Earlier, when the three fake sisters had moved through the village of Nmita, ostensibly toward the chief’s house, they couldn’t help but stop at the bazaar: meandering rows of tarp-tents with roofs made of thin, sturdy, interwoven leaves. Some shopkeepers sat alongside their wares on mats.

Others stood at counters to slice and grill fish, to measure spices, or, in this case, to better handle the often-large weaponry they had to handle.

They paused at the weapon stand, saw free-standing walls heavy with equipment—some of which they’d never seen before.

There were recognizable blades, arrows, and staves, of course. A few things resembled farm equipment, rakes and scythes repurposes and lengthened into tools of war. There were long, thin iron bars, oddly shaped knuckles, and maces whose mallet-ends were tiny.

The actual strangeness, though, came from the wood and metal weapons that looked like flutes. From short to long, from simple to elaborate, inscribed and painted with stripes of any or all colors, with curling, mountain-path patterns of holes that no earthly fingers could hope to stick themselves into...they looked like prized instruments from another galaxy.

All three of them—Dodd, Felicity, and Ethel—were arrested by the sight. So much so that the shopkeeper elf knew they were staring, and became quite concerned.

Dodd realized this at last and hurriedly curtsied...and then she apologized, hurriedly set both hands to her chest, and bowed with head and shoulders. That was the elf greeting (at least here, it was), and though she was half-human too, in this guise, Nmita seemed to prefer the former. “E-excuse us,” she told the weapon-selling woman. “We were interested in your...” She pointed at the “flutes” in the back.

“The telhorns,” said the shopkeep.

“Yes!” Dodd smiled. “Could you please tell us more about them?”

The shopkeep’s eye twitched. “...Who the hells are you?”

“Foundlings,” Ethel blurted.

Now the shopkeep’s eyes were leering away. The look said, “Whoever let these people in, I will find them and kill them.” Eventually, though, the eyes came back. She told them, “They’re a kind of staff. Ordinary staves are unmarked—or, better to say, their marks don’t do anything. Occasionally you get one with a rune, which enhances a certain magic type...or even a single spell...at the cost of all others. So a staff can be personalized.

“The telhorn is the total extreme of that. Not because it comes with spells, but because it comes with several ‘slots’ for spells.”

She turned to take a shorter telhorn off from its wall. It was lined with barber-pole stripes of purple, blue, and white. Could that have been a sign of...?

“They don’t ‘come with’ anything -- you get what I mean?” said the shopkeep.

“They’re not preprogrammed?” said Ethel.

“...Uhh...” Her pseudo-medieval-setting mind wrapped around the word. Ethel wondered if it settled somewhere around punch cards. “Nnno, they’re not ‘programmed.’ Everything you see on a telhorn, when you first buy it or make it, is purely decoration and unrealized function.”

Felicity said with clear excitement, “So the user puts spells inside of them?”

“Not at all,” said the shopkeep. “Runes aren’t spells, they’re just signals. They’re for the user’s concentration. Telhorns are the same way.”

“What’s the point?”

Clearly the elf woman did not like to be told that her weapons were “pointless.”

“Complex spells,” she said. “People who use, say, fire or electricity tend not to get much use out of them. But for the powers that are more”—she waved one hand around in mystical mystery motions—“trust me, they can really work wonders.”

“Oh,” said Felicity. Her voice went flat. “Let’s get swords, then.”

“I like that battleax,” said Dodd. She was pointing to a weapon about twice as large as her imp body.

Felicity said, “Don’t kid yourself. What about those knuckle things?”

Dodd gasped. “You’re right...” A pair of red-and-gold knuckles, not brass but no doubt something harder, called out to her.

As Ethel stood beside them, she wondered where their fighting enthusiasm came from. Nyx wasn’t going to need them as Athalie, right? Ethel assumed the two imps were just going to play-fight in the castle, entertaining themselves the same way Ethel and her sister used to flounder at chess. The imps had never called each other “friends,” and yet...

Bigger in Ethel’s mind, though, was the idea of the telhorn. When the imps’ interest waned, hers doubled. A programmable staff—A PROGRAMMABLE STAFF—how could that not be amazing? Sure, the fact that it had no innate power beyond its own physical memory was a dreambreaker, but...look at how many holes even the smallest one had. Twelve on the front, five on one side. How many combinations did that make?

A skilled “player” of one’s own magic could set off not only far more complicated, but also far more specific spells than usual. Instead of setting off non-specific explosions, Ethel could use a telhorn to hone their mind to a fine point and constrict a heart. Sever a bone. Or cut away a forest path. The chances for experimentation were thrilling.

The only problem with all of this was, they didn’t have any money, or even any soul gems. All they had to barter with was their costumes—which weren’t real material at all, but constructs given a temporary form by the shapeshifting substance they’d all spritzed on earlier.

Instead, when they had all decided on what they wanted to purchase, they went silent and nodded to each other.

In a frenzy, the three sisters leaped over the counter and past the shopkeep, hoarding all the weapons they could, toppling walls, dogpiling the ones they wanted most. No sooner had the shopkeep turned then they’d all disappeared, enveloped by a crow’s shadow.

Now the only proof they’d ever been there was utter desolation.

Shopkeep Talaleia pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t having a nightmare. Then she sighed as she had never sighed before.