Electric Eye

I remembered when I was in high school, Leather Katz was called “Pantera.” We found out pretty soon that there was already a kickass band called “Pantera” from Texas. They sounded like us during that time, but they definitely changed their sound in the 90s, right before I died. They blew up pretty good because of that. I think I’m going through something similar in life.

After our two B rank quests, people started asking questions. Chicks started following me too, mostly the guild members, thankfully. From Gally’s memories, he was already a stud, and now with the new cred from our high ranked quests, me and Lara became super popular.

At school, these kids would ask me if I could play their favorite minstrel songs, and Lara would push them back, saying that it’s too dangerous. You know, I haven’t tried playing non-metal music on my lute. So instead, I played Take It Easy by The Eagles, and it caused people to chill out. Damn, so anything I play from my old world causes magic. This was going to be a problem, since I just wanna rock without hurting random dudes.

Luckily, with the money me and Lara collected from B ranks, I had enough to buy a custom lute. Walking into a luthier shop felt like Vallaha to me. But there was one problem: not a single V shaped lute.

“Hey dude! I mean, good man. I have a request of sorts.”

“Sure thing, young bard. What can I make you?” His name was Andrus Varlex, and he was a minstrel minotaur. What a cool name for a cool dude. He was dehorned, though. I wonder why he did that.

“I have a drawing on this parchment. Can you make this?”

“That looks quite unusual. Why have it this shape?”

“My dream is to have a lute with this shape.”

“It looks like an odd looking axe. It looks quite dangerous to be a bard’s lute.”

“Exactly, dude! I’m a battle bard.” Andrus looked at me with curiosity, and he looked at Lara for guidance on how to respond to me.

“Don’t worry about my friend, he’s a little weird. He hit his head more than a month ago, and he’s been like this since.” Lara nodded to me.

“Okay, my good bard. I will make this for you. Because it’s in a strange shape, I will charge less, since this may not appeal to the public. How about 1000 pences?” Damn, what? Usually custom guitars with odd shapes were super expensive. This was like buying some cheap Chinese knock off! I laid down the money to him and added an extra 500 pences. He took the money and smirked while breathing hard out of his snout.

“I’ll have this in a couple hours, young master.” In a few minutes, he had called me names with increasing ranks. Lara seemed to be confused as to why I gave him an extra 500 pences.

“In my world, we add extra money as a good gesture, like as a thank you. We called it ‘tipping’. In this case, I want the best lute possible, and he already discounted it for me. It’s a big thanks from me.”

“I see, that is a bizarre tradition. However, minotaurs do something similar, and actually, ‘tipping’ is seen as a challenge to them. You basically said ‘I bet you can’t build me a great lute in 2 hours.’” Oh crap, I didn’t mean that at all.

After a couple hours of hanging out at the town center and eating at the farmer’s market, we came back to the luthier to check his work.

My eyes were crying.

“Young King, are you displeased with my work?” There was the increase in rank again.

“Dude, this is amazing.” It was a V-shaped lute with the exact specs I asked for. It came with a switch that was placed exactly where a normal pickup switch would be on a Gibson Flying V. Instead of switching pickups, I could switch the lute from using magic to no magic. This means I can play wherever I want without affecting people with random magic!

I switched it off, and I played some Leather Katz tunes. While shredding, I cried. It felt so good to play full songs again. In front of the shop were some bystanders that watched my performance. Some rushed in and asked for the same shape of lute. Some even asked me if I taught lessons. From Gally’s memories, lessons were only available for nobles, since they had money to pay someone to teach them. Most elven people, like me now, are poor, and we self teach lute playing and other music stuff. So I attracted nobles in this luthier shop?!

“My young Emperor, you have my eternal thanks for bringing so many customers. If you ever need a new one, I will build it for you, free of charge.” That was so cool.

Arg explained in my head that minotaurs were seen as lesser people because they can’t use magic. Instead, they focus on wealth, so money is super important to them. If they tell you that they’re making you something for a discount, they have high respect for you. If they give you something for free, they basically adopt you into their family. That’s sick though. I’m part of a minotaur family now.

Wait, where was Arg when I paid Andrus an extra 500 pences?!

After the luthier trip, I walked home to kick back and relax. Lara was still walking with me though. I didn’t mind, since she used to stop at my pad when I was just Gally.

Right when I opened the door, a bunch of confetti and stuff blew up in my face.

“Surprise! Happy halfway birthdate to our sweet, brave boy!” My dad announced super loudly with his bard voice.

“Honey, be careful with the voice art! You might shatter some houses around us!” My mom was super concerned, since the ground was kinda shaking a little bit.

Behind them was a nice cake, some food that looks Italian, and some other people I recognized as Gally. There was Morlo Elki, who graduated a year ahead of us, and she’s a super tall, buff, dark elf chick. I think she’s a paladin or something. There was also Scott Reela, who also graduated a year ago. He’s a shorter human guy, and he’s an expert archer that only uses magic for arrows. That’s rad! I remembered that Gally and this gang of cool dudes used to hang out at the guild, doing the basic stuff to get Scott and Elki credits. They’re really strong too. I think when they graduated, they’re about B ranked, and now they’re A ranked.

