,” the cook said. “How many visitors have we had from other worlds, over the centuries?”
The girl shrugged. “I’m only sixteen, sir. I’ve yet to learn about these things.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Exceedingly few. There were rumors about a foreign man coming, centuries ago, and two of Visio’s most despised criminals leaving with him to their deaths, but that is it. And we all know our worlds aren’t the only inhabited ones in this universe. They can’t be, clearly proven by our guests today. So, what are the odds that they really did just come here to make contact?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Pretty small,” the cook replied. He struck me as the kind who ate up conspiracy theories with the delight of a child lost inside a candy store. His paranoia would’ve been amusing, even, had he not actually been right.
GASP wasn’t here just to say hello, but he didn’t know that.
Leaving the kitchen behind, I still wasn’t convinced by what I was seeing and hearing. My instinct refused to let go. I couldn’t trust my own eyes and ears. After a few more minutes spent wandering through the hallways and eavesdropping on other servants as they rushed to and from the dinner hall with cutlery and fine silk napkins and all the other relevant dining accoutrements, I found the palace library.
It was a huge place, with hundreds of sturdy wooden bookcases, rows upon rows of knowledge preserved in one gigantic hall. I took my time digging through the history section. There were plenty of leather-bound volumes for me to study, though I doubted I had enough hours on the clock to get a clear picture of this place. Hopefully, one of the higher Reapers would be in touch with details—if they had any. Something told me I wasn’t going to get the truth out of Visio as easily as I might have hoped. Again, that was my instinct telling me things.
Among the books I perused, there was a written history recorded by one of the former Nasani lords, a certain Devyn Nasani, father of Imelda Nasani—known mother of Acheron. Devyn’s account of the Aeternae’s development seemed to cover the first million years, and, judging by the book’s size and thickness alone, it was certainly comprehensive and rich in details. Flipping through the pages, I found illustrations that accompanied the text, including maps of the early Aeternae kingdoms, long before they were unified into an empire and