Plato held a cup of Sea Drink to Lucian’s lips. “Drink this.”

  “I don’t feel bad yet.”

  “You’ll need it,” he said. “Trust the process.”

  There was nothing to do but drink. Only after three swallows did Plato nod, satisfied.

  “You sure you’re ready for this, son?” Linus asked.

  The “mayor” was in one of his rarer serious moods. It had been about a week since Lucian moved into the cave. During that time, he’d had a taste of the Isle of Madness lifestyle. The long nights seemed endless when there was little to do but drink. And Linus and Plato had plenty to drink.

  Lucian soon discovered that whatever was in the beverage had a minor hallucinogenic effect in certain quantities. He could lie for hours, seeing past images of his life pass by in a kaleidoscope of vivid imagery, along with alternate realities of what might have been. He saw himself at the Academy, raised to Talent as a follower of Transcend Blue. He saw himself on the tidally locked world of Halia, following Vera to explore Builder ruins under sheets of ice beneath a star-studded sky. And he even saw a reality where he wasn’t a mage at all, a reality where his mother was still alive. He had been about to leave home to crew a freighter based out of L5, having failed his civil exam.

  But, as always, the visions would end, and he would return to the cave on the Isle of Madness. This reality, this truth, seemed to make the least sense of all.

  Lucian warmed himself by the fire, ate some more stew, and lay on his hammock woven from ropes of lichen. Linus and Plato, to Lucian’s surprise, hardly spoke to one another. Linus spent most of the daylight hours scrounging for clams and shellocks in the cold, icy surf. He had nothing but a fire built on the beach to warm him. He had taken Lucian with him several times, but it was cold and wet work. Lucian was shivering after a few minutes of wading in the shallow, icy lagoon at the base of the cliff. But Linus seemed inured to the cold. Lucian was huddled by the fire after a couple of minutes, having not found a single clam. Every time Linus emerged from the sea, frost clinging to his beard, he had a pot’s worth.

  Plato rarely left the cave. During daylight, he sometimes went to the flatland above to tend his “gardens.” The gardens were edible fungal stalks, tubes, and lichen that grew in rocky crevices, damp with geothermal runoff. That only occupied a few hours of his time a week. His current project was building a furnace to heat the pool. Of course, any furnace would be primitive with the materials they had on hand. But once done, they wouldn’t have to go to the hot springs when they wanted a warm bath. Lucian could hardly conceive how Plato could do such a thing.

  “Time,” Plato said when Lucian asked. “Lots of time and experimentation. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

  Plato showed him the work he’d done so far. It was nothing more than a chamber hollowed out from the stone wall with a removable stone door. The fuel would be packed within, and a simple valve caused the hot air to enter a small chamber beneath the pool. The stone surface would heat, warming the water above. If all went according to plan.

  “It won’t be ready for a while,” Plato said. “Depending on how efficiently I can get it to run, I might bore out some airways around the cavern. That could give us some heating. That might not be doable, though.” He smiled with pride. “Not even the Academy can boast of central heating!”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Linus said, who was cleaning a pot of shellocks by the fire. “I don’t understand the things with which you waste your time."

  Plato pursed his lips. “Why must you always denigrate my work, Linus? I’m only doing this so that we all might live more comfortably.”

  “You do it because you’re bored. Same reason I brew Sea Drink.”

  “The two things can’t even be compared,” Plato said with a laugh. “One gets you drunk; the other will improve our living conditions.”

  "I would argue Sea Drink does both.”

  “I should have it done this winter,” Plato said, turning back to Lucian. “You’ll have to forgive him. We’ve been away from society too long. Manners have fallen by the wayside.”

  Lucian closed his eyes as another excruciating headache tore through him. The temptation to stream was almost too much to bear. All the mages’ warnings about Manifoldic poisoning ran through his mind. Why was he trusting Linus and Plato, anyway? Weren’t they kicked out of the Academy for not being qualified, same as him?

  Lucian knew he could never stop using magic if there were doubts. If the cost of staying here was not using magic, it was no wonder that most exiles chose Psyche. At least on Psyche, they could use magic, even if it would cause their minds and bodies to rot. Here, magic was the only prohibition. And Lucian didn’t know if he had it in him to last a few more days, much less the rest of his life.

  Linus stood up from his work. “Ah. Time for another drink. You can see he’s sick, Plato, and your talk isn’t helping.”

