Underland. The Dark City.
2352.
49th Year of the Reign of King Caspian X.
Rois.
Rois moved carefully through his quarters, weaving between shelves laden with vials of shimmering liquids, aged tomes with crumbling pages, and intricate instruments of alchemy. The air was thick with the mingling scents of herbs and something acrid – something unnatural. At the heart of it all, on a stone pedestal, the nightrose stood in full bloom, its petals a deep, velvety black, drinking in the dim light from the lanterns overhead.
He reached out, running a gloved finger along one of the petals, watching how the darkness seemed to cling to him.
A beautiful thing, a creation of patience, of precision.
Of sacrifice.
Behind him, the chains rattled – a faint, restless sound, nearly swallowed by the murmur of bubbling elixirs and the whisper of parchment turning beneath his fingers. Rois did not turn. He let her struggle, let her seethe.
He savoured the moments of silence before she found her voice.
The naiad in the iron cage fixed her gaze upon him—or tried to. Her blue eyes, meant to gleam like starlit waters, were dulled and unfocused, their glow dimmed by the draught he had forced past her lips. Naiad blue, the colour of moonlit tides beyond Cair Paravel, clouded by the nightrose like a storm-churned sea.
Her hair, restless even in captivity, moved like water itself – liquid silk the shade of which river that had birthed her. It floated in slow, undulating waves around her slender frame, as though it still remembered the current's embrace. But there was no river here. No rushing stream to answer her silent call. Only iron, cold and absolute, caging a creature never meant to be bound.
A shame, really. The water spirits were always such proud creatures.
"Still fighting, even now?" he mused, crouching before the cage, his voice edged with amusement.
The naiad tensed, pressing herself against the farthest bars. Her delicate fingers curled into trembling fists, though whether from fury or weakness, he could not tell. The iron drained her, sapping the strength from her limbs, but the fire in her eyes had yet to dim completely.
"I wonder…" He tilted his head, studying her as though she were some rare specimen in a glass vial. "How much longer that will last?"
If she could have lunged at him, she would have. He could see it in the way her muscles coiled, in the sharp rise and fall of her breath. But the bars held firm. The iron did not yield. And so, instead of striking, she glared at him with those fading, defiant eyes—eyes like the deep waters of a world beyond his reach.
His quarters were a labyrinth of knowledge and experimentation, a place where secrets whispered from the curling edges of forgotten tomes and glimmered in the depths of vials filled with liquid impossibilities. Strange symbols sprawled across parchment, half-finished incantations lay abandoned on workbenches, and the scent of burning herbs wove through the air like an unseen spectre.
It was a space of mastery, of creation—of things better left untouched by lesser minds.
But Rois was no lesser mind.
He was a craftsman, an artist.
Where others saw limits, he saw potential. Where they flinched at the unnatural, he reached out, shaping it, bending it to his will.
He would unravel the mysteries of nightrose, dissect its influence, and chart its effects upon every creature in Narnia. No two beings reacted the same—what lulled one into a gentle stupor might drive another into madness. The way it tangled with magic, the way it seeped into blood and bone, fascinated him.
The naiad was but one of the first.
A test subject.
A glimpse into the deeper truths hidden within the petals of that elusive bloom. He would learn how it dulled the glow in her eyes, how it made her limbs sluggish, how it unravelled the threads of her power.
For the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, the effect was simple – almost disappointingly so. Nightrose wove its way into their minds like a creeping vine, soft and insidious, leaving them open, vulnerable. It did not cloud their senses or weaken their limbs as it did with the naiad. No, it worked far more elegantly.
It made them susceptible.
Wholly and completely.
A single whisper could become truth. A mere suggestion, an unshakable conviction. With nightrose in their veins, their will was no longer their own. They would follow, obey, believe—until he decided otherwise.
And Rois had done what no alchemist, no scholar before him had managed.
He had refined it.
Through careful distillation, through countless failed attempts and shattered vials, he had unlocked the full potential of nightrose. No longer merely a flower of passive influence, no longer a crude tool wielded by fumbling hands—it had become a perfected draught, a drink that could bend even the strongest mind to his will.
A single sip was all it took.
For the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, it meant absolute surrender in a way that no other alcohol would.
Rois turned from the naiad, his gaze sliding toward the second cage. Within, the dryad slumped against the iron bars, her slender frame caught between fevered tension and languid surrender.
She hailed from the Lantern Waste, a being woven from the essence of its oldest trees, her lifeblood steeped in the potency of its flora. Pale as moonlight, her skin was flushed with unnatural heat, a stark contrast to her usual sylvan grace. Her eyes, the deep green of flower stems, fluttered half-shut, unfocused. Her breath came in shallow gasps, her pulse a rapid, frantic thing beneath translucent skin.
The nightrose had taken her differently than the naiad.
Where the water spirit weakened, limbs heavy with sluggish despair, the dryad seemed consumed by a different madness. Her body, attuned to the potent toxins of her own blossoms, responded with a fevered rush – her blood racing, her senses drowning in a haze of near-drunken stupor.
A sharp thrill coursed through Rois as he watched. Two creatures. Two reactions. And yet, both utterly ensnared.
Fascinating.
Rois stepped closer, his fingers tracing the bars, watching as the dryad shuddered at his presence. The concoction was still in its early stages, but the effects varied. Water spirits resisted, fighting against the poison in their veins. But those tied to the earth… they yielded.
His gaze flickered to the naiad, who still had enough strength to glare at him through the haze. He smiled at her, slow and knowing, before making his way back to his worktable.
The nightrose lay before him in its various stages – petals like ink, crushed stems seeping a dark, glistening resin. He took up the mortar and pestle, his fingers tightening around the cool stone as he ground the dried petals into dust.
The frost fae would arrive soon.
Dark excitement curled through Rois like smoke, slow and intoxicating. The naiad, the dryad—they were only the beginning. His experiments had already unravelled new truths, but there was still more to discover. So much more.
For frost fae had arrived in Underland.
Rare, elusive creatures of ice and shadow, their very existence defied the natural order. Their blood was said to shimmer like liquid silver, their magic as biting as the northern winds. Would nightrose melt them from within, burning through their veins like wildfire? Or would it freeze them, twisting their power into something brittle and broken?
He could not wait to find out.
A slow smile curved his lips. It was only a matter of time before he got his hands on one. And when he did—when he fed them his perfected draught—he would uncover every secret hidden beneath their frozen skin.
The pestle scraped harshly against the mortar.
He had to know.
He exhaled, watching as the nightrose powder curled like smoke beneath his fingertips, careful not to inhale too deeply, even with his mouth covered by cloth.