The wagon rolled along the dirt road that was really just a wide path through the Darkwood. The Boravans had built the wagon well, supporting the main bed on leaf springs that at least reduced the bouncing, but it still wasn’t exactly comfy. The rutted road jounced me around, and the hard, unpadded bench Renica and I sat on wasn’t making my ass feel all that great. I cradled one of the crossbows I’d recovered in my hands, watching the forest and performing the medieval equivalent of riding shotgun. Viora rested in the back, her body and mind exhausted after her ordeal, while Vikarik lay beside her.

We obviously couldn’t stay on Blacktop last night, surrounded by corpses, so we’d loaded up the wagon, and Renica drove it a mile or so from the hill, leaving the soldiers’ corpses to the hungering. I’d wanted to take the Vanator’s armor and sword – I couldn’t really use either of them, but I could probably sell them if nothing else – but Viora warned me against it pretty strongly.

“It’s obvious that those belong to a Vanator,” she pointed out, touching the symbols engraved in the armor’s breastplate and the base of the sword’s blade. “If you try to sell them, any honest merchant will report you, and anyone who’d buy them wouldn’t think twice before slitting our throats to keep their existence a secret. Killing a member of the Vanatori is a death sentence, after all, and aiding someone who killed one is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment and hard labor.”

“Seems harsh just to keep someone from killing you,” I observed.

“The Vanatori are the hands of the pretmaraji, the masters of the Cathedrals of the Sun, Ionat. They’re given a sacred charge – to hunt down imperialists and lomoraji – and they have basically unlimited leeway to do that. Borava isn’t the first village they’ve destroyed claiming that it held imperial sentiments.” She looked at the armor and sword. “Leave these here, Ionat. They’ll bring us nothing but harm.”

I agreed after hearing her reasoning, but to my surprise, Sara had another idea for them.

“John, take out your hatchet and touch the blade to the sword’s,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“Because the hatchet is adaptable, meaning it can take on the features of any weapon it touches.”

“So, it’ll turn into a sword?” I thought dubiously. “Sara, I’ve never used a sword before.”

“You could learn, but I’m able to guide what it takes somewhat, and I wouldn’t let it absorb something you couldn’t use. Trust me, John.”

I shrugged and touched the hatchet to the blade. Nothing happened, and I started to remove it when I felt a shock roll up my hand into my forearm. I stopped moving the weapon, and the shock eased immediately. Apparently, the hatchet didn’t want to be moved.

“Sorry, it just takes a few seconds to make the adaption – there you go. Take a look at it now, John.”

I lifted the hatchet cautiously from the sword and examined it. At first, I couldn’t see any difference, but when I held it up to the moonlight, swirls of dull, matte metal twisted along the surface of the blade and down into the handle. I thought about its status, and it popped up in my vision.

Adaptive Hatchet

Item Type: Basic Weapon

Abilities: Adaptive, Bound Item

Adaptation: Golost Blade

Golost Blade

This weapon does extra damage to spellcasters and can be used to deflect or block spells.

“Golost blade?” I asked Sara silently, examining the whorls and patterns on the axe carefully.

“It’s basically the same pattern that the Vanator’s weapon has. It’ll stop magic the same way his sword did, and it’ll be very useful against other people who use raju.”

I frowned. “That’s great, but – what about my spells? Can I still use it with Twilight Strike?”

“No, but you can suppress the adaptation whenever you want. Just think about it, and I’ll return the hatchet to the way it was.”

I concentrated on the blade, and the matte patterns vanished. “Useful. Can you do this to any weapon?”

“Only weapons that are similar to your Adaptive Weapon’s base form, and only ones with special qualities. You can pull a single adaptation from a weapon, and you can only manifest one adaptation at a time.”

“So why haven’t I don’t this before? And why didn’t you tell me it was possible?”

“What would have been the point?” she laughed. “In Kuan Yang, there weren’t many weapons to pull an adaptation from, were there? And that sword is really only the second special weapon you’ve found in this world, other than your dagger.”

“Could I take an adaptation from the dagger?” I asked a bit eagerly.

“You could, but I would advise caution, there. I can’t take its affinity for twilight magic, for example, or both of the special materials from it. I could give it a sunstone or moonstone property, but that might imbalance any spells you used on it. The dagger is really complex, and until I understand how it works better, I can’t gain its best adaptations.”

Her answer didn’t exactly make me happy, but it did make sense. I slipped the hatchet into its sheath, finished taking the supplies that Renica thought we’d need for the road, and we headed out. Renica and I each grabbed a few hours of sleep while the other kept watch, while Viora collapsed into an exhausted stupor. When the sun rose at last, we headed out, on the road toward the neighboring village of Nadmeva.

