Deep in a dreamy haze, I was thrust from what had to have been a pleasant dream. If not, it was simply joyous sleep, for I remember how hard my heart pounded when I was torn from that place of pleasure and peace and sent sprawling on the floor, pain radiating from first my neck, into my back, and soon into my everything. My eyes were burning from waking up at the wrong time, and I went to rub them when a kick sent me flying into the wall. Luckily at this point I was in so much pain that I couldn’t possibly process it all at once, so I shook my head and got up, running into things and desperately trying to see who my attacker was.

He was tall, not ridiculously so but enough to tower above me. He was in an entirely green cloak with a hood that draped and covered his face. A large sword was on his back, and the fact that it was sheathed was almost more intimidating than if he’d had it out.

“Who are you? How’d you get passed everyone?” I asked, groggy and shaken. I wanted to open the door and figure out where Chrys was. If this guy had gotten in, then he might have hurt Chrys to do it.

But he didn’t answer, as attackers are wont to silence. So, blinking a lot to reduce the irritation in my eyes, I attempted to figure out a way to subdue him.

The guy hit hard, that much was for certain. I was hit in my sleep so I didn’t brace myself, but even then I shouldn’t have been sent into the state I was in, a kind of painful numbness that was there and wasn’t. So I knew if I got hit again I’d probably be at worst dead, and at best receive permanent damage for my trouble. I’d have to bait him into an attack and counter it without getting hit. Hitting him before he hit me would leave me open, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be fast enough to take care of him before he could bust me open like a coconut.

Slowly and unconsciously, I began circling slowly to the left, him mirroring me and circling around, always facing each other, always equal distance apart. The bed kept us apart, but I knew he’d be able to get around that fast.

When neither of us made any moves, I decided to keep talking, unsure of how else to progress the situation. “I assume you’re some assassin from Cashew? Or maybe Avocado? My understanding is I’ve no real allies in either place these days.”

He didn’t respond at all, choosing instead to continue our dance in silence.

“You not talking isn’t doing much for first impressions,” I said, grinning. “Was I not supposed to wake up? Maybe you’re unsure of how to finish this? Here, let me help you.” I put my arms down at my side and stood straight, unguarded. Slapping my chest, I said, “Come on, this next one’s free.”

To my surprise, he didn’t take the bait, instead just stopping and mimicking my stance. I frowned, and went to rub my eyes.

That was the moment he leaped forward, flying over the bed and in my face before my finger even touched my eyelid.

I smiled slightly, trying to stay collected while I quickly scanned him to see what he’d use to attack. His right leg was getting ready to swing, and it was an attack I’d blocked countless times in training with Sage. I swayed my body to the side and went to grab him around his thigh, so I could twist and swing him up over my shoulder and slam him into the ground, which would most likely stun him long enough that I could either run away or go in for a couple free hits.

Instead, I was greeted with a left straight to my shoulder, again sending me sprawling and driving a stake into every single part of my body that could process pain before quickly going numb. My eyes shut, and an eternity passed in an instant before my head forced myself to remain conscious and fight. But when I tried to get up I couldn’t move.

Paralyzed from two hits? And one was in my shoulder?

This guy was some kind of fist wizard.

“Well?” I coughed out. “You going to kill me? What’s my sentence, Mr. Hatchet-man?”

He stood over me, his face still obscured by what I realized then was a mask inside his cowl. Pulling the cloth up, he shook his long hair out and sighed, disappointed.

“You aren’t ready, Mint,” Sage said.

“Oh, it’s you,” Mint groaned. “What are you doing here fighting me like this? I thought I wasn’t supposed to fight?”

Grimacing, Sage said, “I had a feeling.”

“A feeling about what?”

“A feeling that you would disobey and fight anway, so I figured you might as well be ready. But I see now that you are far from ready. Those hits I gave you were nothing compared to what you’d face out there on the battlefield.”

Breathing through my teeth, I said, “I doubt that. I don’t claim to have been in as many fights as you, but no one has hurt me like that before. What did you do? I swear you hit me in my shoulder but my entire body is numb.”

Ignoring the last part, he frowned and said, “Just take my word for it then. If that is the strongest attack you’ve experienced, then consider yourself lucky.”

I could tell he was serious. In the last week or so it looked like he had received a few extra lines on his face, and his green hair was streaked with flecks and strands of grey, which though they would have made him look nice on any other day, instead only solidified his own physical anemia.

“Okay,” I said, quietly. I rubbed my shoulders, slapped myself, and still couldn’t feel a thing save for the presence of my body, so I asked him again what he did.

“When we trained before,” he began, his eyes slanting in something resembling amusement, “I never once used an inkling of my Vastmire.”

