Syra led Firnix through the dark residence until they made it to the Reeve’s study.

  The square room was well-lit by multiple Glimmermoss lanterns, thick with a smoky, earthy scent. The Reeve was hunched over a wooden desk, scribing with an ink quill. When he heard Syra and Firnix enter, he slowly turned away from his work. His eyes were beady behind his spectacles, and limp gray locks clung precariously to his scalp.

  This was the man responsible. The man abusing Umbras for his own benefit.

  “Greetings to the venerable Reeve Cestod,” Firnix said with a bow.

  “Strike me shocked, you’re awake already,” Syra said, leaning against a wall beside the door, eyes narrowed.

  Cestod smiled uneasily. “I’m shocked to see two fellows with Umbras out at this time. In my house, too, when I had two guards.”

  “What were those guards for, anyway?” Syra asked. “I don’t think they were hired just to warm your doorstep.”

  “It’s only natural to have guards when villains are on the loose.”

  “Villains?”

  Cestod gave her a pointed stare.

  “Oh, us. But how did you know we were coming here?”

  “I didn’t. The guards aren’t from here. Elkah sent them to watch over this village to protect us from ‘a wayward Soulcaster with a fake Umbra.’”

  “Did she know we’d come to this village?” Firnix asked, shifting his weight to his heels as if poised to flee.

  “She could’ve made the law for the Reeves of every village in the general area around Sylvanshade,” Syra figured. So Elkah had trusted in her to survive. “What were the guards supposed to do? Take us back with them, or kill us?”

  “You think Elkah would want to kill you?” Firnix said, as if startled. “I thought you grew up with her!”

  “She always cared more about the ‘good of the society’ than any one person,” Syra said. She’d always admired that about Elkah as a kid, although she wasn’t sure how to feel about it now. She felt some sort of hollowness in her chest at the idea of the kind old woman regretfully giving the order to have her and Firnix killed. “She might think I was trying to attack her when I burned down her house. Besides, the guards had spears.”

  “Actually,” Cestod said, “I believe those spears were meant for their protection.”

  “Their protection? From who?”

  Cestod gave her another pointed stare.

  “Oh, us. So why did they run…” Syra trailed off as the picture clicked into place. “Firnix, Firnix! They ran to Sylvanshade!”

  “Sylvanshade?” Firnix asked. “The place where Elkah lives?”

  “She thinks I’ve gone rogue. She probably thinks she needs to send Duri to take me back. Or take me down.”

  “But you have gone rogue, haven’t you?” Firnix asked.

  A familiar pit of anxiety. Am I really doing the right thing? She quelled the feeling. “I guess I have.”

  “So a Redcloak is coming? Syra, what do we do! We can’t fight a Soulcaster.”

  “Don’t look so worried. I told you already, Duri won’t make it here in time, even as fast as he is.” She turned to Cestod, who’d been listening silently beside his desk. “Not if we get a drake to ride soon after the drake meeting.”

  “You came to demand a drake from me,” Cestod said wearily. “Unfortunately, that will not be possible from this village, no matter how you threaten me.”

  “We know,” Syra said, frowning. “And whose fault is that? We’ve come to get you to fix the situation. A villager told us you scheduled too many drakes for the upcoming meeting. You need to scale it down, or postpone the meeting at least.”

  “That’s not possible. Communication with the beasts is tenuous, you understand. They don’t have a language, nor any desires beyond animalistic instincts. Just scheduling these meetings was a miracle of improvised communication. Attempting to amend our meeting’s plans on such short notice is pointless.”

  “So you’re just waiting to die with the village?”

  “I’m working on a solution as we speak,” Cestod said smoothly. “I’m working through the night to better manage the hunters. Further and further out they go, and less and less they bring in. We may not have enough meat, but we’re trying our hardest to get as much as we can.”

  He doesn’t care, Syra realized, almost in disbelief. Her nails dug into her palms. He really doesn’t care. “We heard there’s not going to be enough meat for the drakes coming tomorrow.”

