It had happened on Soren’s tenth birthday.

  Soren remembered being so excited for the day, too. Chef Zelim was going to make him an actual apple pie; a rare treat, as their island lacked an orchard. They had his mother’s greenhouse to grow stuff in, but it was too small for full-sized fruit trees, so she only grew things like berries, grapes, and vegetables.

  Now, he barely remembered the pie. The memory of its taste had been tainted by the bitterness that had followed it.

  It was that morning his father had informed him that, starting the next day, his schedule was going to change. He was no longer going to follow classes from Master Gullfeather with his friends.

  Somewhere, Soren had known he’d be graduating the class on his tenth birthday. He just hadn’t really comprehended what that meant.

  It turned out to mean he would move on to being schooled by his grandmother herself, and a variety of tutors under her supervision, that all specified in boring things like history, art, and manners. And the lessons would take up not just the morning—like Master Gullfeather’s had—but all afternoon as well.

  And so started his days of sitting up in the tower, watching enviously as Rylan and Zahra played outside in the sun.

  He’d felt a little vindicated when his friends had gotten chores to fill up their days after their own tenth birthdays, but in truth it had only made it harder for him to see them, further widened the gap between them.

  Worst of all, however, had been the gradual change in the way Rylan looked at him. Soren’s best friend had seemed less and less happy to see him. Instead, he’d started to look sour, miffed... resentful. Like Soren had done something to him. Like Soren’s schedule wasn’t even fuller, his life even more restricted.

  So as Rylan prepared to punch him, with that same look Soren had come to hate so on his face once again, Soren did not hesitate to draw back his own fist as well.

  “ENOUGH!” Tamina yelled, forcibly inserting herself between them and pushing them apart with surprising strength. “By Singghir, and you call yourself Quinthar?! I don't care if you hate each other’s guts, but our odds of survival are bad enough without the two of you going at it!”

  Her mention of the Great Spirit of Fire was enough to shake Soren from the fugue he’d started slipping into, and he didn’t resist as she pushed him further back.

  Rylan shook her hand off his shoulder, but stepped back as well, turning his glare on her. “Don’t go acting all high and mighty, Thar. You’re the one who started pointing fingers in the first place! Did you take into account that you’re the one that basically ran us off the cliff?”

  “It collapsed,” Tamina corrected, narrowing her eyes. “And I was just following orders.”

  “Oh, so if Vidric tells you to jump off a cliff, you just do it?”

  She glared back at him, and threw her hands in the air. “You know what? I changed my mind. Go ahead and beat each other to a pulp for all I care. Just remember that we’ve got only one fog condenser, so we’re going to be stuck together for a long fogging time. Thanks for breakfast.”

  With that, she turned around and stomped over to the backpack, pointedly picking up the condenser and twisting off the cup to take a sip before sitting down with her back against the wall of rock.

  The reminder of the situation they were in was like a bucket of cold water splashing down Soren’s back. Not that he wasn’t wet and cold all over already from the damn fog.

  Either way, Tamina was right that they couldn’t afford to fight amongst each other, not down here. Despite the encounter with the armadon the day before, Rylan still didn’t seem to fully comprehend how much danger they were in, but Soren had seen the numbers.

  Most sailors never made it back to shore after a crash in the cloudsea, and that was when they landed in between islands. There was no telling how far they were from the nearest peak that actually crested the fog.

  Still, most sailors weren’t Quinthar. They definitely had a chance of making it out alive, but only if they could work together, so he took a deep breath and consciously relaxed his posture.

  Rylan shot him another resentful look, but didn’t seem inclined to make another attempt at starting a fistfight either. Instead, he produced a rag, sat down, and started aggressively cleaning the pan and chopsticks.

  Soren let out a sigh, and moved to the other side of the gorge, where he lay down on the bedroll, feeling rather drained.

  Sometime later, it was Tamina who broke the silence. “Look,” she started tersely. “Regardless of whose fault it is, we’re here now, and we can’t just sit around. The longer we spend down here, the worse our odds of survival get, so we need to get moving.”

  Soren rubbed his eyes with a groan.

  For a moment, he considered poking through the tough front she was obviously putting on to try and take charge. It’s what his grandmother would do. However, it was quite obvious Tamina was the more experienced Quinthar, despite that she couldn’t have been one for much more than three years or so, as she didn’t look that much older.

  And either way, Soren’s knowledge of the cloudsea was mostly academic, as the few carefully controlled ventures he’d made into the cloudsea had never been too deep or too long.

  So he ultimately just got up and started rolling up the bedroll, and when Rylan spoke up after a moment, he left it up to her to answer.

  “What’s our plan to get out of here, exactly?” Rylan asked. “Are we going to try signal for help?”

  Tamina raised a brow at him. “And how exactly do you see us doing that?”

  Rylan blinked. “Well, I’ve heard stories of sailors letting up red buoys to mark the location of their shipwreck...”

  “Did you bring any buoys?” Tamina asked dryly. “Did you bring rope to attach them to?”

  Soren saw the muscles in Rylan’s jaw starting to clench again but did nothing to interfere. Thankfully—or unfortunately, a small part of him whispered—Tamina seemed to see it too.

