EPISODE ONE

  Part 1:

  “I Was Just a Humble Baker Boy, But Then the Gods Marked Me for War."

  Sai was born on the Island of Nowhere, where men, women, and children toiled from dawn until dusk. Everyone belonged to a caste that dictated their work, and they did that work without question. The island keepers, serving as guards and law enforcers, made sure of that. Nowhere was a harsh home, but Sai didn’t think too ill of it. Life was hard everywhere, wasn’t it? And besides, there were distractions. Rock skipping on the riverbanks. Chicken racing on Saturdays. Cattle spotting—the free-range herds grazed from coast to coast. O’Weenie’s tavern, where the ale was bitter but strong. And, on rare occasions when the keepers allowed, dancing in the town square.

  Sai had little love for chicken racing. “I feel bad scarin’ ‘em,” he’d say. He didn’t have an arm for rock skipping and thought cows were dumb. He was too young for ale. What he did like was Old Man Rummy.

  Old Man Rummy was the town drunk, a shuffler with a fondness for dirty limericks and wild tales. Sai loved dirty limericks and wild tales.

  Every night, under the great beech tree at the edge of town, Rummy would sit by the fire, and the children would gather. There, he’d tell limerick after awful limerick, each worse than the last, and close the night with a ridiculous story. The air rang with giggles from start to finish. Sometimes, the adults would come too, lingering at the back, buzzing from the booze at O’Weenie’s, fighting their own laughter. Even the island keepers showed up now and then. Everyone loved Old Man Rummy’s stories.

  Until one night, when he told a different kind of tale.

  His eyes grew glassy, his voice solemn, as he spoke of the Great Heavenly War of Crowns.

  Every hundred years, he said, the gods chose kings and queens, not of royal blood, but of supernatural power. One king and one queen for each of the four kingdoms. The queens bore divine crowns, granting them extraordinary, terrifying magic—a rebalancing of power, a tipping of the scales. Whoever claimed three of the crowns could command mankind to obey any three laws for the next century. Whoever claimed all four? They could rewrite reality itself.

  And the only way to claim a crown… was to slay a queen.

  For millennia, the Great Heavenly War of Crowns had drenched fields in blood, birthing wars so brutal, so unrelenting, they reshaped the land itself.

  The fire crackled into silence. A child sniffled, then began to cry.

  Sai spotted the island keepers lurking behind the beech tree. Even under the canopy of heavy branches, their scowls cut deep.

  Old Man Rummy did not return the next night. Nor the night after.

  By the end of the week, the island keepers announced he had fallen ill. A few days later, they said he had died. Soon after, a small grave appeared beside the beech tree, marked by a modest wooden plank:

  RUMMY

  Storyteller

  That week, Sai’s reality shifted. Until then, he’d thought that, for all its harshness, the island was still an alright place. It was home, after all. And the keepers, though stern, were here to keep them safe. Weren’t they?

  Not after Rummy.

  Doubt—big, capital ‘D’ Doubt—settled in his chest, gnawed at his mind. He wondered about Nowhere. About the world beyond the endless horizon. About what he knew.

  More than anything, he wondered about what he didn’t.

  He was eight.

  OOO

  “One more drink! Just one more!”

  “No, no, I should go.”

  “Come on!”

  “Well… if you insist, haha!”

  Sai’s friends cheered as he caved. The table was packed, eleven people strong, with an empty spot where he’d been sitting. They were all food production caste—millhands since the age of thirteen. He knew them like family, which was the only reason he would ever let them peer pressure him into borderline alcohol poisoning.

  His best friend, Collin, swiftly emptied his own half-full mug into another, making a full one, and handed it to Sai, who wavered unsteadily over the table of grinning faces.

  “Drink, drink, drink!” they chanted. Sai lifted the mug and, in one impressive go, downed every drop, his ninth that evening.

  The table erupted into applause as he slammed the empty mug down and burped.

  “That’s it. Gotta go,” Sai said, woozily.

  “You’re a champion among champions!” Collin laughed, slapping him on the ass as he teetered away.

  “Oi! Buy me dinner first!” Sai called over his shoulder.

  “That’s not what yer mum said!”

  Laughter from O’Weenie’s followed him out into the cold of night. He staggered down the steps onto the cobbled streets, steadied himself, and stretched. His seventeen-year-old frame, all six-foot-two of it, was spare and bony. Unlike his friends, he hadn’t built the stocky muscle that came with grinding corn. He worked with the bakers instead—too much heat, not enough food. Thankfully, ale was cheaper than bread on the island, and tonight, with his stomach only half full and his next meal a sunrise away, it made a fine substitute.

