Making his way back the way he had come, away from the strange, beautiful tree that was methodically destroying the stonework around an abandoned orchard, Max struggled to keep his crushing disappointment from tipping over into despair.

He had known the strange thunder likely had a monstrous origin, but he’d still hoped to find people. Even a meeting with a group of people who cultivated a malevolent orchard would have been better than discovering a new monster doing strange, monstrous things. At least then he could have been sure that people still existed somewhere in the jungle. That he wasn’t the only human being in that silent ocean of trees inhabited by murderous plants.

Max paused as the wave of disappointment crested in his chest. He drifted toward the nearest tree, a gnarled, ancient thing with a nest of roots boiling up around its trunk, and put his head in his hands. The despairing ache in his chest had grown to an almost physical pain.

Max sat that way for a while, letting the feelings roil inside him, helpless against them. Helpless to think about his path forward now that the clarity of that morning had dissolved. He had woken up focused, with nothing but the hunt on his mind. Earning himself pants and a shirt had felt like a powerful step forward. He felt, in a small way, in charge of his own destiny. Or at least in charge of his own body and the things he put on it. But that conviction had been pushed aside by the sudden surge of hope that had come with that distant thunder. Then it had been obliterated when that hope had been dashed.

What am I doing here? What do they want from me?

Max knew he had put too much stock in his interpretation of the mural in his hideaway. He’d assumed it was an historical work, but he realized now that he had no reason to believe that. At least not anymore. If it had ever been a realistic depiction of the state of the jungle and its creatures, with one set of monsters protecting human beings from another population of predatory beasts, that didn’t seem to be true anymore. All the people, however many there might have been, could be gone. All the monsters who protected them could have been lost in the struggle against their darker brethren. Or maybe they had simply turned on the people they had once protected.

Or maybe it was all just art–mythical, aspirational, cautionary–that he couldn’t interpret and would never really understand.

Max didn’t know how long he crouched there in the dirt under that ancient, gnarled tree, but eventually his stomach began to growl. He ignored it for a time, but as his hunger deepened, as the fundamental reality of that physical need continued to press in on him, the turmoil in his mind slowly began to recede before it. Only slightly at first, but enough.

I need to eat.

Taking a deep breath, Max stood.

He couldn’t know what the mural had been meant for. Couldn’t know anything except what he had seen with his own eyes since he had arrived: that monsters could die, that their parts could sustain him, and they could provide the dust that Aurum could transform into useful things. That would have to be enough. It was all he needed to continue pushing his way through the jungle until he could find the Emerald Gate. Then he would find real answers in a strange city at the center of a sea of wildflowers.

Hopefully.

Max looked out at the dense riot of jungle greenery in front of him. He remembered how long it had taken him to find a monster the day before. He’d crept quietly through the jungle hoping to take a creature by surprise, but he hadn’t found anything until he’d drawn attention to himself by blasting a low hanging branch off a tree.

He wasn’t sure whether it had been the damage he’d done to the tree or the noise he’d made while doing it, but in either case it seemed that if monsters were nearby, he could get their attention and make them come to him.

Maybe.

There was nothing stopping him from finding out. All he had to do was set something on fire. If that didn’t work, he just had to find a way to be a little noisier about it. If that didn’t work either, he’d start moving through the jungle the way he had the day before, setting things on fire as he went.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll teach myself how to make snares.

He looked down at Aurum. “Prepare yourself, little one.”

The brightling looked up at him, twitched its tail back and forth, but didn’t stand.

Max raised his hand and conjured a bolt of fire into his palm. He was about to send the bolt into the underbrush directly in front of him, but he thought better of it just as he was tensing to let the bolt fly.

What if it pops up right in front of me?

Max lowered his hand with the same feeling he’d had when he narrowly avoided plunging over a cliff and into a ravine the first day he’d arrived. The tentacle monster that had come for him the day before had charged him as soon as it had appeared, but as Max stood there with a bolt of flame flickering in his hand, he realized he didn’t know whether the thing had been nearby and popped up when he’d made himself known, or whether if it had simply appeared because he had damaged the jungle.

That might be possible. Anything is possible in this miserable place.

But that might be a good thing. If creatures did appear where parts of the jungle were broken or burned, he could use that to his advantage. If he could lure the monster to a location some distance away from him, he would have plenty of time to send a few bolts at it before it reached him. Well before it reached him. He liked that idea.

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Max lifted his arm again and aimed his bolt at a heavy looking branch hanging low on a tree a few hundred feet away.

“Ok,” Max said, tilting his head toward Aurum, “now you should prepare yourself.”

Max let the bolt fly and tensed, waiting to see what monstrosity might emerge from the undergrowth to attack him, but his bolt of fire never landed. As it streaked off into the jungle it burned brightly, but as it flew farther and farther it began to fade. Finally, it shrank abruptly to nothing and disappeared without a sound.

Max’s heart leapt in his chest and he looked down at Aurum.

“What just happened?”

The brightling looked up at him and blinked.

“That’s never happened before, little one. Why did it disappear?”

The brightling yawned, revealing a mouthful of needle sharp teeth, and curled into a ball. It sighed quietly as it settled its chin on its tail.

Hopefully that means there’s no reason to panic.

Max raised his hand again and aimed at a branch that was about half the distance to his original target.

