The Incubus woke with a nagging feeling that something was off. She had better watch it again.
She told herself she had been exhausted by the later Magic Films, and all the scenes had blurred together. Something about Annan Potter becoming a criminal to find his lover from a past life, then leading three hundred accomplices in a charge on the Mage Tower...
The Incubus spent so much time at the Theater that she soon drew attention. She even became the subject of a story in Kindred Spirits—and received five Silver Coins as a thank-you, along with the New Issue of the magazine.
Her story appeared on page 38: "The Ratfolk Lurking Outside the Theater."
[The warm, sweet scents of Free City stopped a Brownfur Rat in the street.
Rows of neon lights gleamed against crystal Shop Windows like countless walls of rainbow light. But its gaze caught on a towering building at the far end of the Square. Several enormous, lavish banners hung from its walls, while huge letters flashed above the main entrance where humans came and went: Free City Grand Theater.
The Brownfur Rat could not read human writing, but miracles played out in the windows cut into the walls, more beautiful than moonlight. Light and shadow shifted within them, and sound surged like the tide.
It wandered inside, where a vast glowing wall seized all its attention.
On that wall stood a breathtaking Mage Tower beneath a deep night sky. A lively misunderstanding unfolded, and the women's laughter flowed from the Magic Stones beneath the wall.
When the black Rat Nest surged from the darkness like a tide, the people inside the brightly lit Mage Tower were still enjoying their banquet. Though it was Ratfolk itself, it dug its claws into its palms, unable to stop