“How did you make this road?” I asked Renica as we traveled along. “The darkwood trees grow so quickly, I would have thought they’d take over an empty spot like this.”

“They would if we let them,” she agreed. “Any time someone travels this road, they dig up any saplings they find and replant them in the forest.” She pointed to a blackened spot on the ground. “Looks like the soldiers just burned them to make room for the wagon, though.”

I looked back behind us, wondering how long it would take for the trees to reclaim the road now that Borava was no more. Probably a few years, at least, but eventually, the Darkwood would grow over the village, and the only evidence that Borava existed would be tumbled ruins and half-buried skeletons. I shook off the morose thought and faced back ahead. I couldn’t help Borava, but I could certainly avenge it.

We rolled into the village of Nadmeva and stopped briefly to let Viora talk to the village’s elder, a wizened lady named Kelestina, and their Sorvaraji, a tall, rail-thin man who didn’t give us his name. I wanted to keep our story vague, perhaps insinuating that the hungering destroyed the village, but Viora told the entire story, leaving out only that we killed the Vanator and soldiers.

“This is a terrible tragedy, Sorvaraji,” Kelestina spoke in a sorrowful voice, shaking her head.

“I no longer hold the right to that name, Elder,” Viora shook her head. She looked at the village’s Sorvaraji. “Indeed, I’m risking a great deal stopping to tell you of Borava’s fate, but I think it’s necessary.”

“No one here will speak of your visit,” the old woman said firmly, eyeing the Sorvaraji as well. “And of course, we want to know when such harm befalls our neighbors.” She shook her head. “I shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn’t known, and merchants continued on to Borava and the cursed ground there.”

“While we appreciate the information,” the tall man spoke, his voice slightly condescending, “you know that you’re bringing danger to Nadmeva by coming here, Viora.”

“Not as much as if we hadn’t told you,” I shook my head.

The man looked at me disapprovingly. “Forgive me, stranger, but I don’t think you understand. If the Vanatori seek Viora and find out that we gave her shelter…”

“They’ll do exactly what they’re probably intending to do already,” I cut him off, looking at the Elder. “The soldiers passed through here, right?”

“Of course,” she nodded.

“Then they’d have passed back through later with Viora in chains if the hungering hadn’t gotten them,” I shrugged. “Would they have just let you all see that?” I looked at the Sorvaraji. “What would you have done at that point?”

“I would have requested answers from the Cathedral in Panja, of course,” he said arrogantly. “The capture of a former Sorvaraji is an unusual occurrence…” He fell silent as I saw understanding cross his face.

“Exactly. If they’d just killed everyone in the village, it wouldn’t have been a concern. But they captured Viora, and that would raise eyebrows. If she’d somehow broken her oath and become a lomoraji or an Imperialist, they’d have executed her. Can you think of any reason they’d have taken her prisoner, instead?”

“I – can’t,” the man admitted.

“And that would make you curious, and if you contacted the Cathedral, they’d be curious, too. I don’t think the Vanatori would want anyone asking questions, and they’d take steps to make sure no one could.”

I looked at Kelestina. “It’s up to you, of course, but you might consider building defenses around the village – permanent ones. It’ll be an inconvenience, but…”

“Not as inconvenient as being slaughtered if the Vanatori return,” she finished. “You may be right, stranger.” She looked at Viora. “Where will you go?”

“If you want my advice, Viora,” the Sorvaraji said pompously, “you should go to the Cathedral in Panja and throw yourself on the mercy of the pretmaraji. They’re fair in judgment and wiser than any of us.”

“Thank you for the suggestion, Allin,” she said evenly. “In fact, I intend to travel to the Great Cathedral of Mihabag and request restoration of my status.”

“A wise decision,” he nodded condescendingly.

“If I could offer you the Moon’s Truce, I would,” Kelestina sighed. “With the Vanatori hunting you, though…” She fell silent, her face pained, but Viora nodded like it was what she’d expected.

“That’s perfectly reasonable. “You have to protect your own above all.” She looked at Renica and me. “The close moon has passed, so we should be fine sleeping outside the village for the night, yes?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Renica nodded. “We have supplies, as well, so we don’t need to strain the village’s hospitality.”

“It pains me that it has to be this way, but I don’t see any other choice,” Kelestina shook her head. “I wish you luck on your travels, and should you be restored to your rank, please return.”

“I will,” Viora nodded, turning away from the pair, a flash of pain appearing and vanishing across her face so quickly if I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have seen it.

