“How many songs have you written?” Cartalis looked at Drav and Zelzad in disbelief.

“Not a ton,” said Zelzad, chuckling. “Most of these are covers.”

“Are they all the same sort of…” Cartalis paused, looking down.

Arenya looked up from her increasingly full page of notes and ideas. She had never seen Cartalis struggle so long for words before.

“The same…” Cartalis let out an almost imperceptible sigh. “Graaaaagh whuuuuuu -”

Cartalis started coughing as Arenya almost choked on her own tongue in shock. “You know, that,” she said after a moment. “It hurts my throat to try it.”

Drav applauded. “That wasn’t bad! Careful with your vocal chords, though. Maybe if you want to learn some techniques sometime, we could -”

“No.”

Zelzad sighed. “Come on, Cartalis, have some fun. And no, not all our songs have uncleans. Some are just metal covers of popular music. We pared down the list to not have the worst offenders, so probably you’ll think these are all fine.”

Cartalis scanned the list. “The Mare of - hmm, what’s this one about?”

Arenya noticed Drav and Zelzad exchange a glance. “It’s about a man who meets a mysterious woman in the woods,” said Drav, “but she turns out to be an evil, uhh…”

“‘I pray she won’t play the…’ Oh, eww," murmured Cartalis. "What did you think I was going to say to this? No, you’ll not play this one."

Arenya looked over Cartalis’ shoulder and went pale. “Is she -”

“Yes, I believe she is,” said Cartalis. “Pray tell - did you truly believe I would have any reaction other than disgust to this?”

“No,” muttered Drav. “I thought I removed that one…”

Arenya turned back to her notes, crossed out a line reading “A man but so too a slave”, scribbled another underneath it. “Not a man, merely a slave.” It still wasn’t good enough, so she crossed that one out too.

Cartalis flipped to another page. “Mayhaps this one shall be better…” She proceeded to read in a deadpan tone. “‘I’m hot. My b…’” Cartalis paused, squinting at the page. She gestured vaguely toward her chest. “‘and b...’” She grimaced. “This is just a woman singing about how beautiful she is. Crassly. She is mostly drawing attention to her anatomy in the most lewd fashion possible. The only way you could possibly deliver this song properly - ahem, properly - is half undressed, and I suspect even you are above that. Only a man could have written this. Or Ya'el, I suppose.”

Only a man… Only a slave. Arenya nodded and wrote it down, finally happy with the line.

Drav facepalmed. “Why was that song there? I thought we took that one out!”

Zelzad shrugged. “It’s really not that bad, Drav. And it was actually written by a woman, too. I thought maybe Cartalis wouldn’t mind so much.”

“Well, I do.” Cartalis harrumphed and turned to the next song. “‘When the mood sways me’…”

Cartalis went pale. Her eyes widened.

“What in the seven hells is this song? This is… These may be the most depraved lyrics I have ever read in my life! ‘I want to… TO DEATH’?” Cartalis’ hands almost began to shake as she dropped the page. “Oh, by Arela, Sultis, and Xelax! Zelzad, if you actually sang these words, the entire audience would think you were a whore!”

Arenya sat up so quickly she knocked her her page of notes off the desk to land next to Cartalis’ song sheet. She’d never heard Cartalis swear like that before.

She peered at the page on the ground, before covering her quickly reddening face. The lyrics appeared to describe a woman whose singular hobby was dragging men to her bedchambers and murdering them through acts so unspeakable Arenya couldn’t believe anyone had dared to think them, let alone put them to music.

“Oh,” said Drav, “is that ‘I want to-’”

Cartalis nodded.

“Zelzad, I thought we already agreed we were never going to play that song again! She’s right, it’s depraved. Even for us.”

Zelzad nodded. “We did…” She shook her head. “That song sucks anyway. Not sure why we even had it in the list. There was no way we were going to play it.”

Drav shook his head. “It’s strange. All three of those I thought we’d removed already.”

As if on cue, the door opened. Ya'el walked in, holding a collection of loose papers. "Hey, y'aaaaaaall," she said, smirking as she drew out the line. "I stopped by our workshop and noticed our song selection was still there. The rejected ones were gone, though."

Arenya noticed Zelzad subtly smirk. It was a brief gesture, lasting only a fraction of a second, but at that moment, Arenya realized what had happened.

Evidently, Cartalis did too. She stood, fists clenched. “You gave me the wrong list! You did not hand me the songs you approved, but the ones you rejected! And I bet you did it on purpose, too, Zelzad. You just wanted to see my reaction!”

“…”

“…”

“…Yeah.”

A moment of stunned silence settled on the five of them, broken by Arenya, Zelzad, and Ya'el all bursting out laughing.

Cartalis glared at Arenya.

“It is kind of funny,” Arenya said once she caught her breath.

Cartalis’ gaze held for several seconds, but her stern gaze faltered as she cracked the barest smile. “I suppose the second one was rather humorous…” Arenya could tell Cartalis was trying not to give Zelzad the pleasure of hearing her laugh at her prank.

Ya'el rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you guys wanted to take out some of those. That one is so much fun. I'm hot! My b-"

Even Cartalis joined in on the laughter that time.

“All right. Ya'el, you can hand over the real list now,” said Zelzad.

Cartalis picked up her and Arenya’s sheets of paper from the ground. She paused, looking at Arenya’s. She gulped. “You wrote this?” she asked. There was a quavering element to her voice.

“Yes… Do you like it?”

“It’s… well… Relative to that last song I looked at…”

“Yeah?”

“This is worse.”

Drav, Zelzad, Ya'el, and Arenya turned to Cartalis and said “What?” in perfect unison.

“I have got to see this,” said Drav. He walked behind Cartalis and looked over her shoulder. His eyes widened. “‘He who claims to be a king, great and brave, is only a man, only a slave, and with those words she cast herself off the roof? Hardel - whoever that is - took her body and…’”

"Yo," said Ya'el, a devilish grin on her face. "That is sick."

"Sick is right." Drav shook his head. "I'm surprised you'd write something this depraved, Arenya. It doesn't seem like you."

Arenya tried to hide her deepening blush. “Yeah, but that’s Hardel. He’s supposed to be vile. At least it’s not making light of it like those ones all were.”

“Hmm…” Cartalis looked over the page carefully. “So he killed all the dragon lords except for one, whom he blinded and clipped the wings of, and … and he rebuilt the Palace?”

Arenya nodded. “Yes, that was him. It didn’t last long.”

Ya'el blinked. “The Palace. That Palace? It was rebuilt by this bozo?”

Arenya paused for a moment. “It’s complicated,” she admitted. “This story might be a parable. I’m not sure. But Hardel was heavily involved, definitely. That’s what makes this story so fascinating. My father and I were studying it together a few days before I left to come here. I didn’t understand it all that well, but I thought it might make a good song.”

“About that,” Cartalis muttered, “I suspect you are wrong.”

Drav took another sheet of paper and began to make notes on it. “No, I think there’s something here. A complex, morally dubious tale of an evil slave trying to rise to a king? Destroying the holiest people of the land just so they wouldn’t speak out against him? His eventual return to the good by creating The Palace? This is as metal as it gets.”

“He did not return to the good,” said Arenya. “He was a fool tricked into it by the Lord he left alive.”

“Mayhaps we should study this together,” said Cartalis. “In the meantime, though, perhaps I should get back to checking this song list. Hopefully this next batch is less objectionable than the last one.”