  “That may be what some people—”

  Her pulse thundered in her ears. She’d always thought a Redcloak’s duties were to defend peace from those yet without Umbras. She’d never imagined the people of the island would need protection from their own Reeve, from the system itself. How dare he misuse his responsibility?

  In a flash, she crossed the distance to the Reeve, shoving his desk aside and grabbing him. A jar fell and cracked, bleeding ink over the scroll he’d been writing in.

  “Peace!” The Reeve choked out. “Peace!” He whimpered as he glanced at the ruined scroll. “Now we cannot save ourselves! Without quite proper coordination—"

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Syra let go, head buzzing, pushing him off his chair and onto his frazzled carpet. She glared over the fallen man. “You made this mess yourself! Desperately flinging hours of the villagers’ time away to make up for the shortage, which you again caused, won’t work.”

  “Syra,” Firnix said. She saw his pleading expression and felt her hot anger soften. Just a touch.

  “Call off most of the drakes coming tomorrow,” she said to Cestod. That was the only reasonable option. “Whatever meat’s already preserved in the village, present that. How many drakes would that pay for?”

  The Reeve trembled. “I… I cannot quite do that. There’s no way to adjust now.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, drakes cannot speak, so our communication is very rigid and limited.” A fresh wave of fear entered his voice.

  “You could evacuate the villagers.”

  Cestod shook his head. “If the village is evacuated, I’ll no longer be a Reeve. No, they must stay.”

  “You’d rather die than lose your position as a Reeve?” Firnix said, disbelieving.

  Cestod must’ve guessed what Syra was about to do to him, as he blustered on. “Ah, I must say first, before we do anything quite rash, I have a plan. Mind, it is unlikely to pan out.”

  She leaned forward eagerly.

  Cestod’s face became a mask of fear as he stared wide-eyed at her. He must’ve mistaken her curiosity for something else.

  She gestured for him to continue.

  “Well,” he said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. It is no more likely to succeed than jumping into a volcano to appease Auri for good fortune. And it is no less fatal.”

  “Go on,” Syra said, bouncing on her toes. “Go on.”

  “There is a drake that lives in a cave just an hour’s walk from here,” the old man said slowly. “Hopefully, it’s one of the drakes scheduled for the meet. If I present it with rotten meat, hopefully, it will decide our village doesn’t have any meat of worth. Hopefully then, it will tell the others and they will all not bother with coming tomorrow morning.”

  “Even if you were personally blessed by Auri,” Syra muttered, “you couldn’t get through that many ‘hopefully’s.’”.

  Cestod hung his head. “Yes, quite.”

  Syra was silent, unsure of what to say. She’d come to this man’s house to threaten him to save the village, but it seemed he had no idea how. His idea of scaring the drakes away with a sample of rotten meat was, well, rotten. Surely, he’d force one of the villagers to present the rotten meat, and the drake would certainly eat them.

  Syra knew drakes were vicious creatures. She’d never seen one, but she’d heard many stories. The apex predators of the Glimmermoss Forest, unparalleled in ferocity, strength, and cunning. In fact, presenting one with rotting meat might incur the wrath of every local drake, setting them against more than just this village; they might even attack other settlements.

  Firnix’s voice cut through the tense silence. “If I may, I would like to visit this drake. If you could provide directions. I could figure something out.”

  If Cestod had stared fearfully at Syra like she was a predator, now he gaped at Firnix like the Warden had stripped naked, done a hand-stand, and proclaimed he was Auri’s reincarnation. His eyes bulged so much that she almost worried they’d pop right out.

  The man recomposed himself quickly. “Yes, certainly, if you believe you can succeed.” His voice was laced with skepticism.

  “He thinks you’ll just get yourself killed,” she said. She glanced sidelong at Firnix. “Will you?”

