Prince David had brought only one truly luxurious item on this journey with him. Everything else had been absolutely essential for his mental health. The spa, the trees, the Courier himself were not frivolities that David had brought without purpose. Each one kept him and his employees in peak condition, able to fight this battle against nature itself.

The one luxury David had brought was a single book. It was not one of the many books on cartography, logistics, or history that were pertinent to his whole mission in the Frozen continent. It was a journal written by a lowly peasant who had become a soldier in the first age.

David had found this journal in an abandoned corner of his father’s library when he was a child. He had not been immediately enthralled by it since the entire thing was endlessly boring. However, in a twist of Fate, David opened the book to the most important entry on accident one night.

The prince read the entry quite frequently, hoping to glean new details from the sparse writing. The peasant himself had not been particularly eloquent, nor did he have a good view of the event, but still it was a story for the ages.

Reading it was a meditative experience for David now. And whenever he felt overwhelmed, he sat down somewhere quiet and private to read the journal.

The journal had been written by a peasant living in the fractured continent, pre-fracture of course. He had a lowly gift that allowed his thoughts to appear on paper. This meant there were fantastical realistic drawings scattered throughout the book, real snapshots of the moments that this man had lived. Unfortunately, the man had a pension for putting nude men and women throughout the book, but some of the drawings were truly breathtaking.

The part David cared about was when the peasant had been conscripted into Balthazar’s army. Balthazar had not been given a powerful gift when he was born. In an age of legends and personal power he was weak. He couldn’t shoot fireballs the size of mountains at his enemies, nor could he rend his enemies limb from limb with his mind.

Balthazar had not brought the continent to its knees through mere personal power, the power of man not god. He had used his brilliant mind and indomitable will to force all the little monarchs of the fractured continent to bow to him. He started the dynasty that eventually ended with Greg the Idiot.

The peasant had been conscripted into the army and was terrified; these soldiers fought legends with gifts that made the soldiers seem like ants. But Balthazar always had a plan.

In one particularly unique battle, he had faced a man who made the plant life in a nearby area follow his command. Trees would stand up to face his enemies, the grass at his enemies’ feet would trip them, the very pollen in the air would fall into open eyes and noses.

Balthazar made his army uproot an entire forest. The peasant himself spent weeks picking out every tuft of grass he could find, chopping vines with his sword, and making wet rags to cover his companions’ faces.

Many foot soldiers died in the initial skirmish, however once the enemy had been routed to the grass free plains, it was over. The man’s head fell and stained the lifeless dirt beneath his feet. That was one of the memories saved in the journal written by the peasant. The very moment was drawn directly from the man’s mind into the book, in all its gory and glorious detail.

David flipped through the pages, until he got to the important section. There were pages and pages of thoughts and images imprinted in the journal since it was such a momentous occasion.

Balthazar was fighting the last house, the final standing monarch of their region. The entire continent had been divided into little provinces ruled over by little kings with their gifts being the only thing that kept anyone in line. There was no infrastructure, there was no government, it was simply the will of the strong. If someone on that continent was blessed with a powerful enough gift and they defeated one of the standing monarchs, they simply took over the territory and continued to rule in the previous one’s stead.

But Balthazar had taken these little factions and untied all but one of them under his own name. His army, thousands of men strong stood in front of the final castle, thousands of spears held at the ready to face a single woman. She was an army unto herself. Regina the Reflected, had been given a normal gift, if she looked into a mirror, her reflection could step out and fight alongside her as an indistinguishable copy. But, by pure luck she realized if she stood between two mirrors, she could make nearly infinite reflections of herself.

Thus, two armies met on the battlefield. One was Balthazar’s army, well-armed and well-fed. Their lines stood strong in their battle formations as they approached the other army. And the other was the mirror army.

It was quite unnerving for the peasant to march on an army that looked identical. Every single one had the same weapon, the same armor, the same small imperfections lined every face.

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Another image had been imprinted of this moment into the journal and David gazed at it reverently. It was unnerving and showed the terror of the ancient gifts.

The battle was basically a slugfest between the armies. Continually pushing back and forth against the other. The peasant survived through pure luck.

Eventually Balthazar’s elite force punched a hole through the continually replenished force and broke into the castle. Whereupon they sliced and diced their way through the halls. Until they reached the mirror room, where Regina sat, creating more and more reflections to attack Balthazar’s army with.

Balthazar himself bested her in a duel, then pronounced to the remaining reflections that the original was dead. Then he asked which of them was now the original. Which started infighting between the remaining reflections, which caused Balthazar’s army to easily finish off the remnants.

This was where the most provocative part of the story began. The peasant himself had imprinted many moments into the journal since it was such a powerful moment.

