To be a good man is to live with virtue and integrity on the hardest of roads.

- A Quassian aphorism.

The path ahead curved upwards, becoming also more natural in its formation. Here and there, stalactites and stalagmites grew from the floor and ceiling, occasionally meeting to form pillars. Glowing purple lines threaded through the rock here, making the formations look like living blood vessels. It was a sign, as good as any, that this place was most ancient in its origin.

Zala was ahead of me, scampering this way and that, chirping the occasional comment about our local environs and sniffing the air. After a few moments, she helped to confirm my suspicion that we were close to a source of water. And where there was water, there was food. I was used to privation, but I could no longer ignore the hunger pangs that a few strips of jerky could simply not assuage.

“We are close to fresh water. It will taste more like blood as we get closer to the Bright. They say it is because a sky-god bled here once,” she informed me, her eyes focused downward, subserviently.

“Good. Find it, and we will drink,” I returned simply, glad that we could refill our skins.

Regretfully, not all of the skins had been filled with water.

Some had filled with noxious liquid that burned my throat and set my limbs afire. In short, it gave me wings. I would have kept the energizing liquid, but it caused me to sweat a river and left me even thirstier. Regrettably, over half of the skins were of extremely poor quality, fashioned from fragile animal bladders that ruptured when their former owners discarded them hastily before taking flight. I had to discard them, as they were unusable.

Between us, we had six usable containers, of which three were about half full. Things were not desperate, not yet, but I knew enough to plan a few steps ahead.

Also, without a way to gauge how much longer it would take to reach the surface, this news was a godsend to me. The ‘blood taste’ description might be these primitives’ allusion to the heavy metal content in the water. The thought of drinking water with actual blood in it, was on some level, a little repulsive.

I pointed at her to go ahead. “Go. Scout out ahead. If you do not return I will find and gut you,” I commanded.

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Gulping, she nodded her head a few times before and she scampered off.

Ever since the encounter with the fearsome Zlesh Viper, I felt that she saw me as something of a protector. Those who were weak would always take shelter behind the strong, it was the way of the world. She was used to taking orders.

Zala returned to my side, with a worried look on her face. “Water, a small watering place. Clean, I think. But there is one problem…”

“Spit it out,” I barked. I kept my responses short as, despite my magical ability to learn languages quickly, I still only had a very basic grasp of their underground language. With that in mind, I surreptitiously cast an Identify.

“Yes, yes,” she continued, surprisingly unfazed, as if she was expecting this response, “There are other things at the water. No big ones, like the Zlesh. We were lucky with the Zlesh, you were wise for not moving. No doubt you saw that it was sated and slowed. The Zlesh are known to move faster than a thrown spear. I saw some Ghostwalker Crabs. They are, of course, no threat to one as mighty as yourself but…” There was always a but, “They have begun their courtship dances and they will be most territorial.”

I waited for a few moments, to really absorb her words. Every word was being added to my lexicon as my mind digested them. Having learned one language already, the acquisition process had become much easier for me. It turned out that my teachers had been right, up until now, I had just been lazy all along. When your survival depended on it, one picked things up quickly.

Finally, I formulated a response, “The Crabs, they can be eaten?”

“Yes!” she piped, perking up almost immediately. “They are most delicious. We used to…”

She grew silent as I ended my Holy Aura, the darkness returning as the golden light withdrew. The golden song that had been playing faded, and with it my righteous sense of purpose. For some reason, I felt less sure. The reality of the task of returning to the surface somehow felt like it was becoming an impossibility.

I rolled my shoulders, cutting off such nihilistic thoughts as my eyes grew accustomed to the dull gloom. My light extinguished, I noticed now that the area we had entered was brighter than where we had come from, with more of the luminous rocks casting their glow. Here the darkness was, by an order of magnitude, far less stifling.

Looking in Zala’s direction with an appraising eye, I could see that her choice of attire was actually less primitive than I had originally thought. Now, I could see that instead of being a haphazard mix, her ensemble seemed to be a deliberate selection for our current environment. Here in this poor visibility, her garb did a good job of breaking up her outline, its texture and lines rendering her as just part of the background rock.

I realized I had overlooked something rather basic.