Despite the successful test of my new weapons, there was still much to be done before I was satisfied with my chances. Crossbow designs needed to be optimised, troops drilled in more complex manoeuvrers, the poachers trained to land without breaking something…
Unfortunately, it seemed the world itself was against me this time. And there was nothing I could do about it. The days had been getting shorter as winter dragged on, leaving me with less and less light to work under.
Until one morning, daylight didn't arrive at all.
I knew, of course, that the Suns hadn't disappeared. They were simply eclipsed—temporarily shadowed by giant planetary rings that spanned this world's skyline. It was easily explainable with a bit of geometry, just like any solar eclipse back on Earth. Still, it was an important local custom, so I could do little else but let everyone take a break to celebrate. But I didn't see the need for local superstitions to interfere with my work any further.
However, certain people had other ideas…
***
First, it was Erika.
She arrived at the manor in a colourful two-layered dress that was clearly maintained much better than her usual rugged attire. And instead of being kept in place by a coif, her platinum hair was carefully arranged in a braided bun and decorated with acorns and pine branches.
It was certainly not a good outfit for doing the work she usually assisted me with.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked as I looked up from a calculation I was doing. I was vaguely aware of the nature of festivities from the prince’s memories, but I didn’t devote too much brainpower to it. I had much more important things to worry about, after all.
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could answer, another figure emerged from the shadows into the great hall.
Adalbert.
His appearance was quite a surprise as he rarely came to the great hall uninvited anymore. Instead, he spent his time with the bailiff’s children, making sure they were cared for and tutoring them in noble etiquette.
"Young Lord," he stated simply as he looked at me, ignoring Erika’s presence. "The villagers are gathering."
"So I heard. I am rather busy, so please bring them my best wishes."
"It would be most appropriate for you to attend." Adalbert continued with a slightly sterner tone.
"Your people have had a difficult year. Seeing their lord present among them on this occasion would do a great deal for your standing among them."
"Indeed. You should come join us. It will be good for morale.” Erika continued, similarly ignoring his presence. "Your work will still be here, Lord Karl. The darkness will last as long as it lasts. Not even you make daylight."
Not yet.
Sigh. "Fine. Fine. I will go poke my head and greet everyone."
I rose from my seat and took up a torch from the wall, resigned to follow the pair to the village.
“Young Lord.” Adalbert reprimanded me before I could even make three steps towards the door. “I hope you do not intend to show up to an official appearance dressed like that. I have prepared suitable clothes in your room.” He then briefly glanced back at Erika, who kept her expression pleasantly neutral, no doubt with great effort. “You can’t allow the servants to be dressed better than you.”
I groaned.
Squeezing into those tight leggings was a chore. Not to mention buttoning the dozens of tiny buttons on the doublet. Or fiddling around to properly latch the embroidered cloak.
God, I miss zippers…
***
The bonfire in the centre of the village was enormous.
It reflected off the snow and lit up the village square in a warm amber light. Beyond it, long shadows swayed and shifted as people mingled around the fire.
I stood at the edge of this darkness for a moment, watching.
The village moved with a looseness I had not seen before. It was not the anxious crowd that had gathered after Ugo was ousted, nor the rigid formations I watched each morning from the manor’s window. It was just… people.
Erika and a group of women danced around the fire while Kurt and Ralf tended to a skewered board roasting over it. Two men holding each other’s shoulders and drunkenly singing. An old man sitting on a stump with four or five children arranged around him, gesticulating with his hands as he told a story. Paul and a group of peasants were snacking near a large split log that served as a table of sorts, village dogs sniffing about for any scraps that may fall off.
What caught me, though, was the children.
There were more of them than I realised were in Rand. A dozen, at least, darting between adult legs and the edges of the firelight, shrieking and chasing each other.
My first thought was that they needed to be properly educated so they could be future labour. Future soldiers, if it came to that. Future engineers, if I were lucky… However, watching them, the calculation felt a bit beside the point. Somehow, it was much too idyllic a sight for such thoughts.
I straightened my fur cloak and continued on.
As I approached the centre of the village, a small mound at its edge caught my attention. For a moment, an unpleasant feeling pierced my stomach.
Surely, they wouldn’t…
No, it was only snow. Packed and drifted against the base of the old fence post. Just snow.
I let out a breath of relief and continued walking, emerging from the shadows into the crowd.
