The next morning, Tasam insisted that they continue heading east.

  “We have to get to Townshold,” he said. “If the void is spreading as fast as Hela says, it will cut us off at the cliffs before we can get there! Besides, we already made this decision together. You don’t get to change your mind about it now.”

  Coril shook his head, but he didn’t have a better plan. They continued on their way, and Tasam did manage to pick out something of an overgrown path through the woods as they moved.

  Still, Coril kept thinking about the light they’d seen through the trees. Someone was out there. Someone who probably had food. His stomach growled.

  “If we can’t find the path up the cliffs, I say we go back,” Coril said. “We should have sent someone over to scout out that light last night. What if it was a crew of spore hunters from Townshold?”

  “Fine,” Tasam said. “If we get to the cliffs and don’t see the path up, we can go back and investigate. But we’re running low on food,” he said, his voice hushed.

  They continued pushing their way through the dense trees for another hour or so, before the woods started thinning.

  Coril wiped his brow, relieved at first to not be fighting for every step forward.

  Then the witch—Hela—screeched.

  “Blight!” she cried out. “Voidblight!”

  Coril looked more closely at the foliage around him. Dark spots speckled the leaves. Branches and grasses wilted. Voidblight indeed; it may have cleared out some of the undergrowth, but it heralded something much worse ahead.

  “Everyone stay back,” Coril said. “Tasam and I will go have a look. We need to decide what to do now.”

  Tasam followed Coril closely as they moved forward. A grey, ashen dust coated the ground here, remains of once living things consumed by the blight.

  The trees thinned and the ground softened.

  “Coril,” Tasam said. “We shouldn’t go any further. This is bad.”

  “We’re far enough now, I suppose,” Coril said. “Are those the cliffs?”

  He pointed through the trees to a stony ridge far overhead.

  “Yes,” Tasam said, checking his map. “I think so, though that means we’re further east than I had thought…” he trailed off as he stared at his map.

  Coril examined the cliffs through the trees. Steep and rocky, the cliffs here were impassible for dozens of miles in both directions, save for the old road cut into the stone face. The Ebil river tumbled down off the high plateau in a huge waterfall, probably not far from here. He listened carefully, and thought he caught a hint of its distant roar.

  “We need to go further,” Coril said. “If this void has spread, we won’t be able to get to the cliffs. Let alone try to find the pass.”

  “Traveling near the blight will be dangerous either way,” Tasam said. “We can’t fight off a swarm of voidlings.”

  He and Tasam proceeded. The trees continued to thin as the blight destroyed them. Grey ashen blight-dust swirled in the air. Coril felt the weight of influence opposing him as they moved across the voidclaimed land. Branches became more difficult to push through, and the soft, shifting soil slipped beneath his feet.

  “This is a big one,” Coril said. “It might go all the way to the cliffs.”

  “So what do we do?” Tasam asked.

  “We go back,” Coril said. “The only other way is back up and around.”

  Tasam paled. The journey was more than ten times longer than this route.

  “Our supplies. Food?”

  “We’ll have to forage,” Coril said. “We obviously can’t go through voidclaimed tiles all the way to the cliffs. We’d be torn to shreds.”

  Tasam nodded. “You’re right. I suppose we should have checked that campfire last night.”

  “We should have,” Coril said. “But I doubt we’ll be able to find it again.”

  The two co-leaders returned to the party and explained the situation. The weary villagers took the bad news in stride, and they turned around, heading back the way they had come.

  Everyone knew that it would take an act of god for them to survive a the long trek through void infested wilderness.

  Laryn walked over to where he had buried Keldin. He pulled the plank he’d used as a grave marker and began scraping sand away.

  “What are you doing?” Adi asked, materializing behind him.

  “I was thinking last night, about some of the things that you said. About how I’m going to have to deal with this situation on my own. How I have to learn to be a [Ruler].”

  Pulling the corpse from the shallow grave, a distinct odor filled the air. A lump formed in Laryn’s throat. This was not the honorable end Keldin deserved. The idea of sifting Keldin for resources had seemed horrible to Laryn at first, but now…

  “I think…” Laryn said, carrying the body across the beach, “I think Keldin would prefer this. Even though he’s gone, I think he’d still like to be a part of it. To help however he can.”

  He placed Keldin’s body on the ground beside the kingdom core. Resting his hand on his brother’s chest, he closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he cast Sift.

  A handful of colorful spheres filled his hands. Keldin’s body, reduced to core essences. Laryn stared at them for a moment, until they started misting, then he pressed them into the kingdom core.

  “Three life, three water, two fire, one earth, and one stone,” Adi reported. “Two point three seven influence, and a six percent balance debuff.”

