The sky is blue and vast, endless. A woman’s voice echoes through the air. White clouds hang softly by the canopy above, and below. I feel the white cotton tickle my skin and hug my back. This is definitely the most comfortable I’ve ever felt. Not that I really ever feel comfortable, but you know what? Forget feeling!

I am on a cloud.

I run my slender fingers through my hair, feeling the strands on my skin. Slowly, I resign myself to sinking deeper into the bliss.

Sinking, sinking, sinking.

I fall through, feeling butterflies in my stomach.

Falling becomes descending, and descending becomes floating, and around me, there’s plenty sheepish fluff in the sky of blue. I land on another soft canvas. More cloud. In the distance, I hear a woman laughing like honey. The sound rings through me as I sink through again and finally land on soft grass at the top of the sky, green hills stretching along the horizon.

While I lay down and stare at the soft sun laying in the blue canopy, the laughter sinks into my being, vibrating with bliss, making me smile.

She speaks.

‘Anite.’

Still, the sound rings both far away and close by, everywhere. The sun starts to set onto me, and a shape appears from the center. Or not. A light. It envelops me with warmth.

‘I love you, Anite.’

The light becomes the woman, she looks weird, naked without fur coat. She is my light, her eyes closed, blinded by her own shine.

A light so beautiful it dazes me.

And she loves me.

And I love her.

I reach my arms out to her, but as long as I lay there, I’ll never reach.

'Wake up.'

---

Slowly, I opened my eyes. They stung, and my body ached. A groan tried to leave my mouth, but it was too dry to properly do that. Even yawning was an effort. Yawning should never be an effort.

It was dark wherever I was, which wasn’t right cause there was this glowing rock where I used to live. I tried to stand up and hit my head on something that felt like stone. Did I get lost… somehow? And it was comfortable, so comfortable. And soft. A bit cramped though, and my instincts told me to find the way out. My body, on the other hand, was telling me something entirely different, something about sleeping again, seeing that beautiful light lady.

Oh, that’s right, she told me to wake up.

As my eyes got used to being awake, and I’d rubbed the sleep out, I searched for a, possibly green, light and found a small opening through which fell a soft glow. Cautiously, or not so cautiously, I crawled out and realized I was still in the same old room. Looking behind me was a small burrow. Looking around, there were more burrows like the one I crawled out of. Three, to be exact. Since when were these here? Besides me, no one was in the room. Did they all crawl into the little homes together? There shouldn’t be enough, or would there be…?

It struck me that I was still sleeping, of course. for starters, the big guy was gone. No shadowy veils either. Secondly, somehow mother's huge carcass had moved out of the hole she was stuck in and laid down on the other side of the stone. Though, I vaguely remembered her to be dead, and immobile. Even the hallway was opened up. I cursed as I pulled out a few strands of grey fur from my arm. Okay. Awake.

After I drank a bit from mother, who was definitely still dead and missing a few patches of hide, which I’m pretty sure disappeared into the den I woke up in, I made my way through the hallway. Somehow, the entrance got a bit broader and slowly got more tight till it reached the size I remembered it to be. My memory was apparently – definitely shit, yet I still knew the sizes of hallways I’ve ever walked in. Thank you… rat-sense?

Strangely, the room at the end of the tunnel was much darker than I remembered, but it certainly was the same room, just with… slightly dimmed light coming from the blue crystals that attached to the cave’s ceiling. Somehow, the flooring had evened out perfectly. An unnatural level surface. On the floor I recognized some dark shapes to be Bart and the other guy lying curled up near a wall under a low, stone slab (probably magically generated) that caught the blue light and kept the two of them in darkness. Another girl was the same. It was like the burrows in the other room, but more spacious and fewer walls.

In a corner of the room was a wall of impenetrable darkness that didn’t fit with the vine-covered walls in any way. Supposedly, the other three girls had claimed themselves a burrow each. ability to count, still intact. Brynn was probably the first to demand one. Why did I have one though? Demanding my own room wasn’t something I’d see myself do. I mean yeah, maybe, just maybe, I’m a bit arrogant and selfish sometimes, but isn’t everyone?

To the left and the right, both passageways had been locked off by walls of stone (definitely magic). They bore a strange resemblance to the burrows in the other room, though I couldn’t tell how, something in the surface of the stone. It was the same for the bigger burrow, probably magic-related, though it was weird how it managed to stand out between the rest of the rock walls. You know, except for the lack of vines and all that.