  He started his uneven walk home.

  The Town (or was it a village?) was a crooked patchwork of stone and brick, with lopsided buildings, broken lampposts, and rooftops riddled with as many holes as the streets. Most days, Sai liked living here. Saw nothing wrong with it. The Town was the only one on the island, and it was better than the farms, which were unsettlingly quiet. Better than the encampments by the mines. Certainly better than life on the plantations. Then again, he’d never stepped off the island, and was aware that he didn’t know what he didn’t know.

  But on nights like these, he was especially grateful. Boozed up, whistling a tune, stars shining bright. O’Weenie’s was only three blocks from the millhouse, just short enough that he never lost his buzz before crawling into bed. These small blessings made it easy to forget the unease that sometimes crept up inside him when he pondered his circumstances, his labor-filled life on this island.

  He was a block away from home, when he spotted a figure approaching from a side street. He would’ve recognized that walk after a hundred ales.

  Her name was Tavi. And she was the most beautiful girl in the world. At least, as far as Sai was concerned, which granted, wasn’t a very high bar, considering his circumstances. But the fact of it might as well have been carved into his bones. It was just one of those things he knew, that he would have bet his life, was true.

  She was carrying a pail, and from the way she swung it, he figured it was empty. The last time they’d talked, she’d mentioned Mrs. Donoghue struggling to nurse her newborn. Tavi had been bringing her goat’s milk every evening, a long trip from her family’s dairy farm, but that was Tavi for you. Ever the saint.

  Sai sucked in cold air to sober up, and straightened his posture. No matter how drunk he was, by the goddess Freia, he would make a good impression tonight. Better to stand perfectly still until she reached him though. Couldn’t risk stumbling on his way to her..

  She was nearly close enough to call out to when a shadow peeled from an alley behind her.

  Sai’s stomach turned.

  Shit.

  Bahla. One of the town troublemakers with a taste for women half his age. He had a wife and kids. Didn’t stop the bastard from trying to talk up every lass in town.

  Sai strode toward Tavi.

  “EY, LOVE! HOW’S IT GOIN’?” Bahla bellowed.

  Tavi flinched. She didn’t turn around though. Only walked faster.

  “WHERE YER GOIN’? AWW, DON’T BE LIKE THAT!”

  She picked up the pace. Then her eyes landed on Sai.

  “Sai?”

  He pushed past her, planting himself between her and Bahla. “She’s with me. We’re meeting someone around the corner.”

  Bahla slowed into a heavy gait, his face darkening. “Who the fock are ya? And did I ask about yer evenin’ plans, ya wee pencil-shaped prick?”

  A second voice, slimy and tittering, slithered out of the dark behind him.

  “Fancies ‘imself a hero, the twig-shaped prick…”

  Sai wobbled around to see a second thug he did not know by name but by face, slinking out of the alley behind. He was one of Bahla’s friends.

  Then a third voice. “No, no. He’s lookin’ for hero lessons… by way of a beatin’, the bug-eyed prick.”

  Sai barely saw where the third thug came from. Just that suddenly, there was a tubby man on their right, and now they were surrounded.

  Bahla cracked his knuckles. “Is that what yer feanin’ fer? A bit of schoolin’? Prick?”

  Sai swallowed, keeping Tavi behind him. “Alright, alright, I’m a prick. Message received and understood. But it’s such a fine night, gentlemen. Why ruin it by makin’ it ugly?”

  Bahla sneered. “Only thing’s ‘bout to be ugly is yer fokin’ face.”

  The three had forced Sai and Tavi into a tight circle. By now, Tavi’s nails were digging into Sai’s shoulder, but she still said as defiantly as she could, “There are keepers nearby! Passed them on my way here! Lay a finger on me, and I’ll scream! See how you like sleepin’ in the pits!”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Bahla’s grin spread, yellow and crooked. “Scream? Now, now. What do yer think my intentions are, lassie? It’s yer boyfriend here that’s grindin’ my gears.”

  The thugs stepped closer.

  “Stay back!” Tavi warned. “I said—STAY BACK!”

  She swung. The night resounded with the thunk of her pail slamming into Bahla’s face.

  Silence.

  Sai froze. Tavi gasped, her eyes locked on the blood dribbling down Bahla’s temple. The thug touched the side of his face, and stared at his stained fingers.

  Slowly, he looked up. “Oh wow. Ya uh…ya really nailed me.”

  “I… I told you to stay back,” Tavi whispered shakily.

  “So ya did, so ya did, in all fairness.”

