Three weeks of darkness.
The long night was three long weeks that everyone feared. Crops died from no sunlight. The cold swept away all the old and ill who were unprepared. Kingdoms let their people starve to save the rich.
It was how the rulers were tested.
The City of Fintan, with an estimated population of 300, all gathered outside atop a large hill, situated to the east of the city. With the leaders of the village all standing fearlessly at the front, watching, with everyone else, the slowly setting sun. Which would not rise for 3 more weeks.
"So that's it then," Fishy said when the sun was no longer visible to them. The dark sky informed everyone that hell was about to begin, and they all needed to head home.
"Rather anticlimactic," Ziu said as he turned around to walk back.
"This will be a test." Clara said as she moved next to Fishy, "I know I would fail. But, I believe that if any one of us could do it, it would be you."
Fishy turned to the pink-haired damsel that smiled brightly, for once hopeful about the long nights ahead.
Everyone in the village started to walk back down the hill where the bottom was no longer visible due to darkness. Morale was already low, however, Fishy had not spent the last week preparing for nothing.
"Is everything ready?" He turned to Silmor, the dwarf and the city's head builder who smiled back at him with a large grin on his rough face.
"Of course!" Silmor dug deep into his dark coat pocket, pulling out a simple rocky switch which he immediately pressed. By using special magic stones, he was able to create a small wireless network, with the help of Fishy's knowledge of how similar systems worked in his own world.
He turned to face the city below, which suddenly illuminated during a time of darkness. The villagers all stopped and looked at the red-glowing city, imitating the flames that once shined the city. Buildings lit up in the windows, the streets flickering with delight as if it was any other normal night.
"What's so different from normal?" Clara asked, "Isn't night like this all the time for us, with all the lights?"
"Yes, but these lights are created through magic stones which can only hold so much, eventually we would go dark." Said Fishy only for his explanation to be interrupted by Silmor who took over with his excitement.
"But, thanks to me, we managed to find a way to use less and less magic. More refined magic stones. Purer mana could be inserted."
"Alright calm down," Fishy said as he and Clara started walking back to the village that was functioning like normal. "It's my mana you're using…"
Shops and vendors were open whilst kids cheered and darted around the streets, playing and messing about whilst their parents warmed up by one of the many furnaces being used as a heater. If the freshly cooked hot food wasn't warming them up, then they could snuggle around one of many designated destinations to heat themselves up.
However, during the Long Night, the day doesn't exist. It's as if the giant rock in space stopped rotating, and the two moons above became locked in space and time. The concept of time and days passing had to be tracked, or else people's internal clocks would get messed up. But luckily for the city, Fishy was keeping track of time.
"It's currently 7 PM. The sun just set," he said whilst walking through the lit-up streets, pulling back the sleeve of his fluffy coat to reveal a tiny little wristwatch that he studied. "We calculated that we can charge the magic stones overnight, we shut them off just before midnight so the village goes dark and people can sleep, and at 10 in the morning, we turn them back on again. We repeat this for the entire day and we should hopefully be producing more energy than we are using for the stones."
"Wow," Clara turned and looked at him in amazement "You've thought this out."
"You sound surprised."
"I am."
The city continued for the night, following Fishy's timing and being all back inside their houses and sleeping by midnight. It was a strange curfew that didn't exist before, but no one questioned it, as they understood why.
However, the Long Night only just started, and with the nights being as cold as they were, they were about to get colder. As during the first night, snow gently fell and rested atop of The City of Fintan.