Terror gripped Max as he fell into darkness. He’d expected a painful, undignified drop into a hole full of leaves and branches, but instead he disappeared into an emptiness so complete it felt like the world itself had dropped away from him. The faint light from the hole above illuminated only the leaves falling around him, and his terror conjured images of an endless fall into a narrowing crevice with outcroppings that would break him again and again as he tumbled. He had just opened his mouth to scream when he heard the stones below him plunge into water.
Deep water, judging by the resonant booming of the stones as they struck the surface.
Max plunged into the black water a moment later and the water smothered his scream. He struggled frantically for the surface, horrified by the thought of some wretched creature swimming up from the depths to stab or grab or chew whatever part of him it could reach. He broke the surface with a gasp.
Looking around for some way to haul himself out of the water, Max realized he hadn’t fallen into a natural looking cavern. By the faint light filtering down from the hole he’d made, he could see he was treading water in a circular chamber with straight even walls constructed from small, even bricks. A well? A sunken building?
He couldn’t know and didn’t care. On the opposite side of the pool stood a black archway with a stone landing that looked like the top of a submerged set of stairs. He swam for it, hauled himself up on the cold stone, and huddled against the edge of the archway so he could keep his feet and legs as far from the water as possible. He sat shivering against the stone, the wound in his stomach throbbing painfully, his ringed hand held out toward the water and ready to throw fire if something climbed out after him. Nothing did.
As Max’s breathing began to return to normal he realized that the brightling sat by his side near the center of the archway. Keeping one eye on the dark, still water a few feet away, he reached out to stroke the brightling’s head.
“Are you ok, little one? That was quite the fall.”
Max frowned as he stroked the brightling’s golden fur–it was dry.
“How’d you manage that? Did you land on the stairs?”
Carefully, Max ran his fingers over the creature’s body, testing for breaks and bruises, but the brightling endured his attentions without complaint. It looked up at him when he let his hand fall away.
“Well,” he said, still frowning down at the wide-eyed creature, “I’m not sure how you managed it, but I’m glad you aren’t hurt.”
Max let his head rest against the stone wall behind him.
“And I can swim. That’s good to know.”
He hadn’t had any reason to wonder before, but he felt a little puff of pride as he remembered the way his arms and legs had pumped to keep him safely at the surface. It felt good to be good at something.
“Maybe I also have a talent for climbing.”
Max studied the walls of the chamber he’d fallen into. Very little light shone down from the hole above, but it did allow him to see that there was no way for him to climb back out of the pit. The walls were constructed of small, well-fitted stones that would offer him nothing to hold onto. Evenly spaced square holes, some of them filled with what looked like rotting chunks of wood, dotted the wall at regular intervals, but they were too far from each other to be useful as handholds.
More evidence that the jungle was inhabited, or that it had been at some point. The wall around the orchard had looked as well maintained at the grassy space it had enclosed, but this place was clearly a ruin. Had it been a tower at some point, or had it always been a subterranean space? An elaborate well, maybe. But how had the people come and gone?
Max shifted to look over his shoulder into the darkness beyond the archway, then down at the brightling.
“You glow, little friend. Can you light the way?”
Max watched with surprise as the brightling rose obligingly to all fours and took a few steps into the archway. It walked until it had moved beyond the weak light streaming down from the hole at the top of the chamber, then turned, sat, and looked at Max. The soft glow of its golden fur did nothing to illuminate the space. It looked as if it sat floating in empty darkness.
Max sighed. “I guess not.”
Max stood but hesitated just outside the archway. He wasn’t enthused by the idea of walking blindly into a dark tunnel under a jungle filled with predatory monsters and violent trees. If they roamed above, why not below? And he had no way of knowing how long this tunnel or hallway might be, how many turns, and forks, and sudden stairs might be hidden in the blackness. He glanced at the stairs leading down into the water.
How many pools like this might be waiting to swallow him up?
“Well,” Max said, raising one eyebrow at the brightling, “good thing I can make fire, hm?”
Max raised his ringed hand, palm pointed into the emptiness beyond the archway, and fire leapt into life at the center of his hand. Then he hesitated, remembering the way a rock thrown in frustration two days before had struck an unseen monster. That had led to his laying on the ground with a hole in his gut, unable to move or eat for days. Max put his left hand on the wound in his stomach. It twinged painfully, but it hadn’t opened again during his fall and the pressure of his hand didn’t hurt any more than running had.
That wasn’t normal–was it? To heal so quickly from a wound so deep?
Max looked down at the brightling again and remembered the sickening sensation of the hole in his stomach cinching closed as golden light poured out of his gut.
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No, probably not normal.
The brightling had saved his life, but he had no way of knowing whether it would help that way again. Best not to call down unseen dangers by sending his little fire bolt into a darkened hallway in a jungle full of monsters.
Max looked down at his hand. Maybe he didn’t need to throw fire down the hallway. The flame he had conjured remained in his palm. It provided only meager warmth, but it appeared he could hold it out in front of him indefinitely. And by its light he could just see, very faintly, another archway at the end of a hallway.
Max looked down at the brightling.
“Very useful. Shall we? Be brave now.”
The brightling blinked lazily at him.
Taking a deep breath, Max stepped forward. He yelped and stepped back again when the fire in his palm guttered and went out.
