"Know that I hold no grudge against you, brother," Sayed took a deep breath, drawing aether into his body and making his arm muscles bulge as he pulled against Aapo''s hand. "But I will win this day and this prize."


    "That ch''arki is mine, outsider!" Aapo strained against Sayed''s arm on the table, their stools on the ground forgotten, but Sayed did not budge.


    Sayed smiled at him. He could let the man win, but the jerky smelled delicious, and he wouldn''t let it go so easily. He turned his grip and started to lean in with his shoulder, putting his full weight behind his movements. Aapo huffed, holding his breath as he fought back, but that was the man''s mistake. Sayed pulled harder, but in reality, he needed to do little more than turn his body. Arm wrestling was not about strength but technique, and he brought Aapo''s furry hand down.


    Boom.


    Sayed slammed Aapo''s hand onto the table with one last burst of effort, ending their match with a cacophonous boom across the hut. Around him, several of the other Zoans erupted in mewling cheers while others hung their heads in defeat. The wagers had been set. The bets were done, and Sayed won the day. One of the Zoan, a woman Sayed guessed from the binding around her chest, brought him the last piece of jerky and laid it on the table before him as victor.


    "Let it not be said that I am not a good sport." Sayed drew one of his khopesh from his back, using the curved blade to cut the piece of dried dark red meat into two halves.


    He slid it across to Aapo, and Aapo favored him with a crooked smile that split his furred face.


    "Many thanks to you, friend," Aapo said, tossing the jerky into his mouth and beginning to chew.


    "The experience is well worth the cost, brother." Sayed smiled, doing the same. "This village feels so alive, and it has been so long since we have experienced such great hospitality!"


    "Hah." Aapo snorted, his slitted eyes flicking across the people around him, who had stepped away from the scene to return to their night''s festivities. "Is that how you see it, friend?"


    Aapo stood up, stepping toward the door to the hut and looking out into the night. Sayed sheathed his sword and followed the Zoan, unsure of what he meant. Everything in the village seemed fine. Other than the normal travails of life, the people seemed to be happy.


    "What do you see when you look at my people?" Aapo began to walk through the village.


    Many of his people were retiring for the night, going into huts and rolling down the cloth doors that covered them. Sayed saw many of the Zoan at that moment, and he noticed something, but he wondered if that was what Aapo was talking about.


    "A strange question," Sayed said. "But you have so very few children."


    "That is precisely the problem," Aapo said, looking out to the center of the village and toward the bonfire. "We have three children in the village now, though we are fifty strong. James has talked to me about this, and he thinks it is due to the temple''s disease."


    "The temple brings a sickness upon your people?" Sayed asked, a grimace crossing his face.


    "We try to keep the young away, but that hope dwindles every day. It is not just in the temple but in the air we breathe and the water we drink. The sickness is all around us, and it dwindles us every day. I do not think our tribe will be long for this world, but soon, we will all return to Paradise."


    "My people have temples of our own," Sayed said, his eyes drawn toward the fire. "Great stone structures built to follow the path of the sun across the Hajh. What purpose does your temple serve?"


    "Our temple is a relic of Paradise," Aapo said. "When our island was severed from Paradise and sent into the Dark Meridian for our trials, the temple was the one remnant of the old world that would be here, forever unchanging. It gives us a place to keep our dead until we all return to Paradise."


    "But it also causes you a sickness." Sayed shook his head. "I find that…troubling."


    "That is a relic of our founder," Aapo said, sighing. "He had a strange power—a way to communicate with the spirits beyond us that no one else could. He gilded the temple as a way to honor himself and deny the gods, and for that, we were punished with the disease and forced to live away from the temple. We can only return when our path in this world is over."


    "You are punished for the crimes of your forebearers?" Sayed shook his head. "I cannot see that as justice."


    "But it is as the gods will." Aapo shrugged. "Who are we to judge them?"A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Sayed took in a deep breath, unsure of how to respond to that. If his own god commanded him to do something horrible, or if his god caused an unjust punishment in Sayed''s eyes, would he be able to judge it? Sayed had never run into the situation before, so it was a novel thought.


    "I do not know the answer to that," Sayed said. "But I will bring this situation to my companion''s attention. Perhaps they know something that I do not. Perhaps there is no need for your people to suffer any longer."


    "You are a good man, Sayed." Aapo placed a hand on Sayed''s shoulder and smiled, his yellow eyes dilating in the night. "While I will hold out hope for our young, I think it is far too late for that."


    After that, Sayed left him behind, going to gather all of his friends together before they went to bed. They sat around the bonfire, with even James joining the group as Sayed relayed the details of what Aapo had told him.


