When Luce opened his eyes, the forest was alive once more. Pulsating green, vibrant and verdant as the wind rushed past their leaves.

And up through the canopy, the slightest parting of the trees revealed the faintest shadow of the moon, a crescent so sharp it looked to puncture the sky.

An arrow flew by his ear, sending a chill through his bones.

He turned his head to face the source, and a vacant face stared back. Gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes, and older, but it still looked like Harold.

Behind him was Father, atop a magnificent black stallion. An old man, with a gaunt face and long dark hair gone mostly to grey, his visage still had a cast of warmth to it. “Be careful, son!” he barked out. “Never point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to kill.”

Harold narrowed his eyes, spite bringing a trace of life back to his face. “Sorry.” He shrugged unapologetically. “Thought I saw a fox.”

The older Father sighed, clicking his heels to direct his mount forward. “If you spent less time drinking, terrorizing your servants and disappointing me, imposing on those poor girls…” He shook his head.

Is this the future that awaits them?

These visions weren’t supposed to be able to do that, a dim part of Luce remembered, and yet here it was, plain to see. Whatever it really means...

The prince here wasn’t acting anything like his brother, though. What is this, really?

As the older Father rode ahead, the prince notched another arrow, pulling the bow taut in his hands and aiming straight at Father’s back. With the slightest crack of a smile on his face, he loosed.

Luce called out, but they couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t see him. A mere observer, is that all I am to be?

He felt the life of the forest coursing through him, or perhaps it was simply the mushrooms, but it felt as invigorating as it was terrifying.

Harold I died in a hunting accident while out with his son…

“He will change when he’s king, Luce. Rule does that to a man.” Father was at his side again, his hair clean and dark once more, his face free of wrinkles.

I remember this. Harold had locked himself in his room for almost a week, and Father was reassuring me. Years ago, now, but the memory was fresh.

“You must be there to support him,” Father continued. “Be his rock. He will depend on you exactly as I do.” He had hugged Luce then, when it had really happened, but now he walked away.

A boy was standing there in the woods, his eyes blazing with green fire.

Father wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder, leaving his back turned to Luce.

Who? Why?

When Luce looked back, they were gone, and Harold stood in their place.

Tears in his eyes, he held in his hand a dagger as dark as a Nocturne gate. He took a deep breath, then slashed down his own face. Darkness bled out onto the pink sand of the beach in place of blood.

The black blood flowed down to the cold, biting wind from the water, past a crowd gathered around a roaring fire, but none of them cared. Most were bedecked in chainmail, hanging heavy on their shoulders alongside the crude spears they grasped.

Ships gathered in the water behind them, broad and unadorned, with dozens of oars poking out from either side.

They spoke as well, muttering and murmuring in a tongue that sounded closer to the Empire’s than Avalon’s. All save the bundled figure, bound and gagged, squirming and struggling under the eye of a thickly muscled man with enormous, bushy eyebrows.

“Great Spirit Khali, Empress of Darkness, Guardian of the Night, Shade of Shades, I call you forth to receive my offering. Hear my call and honor the pact of my grandfather, Cambris Grimoire.”

The crowd erupted in cheer as Luce felt his heart stop, sweat pooling on his forehead.

The Grimoire raised his hand, holding up a dagger of iron and bone, and plunged it downwards.

He stepped aside as the crowd continued cheering, their speech impossible to make out.

“Our hopes have been answered by the grace of Khali,” he spoke, walking towards the foggy water. “This land will serve us well.”

This isn’t Refuge; it’s Cambria.

The first Grimoires had settled Cambria from over the sea… Not everyone knew that, but it wasn’t a secret. And yet I never once considered what that would mean.

Had anyone?

Father couldn’t have known. He couldn’t…

Scant wonder the forest spirit would show me this. The greatest good that Avalon’s conquests ever boasted, and we’d brought it to Cambria in the first place.

The hypocrisy of generations weighed on his shoulders as the blood polluted more and more of the water.

Nor was it the simple barbarism of the Empire’s human sacrifices… Khali… To willingly serve the dark spirit was an act less than human. She who had almost plunged the world into darkness and extinguished all life, stopped only by the daring courage of the Great Binder.

