"It really is a haunted house," Mila muttered under her breath.

The interior design of Rose Manor could have used some work, the young group realized. It was dark, and what little light filtered in only served to accent the shadows that surrounded them. The whole place had an odd musty scent, like a living antique shop. It hardly seemed like the abode the mistress of technology dwelled in.

Even so, Rose strode fearlessly into the darkness. It was truly her home, and she was its master.

"Don't worry about the ground floor. It's like uh, a tourist attraction," she assured the group as she walked. "I think," only Taika and Rebecca caught the quiet aside.

Shouri took in the ambiance, seeing through it thanks to the blessings of lunar vision. It was well-kept in all actuality; like the original owners left their home in a time capsule for hundreds of years. Even the dining room they passed was still set as if the home's masters would be arriving any moment for supper.

"Down here," directed Rose, vanishing into the stairwell.

Taika took Shouri's hand, giving him the courage and motivation to heed the Ethereal's instructions. Seeing their fearless leader and his first descending into the depths, the rest of the traveling party followed right along – Pacifica, Rebecca, Mila, and Vince brought up the rear.

The group got flash-banged as clearing the threshold between the first floor and basement levels assaulted their vision with stinging luminosity.

While the first floor lacked any modern lighting and was a relic of the distant past, the basement was its conceptual opposite. A huge, modern workshop graced their vision. Rose herself already wandered around below, possibly having just jumped over the railing to hit the ground before her guests could catch up.

Upon hitting the end of the stairwell, Shouri's group made their way to the Ethereal, who had seated herself at a desk covered in indiscernible paperwork.

"Okay," Rose began, spinning her chair to face the group who stood at her desk. "What do you want?" she asked.

Everyone turned to Vince, and he looked to the leech in his shirt, Zephyr. "Chip me," demanded the fairy.

"A fae folk? Been a hot minute since I've been in the presence of a fellow mirage," Rose chuckled, leaning back in her seat.

"Fellow mirage?" Shouri questioned.

"Ah, right." Rose shook her head. In an instant, her body entirely vanished and a bolt of lightning flew straight into Shouri… or at least one of his tuners.

"I'm a sprite. Born right here in Loggiavento. Freak lightning storm birthed me," her voice rattled from the tuner's speaker.

"Is that not normal?" Vince questioned. "No, sprites are normally born in L'ultera where the lightning storms of the Spark Block are so intense it creates them. Sprites in any other part of the world are exceedingly rare," Shouri explained.

Rose reappeared back in her chair in the same spectacular fashion as her demonstration. "July 30th at 6:37PM," she suddenly spoke, earning confused looks from the group. She pointed at the guildmaster in her midst. "That's when you looked up information on Sprites. You were in Alspo General Hospital at the time," said the inventor.

Shouri narrowed his eyes. "That's not creepy at all," he retorted. "In case you had any doubt about who I was," Rose replied. "You're a very skeptical man. You don't do anything without making certain you're right first," she added. "You can tell a lot from a person's search history."

She took a breath and gestured to Rebecca, "I can appreciate your taste in cars, also I'm sure you're a fine kisser." Then her attention drifted to Pacifica. "You need to stop playing so many gacha games, even if your mom is footing the bill now." And last one on the chopping block was Taika. "What you read makes even me blush, god damn."

Needless to say, the three girls were now mortified and hid their faces from the rest of the group.

"See?" chuckled Rose. "For their sake I'll pretend I didn't hear any of that," grumbled Shouri.

"Relax, tuners and their users are privileged information. Your search habits aren't privy to anyone but me," Rose said with a confident smirk.

"Even the Riterran government?" Shouri raised a brow. "Especially not them, we have an agreement you see," Rose began. "I control the flow of information from tuners, and they get their shitty little button."

Shouri's expression hardened. "Well, that answers one question," he grumbled.

"I'd rather deal with a few bad eggs over having big government watching your every move. The only thing I give them is command statistics from that function. What they do with that information is between them and Lord Cievo." The Ethereal shrugged. "In exchange, they play courier for me and make sure every one of you has my tuner in hand. Keeps things uniform, easy to manage."

"I'm surprised they capitulate with you. I'd figure they'd want more control," Shouri hummed in thought.

"Oh they'd love that, but it's mutual assured privacy. I'm the only one with this data. So they can do what they want without fear of another vector of information to be leaked. And as such, the usage habits of certain users are kept under wraps," Rose stated.

"'Certain users'?" questioned Shouri. "Blessed ones." Seeing the confusion painted on the rest of the room, Rose clarified, "Maestros who have Ethereals as their Resonators. There are more of them around than you think."

It was something that they had considered, but to have it outright confirmed was another story entirely.

"Not all of us seek the company of another; but there are plenty who either entirely rely on Maestros, or will occasionally allow themselves to be taken in by one. For us, it's something to do; we can't die, so there's nothing for us to lose but time, which we have an infinite amount of." Rose shrugged.

The group remained silent.

