They broke camp after the rabbit was reduced to mostly bones in the fire pit. Kaiser and Henry had to do some basic stretches to work out their stiffness, Henry moreso than Kaiser.

“I swear to God, I am never skipping leg day again,” Henry whispered, as he soothed the precursor cramp to a charley horse. Kaiser kept his mouth shut and moved like his back was suddenly fused together. Between the five of them, they had one water skin. The Archon filled it with freshly boiled water, and made sure everyone drank most of the last pot.

“We will walk longer than is normally needed.” He said. “The Gods are, after all, on our tail.”

“I’d rather be running,” Kaiser said.

“Running won’t do us any good. It will steal our vigor, and we’ll fall prey to the Gods as soon as we stopped to rest. No. We walk. But we’ll walk longer than we have to, and get up earlier than we feel we need to.”

Without dawn, Hawk’s body didn’t feel rested, or even as if she’d slept at all. She felt like she’d closed her eyes on that hill and woken up minutes later on her hummock. She also regretted having to leave all that cool, damp softness behind. In short, Hawk regretted existing almost immediately.

She made sure to stay close to the Archon, not because he was any kind of protection (Well, he was, just not the sort people expected; when you can call on a quasi-divine being, even a fifth part of one, you’re all the backup anyone might need) but because he continually pointed out things and creatures as they walked. Here were more edible roots, this time a variety of wild carrot (promptly filed in the “no touchie” category; Hawk did not know if this world had any varieties of hemlock, and she wasn’t going to find out by accident) and a pale white flower that bloomed with a near starlike brilliance, as long as one was absolutely quiet. This tasted delicious, and several of them were plucked and consumed; Hawk thought they tasted vaguely nutty.

One thing that had been bothering her raised its head after they’d walked far enough to warrant their first rest. “Archon,” she said, because she hadn’t gotten permission to call him “Mattias” yet. “Why is the cold-light so different from person to person?”

His face lit up. Oh, it was so nice to see him without the awful mask. “In part, it depends on who taught it to you. I grew up in the Southern Wastes, under Argon’s arm, so I learned from the traditions of the Firemaster, and my coldlight came out red as blood, and hot. You could melt candles in it, for all you couldn’t catch a flame. I was ten years old, four years away from my novitiate, when I visited the Rivers and saw their cold, blue lights for the first time.”

“Yours is different. It’s more like real light. Like an incandescent bulb.” Hawk said.

“Ah,” And there was a pleased look on his face. “My primary teacher was our mutual friend. His light is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s like the Light at the Temple.”

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“It is. It’s like sunlight, almost. A very complete spectrum.” Hawk said, and delighted in the resulting confusion on the Archon’s face. It was a novelty and that made every wrinkle beautiful.

“Sunlight?” He said.

“Our sky back home, there’s no cavern ceiling. It’s open to the sky and blue as you’ve never seen it. Light is everywhere, like at the Temple. All the plants are green and grow up, reaching for the sun like it’s the center of the universe. The sun is a great big ball of fire burning millions on millions of miles away. It’s also what we call a star.”

“Our friend told me about those. How they made the sky look like a field of moss when all is quiet. Tiny points of light so bright and pure they could cut you.”

“It’s better than the moss,” she said. “The sun makes light. All the light we need, every single day. Sunlight.”

The Archon closed his eyes and turned his bare face up towards his own coldlight. The bare warmth of it was enough to keep despair at bay, but it was nothing like the sun. Hawk filled her own memory with Arizona, and an anting trip she’d made to the Mojave with Alex two years ago. It had been one of the hottest days on record, so they stuck to the morning and the very late evening for the most part. But there was one day where they had a sudden storm. The sky darkened as clouds rolled in, gray and bursting with water that poured down over red soil and green ground covers, filling rivers and washouts for just a few breathless hours. Hawk had chosen to risk the heat to catch her Queens at the source, and she and Alex had gone out into the post-storm sunshine. Everything was fresh and clear, the dust was all washed away, and raindrops glimmered adamant on every visible surface, the sun catching fire in each and every drop. She could still feel the kiss of that sun on her face.

“What a glorious thing the sun must be,” the Archon said, sadly. “I wish I could get to see it.”

“You will!” Hawk promised. “We’re taking you with us. He asked me to do it, and I’d be doing it anyway. We’ll go home and you’ll get to see the sun, and the stars, and rain in the desert.”

“Rain in the desert,” he mouthed the unfamiliar words. “Sunshine. Stars.”

And then something curious ran through the camp. It was a little red, glowing thing that looked a bit like a mouse. It ran first up to Emile, where it sniffed their fingers. They offered their hand to it at first, then yanked it back with a sharp, discomforted “Ow!” Then it padded over to Henry and Kaiser, who were talking low-voiced about something that involved a lot of math and numbers. Hawk realized as it sniffed at their shoes that part of what made it look so odd was the shimmer around it. Little puffs of something rose from its paws. Its ears glowed orange, its eyes an ember-red. She dropped her hands down and cooed to it…only to have the Archon slam his hand across hers. “What in the name of God are you doing, girl?” he snapped.

“I was just going…” and then she trailed off as she got a closer look at the thing crawling through the moss.

The puffs rising from its footsteps weren’t dust, but steam. Each footfall hissed as it touched the damp, cool moss, putting out some of the glow about its feet. What she’d mistaken for normal rodent flesh was something else entirely. As she watched, bits of its skin flaked off into the moss, charred black and fragile, exposing flesh that glowed and shifted like embers…

…no. Not like embers. They were embers. This was a mouse, and it moved as if it were alive, but it was twisted throughout with fire.

And in that exact moment, it met Hawk’s eyes, and then leapt precisely for her throat.