  Laryn didn’t reply. He knelt in the shallow water beside the kingdom core, one hand gripping the cloth that had wrapped Keldin’s corpse.

  “I… I think it’s what he would have wanted,” Adi said.

  “Thank you,” Laryn replied. He rose, wiping tears from his eyes. “I’d better get to work on that list you made.”

  Laryn scanned Adi's list, looking at the things that she thought were important for him to be working on now. Most of them were certainly valuable or useful, but… He didn’t want to spend all day sifting water to try to balance his core essence.

  “Adi,” he said, "I understand that these are important tasks in maintaining a kingdom, but there's a few things on here that are missing that would be nice to have. Maybe not as important for a kingdom, but valuable comforts for me."

  Adi raised her eyebrows. "Like what?" she asked.

  "Well, for starters, a table, a bed, a better place to sit would all be nice."

  Adi nodded and walked over. She pointed at an item much lower on the list. “Stuff like that is on there,” she said.

  Laryn read the entry. “Waste time building creature comforts.”

  “They’re not that important for a sustainable kingdom,” Adi explained.

  “That kind of stuff is important to people,” Laryn said. “People with bodies, I mean.”

  “Hey.” Adi sounded hurt. “Not fair. I mean your top priority as a ruler must be the success of your kingdom. Stuff like that will become important as the population of the kingdom grows, but your valuable time should be spent strengthening and expanding the power of the core.”

  Laryn considered that. “I’m not trying to build an empire yet,” he said. “I just want to survive. And be safe.”

  “Either way, I’d recommend you work on things that are closer to the top of the list.”

  Laryn rolled his eyes but scanned through the list again, starting at the top. At least Adi had included “Dig a latrine” much higher up on the list.

  Partway down the page a task jumped out at him.

  ‘Scout out surrounding terrain.’

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  “That’s what I’m going to do this morning,” he said, pointing at it. “I need to see what else is on this island. I never even made sure that I cleared all the void.”

  “That’s kind of far down the list,” Adi said. “You don’t really need to do that right now.”

  “I want to know the lay of the land,” Laryn said, and tossed the list back to her. “I want to think about my next steps.”

  He walked to the high point of the sandy beach and surveyed his surroundings.

  Directly to the south lay his kingdom core, shelter, and fire pit. Beyond his small encampment the deeper fork of the river rushed past. Lush green forest grew along the south bank of the river. No mountains or hills rose to where he could see them, even though he was pretty sure there was a low range somewhere to the south.

  Blue sky mottled with grey clouds rested atop the trees.

  To the east, the beach narrowed to a point, where a large stone rested and divided the river into two as it flowed around the island. Laryn scanned the river, following its course as it rounded a bend and disappeared in the trees.

  The bulk of the river passed to the south, leaving the north fork shallower, and potentially crossable in some places. The clear water didn’t appear to be more than waist deep most of the way across, and the current wasn’t as swift.

  The rest of the island lay to the west. Sand extended on for a few dozen meters before giving way to shrubs and then trees, the occasional stony outcropping breaking up the greenery.

  Laryn started his exploration, walking west. He followed the north shore, watching the river and identifying a few more places that might be crossable.

  Massive boulders broke up the flow of the river here and there, creating dangerous eddies and rapid chutes of water. But in a few places, with some wading and scrambling from boulder to boulder, crossing the river seemed possible.

  It wouldn’t be ideal to cross to the north, into the wildlands, but at least it was a way off the island. If, or rather—when, he found a replacement to watch over the core, he would be able to cross to the north bank and work his way along the river back to the ford.

  Scaling the cliff to the top of the waterfall might be challenging in that direction though. And the ford had already proved dangerous. It was the place where he and Keldin had been ambushed by voidlings.

  He could always try swimming across to the south bank. Or building a bridge. But he wasn’t confident in his swimming or his civil engineering abilities. His training as a warrior had involved more than just fighting; he also had to know about logistical management of armies. And building bridges was a part of that. But the actual building part was generally left up to others, usually trained by priests.

  A criticism soldiers often levied at priests referred to the beautiful gardens they kept on the grounds of the palace. Detractors would often accuse priests of being ‘locked in their walled gardens,’ a criticism that Laryn had understood intellectually but not quite grasped until now.

  Now he felt the pain acutely. He thought he had prepared well for his attempt to be a ruler. But it was easy to read and study and grow things in a perfectly controlled environment. Out here, in the wild… So many things could go wrong.