My heritage is naught but blood and darkness, from Cambris Grimoire all the way to Father.

As the thought passed over Luce, he caught sight of the Nocturne gate hanging high in the sky, almost invisible in the dim night.

A speck was falling, he could see. It almost looked like a boy, but it was impossible to properly make it out before it landed on the beach in a plume of dust and smoke.

And out in the water, the first true source of light.

It took the form of a man, and yet glowed with the light of the sun. Flowing white robes pulsed gold as they rippled, flapping with the movement of the man’s arm.

He wielded a pistol in his hand and a scowl on his face, brandishing both at the creature across from him.

Her hair a mane of blue snakes, flesh and blood dyed in the same color, there was nothing but ice in her veins even as the luminous man pulled the trigger.

She fell, and the sound echoed across the beach as it was engulfed with flame.

Wax dripping, enormous lizard creatures scurrying to and fro, the echo of the pistol continued ringing, dripping with wax as it reached Luce’s ears. “Do not trust Magnifico.”

The words bounced back and forth inside Luce’s head, ringing more and more as the crack continued on. Why would it use that name? ‘Magnifico’ was nothing but a ruse, a role Father could play to advance his interests.

But to any who did know him by that name...

Cya was showing him another of Avalon’s failings, not warning him about Father. That made far more sense. Who could Luce ever trust, if not family?

“He tried to have his son killed. There is no greater monster in all the world. Darkness leaves traces but the light blots out all else.”

And so it was, the fire blazing brighter and brighter, until it became impossible to see all but the faintest edges around it. Stones buried deep in the earth, piles of books and bottles of nightshade, and the feet of a figure wholly obscured by the flame.

≋

The sun had risen high in the sky by the time Luce fully regained his senses.

Even after the visions had passed, his body had kept him awake, reliving their every horror.

Cya acouldn’t have outright lied, framing this loss of control as an enlightening gift, but she had surely misled.

The mind is sacrosanct, and she took that from me by force. That alone was unforgivable.

But the spirit and her arboreal revenants were nowhere to be found; they’d likely left him here in the depths of madness.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Luce blinked, trying to shake the unnerving feeling from his head.

With no shade but the spindly remnants of the forest, the mid-morning rays were already beating down heavily. Luce’s throat already felt hoarse and cracked, and this was only the beginning.

Cya had left him in a tiny ruin, a circle of stones set in a pattern into the ground, bleached trees springing up between them that stretched up higher than those in the surrounding forest.

Not a drop of water remained in sight save the salty ocean far in the distance, useless for drinking. And crawling with pirates ready to dragoon me into their smuggling once more, for all I know.

It had seemed as if their captain, apparently named Eloise, had probably alienated enough of her crew that they wouldn’t be likely to come back for her, but ultimately that was just a guess, and not one Luce felt confident enough to pin his freedom on.

But what else was there?

Cya’s relative affability belied her cruelty. Leaving me here was just as sure a death, only slower and more agonizing.

If he tried going south or west towards the Rhan river, he would surely die long before glimpsing it. The lands of the Aboreum lay to the east, further from Avalon’s control or influence, and deeper into the lands of these spirit-worshipping fanatics. Eloise had mentioned taking him there, Luce recalled, wanting to sell his corpse to be paraded around like an animal pelt.

In all likelihood, that too was unreachable. The blight had perpetuated itself far beyond the bounds of Refuge itself; the walk east would be even longer, even less possible.

To the coast it is, then.

At least there, life remained a slim possibility.

Do not trust Magnifico. He tried to have his son killed.

Those visions had fallen far short of the enlightenment Cya had promised, leaving him strung out on the failings of the past and errant warnings about Father.

He would sooner kill himself than harm me or Harold. That was the nature of parenthood, Mother had told him once, in the days when she still lived in Cambria with them. Unless there were some other son Luce didn’t know about, it had to be a lie, or at least one of the spirits’ signature misleading truths.

Maybe there was another son. Father often traveled for matters of state. He and Mother hadn’t so much as seen each other since he’d taken the throne; was it so hard to believe that he might have strayed?

