The Hunter Clans of the Wild Wood taught that the afterlife was a great forest with trees so tall that their crowns touched the stars. I had been taught these stories from childhood, and I had no reason not to believe them.

When a man of the hunter clans died, he was transported to the realm of heavenly trees. Where he lived among these Celestial Sentinel trees was determined by the life he’d lived; virtuous or covetous, generous or grasping, kind or cruel. A man who’d abided by the hunter’s code of personal honor and doing his best for his clan would be given a higher position. The man who had lived by the code without fail would spend the afterlife on the highest branches, with the moon, the stars, and the other greatest people of the clans as company.

And now I was dead.

When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in a forest, probably somewhere among the lower third of a Celestial Sentinel. I had done well to abide by the Hunter’s Code, but I was young, and had not had much opportunity to assist my clan, or to atone for the youthful transgressions that are inevitable in a young man’s growing up. I was content to take my place in the celestial tree, wherever my place might me. That was the right place for a man of the Hunter Clan.

I opened my eyes.

All was blurry for a moment, a forest not of trees, but of gray and black shadows, and at the center a bright, buttery yellow light. I brought my attention to the light, and after a moment of concentration, my vision cleared.

To my surprise, I found myself staring at a thick candle standing in a clay holder on a rough wooden table. I blinked.

The candle threw its yellow light out over the wooden table and illuminated the whole space. I was certainly not in a tree. Instead, I appeared to be in a cramped, stone cave. The walls were rough gray stone, and there was a dark entrance on one side of the cave, covered up by a crude wooden door.

Directly across the table from me was a rectangular, stone box, sitting on a stone plinth. The flat lid of the box was propped up against the side of the plinth.

There was a body in the box.

I knew what this was. The Hunter Clans didn’t bury our dead in sarcophagi, but I still recognized the box for one. As a child, I’d come across some of the ancient crypts where former civilizations had filled their stone halls with such things. Mouldering bones and fragments of fabric lying in broken stone coffins was all that was left now. As a boy, me and the other children would challenge each other to go inside the crypts and mess with the bones. That was, until our fathers found out and put a stop to it, sealing up the entrance to the old vault of the forgotten people.

But this coffin held no skeleton, no mouldering, rat-chewed collection of ancient relics. Instead, it contained a young man, perhaps eighteen years of age. He couldn’t have been dead long because his skin still looked pink and almost healthy. His eyes were closed and his hands were crossed over his chest, and he was dressed in a rich robe of dark red and black. His golden hair grew long but was tied in an elaborate plait. On his brow rested a silver crown, embedded with rubies. A royal then?

Why had I awoken here? Was this the afterlife, or had my body somehow survived the ravaging of mutant wolves? Perhaps I was not dead after all?

I glanced down and saw that my body was not as it had been before. It wasn’t covered in the wounds, nor was it wearing a leather tunic and pants. I was completely naked. However, this wasn’t the most surprising thing about my present state. On closer examination, I found that my form was ephemeral, like the mist that traveled across the river, and it glowed a pale blue.

I held my hands up before my face, shocked at the way their blue glow illuminated the room around me.

Was I a spirit of some kind, then? I felt a moment of fear; in our mythology, some spirits were not allowed into the realm of the Celestial Trees, because of bad deeds in life, a lack of clan alignment, or perhaps because of a curse. Surely, I thought, such a fate could not have befallen me?

My attention was drawn by a sudden movement in a shadowed corner of the cave. I turned my head, partly surprised but mostly quite pleased to discover that I was not alone. There was an elderly man in the cave with me. He stepped into the flickering candlelight and I saw that he was kindly-looking, with a long gray beard, a bald head, and dressed in bright red robes.

He was not of the Hunter Clans, that much was for sure. Neither, for that matter, was the youth in the coffin. Both had light coloring in their skin and their hair, and both were tall. The Hunter Clans were generally small, stocky people, with dark hair, dark eyes, and skin the color of wet tree bark. I’d never in my life seen people like these two.

The old man’s small eyes were very bright and blue, and they sparkled with excitement as he looked at me.

“The spirit has come!” he muttered, as if to himself. “I can hardly believe I managed it. After all this work…” Then he broke off and stared into my face, tilting his head from side-to-side like a man examining some rare artifact. My eyes met his gaze, and his eyes widened in sudden surprise. He raised a hand and moved it back and forth in front of my face.

