“Would you like to talk about it?” Aviela had looked at me this morning with concern but had not pressed me for answers about my hand wrapped in scraps of cloth. Half a day of hiking through the forest away from the river tribe static has loosened her tongue and prickled at her curiosity long enough.

  “Not in particular.”

  “Do I need to worry about you turning sickly and dying?”

  “Would it concern you if I did? You’ve only known me a few days.” I’m petulant, but my hand is agonising so I can’t contain myself. I’d peeked beneath the cloth earlier in the day and it was red, raw, and weeping, but it didn’t seem to be harbouring the kind of hot death that I’d seen so many times.

  “I can still leave you to fend for yourself. If you start now you could be back at the river tribe before null cycle.”

  I grind my teeth until my jaw aches. “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Which is something that we should talk about.”

  “I don’t want to, Aviela. Can’t I have something of myself?”

  Aviela comes to a stop abruptly and turns so quickly that its a flash to me. I step back. Two Marked so soon together, moving at different purposes but so close in power that I’m ashamed at the chill that sprints along my spine.

  “How?” She stares into my eyes, hers flicking from one to the other as though she is searching for something. “It is unbelievable that he would be able to harm you and not receive repercussions from the architects. And yet there he was, whole and hale, and you with this.” She pulls at my hand and I am powerless to stop her as she unravels the cloth to reveal the wound beneath.

  I suck in my breath as the covering pulls back and with it the edges of the puckered wound. It’s an awful thing. “It hurts, you know.”

  “It could be worse.” She looks at it for a moment longer before letting out a sigh and releasing me. “I suppose that you’ll live…You never mentioned how your face became so scarred, Pik. And here is a pyromancer with a penchant for hurting you.”

  I can feel my face as it reddens; the skin around my new eye is tighter, like when you cannot scratch somewhere and it maddens you by itching. “I really don’t want to talk about my past, Aviela. I am very grateful that you’ve offered to teach me and I’ll understand…” I take another deep breath to steady myself. “I’ll understand if you want to leave me behind, but I want to put Oran and my old tribe behind me. I want a new future without…memories.”

  “Hmm.” She taps a finger against her lip and frowns at me. “Fine. I’m not going to leave you alone for something silly like this. Betray me and I’ll drop you like a bad smell, but you can have your secrets. I need to know if this will be dangerous. That’s all. If someone can hurt you without the architects intervening then does that mean it can happen to me? Do we need to be more careful of strangers?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I only know that the architects made no move to help me.”

  “Well, there’s not much we can do I suppose. Its not something I’m eager to test. I could try stabbing you a bit, see what happens?”

  I take a step back and raise my hands, my eyes wide until I see her smile and realise that she’s joking. “Funny. You’re a funny person, Aviela.”

  “I try. Right. Time’s running on; keep up acolyte.”

  It’s another day before we cross through into the next segment; it’s a darker land of steep drops and jagged stones with vines that creep from every crevice and trees with branches that reach for the sky like crooked fingers. It’s isn’t barren, though, there are pools of water with fish, dense tangles of greenery that flock with screeching birds as we close, and great lumbering beasts with heads hanging from heavy necks and trunks that trail to the ground.

  My hunger has worsened. I have eaten from the obelisks that we found on the way as the pangs grew more intense, but instead of sating me, the food made my stomach ache all the more. The great beasts are looking more of a feast than a foe by the mile.

  Aviela has us stop near a slowly bubbling stream in a depression; it is sheltered on one side by a sheer rock wall with a shallow cave curtained with fronds. She places her pack into the cave and brings me to the centre of the flat area in front.

  “So. You don’t know anything about advancement and ascension?” She stands with her hands on her hips and her feet set shoulder width apart. I feel loose and awkward opposite her.

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  “I know that the Marked ascend to the next place when the trials are called. I know that most people just find out they’re Heightened one day and there are some seeds in the dungeons that make you a Marked?”

  She grimaces. “The worst part of all this is going to be picking the truth from the mess of assumptions you’ve made. Yes to the trials. Although I think there are other ways, the trials are what most Marked go through to ascend to whatever is above the sky.”

  “Heaven.”

  “What?

  “Heaven. It’s where the sun shines; if we ascend enough we get to heaven and bask in the sunlight.”

  Aviela sighs. “Yes, Pik. That is what we’re taught in our cocoon dreams, we ascend to the sun and paradise.”

  “Why haven’t you ascended?”

