01 ToR - 06
Max spent two days laying on his back next to the ravine.
The first night he slept fitfully, waking whenever an unconscious movement jarred his wound. As afternoon became evening he could tell, vaguely, how long he had been asleep by the fading light in the sky. When the jungle beyond his cocoon of light disappeared into darkness, he lost all sense of time.
He awoke sometime before dawn, shivering and disoriented, as a rainstorm swept through the jungle. The rain made his protective cocoon shimmer and sing with a chorus of hundreds of tiny bells, while a sheet of water flowed under and around him on its way into the ravine. Before he quite understood what was happening he had a panicked vision of being swept away by a flood. He moved reflexively to sit up, but screamed when the pain of his wound knifed through him. He probed at his wound cautiously, afraid it had opened with his sudden movement. It felt hot to the touch, but remained closed.
He spent the rest of the storm in abject misery, trying to suppress the shivers that aggravated his wound and clutching the little golden creature he had lifted off the wet ground to sit on his chest. He had begun calling the creature his little “brightling.” It was both descriptive and affectionate, and when the apparently intelligent creature hadn’t registered an objection the first time Max used it, he kept using it. It crouched patiently just under his chin, weighing almost nothing, and it endured his pained jerks and twitches without complaint. Max finally slept again only when the storm blew away and the sky beyond the canopy began to lighten.
The next day was worse.
Max woke around dawn and he welcomed the sun, grateful to be able to see out into the forest again even if his view was mostly limited to the canopy directly above him and the dense undergrowth along the ravine. By midmorning he had changed his mind. As the sun illuminated the canopy, its power quickly turned the newly saturated jungle into a steamhouse. Max marveled that he could lay on the wet ground, unmoving, and still sweat, and soon his only waking thoughts were split between the unyielding pain in his stomach and his mounting thirst.
By mid-day his need to find water began to surpass his fear of aggravating the wound in his stomach. He contemplated slipping down into the ravine to drink from the stream there, but he abandoned that idea after a brief attempt to sit up had made him scream. He lay still for another few hours until his thirst became unbearable. He decided that he might have to drag himself backward on his elbows into the jungle in search of a stream, hoping desperately to avoid roving monsters, but when he tilted his head back, he spotted a spray of violet, cup-shaped flowers each half the size of his fist. They hadn’t been there the day before, Max was sure, and it seemed incredible that they could have grown quickly enough to open in the darkness and the violence of the storm, but he had no energy to spare marveling at the idea. He only cared that they now nestled among the leaves of a bush that held them upright, and he could see through their translucent sides that many of them had collected rain water.
It was a slow and excruciating process to inch his way backward toward the bush. His wound incandesced with pain, his elbows and palms were scraped raw, and his throat ached from choking back the screams that could bring the leaf monster down on him again–it hadn’t broken through the brightling’s barrier yet, but he didn’t care to watch it try again. As soon as he was close enough to reach toward the vine, he lifted a hand to grasp the nearest flower. His fingers were shaking and clumsy with exhaustion and his flailing caused half the flowers to jump and sway, spilling their meager contents in every direction. He gasped and nearly wept when two spilled onto his face, their water draining uselessly away into the dirt under his head. Eventually he managed to bring three of the flowers to his lips, carefully winding the vine around his shaking hand, inch by inch, to draw the blooms toward him. Those few mouthfuls of water were warm and filled with grit that coated his tongue, but they were the most intensely pleasurable moments he could remember since arriving in the jungle–that he could remember at all, maybe. After he emptied all the flowers he could reach, he carefully arranged the delicate cups by his elbow. He lost consciousness hoping with all his being that it would rain again soon.
Max opened his eyes that afternoon as a new pain began to grow in his stomach. Despair swept through him. He had resigned himself to laying there on the ground only so long as it took for his wound to heal enough that he could get to his feet and stumble, cautiously, in search of help. But this new pain in his stomach clearly meant that his injury was worsening, progressing to some kind of illness. It wasn’t until he had calmed himself with a few deep breaths that he recognized this new sensation for what it really was: hunger pains.
Max looked at the row of violet flowers standing at his elbow.
Flowers were edible. Some of them. Weren’t they?
“No, no.”
Max rolled his head back and forth as he pushed the thought from his mind. He needed those for water. He couldn’t solve one problem by making another.
He looked around again, surveying the plants nearby. None of the waxy leaves or the fuzzy, thorny vines looked promising.
“Little one,” Max said, reaching down to touch two fingers to the head of the golden animal sitting by his hip. It had been looking impassively out at the ravine, but it turned to look at him when he touched it. “Can you find us something to eat?”
The brightling watched him, eyes unblinking.
“Can you bring me food?” Max said.
The creature didn’t move.