  Sai forced a weak smile. “Fellas, this has all gone a bit too far, don’t you think?”

  “Suppose it has.” Bahla nodded heavily, his eyes on the ground, his hand still touching at the wound at the side of his head, which was still bleeding rather freely. “You… should go.”

  Relief rushed through Sai like a flood. “Thank you.” He grabbed Tavi’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here—”

  He turned…and bumped into one of Bahla’s friends. The bump came with a sharp pinch, the sort of which he’d never experienced before, deep in his gut. Sai staggered back and looked down. Odd. That…looked like a knife. Sticking out of him, just off-center his belly. He couldn’t help but try to touch it, and the pinching exploded into agony; a raw, searing thing that rocked his entire body. Blood bloomed through his shirt.

  “Y-you stabbed me?” His voice was thin, disbelieving. “You… you stabbed me.”

  The thug grinned. Bahla laughed first, then the others, cackling as Sai dropped to his knees.

  “What did I do…?” he mumbled, dizzy. “What did I…”

  Tavi’s scream split the night as the thugs pounced on her. Sai barely heard it. His last thought as he keeled over, darkness overcoming him, was how much he hated the whininess of his own voice.

  And how much he hated this fuckin’ island.

  OOO

  Sai was twelve the first time he saw Tavi. Not met her. He had met her plenty of times before. They had grown up together in Town, after all; it wasn’t a big place. They had played in the same fields, wandered the same streets and mingled in the same rooms. But then, early in their childhood, Tavi’s family had been given charge of one of the island’s only two dairy farms, and with that, she disappeared from Town’s daily rhythm. Her visits became infrequent and fleeting. One particular winter, she was absent entirely.

  By the time she returned in the spring of her fourteenth birthday, Sai barely recognized her.

  She had grown taller, far taller, to a willowy five foot ten. She dwarfed the other girls her age, and Sai himself would not catch up for a more years. Her dark red hair, once short and bound in neat braids, now fell in wild, frizzy curls that caught fire under sunlight. Grass-green eyes had deepened into emerald, and her gait had found a rhythm. And then, there were the curves. Unapologetic and impossible to ignore; from the shape of her lips, to the slopes of her chest and hips.

  Oh, Sai saw her. And once he had, he couldn’t stop. She was everywhere; on the streets, in his mind, in his dreams.

  Eventually, he found an excuse to speak to her.

  One morning, as he passed the local provisioner’s shop, he spotted her standing in front of the door, a large jute sack of salt resting at her feet. He was meant to help dress the millstone that day, but instead, he found himself at her side.

  "Need help?" he asked, already reaching for the bag.

  Tavi glanced down at him, surprised. "Oh! No, I—"

  "It’s no problem." He tightened the sack’s mouth into a knot. "I’m stronger than I look."

  A bemused smile flickered across her lips. "I don’t think your mum would approve, little one."

  Sai turned red. "We’re the same age," he muttered.

  "Are we?" She arched a brow.

  "Well, you’re only a couple of years older. You just saw your fourteenth winter, right?"

  Tavi tilted her head, considering him. "How do you know that?"

  Collin had told him, but he wasn’t about to admit that he’d been asking after her. Instead, he avoided her gaze, slung the bag over his shoulder, and muttered, "Lead the way."

  For a moment, Sai feared she might protest, might tell him to put it down, leaving him to slink away in embarrassment. But instead, she simply said, "Follow me."

  They walked in silence through Town, but as the countryside unfurled before them, Tavi began to talk. She spoke of the weather, of the desperate need for rain in the fields. She spoke of a new calf at the farm, of her excitement for the upcoming summer dance. She told him how her father was teaching her the constellations; their names, their myths, how the gods wove their will into the night sky (she had her doubts). She rambled about knitting, about how vastly different it was from sewing, explaining in intricate detail.

  At some point, Sai realized she was doing it on purpose. She must have noticed the way he struggled under the weight of the sack, the way the scratchy jute chafed his palms, the way he subtly shifted his grip to ease the strain on his back. She was keeping his mind off it.

  The dairy farm came into view after an hour, and still, another twenty minutes passed before they reached it. By then, Sai’s legs were quivering. When he finally dropped the sack onto the back porch step, pain unspooled from his spine to his shoulders, and his wrists throbbed.

  "Well done," Tavi said, not unlike how one might praise a child.

  "G-Good… thing… I was… there," Sai panted.

  "A very good thing," she agreed, her smile small but knowing. "Though, you know, the waggoners usually bring me back for free."

