Esau didn’t get cold.

It was the first thing Kane had noticed about the guy the first time he’d ever seen him. Tal and Esau had been up on the ship’s main deck, discussing their plans for their most recent grave chest haul. Tal was bundled up in a cozy-looking, kangaroo pocket hoodie. But Esau? The man was wearing a black tank top and cargo shorts. And that was all Kane had ever seen him wear, unfazed by the Limbo breeze.

Despite the odd extremes of heat and cold this place seemed to throw at them, Esau had never once seemed bothered by the temperature. And now, watching Esau shivering in the chaos that ensued, he finally understood why.

“Esau!” Tal scrambled to his feet, unsteady, as if he’d forgotten how to walk. “What did you do?!”

Esau was still sitting on the floor, driving himself away from Tal with scuffled slides of his feet. His voice was barely above a crackly whisper as he spoke. “I swear, I took the precautions I had to—”

“My power is gone, Esau. What the fuck did you do?” Tal windmilled his hands to keep from falling. The man was moving like a toddler, and raging like one, too.

Kane had never seen Tal this pissed before. He was typically reserved and collected, only getting involved in a convo to offer a pragmatic comment or a snarky remark. But at the moment, he was genuinely furious.

Some part of Kane was glad that the man’s powers weren’t working.

He realized it was about time he interfered. “It must have been the torrafin,” he said, springing up between the pair. “It must have affected your powers somehow.”

Esau was desperately trying to start a fire, any fire, his teeth chattering as he snapped his fingers again and again.

Saul, meanwhile, had holstered his sword and stood still, the intense expression on his face unreadable. Unlike Tal, he seemed to realize that killing Esau likely wasn’t the most productive way to go about this. “Elaborate,” he commanded Kane.

Kane obliged, taking a breath to steel himself before speaking. “Alright. Here’s what I’ve surmised with all of this. First of all, the three of you seem to have lost your powers after ingesting the torrafin and the antidote.”

“That was an antidote?” Esau asked, placing his face in his hands. “Then why did—”

“Let me finish,” Kane hissed, cutting the man off. “Second of all, the galley chest offered no food tonight, but rather, only this antidote. And this was after we all brought the torrafin aboard.”

He turned to Lucian, who seemed to have already figured out where Kane was going. “The chest accommodates for the crew in some capacity, right?” Kane asked him.

Lucian gave a slow nod. “When it was just me on board, it only provided enough food for one person. This changed over time.”

Kane bit his lip, gears in his head working. “If it can account for however many people are aboard, it can also probably account for what exactly they can eat. There’s a reason the food on board is so American from what I’ve seen.”

He recalled the breakfast from that morning. Bacon and eggs and the like. He’d already pegged Esau and Saul as fellow Americans, but there was something different about Lucian and Tal, at least concerning their voices if not their demeanors outright. They had to be from elsewhere.

“I imagine the galley chest knows what we want to eat, as well as what we need to eat. Which is likely why it produced the antidote when it did.”

Tal let out a weak sigh from the floor, his limbs sprawled out in all directions. Clearly, he had given up on standing. “The chest knew the torrafin was poisonous,” he concluded.

Saul marched up to Esau, closing the distance with slow, plodding steps. “I thought you said you’d tried it!”

“I did!” Esau cried, pushing himself up with his hands. “A tiny nibble of the filet! And it was damn good, too!”

The man got to his feet, all eyes on him. “I’ve handled some crazy ingredients before. All sorts of meats. I’ve even prepared pufferfish.” He rubbed his arm, and Kane couldn’t tell if it was because of the cold or nerves. “I cleaned the megashark thoroughly. And the part of the torrafin we pulled up from the Sea had no poisonous organs from what I could see. What reason could a torrafin have to be poisonous? It’s an apex predator!”

“Unless it isn’t,” Kane stated.

A heavy silence fell over the room. The crew exchanged glances, the realization slowly sinking in.

A beast like the torrafin — an actual shark from Hell, and one that made the one in Jaws look like a golden retriever puppy by comparison — should not have any reason to be poisonous. Because that would mean it had some sort of greater predator that it needed to dissuade from eating it.