  He soon crossed over into a blighted tile, one that had been claimed by the voidbloom. He had known that killing the bloom would not rid the tiles of the blight, but it did seem to have lessened its effect. Already the occasional green bud or shoot appeared, poking up through the ashy soil or sprouting from the sickly trees.

  Crossing the blighted land was a little bit easier, as there was less foliage to contend with. But the wan soil threw a fine dust into the air with every step, churning beneath his feet like loose sand as he walked. A dusting of grey-black powder soon coated him from head to toe. He reached the place where the voidbloom had grown.

  An entire tile, totally devastated by the parasitic infection of the void. No greenery emerged from the ground here, and he wondered how long it would be before nature could reclaim this place.

  His own footprints, left behind as he had recovered the voidling and the void lord, were the only signs of life in this tile. Through the blight-thinned woods to the north and south, he could see the river, passing on either side of the island. He wondered how much longer the island could be.

  Continuing his exploration across the island, Laryn moved west. The blight slackened, and signs of life showed among the pallid plants. When he saw a verdant wall, he knew he had reached the border, marking the limits of what the voidbloom had claimed. He could see the border of the tile, without even needing the special ‘tile-view’ ability that the core gave him.

  The jungle significantly slowed his passage as he pressed forward.

  The ground at this end of the island sloped slightly upwards, growing stonier beneath his feet. He reached an outcropping and stood atop it, but the trees around him prevented him from seeing for any meaningful distance.

  Overhead, the sky grew greyer, filling with clouds. A slight breeze picked up, a chill filling the air. In the distance, the sound of rushing water grew stronger.

  Laryn emerged from the woods on the west end of the island. The confluence of the two river forks unfolded before him.

  Here, a large outcropping of stone anchored the west end of the island. The river forks flowed together violently, as the river narrowed and increased in speed. Stones protruding from the water created dangerous rapids and eddies; lots of places that would kill someone floating down the river in a damaged wagon.

  The sound of roiling water in the distance warned at more danger.

  Laryn stared at the rapids. The waterfall had been bad, and could have killed him, but this… If he hadn’t washed up on the beach of the island, he would certainly have been destroyed.

  Kneeling down on the western shore of the island, he gazed up at the sky, the clouds lowering overhead. He clasped his hands and offered a brief prayer of thanks to Ishtoran.

  His life had been preserved. For some reason, unknown to him, Ishtoran wanted him alive. At times in the past few days he would have preferred death, he now wondered if his life was not meant for something greater.

  Rising from his prostrated position on the ground, he started heading back along the southern shore of the island. The first droplets of rain drizzled down.

  “Well, it’s not a very big island,” Adi said.

  “No,” Laryn agreed. “And it’s well cut off by the river. Isolated.”

  “As you make your way back, can you work on one of the more important tasks? There are some things hanging in some of the trees that look like they might be edible.”

  “I can do that,” Laryn agreed.

  Many of the trees were laden with a tough brown nut of some kind. He collected a few of them and brought them back to camp. Occasional droplets of rain splattered down around him, the sky threatening a storm but never really committing.

  Stripping off the husks, he managed to crack one open and found flesh inside.

  “Are these safe to eat?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adi said. “Not sure what they are.”

  Laryn sniffed at the fruit. It didn’t smell appetizing. He cautiously touched his tongue to it, and recoiled immediately.

  A harsh, bitter flavor filled his mouth, causing him to choke as he tried desperately to wash his mouth out.

  “I’m going to need to find something else,” Laryn said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Dang,” Adi said. “There are so many of those things, they would have been convenient to eat.”

  Laryn spent the remainder of the day working on his water sifting set up. The sky remained overcast but rain never came.

  He dug a channel in the sand to divert water to a deeper place that would easily fill his scoop. He would fill the bucket, sift the water, and then spend the cool down shoveling, scooping, and working to improve the process.

  Soon the river no longer flowed around the kingdom core, except for in the channel he’d cut through the sand. He had a seat, which was just a stone, but he was pleased with the work he’d done.

  In all, he sifted ten barrels of water, and had ended up adding eight essence to the core.

  “Having influence sure is nice,” Laryn commented as the sun sank in the west. “Eltar generally maintains a level just above one, which helps, but I’m enjoying being over two and a half. The ability this core has to maintain influence without burning essence is incredible. I need to bring it back to Eltar.”

  “You have gotten off to a good start here,” Adi said.

  Laryn started up his fire again, and used it to warm up some of the travelling rations he’d been eating. They were the same old, same old, but warmed up was nice for a change. As the sky darkened, the wind began to pick up.

  “Maybe tonight the storm will hit,” Laryn said, surveying his shelter.

  Then he heard someone calling to him from across the river.

  “Halloo there!”