Max woke up shivering and disoriented. His neck and his shoulder ached, and the left side of his body felt like all the warmth had leached away into the ground beneath him. He waited for his eyes to adjust, but when the darkness around him remained complete, he panicked. He pushed himself up off the ground, then yelped when his back touched something cold and slick.

Max scrambled to his feet and spun around. Something must have crawled out of the jungle while he slept and he had woken up just in time to defend himself. He held up both hands, waving them in the dark, ready to ward off an attack.

The brightling swam into view then, still curled into a ball, but its large eyes and great ears were turned in his direction. Its body gave off a faint glow that did almost nothing to illuminate the stone it lay on.

Stone.

“Right,” Max said, struggling up through his exhaustion to remember where he was. “Underground. Under the jungle. And I can make fire.”

Max held his hand out, palm up, and a fire sprang up. As the chamber's thousands of reflective tiles lit up around him, Max could see that nothing had snuck underground to devour him in his sleep. The bare skin of his back had just touched the tiles of the wall.

Still safe. For now.

Max folded his arms over his chest, hugging himself for warmth, and let the fire go out. He looked down at the brightling.

“You’d wake me up if something was about to eat me, wouldn’t you?”

His only answer was attentive silence. The brightling’s eyes were so black against its softly glowing golden fur, that they were indistinguishable from the darkness all around and Max had the uneasy thought that the creature’s face looked more like a mask than anything else.

“Or would you just let me lose an arm or a leg,” he said darkly, “then wrap me up in that golden cocoon?”

Max wondered again whether the creature could or would save him from death only once. Now that he had chosen a weapon to use against the jungle’s denizens, maybe he would have to rely more on his own skill and ingenuity.

He conjured flame and looked around the room. What would he have done if he had chosen the club or the slingshot? This flame couldn’t warm him, but at least it helped light his way.

Max let the flame go out again, then bent down to scoop up the brightling. He cradled it to his chest as he’d done while he lay on the ground by the ravine. The creature was warm, dry, and impossibly soft, as if nothing in the jungle could settle onto its fur. Its preternatural cleanliness was odd, but basically everything about the creature was odd, and certainly not any more miraculous than the abilities it had given Max.

“Sorry,” Max said, dragging his chin lightly along the top of the brightling’s head. “I’d be dead without you. You’ve done plenty.”

Max longed to lay back down, but he knew he needed to warm himself. He didn’t realize the stone floor could rob him of so much heat while the air around him was still so warm. How long had he been asleep?

Max moved to the arch and the slope that led up to the jungle. With the flame in his hand he could see the camouflage he'd pulled over the entrance, but when he let the flame go out he could see nothing beyond the screen he’d erected. He'd slept into the night. And if he wanted any more sleep, he needed to find a way to warm up.

Still holding the brightling, envious of the warmth coming from its soft little body, Max turned back to the glittering room. He’d just have to keep moving for a while. Maybe he could pace around the chamber until he’d banished the chill. Putting his left hand on the chamber wall, he began to trace the room’s perimeter, but he tripped almost immediately and the brightling tumbled out of his grip with a chirp.

“Sorry, little one,” Max said. Leaning his other hand against the wall to steady himself, he conjured flame.

Looking down at the floor Max saw the sharp edge of a stone that had buckled from the pressure of a root rising underneath it. He glanced around the room and saw many others just like it and resigned himself to the halting pace that caution required. But before he let his fire fade to take his first few steps, the colorful tiles on the wall next to him caught his eye.

Max lifted his hand higher for a better view and he froze when the glassy, brightly colored tiles resolved into images–murals–far more complicated than the geometric patterns he thought he’d seen during his first pass through the room. He leaned in closer when he began to understand what the murals were depicting: a host of monsters locked in combat.

Slowly, filled with both dread and wonder, Max made his way around the room. Eventually, he began to divine patterns. Two of the monsters on the wall he had encountered already–the bird with the explosive tail and the tentacle monster. These two were among the creatures portrayed in bold colors and bright tints, and their poses were open and powerful, with wings, tentacles, and other appendages spread wide in grand gestures. Appearing opposite these bright forms were creatures depicted in much darker shades. Their forms were twisted, bent, and jagged. Max puzzled over some of the darker creatures that closely resembled those portrayed in brighter tones, but eventually he realized that only the darker versions appeared to deviate in some way from the form shared by all their bright counterparts. The vibrantly colored creatures sometimes differed in color, but their physical aspects were uniform. The darker creatures were each unique in some way, and their unique features were always depicted in the most somber shades. The darker creatures were also almost always portrayed along the mural’s periphery, near the floor or moving down from the ceiling.

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But the scenes that drew Max’s attention most were those that included people.

People!

The orchard and the ruins he stood in were proof that someone lived in the jungle, now or in the past, but seeing other human beings depicted so clearly seemed like more consequential proof.

The human figures mostly lacked individual characteristics, appearing with various skin tones and in various states of dress or undress, and their attitudes toward the two types of creature, dark and light, were uniform. They cowered before the darker monsters, which often loomed over them with menacing or predatory postures. The more vibrant creatures they greeted with open, easy gestures, and some groups of humans appeared to celebrate a bright creature that stood triumphantly over the crumpled form of a dark monster apparently vanquished in combat.

