When you spend your whole life in the underlevels, it was only a matter of time before one would get the glooms. The most obvious trait was one’s skin, pale and sickly, then gaunt weakness, often fever, hair loss and bone aches.

Edus’ mother said that humans were supposed to live topside under the sun, not in the darkness like moles. The sun was a source of strength, and one would eventually wither without its light. There were ways to avoid the glooms. Lumin caps and cow's liver, or mushrooms grown topside harvested for the higher underlevels. In their underlevel, food was scarce, and the dark was an eternal companion with their hunger. His mother was haggard, sunken eyes and once golden hair now flaxen and limp. As the years passed, Edus had watched his mother slowly but surely wither away.

“Edus,” she said, too weak to stand beyond her bed, “Get our rations for today.”

“Ma, we don’t have any more tickets,” Edus said. “You didn’t go topside last month.”

Once every month, denizens were allowed to work topside for a day, before returning to the Underbelly. His mother had been too weak to work last rotation, worn thin.

“Don’t worry, ma. I’ll get us food.”

“Edus, be careful…”

He was already out of the door, running. There were ways to gather lumin caps, but it required going to the deepest underlevels, where monsters lurked and hunted…

Edus knew he had no choice. He had his backpack, leatherbound sandals, and small knife too dull for anything besides cutting mushrooms.

His half-sister, Reina, waited outside, fiddling with a pocketknife she’d stolen from somewhere, someone. Her form was outlined in a cobalt-blue glow by a distant UV street light.

Her gray-blue eyes gleamed in the dark as she asked, “Is your ma alright?”

“No. The glooms is getting worse, and we don’t have a ration ticket.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yes. I’m going to the sink for some lumin caps.”

“That’s your plan?” Reina said, incredulous.

“I didn’t say you had to come with me.”

Edus turned away, walking along the rusted metal gratings of the street. He heard Reina padding after him.

“Even if we do manage to score a few caps, we still have to avoid the capped-men who guard them,” she said.

“Have you ever seen a capped-man?”

“No,” Reina admitted, “but I don't have plans to see one.”

They descended deeper down rocky steps in silence. The Underbelly was a vast cavern separated by giant stalactites that connected from the higher underlevels to the bottom, known as the sink. They lived among the hollowed base of one such stalactite, spires of stone that winded down in a natural hewn spiral staircase, a plummeting fall on the other side. Blue UV lights glimmered throughout the distant spires, dots of blue light a mile or two furthest away. Tightrope bridges of metal plates and spindled wire connected between the stone towers.

The deeper they went down, the darker it became.

“Did you bring a torch?” Edus asked.

“Of course.”

Edus heard the rapid snik-snik of sparkstones striking together, then the orange warmth of a fire kindled into existence.

Reina held the torch, a rag dipped in oil tied to a metal rod, casting their shadows down the recessed stairway.

After many steps down, when Edus’ legs grew heavy and burned, they reached the bottom of the tower. The door was a thick metal slab, unlocked, unguarded. It didn’t need to be in a place where folk went to disappear.

Reina bashed her torch out against the stone wall, showering cinders. The metallic ringing of her strikes echoed up the spiral staircase. Darkness surrounded them once more.

“Are you ready?” Reina whispered.

“Yes,” Edus said, pushing the door with his sister’s help.

The metal squealed in protest, but eventually scraped open.

The ground was covered in sparse patches of lumin moss, glowing soft green. Small crystals sparkled purple or turquoise, facets of light breaking from the craggy ground.

Edus and Reina crept forward, bent low, keeping close to the dark shade.

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“There,” Edus pointed.

A grove of blue-capped glowing mushrooms appeared ahead of them.

“Wait,” Reina hissed, stopping Edus from crawling further. “Look.”

Tall, seven foot forms that could have been mistaken as reedy stalactites stood still. Then Edus saw their heads above, giant brimmed caps like the infant mushrooms they watched, capped-men. He peered closer, and saw beady gray eyes gleaming below their caps, unblinking.

Edus shivered. “What should we do?”

“I count at least three of them,” Reina said. “I've heard they're deceptively fast, but not as fast if we were to split up running. I can draw their attention with my torch.”

“Are you sure?” Edus asked.

“Of course not, but do you have any better ideas?” Reina whispered, fierce.

“Alright. Just let me know when.”

“Get to the other side. You’ll know when you see me screaming and running for my life.”

“Thanks, Reina.”

Edus crept past, sidling to a bank of the grove, a stream rushing nearby.

He hears Reina shout, “Hey! Over here, you creepy bastards!”

