As the blue-winged bird banked in his direction, Max turned and ran. His unprotected feet found every rock and sharpened twig, but he didn’t dare slow his plunge through the jungle. He remembered the ball of energy launched by the bird in the orchard, and the way it had stripped a tree of its bark. He didn’t want to find out what would happen to him if he was struck from behind by a moving ball of thunder.
Moments later he felt a mass of air surge over his head and explode against a young tree to his left. As the tree groaned and swayed, sending a shower of leaves down over him, Max glanced over his shoulder. The bird was farther away than he expected. Still too far, it seemed, to strike at him accurately. But it was gaining on him quickly and however much he wanted to, he simply couldn’t get away before it caught up with him.
Turning, Max brought his hand up, took aim, and thrust his arm forward to send a bolt of flame toward the bird. The two collided just as the bird began to stretch its wings wide for a second attack. It screeched as a blue sphere flashed into being to envelope it and intercept Max’s flame but it still fell backward. It recovered before hitting the jungle floor and began flapping awkwardly as it struggled back into the air.
Max chopped a hand against a nearby bush in frustration.
“They all have those shields...”
He raised his hand again, hoping a second fire bolt would be as lethal for the bird as it had been for the tentacle monsters, but movement in the canopy above drew his attention. He froze as he remembered the green eyed monster. Then time slowed for a moment. As Max watched, a small, jagged brown blur flew toward his head. He tried to throw himself backward out of its path, but he wasn't fast enough. A yellow globe of light flashed up around him, immediately exploded into shimmering fragments, then Max’s head rocked backward. Momentarily stunned, he toppled backward into a bush.
From its perch in the lower canopy, the black wooly monster wailed and leapt to another branch.
Ignoring the scratches the bush had scored along his exposed skin, Max rolled groggily onto his side and crawled behind the tree that had taken the bird’s thunderous attack. The brightling followed.
Scrambling into a crouch, Max brought his hand to his forehead. He winced at the sudden sting and his hand came away wet with blood. He'd been hit with something. What?
A moment later, the tree shook with the impact of another sphere of thunderous energy. More debris rained down on him from above.
Max glanced at the brightling where it sat by his foot. He dabbed the back of his hand at the blood that had begun to ooze down into his left eye.
“Why is my shield yellow? Why are their shields yellow sometimes but blue other times? And why doesn’t mine work as well as theirs?”
The brightling remained silent, but watched him attentively.
Somewhere behind Max the black wooly monster wailed again just before something struck the other side of the tree with a loud crack.
Max set his teeth. A grim anger rose in his naked, bruised, bleeding chest.
Fine.
He stood and turned.
It didn’t matter why his shield was yellow. It didn’t matter why the monsters’ blue shields stopped his first fire bolts. Nothing about this absurd experience had been fair from the start. If he wanted to live, if he wanted to find the people who had done this to him, he would just have to adapt.
So he waited. He kept the tree between him and his attackers and he took a step back so he could see better to either side. If these bloodthirsty animals were foolish enough to expose themselves first, he would be ready.
And one did, almost immediately.
He saw a flash of blue to his right as the bird flew into view. Max sent a fire bolt at it. This time his flame exploded against the bird itself as its blue shield flashed weakly and faded. The bird squawked briefly then fell to the ground like a stone.
The bird’s death cry reverberated out into the jungle and two new cries rose up to answer it. Hearing them, Max’s new resolve almost crumbled.
Two more on the way. If I kill this furry thing up in the trees, that’ll call another two. I’ll have to run from four of them. I can’t fight four.
Max’s left hand drifted across the fading scar where his stomach wound had been.
I should run now. If I run now I might get away.
The sound of something hard cracking against the other side of his hiding place brought Max back to himself..
No. I won’t make it. I have to kill this thing first.
Trying to block out the screams of the approaching monsters, Max kept his eyes on the lower canopy. If he could just see where–
There.
Max raised his arm, tracking a shaking branch in the lower canopy. As soon as the furry head of the green-eyed monster appeared, he sent a fire bolt streaking up at it. The blue flash of its shield was followed immediately by a tremulous wail of pain.