Max let his head fall back to the ground with a thud and swallowed a sob. It seemed to understand him sometimes. The night before it had nuzzled into his arms when he called for it. But it apparently couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fetch him anything that might blunt his hunger.
He ended up eating a few leaves from the vine that had grown his violet drinking cups, but he regretted chewing them almost immediately. They were hard and bitter and difficult to swallow. He regretted his choice more vehemently when his hunger pains quickly transformed into nausea and the agony of his stomach moving to eject its new contents.
Max fought the nausea for hours, refusing to contemplate what vomiting would do to the wound in his stomach. After a particularly painful series of cramps, he glared at the brightling that still sat by his side, nuzzling his hand when he reached for it, but otherwise apparently indifferent to his suffering.
“Did you save me just for this?”
The brightling offered no response.
“What did I do to deserve this?”
He threw up a few minutes later, choking between screams.
When his stomach finally settled, Max drifted into exhausted sleep, wondering vaguely if it might have been better if the brightling had simply let the leaf monster finish its violent work.
—
On the morning after his second night in the jungle, Max stared up into the canopy with a fatalistic calm. He had drunk his fill of rainwater during his second midnight rainstorm, and he had become very good at laying very still. So good that the pain in his stomach would sometimes lessen enough that he could pretend, now and then, that a monster hadn’t drilled a deep and terrible hole into him.
But it had, and he was beginning to come to terms with the fact that it might not heal quickly enough for him to hobble his way through the forest to find help. He would never find the Emerald Gate. Would never pass through it to find Orliat, City of Shards. Would never remember who he was. Would never meet or confront his tormentors.
Max cupped a hand beneath the rear legs of the brightling, which now always sat by his hip, and swept it up to sit on his chest. He looked into its great black eyes.
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“How long are you going to put me through this?”
The brightling twitched an ear, turned, and leapt from his chest to stand next to the wound on his stomach. It lowered its nose and Max could hear it gently sniffing.
“That’s new,” Max said, craning his neck to look down at the golden creature.
The brightling straightened, apparently satisfied, and looked back at him.
Max frowned. “Little one?”
The brightling’s eyes blazed with golden light and Max winced, turning his head and raising one arm to shield his eyes. When the glow didn’t fade, Max cautiously lowered his arm and turned to look at the brightling. As he did, he marveled that even with all his twisting and sudden movements, the wound in his stomach offered only a dull ache.
Slowly, carefully, he propped himself up on his elbows. The pain in his stomach flared briefly, throbbed, but it no longer sent searing lances through his abdomen.
He stared at the brightling. He thought maybe it had finally taken pity on him and used its strange powers to heal him further, but this new light hadn’t touched Max’s body. Instead, floating above the brightling’s head Max saw the outline of a human figure drawn in golden light. Glowing nodes winked into being on the forehead, neck, chest, forearms, hands, waist, thighs, shins, and feet. Above the head hovered a silver circle. Next to the left hand of the diagram a point of light flickered and shimmered, sending out occasional rays of multicolored light. It reminded him of the iridescent stars that had gathered in the mouth of the stone monster back in the sea of poppies before it had sent him hurtling up into the sky. Next to the right hand of the diagram a multicolored bubble shimmered and pulsed. Max frowned and squinted at it. Not one bubble, but maybe three, each of them undulated and pulsing. As their surfaces rose and fell, he thought he could count three distinct colors: yellow, green, and blue.
“What is this?” Max said, looking at the brightling. “What are you showing me?”
The brightling’s ear twitched.
Slowly, deliberately, the brightling lifted its left hand and let it hang in the air.
Max waited, but when the brightling simply watched him, its hand poised in the air, he shifted his weight to his right elbow and lifted his left hand.
The silver circle shifted upward.
“Oh.”
The brightling opened its mouth and gave a short, warbling chirp.
Max dragged his finger through the air and the circle moved with it. Each time it passed over one of the glowing nodes on the outline of the body, a low musical tone filled his ears. Max dragged it to the shimmering, superimposed bubbles, and they made the same low musical sound and continued their rippling. When it passed over the multi-colored star next to the figure’s left hand, it flared and sent off a steady stream of blue, green, and yellow sparks.
“Pretty,” Max said, and the brightling chirped.
Max hesitated. “Now what?”
The brightling jerked its head forward a fraction, sniffing as if to punctuate the movement.
Frowning, Max jabbed his finger forward.
The sparkling star expanded rapidly, then split apart. In its place hovered three separate stars, each a single color: yellow, blue, and green.
“Ah,” Max said. “So if I…”
Dragging the silver circle over the green star, Max pushed his finger forward again.
