After days on the river, Roux met a person for the first time. He was a shepherd, leading a flock of sheep to drink from the river. His clothing was rough, but he was clean shaven and looked like an honorable man. He saw the bright yellow lemon bobbing in the currents, and used his staff to fish Roux out of the water. Seeing Roux more clearly, the man frowned and peered upstream, wondering why a lemon was in the river.

  Thank you, kind sir! It is lovely to meet you. Can you tell me where we are? I'm new to the area don't quite know the nam—

  Roux was cut off mid-sentence as the man screamed in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, and hurled the poor lemon back into the river. As Roux sailed through the air, he thought that the shepherd was surprisingly good at throwing, and wondered how tending sheep led to such skill. He also wondered what scared the man so much. He was just a lemon, after all.

  When he landed back in the river, Roux decided to carry on downstream a while longer. River means water, water means people. Eventually. He didn't know how he knew that, but he knew it. He also knew people were his best chance at finding more sources of magic.

  The next person Roux came across was a fisherman. The river had slowed down, meandering into something wide and calm. A small rowboat sat lazily in the waters, and a man was tempting the local fish with worms on a hook. Half-submerged, Roux could see what was going on underneath. A whole bunch of fish gathered around the hook, each one daring his companion to try take a bite of worm without getting the hook itself. Some could do it so subtly that the fisherman didn't notice. Others got a worm, but caused the man to pull the hook up quickly. The fish counted this as a losing move.

  No fish had been caught yet, but Roux thought they were playing with fire—or whatever the underwater equivalent was. But they did seem fairly clever, these fish. While the main school was keeping the man's attention, Roux noticed another fish had swum around the back and was trying to reach the true prize—the man's bucket of worms sitting on the far edge of the boat. With a sudden splash, the fish jumped out of the water and smacked into the bucket at just the right angle, causing both fish and bucket to fall back into the river. The water boiled in a sudden feeding frenzy as all the fish dived on the pile of worms. The boat lurched and rocked as the man cursed and tried to get his bucket out of the water. Then, finally, he noticed a lemon floating on the water.

  It was no accident, Roux said helpfully, the fish were aiming for that bucket from the start. The whole thing was a setup.

  The man blanched, and without a second's hesitation abandoned his boat and leapt into the water. He swam downstream for hours, eventually reaching the town, where he changed careers and become a bricklayer for the rest of his life, content to never be on the river again.

  Roux frowned. How was he supposed to interact with people, when everybody ran away at the first sentence? How does a lemon become more approachable? Roux thought he looked pretty approachable already. Birds seemed to think so, he needed to scare them away almost every day. He was a lovely warm shade of yellow, about the size of... well, a lemon. What was the deal with humans?

  ***

  As the day grew to a close, Roux started to see more signs of people. He must be approaching a town. He tried calling out to a few, but always got the same reaction. Some screamed about ghosts, others just screamed without words. Not a single person stuck around to chat. Rude, thought Roux, and unhelpful.

  Buildings approached on the horizon, and just as Roux was approaching the city walls, a large gull swooped down and dug his claws into the tasty-looking lemon. The fruit was heavier than the gull expected, and it labored to gain height, beating its wings with effort. It cleared the walls and headed to the tallest roof in the city, where its nest waited.

  Thanks for the ride, you can drop me off here. Roux said politely. The gull spontaneously shed a few feathers, and immediately dropped the lemon in fright. Roux tumbled down the side of a roof, rolling onto open air before hitting another roof. He tumbled down again, clattering against the clay tiles, until he fell again. He hit an old fabric awning and bounced to a rest at the bottom of a small alley. It was dirty, filthy really, and quite occupied. A gang of children even dirtier than the alley had surrounded something. They were shouting, kicking, spitting, and throwing things at the center of the circle. "Dead meat!" They chanted. "Dead meat!"

  Roux couldn't see past the circle of children with his eyes, but he was close enough for his awareness to pick up that the object of all the kicking and spitting was another child. He wondered what made this one different to all the others, that it—she?—would be on the ground and all the other kids got to do the kicking. But that was an idle thought. What he really needed was information.

  Excuse me, Roux whispered into their minds. He was trying a whisper, thinking maybe the usual volume was too loud, and that was what scared people away. I'm looking for sources of magic and power.

  The children didn't scream, long-honed instincts caused them to simply bolt out of the alley. There were three exits. One was a hidden doorway nearby, another was the street itself, and a third was a ladder propped against a roof. Every child seemed to know their designated escape route, and within seconds the alley was silent and empty. Roux was impressed. They seemed like belligerent thugs, but they surely had this planned out in advance. They'll go far in life, he concluded. He was sure of it.

  Roux sighed and stood up from where he had fallen. He walked slowly to a nearby wall and sat down, leaning against it. He tried to think of what to do next. The past few days he had this general notion of finding people, and that would lead him to... something? He didn't know. He sat there, considering.

  "You... can walk," wheezed the child lying in the alley. Roux had forgotten she was there.

  I sure can, Roux replied with a mixture of pride and weariness. It was really getting to him, the way nobody ever stuck around to talk. It was almost as if he—

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  Wait a moment.