Max stepped behind the tree again, keeping his arm raised and his attention on the branches above. But the wailing monster didn't step into view again. It just continued to hurl its little projectiles at the other side of his tree. And with each impact the screams of the two approaching monsters grew louder.
Max clenched his left hand into a fist as he considered his options.
He could run and turn his back into a slow moving target. Even if he tried to keep this small tree between them, the creature would see him leave and come after him.
He could wait for the wooly monster to appear again, hoping it presented itself before the other monsters surrounded him.
Or...
When the creature's next projectile struck his tree, Max waited, counting the seconds. When a third missile landed, he stepped out from his hiding spot and fired, hoping, believing, that the pause between missiles was a window, not a trap. His fire bolt streaked through the air and struck the creature as it was leaping between branches. It didn't make a sound as flames engulfed it. It struck the branch it had been aiming for and folded around the limb like a thing made of cloth, then tumbled down toward the jungle floor. Its death cry reverberated out into the trees before it hit the ground.
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Max turned to look at the brightling as the wooly monster crashed into a thicket, but his gaze caught on the thing that the monster had been throwing at him. Embedded in the other side of the tree were two caltrops like the ones that had hit him in the macabre orchard.
He had no idea what that meant, and he didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
“Go get them if you want them,” Max said, sweeping his hand in the direction of the fallen monsters, “but I'm leaving before the others get here.”
Max half expected another display of his golden companion’s musical obstinacy, that it would insist he go and watch as it turned the beasts into dust, but it turned and darted into the undergrowth without a sound.
“Wait,” Max said. “Come back!”
He hadn’t expected it to go without him. He’d thought it would refuse the offer and then he would have to run and hope that would force the thing to follow him. Or maybe he would have to just pick it up and carry it to safety.
Max listened. He couldn’t hear the brightling moving through the undergrowth, but he could hear the screams of the approaching monsters.
“I’m leaving!” he called.
Still nothing.
Max turned in a quick circle, assessing the direction of the approaching monsters. The path to his hideout seemed safe enough, so he began pushing through the undergrowth toward the only “home” he’d known in the four days he could remember of his life. He moved slowly, looking over his shoulder with every step.
His heart hammered as he wondered if he would be able to hide again. The creatures didn’t seem able to find him if they couldn’t see him, but the green eyed monster had apparently made an effort to search for him.
“Where are you, little one?”
Max closed his eyes in resignation as the nearest two calls echoed through the trees nearby. He crouched. He would crawl away if he had to, but he couldn’t leave his golden companion behind.
His heart hammered as the nearest of the four monsters passed him, unseen somewhere above the lower canopy. Another bird, maybe. He rose slightly from his hiding place and looked back the way he’d come and waited. When he could tell from their calls that all four monsters had converged on his previous location, his heart sank. None of the monsters he’d met had tried to attack the brightling during their fights. They hadn’t even seemed to notice it. But did that mean anything? If the small, giant-eared creature was the only target they could see, would they transfer their lust for revenge to the brightling?
Max stood. He had to go back. He'd just killed two monsters at once. He would figure out how to kill four.
Max brought his arm up reflexively and conjured fire when he realized something was hurrying through the undergrowth in his direction. When the brightling shot from beneath a bush to stop at his feet, he let the flame go out so he could scoop the creature up and hold it in front of his face. He gave it the tiniest, gentlest shake.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
The brightling chirped.
Max had begun to turn back toward the direction of his hideaway, still holding the brightling, when he noticed a faint sparkling around the golden creature–the green dust was still following it, streaming into its body even as it ran back to him. The creature must have stopped by the fallen monsters’ bodies only briefly, then returned to him before the arriving monsters could spot him.
“Very efficient,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He pushed as quietly as he could through vines and scratching branches, wondering while he went about the green mist that streamed into the brightling after each of his kills. He couldn’t be sure, but it certainly seemed as if his soft, adorable companion was feeding on the bodies of the creatures he killed. If Max could eat the monsters, why couldn’t the brightling?
Of course it’s eating the monsters. Why else would it be helping me? Why else would it insist on taking each of the creatures apart?
That made it just another monster from the forest, then, different only in that it was dependent on others to kill its prey. It needed Max.