  Sai blinked at her. Then, slowly, realization dawned. When he found her, she had been waiting for a horse-drawn cart. She had never needed his help.

  He looked flustered. “Then why did you—”

  Tavi shrugged. "I wanted the company. And you looked very eager to show off for me. Didn’t seem fair to rob you of the chance."

  He had no words for that. He was still searching for them when she stepped closer, her fingers threading gently through his hair before trailing down his face. They lingered at the corner of his lips. She smelled of wildflowers.

  “What are you called?”

  “Sai.”

  "Do you want to be friends, Sai?" she asked softly.

  He liked the way she said his name.

  "Yeah," he mumbled.

  "Okay." She withdrew, and lifted the sack. "See you around, Sai."

  OOO

  Sai’s eyes flickered open, and as his consciousness clawed its way back, he struggled to make sense of his surroundings. He was lying on a bed, that much he could tell. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he made out a roof above him and, between that and himself, a window from which weak lamplight spilled in. He shifted and immediately, a spasm of pain ripped through his midsection.

  “Sai? Sai! Oh thank Freia.”

  Tavi voice, sharp with relief, cut through the fog in his head. She was beside him, leaning forward in achair, staring down at him with concern. His last memories came flooding back; memories of her, waves of panic, the sound of her scream when Bahla and his goons had descended upon her. With the memory came fresh adrenalin and a gnawing dread.

  “Are you okay?” he rasped. “Did they hurt you?” He tried to sit up, but his body rebelled, pain lancing through his ribs, forcing a ragged gasp from his throat.

  “Don’t!” Tavi’s hands pressed against his shoulder, firm but careful, keeping him still.

  With her face so close to his now, she could see the swelling along her jaw and the bruising around her eye. Sai’s fingers curled into the sheets. “Those bastards,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “It’s fine, I’m fine. This will heal.”

  “Did they…” Sai’s throat tightened. He didn’t know how to ask the awful question.

  “No. I wasn’t bluffin’ when I said there were keepers close by. They heard my cries, rushed to my aid, not long after your candle got snuffed, poor thing.”

  Sai was relieved to hear that, but her last two words still burned in his years. Poor thing. Because that’s what he was, wasn’t he? Useless. Weak. He had failed miserably at rescuing her, and now here he was, laid up, battered, and stinking of ale. He suddenly found he couldn’t look her in her eyes anymore, his gaze drifting instead to the ceiling.

  “The keepers helped bring you here.”

  “And where’s here?” he mumbled.

  “Dear Miss Millie’s.”

  Millie Kingsley was the town herbalist. She could brew potions, bind wounds, and set bones, but she wasn’t a proper physicker, someone who could use magic to mend the body. That would be Mister Kingsley, her father, who lived near the mines to tend to injured workers in emergencies. But Millie was more than competent.

  “She’s bandaged your side, and left you with milk of silverleaf for the pain. She only just left in actually,” Tavi continued, “Sendin’ word for Mister Kingsley. He’ll heal your wounds in an hour, scars and all.”

  This surprised Sai. “He’d come all the way here, for me?”

  “Miss Millie promised he would. ‘Cause he loves her so. And she’s askin’ as a favour to me. She’s friends with Mrs. Donoghue, you know, the woman I’ve been bringin’ goats milk? A little kindness goes a long way in this town.” She smiled.

  Sai didn’t know what to say, but there was a sting in his eyes he couldn’t blink away, and a lump in his throat he was having trouble swallowing.

  “If only I was stronger,” he said. “If only I wasn’t such a runt…”

  “You’re bigger than me, Sai. You’re hardly a runt…”

  “But I’m weak. I could’ve saved you that black eye. I could’ve—”

  Suddenly, he felt her fingers weaving gently through his hair. “It was sweet of you to try and help.” Then, after a pause, her voice turned playful. “You’ve always been a bit of a show off, ‘aven’t you?” She was teasing. Clearing joking.

  But Sai pulled away from her hand. “I’m only ever goin’ to be a little brother to you, amn’t I?” he whispered.

  The air shifted. An uncomfortable silence fell between them.

  Tavi’s voice, when it came, was quiet but taut. “You think I bring you fresh berries every week because you’re like a brother to me?”

  Sai turned, eyes wide.

  “You think I touch your face every chance I get—because you’re like a brother to me?” Her voice was rising now. “That I’m sittin’ here with you right now, instead of halfway home, because you’re like a brother to me?” Her voice wavered. “I’ve been cryin’ all last hour. I thought you were goin’ to die.”

  Sai already regretted his last words. Her expression was a mix of fury and hurt. “Tavi—”

  She shot to her feet. “Sai, yer an idiot if I ever saw one!”