But of course, it was Limbo. Why shouldn’t there be one?

“There’s always a bigger fish,” Saul mumbled with a weak smile, leaning against the wall with a thud.

Esau was fiddling with his rings, anxiety suffusing his motions. “I thought… I thought Chester wanted us to eat the torrafin. Why else would it give us no other food? I thought it had trusted me, leaving it up to me to create the best dinner possible. If it knew there was an issue, why not give us a warning? Why not produce a sticky note saying ‘Don’t eat the damn fish!’?”

“Because it’s spiteful and selfish, Esau,” Lucian said, drawing up to full height. Kane noted his demeanor had changed drastically, his voice melodious and firm. “It wants to teach us a lesson. It wanted us to suffer the consequences of not going to it for food, for choosing something else instead.”

It was completely ridiculous, but in a strange way, it also made sense. If the chest were sentient by any sense of the word, and it wanted to ensure it was always being used in some capacity, it would naturally offer itself up as their savior when they made the grievous error, holding the literal antidote to their mistakes within.

In order to survive on this ship, they’d needed its help thus far. And it likely planned on keeping it that way.

—

It looked like they would subsist on water and bad vibes tonight.

Esau, Kane, and Lucian had checked in on the galley chest. It was still during the chest’s “business hours,” according to Lucian’s pocket watch. Yet, the thing wouldn’t produce a scrap of food no matter how much they prodded it.

Kane had even put the antidote back in, but nothing. It remained as a regular chest, refusing their offering. Kane had simply decided to pocket the antidote for now.

“We’re dead,” Esau whispered in disbelief, placing his hands on his head. “We’re going to starve to death.”

Kane elbowed him harder than he should have. “Stop whining. You know it might give us food tomorrow, right? There’s no indication it won’t.”

“There’s no indication it will!”

Lucian cradled his pocket watch in his hand, mulling over their predicament. “Kane. Let’s try feeding some of the torrafin to it. Maybe that will convince it to change its mind.”

Kane acquiesced, understanding the vision. He marched back to the dining area to retrieve a dish. When he arrived, Tal and Saul were moping around, clearly weakened in some respect.

It looked like Tal could barely even walk without his powers. If Kane understood the first mate’s abilities correctly, they allowed Tal to manipulate gravity within a certain area. That was probably the reason he was typically so light on his feet, ever the steady force on board. Kane could imagine that building an overreliance on gravity manipulation for moving about was possible — it just seemed unlikely, and rather stupid.

In fact, if that truly were the case, it were embarrassing. Tal had been locomoting on easy mode. Now he was just like the rest of them, if not worse off.

Stolen story; please report.

Meanwhile, Saul had started hacking away at a barrel he’d dragged into the room. His scimitars were still sharp as hell, but they didn’t achieve the same effortless, guaranteed slice that they did before. Not to mention Saul was having a much harder time handling them now, seemingly finally grasping just how heavy they were.

Kane simply grabbed his dish of choice and left without saying a word to either of them. He knew the resulting conversations with either of them would not have been pleasant.

Arriving back at the galley, he found Lucian and Esau standing in complete silence, as if they had nothing to say to each other. Lucian perked up slightly and nodded at Kane’s arrival. “Alright. Let’s see it, Kane.”

Kane crouched down and carefully lifted up the lid of the chest, placed in the dish he’d chosen — the massive platter of torrafin filet — and shut the chest firmly. The trio waited a couple of moments, the room silent with their held breaths, and then Lucian lifted his palm. Kane flipped open the lid.

The dish was still there, untouched.

Esau fell to his knees theatrically. “We’re doomed!”

Lucian ignored him, his expression calculating. “Here’s the plan. What we’re going to do is keep the torrafin we have aboard for the night. If the chest produces no food tomorrow, and perhaps the day after that, then we’ll eat the torrafin in the meantime.”

Kane and Esau looked at each other, then up at him. “You’ve got to be kidding,” the chef said.