My eyes widened. “So that’s—”

“Yes, my Vastmire does that to my enemies. When I hit you, it not only is with enhanced strength, but the energy I send radiates into your body, removing your ability to feel.”

“That’s… sort of underwhelming,” I said, not quite sure how to say what I was thinking.

Sage smiled though. “You see then? My power is a double edged sword.”

“How?” I asked.

His smile lessened. For some reason, he thought I had been able to figure it out on my own. Even this far into knowing me, Sage had held some hope for my ability to think fast.

“It’s probably a good thing you aren’t pursuing a scholarly life these days,” he joked.

I glared at him, but he just chuckled and continued. “My power takes away your ability to feel. So how about we exercise it now and see what you can do? Right now you are numb, correct?”

I nodded.

“Then try and hit me as hard as you can.”

Sage simply asking this of me was all I needed to fit the pieces together. “I get it. Because I can’t feel, I can’t regulate how fast or strong my movement is, and my dodging is going to be off.”

“That’s correct,” he agreed. “But there’s more to it than that. Just see what happens when you hit me.”

So I took a second to make sure I had a proper fist, packing my fingers together and being sure that they would stay together. Then I focused all of my mental energy on putting power behind my fist, all of it that I could muster. When I was finally prepared, I launched a punch into Sage’s chest.

And to my surprise, I knocked him to the ground.

Sage grunted in pain, groaning and feeling his chest as if he’d been hit by a weapon. I looked down at my hand, confused to see my knuckles were turning dark red.

“What happened?” I asked.

Finally standing up, he cocked an eyebrow at me and asked, “When did you get so strong? My back is completely messed up now.” He bent himself backward, getting a loud crack out of his spine that made me wince. “Ugh, alright. Anyway, that was perfect Mint. You showed exactly what the issue with my power is. Because you can’t regulate yourself properly, it could go one of two ways for my opponent. Either they hit me too weakly, too slowly, and they get demolished by me. Or—” he grabbed my hand gently and directed my gaze to my knuckles, which he didn’t really have to do. I was already staring at them. “—You end up overcompensating. If you were more seasoned, or hit me with a sword or club or something, I’d probably be dead. Numbness being my strength means I need to end things quickly.”

Wincing down at my knuckles I asked, “When will I be able to feel again?”

Sage shrugged, “Could take a while. If you sleep you’ll probably wake up with a decent amount of your feeling back, but you will probably be feeling the effects for a day, at least where I hit you.”

He turned, his cloak swooping theatrically. “I should get back to my quarters, though. Don’t leave this room.”

Normally I’d probably have just nodded, but being tired opens gates that you didn’t know were there. I ran in front of him and held my hands out to block the door and I said, “I’m going to fight.”

Knitting his brow, he stressed, “No, you will not. You will be safe here.”

“It’s stupid to put me alone here. Just because I’m out of sight doesn’t make me safe!” I looked in his eyes, pleading. I might have cried. Maybe. “I’m going crazy in here. This place is a prison. Didn’t you say I should fight to get out of prison?”

Sighing, he said, “I did say something like that.”

“Well if everything goes wrong while you guys are fighting, and they send someone plowing through here, killing people left and right before they get to me, it won’t exactly be easy for me to escape! Don’t you get that? This is just setting me up to get captured!”

“I think you’re being paranoid,” he said. “Let me through, before I hurt you.”

Which wasn’t a threat, it was just him letting me know what I already knew.

“Just please give me a chance. I want to help out! Couldn’t I just stay close to you? I need to get experienced with this kind of—”

He sent me sprawling, and the pain of rejection was far worse than whatever I might have felt were I not numb.

Without looking my way, he assured me, “No one will come down here. I’ve made sure that the battle will remain above ground. Just deal with this for a few more days, maybe a week. The battle will begin soon enough. The ships were seen very close, and they will be coming to shore perhaps tomorrow. But you’ve just got to sit tight, Mint. Things will be fine, just leave it to us. We’ll protect you.”

Gritting my teeth, I said, “But I am their target. I am the Prince of Avocado, and this is my fight as much as yours.”

Sage turned to me, and with eyes cold as ice, he said, “You may have been a prince before, but now you need to really think about what that means, what that meant. What you should be tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, pleading.

“I mean that as of right now, Sumac is the rightful heir to the Avocado throne. You are just a blubbering fool claiming to be someone you’re not.”

“But that’s—”

“Not true? A king must see from the eyes of the people, Mint. As a prince you should know that. But you are not a prince, you are just a boy, caught up in a world that will eat you alive if I don’t show you the way.” He walked over to me and knelt down, and he gave me a full hug. Not a small, one armed deal. He embraced me, and I felt my hair dampen as he shed silent tears. His voice never wavered when he said, “Trust me when I say I know how you feel. But also trust me when I say that I will keep you safe even if this isn't the most ideal way of life. None of this is easy, even for me. If I could make all of this go away, and take you back to your room in Persea, and make it so we never met, I’d do it. You’d be better off that way.”