The three moons looked different that night when they rose above the trees. The silver moon still loomed twice as large as the other two, but I could cover it with three fingers side-by-side, and the other moons looked larger and closer than they had even the night before. The air that night was cool but not as chill as it had been, and the air looked clearer than before, as if a haze of smoke blew away from my eyes.

Viora sat beside me and stared up at the moons. “It’s comforting when the moons aren’t quite so large, isn’t it?” she asked.

I didn’t really agree; the moons didn’t make me uncomfortable, but it was nice not being hunted by undead and kept awake by the screams of the hungering. “It seems so much smaller than just a few days ago,” I commented instead, inclining my chin to the moon.

She nodded. “The three moons are roughly equal in size, in truth. One only seems larger when our world captures it and pulls it near enough for its light – and its power – to deeply affect the world.”

“Our world? You mean, its gravity?”

“Yes. As best we can determine, the three moons orbit each other in a complicated pattern that occasionally allows one to drop closer to Soluminous. When that happens, it slips out of orbit with the others and drifts closer to the planet for several days before the other moons recapture it and pull it back out into their orbit. That’s what we call the close moons.”

I frowned. “If the moon gets pulled closer to the planet, why doesn’t it spiral down and crash, then? It seems like it should instead of getting close and then rebounding back out.”

Viora shrugged. “No one really knows, Ionat. We just know that the moons only come so close before returning to their orbit around one another. I’ve heard a dozen theories – the Sun’s power seeps into the world and shields it from the moons approaching too closely; the moons bounce off the top of the sky; some property of the world itself rejects the moons – but none of them really make sense.” She laughed. “I’ve even heard a theory that there’s a fourth, black moon that we can’t see, and that controls the close moons. No one really knows why, but some force or another pushes or pulls the moons back into orbit when they get too close.”

“That doesn’t really make any sense, John,” Sara said a bit disapprovingly. “I mean, the three-body problem is hard to solve, and they probably can’t do it with their math, but the moons are certainly too large to just bounce off the atmosphere or be pushed back by the world without it affecting the planet somehow. Every action has a reaction, after all.”

I had no idea what the three-body problem was, but I got the bit about actions having reactions. Anyone who’d ever used a firearm knew about that, after all. If the moons pushed off the planet, the planet would also push off the moons, and that would probably cause some sort of weirdness in its orbit or rotation eventually.

“In any case, this is as good a time as any to begin your education in spellcraft,” Viora spoke, taking the flawless diamond out and setting it between us.

“Now?” I asked in confusion. “Wouldn’t it be better when the sun’s up?”

She shook her head. “Almost all novices in solar magic learn at night, Ionat. There’s far less solar raju available, so they’re much less likely to critically imbalance a spell form and injure themselves.” She smiled. “Although you seem to have done well so far.”

“I’ve probably just gotten lucky,” I suggested.

“That’s possible, although it’s more likely that you have an intuitive sense of how to understand and balance a spell.” She shifted until she faced me and raised a hand, palm facing up. I saw a thin line of orange-red power stream up from the diamond and swirl about her, circling her body and eventually coalescing over her palm. A ball of light shimmered into view above her palm, no bigger than a marble and shedding a clear white radiance that was bright but not painful to look at. At the same time, a mist of dark red energy wafted away from her, and I felt a brief sensation of warmth that passed almost instantly.

“This is the simplest spell of solar magic,” she said. “All I’m doing is taking pure solar raju and stripping the heat from it, then condensing it into a point.” She tossed the ball into the air, and it hung overhead, illuminating the clearing we’d chosen to set up our camp. She waved her hand, and the light vanished, dispersing as a wave of orange mist that faded into the atmosphere. “Go ahead and see if you can replicate it.”

“That explains that part of the spell form,” Sara mused in my head. “I wondered why it talked about separation; I never realized that there were multiple components to solar raju like that. That’s useful”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, judging from your magical sight, it looks like solar raju is a combination of light magic and heat magic, at the very least. She split it into two parts, allowing the heat magic to disperse and only working with the light magic.”

“I got that,” I thought back, mentally rolling my eyes. “I mean, why is it useful?”

“Well, if solar raju is actually a combination of other types of magic, separating out the important parts could be useful. For example, if light magic promotes healing and growth, you could use it alone instead of pure solar raju to heal yourself, and it might be less – searing. On the other hand, if heat magic is the damaging part of solar raju, by only using that part, your Twilight Strike spell might do more damage for less energy.”

“So, how do I separate it out to make the light spell she wants?” I asked curiously.

“Well, now that I’ve seen it, the spell form you showed me in her book makes a lot more sense. She’s just polarizing the light, more or less.”

“I’ve heard of polarizing lenses,” I replied slowly. “They keep glare out. Is this the same thing?”