  Firnix smiled with pressed lips. “I’ve never seen a drake before, but I’ve studied a lot about them. I might find a solution, if I shadow it. If one really does live so close, what could it be eating? What does it enjoy? If we can use that—” he hesitated. “You don’t have to join, if you’d rather not. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  Elkah and Da would’ve sooner let Syra jump off a cliff than willingly go to meet a drake. But Firnix was a Warden, which was apparently some order even Da had respected. And Syra hadn’t forgotten the plan Firnix had impressively concocted with the snakes. This could’ve been the only chance to save the village and get a drake to ride as soon as possible.

  Also, Syra did share in Firnix’s excitement to see a drake.

  “We’ll go at sunrise,” Syra said. She turned to Cestod. “If Firnix and I can’t come up with anything by sundown, I’m coming here and making sure…” she paused to think, then raised her voice, “making sure you answer for the situation you’ve made.”

  Cestod paled. An argument was forming on his lips, but he stopped himself. “I will wish you blessings of Auri for success.”

  From his tone, he didn’t expect she would be alive to come back to him by then.

  Several hours later, just before sunrise, Gan presented a morning meal of seasoned greens for Syra and Firnix. The two of them sat beside a table in the inn’s large reception room.

  She was on her second helping when she noticed he’d barely touched his meal. “What’s up? Worried we won’t find the drake?”

  Firnix pressed his face into his fists. “I’m worried we will,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said I’d go find one.”

  “What do you mean? You were so excited about it earlier!”

  “I was just excited about getting to see a drake. But I’d overlooked that drakes on the page of a book are just harmless ink, while drakes in real life are man-eating predators. There’s no way I can survive meeting one.”

  “Really?”

  “I know a lot about them, Syra. Humans like us don’t stand a chance against them if they get hostile.”

  “Sure, but don’t you get it? We’re both not just humans. We’re Soulcasters!”

  He was silent.

  While she waited for a response, she called Gan over for a third plate. “Is it really alright for me to—”

  “Yes, yes, eat up!” Gan said. “Feeding others is one of the small joys left for me, and I want to enjoy this last day as much as I can.”

  “Last day? Nonsense. Like I said, I’ll find a way to help!”

  Gan’s smile faltered and he left to continue cooking.

  “I will only use my abilities if someone’s life depends on it,” Firnix said. “But using my abilities to fight off a drake after willingly seeking one out? That’s just wrong.”

  “Wrong? What do you mean wrong?”

  Firnix took a deep breath. “Give anyone power and they’ll end up corrupted by it. Look at Cestod, misusing his power” — sure, yeah — “and Elkah ruling this island” — what? — “and Soulcasters in general” — no! — “and, just, I don’t want to end up like that.”

  “You have it all wrong!”

  “How?

  “When I was six years of age, my hometown burned to the ground. Some criminals, probably. I have no memory of what they wanted. I don’t even remember what my hometown looked like. All my memories of my first six years are gone, really. But what matters is that crime took my family, and any friends I used to have, away from me.”

  Firnix listened quietly, red in the face and staring down at his food.

  “It’s only because Roshi found me and brought me here, to Oberon Island, that I’ve been able to keep living. And not just keep living. Elkah’s Umbras make it so nothing like what happened to me could happen to anyone on this island. Ever. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “I don’t want to argue. I know I can’t change your mind.”

  Syra frowned, wishing there was some way she could cheer him up. She’d never seen him smile once. With all that was going on, she couldn’t blame him, but if he could see how Umbras were well-intentioned at their core, he might realize it wasn’t all so bleak. He might even decide to stay in Oberon Island.

  Firnix sighed heavily. “It doesn’t matter how scared I am, anyway. I’ll go find that drake, because it’s the only hope these villagers have left. And if I end up having to use Ardor Eye to keep that hope alive, I don’t have a choice.”

  “Well. That’s good, at least. Looking forward to it.”

  Syra peered over at his plate. Her stomach growled. It always took a lot of energy out of her to remember her early years. And there was a big task ahead, one that would likely need her in top condition.

  “Are you going to finish that?” she asked.