  Plato huffed, but in a way that said he must have agreed. He helped Lucian over to his hammock. The world was spinning already as Linus handed him a mug of Sea Drink. A wave of nausea passed through him.

  “I know it’s not easy,” Plato said kindly, “but you’ve got to get it down.”

  Lucian tried to open his eyes, but any time he did, the nausea was too much. He leaned over in his cot and heaved, though nothing came out. They had instructed him to fast, too. He couldn’t decide if he was sicker or hungrier.

  Lucian took the cup and made himself drink. He tried not to taste the concoction. It left a sweet, grainy aftertaste on his tongue. “Water.”

  “Only a little,” Plato said, handing him a cup. Lucian was only able to get a couple of swallows down before Plato took it away.

  The worst part was Lucian knew streaming would make this horrible feeling go away. Holding his magic in went against everything he knew.

  For all he knew, this was going to kill him. But he was determined to try. He needed the help of these men to not only survive the island but also to escape it.

  “That’s it, Lucian,” Plato said. “Easy does it. Lie here for a while, and whatever you do . . .”

  “. . . Don’t stream. I know.” He held his breath to keep himself from heaving again. “Why is it so bad?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Because the minute you learned to stream on your own, you never went a day without it,” Plato explained. “The mages never allowed you to not stream. I’ve never seen the symptoms take on so fast, though. For me, it was a week; for Linus, he says it took about two weeks. But you are already going through withdrawal. Either you were streaming a lot more than we did back at the Academy, or your ether regenerates faster than anything we’ve seen before.”

  “So, you’re saying this isn’t normal?”

  “Hard to say,” Plato said. “The others who went through it developed symptoms later than you. Then again, some of them might have been cheating, streaming without our realizing.” He smiled and clapped Lucian on the shoulder. “Well, it’s clear you haven’t been streaming on the sly. This sickness can be thought of as the poison leaving your system.”

  And what if Plato were wrong? Lucian didn’t have the heart to ask. The proof that it worked stood before him. Both Linus and Plato were old men, almost old enough to have participated in the Mage War themselves. They were alive during it, albeit as children. And here they were still, completely sane. Well, mostly. If there were signs of madness, it was only due to their isolation, which was understandable.

  Another wave of nausea tore through him. How could he survive this? Was this what a magic-free life would be like? Would it be worth living in the first place? If there was even a part of him that wanted to answer “no,” then there was no hope of making it through the Ordeal. But how could he make himself want it?

  He almost told them that he wasn’t ready for this. That he wanted to stream one last time. Both men were standing beside the fire, talking in low, indiscernible voices. When had that happened? Lucian had somehow faded out. It was already dark outside.

  He needed to use the bathroom. Plato had carved a toilet in the rock about a meter above the lower part of the aqueduct closest to the ocean. Lucian sat up, barely managing to stand on his own. He didn’t know whether it was his withdrawals or the Sea Drink, but he could hardly keep his feet.

  Linus rushed toward him. “Got to loosen your guts, I wager. We had better get you there quickly."

  Lucian tried to wave him away until he realized he wasn’t going to make it on his own. Within a minute, Linus had guided him to the front of the cave, where it was much colder. Some of the harsh wind found its way in, all but sapping the heat from Lucian’s fever.

  The privy was in a small cleft covered by a curtain of hanging moss. Linus parted the moss for him, allowing Lucian to go inside.

  There he sat on the cold stone seat, the water flowing about a meter beneath him. Once finished, he could hardly stand. He had never felt so miserable in his life.

  “You need help, boy?” Plato asked.

  Had he been standing there the entire time? “I’ve got it.”

  He tried to stand, but he stumbled against the moss. In an instant, the older man caught him.

  “Easy there.” After keeping Lucian steady, Plato brought him a bowl of warm water steeped in some sort of plant with small white flowers.

  “Put your hands in here for a good fifteen seconds,” he said. “That’s it, boy.”

  Lucian tried to thank him, but his tongue was swollen in his mouth. It was hard not to be humbled by this. He was twenty-one years old, and he couldn’t even take care of himself. He had to let both guide him back to his hammock.

  It went on like this for a while. Days, weeks, Lucian couldn’t have said. After he counted the passing of daylight several times, his symptoms were at their worst, and he could no longer keep track of the days. He couldn’t move from his hammock. And in the darkness of his fever dreams, magic beckoned to him. He didn’t know how many times he resisted its siren call, how many times he almost gave in just to feel normal again.