  And before he could say another word, she stormed out of the room.

  “No, Tavi, wait!” Ignoring the pain, Sai forced himself upright. Agony tore through his side. He barely stifled a yelp as he dragged himself out of bed, legs trembling beneath him. “Tavi, come back, I…” He stumbled out of the sickroom, just as Tavi was disappearing through the front door to the house and slamming it behind her. The fireplace was out, and Sai had to stumble through the dimly lit hearth room, catching his toe on a chair leg, knocking into a table edge, vision reeling from the pain. His wound pulsed, hot, deep, nauseating, but he kept going.

  “Tavi!” he cried, as he threw open the front door and…he stopped frozen. “What in gods’…”

  Instead of the streets of the Town, he stood in the nave of a vast, empty church. A ceiling stretched so high it disappeared into darkness. Stained-glass windows surrounded him on all sides, kaleidoscopes plunging down like waterfalls. They formed the image of a woman, again and again, the same woman, adorned with an orb between the horns that jutted from her forehead. And there were no pews. Only a red carpet that stretched ahead to a dais. On that dais, there was an altar.

  And above that altar…

  A throne.

  A floating throne.

  Sai turned sharply, heart hammering, expecting to see the door he had just walked through. But the door was gone. Only more church, endless church, the red carpet beneath his feet extending endlessly behind him, swallowed by receding darkness.

  His pulse pounded in his ears, his entire body rigid with fear. He had even forgotten about his pain.

  When he turned back towards the dais, there was a woman on the floating throne.

  She was unmistakable; the woman from the stained-glass windows, now made flesh before him. Skin as white as untouched snow and smooth as polished marvel. Curved horns, deep ruby red, framed her face like a crown, and held an orb between them, alive with a faint otherworldly glow. like the moon. Horns curved and ruby red. She sat poised, bare from the waist up, her full breasts exposed, their milky flesh bathed in a spectral moonlight that seemed to pour from the orb. And from her hips, a cascade of silk, blue as the deepest ocean, spilled in lavish waves from her throne, flowing down to the altar like an overflowing stream, and pooling at its base in excess.

  Sai felt as if his body had turned to stone. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe, as some unseen force lifted him from the ground.

  And as he rose into the air, the woman’s voice echoed around him:

  Open your third eye, ye Chosen

  To see which hides behind the dial

  To rise and claim your throne

  Sai blinked and in an instant, he was floating right before her. She loomed impossibly close, her sheer presence overwhelming. Up close, she was even more beautiful, profanely so even, and it made him heady. She reached out, and tapped her finger gently against his forehead.

  Sai felt something growing over his face. Cold. Hard.

  O Nineth Jester of the Bloody Court

  Behold the mask that marks you

  And herald the Bright and Glorious War of Crowns

  The mask encased him in an instant. Midnight black and slick as porcelain, with horns curved like hers, wicked and sharp. And across the lower half of his face, jagged cracks split the mask, carving a grotesque grin from ear to ear. Sai gasped…or tried to. The mask was pressing in on him, suffocating him. And just as the edges of his vision began to blur, the woman leaned in.

  Her lips pressed where his mouth would have been. A kiss, slow, deliberate, burning through the mask as if melting away its boundaries.

  Sai fell. Air rushed past him, the world tipping violently, and then his knees struck the ground. Hard. Pain flared, a jolt sharp and real that shattered the lingering haze of the church hall. His breath hitched as he looked up and…

  He was kneeling in the streets of the Town.

  “Sai?” a familiar voice said. “What’re you doin’ out here?”

  He turned, dazed, to see Mille Kingsley standing over him. She must have been returning home and found him like this.

  “You silly boy!” She looked just as concerned as angry. “Yer goin’ to catch a fever on top of your wound!”

  She helped him to his feet, but Sai found he barely needed her support. Other than the soreness in his knees, he was suddenly aware of the absence of pain. His body felt different. Changed. Instinctively, his hand drifted to his midsection. The raw, pulsing pain that had gnawed at him since the fight was gone. Without thinking, he started to unwrap his bandages.

  “What’re you doin’?!” Millie cried. “I’m swear Sai, I’m not wrappin’ that up again—!”

  Her voice cut off. She was gaping at Sai’s body in disbelief. Where there should have been soft untempered flesh, there was hard toned muscle. Every inch of his pectorals and abdomen, carved into immaculate definition. And where there should have been a knife wound…

  There was no wound at all.

  And at that moment, as if from the heavens itself, a trumpet sounded.