That’s believable enough, but even then he would never harm such a boy.

Over and over, he turned the possibilities over in his mind as he trudged back towards the beach: Was there another Magnifico? Could spirits lie once they were half-dead, as part of their metaphysical nature? Were the visions nothing more than toxins scrambling his brain, playing on fears?

None fit quite right, all required a leap of faith that Luce wasn’t prepared to take.

None of it will matter, if I die here.

His limbs felt leaden by the time he reached the shore, though the breeze filled his lungs with the slightest relief. Here was the water, for all that it was undrinkable.

“Oh, it’s you.” The pirate, Eloise, paced the beach with her hands behind her back, voice hoarse and eyes red.

“I suppose Cya killing you would have been too much to hope for.” Luce bent down and splashed a handful of seawater into his face. “It would be the least you deserve.”

“Probably,” she agreed. “Luckily, what someone deserves has nothing to do with what they get.”

How is she so unphased after what Cya did?

“I wonder. Even you must have realized your crew aren’t coming back, by now.” Deliberately, he turned away before she could respond, returning to the desiccated tree trunks a little ways back from the water.

A guttural growl caused him to turn though.

Eloise wore a look of pure fury, bloodshot eyes narrowed enough to stare daggers. “Those ungrateful fucks. We had a good thing going! Easy money, low risk, high reward. But could they appreciate it, even for an instant? Couldn’t they just fucking—” She folded her arms, taking a deep breath. “Really though, this is on you. You could have shut up and taken your share, and we’d both be safe and rich right now.”

“Typical, that you would be so concerned with money.” He reached up and grabbed one of the slimmer branches of the nearest tree, snapping it off with what strength he could muster.

Her eye twitched. “It matters, to the overwhelming majority of people who aren’t born with fuckloads of it. It’s freedom, power, control.”

“But not for your crew, apparently.” He snapped off another branch. Cya might get angry, but that’s her problem. “They were happy to peddle that poison that was forced down our throats for a handful of mandala coins, but you were still odious enough to turn them away. It’s impressive, in a way.”

“What the fuck are doing, anyway? Building a fire in the middle of the day?”

“Yes,” Luce responded curtly.

Eloise snorted. “Well, I can see your mind made it out of those visions intact. Meanwhile, we have to get moving if we want to survive. If we follow the coast east—”

“We can die a hundred miles before we reach the Arboreum,” he finished. “Go, if you want. I don’t care.”

“So you’re fine dying here instead. Fucking brilliant.” She stormed off defiantly, taking long strides along the pink sand.

He had just finished getting the firewood ready by the time she came slinking back. “Say what you want about Eloise the pirate, she doesn’t give up easily.”

“Fuck off,” she barked, a scowl on her face as she approached. “There’s another ruin back that way, but fuck all else. Figured I might as well defy the spirit’s prediction and avoid dying alone.” She glanced down at the pile of wood. “Alright, seriously, why the firewood?”

Luce wiped the sweat from his brow. “It’s simple thermodynamics. Water exists in a liquid state due to the neutral temperature. It’s got a moderate amount of energy, while ice is solid because it has almost none, and steam is vapor because it has a lot more.”

Eloise blinked. “Well, thanks so much for the lesson, professor. That explains everything.”

Luce smiled smugly. “If we can turn saltwater to vapor, it leaves the salt behind, and the water from the steam is safe to drink. Normally that means using what’s called a solar still, where you cover a basin of saltwater with a sheet of glass and let the sun evaporate it. Water condenses back on top, ready to drink.”

She held the palm of her hand to her face and exaggeratedly searched around. “Must be super clean glass. I can’t see it at all!”

“Yes, well, that’s what the firewood is for. I just need to heat it up in a different way, and I can desalinate the water.”

“Oh.” She paused in what appeared to be a moment of genuine reflection, then snorted. “So to that end, you gathered a fuckload of wood, and nothing else. How are you going to store the water while you heat it up? How do you collect the steam so it doesn’t billow uselessly into the sky?”

“I’ll figure it out. It’s better than sitting here and waiting to die.”