Max paused in his circuit around the room and tried to recall the appearances of the monsters that had attacked him. As far as he could remember they looked just like the bright, beautiful versions in these murals. Versions apparently celebrated by the human figures.

So why had they attacked him? Were they both members of this darker horde? Had they been aberrant in some way he hadn’t been able to recognize?

Max looked over his shoulder at the brightling that was trailing silently after him.

“Did that green tentacle thing look odd to you? Strange compared to the others you’ve seen? Oh!” Max turned quickly back to the wall. “Are you on here somewhere?”

Max retraced his steps, studying the beautiful, multihued creatures that appeared to be defending the human inhabitants of the forest.

“No,” he said, both puzzled and disappointed. “No little golden beasts with big charming ears.”

He stopped again, a new thought he didn’t dare voice rising urgently in his mind. He poured over the circular mural a third time, carefully inspecting every creature he found. Finally, long minutes later, he straightened with a sigh of relief.

“And no little golden beasts that look like they might want to eat people,” he said, reaching down to scratch behind the brightling’s ear with his free hand. “Sorry to doubt you. Again.”

Max straightened and looked at the scene on the wall before him. A great green monster occupied the center of the wall and its emerald, serpentine coils encircled a large group of cowering people. Standing defiantly before its great jaws stood a massive, red, darkly twisted tree that reached out for the cowering humans with needle-like claws.

Max studied the huddled figures, appreciating intimately the terror they would have felt when confronted by a hideous walking plant that wanted to kill them.

“Where did all the people go, little one? Are they hiding? Did their guardians fail them?”

As if in answer, a splashing sound echoed up the hallway from the room with the submerged stairs. Max spun and threw a fire bolt at the entrance to the hallway. It struck the wall with an orange flare just beyond the arch and then the room fell into darkness.

Max took two quick steps sideways to position himself directly in front of the archway, holding his hand pointed in the direction where he thought the center of the arch would be. When the sound of another splash echoed out of the other room he blasted a second fire bolt at the noise. He was gratified to see that his aim had been true and his burning missile streaked down the hallway to explode against the far wall of the half-submerged room. He conjured another bolt but held it at the ready, listening intently for the sound of something splashing up out of the water and onto the stone landing. When no other sound came from the other chamber, Max cautiously made his way to the dark hallway.

He paused at the arch to make sure nothing had slipped silently out of the water and into the hallway. Nothing had, and he allowed himself a quick, curious glance at the place just beyond the arch where his first fire bolt had struck. It hadn’t loosened any stone, but the rock still radiated heat.

Max worked his way down the hallway one step at a time, trying to spend no longer than a fraction of a second in the dark after each step. When he finally reached the stone landing he found the water glassy and unbroken. He looked up. By the light of his flame he could just make out the shape of a stone slowly toppling inward from the wall he had disturbed the day before. It fell silently into the hole he’d made–the hole he’d made in what sort of roof or former floor, he still couldn’t tell–before disappearing into the water with a splash.

Max crouched in the hallway for long minutes, waiting to make sure no monster lurked at the top of the hole, poised to follow the stones. By the time he’d convinced himself he wouldn’t be speared by a tentacle monster the moment he turned his back, all his adrenaline had drained away. The sweat that had sprung up on his skin as he anticipated a fight had cooled, leaving him shivering again.

He stood to creep back down the hallway to the mural. Nothing was going to follow him, not yet, but how long would it be before something surprised him? Max sidestepped his way back down the hallway, casting glances up and down as he went and thinking about the pathetic human figures he’d seen cowering in the mural. They’d had each other, had been part of a civilization that could transform the jungle to make space for orchards, build underground spaces, and design stunning murals. And they were gone now, so far as he could tell. What could he do in this horrible place all by himself?

Max stopped at the end of the hallway when his back slid against warm stone. The place he’d struck with his fire bolt still radiated heat. He leaned back against it gratefully, reveling in the dry heat. He let his shoulders relax as his head slumped back onto the stone.

When he began to feel his eyelids droop and the heaviness of sleep steal over his mind, he pushed himself away from the wall. He turned to face the mosaic chamber, held up his hand and sent a fire bolt down onto the floor near the far side of the chamber. He walked slowly, carefully through the darkness until he could feel the heat under his feet. It was almost too hot to stand on, but once he was sure it wouldn’t burn him, he sank down into a crouch. As the warmth drifted up over his clammy skin, he took a deep, steadying breath.

“Maybe they didn’t have this,” Max said, thinking about the human figures cowering and running from monsters all over the mural. He looked down at the golden creature that sat by his foot. “Maybe they didn’t have you. Whatever you are.”

Max walked slowly through the chamber, systematically heating the stones by carpeting the floor with fire, then he clustered a series of bolts near the wall between the open archways. Stretching out on top of that luxurious patch of heat, Max stared up into the dark.

“I think we’ll do a little better tomorrow, little one,” Max said. “Tomorrow I think I’ll try hunting.”