Alto placed his palm down on the crystal and waited. “Needs warmth to activate,” he said. “Provided it still works.”

  Prospero flinched when a puzzle of light beamed from between Alto’s fingers, bouncing from the walls and consuming the cabin in a grand lattice of cerulean webwork. When Alto lifted his hand, the crystal levitated a few inches off the desk. The network of beady lights and connecting strings moved as one entity, as if sweeping along the matrix of a three-dimensional map much too large to be contained within the cabin. One particular light, brighter than the others, moved to rest within the crystal. Two ‘connections’ of light tethered it to a pair of similar dots.

  “This is…” Prospero blinked. “This is a Realmstone!”

  “Oh, good to see Gaspar taught you something useful when you weren’t learning which spoon to use with which soup,” Alto smirked. “This is an older make, though. Not nearly as reliable as one of the newer crystals, but there are some luxuries we men of the salted earth can do without.”

  “So, all of these lights…” Prospero glanced over the web. “These are realms?”

  “That they are. And these connections-” Alto trailed his index finger along the beams. “They’re celestial winds. The Realmstone uses… uh- actually, I’ve no idea how it works, but it somehow keeps track of the winds whenever they appear. These are the highways through which deals are dealt and holds are plundered.”

  He went back towards the chest of drawers and picked up a stack of thin clay tablets. Upon the surface of the first was inscribed a sigil which Prospero could tell at a glance belonged to the esoteric Runic Way, though he understood too little of the art to tell exactly what kind of power it held. “I didn’t take you for a Magus, Alto,” he said.

  “Magus? Hah… if only I was so fortunate,” Alto laid the tablets down on the desk and spread them out to reveal the same rune inscribed on every surface. Prospero couldn’t tell one apart from the other; they had been inscribed with perfect accuracy. “Voidbeasts lose their wings when they’ve been on the ground too long. All it takes is a little Runic injection to whip them back into shape, then they’re good for as long as you keep them clear of realmspace.”

  Prospero paused. “Wings?”

  “Not literal wings, lad. That’s just what folk say when they start hovering about,” he replied, then slammed his fist down on one of the tablets, breaking it into countless pieces. The hairs on Prospero’s neck stood up as something imperceptible, but strangely energising, coursed through the air like electricity. Beyond the doorway, Victima trilled in apparent delight.

  “You made these yourself?” Prospero asked. “They seem perfect.”

  Alto chuckled. “I don’t know of a single captain who’s ever inscribed his own runes. Well - there was one, but… not much of him left to discuss. No, they’re from the Institution. How do you think those madmen finance their experiments and build those seeking eyesores in every Port? Have to make money somehow, so they have most of their students penning runes for the markets. Wouldn’t be much trade if they didn’t.”

  Prospero ran a hand through his hair to dispel the pins and needles running over his scalp. “The Institution… How far is Hartlokus from here?” he asked.

  “Not close,” Alto guessed. “-But we’re not weeks from the True Realms, either. Plenty of wilders out in this region, so we’ll have an opportunity or two to restock on our way there. And speaking of ‘there’ - where exactly are we going, Baptista?”

  They were interrupted by a sudden shunt, and Prospero could tell from the vanishing hillsides beyond the door and past the deck that they were now airborne. He had a sudden desire to dash out and watch Glassoph fading into the atmospheric fog, but the sunlight gave him second thoughts. Alto awaited an answer as to their destination, but Prospero, in all his paining and fleeing since the events at Innsworm, had never once stopped to consider an answer. “Mm…” his expression flattened out. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, you had better have one by the time we’re in travel,” Alto stacked the tablets up and hoisted them in both arms. “We’ve got a band of not-so-merry Vampires on our tail, after all.”

  “What- Orlok will follow us?” he blinked. “But how? All the Voidbeasts are gone!”

  “Oh, shit…” not quite disappointed, but certainly worried, Alto averted his eyes. “How much did Gaspar teach you about Vampires, lad?

  “Beyond what I’ve learned in the last few days,” he shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “You’re about to learn something else,” Alto tilted his head towards the door. “Come on.”

  Keen to find out for himself just how Orlok intended to leave the realm without a Voidbeast, Prospero drew his cloak up and wandered after Alto into the light and wind of the cloudline, where Victima continued to gain altitude until the land below was only a distant memory. Prospero gazed over the deck and imagined, whimsically, that he might be able to spot Innsworm from so high up, somewhat disappointed to see nothing but sprawling woodland in every direction. Most of the Sunflowers had disappeared below deck, probably to keep the stores from rattling about as they ascended, while Aldruag stood at the bow with his arms crossed and eyes focused on the curving horizon.

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  A gust of wind accompanied their rise past the sparse cloud cover. The skies withered from light to dark, and Prospero felt an unpleasant sting in his head which faded as Victima’s surroundings grew hazy and distorted, as if viewed through warped glass. A sort of ‘bubble’ had formed around the beast, rippling with the wind and constantly on the verge of popping, though it never did, and within its confines, Prospero could no longer feel the burn of the sunlight on his skin. “...What is this?” he wondered aloud.