“You can hear me? See me?” he asked, tentatively.

I nodded, then tried to speak. For a strange moment, I couldn’t remember how, but then it came back to me. My voice echoed strangely, as if I was speaking from the bottom of a well.

“Why have you brought me here?” I asked him. “Who are you? I should have been in the afterlife by now. Are you some necromancer, to have called my spirit to this place?”

“I am not a necromancer,” he said hastily. “But I have called you here. It’s taken many years of work, and I didn’t think it was possible, but I have done it at last.”

“Then if you’re not a necromancer, what are you? Who are you?”

“I am a Magus. I’m advisor to Boris, King of the Outlands.”

I’d never heard of a Magus, or King Boris, or any Kingdom called the Outlands, but none of those things were a particular priority for me just at present. “Why have you prevented my journey to the afterlife?”

“Because I need your help.”

I was feeling unsure about fulfilling this magus’s request, but I figured if he’d managed to summon me, he was calling the shots. I would be better to help him and then perhaps he’d allow me to return to the afterlife of my ancestors.

“Well,” I asked, “what do you need me to do?”

He turned and gestured with a hand in the direction of the young man in the sarcophagus. “This young man’s soul has fled, and cannot be retrieved. I need you to take his place.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at it like this: you were from a Hunter Clan, so you dabbled in the arts of alchemical mixtures, right?

“Right…” I answered doubtfully.

“Hunters take two substances and combine them to make something that retains the properties of both but is new. That is what I’m doing here. I will combine your soul and this man’s body, and together you will make something new. You will retain your hunter’s powers, and he will retain his prince’s physical form.”

“Prince?” I asked, looking again at the crown on the young man’s brow. “So he was royalty?”

“I see you’re quick to make inferences and have not lost any of your intellectual capacity despite having been dead. You will do well in this role. The time has come. Let the joining commence!”

He suddenly drew a wand from his robes and pointed it in my direction.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I protested, but there was nothing I could do. I felt a tugging in the center of my chest, and found myself dragged in his direction like a fish on a line.

The Magus swept his wand in a horizontal line through the air. Unwillingly, I followed the movements of the wand. I was pulled forcefully from one side of the cave to the other. It seemed that his wand could force me to go wherever he wanted, like a leashed dog. I fought against him, struggling and flailing my hands at him, but to no avail. By moving the wand in the direction of the sarcophagus, he caused me to float over the wooden table, past the flickering candle and to come to rest floating above the royal corpse.

“This is Cassian, Crown Prince of the Outlands,” the mage said. “What was your name in life, Hunter spirit?”

“My name is Bright Fox, son of the elders of the Red Feet clan of the great wild wood,” I said, gazing down at the still face of the blonde-haired prince.

“No more,” he said. “Now, you are Cassian, crown prince of the Outlands, eldest son of King Boris the Protector.”

With that, he thrust his wand in a great arc downward and spoke a word in a language I did not recognize. With a shocking rudeness, I was pulled downward and, like a diver arrowing into deep water, I plunged into the body of the Crown Prince Cassian.

For a long moment, all was darkness. Then, swiftly, sensation began to run up my fingertips and my feet, a painful sensation like pins and needles. I gasped, and found that I could draw in a long, ragged breath. The damp air of the cave hurt as it rushed into my dry lungs, and I felt my back arching.

I cried out, then blinked and opened my eyes, struggling to sit. I was staring up into the eyes of the Magus.

“It worked!” he said, his eyes filled with gleeful tears. “The soul merging worked! You have occupied the body of the Crown Prince, and now the prophecy may be fulfilled!”

“Aaargh…” I groaned as I flapped my hand at him. He caught my meaning and grabbed my hand, helping me to haul myself up into a sitting position. Every muscle in my body ached, and my bones felt like they were grinding together. My throat was raw, my eyes were gummy, and there was a foul taste in my mouth.

As I sat up, I felt something heavy drop into my lap, and I looked down. It was the crown. I looked at it for a long moment, then at the rest of myself. My hands were fair-skinned and smooth, not the callused, dark-skinned hands of the rugged hunter I had been. My long braid of blonde hair was heavy where it hung over my shoulder.

