(Year 997, 17th of Full Inji, 12:09AM)

The first matter of business, on the way down into the cave, was figuring out how to light the way - getting my hands on a light source I could bring with me.

It would've been nice to have a latern, or even a torch... I didn't have either, though, so the best I could do was make my own.

A bit of scrounging outside the cave mouth (careful scrounging, in case Faen was still lurking the woods) revealed more than enough fallen branches to fit my purpose, and I went through the effort to gather them up and [Devour] them one by one. It had occurred to me that when I absorbed small objects, like the pebble I'd first used to test out [Absorb], they seemed to hold their shape - a pebble went in, and a pebble would come back out, rather than a mush of stone. A bit of testing earlier in the day, when I'd been building a fire, had revealed that small sticks could work the same way. With a bit of fire (or heat and light, rather) also inside me, it was easy enough to light one of the sticks.

Well, alright, it wasn't easy - I could only make fire by expelling heat from one hand and light from the other, so cupping my hands around a stick meant I had to hold it between my feet to prop it up, and then it was an equally annoying process (with a couple of false starts, including one close call that nearly set my pants on fire) to get my hands around the makeshift torch and make use of it.

It wasn't as easy to hold as I guessed a real torch would be, and it might not burn for as long, but I would have plenty of sticks to replace it with.

All that left was to move forward, and with one more glance aside at Shimmer (who nodded back, prepared just as well as I was), I let my feet carry me into the darkness.

My makeshift torch, as it turned out, also had another flaw: It didn't light the cave as much as I would've hoped. The firelight was a dim orange-brown, and only a few feet ahead of me it faded into total darkness.

Fortunately, I didn't need to see where I was going in order to know my way. The tugging sensation inside me was fading, but I could still feel it pulling me forward, deeper into the cave, toward what Shimmer had called a "monster". There were a lot of things that could be called monsters, according to the books I'd read, and I'd never seen any of them in person...

I could feel my body clenching up, slightly, from the fear I had to admit was setting in, but I also had to admit that I was curious to see what was waiting for me in the dark.

That curiosity faded immediately at the first sound of something moving around in the darkness. I had to stop dead in order to listen closer, and then the sounds of fluttering wings and scurrying feet immediately sent me stumbling backward. I nearly fell, nearly lost my grip on my torch, but instead I narrowly managed to twist myself to the side, making a sort of 'swoop' motion instead of falling.

In doing so, I managed to get myself out of the way of an entire pack of rats, at least ten of the horrible little things, charging past me toward the mouth of the cave.

I could still hear the sound of fluttering wings, but they didn't seem to be coming toward me. When I finally convinced myself that nothing else was on the way out, I found myself releasing a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding, and I asked, "...Shimmer?"

"I can only assume that these creatures were running from the Monster. You can still feel its presence in the direction they came from, yes?"

Taking a deep breath, I nodded to Shimmer, and then continued into the cave, slowly but surely. "I do. Can you, uh..." The answer to questions like these tended to be a 'no', but I still asked, "Do you know anything else about this 'Monster'? Is there anything else you can tell me?"

I could barely make out Shimmer's hazy form from the darkness ahead of me. After a moment, she answered, "I know that a Monster - a monster like this, a Monster in the purest sense - is made from pure Chaos. It is... it would not be wild in the same way that a wolf is wild. In nature there are laws, patterns, and structure. This Monster, whatever it looks like, will be unaccustomed to any order whatsoever, and it will be unhappy to be bound by ways in which our world works."

I raised an eyebrow. "So... it's not from our world, and it's unhappy to be here? That makes me feel kinda bad for... whatever it is."

Shimmer shook her head. "It will be a mindless creature, Aedan - a creature of pure violence, with no impulse or purpose except to lash out against this world and everything in it. Whatever pity you feel, do not lower your guard on that account, else you may be ripped to shreds."

I suddenly realized that I was slowing down... and after hearing that I was walking toward something that wanted to tear me apart, who could blame me? That wouldn't do, though. I'd come down here to solve a Monster-based problem, and if this Monster was a killer, its existence was definitely a problem in need of being solved.

It took effort to keep my feet moving forward into the depths of the cave, but I did. Slowly at first, but making my way back up to a steady pace, I marched forward into the cave, surrounded by the darkness and the cold... and the beating of wings...

I really should've expected it when the first of the bats attacked. Really, I should've. I knew something was wrong with the cave, what with the Monster and all, and I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that bats were supposed to be cowardly creatures that didn't like humans. They didn't like people and they didn't like light, let alone liking fire.

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That was why I should've realized that it wasn't right for the bats to be circling around me - they should've been running away. Instead, one of the bats swooped in and smacked into my head, and then it was open season.

Bats, as it turns out, have claws sharp enough to break skin. Not all of the bats seemed to realize this immediately, most were just trying to swoop into me and beat me to death with their body-weight, but every time a bat happened to scratch me by accident, it would immedaitely seem to realize "Hey, this works" and then start scratching at me more.

For my part, mobbed by bats as I was, I did happen to be holding a flaming stick. I wasn't all that great at hitting trees with axes, so it was obviously even more difficult to hit moving bats with a stick, but there were enough bats around me that I was hitting something more often than not, and every time I did, they flew away with a screech, some of them still lit with fire they'd caught from my makeshift weapon.