  “Voidbeasts conjure celestial bubbles to protect them from the freezeboil,” Alto’s voice was quiet against the wind. “Dwellers of the stars they might be, but the creatures need air just as dearly as you or I, and the bubble provides them with that. Also protects you from the sun, but without… stopping the light? Some kind of Runic thing - you would need to ask a Magus. All’s you need to know is that we’re protected from the Incandescence for as long as we stay inside it.”

  Prospero felt the need to ask, “Does it ever… pop?”

  “Only if the Voidbeast kicks the bucket,” he answered. “-And if that happens, you’re already fucked. Oh, but don’t go thinking it’ll support your weight or anything; fall overboard, and you’re as good as dead.”

  Prospero nodded. “I’ll… remember that.”

  Under more joyous circumstances, he would have been ecstatic to ride on a Voidbeast. But there was a very good reason, he had to remind himself, for why the journey was necessary to begin with.

  When the stars became visible, they were high enough that Glassoph had vanished entirely. From a cosmic viewpoint, Prospero couldn’t recognise the realm in the slightest. It struck him that, despite years of poring over geographic textbooks and maps in the study, he had never seen a chart of his own world. He took that to mean it was somewhat out of the way, as his father had always claimed.

  He couldn’t quite contain his excitement - or fear - when they could no longer be considered ‘airborne’ in the traditional sense. The horizon was gone, replaced with a planetside view stretching across his vision. He craned his neck until he was at risk of falling over, somewhat reluctant to believe that he had spent his entire life on a quiet rock that now appeared so tiny in comparison to the great void surrounding it.

  “Unbelievable…” he whispered. “To think I was standing on the surface of this realm just a moment ago, and now I see it as the Gods do…”

  “Hm,” Alto crossed his arms. For the first time since their meeting, his eyes were alive. “There was a time when nothing mattered to me more than this view. Never thought I’d be here again, feeling this way again. Never been so glad to be sober… uh- mostly sober.”

  -But in the next moment, his eyes were worried and scanning, probing, searching - looking for something in the bright darkness of the stars. He turned and held an arm up to protect his eyes. In the distance, a star burned with the cosmic might of creation, its radiance only just bearable thanks to Victima’s celestial bubble. “Baptista,” he said, nudging the lad’s shoulder. “Look.”

  Prospero felt a shadow creep up his back. When he turned, something blocked his view of the sun - great spires piercing the light, a grand promenade of displaced stone encircling shelves of forestry. It was a castle; an entire estate, sitting in the void as if the hand of some wrathful deity had unearthed a small slice of the planet and discarded it in the cosmos. A field of rubble and stonework and soil surrounded the structure, trapped in stasis.

  Majestic; a marvel of architecture and sorcery, but Prospero couldn’t bring himself to admire the sight. His heart stirred with an unknown fear. One glance was all it took to tell that the castle was not of his world - or of any world, for that matter. It was unfeeling and still, but inspired terror nonetheless, and he knew, somehow, that it bore some passing connection to himself.

  “Ride the stars for so long, and there are certain sights you learn to steer clear of,” Alto said. “-But I can think of scarce few things higher on that list than a Vampire’s Castle. Especially if it happens to be looking for you.”

  “You’re joking…” Prospero shook his head. “A floating castle?”

  “Given your circumstances, I doubt it’s the last one you’ll see,” he replied. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s in at the moment, so that gives us time to get going. Ask all the questions you like once we’re safely out of sight.”

  He stepped towards the stairwell leading to the lower deck. “You lot! Any of you who can work a Realmstone, get your arses up here and into the captain’s cabin! We’re leaving!”

  Soon enough, the deck was alive with shouting, arguing, cursing, laughing - but Prospero couldn’t take his eyes off the silhouette of Orlok’s castle. That monument to despair crystallised the tragedy of his father’s death, and placed into perspective the vast importance of the Beastblood, that a Vampire of such incredible power was willing to chase Prospero to the ends of the cosmos for the sake of acquiring its power. But more than anything, he feared that one day - someday - it would be his responsibility to infiltrate that dread castle and confront the darkness within.

  How strong must I be, he thought, to protect the Beastblood as my father desired? How many more trials and battles await me beyond the realm? How many beasts must I slaughter to approach even a ghost of Orlok’s strength?

  The weight of his mission was now settling in. Insofar, Prospero had only killed as he needed; shapeshifted as fate required, but a glance at Orlok’s castle revealed that his prudence and temperance would earn him nothing but a swift death in due time. The thought of sinking further into the sphere of Vampirism made his stomach twist, but the present revealed no other option.

  For the first time, he felt truly alone, as if there was no man across the breadth of the Incandescence who could share in his pain. Again he wished, more than anything, that his father was still alive, even as Victima picked up speed along the axis drawing them further from the realm and away from the wicked castle, into the tempting darkness between the stars.