A few people saw me first. The singing stopped. Not all at once but in a ripple, one voice dropping and then another, until there was a quickly expanding radius of silence all around me. A woman nearest to me smiled reflexively and then looked uncertain about whether she had done the right thing. Two of the recruits instinctively straightened before remembering they were not on duty.
I was trying to think of something to say that would ease the tension when a small boy ran toward me. Judging by his face, it must have been Kurt’s son. The boy held out a carved log about the length of his forearm. Each base held what I assumed to be a depiction of one of the Suns, each connected to the other by rough patterns running between them.
"My da says you gave us food," he said. "So this is fer you."
I looked at it in confusion. "Uh, thank you. That's… very kind."
He nodded, apparently satisfied, and returned to his stepmother’s slightly nervous embrace.
My first thought was that it was a medieval version of a macaroni painting. But to my surprise, I was handed another one by Paul.
“Your Grac—I mean, Sir, this is for you,” He fumbled a bit as he handed me a similarly crude carved log. Then another one, this one much more delicately carved. “And this one is from my mother. She insisted on making you one for everything you did for us.”
I didn’t even have time to answer him when Lili handed me another one, followed closely by Jost moving slowly with a third, then Wulf, then several more people converging from different directions with the same gift. Each small log was slightly different in the carving, some rougher than others, but all carried the same motifs.
I ended up standing in the middle of the square holding an increasingly precarious stack of them.
I helplessly looked to Erika, who had appeared from somewhere with a mischievous smile, no doubt slightly amused by my predicament.
"They are sun-logs," she explained, with the particular composure of someone enjoying themselves.
"Good intentions and wishes that will find their way towards the Suns once you add them to the fire."
"I see." I shifted the stack. One rolled off, and Kurt caught it before it hit the ground and returned it to the pile with a grin.
"It is considered a very good fortune to receive many." She continued as she added her own log to the stack with a playful wink, almost causing the whole thing to collapse once again.
With some effort, I managed to stabilise the pile and carefully carried it to the bonfire, adding them one by one under the watchful gaze of everyone present. The wood caught easily, the carved faces of the suns curling and darkening as they went.
Somehow, I found myself watching the logs burn longer than I intended.
***
Once the festivities resumed, I made a few rounds and made several attempts at conversation that were pleasant enough but ultimately led nowhere beyond pleasantries. I was not, by nature, someone who found large social gatherings easy when there was nothing to accomplish in them. Group projects, seminars, tutoring—those I could navigate. But standing around, talking about nothing in particular with people I barely knew, was harder than any oral exam.
Just as I was ready to make my excuses and head back to the manor, I found myself within earshot of that old man who was telling folk stories to several very eager young listeners. August, someone told his name was.
"In the first age of the world," he narrated, "there were not two suns but one. Aet, the elder, rose and crossed and fell alone. Every day, without rest and without company, for longer than memory runs. And the world was warm. But there was no joy in it, because Aet himself had no joy. A sun who knows only his own light grows tired of it eventually."
The children listened attentively. Even the dogs had settled.
"Then one day at the edge of the sky, he saw a light that was not his own. Smaller, and of a different colour. Ish, who had wandered in from beyond the horizon, which is where wanderers come from. And Aet being a sun and therefore not subtle about anything said: you should stay, and Ish being new and unsure of everything said, perhaps I will. And that was that." A few of the children giggled softly. "Two suns. Two paths across the sky. Close enough to warm each other. Far enough not to burn their children.”
I sat down on the edge of the gathering without meaning to. Maybe it was because the story and the atmosphere reminded me of fairy tales my mother used to read by the fireplace when I was younger.
"But they were not always apart," August continued. "There were moments. Brief crossings, small embraces, when their paths touched. For a while, this was enough to keep them content through the long work of the days. Until the longest night." He paused, letting the fire crackle into the space. "No one knows exactly how it happened. Perhaps their paths drifted. Perhaps they simply lost track of time, the way you lose track of time when you are with someone you love. But they met at the edge of the sky and held on, and the light they made together was so beautiful and so bright that it blinded itself. The sky went dark."
One of the children gasped as August gestured with his arms.
"And the people were afraid," August said in a slightly deeper tone. "They had never known darkness like that. They built fires to keep themselves warm and to keep themselves together. They prayed, and they called out. And the fires they built were so many and so bright that they could be seen from beyond the world. And Aet and Ish, finally remembering themselves, found their way back by those lights. By what the people had made." He looked around the circle. "Which is why we light the fire. And why you too must do the same when us elders reunite with our divine parents. So the two lovers can always find their way back."