“Do you even know how to start a fire?”

“Of course…” The principles, anyway. He grabbed two pieces of the bleached wood and held them together. “You just rub them against each other really hard until the friction generates enough heat to cause a combustion reaction with the phlogiston in the air, and then sparks will—”

“You are so fucking doomed,” Eloise scoffed, rolling her head around. “See you, Prince Lumpy.”

This time, she was gone for hours, and returned covered with scratches and bruises, cradling something in her hands.

“You know, I think it might be even more amusing the second time.”

“Had to tangle with the spirit-touched guarding the ruins. Not exactly the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” She set her object down on the ground, allowing Luce a better view of what it was.

“A clay pot…” He exhaled. “You—”

“Saved your sorry ass.” She shrugged. “And it’s actually two.” She lifted the lid and pulled a small cup from inside. “Said you needed something to collect the clean water, right?”

Luce blinked. “I— Thank you!” He’d managed to find a hollow branch amidst the firewood that could hopefully serve as a pipe, but basins for the water had completely eluded him.

Eloise folded her arms. “Don’t thank me. I fucking hate that. It’s not about you.”

“There’s the charm!”

“Shut up.” With a soft crunch in the sand, she hopped over to the pile of firewood in one fluid motion. “Set up your science stuff and I’ll get the fire going.”

The final piece of the puzzle was getting the water out safely, but Luce had already spent hours thinking over that particular conundrum. It was the work of a few minutes to wedge the hollow branch he’d picked out into the lid of the pot.

Eloise had left him a roaring fire, fortunately, sparked by some piece of steel she’d kept in her doublet. Far better than anything Luce might have managed, had he even succeeded in making sparks at all. She had already wandered off into the water though, seemingly unwilling to help further.

Still, with some difficulty, Luce managed to perch his apparatus properly atop the fire by himself. With the aid of the cup, it only took a few more minutes to pour enough seawater in the sand around the makeshift pipe, covering it with something cool so the steam wouldn’t be scalding as it escaped.

That particular safety measure hadn’t come to him until hours into Eloise’s absence, and Luce was proud that it had at all. So far away from his comfortable labs and advanced equipment, never had it been so hard to put theory into practice.

He bated his breath as the decades-old pot began to whistle, a worrying wisp of steam escaping through tiny cracks in the lid where he’d attached the tube. The water didn’t take long to boil, but every moment of anticipation was agonising.

And then, at last, drops began to trickle into the cup.

Luce forced himself to wait until the cup was filled an inch deep, then pressed it to his lips.

Lukewarm and disgusting, it was the sweetest elixir he had ever tasted, for the salt was gone.

“Yes!” he couldn’t help but cry out, carefully setting the cracked clay cup back into place. “Yes!”

Eloise strode out of the water with a flopping fish in her hands. “Oh good, I was hoping someone would scare away half my dinner. Was hard enough catching the one with bare hands.”

“Thank you,” he muttered, pointing to the contraption. “Go ahead, drink.”

She narrowed her eyes, but still bent down to sip from the battered cup.

By the time night fell, they had boiled their fifteenth cup of water, with no end in sight.

“You know,” Luce noted, spitting out a tangle of bones from the roasted fish. “I made a mistake. Told you how this all worked before it was built. You could have done this all yourself and left me to die.”

Eloise shrugged. “It’d be a waste.”

She’s probably talking about the ransom. Still, it was more polite than she’d been yet. “Can I ask you something?”

“No, you are physically incapable of asking me questions. That’s my power from the spirits, shutting people up.”

“Right, ok.” He took a deep breath, willing himself to accept the answer, no matter the cost. “How did you know where to find my ship?”

Eloise raised an eyebrow. “Someone blabbed about it to us. Someone always talks. All we knew then was that it would be a royal-class vessel. Expected jewels and silks for Perimont, that kind of stuff. But instead we got you, and all the joy and good cheer you brought with you.”

Someone told them, and set me up.

“I see.” Luce strained to keep his breathing calm, nodding slowly back at Eloise. “Thanks for filling me in.”

I wasn’t supposed to survive the trip.