Immediately, the star exploded in a little nova and expanded into a circle of fizzing sparks, obliterating the rest of the diagram. Inside the circle Max saw himself–still naked–facing down the leaf monster that had attacked him two days before. In his right hand he held a slingshot. Slung around his waist was a belt with a rough leather bag. As the monster rushed forward, the image of Max reached into the bag and pulled out a stone. After fitting it to the slingshot, he sent it flying toward the monster.
Max watched as the stone struck the monster. A globe of yellow light encased the monster with a flash and the monster shuddered but continued its charge. The illusory Max sent more stones through the air in rapid succession as the monster approached. The first of the two shattered the yellow globe, struck the monster directly, and one of its flailing arms exploded. The last stone hit the monster in the middle of its body and sent it crashing to the ground.
Max stared as the scene began to repeat. Then he looked down at the brightling.
“Can you give me one of those?”
The little golden creature gestured with its nose again, so Max jabbed his finger forward.
A shower of green sparks began winding around his wrist, hissing and popping. When they faded, an insubstantial slingshot lay in his hand.
“Oh, you beautiful thing!”
Max reached down to stroke the brightling, but it stepped back smartly, out of reach. Startled, Max jerked his hand back. The slingshot in his hand disappeared as the circle of green sparks hissed and shrank.
“No!”
As the green circle closed, the golden outline of a body reappeared, as did the three gem-colored stars.
“Oh.” Max sighed. “Tricky beast.”
Max looked at the three stars, remembering the yellow sphere that had appeared around the monsters as the stones hit it. The color seemed to match the shimmering yellow star.
“Well. Let’s see the others.”
Max dragged the silver circle over the yellow star and punched his finger forward.
The yellow star expanded as the green one had, revealing another naked Max, but this time he stood with both hands gripping a long, gnarled looking wooden club. As the leaf monster rushed toward him through the undergrowth, this version of Max stepped forward to meet it.
Max winced as the tentacles of the leaf monster lashed at the illusory version of himself. A bubble of yellow energy appeared around him to intercept the first blow, but it shattered under the force of the monster’s swing and the tentacle scored a wound across his chest.
The image of him swung the club with impressive looking force, but it struck the monster’s sphere of yellow energy and bounced away. The monster retaliated by driving one of its tentacles entirely through Max’s stomach. Max stared in horror at the barbed edges of the leafy tentacle protruding from his image’s back. He put a hand gingerly over his own stomach, then jerked his finger backward, trying to replicate the dismissing motion he’d accidentally triggered moments before. The circle of yellow sparks closed just like the green one had.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Max dragged the silver circle over the last star.
The blue star expanded as the other two had, but it stopped at only half the size. On a field of pure white light, seven symbols appeared: a raindrop, a lightning bolt, a flame, a jagged pebble, a snowflake, a green leaf, and a triangular, stylized vortex.
Max selected the snowflake.
The blue circle of sparks continued to expand, revealing the now familiar scene. The version of Max that appeared stood without weapons, but he held one hand extended in the direction of the leaf monster. As it charged, he pressed his palm forward slightly and an amorphous dart of blue-white energy flashed toward the monster. When it struck, a blue sphere of energy appeared around the monster. Frost spread over the globe, then disappeared. Another ice bolt shattered the blue globe and covered the right side of the monster in white frost. A third dart sent the monster crashing to the ground, white mist slowly spreading out from its body in a frosty halo.
Max smiled.
“Interesting.”
He cycled through each of the elements, his enthusiasm growing as he watched the monster collapse under each elemental onslaught. After watching the monster die a seventh time, this time under a rain of lightning bolts, Max jerked his finger backward to return to the field of elemental symbols. He looked down at the brightling.
“How many of these can I choose?”
He waited. Finally, the creature’s left ear twitched. Once.
Max sighed. “Ah.”
He considered his options again. What would be the most effective option in a jungle potentially full of monstrous birds and plants?
The answer seemed fairly obvious.
Max dragged the silver circle over to the flame. He watched the leaf monster succumb to a series of small, bright fireballs, then punched his finger forward. In a shower of blue sparks, four brass rings appeared on the fingers of his right hand, each joined to its neighbor at the top by a short, delicate brass chain.
Max flexed his fingers. He could feel the metal bands click together, though they remained transparent. If he made a fist, his fingers came together unrestricted.
Max looked at the brightling.
“I want this one. I want to be able to throw fire.”
The brightling watched him for a moment, then jerked its head forward again with another sniff.
Taking a deep breath, Max punched his finger forward one last time.
The brightling’s body blazed with golden light and Max’s ears filled with the sound of a ringing gong as the rings on his hand solidified.
As soon as they had become real, the golden cocoon that separated him from the forest popped with the fading sound of a bell. In the undergrowth nearby, the leaf monster shrieked.