A long, quiet silence settled as August finished his story.
I knew, of course, that the fires had nothing to do with it. The Suns would return on the schedule physics had set for them, regardless of how bright a fire one set up or how loudly they prayed. August's story was cosmology invented by people trying to make sense of a sky they couldn't measure.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that.
Despite the wild inaccuracies, it was a rather beautiful tale. And one with a good message. The people had been afraid, but they hadn't waited for someone to save them. They had simply made light, with what they had. And it had been enough.
Instead of going back, I stayed where I was, deciding to hear one or two more stories.
***
The climax of the festivities was a feast by the bonfire. Unlike the feast held when I first arrived here, this one was much more modest. Coarse bread, fresh cream and cottage cheese, fried eggs, and a thick soup that had been sitting over a fire for most of the day. The only more substantial food was the roasted boar the poacher must have caught, now rationed into small cuts.
“Forgive us, My Lord.” A plump woman apologised as she handed me a clay bowl that was noticeably more filled than the others. “We know you are probably used to better food, but I hope you find it to yer taste.”
“Don’t worry, it’s quite all right.” I smiled and reassured her as I accepted the warm bowl.
Bread, cheese, fried eggs… From all the elaborate meals I have seen here so far, this one was strangely familiar and comforting. It reminded me of the breakfasts served at the student cafeteria every morning. And the soup, simple and heavy, reminded me of the kind my mother used to cook when I was younger. She always insisted we have soup before every meal.
I should have called her back…
I’d turned off my phone before I was about to defend my thesis, not wanting to be distracted. What if she called me as I sat in that hallway? Before I got... here.
“Are you enjoying our foods, Sir Prince?” A child’s voice interrupted my thoughts before his mother quickly pulled him away and apologised. “I helped with making it.”
I sighed and turned the thought over briefly, then let it go. There was nothing useful I could do about it now, anyway.
“Very much!” I shouted at the boy with a smile as his mother dragged him away, scorning him for bothering the prince during his meal. “Compliments to the chef!”
***
In the end, I stayed much longer than I had intended.
My schematics and calculations were waiting for me. And yet for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Unlike the cold, lonely rooms and dim candlelight back at the manor, here it was bright and warm.
The bonfire was drawing people back in ones and twos, the feast giving way to the final part of the night.
They built fires to keep themselves warm and to keep themselves together.
I turned over the line from August’s story. Rummaging through the prince’s memories, I found it was a much different story than Karl was told. In that version, the Suns were the ones who gave the most powerful and capable humans the power to call them back by conjuring fire. And those gifted humans then became nobles who ruled over the others.
But take away the sense that magic was their exclusive property, that fire was something only divine blood could conjure, and you are left with nothing but normal humans with some land and an army. I realised the moment I arrived here. But I had been thinking about it as a future project. Something to demonstrate when I had a better audience, a more controlled setting.
I reached into my coat pocket.
The crowd had now settled near the fire, huddling to each other for warmth as they awaited the return of the Suns. I looked at the children still weaving through the adults' legs, and at the small girl nearest to me.
August's story had told them to make light so the suns could find their way back.
I could at least do that much.
I took out the match and handed it to the girl.
It was a small thing. A short stick of dried wood, its tip treated with a mixture I had worked out when I needed a reliable way to light my candles without having to get up and go to the hearth each time.
But right now, it felt much larger than that.
“Strike the top against the stone a few times,” I whispered and pointed to a piece of rock peeking out from the snow.
The girl was visibly confused, but did as I asked, all eyes on her.
The first time, nothing happened.
Neither did the second.
But then, on the third strike…
A small flame appeared from nothing.
No torch, no ember—no magic. Just friction and a bit of phosphorus.
The mote of flame defiantly danced in the wind as everyone stared at it in stunned silence.
The match burned down slowly. I watched it go, and the people around me watched with me, and for a moment the whole feast was held in the light of something smaller than a candle.
Then it went out.
But by the time the last curl of smoke had risen and dispersed, a thin line of gold had appeared at the horizon. Faint at first, and then unmistakable. The first of the two Suns edged out from behind the rings and slowly began to find its way back to the sky.
I took a moment to stare at it, then turned and walked back toward the manor. If I wanted a new day to dawn over this world, there was still much to be done.