The town of Spokojny Brzeg, as it was, began as a fishing hamlet more than 300 years ago. One of its main landmarks, the Lighthouse Museum, was built just as the town began, but of course it wasn't a museum back then. For centuries, it pointed out the cape jutting out from the place where the town was founded, situated atop a cliff towering over the placid waters below. Further inland were the docks, with the tiny fishing fleet of the town safely moored there, and later a pier for steam-powered ferries coming from across the Inland Sea. There was, however, a reason why the lighthouse was by now a museum, and it was called LORAN. No, it wasn't the name of a deceiving femme fatale, shouted in all-capitals by a pulpy comedic novel in the genre of trash-noir; it was the acronym for radio navigation systems that made the Inland Sea and the Eastern Seaboard generally a safer place for the oceangoing ships. With lighthouses not as necessary as they were before the time of vacuum tubes and transmission towers, there was a scramble to preserve or re-purpose them; the community of Spokojny Brzeg chose the second option.

Waleria and Levi quickly navigated their way through the town streets - in all of fifteen minutes they went from the train station to the edge of town. And there, they saw it: the Lighthouse Museum, looming above the sea on its sturdy cliff. The main tower had several other tiny buildings, like wooden shacks with balconies and a full-on greenhouse, attached to it with steel beams and tension anchors. The top of the lighthouse was rebuilt into a sightseeing platform protected by openable glass windows, with the central lamp moved into the museum building below as one of the exhibits. And below, the adjacent house where the lighthouse keeper once lived has been expanded into a two-floor building, with a side extension on the right that had enormous glass windows from chest height to ceiling, and a half-hexagonal mini-tower on the other side. In front of the tower, there was a wide porch with double doors and a ticket booth next to them, and in front of it a small bike parking with several bicycles and what looked like a heavy diesel motorcycle plus sidecar. Finally, neither Waleria nor Levi could ignore the bucket-and-rope lift descending from the cliff towards a small pier, and stair-steps leading downwards from the top elevator station, which completed the whimsical impression the museum would have made on any onlooker with even just a bit of innate playfulness in them.

"Wow... That is..." Waleria said.

"Cool, isn't it?" Levi asked her.

"Of course it is cool!" Waleria enthused. She took out her camera, lifted it to her eye level, set out the shutter speed and aperture width, and snapped a photo of the Lighthouse Museum. She felt that even if she never returns, it was the kind of place not easily seen on popular science television because of its obscurity and local-ness. Levi just nodded towards her, and the two continued to the museum itself.

Approaching the ticket booth, Levi reached out and rang the bell on its front desk. Through the glass pane, he and Waleria could see the partial partition separating it from the house-museum, and the small collection of historical oddities behind it, while next to a window there was a sign saying "All Profits Go to Maintenance and Improvement of the Museum". Soon enough, one of the museum's keepers rushed over, and sat down on the rolling chair next to the ticket window. His large wooden antlers of an Arboreous were expertly trimmed and bristling with shapely green leaves, while his casually-worn vest, rectangular tie, long-sleeved shirt with wide unbuttoned cuffs, and green-colored dress pants had the air of quirky refinement about them. He looked towards Levi and Waleria, and asked:

"Greetings! Would you like to get a ticket and attend our collections?"

"Yes," Levi responded. "Is the adult ticket still just four Friedenmarks like it was in '268?"

"Five," the museum-keeper responded. "Costs do rise, but thank the Bringer of Plenty and Fortune, they don't rise too fast."

Just like that, Levi and Waleria forked over a five-Friedenmark banknote each, took the tickets that the museum-keeper handed them, and entered through the double doors. Inside the building, a panoply of museum items were placed in glass cabinets, all relevant to the history and geography of the south coast of the Inland Sea. Antique maps, sextants and chronometers, and even a ship's compass; early modern industrial tooling; mannequins wearing the fisherman fashions of the previous century; all carefully maintained. Of course, the richness of the collection mainly spoke to the eccentricities of the museum's keepers, but literally nobody in the world, not even the most ardent contrarians, managed to work themselves up to complain about it - that was the power of local history museums in Duchowiesen and across the entire planet. Waleria and Levi looked around the collections brightly lit by the sun, then noticed a set of blacksmithing tools in one of the cabinets. They paced over to the tools, and Waleria asked:

"Are those the tools we're looking for?"