“Probably. Can you picture one of those lenses you’re talking about?”

I imagined the glare-resistant coating of a rifle scope without any difficulty. “Definitely, yeah.”

“Then try imagining the energy you gather going through one of those and see if it works. Just think of it as being transparent to light but reflecting heat. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go into more detail about polarization.”

I closed my eyes and pictured what she instructed. I reached out to the diamond and drew on it, feeling a flow of warmth erupt from it and wrap around me. I pictured it as a narrow tendril of red-orange mist, swirling about me toward my upraised hand. I opened my eyes and watched the energy stretch up my body and along my arm. As it reached a point above my palm, I imagined it striking a bluish lens and passing through. The orange light congealed on the other side, swirling into a ball of clear, white light, while the red mist recoiled from it and spread out, dissipating into the night.

Even as I did it, the spell felt – wrong. The heat wasn’t supposed to dissipate like that, I knew. It felt like it weakened the spell, made me use more power than I needed to. It needed to be cooled off, is all, just like my other spells. I banished the lens and instead grabbed some of the cold, silvery energy flowing all around me. I mixed it into the forming ball of energy. The orb reddened in color and grew warm the moment I removed the lens, but it cooled quickly and formed an orb roughly the size of a baseball. The globe shed a bright light that had a faint silvery sheen. When I tossed it overhead, the orb hung there, bathing everything around us in its radiance. Shadows fled the gleam of light, and the entire clearing swam in silver radiance that left not a scrap of darkness behind.

Viora stared at the globe hanging overhead, then looked around at the brilliantly lit clearing. “Do that again,” she commanded, her voice faintly awed.

I shrugged and dismissed the light, allowing it to fade, then repeated the process. Once again, I clearly held the image in my mind of the power flowing up my body and around my arm, pooling in my hand. The energy warmed, but I cooled it with an infusion of the cold, silver power all around me, and it swelled to a baseball-sized globe of silver-white light that drenched everything in its radiance and devoured the darkness around us.

“Ionat, how did you do that?” she asked quietly, staring at the globe in my hand.

“I just did what you did,” I shrugged, lying easily enough. I hadn’t, of course, but I had a feeling I knew what I’d done to balance the spell, and she wouldn’t be happy to hear it.

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t separate out the heat – that light should be burning your skin just from being near it. Why isn’t it?”

I shrugged again. “No idea, sorry. This is just what came to me as I tried to replicate your spell. It felt too hot, so I cooled it off.”

“It felt hot, so you cooled it off,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I have no idea how you did it, but that spell form – it’s completely balanced. There’s not even a hint of instability.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It is, but from everything I know of magic, it’s also impossible.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “Do it again, please.” She watched intently as I repeated the spell, then leaned back, her eyes gleaming but her expression confused.

“I can see what you’re doing,” she said. “At least, I can see the results. You’re pulling in pure solar raju, not splitting off the heat the way you’re supposed to. It starts to get unstable, and then – you balance it. Perfectly. The heat’s contained, and the resultant light is far more powerful.”

“More powerful?” I asked, glancing at the globe. “It doesn’t look any brighter than yours.”

“Ionat, look around you and see what you’ve done,” she said quietly. I glanced around and saw the clearing fully lit by the ball of radiance in my hand, as I’d intended. I didn’t see anything different – that is, until I glanced down at the ground. The light hung between Viora and me, but somehow, the woman wasn’t casting a shadow. Darkness should have drenched the ground behind her, but it shone just as clearly as everything else.

I looked around curiously. Literally, nothing within the clearing possessed a shadow of any kind. No shading draped the ground beneath my outstretched hand. No darkness hung below the short blades of grass or filled the air behind the closest trees. Everything gleamed with perfect clarity in violation of everything I knew about physics.

“How – why aren’t there any shadows?” I asked, stunned at the revelation.

“Shadows are just a lack of light, Ionat. You’ve created a perfectly balanced light, one that covers everything within its radiance despite obstructions in the way.” Her eyes grew curious, and she held up a hand. “Hold on a second.” She crawled over to my tent – she planned to share Renica’s, but the hunter dropped off to sleep almost immediately once night fell – and slipped inside. A moment later, she came out, shaking her head.

“When the tent’s fully closed, it’s dark inside,” she reported. “If I open even the smallest crack, though, the entire place floods with light.” She grinned at me. “It’s as if any place that could be lit by the spell is completely illuminated by it.”

I closed my hand into a fist, and the light winked out, plunging us back into darkness. Viora came and sat back beside me, smiling. “Well, you’ve mastered the light spell. Let’s move on to fire, and then we’ll practice spell theory. We have years’ worth of material to cover, and the road to Panja isn’t that long.”