What was left of Balthazar’s army was sifting through the corpses. The good people were finding their friends’ corpses and trying to send them back to their families or take a token to give to the widows and parents. The pragmatic soldiers were taking the armor off their fallen comrades and enemies; they hoped to cart it home and sell off the valuable ores they could. Finally, the broken people just sat, too traumatized by the entire battle that their minds simply shut down rather than process it.

Balthazar himself was in the broken camp. He had found a particularly tall pile of bodies and sat himself upon it. Surveying the carnage that he had wrought upon the world.

The peasant believed Balthazar was seeing the true pain and misery of his conquest for the first time. The magnitude of his war had set upon him and was wreaking havoc upon his morality and mind. But David disagreed with that assessment, Balthazar had seen bloodier battles than these and had shouldered the blood of the people to forge a new world. David believed that Balthazar had attained his goal, something that should have been impossible, something he never should have accomplished, and was struggling to see himself existing without the goal. He had achieved his vision of the world, what was a person to do once they achieved their life’s work?

The peasant watched as Balthazar started convulsing and shaking. His eyes bugged out and the veins on his body started popping out, looking as if they were to burst. The peasant was petrified, was a new even more powerful monarch about to approach this army and kill them all. What a terrifying gift this person must have to kill Balthazar without anyone being able to see him.

Then it stopped. The shaking subsided and the eyes stopped bugging out. Balthazar took a deep breath and let out an airy chuckle that the peasant could barely hear.

The space in front of Balthazar stopped existing and something emerged.

In the journal there were several pages dedicated to trying to describe the being that emerged from the rift in space, and many attempts at imprinting the image into the book. However, none of them seemed able to convey the majesty in a way that satisfied the peasant, so he blotted each one out.

The being was a sword, a single drop of blood, it was good, it was evil, it was thousands of men dying at the other’s hands, it was a bloodied man, it was ugly, and it was red.

From the array of existence that was the being, a single red eye emerged and looked at Balthazar, who looked back without fear.

“I know,” he said to the being, before pulling out his sword and slitting his own throat.

The being then receded back into the rift. But the peasant saw an image of Balthazar appear in the being. Just like the sword, and the blood, the bloodied man, and all the flashing images that made up the being, Balthazar flashed by, dyed a bloody red color.

It was a surreal event for everyone involved, but no one was quite sure what happened. The peasant talked to many of his comrades and asked for opinions on the event, but no consensus was ever reached.

Balthazar’s heir took the throne and life continued for everyone involved. The peasant went back to working in his fields and imprinting lewd images of people into his journal.

The bizarre events faded into the annals of history, leaving nothing except for remnants of memory and the scraps told by the survivors. The journal was passed hand to hand, and by some twist of fate, ended up abandoned in the corner of the royal library in the Hearted continent.

David was tracing his fingers over the cover of the journal, feeling its edges and its spine, when a persistent knock hit his door. Immediately, his right hand raised to the bridge of his nose that he pinched softly in annoyance.

Sam barged in without even waiting for David’s approval.

“They are the luckiest idiots to have ever lived,” they said emphatically, with copious hand waving and gesticulating.

“Who?”

“Your team of fools. The ones who were just searching for the natives as a punishment. They actually succeeded. Not even one of our dedicated search teams, comprised of people with complementary gifts, could find a trace of the natives. But your bozos did it.”

“Well, that’s surprising.”

Sam breathed heavily glaring at David.

“Surprising would be finding an extra slice of bacon in your morning breakfast David. Those idiots have defied rationality, they have exceeded the limits of humanity with their pure foolishness.”

“But they succeeded, and that’s what we wanted.”

“Yes, but, but, but…” Sam trailed off in exasperation. They obviously couldn’t express their annoyance to David, so they shut their mouth and left the room.

Not even a few moments later a figure stepped out of a nearby shadow.

“Benny,” the prince acknowledged the presence of the freaky shadow man and his ridiculous bowler hat.

“You could least pretend to be surprised, sir.”

Benny’s hat came off his head and he brushed some of the excess snow off his clothes. Then he continued, “I have come to let you know that the team has succeeded, and we have brought back a native named Anna. She’s a real pain in the ass, but she was the only one willing to come. Also, we’re paying her in food, like a lot of food.”

“Drop her off with Sam then. And make sure to let the chef know that her services will be needed for our guest. Also, keep her hidden from the Freer Men, I don’t want them getting any funny ideas about our alliances here.”

Benny disappeared into the shadows as David chuckled a bit to himself, life was certainly about to get interesting.

After all the positioning and posturing, the journey was about to begin.