The waterfall’s gurgle broke through my stunned silence louder than an exploding firecracker. I waved a hand through the spot where a dying man had just been lying in the long grass, confirming it to be empty. The blood had gone with him. I moved the same hand to my face, wiped the skin. My fingers came back clean.

I hadn’t imagined it. The grass was flattened where Orange’s body had fallen, its stems crushed and bent.

The weight of my promise, too, hung over me, a reminder of a mistake I hadn’t been aware I was making. As lessons went, it was a powerful introduction.

It was a lot to take in, assuming it was true. I tried searching my memory for something – anything – to sway my opinion one way or another. Everything was coming up blank. I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing before opening my eyes in the glade, or anything about my life. I didn’t know what I looked like.

That, at least, could be remedied.

Between the current and the waterfall, it was hard to make out my features in the shallow pool, but I was slim, dark, probably okay-looking, with short, clumped hair sitting close to my head. Definitely a woman, if Orange calling me ‘Lady’ hadn’t already made it clear. I was fairly sure the ‘lady’ had been an honorific, not a description. It felt undeserved.

A point towards Orange having told the truth.

I was dressed in black, exclusively so; a sleeveless tunic, skin-tight trousers and laced boots reaching halfway up my shins. Good thing the weather was mild. I wondered if the colour was where my name came from. Assuming it was really my name. I didn’t have anything better to go with. Though if I had to lie low, I’d have to come up with something else before long.

I didn’t know what names were common here, unless they were all modelled after colours. I didn’t know anything of the world outside this grove, in fact; trying to bring up scenes and ideas wasn’t working so well. The extent of my world, as it currently stood, was very small.

I understood concepts. I knew what a doctor was. What fireworks were. I knew there were more kinds of plants than existed in this grove, even if I didn’t know what they were. I knew language, though not the memory of learning it. It was like someone had taken an adult brain, given it the minimum it needed to skip functionally past childhood, and dumped it into existence without an instruction manual.

I added instruction manuals to the list of concepts I understood. ‘Ancients’, sadly, were not on that list.

Without Orange in it, the grove felt lonelier. Sadder. Short of climbing the walls, I didn’t see an immediate way out. I’d never climbed anything before, at least not that I could remember. It seemed doable; the cliffs were jutting and jagged, filled with porous rocks with plenty of wide hand and footholds. One mistake, though, and I’d be trapped at the base with broken limbs, or waking up in my next supposed ‘cycle’ with no memory of the current one. And no introduction to help me this time, either.

Assuming any of it was true. Whatever library was stored in my brain hadn’t accounted for any of Orange’s story. What were the chances there were only ten Ancients, and I just happened to be one of them?

But I didn’t have anything better to work with.

I could try searching underwater for the end of the current, but I liked it less than the cliffs. I’d have to get wet, which meant cold, and then dirty. Even if I stripped first. There was no guarantee the exit would be wide enough to fit through, or close enough to reach while holding my breath. Fighting against it on the way back could be another way to end up trapped and drowning.

I spent ten minutes or so browsing the grove, checking behind trees and plant growth. There wasn’t much to work with. No hidden tunnels, no convenient tools. Orange and I might have been the first people to ever set foot inside. The largest tree glimmered with fragile silver needles; spokes dangling earthwards. A smattering of vertical leaves pierced the ground underneath, sticking out from the soft earth. When I ran a hand across them, they broke off with a soft tinkling noise and left glittering powder on my fingers. I washed it off in the pool in case it was poisonous.

If there was food to be had here, I didn’t know enough to recognise it. The only thing that might pass for shelter was the needle tree, and it was a poor offering at best. The way the needles plunged into the ground below, it might even be hazardous.

I didn’t want to face the cliffs. I passed another thirty minutes lying in the grass watching the suns – two of them, and I suspected a third just out of sight – pass over the rim of the depression. Watching the movements of the ripples spread out from the waterfall to the near edge of the pool. Waiting to catch the moment one of the silver needles dropped to the ground. It felt relaxing, safe and sad, a memorial to the only person I could remember knowing, whose only discernible trace was a collection of broken grass blades.

My world was small and, for now, peaceful. But it couldn’t last.

Eventually, I picked myself up, drank deeply from the bubbling pool, and began to climb. The longer I waited without proper sustenance, the weaker I’d become. My escape had to begin now.

It was as difficult as I’d expected; not impossible, but a task for which my muscles weren’t acclimatised. I found myself clinging to the handholds with all my might, rapidly approaching exhaustion. But it was that or starve in the grove.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As I climbed, a string of words unfurled in my head, so unexpected that I jolted and rammed my forehead into an outcrop. I knew it had drawn blood when it came back wet.

--Hello, Black.--

I drew in a breath. My head stung. As timing went, it wasn’t the best. “Hello?”

--You are performing a task for which you are under-equipped. Based on your current objectives, three potential upgrades are available. Will you accept?--

Now was really not the best time. I glanced tentatively over my shoulder and regretted it, vision swarming with vertigo. My arms ached. I could go back down, head back to a safer height to have this conversation. But then I’d have to start all over again.