  “Haven’t wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  “I like it down here enough that I don’t want to go up. Stop asking questions and let me teach you. Blazing sun this is harder than I thought it’d be…”

  I bite my tongue to stop myself blurting out more impertinent questions. We’d been cordial for our time together but Aviela had been quiet on matters of substance. Perhaps it was a reprisal for me not wanting to talk about the fifth tribe.

  “Anyway, I am speaking about advancing from your state of heightened to that of a Marked. It’s clear you have no real idea how any of this works so I will tell you and you will remain quiet and calm until I’m done.”

  She glares at me and I remain as quiet as a whisper on the wind.

  “Good. Right, every Marked goes through a few stages before they can accept the mantle of their powers. You must: harden your body, sharpen your mind, align your senses, find wholeness in yourself, and situate yourself in the environment. If you miss any one of these stages then going into a dungeon and eating the seeds will have either no effect, in the best case, or outright kill you. That is the most often realised outcome, by the way.”

  “I don’t remember our Marked going through those things.”

  “They will have done. Sad to say, but from what little you’ve told me, it doesn’t seem like you were let into the knowledge. Maybe it was something they taught the Heightened?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fine, well it’s not that important. So, we need a plan to get you ready to receive your mark. The easiest but also somewhat hardest of all these things is to harden your body. This is making you stronger than a normal Heightened, your body tougher, and also more resilient to things like disease and injury.”

  “So, how do I do that?” I look around. “Do I run a bunch? Lift some heavy rocks?”

  She winces. “You can do that, but there’s a faster way. I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  My eyes flick back to her, then out into the distance where I hear the call of what of the mammoth creatures we’d seen before. “Make my body tougher?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t have any weapons.”

  “It’s best if you don’t, actually.”

  “Did you do this?”

  “No, I did this the old fashioned way. Lots of training, sparring with people like Lei, lifting heavy stones.”

  My mouth waters at the thought of what she’s implying. “I think you want me to go out there and hunt those big creatures.”

  She nods. “I want you to pit your strength and endurance against theirs. You need to hone your body to a peak of physical perfection. You’re already stronger than you have any right to be, it’s almost like you’ve been at this for a week already. But yes, we’ll stay here for a while and you’ll fight those monsters until you’re bloody, black, and blue and you’ll do it all while focusing on how it feels for every muscle and bone in your body until you know your physical shell better than you’ve ever known anything in your life.”

  “Once you’re done.” She smiles at me and leaps straight up until her feet are at twice the height of my head. “You’ll be able to do something like that.”

  I turn away and walk to the bubbling waters of the stream and sink to my haunches. The water is clear; I can see the to the bottom where the bed is made of pebbles and grains. Amongst the cracks formed by the fallen, tumbled rocks are strands of green that wave in the placid current, all pointing down.

  I slowly lower my finger into the water until the surface of it laps at the knuckle closest to my hand. It’s distorted. The near constant light of my new eye tells me things that I cannot understand. I think it is telling me how far the water is from me, perhaps even how cold it is. I don’t need some arcane device to tell me that it is cold as it the reality of my own body that informs me.

  Aviela is quiet beside me. “Is it painful?” I ask of her without looking. “You ate the seeds. Did you feel pain or was it like a long sleep?” I think of the weeks that had passed after I feasted on the flesh of the dungeon boss. Find faith in the flesh. The words had been ringing in my mind ever since that strange moment.

  “It’s like every part that makes you…you is being torn apart and built again. I don’t know if I can describe it, Pik. But I was prepared. I’d worked hard and honed my body, I’d danced on the treetops to make my self nimble, I’d solved all the puzzles and traps of half a dozen dungeons before I even thought of eating a seed. Even then, it had taken me months to integrate all these new things into myself and even longer to understand how to be at peace with what was around me. We can rush parts of the process, but not everything.”

  “But you didn’t pass out or lose time?”

  “No.” She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “Did something happen in the dungeon? You didn’t eat a seed, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t eat a seed.” Finally, a fish, attracted by the lure of my finger approaches. It is slow and nervous at first but when I wiggle my finger with just enough speed to be enticing, it darts forward and clamps down. I snatch it from the water with a speed I’d have been envious of weeks before and hold its wriggling, silver body in my fist. I don’t hunger for it. When I look at the big creatures or think of the foul flesh of the dungeon boss even, my body tells me to eat. Demands it of me. But looking at this poor, defenceless creature, I feel nothing but emptiness.

  I release it back into the water and it is gone in an instant. It leaves behind a small, rapidly dispersing cloud of red. There’s a ring of pricks in the tip of my finger. Maybe not so defenceless after all?