It’s a kind of magical parasite, he thought. Maybe that was why it wasn’t on the underground mural in the hideaway. It isn’t part of the color coded dynamic of aggressors and protectors.
Max glanced down at the furry animal darting quietly through the greenery. The creature that had shielded him from death, given him a weapon to hunt with, and helped him find food. ‘Parasite’ felt uncharitable. Mean. Base.
And not a parasite, anyway. Max and the little brightling both benefited from the relationship. They had a symbiotic relationship. A partnership.
Max felt better about that. And he decided not to interrogate the fact that he wanted to feel better about it. Why shouldn’t he want to like and trust the only companion he’d found? The only living thing in the forest that didn’t want him dead? That had saved his life and given him the ability to shoot fire from his palm?
But he still had questions. Why would the brightling need him to kill its prey when it could give him deadly magic and protect him from violent monsters for days at a time? Maybe it simply couldn’t do these things for itself. Maybe that was one of the constraints of its nature.
Max’s musings were interrupted when the brightling stopped abruptly. Max looked over his shoulder, listening, but the monsters behind them had stopped crying out and he couldn’t see or hear any sign of pursuit. He turned back to the brightling and watched as the last of the green mist disappeared into its body.
Immediately the brightling grew rigid and its eyes began to blaze with light. A sonorous bell rang. Golden flame boiled out of its body in every direction, then rose into the air to form a steady, gently undulating plume.
Max panicked and shrank into a crouch. Over the shimmering sounds of bells echoing out of the brightling, he tried to listen for the screams of monsters suddenly alerted to his location.
“Stop that!” Max said with a hiss, waving his hand at the brightling.
The brightling grew dark, wilting into its normal relaxed posture. The bells echoed into silence and the pillar of liquid golden flame flickered into nothingness.
Max listened. When he heard no screaming from the monsters who had arrived to hunt him, he turned back to the brightling who sat watching him.
“No more of that,” he hissed. “Not until we get back underground.”
For the rest of his sweat-soaked trudge back to his hideaway, Max split his attention between scanning the forest for monstrous threats and watching the brightling for more uninvited, clarion surprises. Only when he had finally crept back into the relative coolness of the dark mosaic room did Max allow himself to indulge his curiosity.
“Ok, little one. I think we’re safe here,” he said, easing himself onto the floor where he could see both entrances. “For now.”
Max touched his forehead gingerly. It stung still when he pressed his fingers around the wound above his left eye, but it was no longer oozing blood. He thought about going to the pool in the other chamber and rinsing the caked blood from his face, his hands, but in the dark of that subterranean cell it didn’t seem to matter. He was tired and he would just be bloodied again. And likely sooner than later. He let his hand fall away and looked at the brightling.
Later.
“What was it you wanted to show me?”
Sitting by his folded knee, the brightling burst into flame again and the now-familiar sound of a ringing bell filled the chamber.
Max winced at the sudden brilliance then sat quietly for a moment, watching the pillar of flame danced slowly before him. It rose almost to touch the ceiling, but gave off no heat and left no marks on the stone.
“I don’t know what you are or where you came from,” Max said, admiring the pillar of white and golden energy as it billowed above the large-eared animal. He looked into its glowing eyes. “But you’re very, very pretty.”
Max waited. He didn’t expect a response, but he thought the creature might prompt him with a paw or a twitch, the way it had when it had shown him how to select the rings that let him throw bolts of flame. When it didn’t, Max raised his hand a few inches from the brightling’s face and tapped at it with one finger.
Instantly the pillar of flame exploded outward and engulfed him. By the time Max brought his hands up to protect his face he was already sitting inside a circular curtain of rippling flame. The brightling still sat by his knee, staring up at him, and the outline of a human body had appeared above its ears.
Unlike the last time Max had seen the diagram, the golden nodes that shone over the various body parts were now encircled by tiny rings of spinning green energy. Max leaned closer to the node sitting at the center of the diagram’s chest. The green energy spinning around it sparkled faintly and it thinned and thickened as it spun, like a flowing liquid. No, not a liquid. He’d seen that color before, that fluid shimmer moving through the air.
“Is that…monster dust?”