I held my hands up in front of my face. I was no longer ephemeral and glowing blue. The Magus was right. He had succeeded. For better or worse, I was Crown Prince Cassian… whoever he might turn out to be.

When I tried to speak, all that came out was a dry groan, and I started to cough. The old man hurried to the shadowed corner of the cave, and returned with an earthenware jug and a heavy brown cup.

“Here,” he said, slopping cold water from the jug into the cup and holding it out to me, “drink this.” He reached up and helped me drink from the mug, scolding, “slowly, now!” when I spilled the water onto my hands and coughed.

At my second try, I managed to get a cup of the water down. It was the most amazingly satisfying thing I had ever drank in my life, and I immediately drank another two cups. After that, I felt much, much better. I rinsed my mouth out and spat over the edge of the sarcophagus, able to hold the cup on my own now. The Magus was shuffling through some oddments which lay on the table.

“Here now,” he said, “I’ve found it.” He came back over to the sarcophagus, holding something that glinted in his hands. “Look!”

The Magus thrust the object he was holding into my hands. I looked down, and it took a moment for me to recognize it. It was a mirror he had put into my hands.

I stared into the glass, and shuddered. Instead of the reflection of the Hunter I had been, I saw the face of the dead royal who had been lying in the sarcophagus staring back at me. I looked up at the Magus again, then back at the mirror, then back at the Magus.

“How?” I croaked, the first word I’d spoken since I’d been brought back to physical life in this new body. The voice of the Prince rang oddly in my ears as I used it. “How is such a thing even possible?”

“An ancient magic,” the Magus said, nodding sagely. “I didn’t think it would work, and for years, I couldn’t find the secret. I lost track of how many times I tried and failed to perform this ritual, but now…”

He rubbed his hands together with glee, and gazed at me with a look of total satisfaction on his face.

“But why?” I asked. “Why have you done this?”

He shrugged. “I did it because I had no choice. Because the world needs Cassian, Crown Prince of the Outlands.”

“But I’m not him,” I said. “How can I be him? I’m Bright Fox of the Hunter Clan…“

“No more,” he interrupted me, shaking his head “You are Cassian now, in every way that anyone will recognize. Your soul inhabits his body, and you speak with his voice and hear with his ears, see with his eyes and work with his hands. You are him, and you must be him from now on.”

“But I…” I was about to object, but my speech was cut off when the mirror suddenly became bright in my hands. I brought my arm up to ward off the intense light. When the light vanished, the glass surface no longer showed my reflection. I leaned over and peered into it.

In the glass, I saw an image of a great castle on a hilltop, protected by massive stone fortifications, and overlooking a valley peppered with farms and houses. It was a peaceful scene, with cattle and sheep in the fields below the towering castle walls, and a bright blue sky illuminating the clean lines and monumental architecture of the fortifications.

“The mirror responds to your magic,” the Magus said as he looked over my shoulder at the mirror’s new image. “It shows you your home.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never seen this place before. This is not my home. My Hunter’s Magic would not show…”

“Not the Hunter Magic,” the Magus said. “Your Royal Magic. The magic that goes with the body of Crown Prince Cassian.”

“But I… I don’t have Royal Magic.” I let the mirror drop down into the sarcophagus, and Auron reached out and took it from me. He slipped it into his pocket and it disappeared.

“Yes you do,” he said patiently. “You are Prince Cassian now. You inhibit the body of the Crown Prince, so you are of the Royal Bloodline. The Royal Magic runs through your veins.”

I looked down again at the crown in my lap, then after a moment I picked it up. I turned it in my hands. It was beautiful, a finely-wrought circlet of silver, studded with small red gemstones, and with one big ruby positioned at the front. I’d never seen jewelry like it before.

The truth of it was undeniable. It had taken me a bit of time to get my head around the idea, but here it was. I could not deny it. I was, to all intents and purposes, the Prince.

“Help me out of here,” I said to the Magus, and he gave me his hand. I lurched up and scrambled over the edge of the coffin, leaning on him to steady myself. As I got over the edge, the world spun for a moment, and if the Magus hadn’t been there to support me I would have fallen.

When my feet hit the cold, rough stone floor, my knees buckled and I staggered forward. It was only the Magus quickly putting his arms beneath my shoulders that prevented me from falling onto my face. I clutched at him, pulling myself upright again.