"No duh!" Levi responded, perking his ears and raising both eyebrows. "Look, it even says on the label: Blacksmithing Tool Set of the long-lost Kingdom of Oostelijk Wunderwald!"

"So, what now?" Waleria asked. "There's another label, and it says "No Touching the Exhibits". And I don't feel anything unusual just standing next to the toolset..."

Levi looked over the tools again; a rich collection, considering the Lost Kingdom was almost completely gone. There were several different hammers, a pair of tongs for holding heated metal, and even chisels for finer smithing work, all inscribed with magic rune sets imprinted into the metal of the tools. "Well, we're going to have to talk to the staff," he told Waleria. "We simply have to figure out if you really do have a connection to the Lost Kingdom!"

At this moment, a woman in a wizard's trenchcoat who was examining an antique alchemist's set a few metres away turned to Waleria and Levi. "I apologize for butting in, but are you talking about the Lost Kingdom of Oostelijk Wunderwald?" she asked. "I'm Octavia Antonescu, from the Groenzee-Stadt Historical Museum down the coastline, and I literally wrote a book on it. Not a big book, but..."

"What book?" Waleria asked, raising her eyebrows.

"It's called The Land, The Myth, The Legend: Oostelijk Wunderwald Explained, and it even hit the bestsellers list during the Month of Ice in '267!" Octavia bragged.

Before we continue, it should of course be noted that hitting the bestsellers list during the Month of Ice is not among the toughest accomplishments there is. Peak TV ratings are associated with the Month of Ice; so are sales of two-week-long railway tours to the deserts of the Far South. That being said, The Land, The Myth, The Legend had plenty of strong competitors, so it was not entirely trivial for it to hit even one bestsellers list in 10267. Having registered that achievement for everyone to hear, Octavia raised an eyebrow towards Levi.

"Wait, wait, you're the Comrade Antonescu from the Tenth Opal riddle historian team?!" Levi asked, waving his hands enthusiastically. "Of course I heard of your book; it has top-quality research and figures directly into my investigation!"

"I see. I have to say, if you and the pani here are going after lost knowledge from Wunderwald, and if you allow, I'm going along with you," Octavia said as she looked towards Levi. "There is no way I will miss the opportunity to find out more about the Kingdom; all its mysteries have been bugging me for five years!"

"I'm going to have to call my editor, but I'm not against it myself. Waleria?" Levi asked, turning to the beast-folk woman.

"Look, we don't even know yet if I'm the heir!" Waleria protested. "Let's not attempt to sprint in front of a steam locomotive, shall we?"

"We might be able to find out," Levi told her, before turning to the museum-keeper at the front desk. "Excuse me, I know we're very much not supposed to touch the exhibits, but are there any exemptions for research? We may have the heir apparent to the Lost Kingdom of Oostelijk Wunderwald with us, and I have a folder full of research to prove it."

The museum-keeper turned to Levi with a half-curious, half-incredulous facial expression.

"Are you, uh, serious?" he asked. "That is a bold claim." he said.

"Well, you can look over my materials," Levi said, carrying over his suitcase to the front desk and opening it to show the folder.

"Hm." the museum-keeper said, before turning in the direction of a winding staircase in the back of the museum. "Inkeri, please get down here! We've got unusual visitors!"

"Going, going!" the other museum-keeper shouted from upstairs. Her loud footsteps echoed across the ceiling, before she walked down into view. Immediately, Waleria and Levi saw she was from among the dwarves: short, stocky, her head and arms clad in a red-yellow protective shell with purple spots, pincer-like carapace extensions over her hands, and loose "beard" of water-filtering tendrils. She was wearing a traditional cut of a dwarven skirt and jacket, with the "hair" of feeler tendrils on her head in equally traditional short-braids of her people, and a hydrator mask pumping oxygen-enriched water to amphibious gills on her lower cheeks, for long-term comfort abovewater. She trundled over to Waleria and Levi, and looked at them with a grumpy frown over her deep turquoise eyes.

"Hello. Inkeri Jaakola," she told Waleria and others. "What do you want?"

"We wanted to... err, ask if Waleria here can touch the exhibits and see if they react." Levi said.

"React? Do you think you're in a petting zoo?" Inkeri frowned.