I know he was trying to make me feel better. In fact, when he said that, I cried harder, knowing that I would have felt better back in my room, studying history and grumbling about the noise people down below made, seeing people only as tools and disruptions. Loving only my mother, knowing nothing about anything. Life was simpler then.

Writing this out now, though, I’m heavily aware that this would have been a terrible idea. Sure, being stuck in that room was awful, and all the things up until then were terrible. Fighting wasn’t something I wanted, it was something I had to do. Learning it was just another piece of homework for me. But the people I met were too precious, the lessons I learned too valuable, to just throw it all away. Conifer, Basil, and Sage were all vastly more important to me than my father ever was, ever would have been.

When he finally broke away from me, and stared down at me, in a moment of weakness, he said, “Come on, I’ll take you outside.”

“Really?” I asked, stunned.

“Quickly, before I change my mind.”

And with that, I was following him down unfamiliar halls. He pulled his face mask down and padded silently along the empty corridors, no words crossing between us. I wasn’t sure what exactly we were going to see, but even the stale air the rest of the haven was breathing was fresh to me.

After a dizzying amount of time spent in that silence, we made our way to a stairway. Sage looked left then right, saw no one was around, then motioned for me to follow closely. Up the stairs we went, and through a trapdoor which lead outside.

The first thing that hit me was the air. Fresh air for the first time in probably a week was incredible; I honestly can’t imagine what it’s like to be locked away from nature for longer. My mood was improved the second the air touched me. It was a breezy night, autumn air bringing with it the gentle touch that would soon be winter.

“This way,” he whispered, and he lead me away from the walls, towards the beach. He weaved us along a path that seemed insane, but I figured he knew where each guard would be and just dodged them. I never saw a soul on our walk.

When we got to the beach, he sighed, obviously relieved no one saw us. Seeing that, I realized it was okay to speak and asked, “So what are we doing here?”

Nodding to himself as if agreeing to a statement I couldn’t hear, he asked, “Do you truly want to help out? To fight in battles like I do?”

The question felt circular. This was all we had been talking about, and he knew my answer. But I gave it anyway. “Yes, I want nothing more than to fight.”

He walked over to me and said, “Give me your hands.”

I held them out, and he took my hands in his. “Good, now close your eyes until I say to open them.”

I did, and in that moment I experienced a sensation I’d only feel a few more times in my life. At this time, I wasn’t sure what was happening. It felt as if my thoughts were jumping, like I couldn’t focus on any one thing. I thought of my mother, of studying, of Sage, of Basil, of Conifer, his family, his pain, of Rose and her mother, of her feelings towards me and her mother's feelings towards that, of Chrys and his plight, of Dil, of Neres and the harpies, of my fight with Dil, of my fight with Bitter, and even my spar with Sumac from before my journey began. My memories were sifted through, consumed, deliberated upon.

Sage opened his eyes, and I opened mine simultaneously.

“I’m unsure if I should let you have this,” he muttered, releasing my hands.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Biting his lip, he shrugged. “I suppose I can show you. We’ve not a lot of time for this. Watch carefully, alright?”

I nodded, and he walked to the edge of the beach, just a step away from where the waves would stop. Sage stood completely still, the only movement happening in his cloak, which billowed vigorously in the wind. He moved his hands in wide, slow circles, bringing them down and below his waist in time with his breath. It was almost meditative, the way he moved so fluidly yet so slowly, deliberately.

Then, his hands began to glow.

My eyes widened in awe as I saw something like a glowing ball of slime appear, floating strangely between his hands. It bulged and convulsed with viscous movement, entrancing me.

Sage spoke with difficulty as he tried to hold it in his hands, “This is the Vastmire I carry inside of me. It’s the concentrated power of every single Moss Knight that ever came before me, and I am to give it to the next in line. It’s strength could destroy an entire army, and is the sole reason for my lifelong imprisonment.”

He slowly pressed it back inside of him, wincing as he did so. “The act of receiving this gift is not for the faint of heart. It could easily kill you, and the influence of its power is incredible on the mind. Even if you didn’t die, you might murder without a second thought and become a horrible nightmare for those you seek to protect.”

I took this all in, unsure. “Why are you explaining all of this to me?”

With hard eyes, he said, “Because I’ve been considering you for my successor.”

