Foreword,

It would not take a very astute reader to surmise that the months governing the Misty Isles after the eradication of the daemon were akin to paradise for my pupil. The weather was fanciful, the wine plentiful, and stress but little. Peace reigned, gold flowed, and the life within Aisha’s belly grew.

Across the sea, Prince Gabriel issued an arrest warrant for a finance minister of Portacheval. His ineptitude at encircling the city led to the fellow, innocent or guilty, escaping first to Skaldheim than to a hermitage in Drachenreach. This made it quite impossible to service the warrant and the locals would have none of his demands. This marked the beginning of the War of Friends, between Vassermark and the central kingdoms. The first conflicts were legal in nature, and the king sought ways to split up the city-states from forming a unified resistance. One measure was flat out lying to his brother-in-law, the Princeps of Westshire, which only lasted so long. I shall touch on those war matters another time.

What concerns this tale is the other primary action, the rescue of Bishop Jean de Jeamaeux. She had gone on excursion to the wastelands in scholarly pursuit and missionary goodwill to the sunless desert of the south. Despite bringing a whole host of men and laborers, deserters and escaped revolutionaries, she had not been successfully recalled even by the word of the angels.

Thus, to reward Lucius for his good work in restoring the production of the Misty Isles to levels not even dreamed of, the lands were taken away from him so that he might be given the glory of marching into an inhospitable desert where no rain falls, no sun shines, and no man is a friend. In the due fashion of a youth suddenly terrified of his own aging, my pupil welcomed the letter wholeheartedly.

He saw the command as a return to course, a way back to the adventures of his youth that he thought was already slipping through his hands. Such is the frightening alchemy of parentage. I imagine any relevant parental figure in his life would have laughed at him and called him a fool. In hindsight, I see it as a failing on my part that I took his fear as an insult upon myself. I was the one who had taught him everything of importance he knew and to imply that he was not ready for the banal act of having a child was to imply that I had failed on such a basic level of moral cultivating. What’s more, the actual rearing duties would surely fall, and did so, on Aisha’s hands. The temples had taught her well. She wasn’t terrified of the prospects at the time, which only redoubled my pupil’s anxiety.

Through the lens of personal alloying, his time in the desert came at such a fortuitous time for him that one would think I planned it. I of course foresaw certain likelihoods and needs, but only in the realm of politics. His personal journey was his to take and I can only be thankful that I trained such a robust boy.

As much as I would like to begin the story with his arrival at Ley Port, certain niggling ends require I begin still in the Misty Isles. Fret not however, his journey will be swift before it mires down within a land no good man should ever choose to tread.