Standing back on the stone landing, Max took a few calming breaths. He raised his hand before him again and the flame that appeared to brighten the doorway. He took a small, experimental step forward. The flame went out again. He took another step and summoned flame into his palm a third time. The fire remained in his palm, small but steady. Max sighed.
He could use his fire as a lightsource, but not while he walked.
Max looked back at the brightling where it still sat on the landing. “You don’t make anything easy, do you?”
Max moved slowly into the hallway, summoning fire every few steps to make sure he wasn’t walking onto rotten stone that would drop him further underground into someplace even more horrible. When he had nearly reached the end of the hallway he summoned flame with every step, determined to see any monster lying in wait before it could take him by surprise.
Standing in the archway at the end of the hall, Max looked into another circular room. It was smaller than the one he'd fallen into, with a low ceiling and walls that were covered with glassy, reflective tiles that multiplied the light from his flame. He could see two other archways, each equidistant from the one he occupied. The archway to his left was clogged with the stone and dirt of a collapsed tunnel. The archway to the right was strewn with rubble, but didn’t look impassable.
Moving slowly, still summoning flame every few steps, Max made his way to the right and found that the collapsed hallway beyond formed a steep ramp of earth sloping upward. A few dozen feet away, through a screen of vines and exposed roots, he could see the dim daylight of the jungle. His shoulders sagged with relief as he realized he wouldn’t have to spend hours–or days–wandering a subterranean maze. He let the flame in his hand die and began to pick his way up the slope.
He stopped at the top and peered out into the jungle. It was quiet and he could see nothing moving. He looked back at the brightling that stood a few steps behind, glowing silently in the pitch dark tunnel.
“Can you tell me if there’s anything hungry or angry nearby? Is it safe to leave?”
The brightling sat down.
“No?”
Max crouched carefully on the rubble and wrapped both arms around his knees.
“Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what you are or who you are or…who I am. I’m grateful for this,” he said, holding up his hand with the rings. “I really am. And I’m grateful you saved my life.” Max looked back out into the jungle, wondering what else lurked out in the wilds. “So far.”
He looked back at the brightling.
“I don’t know how much you can actually understand me, and I don’t know if this is a test of some kind, but it would be really, really helpful to know if there’s anything else I should expect from you.”
The brightling cocked its head slightly to the side.
Max waited, but when it didn’t move again his next question came out barely more than a sigh.
“Is there anything else, anything at all, that you can do to help me?”
The brightling snapped to attention and began to blaze with the same golden light it had given off when it had allowed him to claim the ability to summon flame. Above the brightling’s ears the human shaped diagram appeared again, with its golden nodes and three gem-color stars, but before Max could interact with it, it slid sideways in the air and faded away. In its place appeared a series of grids, one after the other, all of them constructed from thin, brightly glowing lines of gold. They slid in and out of view quickly, and above each of them hovered an icon that looked like it represented a body part–head, torso, legs. Then came two unlabeled grids, the second of which was long and narrow. On the left side sat a square that had something hovering within it. Max frowned and leaned closer to examine it, bewildered. His confusion deepened when he realized it resembled the glittering green dust that had appeared above the leafy tentacle monster after the brightling had taken it apart.
“What is all–”
The final grid slid away and a gray stone, flat and vaguely circular with the chipped edges of rough hewn slate, appeared before Max’s face. It hovered steadily in the air, slowly rotating, and on both sides he saw the small fire symbol he had selected when choosing among all the weapons the brightling had offered him.
Then came the four rings on his left hand, glittering as they floated in the air, connected by their delicate chains. Max looked down at his own hand as the representation faded. His own rings remained. He looked at the brightling.
“I don’t understand. What is all this?”
The brightling, still glowing, turned to look back down the collapsed passage. The sound of a chime filled the air and a faint golden glow appeared back in the underground room he had just left. It faded again as Max got to his feet.
“I don’t understand!”
The brightling turned and seemed to look past him out into the jungle. A black circle appeared in front of Max, depthless, featureless, and nearly as wide as his outstretched arms. Startled, he backed away from that window into nothingness. He lost his footing and fell painfully onto his backside. He began to slide sideways over broken stone, back into the unlit room, until he threw out both hands to stop himself.
“Stop,” he said, almost shouting. “Stop. Please.”
The black circle, the brightling’s light, and the sounds of bells all vanished. The brightling turned to look at Max.
Max sat up carefully and gathered his legs under him.
“I asked,” he said, reaching out to touch the brightling lightly on the head, “and you tried. But I don’t understand. I can't….”
A wave of exhaustion swept over him.
“I think I need to sleep.”
It didn’t take him long to scavenge nearby branches and leaves to better obscure the entrance to the collapsed tunnel. After he felt reasonably sure the hole was less visible to casual inspection, he made his halting way back down the tunnel into the glittering, circular chamber and searched for the driest patch of dirt to lay down on. Realizing that there was no truly dry patch of dirt, he wrapped his arms around himself and curled up along the wall farthest from each of the room’s open archways.
He watched his glowing companion curl up in front of his knees.
“Thank you, little brightling. We'll try again. I just need to rest for a bit.”
He was asleep almost before his head touched the damp stone floor.