Waleria and Levi just looked to each other and realized they have to engage the polite mode to get anything. To them and indeed to us, pani Jaakola was clear-cut proof that Duchowiesen was nowhere near the unachievable benchmark of "a perfect society filled with perfect people". But, that didn't reduce the need for social and professional courtesy; in fact, grumpy people all but demanded it. So, Levi gave his etiquette a "full steam ahead" order, and smiled to Inkeri as he approached her with his folder of research.

"Pani Jaakola, we're not some amateurs trying to reach into museum displays where our hands don't belong," he said, waving his tail in a friendly manner. "We potentially have the heir apparent to Oostelijk-Wunderwald with us," - as he said that, he pointed to Waleria - "and we want to see if those magic-imbued items will have any reaction to her. I have journalistic notes to prove my hunch!"

"Hmf. Your accreditation, please," Inkeri told him. Levi responded by showing her his papers, but that just elicited another grumble.

"Let me look at the notes," Inkeri said. "I'm not particularly set to believe you, but I feel like Erich over there won't be happy if I just say no."

The Arboreous museum-keeper just looked at Inkeri with slight consternation as she began to examine the papers, Levi and Octavia looking from the side with great interest. After a few minutes of that altogether boring (to non-specialist) process and lots of grumbling, Inkeri said:

"Okay, this looks... interesting. But just because I'm willing to entertain your theory, doesn't mean I'll just let you grab the exhibits willy-nilly. First, you have to wear a special glove for exhibit handling; thank me and other staff that we can find those for you," she said. "Next, be extremely careful. If you as much as push too hard against the blacksmith tools, I'm going to take it to the regional museum authority. A slight, gentle touch will do for your theory, no need to grab onto the exhibit with both hands. Lastly, if this causes any spirit activity, that's entirely on you. I'd tell you to sign the papers to that, but I'm not even in the mood to go get them... and you probably know as well as I do that the written law already covers this occult corner case. You can't hold us liable for any apparitions."

After Inkeri was done explaining, Erich produced a box with several different sizes of thick, puncture-resistant nitrile butadiene rubber gloves. Those were museum-specialty - namely, the kind treated with an alchemical solution to conduct occult energies extra-well, though of course sometimes museum employees needed the opposite effect, and wore standard industrial gloves that were engineered to block occult phenomena. Waleria took one that was large enough for her hand, and pulled it on, before walking over to the display case with the blacksmithing tools. Erich and Inkeri opened it, and Waleria carefully, slowly reached out towards the exhibits.

As Waleria gently touched one of the hammers in the collection with her index, middle, and ring fingers, she felt an odd sensation... a little like the hammer being warm to the touch, but not in the same way that it would be from being out in the sun. Rather, it felt like it was just in the forge not a minute ago, making the blade of a magic sword. Then, a brief vision flashed through her mind - the night sky over a grandiose building of a magic smithy that she was sure she never saw in any book or TV program. And then, as she pulled her hand away from the hammer, she heard a distant rumble of thunder.

"Hey... did anyone else hear thunder just now?" she asked as the museum-keepers secured the display again.

"No, I haven't," Levi said. "Are you sure that--"

"A rumble of thunder? Yes, that may be a magic reaction to your presence," Octavia said.

"I think I also had a vision of a magic smithy somewhere!" Waleria said. "But I'm not sure, maybe it was only..."

Just as Waleria was about to start explaining, a phone on the ticket desk rang out. The Arboreous museum-keeper picked it up, and asked:

"Hello? Wait, what are you saying? I can't hear you too well. "Chip our dwarf least?" She is not-- no, that's... do you-- no, they can't hear you. And how do you know they-- no, I'm not-- well alright. Yes, you can speak to the... barony's Hausmeier, that's me." The incoherent conversation continued for a full minute more, before the museum-keeper called over Waleria.

"I think there is a spirit trying to reach you, pani," he told her. "Not very successfully, I might add."

Waleria walked over to the phone, and took it from the museum-keeper with her non-gloved hand, as he pointed for her to do. She asked:

"Hello?"

"Ah, you," the distorted, bubbling voice of a spirit half-awoken responded from the other side of the line. "Keep out of this, or you will be very sorry." Then, three seconds of silence, and after it short dial tones, indicative of a phone receiver rudely dropped back onto the switch-hook.

"What was it?" Levi asked.

"Uh... a spirit telling me to keep out of this... rudely," Waleria replied.