Kunago was still strumming his lyre under the tree on the Echoing Overlook above Somber Tune when Sai returned. "I'm glad that you've decided to return," said the elf. The wind rustled his leafy hair. "I have a task that needs a mortal's touch."

  Sai leaned against the tree and crossed his arms. "Will it upset the Nightmare?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Kunago.

  "I'll do it," Sai told him.

  Kunago strummed an angry chord on the lyre, and the ground trembled. When the Sorrowful Bard began to speak, his words sounded discordant and out of time with the Song, and the earth protested. "The Eternal Nightmare has come into possession of something dear to me, and I want it back," he said. "However, it has been cast deep into the darkness where I can neither see nor reach. I require the services of a mortal to recover it."

  Sai glanced down at Cuatete, who was growling at the jangling stones around her feet. "What am I looking for exactly?" he asked the elf.

  "It is the lyre that I played while I yet walked this world as a mortal," Kunago said, his words still clashing with the Song. The branches above him writhed in the discordance, and Sai silently stepped back. "It did not transition when the Eldritch One sealed me inside the song, and the Eternal Nightmare was quick to acquire it."

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  "That sounds like Syn," Sai said. "Where is it?"

  "In the darkness," said Kunago. "More I cannot say. The shadows surrounding it are too deep, too silent for me to sense it. I fear the Eternal Nightmare tries even now to suffuse my lyre with its shadows such that it can corrupt my song."

  Sai nodded, considering the effect of Kunago's own corruption on the world around them. "And that would be bad," he noted.

  Kunago strummed another chord that once again meshed with the song, and the ground and trees became still. "I am unable to ally myself with either side in the great war between the Eldritch One and the Eternal Nightmare," he said. His words, though spoken and not sung, seemed again to weave effortlessly through the Song. "But I'll not stand to have the Song subdued and turned against itself and its own cause."

  "Alright," said Sai. He turned to head back to the caves down to Somber Tune. "I'll bring your lyre back. Wait right here."

  "I thank you greatly, Harbinger of Nightmare," Kunago said from behind him.

  Sai blinked. "What did you call me?" he asked and turned back around, but the Sorrowful Bard was gone, his song playing itself on the unending wind. Sai checked behind the tree and over the sides of the overlook, but the elf was nowhere to be found. "I said wait here!" Sai shouted to the sky.