"SHIMMER," I yelled as I continued to swing at the bats, "I- WHY ARE THEY ATTACKING ME!?"

I managed to catch one bat particularly hard with my stick at the right angle, and it fell to the ground, either dead outright or too dazed to fly. I saw Shimmer hover over to it, looking down. "...Curious," she murmured as I continued to fight. "I can sense traces of Chaos, its touch and its taint, from the bat's body. Perhaps -"

With a thwack, I knocked another bat to the ground. "ALRIGHT, I - I think I see where this is going! The Monster is supposed to be super violent because it's made of Chaos, right? So - so what, are these bats made of Chaos too, or is Chaos just spreading around?"

I was down to just a few bats fighting me now. The trouble was that, given my aim was so bad, fewer targets to hit meant the hits I was lucky enough to land were fewer and farther between.

Even worse, with a sharp crack, the lighting of the room abruptly changed, and I looked down to see that half of my stick - the burning half - had broken off and fallen to the floor. I knew I didn't have time to be annoyed by that, though, so I just popped another stick into my hand using [Expel], a slightly longer and thicker one this time, and went back to batting at the remaining bats, not even pausing to light it. Waving my torch around wildly hadn't helped, I decided, so maybe it was time for a more measured strike. I watched one of the bats rear back and get some distance, as well as some height. I held my stick firmly in both hands, trying to ignore another bat scratching at my shoulder, and as the first bat swooped around and flew straight at me, I reared the stick up one way, then swung it the other with all the force I could, and -

THWACK.

Probably the first solid hit so far that hadn't been a total accident. Almost absent-mindedly, I lifted the stick up to thump it against the bat that had been clawing at my shoulder, and that was that. As I looked around, I realized that all the other bats had either run off, deciding that attacking me wasn't worth the trouble, or fallen to the ground, either knocked-out or dead.

Should I have felt bad about that?

Before I had time to answer that question one way or another, I heard Shimmer whisper, "I may have figured out how to answer your question."

I turned back to her, still hovering over one of the fallen bats, and tried to figure out what she meant. "So... you know how Chaos is affecting the bats?"

Shimmer shook her head. "No, but I believe I have found a way for you to find out... provided I am correct about some things."

I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that. "Is it going to be bad for us if you're wrong about those things?"

Shimmer shook her head again. "No... most likely not." Spending no more time on my worries, she continued, "I simply need you to [Devour] one of the bats, or at least attempt this. If the bats are made from the basic essence of the Path of Chaos, as the Monster must be, you should not be able to consume them. If you can consume them, then, we must conclude that they are simple bats possessed by Chaos' power. Do you understand?"

All in all, that did makes sense. I took a moment to pick up my broken torch, fire slowly dying, and light my new stick of choice off it - much easier than it had been to light the first one. New torch lit and old torch reabsorbed, I crouched down next to the bat Shimmer had been hovering over, taking a look. I wasn't exactly familiar with what bats looked like, I realized, but looking down at the probably-dead bat, it seemed... normal? I could see a bit of blackening where I'd hit it with the makeshift torch, plus some blood around the spot I'd hit, but as far as I could tell, it was a completely normal bat.

Which meant the only way to find out more would be... exactly what Shimmer had suggested.

Holding my torch aside with one hand, I reached down to the bat with the other. I gripped the bat tightly, and held in my mind an intent to [Devour].

Immediately, an illusory message appeared in front of me, reading, "Warning: Not all components can currently be absorbed. Proceed?"

That made it sound like Shimmer was on the right track, but if I could absorb any part of the bat...

I made up my mind to [Devour] the bat, and it was... strange. Before, when I would absorb a deer or a rabbit, it was almost like the space inside me was swallowing the corpse whole. This time, though, it was like the corpse of the bat was absorbed in layers. Dark skin and fur was sucked off from pink meat, meat was sucked away from bone, and bone was sucked in as well... but there, where the bones had been, I could see something left behind. Not an object, exactly, it was like...

I wanted to say it was a crystal, but before my eyes, it sort of wisped up off the ground, like a lick of orange flame, and faded into nothingness.

I looked up at Shimmer, who just whispered, "The essence of Chaos..."

I stood up, an eyebrow now raised. "So... that was the 'essence' you were talking about? You thought the bat would be made of the stuff, but it just had a little bit inside... what does that mean?"

Shimmer's voice seemed lower than normal as she responded, "It means... that the Monster can spread the essence of Chaos to other living things, and in doing so, spread its violent nature."

Shimmer didn't need to say anything else, because the next question to ask was obvious: What if it could do the same thing to people?

That thought made images of the night before flash in my mind - images of the townsfolk gathered around the bonfire, watching a woman burn...

"That settles it then," I said. "Let's get in there and kill this thing."

Shimmer's voice was still low, but closer to normal, as she asked, "Aedan... you are bleeding from your scratches. Are you sure it is wise to continue?"

I shook my head. "Maybe it isn't, but we can't turn back now. Killing this thing... it needs to be done. I don't want to give it a chance to do something... worse than this. Not to anybody."

With that, I put one foot in front of the other, and we ventured deeper into darkness.