  The men placed him on the floor at some point, on a bed of green moss which they freshened daily. Freshening was necessary because Lucian could no longer rise to use the bathroom.

  This loss of dignity was almost enough to convince him to stream. But they always told him to keep going—to push through, no matter how bad it got. Or at least, that was what he thought they had said.

  But if it kept going like this, he was going to die. Hadn’t they considered that?

  The time came when it was hard to know what was real and what was make-believe. He floated through dreams. He saw Emma, hauntingly beautiful. There were his comrades from the Academy, frowning disapprovingly. Even Dirk was there, his face sneering with cruelty. There was his mother, too, her face younger than he remembered. There were periods of darkness. He relived his childhood, going back to that terrible day he learned his father had died.

  His mother was crying in the living room. He didn’t have to ask the reason. His heart pounded with helpless fear. His mother looked at him with reddened eyes, holding out her arms.

  He ran and was somewhere else now.

  “Go kiss your father, Lucian.”

  “No.”

  Why had Lucian been so angry? He could no longer remember. He was leaving. Why did he have to go again? He hid his face against his mother’s leg.

  He would not kiss him goodbye. He wouldn’t.

  He saw his father’s face. The eyes were now open, yellow and rheumy. The mouth expanded into a silent scream . . .

  There were other dreams, too. Countless hours spent alone in his room, surfing VR interfaces. Looking for something to feel. School, where he had few friends and many enemies. Most of those confrontations had been his fault, stemming from his anger and shame.

  And there was his ex-girlfriend Luisa, too. With her, he had been afraid. Afraid of all she would see if he bared his soul, which was nothing at all.

  Alone. He had spent most of his life alone. And now he was here, on this island, never to escape.

  One day, Plato and Linus would die. As good as they had made things here, they perhaps had a decade or two left.

  Was it worth staying alive here, all alone? And to do so without magic, the only thing that made him feel anything at all besides Emma?

  It was hard to know. He could stick to the sad reality he knew, or pick the mystery box, as Linus had put it. Maybe the mystery box was as bad as what he knew. Or it might be even worse.

  But after losing everything, what else did he have to lose?

  Something told him the rest of his life did not lie on this island, as improbable as that seemed. He remembered Vera’s words, under the waves of the ocean.

  Greater things are meant for you. Even from beyond, she had somehow spoken to him. Had that been her? Lucian couldn’t say. He no longer knew what to believe.

  After the endless dreams, darkness finally came. At first, Lucian believed it to be death. It was a place without thought, without reason, without time. It was a place that might have been before the existence of the universe and before the birth of magic itself.

  He saw Seven Orbs burning like colored suns. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Violet. Gray. And in the middle was a mind-bending shape, a maddening abomination that made him want to scream. What was it? To the core of his being, it felt wrong, against nature. It was like . . . an eye, but it looked nothing like any eye he’d seen. It stared into him, far harder than he could ever stare into it.

  Reach, the Voice whispered. Take what is yours.

  It was back. The same being that had haunted him during his metaphysical dream had returned, visiting him in this dark and hopeless place.

  I won’t take it, Lucian said.

  Would you deny my gift?

  It’s not a gift. It’s a curse.

  Only to fools who use it wrongly. In the right hands, magic can be your salvation.

  His salvation? Did that mean it would help him leave this island?

  I won’t stream. I will make it through the Ordeal.

  The Ordeal? Don’t trouble yourself with that. You are meant for greater things.

  The echoing of Vera’s words seemed too coincidental. Who are you? What are you?

  A long silence was Lucian’s only answer. It seemed to stretch into eternity until Lucian noticed a light shining brighter than the rest. The Blue Orb. Another voice entered his mind, a voice that sounded female and one he had never heard before.

  It’s close, the voice said. Very close. Would you leave it now, when all you must do is reach out and take it? Find it, Lucian. More is at stake than you know. You were meant to come here. You were meant to find me.

  What is at stake?

  A new Time of Madness draws nigh. All you know is in peril. Would you let your kind be wiped from the face of Starsea?

  Starsea? What are you talking about? Starsea is gone. Are you talking about the Starsea Mages?

  I . . . will tell you everything. But you must come alone.

  All Seven Orbs shone with a sudden brilliance that was blinding. He screamed, the lights exploding like seven supernovae. Light and heat consumed him as if the Manifold were a torrent of magma burning him to ash and bone.

  And then it was done, followed by a moment of darkness.

  When Lucian opened his eyes, the Ordeal was over.