For once, I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, processing it. It’s not like the statement made no sense. Obviously, upon reflection even at that time, I could see that he’d been planning it the whole time. To anyone reading, it appears obvious. To me at the time though? I didn’t want to believe something like that, so until it was said to me at that moment, it was an inconceivable notion, a foolish statement with no weight behind it.

Sage didn’t look like he was joking, though. He was serious.

“I know it isn’t what you want,” he said. “It’s not something I want for you either, if I’m honest. You’re not naturally inclined for something like this.”

“You mean I’m not fit to fight?” I confirmed, quiet venom in my voice.

“I mean you shouldn’t have to,” he said. “None of this should have happened.” His face looked like a statue, capturing an enormous amount of emotions that passed for him. Regret was on his mind, something I’d learn a lot about in the future but knew little of at the time.

“Anyway, I need to show you what I will give you.”

I grimaced, now more annoyed I’d been taken from underground. Sure he was treating me more like an adult, which is what I said I wanted, but what I meant was I wanted my freedom. This lecture was too heavy, and the scenery was too nice for me to pay attention to this. Especially when he was trying to sway my decision making with this Moss Knight stuff.

Sage read my face and he smiled. “I know it feels like I’ve already shown you, but just watch. You need to see the practicality of it.”

Rolling my eyes, I nodded. “Okay.”

Sage dropped into a fighting stance and took a deep breath as he had before, but this time was different. Instead of removing that strange, slimy blob of gelatinous power from his stomach, he began glowing. Not like the sun, or like a diamond. More like the low glow of a dim candle at night, except with greener hues. He locked his fist next to his chest as if it were a drawn bow, and the glow grew more and more intense, until it was like being too close to an all encompassing flame, too hot to be comfortable near and too bright to look at for long.

Then he shot his fist out, releasing the arrow into the open air, aimless and destructive. And from his fist flew out a blob of energy, green and wavy like a ball of water. It was only about as big as Sage’s forearm maybe, but the amount of power behind it seemed ridiculous. I could see the sea bend even before it went over the water, and once it got out into the open water the sea looked like it was moving out of the way, the green ball a guest of honor at this party of power.

Sage stared out at it with satisfaction, slightly out of breath. “In my younger years, that thing would only stop once it hit its target. Now it will fizzle out in just a few iles, perhaps a bit more.”

Still watching it go, I asked a question whose answer I knew. “What happens when it hits something?”

In his infinite wisdom, Sage just waved a hand and said, “Boom.”

“Boom?”

“Indeed. Whatever that shot touches will have so much Vastmire in it that it will burn from the inside out and die in less than an instant. That is the power you gain from taking on the power the Moss Knight’s have cultivated.”

My eyes never left that light, now just a small blink above the sea, a viridian star in the distance.

“I sincerely hope that if I give you this, you will use it well.”

I nodded, absently. In my head I was thinking with something like that I could just go back to Avocado right now, drive Cashew out and return everything back to normal.

“If you’ve got all that power, Sage, why do you even need to fight a war like this? Couldn’t you just decimate the army on your own and finish things fast?”

Sage frowned, looking so ancient he scared me. A vision of my future I wasn’t ready to see.

“This is why I never gave out the mantle before,” his gruff voice felt like knives in my ears. “I just told you that this strength of mine will burn the victim from the inside out. I don’t go doing that to armies just because they disagree with me. I try my best to make sure there are as few casualties on my side as there are on the enemy’s side.”

“So what’s the point in the power if you can’t even use it?” I asked him, honestly confused.

“Sometimes the threat is all you need, boy. The scariest thing in your life is the pain that never happened, remember that.”

If Sage were here, I’d say I did.

After that, he took me back to my room underground, keeping me hidden and distracted with talk of the battle. By the time we were back to my room, I realized I couldn’t remember how we got there and cursed myself for not paying any attention. It seemed to me I’d be stuck in my room again for the foreseeable future.

A few minutes after Sage left, my door opened and I jumped from my bed, surprised. Even more surprised to see that it was Conifer at the door, looking none too pleased.

“Your beast needs to be kept on a leash,” Conifer huffed, then stomped over to my bed and made a show of looking away from Chrys.

“That man was trying to sneak in here,” Chrys called from the end of the hall coldly. “I was only kiting him away from here. Then that man called Sage came and we hid away for a time.”

“Then Sage came,” Conifer said, confusing me for a second before I remembered he couldn’t understand Chrys. “And we had to stay hidden until you returned.”

Still not sure what was happening, I asked, “Okay, so why are you both here then? Did you just want to visit me, Conifer?”

The question brought a smile on Conifer’s face. “Actually, I came to ask a question of you.” Reaching into his ragged shirt, he pulled out a dagger in a sheath made from what looked like one of the trees that grew there on the island. “Would you like to escape with me?”