  She held up a hand, stalling the angry retort Rylan was clearly working up to. “I’m not trying to be mean,” she said with a sigh. “Just trying to get you to understand the severity of our situation. I’m assuming you haven’t been in the cloudsea much, so let me clarify: judging by the light, we’re in deep. We might be as much as a mile down, so even if we had a buoy, odds are it wouldn’t even reach the driftline.”

  “What about building a cloudship, then?” Rylan asked, stubborn as always. “If we got our hands on a big enough gasbladder, we could use the fog condenser to suck out the fog and make it float, right?”

  “Well, the only big gasbladders we had available will have burnt to a crisp by now,” Tamina replied. “So we have no materials, no tools, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got no experience with building something like that. Frankly, the only way I see us getting out of here is on foot.”

  “On foot?” Rylan repeated bleakly. “Is that really our best option? We still have no idea where we are, right? What direction would we even go in?”

  Tamina shrugged. “Up. The way out of the cloudsea is only ever up. We just have to hope that whatever peak we reach is high enough to breach the driftline.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “And if it’s not?”

  “Then we keep going.”

  Soren maintained his silence as they climbed up out of the gorge and started their trek across a relatively barren stretch of sandy cloudbed, looking for any kind of upward slope.

  The idea of moving ‘up’ seemed simple enough, but as Soren soon discovered, it proved to be anything but. Even with daylight filtering through, they could only maybe see sixty feet ahead, and as they continued walking through the shifting sand, the landscape started to roll, the sand shaped into small dunes that went up and down.

  But there really wasn’t a better way to navigate the depths of the cloudsea that he knew of. Thus they kept moving, with Tamina in the lead, only spotting the occasional swarm of fogfish or lone jellyfloat as they quietly trudged through the sand. There either were few crabs here, or they were all buried in the sand and keeping quiet.

  Soren didn’t mind the silence. He had a lot to think about.

  The argument earlier had brought up a lot of old hurt, hurt that he thought he’d gotten over. Perhaps he’d never had. Perhaps he’d just let it fester.

  He’d fantasised about shouting at Rylan like that. It should’ve been cathartic, to finally let out some of the anger at how abandoned he’d felt by his best friend, how alienated because of their difference in status, which existed through no fault of his. How unfair he’d felt the way they’d treated him had been.

  But the catharsis he’d expected hadn’t come. Instead, there was this hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He frowned as he continued trudging. The way Rylan had talked about his family had been... hard to hear. Something about the tone Rylan had used had made him angry. It was like Rylan thought of them as nothing more than his-his jailors. As if he’d forgotten all the good times, the endless games of hide-and-seek and tag with Helen, Soren’s mother kissing the scrapes on his knees and saying ‘all better,’ the holiday celebrations where Soren’s father would actually sing, the sleepovers where his grandmother would read them bedtime stories...

  At the same time, the pit in his stomach gnawed at him. Rylan had put it rather harshly, but hadn’t Soren baulked at the way his family had treated his friend, too? Truth be told, despite his grandmother’s attempts to explain, he’d never really understood his family’s reaction to Rylan’s wish to leave.

  In his mind, he’d always expected that Rylan would go see some of the world, and then eventually make his way back with more appreciation for their little slice of paradise. Though perhaps that had been na?ve...

  After all, he too had gotten swept up in the fantasy of a little shared apartment in a free city at some point.

  In front of him, Rylan once again shifted the straps of his backpack.

  Part of Soren wanted to offer to take it for a while, but another, pettier part, wanted to do no such thing whatsoever.

  The deciding factor was a third part that feared Rylan might snap at him if addressed.

  Tamina needed access to her shield, so unless Rylan asked Soren directly, he could carry it a little longer. It shouldn’t be too heavy down in the fog anyway.

  Nowhere near as heavy as Soren’s mood, anyway.

  Rylan tried to hold on to his anger, but as they slogged through the sand for hours, hardly speaking a word, it slowly got ground away under the monotony.

  As the fire in his belly died out, he was frustrated to find guilt seeping into its place. Despite this, he stubbornly refused the recurring urge to glance at Soren, keeping his eyes on the fog as he tried not to think of the wounded look his former friend’s face had taken on earlier, when he’d accused Rylan of shutting him out.

  Stop feeling sorry for him, Rylan, nothing’s changed! He’s still concerned only with himself, and if that’s made him lonely, he’s deserved it.

  Of course, that didn’t mean Soren deserved to have gotten dragged into this mess with Rylan. And Tamina definitely hadn’t deserved it.

  Fog...

  Eventually, the terrain changed again, the rolling sand giving way for slightly rockier ground with a mild-yet-clear upward slope.

  Onwards and upwards they went, but the excitement of the change quickly faded into a new monotony and as his emotions dulled, Rylan was getting quite bored. He kind of wanted to practise his Skill more, however, his Mana Pool had only refilled to about a third over the course of the morning.

  He snapped out of his reverie when Tamina came to an abrupt halt.

  “What is it?” he asked as he moved up next to her, his throat a bit hoarse from disuse. “Why are we stopping?”