    "The disease is very real," James said from where he lay on his stomach. "I helped a little with it when I first came and moved Aapo''s people further from the temple, but that clearly hasn''t been enough. I don''t know enough about diseases to point to the origins, and the constant fights to keep the village safe ended up distracting from the problem."


    "It could be a chemical runoff or something like that," Alex said, looking at Wen. "I don''t know enough about that stuff. How about you?"


    "I majored in languages." Wen shrugged. "I know about as much about science as you do. However, maybe the gold is giving off radiation, or there''s runoff that feeds into a river or something."


    Sayed had no idea what the two of them were talking about, but that was normal. Alex and Wen had come from the same world, so they shared some knowledge that no one else in the group had. Sometimes, they would say things that would even make each other laugh but never explain them.


    "I''ve worked on miners before," Erin said, patting Mari''s head as she slept in her lap beside the fire. "There have been cases where the metals they deal with get in the water supply and make them sick. It could be related to that."


    "The simple solution would be to leave the island entirely," Jean said. "Strike out for a new one or one of the major hubs, like Dry Turtle."


    "It would be best to do that without delay." Artur crossed his arms across his chest as he looked into the fire. "To outrun a sickness, you must go far away."


    "That could be a sentence to slavery or death, assuming you could convince them to leave the island to begin with," James said. "Don''t think I hadn''t thought about it when we were on the Dark Meridian, and we could have traveled to a different island more easily. They don''t have the resources to build a slipship. No lodestone mines or anything of that nature."


    "Man, it''s so weird talking about this with a commander of the Military Police." Alex sighed, looking down at James. "Why did you choose to protect them? How did you get away from the service? Something''s not adding up for me. It can''t be just because you''re a furry."


    "Really?" Wen snorted.


    "It''s kind of the elephant in the room," Alex said, eyeing her with a raised eyebrow. "You don''t want to bring it up, but it''s there."


    Again, these were the little things that they would do. Sayed had no idea what they were talking about, but neither of them would explain. It was like they were speaking a secret language that no one else understood.


    "That''s been bothering me too," Erin said. "Why are you here?"


    "Fine, I''ll tell you." James sighed. "I''m not that long for the world anyways, though I thought my secret would die with me."


    He pushed himself off the ground with a groan, his hand going to his back as he brought his legs beneath himself to sit up. He looked between each of them, his eyes locking with Alex''s last.


    "The Dark Meridian is a place of strife and battle. It pits island against island, and entire empires constantly seek to connect new islands to their Constellations. But that''s just the background."


    He reached out with a finger and drew a few connected dots in the ground as he spoke. To Sayed''s eyes, the dots were little more than pointed five-sided figures with arms and a leg. One of the arms held up what looked like a long stick of sorts. That must have been what James meant by a Constellation.


    "We were out on patrol with our convoy, and I was the commander of the group," James said. "We ran across an invasion force and came out on the losing side of the fight. My command ship crashed into the island as we fled the battle, and all but three of us died in the crash."


    "You were shipwrecked," Alex said.


    "We were," James said. "And that was how we came across Aapo and his people. They showed us kindness in our moment of need, and I was grateful for it. However, my men saw it differently. They wanted to bring back the gold and one of the Zoan to our base. They saw the gold as a ticket to a promotion and some exotic new kinds of slaves to add to the mix."


    James looked into the fire, his eyes going cold and distant.


    "I didn''t agree with them, so I did what I had to do and gave up on going back to the service," he said, shaking his head and drawing his eyes away from the fire. "That''s how I ended up here, though I never expected to see the nightsea or the Erth again. I thought I''d spend my days fighting to keep this place safe."


    "And Ikal," Alex said.


    "I adopted him when I started seeing his mother," James said. "I think the term we used in the service was ''going native,'' but I don''t care. The Zoan have been kind to me, and I have a home here now. Maybe one day Ikal will accept that."


    Sayed wiped at the tear forming in his eyes. It was a sad but also heartwarming tale. Hospitality and friendship were so important in strange lands, and James had repaid the kindness with his own. The man might have been a member of the Military Police, but Sayed knew then that he was still a good person.


    "What happened to your ship?" Alex asked.


    "Long sunk in the sea outside the island," James said. "Don''t think I hadn''t thought of stealing the lodestone off it, but it was too late by the time I thought of it. Unless you can dredge up the ship with your own, that''s not an option for getting them out of here."


    "We can look into that in the morning." Alex sighed. "Not that I want to get invovled. However, since you guys were so kind to us, I''ll see what I can do."


    Boom.


    In the distance, an explosion ripped through the night. Everyone around the fire froze as a dust cloud erupted at the edge of the village toward the south side. Sayed reached for his kopesh as everyone else readied themselves. Only James stayed still, unable to move because of his back pain.


    All eyes were on the cloud as a second explosion of force ripped through the night, and three shadowy figures stepped out from the cloud.