“What’s the matter with me?” I complained, swaying a little as I found my balance. I kept a hand on his shoulder, and put my other on the edge of the coffin to steady myself. “Why am I so weak?”

“Your muscles have not been used for a long, long time,,” the Magus said. “I wove powerful spells around this body, and blessed the sarcophagus with powerful incantations. There was no decomposition, and very little damage to the body itself. However, with prolonged stillness the muscles will weaken, and even all my magic could not prevent some decay. It’ll take a little time before you are able to walk unaided. Here, lean on the side of the coffin for a moment. I have something for you.”

He helped me turn myself around, so that I could place both hands on the sarcophagus and keep myself from falling over. My head spun, and I laid my brow against the edge of the cold stone, enjoying the feeling of coolness on my brow.

I heard the footsteps of the Magus walking away from me toward the dark corner of the cave. There was the sound of rummaging and muttering, and after a moment he returned with an elderwood staff.

I stood upright again and turned awkwardly, leaning on the sarcophagus and looking at him.

“For now, you can use this to help you walk around the castle,” he said, holding out the wooden staff. I reached out and took it from him.

“Thank you,” I said as I leaned my weight experimentally on the staff. The wood wasn’t sanded smooth, so I could feel the grain under my fingers as I gripped the head of it. Touching the staff reminded me of the treetop village I’d once called home.

I took a careful step, using the staff to support myself and help me balance. It worked, and I felt more secure.

The Magus was looking proudly at me, as if my ability to take a few steps on my own was his personal achievement. An unreasonable surge of annoyance washed through me. “I’m still not sure I understand why you stopped my soul from traveling to the afterlife, or why you put me in the prince’s body,” I grumbled at him, as I used my staff to hobble over to the table. I leaned against the table edge and fixed myself another cup of water.

“I needed to fulfill a prophecy,” the Magus said, in answer to my question. “The Crown Prince is meant to save the world.”

“Yet he died,” I said, sipping the cool water.

The Magus nodded. “He died, yes. But I believe that bringing him back, in this way, could mean the prophecy will still be fulfilled.”

“As much as I’d like to help you out,” I said, “I have a life of my own, one from which I was taken at a young age. I don’t care for the problems of royals, prophecy or not. I’ve never heard of the Kingdom of the Outlands, or of your King Boris or your Prince Cassian. What’s to stop me from building up my strength and returning to my people?”

It was a purely hypothetical question. I doubted anyone from the treetop village which I’d called home would believe that I was Bright Fox. They would simply see a strange-looking young man spouting nonsense.

“You cannot return,” the Magus stated, shaking his head slowly. He almost seemed saddened by his words.

“Would you stop me?” I asked, feeling outraged. Obviously this sorcerer wielded far more power than I could dream of. Sure, he had said that I possessed Royal Magic, but I had no knowledge of how to use it. This man before me had likely studied the magic of his people for decades. Still, the idea that he would constrain me, force me to inhabit this Prince’s body to fulfil some prophecy of his, that idea made the deep flames of anger stir in me.

“I won’t stop you from doing anything,” the Magus said, “but that part of your life has passed. If you must see it for yourself, so be it.” He gestured at the mirror that was lying in the sarcophagus.

I put down my cup and went over to the coffin again, reached over to the mirror ,and picked it up. Careful not to lose my balance, I picked the gleaming mirror up. I thought of my village in the treetops and the mirror shone out brightly before resolving into a heartbreaking image. The village wasn’t there. Not at least as I knew it. The wooden platforms, hemp ropes, and people were gone. All that remained were the totemic symbols in the tree trunks, and they had faded beyond recognition.

“This. . . this can’t be right.” I shook the mirror, hoping it would change into a different vision of my homeland.

“Your old home, like your old body, is long gone now,” the Magus said, not unkindly. He placed a soft hand on my shoulder as I shakily put the mirror down in the coffin again. “The treetop villages in the wild forest were wiped out over 300 years ago.”

My stomach dropped. “And… what’s become of my people? The Hunter Clans?”

“Gone,” the Magus said.

“300 years ago? I’ve been dead that long?”

He nodded. “You may not remember the afterlife, but you were there.”

My emotions finally bubbled over. I turned on the Magus and grabbed him by the throat. Despite my weak legs, I was able to keep myself from falling out of pure rage.