The capped-men turned to Reina, who was waving her torch. They moved sporadic and jittery, their bulbous bodies distending into three long and thin legs. Edus saw that the ends of their feet were barbed and razor sharp, like blades made up of chitin. They loped with sweeping steps, rapidly gaining on Reina.

Edus darted towards the grove, swooping in with his knife, cutting as many of the lumin caps into his backpack. As soon as he’d cut the first mushroom he heard the capped-men screech and turn back to him.

He saw Reina throw her torch at one of the capped-men, who shrieked a piercing, inhuman sound as its body was set aflame, wreathed in brilliant fire that soon covered its form.

There were still three other capped-men striding towards Edus. He dashed and weaved past them, barely ducking away from one pronged leg that cracked into the rocky floor.

“Run away, Edus, not through them!” Reina yelled. “Oh, shit.”

They ran together for the exit that they’d come from, but the creatures were furious in their loping speed, getting closer and closer.

The metal door they’d left open was now closed, and wouldn’t budge as they pulled its handle. A metal panel slid open, revealing a familiar pockmarked face, a vile grin.

“Caio, open the door!” Edus exclaimed.

“What’s the password?” Caio said in singsong.

“When we get in there, Caio, I'm going to gut you,” Reina snarled.

“That’s not it,” Caio said, shutting the panel.

The capped-men screeched behind them.

Reina sheltered Edus, shielding him in her arms.

Then something rose from the ground, the crystals that jutted out from the bedrock rumbled and fissured the stone it lay within. In a hail of rock and earth, a crystalline behemoth barreled into the capped-men. Its form was stout, four legs and a head shaped with jaws, made up of all the radiating crystals lodged to the floor.

The capped-men struck with their razor sharp legs, glancing off the crystal hide of the creature. Its jaws split one capped-man’s trunked body, spilling grayish intestines and bile so strong Edus could smell its sour stench. The crystal mass pounced over the second capped-man, its shards of claws shredding the fungal monster. The last capped-man attempted to flee, but the living geode mass caught the creature in its jaws, shaking its shrieking prey silent.

Edus watched the crystals collapse, falling and rolling away, attaching to the corpses of the capped-men it had killed. There were no traces of the mushroom creatures left, the purple and turquoise crystals covering them, shining ever brighter.

The panel of the metal door opened.

Caio said, “What was—”

Reina jabbed two fingers into his eyes. “Now, Edus! Pull!”

Edus pulled on the door’s handle with as much strength as he could, then let go, and pulled instead with his mind, concentrating. The door squealed, grated wide enough for Reina to draw her knife and slash at someone. A boy cried out, and the entrance opened with Edus’ power.

Edus shoved back another youth who tried to punch him. The boy slipped on the smooth rock, his elbow hitting one hard, unyielding step. He howled in pain.

There was Caio, who was still covering his wounded eyes, and his two lackeys, of which one was cradling his cut arm.

Reina punched Caio, the largest boy, in the gut. He was big, but not yet as tall as Reina, who was thirteen. Caio buckled over to his knees, wheezing.

Edus’ sister wiped her bloodied knife over his shirt, kicking him one final time in the belly. “If you try anything with Edus and me, if you so much as look at us wrong, see where it ends,” she said. “Come on, Edus.”

He looked at the groaning boys, shouldered his backpack and stepped past them.

Caio had tormented Edus since he could remember, though he was glad Reina was always there to protect him. Even though they didn’t have the same mother, she always treated him like a true sibling.

When they reached the underlevel, Edus ruffled through his backpack. “You should have some—”

Reina stopped him and smiled. “I’ll be okay, Edus. Get them back to your ma.”

His half-sister caught his arm. "You have the power, Edus, same as me."

From her pack, her pocket knife flitted to her hand, closing in its handle. "Be careful with it. Sometimes it's too much to take. Sometimes it takes back from you."

Edus nodded and made his way back to his den. He thought of Reina's words. His power was like his body, only stronger, a ghost of his touch, held by his mind. His force often left him exhausted, and he felt that drooping weariness now heavy on his body as he staggered towards home.

The street was dark and winding, a corner only barely visible from one UV light to the next. He saw the door number of one rusted stamped sign: 1146.

All doors in the Underbelly were open, but you would face the swift and brutal consequences for trespassing in anyone’s den. People had to eat, after all. His mother was still bedridden when he knelt to her.

“Hey, ma,” he said. “I brought you some food.”

“Where’d you get these, Edus?”

“From the quartermaster.”

He helped his mother hunch over the bed. She feebly bit into one lumin cap.

Edus thought of the capped-men. If the lumin caps grew into those things, what were they truly eating? Little by little, his mother ate the mushroom. Edus helped her to some water with his flask.

She smiled. “You’re going to do great things, special.”