Anyhow, this meant the big guy finished the spell he was using me for. He’d probably tell me all about it later. Or he wouldn’t. The monster of a man wasn’t very consequent with his talkativeness. Something I’d learned during magic training.

Seeing as everyone I saw was asleep, and I didn’t hear any other noises, I guessed it meant that the dimmed lights were what passed for ‘night-time’ around here. For a second, I considered waking Bart up to have him explain all of it, but tossed the idea as I felt it could wait. If I woke him up it was just to bother him, and right now it didn’t feel like the hour to be a bother. And if this forgetfulness was caused by a brain disease or something, I’d die anyway. No rush. Either way, the small rats deserved the little peace of mind they got.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Behind me, the girl rat screamed and shuddered as if she was in pain, or afraid. She then rolled over and continued sleeping.

I meant rest. They deserved their rest.

Something drew me back to the green-lit room. It wasn’t my castle of a burrow. Not that I remembered owning one of the things, but since I woke up in one, it was probably mine. Usually, it worked like that. I knew from experience. Your spear lands in someone’s carcass? The carcass is yours. You wake up in the body of an overgrown rat, probably your body then. Like that.

But my point was a need for food like never before. I ripped a second leg from the overgrown lizard that was now pinned to the wall by a solid spike of stone and reluctantly took a bite. It didn’t have that nice fresh smell anymore, but my instincts told me it was fine. Brynn’s reptile had decreased a lot in size.

What had happened the night before actually, before I fell asleep? When I tried to remember going to bed, my thoughts were clouded. While I ate, I tried to puzzle my thoughts together, to no avail. Apparently being a mage doesn’t actually make you smarter. In my soul, I was a warrior, you know, brawn over brains.

Wait! I actually could do magic! I made the burrows! King didn’t do shit! Though maybe he made the walls and the bigger one. Pretty sure that was out of the capacity of my soul, even though it was infinite… this still confused me. So I could do magic and made four small houses. At least that explained why I woke up in one, seeing as I made them I deserved first pick. What that didn’t explain was my memoryloss. And didn’t I have an infinite soul? Why did I only bother to make four of the things? Kind of a dick move towards the other… three?

As I thought that, my eyes glanced over a spiky, stone blob that followed a straight line with the burrows along the wall. Four burrows, and a misshapen tumor. The sight made me uncomfortable, like looking at someone get stabbed. Repeatedly. In the head. After all, I did make more than four, or tried at least.

Painful memories flowed back through my head, and somehow I could feel the needles in my head again, the fire, though not so intense, like a slight headache.

When I practiced with King, I had a similar experience, but as painful as it was, after passing out I woke up in a few seconds and the pain had been somewhat bearable, though nauseating. Back then it hadn’t been the needles in my head that made me faint, but the shock of my magic… snapping. I lost focus. Yet that was nothing like last night. That wasn’t something I felt, but this time the pain was the most horrible suffering.

Forget needles, it had felt like someone stabbed me through the head with a thousand burning spears. Though that wasn’t the worst. The shock of my magical circuits snapping this time was… I could feel it now, like my blood was boiling inside my veins, trying to burn its way out while the electricity caused by the soul converging into me convulsed my limbs.

Yesterday, I didn’t pass out due to shock, but due to pure, unimaginable pain.

I remembered it, though, and held my hands over my ears as if I could still hear my screaming when I hit the floor.

For a while, I sat silently, and I calmed down.

But I still remembered.

---

The back of mother provided a lovely view of the grey ceiling, something I hadn’t paid attention to before, but which became fascinating when I noticed it. The dome-shaped stone surface from which the green stone hung in the middle. It wasn’t even a perfect dome! It's just neat enough that you’d argue purposeful placement, but who’d do something so seemingly useless? Why was this stone even here?

Weird thing was, the glow of the stone didn’t hit the ceiling. It was as if the light fell down.

Now, if I were just a simple cave rat, I might have believed that, but I had knowledge. Intelligence from the heavens, and I was quite sure that light also traveled up. You see, faeries used their magic to make all light weightless, I think. Maybe it fell since there were obviously no fae here, or was it supposed to be like a metaphorical fairy? Well, whatever… My train of thought was interrupted by soft footsteps, and as I looked down from mother’s back, I could see a rat with a white spot surrounding an emerald eye yawning blearily. She obviously just crawled out from one of my dens.