But Kane understood. However, he still found the idea lacking in some manner. “As in, we shovel as much food into our mouths as we can before going unconscious? And then cure ourselves with the antidote?”

“Yes.”

“But what if the poison effect scales with the amount of torrafin we eat?”

Lucian flexed his fingers. “Then we eat very little.”

Nearly starving themselves if worse came to worst was a shoddy plan at best, but Kane could come up with no better one at the moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Esau get to his feet and start to leave in a hurry.

“Where’re you off to?” Kane asked, standing up and leaning out the doorway as the man trudged away.

Esau turned back to him, only for a moment. He looked guilty, distressed, depressed, exhausted, and frustrated. There may have even been tears in his eyes, but Kane couldn’t make anything more out in the darkness of the hallway. “I’ve gotta think, Kane,” he said, whirling around and stomping deeper into the ship.

—

Kane and Lucian sat in the room outside the captain’s quarters with all the bookshelves — the Log Room, it was called — across from each other. Their eyes were fixed on the map between them.

Lucian blinked twice, expression weary. “Still nothing?”

Kane’s legs were pulled up on the chair to his chest. He leaned back and rubbed at his eyes with vigor, the pain behind them like daggers stabbing at his retina, near-unbearable.

Not that he would let that show.

He wiped tears away with his fingers as discreetly as he could, shaking his head with a mild expression on his face. He promptly regretted doing so, his migraine worsening with the motion. “Still just flickers.”

It was the truth. Like the book had earlier, the map’s lines were flickering into and out of existence on the page, but only very occasionally, to the point he would think it was simply a trick of the light.

The captain rubbed a hand over his face. He definitely saw through Kane’s facade — because he must have gone through it himself, the pain of getting the map to work — but seemed willing to put up with the man’s act. He was more concerned with their situation as a whole than any of Kane’s bravado, which made perfect sense.

It was fully nighttime, and Lucian had told Kane he planned to stay up all night to get the map to work.

Kane had originally been planning on sleeping. The day’s shenanigans had taken a toll on him, and he was just about ready to turn in. But hell, if Lucian was going to just sit and stare at the map, then Kane may as well join him.

He well and truly understood the urgency of learning magic at the moment. With the entire crew powerless, Lucian was currently the strongest person on the ship, with the magic he knew serving as a power of his own. And thus, Kane had to step up as well, since no one else wanted to learn.

It was all still baffling. These powers, which the men possessed during their entire time in Limbo and maybe even before, all gone due to a little bit of food poisoning. There was no telling whether the powers were gone for good or not.

It made sense that Kane was currently doing the best mentally out of the whole crew at the moment. Three had lost their powers and were coming to terms with it, while their captain couldn’t lead them to the land he’d promised them. Kane, meanwhile, had killed a shark today. And it had been pretty badass to boot.

Kane fixed his gaze on Lucian through his bleary vision. “I don’t think I told you.”

Lucian didn’t look up. “Told me what?”

“I think I have powers.”

“Oh really,” he said in a doubtful deadpan.

Kane’s brow furrowed in affront. “Esau and I were trying to tell you earlier, but you cut us off because screaming at us was seemingly more important in the moment. How do you think we killed the torrafin?”

Lucian pushed to his feet, walking towards a bookshelf on the opposite side of the room. “I really feel like you’re pulling my leg here, Kane,” he said way too earnestly. “I thought you and Esau were just being idiots.”

Of course he did. Because they had been. But Kane resisted the urge to make a sharp retort and focused on conveying useful information.

“I’m in the water,” he said, setting the scene with a comprehensive array of hand motions. “The weakened torrafin is there with me. All of a sudden, I feel that sixth sense you mentioned, I get real hot, and then the water around me starts bubbling and boiling. I cook the whole damn torrafin alive.”

Lucian returned to his seat with his tome of choice. “Alright. Do it now, then.” Kane looked at him confusedly, so the captain clarified. “Those sound like Esau’s powers. So make fire.”

Kane rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think it was quite like that, Lucian. I was in the water, so I couldn’t exactly make fir—”

“And now you’re not in water. ” Lucian gestured at the air and dry wood around them, then snapped his fingers. “Just do what Esau does.”