  She pointed ahead, her face solemn. “It’s a coral reef.”

  Rylan squinted at the hazy shapes in the distance. He could vaguely see hints of red, pink, and yellow that rose about three feet above the sand. “I guess that looks kinda inconvenient to walk through...”

  “You don’t understand,” she replied sombrely. “The corals themselves aren’t the issue. Reefs offer shelter to all kinds of cloudlife. And prey attracts predators.”

  Rylan’s throat tightened. After last night, she didn’t have to elaborate on what she meant by that.

  “Plus,” she continued. “This is just the edge of the reef. The coral here is young, immature. Further in, it’ll tower over us, a natural maze.”

  Rylan frowned. “A maze? Can’t we just, I dunno, climb over them?”

  Tamina pursed her lips. “Some of them, maybe, but most corals are both sharp and brittle. They don’t exactly make for convenient climbing.”

  Soren, who’d come to a halt on Tamina’s other side, let out a sigh. “What now then?”

  Rylan could no longer resist sneaking a glance at him, but Soren didn’t meet his eyes. It was the first thing he’d said since their fight that morning.

  Tamina bit her lip for a moment, then squared her shoulders. “Let’s try to push on for a bit. We don’t know how big this reef is; it might not be that bad. And at the very least, there’ll be plenty of fresh ingredients for Mister Lunch.”

  Rylan’s initial instinct was to bristle at the jab, but he was emotionally drained, and the slight quirk of her lip told him she’d probably meant it as an attempt to lighten the mood, so he ended up just shaking his head. “Fine. Let’s keep moving then.”

  While Rylan did his best to keep his eyes peeled for Malequints while they moved in, it was hard not to get sucked into the wondrous sights unfolding around them as they walked deeper into the reef.

  Colourful fogfish and dextrous octopi darted between the bright corals, snatching up drifting algae and mistweed shoots, while small crabs scurried away from them over the sand and rocks.

  Curious seahorses came flitting by as well, beating their tiny wings, and a young one even landed on Rylan’s outstretched finger, grasping it with its little tail. It was startled away when a swarm of fogfish came flying over, moving in mesmerising unison as they tried to escape from a couple of penguins. The odd, fog-flying birds soared through the mist with a grace Rylan could never have imagined from how helplessly they seemed to waddle on beaches.

  Unfortunately, even after fifteen minutes of walking, the end of the reef was not yet in sight. Worse, like Tamina had predicted, the corals were only getting higher and higher, further limiting visibility.

  “All right,” Tamina finally said, bringing them to a halt. “Decision time. We can either keep moving deeper into the reef, see if we can find our way through without getting turned around, or we can try to start walking around it, risking a very long detour.”

  Rylan frowned, considering his options.

  “Maybe we should go around,” Soren suggested suddenly. “Wouldn’t want Ryles to feel trapped.”

  Rylan stiffened, then glared at the slightly older boy, who met his gaze defiantly. “Don’t pretend to understand my feelings, Soren. You never will.”

  “Clearly,” Soren replied icily.

  Tamina let out a sigh, rubbing her temple. “This is neither the time nor the place for you two to duke it out, so please, just...”

  She trailed off when Soren held up a hand, suddenly looking tense, his eyes darting around as he cocked his head like he was listening for something.

  Rylan frowned, folding his arms over his chest, waiting for the pun. Frankly, he didn’t hear anything. Which... was actually kinda weird. Where was the chittering of crustaceans? The susurrus of fogfish darting through the haze?

  Tamina cursed, drawing her shield, and Rylan turned in the direction she was facing.

  Behind them, in the direction they’d come from, stood a familiar creature, sniffing the sand. The armadon Malequint.

  It looked up, and excitement flashed through its beady black eyes, before it drew a big breath.

  As one, they turned and ran. Within moments, blue light lit up their surroundings, throwing shadows of their running figures on the colourful corals.

  Rylan dove over a nearby, lower coral growth, and hunkered down. Bright blue flames streamed past, the breathtaking heat causing his Mana Shell to glow in response.

  Then he was scrambling to his feet again and running. His companions came out of their own hiding spots and joined him in a mad dash deeper into the reef.

  Low-pitched, accelerating thuds told him the Malequint was giving chase.

  “How the fog is it here?!” Rylan shouted as he ran.

  “It must’ve followed our scent!” Tamina shouted back. “It probably retreated to lick its wounds and returned to pick up our trail in the morning!”

  “You mean it’s hunting us?!” Rylan exclaimed, baffled. “Thanks, Soren!”

  Soren didn’t reply, looking straight ahead in grim determination as he leapt over a small piece of coral with a flourish, clearly using his Skill.

  “It’s not his fault,” Tamina returned, exasperated. “It’s after us because we’re Quinthar. Malequints hunt us and each other to grow stronger!”

  Rylan did a double-take at that. He’d been under the impression being a Quinthar would make him safer in the cloudsea... It sounded more like it painted a target on his back.

  “It’s not going to give up,” Soren called out grimly. “If we can’t lose this thing... we’ll have to kill it!”

  plenty of emotional maturing to do. :p)

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