They lit a small fire every evening, but Jecht didn’t realise how until a few nights in. Matches, he’d assumed – striking flint would take too much effort not to notice – and then, on an evening when he must have had less to drink beforehand, he understood. Braska was lighting the fire by magic, a simple flick of his fingers that was so modest it was no wonder Jecht hadn’t seen.

Magic: he was still new to it. He’d just about become accustomed to the idea that it could be used in battle, to strike down a fiend, heal an injury; but now, staring into the flames as they refracted and rebuilt the air around them, he began to wonder. What was it like, being part of a world where such things were an unremarkable feature of everyday life? How did people live, when existence itself was so different?