The limb burst into flame as soon as his fire bolt touched it. A moment later, a haunting wail echoed down from the lower canopy. Max recognized it as the call of the black furry creature that had hit him in the forehead with a caltrop seed. He scanned the canopy and saw a branch tremble then jump as the creature launched itself through the trees in his direction. It had appeared nearly as far away as the branch Max had targeted with his first firebolt, but he raised his arm and fired at it anyway. He hoped, without much conviction, that they might meet somewhere in the middle.

The bolt streaked toward the creature, but it faded before it struck the monster. A moment later time slowed. Knowing this meant he had a precious few seconds to throw himself out of the way of a viciously pointed missile, Max tried to launch himself sideways. As he did, he saw an approaching blur he suspected was aimed for his head, and knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. When time resumed its normal flow, a yellow sphere appeared around Max and it rang like a bell as the seed struck it.

Max flinched, but when he didn’t feel pain explode through any part of his body, he turned and ran for the nearest tree. He looked down at the brightling as it settled next to him and he remembered the slingshot it had offered him. The illusory Max that had used it in the brightling’s vision had struck a monster much farther away than the version of him that had thrown elemental bolts.

“So my fire has limited range?”

Aurum, now sitting on its haunches by his feet, chirped.

Max sighed, then nodded. “Ok. I’ll make it work.”

Max listened for the sound of shaking tree branches, trying to pinpoint the monster’s location as he waited for the thud of something hitting the other side of the tree. When he heard the sound of bark splintering under the force of the creature’s next thrown caltrop seed, Max stuck his head around the side of the tree, spotted the creature in the canopy, and ran for another tree a few dozen feet closer to his assailant.

Over the next few minutes he worked his way closer to the creature’s perch, sending bolts of fire at it as he tried to gauge how far his fire could reach. After his fourth frantic dash to a tree closer to the menacing creature, his fire bolt struck the branch where the beast had been sitting. A second bolt shattered its blue shield, and a third knocked it off its perch and sent it tumbling to the ground.

“Go get your monster dust,” Max told Aurum as he watched the monster fall into the undergrowth.

As the brightling darted into the underbrush, Max turned and began walking in the direction that would let him avoid the creatures already rushing toward the furry creature’s death cry. He wanted to be fully dressed before it got dark, but he didn’t want to fight multiple monsters at once unless he had to. The jungle continued to surprise him and after encountering a tree that could smash boulders into rubble, he was convinced bigger, more terrible monsters could appear at any moment. He didn’t want to invite two of them to show up at once when he was expecting a tentacle monster he could turn into breakfast.

—

By the time Max had set his third bush on fire and a tentacle monster had appeared from the undergrowth to rush at him, screaming, he felt confident that damaging the jungle was the most effective way to draw monsters to him. He’d also decided that he preferred encounters with the green, sharp-leafed creatures. Not only could he eat the leaves the monster left behind, but he liked that they couldn’t fly, couldn’t climb trees, and had nothing to throw at him. They were still frighteningly fast, but he almost always had enough time to kill the creatures before they reached him. Then he could collect all the tentacles he could comfortably carry and disappear into the trees before other monsters arrived.

Only after setting up his third ambush of the day did he discover that this theory about the way monsters appeared in the jungle was only partially correct. They appeared when the forest had been damaged, but they also, it seemed, roamed the jungle at will. He’d learned this the hard way as he’d hurried away from the site of one kill, moving away the screams of approaching reinforcements. He’d been hurrying but not running, his next meal of roasted tentacles still bundled in his arms. As he’d looked over his shoulder to make sure nothing had seen him yet, he’d walked straight into a nest of green, barbed tentacles.

The monster had risen up when he’d kicked it and the way it had thrown its arms in the air, almost like it was trying to make itself bigger, was the only thing that had kept Max from falling onto it face first. While the creature was still rising up to scream at him, its upper tentacles all pointing skyward in a terrifying cone of blades, Max had dropped the load in his arms and hit the thing with a fire bolt. It had hit him back only once, one tentacle whip bouncing off his yellow shield, before Max had hit it a second time and it went down in a smoking heap.

Afterward, as he rested and ate the tart, steaming mush from inside the monster’s tentacles, he remembered the way he’d been frozen by fear the first time he’d been attacked after landing in the jungle. Then he looked down at the pile of empty roasted tentacles scattered around his feet and felt a little glow of pride.

—

Max didn’t return to his hideaway until the afternoon light began to fade, but as he trudged wearily toward his hideaway, anticipating the safety and the gloom of the mosaic room, he felt good. Exhausted, but good. He was full, he had a good intuitive sense of how far his fire bolts would reach. and he was proud to be wearing both pants and a loose shirt that matched his boots. They were plain, but they were practical, and Max found he almost enjoyed walking through the jungle when it didn’t feel like every branch and leaf and thorn could rake themselves against his bare skin.

He was especially glad to be wearing clothes when he stopped at the entrance to the mosaic room, conjured flame into his hand, and found a woman with a club standing near the far wall.

She wore clothes made from the same material as Max’s, and the club she held with both hands looked very much like the one he had seen himself wielding in illusions where he died trying to beat a monster to death.

And she had a brightling with her.

“Who,” the woman said, her voice low and even, “are you?”