I reached above my head and clawed one arm over the outcrop there, clinging to temporary salvation. “Can we have this conversation later?”

--Selecting an upgrade will improve your ability to complete your current objective. Acceptance is optional but recommended.--

“Does this count as a promise?”

I received no response.

“Can I see what I’m agreeing to before accepting?”

This had better luck. --Three potential upgrades are available,-- the words spelt out. I couldn’t decide if they were more like written text or a voice, both, or somewhere between the two. They were simply there, making themselves known, and I had no existing frame of reference to pin them on.

--Muscle Endurance,-- stated the words. --This upgrade will improve your ability to sustain strength-based exercise.--

I could use that, I thought as my arms burned. Holding myself in one place was burning through a rapidly-depleting pool of energy. Once more, I looked back to the ground. Descending was easier, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to make it to the top before my pool ran out.

Instead, I hauled myself upwards. It would only get harder the second time round. “What’s next?”

--Balance. This upgrade will improve your efficiency and use of physical resources, resulting in less energy wastage.--

“Noted.” I liked the sound of that more, even though it came a little late. Less energy wastage would come in handy if I was going to be searching for food in the near future. Less helpful in the short term, but probably more useful for the long term. “And the third?”

--Seeking. This upgrade will improve your ability to locate individuals based on interrogation and investigation.--

The last option threw me. That had nothing to do with climbing a wall. Unless – the words had stated ‘current objectives’, plural. It must have taken finding Orange into consideration.

Was I going to find Orange’s new cycle? Now that the question had been raised, I realised that it had already been a decision I’d made in the back of my mind. He was the only person I knew, if you didn’t count the words, and he’d helped me. Given his life for my – well, not my life, it seemed. But my freedom.

Yes, I was going to find him.

But first I’d have to get past this cliff. I scrabbled for another handhold, only for the rock to crumble off under my fingers. My muscles were starting to scream.

“I accept,” I said. “I’ll take Balance.” Ideally, I wanted both the first two. But fumbling around for the right places was costing me time, and balance seemed likely to help me not fall.

--Balance, Level One, integrated.--

The effects were noticeable and immediate. My weight was inefficiently distributed off-centre; I corrected it to line up with my legs, and some of the pressure eased. Above me, the easy handhold I’d been aiming for suddenly seemed far less attractive. A further, smaller outcrop would line me up to take more pressure off my arms, which were my greatest liability right now. Swallowing, I reached for the spot and made it, adrenaline spiking through me as my legs followed over open air. But it had been the right call, and I found a new foothold, then another, and the likelihood of falling seemed a little further away.

I let out a breath and reached for the next one. The path was clearer now. Couldn’t stop.

“Thank you,” I addressed the words, but received no response.

After an agonising ten minutes, I heaved myself over the lip of the cliff with the last of my energy, and slid myself forward until I was fully on solid ground. Not a moment too soon. I lay there for a few minutes, eyes closed and breathing hard with the suns warming my back until the pain in my lungs subsided, and finally peered back over the edge.

The depression didn’t look so high from this angle, the climb not so difficult. Almost a gentle slope, if a rocky one. The top of the needle tree covered one side edge of the cove below, the clearing serene but small. The waterfall trickled in from the opposite edge, a little below me now, and I could see it wind in from a narrow spring in a wall further up.

So, I’d survived. One hurdle cleared. Now I had to figure out where to go next.

Partially recovered, I rolled over and subconsciously drew a sharp breath in.

The landscape, if that was what it was, in front of me was broken and jagged, much like the grove cave. I stood not on flat ground, nor even a mountainside, but a high brown rock surrounded by others like it, some larger but most smaller, shattered by some presumable force rending them apart. Pieces floated in the air, mostly barren, some bearing trees and plants. Insects danced among leaves on a rock only metres in diameter floating not far distant.

Below, far below, lay more brown rock, a much wider expanse. Immense chasms riddled it, filling it with cliffs and crevices, enormous cracks diving far into its depths, some of which looked like they could crumble off into new fragments like the one I stood on at any second. Parts of it crawled with multicoloured life nonetheless; others were barren and dead. Structures that looked man-made tumbled over surfaces and edges, hanging out over the void; pale cities or other artifice, tiny, distant and out of reach.

A fourth sun dipped below my feet, shining through the breaks in the rocks, a distant pink-hued beacon adding its pale glow to the other three, blue, white and yellow respectively. Between the gaps there was void, a shifting array of dark pastels where light from the various suns intersected in different combinations. My rock sat in a patch of three colours, missing the pink, shading it cooler somehow, where below the light from the higher suns was absent, washing the lowlands in warmer yellow and pink.

It was indescribably beautiful.

This was the world? The framework in my head contained nothing about this. I had expected - well, I wasn’t sure. Not this. I had concepts for plains, oceans, sky stored away somewhere in my knowledge. Concepts which seemed incompatible with the fractured vista before me.

I had a lot to learn, clearly. But first, unless I could find a sustainable source of food up here, I had to find a way down.