‘Hey, Brynn, I see you’re enjoying my magic,’ I claimed as I jumped down. The white-spotted girl rubbed her eyes, not quite grasping what I was getting at.

‘Yeaaa, wait no, fuck off,’ she said and yawned once more before asking me a question. ‘How did you get there anyway? I didn’t notice you.’

‘I was awake early. Just heard your footsteps.’ The girl looked confused and skeptical. With a weary look on her face, she objected.

‘You heard… impossible. I am the stealthiest assassin that ever lived! I could sneak up on my shadow if I wanted to! I could kill death itself with a rusty dagger! If you heard my footsteps, it’s only because I’m making you aware of your untimely… demise!’ She said, not quite exclaiming as much as mumbling the words. She seemed not to notice.

‘Did you… want me to hear?’

It took her a second to realize she, supposedly, had me where she wanted.

‘Of course, clever boy.’ Nodding decisively, she made her way to the giant gash in mother’s bald stomach.

After the short exchange, I turned to crawl back on mother’s back to maybe return when the sleep-drunk girl finished breakfast and really woke up so she could answer any questions I had. Just as I began climbing up along mother’s fur, I heard a shocked gasp.

‘You’re awake!’ Looking around, I saw the voice came from, what was her name again, Tess or something? She too had just crawled out of a den and stumbled at me. ‘You’re finally awake. We were so worried.’

Tess seemed honestly concerned, reminding me how I had passed out in front of her, but it was still nicer than my conversation with “Spot, the grumpy morning rat”. To my side, Brynn contently drank from mother until the other girl aimed her attention her way.

‘Brynn, don’t you realize Anite finally woke up?’ The girl asked worriedly. Brynn gargled confusedly, which seemed to be intended as a reply. But I had to ask.

‘Finally?’

‘We need to alert King!’ She threw up her arms and seemingly didn’t hear me speak. Brynn probably heard, but just shrugged and grunted annoyedly. ‘But how do we get through his curtains, they’re so… unlike curtains, more like walls.’

‘I can help with that, but… finally?’ I said.

In a disgusting fashion, Brynn spat some blood on the ground and turned to speak to me.

‘Ugh. You’ve been asleep for like two days. You lazy fuck. Glad you’re awake, though.’

Asleep for two days? Brynn was glad to see me? So I was in another cave after all.

‘What… do you mean?’

‘Well, King wouldn’t let me adventure the labyrinth on my own, so I either had to wait for you to wake up or take Bart with me, since he’s the only one somewhat like a soldier. But, imagine that, Bart the guard going out of the cave. He’d probably get eaten by a spider or something. Almost like a joke.’ A deep chuckle rumbled in the back of her throat as she stared in the distance, imagining.

Tess looked at her with a disturbed expression, and irately replied.

‘That’s not funny.’

‘I know, couldn’t find a better punchline after two days, disappointing right? Still, I rather waited for you, Anite, and it’s been so. boring. So that’s why I’m glad.’

‘For fuck sa- I don’t care that you’re glad! I’ve slept for two days? How? Why?’

‘For the love of murder, Anite, How should I know? You’re the magical wuzzard ‘round here. Go bother King about it. And please, let’s go out there again today.’ She seemed eagerly exasperated. ‘I’m so tired of this place.’

‘You’re so fucking nice!’

‘I know, you better find me some good food as a thank you! I’m sick of lizard already! Or raw food for that matter.’

Through all our yelling, Tess got pretty nervous, uncomfortable really. And in the distance, you could hear a groan that belonged to a whole other ratgirl.

‘Would you be quiet?! It’s the damn break of… of well... of crystals getting brighter!’

‘Shut up!’ Both Brynn and I shouted in sync as the two of us had grown agitated. Our raised voice made Tess jump and wince painfully. She was still trying to get my attention.

‘Can you please come with me to King now, Anite?’ I sighed and threw my arms up frustrated, shouting one last thing at Brynn before I walked off with the other girl.

‘I’ll catch you a spider, nice and crispy!’

‘You fucking better!’ I heard her shout back, followed by an amused snort.