  You, child, Roux said curiously, you are not running away.

  The child wheezed out a short laugh. "Can't much move right now, can I? Even if some demon's whispering straight into me soul."

  I beg your pardon! I am a lemon. Can't you see? I guess not with that swollen, bruised eye, but the other one? You saw me walking, just a minute ago! Roux huffed. Demon indeed. Wait is that why people keep running away? They think I'm some sort of soul eater?

  The child didn't reply. She simply lay there, very still. For a moment, Roux wondered if she had died. She certainly wasn't in good shape. How long had that kicking been going on? Roux peered closer, and saw the faintest rise and fall of her chest. Still breathing then, just asleep. Well, she was the first person to ever talk to him, so Roux was content to wait for her to wake up. He settled down to keep watch.

  The city was a busy place. Throughout the night he was visited by dogs, rats, a vulture, and a couple of humans, all coming to check on the body lying in the alley. He scared them all off with a stern word. I will eat your soul was quickly becoming a favorite of his, though it didn't really matter what he said. Lemons are yellow also had people running for their lives.

  Roux had finally made some progress, finding someone to talk to, and he wasn't going to lose that to some stray seeking dinner. He stayed there as the light slowly shifted from the dark-orange city glow to the pale blue of dawn. He glanced at the girl, and wondered if he himself would ever need to sleep. It never really came to him, the need to be unconscious. His whole life-goal, indeed, was to stay conscious and living as long as possible.

  He started humming a wordless tune to himself. He knew the concept of music, but had never actually heard any himself. So he made do with his own humming. Interestingly, the alley never got another visitor after he started, even as the city awoke and become busy. At the entrance of the alley, he could see more people than before, but they all gave the alley a wide berth, and indeed even quickened their steps. So, he kept humming to himself as the sun climbed in the sky.

  ***

  The Council of Seven rarely met. Each member a powerful wizard, they had actually agreed to stay away from each other, more or less. There were no binding oaths, it was simply a matter of practicality. Too much power in one place caused problems. Drew attention from things best left asleep. Not to mention light scuffles between archmagi of this level tended to flatten cities.

  Tonight was different. It was an emergency.

  "Greetings. Let's make this short." The eldest wizard began. His name was Lechebald, and he followed the ridiculous practice of "if I'm a stronger than you, then I must have a taller hat than you." It was a sort of game in magic academies, establishing hierarchy and encouraging friendly competition. New entrants had a bowler cap, and by the time they graduated it would be a nice pointed cone. Only, after six hundred years of gathering power, Lechebald's hat forced architects to rework any building he used. The thing was held up by magic, taller than the wizard himself. It was absurd, comical, and nobody dared to tell him. The blood of the last person to mock his hat still coated the roof of Eldermach Academy, magically treated to remain untouched as a warning for centuries to come.

  The other six mages, decidedly _not_ staring at the hat, nodded and gestured for him to continue. Lechbald gestured to a wall and it dissolved into a map of the continent. Cities were marked out as points of light, kingdom borders as lines, and overlayed were shadings of various strengths.

  "As you can see," Lechebald said, "the disruption to any foresight or fate magic has been triangulated. It weakens as you head east to the Saltern Desert, and north past the Alteric Mountains. The sky, my friends, is not falling. Magic is not failing. There is simply a beast or being of great magic. It is localized, and must have a physical body. If it has a body," the archwizard looked around the room, meeting the eyes of each member in turn, "then it can be destroyed."

  "Excellent work, Lechebald," another wizard said, "but that map still gives a wide area. How do we find such a beast, especially with our powers dampened as they are?" The man swallowed. "And how do we know if any strategy has merit? How can we secure victory when we can't even see how it will turn out?" The wizard's voice, which had started low, clear, and authoritative, was becoming higher-pitched with every sentence. "How can we—"

  "Calm yourself, Yago," Lechebald interrupted, as reassuringly as he could. He had all those fears and more himself, but it would not do to have the Council of Seven in a panic. "I have narrowed it down to the kingdom, and I am confident I can reduce that down to the city. I am not treating this lightly. I will send my own Dark Shadow to eliminate this threat."

  Quiet gasps and murmurs came out in response. Not only was this one of archwizard's most powerful spells, but it would leave him weak while his Shadow was separated from his body. He was taking this seriously indeed. Each mage sat in thoughtful silence as they wondered whether they could attack Lechebald in his weakened state, and take his place as leader of the council. But then again, if he truly was weakened and vulnerable, why would he tell the whole council? Unless he was counting on the wizards attacking him? Endless strategies and counter-strategies flitted through the minds of the council, until Lechebald cleared his throat, bringing the wizards' attention back to the room.

  "If there is nothing of further import, let us close this gathering." And with that, he snapped his fingers and faded into nothing. The other 6 sighed, not knowing which was more troubling—the breaking of fundamental magic that existed unchanged for millennia, or their leader calmly informing them he was going to be at half-strength for a time. Eventually they too snapped their fingers, each fading into nothing until the room, which didn't even have a door, was empty once again. Then the room also faded, until there was nothing but an empty void.