"Anyway, I digress. I can chip you, no problem. Though, I don't know why I should." Rose waved for the fairy to speak.

Zephyr wilted, not wanting to get into it again, but she took a breath and spoke. "My village. I was sacrificed by my village. I need a home," she replied.

"Oh… so that was you," Rose spoke knowingly. Her gaze drifted to Vince, scrutinizing the boy for a moment before addressing the fairy's request. "You picked a good home. He made some pretty stupid mistakes, but he learned his lesson."

The fairy looked up at Vince, her brows wearing worry. The boy turned his head away, refusing her concern.

"Alright." Rose opened a drawer from her desk and set a couple of tiny boxes on it. "Come on. On the desk." The Ethereal motioned to the stack of papers in front of her.

"Wait," Vince spoke up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the white tuner. The same one which was linked to his first Resonator – Cecil's tuner. "If you can do anything with tuners, can you make this one Zephyr's?" he asked.

The gesture stunned everyone silent. He earned a mixture of shock and perplexion at the act.

"Why?" Rose looked down her glasses at the device held out for her. "You trying to erase your mistake?" she questioned.

Vince shook his head. "I want it to remind me how easy it is to mess up. I don't want to hurt her, either of them; like I did him," said the young Maestro. "I want him to know I moved on, but I didn't forget what I did."

The Ethereal studied the white tuner and the static that continued to grace the screen. "Don't let it happen again," she warned. With a snap of her fingers, the screen cleared the device lost its white coloration, returning to the default clear shell, ready for new registration.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Come on you." Rose patted a spot on the desk.

Zephyr pushed herself out of Vince's jacket and fluttered over to the desk. Just like she had done to enter Shouri's tuner before, Rose turned into a bolt of lightning and struck the desk. This time however, she was the same size as the fairy.

"How did you do that?!" yelped Zephyr in surprise. "Ethereal privilege, or at least my privilege. Easier to work on electronics when I can change my size to whatever I need it to be," she explained, opening up the tiny box she had set up prior to her shrinkage.

Sure enough, contained within the box was all the same tools the MA Office tuner technicians used to chip Resonators, just at a much smaller scale.

"Head down," Rose said, flicking the tiny syringe.

Zephyr did as she was told and lowered her head.

"Girl, I need your neck, flip your head forward," complained the Ethereal.

After flicking her head forward, her bare neck was available for the procedure.

Rose wiped the injection site clean with an antiseptic wipe, flipped the needle around and administered the chip.

The other Resonators winced, looking away, each remembering their own chipping.

"Uhg… that feels weird." Zephyr lurched forward. Rose caught her before she fell.

"Easy now, hits fairies a lot harder due to the smaller anatomy. Sit down." The Ethereal eased the tiny girl to a laying position.

"I knew I'd find a guy to make my head spin, but not like this," Zephyr joked, though her façade easily cracked as she groaned and covered her eyes with her hands.

"Is she going to be okay?" Vince asked with alarm. "Oh yeah, you've never seen one of these done, have you?" tiny Rose realized. "Yeah, she'll be fine. This is normal. It allows for the best command processing time possible and has minimal difficulties once administered. Chips can burn out with misuse, but under normal use cases they'll function for the life of the Resonator," Rose explained. "Go ahead and hold that tuner over her and you're done."

Vince looked to the clear bodied tuner. He remained transfixed on the device for a moment before letting out a held breath. "Thank you for everything," he whispered. The Maestro held out the device and it began to regain the white shell indicative of the solar element.

SUMMARY RESONATOR Zephyr MAESTRO Vince Rayburn SPECIES Fairy (Luna Moth) ELEMENT Solar ATTRIBUTE Spirit RHYTHM 75% 75% STATUS Ready

"Rose," Shouri called out to the Ethereal.

Afternoon had passed to evening and the group was offered lodging for the night in Rose's manor. Shouri however, had a pressing concern he wanted addressed.

"Shouri," the Ethereal returned the call. "Shouldn't you be with your girls?" she asked with a coy smirk.

"I just had one more question for you: where's my sister, Aura?" he asked.

Rose studied the audacious Maestro before her. She grinned, chuckling to herself. "Kid, I just got done saying I won't tell the government shit about what goes on in the tuners; what makes you think I'll tell you? If she doesn't want to be found, she doesn't want to be found, deal with it."

Shouri clicked his tongue, his frustration plain and obvious.

"Look, she's fine. I promise she's alive and well. I ain't gonna say more than that though. You'll have to resolve your family issues on your own," said the lightning Ethereal. "Now get back to your girls, I'm sure they're worried I'm gonna fry you like a potato or something." Rose waved him off.

The boy huffed and turned. "If she's not fine, I'm coming back," he warned.

"Oh, I'm so scared. Trust me kid, she's doing well for herself. Worry about your own shit before you concern yourself with other people's drama."

Seeing as he wasn't getting anything more out of the Ethereal, Shouri followed her advice and returned to his room.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.