“You tore me from eternal bliss, only to tell me that my people are all dead!?” I shouted at him. “I have none of my people here in this world anymore. Had I remained in the afterlife, I would have been with them. And now? What will become of my soul? Should I die, will I go back to the realm of my people, or to the accursed lands of the Outland royals?”

The Magus’s eyes were bulging in their sockets as he gasped for air. He clutched my hands and tried to peel my fingers from his throat. As his face quickly purpled, my wrath started to drain away.

I released him from my hold and immediately crumpled to my knees, not only from the sudden weakness in my muscles but from the despair of losing everything I’d ever known in one fell swoop.

A life had been given back to me, but it was nothing like the life I had known before. No trace of the Hunter Clans remained.

Truly, I was no longer Bright Fox. I was now the Crown Prince of the Outlands.

The hunter code taught that one is free to live how they choose. The winds of change would blow against you, but you were the only one who determined which direction you went, either with the winds or against them. The winds of change might push your fate in a certain direction, but it was you who made the final decision.

I’d always liked that aspect of the hunter’s code.

I caught my breath, then drew a deep inhale of the cool air of the cave. I would have to accept my current position in the world. And that meant making good with the man before me, the so-called Magus who was gasping for air as he clutched his bruised neck.

I had collapsed onto all fours after my rage had left me, and I now looked up to see the Magus. He was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning against the wooden table and rubbing his neck. He was out of my reach, and was watching me warily. I pushed myself back so I was leaning against the plinth on which sat the sarcophagus.

“You truly believe this prince can fulfil your prophecy,” I said quietly to the Magus. “Else you would have stopped me attacking you. You have magic sufficient to snatch a soul from the afterlife, so you should also have sufficient power to prevent a feeble young man from strangling you, and yet you did not defend yourself. You did not risk harming this body I inhabit. How important is this Prince Cassian?”

He was nodding. It took him a minute or so to get his breath back. When, after another minute or so, he rose to his feet, I saw that there were purple fingerprints around his neck. I felt a sudden surge of remorse for attacking him.

“The prince…” The Magus said in a hoarse voice, then stopped speaking, coughed, and drank from the water jug. When he was done, he turned back to me and spoke more strongly. “The Prince is everything,” he said Magus said. “You are everything.”

“So I’m beginning to understand.” I said. I had new respect for this man. In that moment, he would have let me kill him rather than risk damaging me. “I’m… sorry I attacked you.” I said stiffly.

He nodded, then gave me a small smile. “I suppose tearing you from the afterlife and forcing you to inhabit the body of a dead prince is something of a liberty…”

“Oh, just help me up, will you?” I chuckled.

He grinned, then approached me and held out a hand. I gripped it, and between us I was hauled upright again. The Magus crouched and retrieved up the wooden staff, which had fallen to the ground when I’d attacked him. I took it from him, and we stood regarding each other for a moment.

“Well,” I said, “if I’m to be the Crown Prince, I’ll need your guidance. What is it I’m to do?”

“You must learn the ways of magic. You must work hard, study, learn, and in time become the greatest mage who ever lived.”

“A tall order,” I said, raising my eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes, but that is not all. Once you have ascended to the highest peaks of the arcane arts, you must become the leader that your people will need. The Outlands must not fall. And you will be the one to prevent such a catastrophe.”

“The Outlands,” I said, pondering. “We had a legend of a place with that name. When I was a man of the Hunter Clan, my people said that we once came from a land with that name, many thousands of years ago, back in the mists of time.”

The Magus nodded. “There’s truth in legends. You and I share a common ancestor.”

“My people are gone, so perhaps I can adopt the people of the Outlands as my own,” I said. “I don’t see a way out, so I will make the best of things. Besides, should I kill myself, I am likely to travel to the afterlife of your peoples. I would prefer to delay that for as long as possible.”

“As would I.”

“If I’m going to be here for a while, I’d like to call you something other than ‘The Magus.’ Do you have a name?”

“Yes. I am Auron. Now, you must come with me to meet your father.”

“The King?” I asked.

The Magus frowned at me, as though to suggest my question was foolish. It wasn’t untrue; if I were the Crown Prince, then my father was most certainly the king. It would take some time to get used to being the son of a monarch, but I figured there were worse things.

I would go with the winds of fate.