“No, you’re not listening.” Kane was having a hard time explaining it because he didn’t fully understand it himself. “I don’t think I could make fire if I tried. But I was able to heat myself and the water around me. Call it a… gut instinct.” Was that what it was?

The captain paused, processing this for only a moment. He picked up a loose sheet of parchment from the desk between them, one Lucian had already scribbled all over before crossing out heavily with angry lead Xs. “Heat this paper up, then. Till it burns away.”

Reluctantly, Kane took hold of the other end of the sheet and focused. He attempted to recreate that feeling he’d felt in the Sea, the sensation he’d already tried to recreate myriad times to no avail, that burning in his chest and his heart. And again, nothing happened.

Lucian flipped open his book, shaking his head. “Don’t waste my time, Kane. This is—”

Kane shot up to his feet, veritably miffed. “Yeah, because your time is oh-so-important, Mr. Center of the Universe!”

The captain gripped the edge of a page between two fingertips. He furrowed a brow as he flipped it. “Speak up.”

Granted the soapbox, Kane spoke. ”Fuck me and my efforts to help the crew, fuck us all trying to survive, trying to see what we can do to help to leave this hellscape. It has to be about you and what you want and what you think is right, doesn’t it? As long as you know what’s going on, everyone gets to move on clueless, put up with your secrets, unable to equip themselves with what they need to protect themselves because it means we’ll rely on you!”

He hadn’t raised his voice to the degree he had yesterday, and he hadn’t lost his patience to the same level, either. But either way, the way Lucian acted required that he be put into place far too often. It was an uncomfortable habit forming.

Lucian simply hummed, hardly taking the time to consider what Kane had said.

“You should leave.”

Kane gritted his teeth. “I’m not just going to—”

An enormous pressure fell upon Kane, that sensation of magic stunning him out of his bravado. It was an empty threat — surely Lucian wouldn’t hurt Kane, because he was likely too clandestine to even want to reveal how he could do so.

Thus, the imagination of the possible horrendous possibilities sufficed. Kane turned tail and left.

—

He pulled up a stool and set it beside Esau, who was seated in front of the ship’s wheel.

“Why didn’t you just stay in our quarters, if it’s so cold out here?” Kane tried not to stare at their resident chef, who had covered himself in a stack of sheets and blankets against the bite of the night wind. “We’re anchored.”

Esau didn’t reply. His gaze was fixed on the horizon beyond the bow of the ship, although nearly everything was pitch black at this point. There was nothing he could possibly make out in the darkness.

The man’s teeth chattered endlessly, his posture hunched and sad in the stack of blankets that covered everything but his eyes and nose.

Kane sighed. He rolled his shoulder, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a tinderbox and a joint he’d taken from Esau’s bedside.

“You smoke?” he asked, his voice casual.

Esau didn’t move or reply, shivering quietly.

Kane looked Esau up and down, a sly grin on his face. “You look like you smoke.” The tinderbox was old and scratched up from years of use. He flipped it open with a clumsy flick of the wrist and set it down on his lap, and then he began the process.

He picked up the flint and the steel, striking the former against the latter in an energetic downwards motion, the clinking of the metal the sole sound brave enough to speak over the wind and the sea. Sparks flew into the small bundle of black charcloth at the bottom of the tin, one catching and growing larger than the others.

Gently, Kane lowered a sulfur splint into the spark, and the end caught the flame, small and delicate. He shielded it from the wind as he lifted the flame to the joint, and finally, he shook out the splint and dropped it to the deck, finishing it off with a firm stomp of his boot.

Kane leaned back, holding the joint to his mouth, savoring the success and the drug paraphernalia in equal parts. He took a deep drag and blew the smoke into the wind. The breeze carried the smog away violently and unceremoniously.

He didn’t expect Esau to raise a hand. But low and behold, there it was, thick brown fingers covered in cold metal, trembling in the air.

Kane relinquished the joint with a small smile, and Esau took his own puff from it, breathing into the night.