Of course, Artium was there too. He’s always welcomed. He gave me a huge hug with enough power to send Arg out of my body. Oops. I could see that Scott and Elki were terrified and confused.

“Um, Gal, what the Hell is that?” Elki was ready to draw both of her swords. Oh, right. Dark elves don’t really worship ancestor spirits like Half-Elves and High-Elves do.

“Hold on, Gal, is that your Guardian?” Scott asked in huge disbelief. I noticed that Artium mad dogged him after his question.

“Yes, yes. I am Argrus, a Grand Spirit, and I have chosen your friend, Gally, to become his Guardian Spirit. I must ask that we keep this private, as this could attract the wrong type of attention.”

“I have to also warn that Gally hasn’t been the same since he hit his head that one day. Remember?” Lara was quick to interject to hide my true identity.

“Oh, when he tried to swing off the earth elephant’s trunk and landed on my head?! That was hilarious and very cute of him.” I bonked my head on Elki?! And that was enough to summon my ass to this world?!

“No, I thought it was when I shot a water arrow at that giant cleaver squid and the arrow bounced and hit Gal’s head. That hard head of his bounced the arrow back into the squid’s eye and killed it.” What?! I got shot by an arrow too?! How the Hell didn’t I remember this? Oh wait, yeah, I think Gally passed out after that.

“You know what, I think we hit him on the head a lot. I remember trying to cast a healing spell over Gal’s head, and when he woke up, he sat up too fast and hit my staff before I could pull my staff away.” Holy crap, you too, Lara?!

“Well, I remember that Yoki and I were tossing him around, and we dropped him. Sorry, that was when he was a fledgling.” Mom and dad too?! Is this why Gally got so tired of living?!

Yeah, that’s why.

Oh my God, he replied!

“Hey guys, let’s try and not hit my head while I celebrate 15 and a half, yeah?”

“We’ll try, but no promises. You’ll live, though. You got a piece of diamond for a head.” Scott was nice enough to warn me beforehand. The crowd, except for Artium, laughed. He smiled though.

Well, today, I found out that elves celebrate the day you’re born and the halfway point too. That’s a lot of partying, and I dig it. The group also dug my new lute. When they found out that I could turn magic on and off with a switch, they went crazy. Some of them asked me to play the tunes that I used against the whispertree, and I finally could without killing anyone.

“Where did you learn those songs? They sound… strange…” Elki was grilling me.

“Uhm, I wrote them! Yeah, I made them up when I was playing.”

“Actually, Gally is-” Arg popped out again to correct me, but I covered his mouth. He totally got the message and disappeared quickly.

“Gally is actually a reborned hero from another world.” We all looked at Artium with different looks. He was dead serious. “If you two will be adventuring with Gally, you must know his capabilities. That’s how you survive outside the walls of Haronda, especially after the war with the Huskites.”

“Yeah, actually, my name is Ricky Roxx. I died in my last world, and Gally was nice enough to let me take the driver’s seat. I mean, he let me have his body and memories. He’s still here though. He’s saying hi to everyone.”

“Wait, so you have two people in your body right now?” Scott asked in his normal disbelief. Arg popped out, yet again.

“Actually, three!”

“Yeah, it’s jam packed in here.” No one understood that. “It’s very crowded in this body.”

“So those songs you played earlier… They were songs written by minstrels from your world, Ricky?”

“You can call me Gally. Actually, I prefer that. Yeah, these songs were written by bands, which are pretty much like parties with only bards. Each bard played a different instrument, and the music we played was really loud.” Apparently, having multiple bards in a party was rare too.

“What instruments exist in your other world?” My dad was definitely interested in this.

“Well, there’s a guitar. They look like lutes, but they’re bigger and they have six strings. They can be made hollow, like lutes, but I played solid ones. The solid ones were connected to these boxes with a wire, and the boxes made the guitars sound very loud. The louder, the better.

There’s also a bass, and they looked like guitars. They have thick strings, and usually have four of them. They cause the ground to shake, and they boost what a guitar player would play.

There was a stick called a ‘microphone’, where a singer could sing into it, and that stick would make the voice so loud, that it powered over everything.

Behind all of this was a drummer. I think you guys know what a drum is, but these guys played like 5 or 7 of them at the same time. They had these metal sheets called ‘cymbals’ that made very high pitched sounds. The crowd always danced to what the drummer would play, kinda like how we do it here.

And sometimes, we have people who play keyboards, which is like a harpsiboard. Actually, keyboards came from harpsichords in my world, which is basically a harpisboard here. Some people blew horns too. I know we play them for war here, but back home, we played them for entertainment.”

I felt like a professor during my half birthday. My family, my party, and the two Trayas sat and listened to me like I was Merlin or something. I spent even more time talking about heavy metal, and what it meant to me. Elki specifically asked me to play something by Judas Priest, since they sounded like the “Yordus Priests” that Elki worships. I pulled my lute out, and hit the switch. I played Electric Eye.

Suddenly, a bunch of electricity zapped out of my eye, and it knocked an entire wall down. I looked down and my switch was “on”. Oops.

My parents looked at me with scolding eyes. Everyone else laughed hysterically.

“Gally!”

I’m totally gonna get it.