I almost die the first day. I come closer the second, and on the third day I finally get close enough to land a blow on one of the mighty creatures.

  It looms above me; in the distance on that first day it had looked large but it hadn’t been until I had approached the herd that I’d understood just how gargantuan the monsters truly were. Four legs, each as wide as I am and twice as tall, are pillars beneath a body made of blubberous iron. Their thick necks hold a heavy head with twin tusks about a prehensile trunk. This is what has endangered me so.

  I dodge as the herd turns towards me. They are so large that they lumber, each motion a careful avalanche of flesh bearing down on me. I had thought to dodge their trunks as simple grasping things, but they are much more dangerous than this. The leading beast, I think of it as a Marked amongst Heightened that I have come to call the Monarch, is taller again by half than the others. It throws a boulder at me with truer aim than any creature should possess.

  I leap back and am scattered with shards of rocks. I wince and squeal as they slice into my tender flesh. I’m covered in bruises from scrambling over rocks and in cuts from the sharpest of them; now I am also shredded.

  “It might help if you’d dodge.” Aviela called from atop a cliff. For every moment of my tribulations she’s sat up there, leaning back against her pack, as if she has no cares in the world.

  “I’m trying!” I call out as another boulder narrowly misses my shoulder. They are really upset this time. “I got it. Did you see?”

  “Yes, very impressive. You managed to punch the monster. How’s that working out for you?”

  Smug shadehumper… Right. I’m not letting them trample me into paste to feed the architect’s designs. My mad scramble away from the herd has backed me into the narrowing end of a ravine and has rapidly limited my options. Half the herd has stayed back, content to pull down the trees which, when split, open to spill out a soft heart of juicy marrow on which the beasts survive.

  Marrow. Maybe when I kill one of the creatures I can crack its bones and drink the marrow within? I salivate and it is a distraction that almost costs me my head.

  “Blazing sun!” I scramble again but this time it is towards the herd. I run beneath the Monarch’s legs and hit it with all my strength, right in the soft area between its hind quarters. The effect is instant.

  My bones groan as I’m picked up by a trunk and brought close to a face filled with animal fury. It crunches me. Squeezes the breath from my lungs until I am gasping like a fish on the riverbank. The world blackens at the edges and I am going to die. Except I have a hand free and it has brought me so close. I cock my arm back, pull on the last of my waning strength, and slam my hand with fingers extended into its eye. It pops. Colour returns to my vision and the pressure releases but I am cartwheeled through the sky.

  I am grabbed from the air, suddenly jolting sideways while the floor is still up, and then placed gingerly onto rocky but firm ground. It takes a long moment for my head to stop spinning enough to understand what has happened.

  I smile. My body is a bruise, I can barely move my legs, my arms are jelly, and the pain is approaching unbearable. I smile at Aviela and blood trickles from my mouth. “Did you see that? Big idiot. Got him right in the eye.”

  “Yeah. Right in the eye.” She rolls hers and plops herself beside me. “I only see one big idiot here though. I must say, pretty brave going in like that. Stupid. Absolutely dumbfoundingly stupid, but gutsy. How do you feel?”

  “Like I just got trampled.”

  “I suppose that’s fair. This is good, Pik. Heal from this and we’ll have another go in a few days.”

  “Any chance I can get a sword or something? Might make it a bit easier to not die.”

  “You can have a weapon once you’ve earn it.” She points down into the ravine where the beasts are still rampaging; they do more damage to one another than I’ve managed in three days. “Kill that big one and I’ll take you into a dungeon and you can have your pick of the weapons in the treasure room.”

  “You’re not joking with me? You’ll do that?”

  “Sure. I’ll go hunting for an entrance while you rest up. Hopefully the river tribe won’t stumble onto it before you get your business with that beast completed.”

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  “Thanks for catching me.”

  “You’re welcome, Pik.”

  I understand what Aviela means about her training helping me to understand my body. I feel every inch of me in pain and healing so slowly. She waits with me until I can stand unaided then gathers her pack and heads out with a promise of a return once she’s checked the neighbouring segments for a dungeon.

  I am left behind in our cave; I’m somewhat hidden behind the curtain of greenery that dangles across the entrance but I don’t rate my chances of avoiding discovery should someone care to look for me. I’m not so far from the river tribe static that Oran couldn’t find me if he wanted. I scare myself with that thinking and hunker inside for another night. I suck down as much of the slop from the feeding obelisk at the rear of the cage as I can stomach and it hurts almost as much as my bruised bones to keep it down.

  As the sky brightens on the next day I am beginning to recover my range of motion and can finally stand for longer than a few minutes. Boredom and aching hunger draw me to the cave entrance. At first I gaze out between the leaves and look across the open ground, the ponds and stream, and out over the vastness of the segment. I can see where it ends far in the distance and I follow the line of the edge until I see the parallel. This segment is a square. Some have more sides but there are not many that have fewer. One led back to the river tribe and the others are a mystery to me, but not, supposedly, to Aviela.

  It’s enough for me for a while; I sit beside the entrance and just watch the lights brighten through the rising cycle to the bright and let the dappled light fall on my skin. Where the light falls warms. I can feel the heat on the sensitive parts of me that it touches; I feel too the small stones beneath my fingers and the hard rock against my back.

  I am Heightened, now, and my bones heal more quickly. I close my eyes and I feel everything in isolation. One after the other I allow the sensations to prod at my consciousness. Warmth. Cold. Pain. The prickle of healing flesh and the itch of scabs. Every breath I take is a disturbance but also a rhythm of bellows beside my heart drum. Together they work and my blood pumps through muscles and organs to carry the breath of life.

  My new eye tells me things too. There are spots of my flesh where the damage is greater and it bring them to my mind even through the lid of my eye. Its layered lights are unaffected by petty things such as eyelids, they show what I miss and I understand more of myself. If only I could parse the symbols that it displays with such regularity.

  The bright cycle passes and fades into a low cycle; it isn’t a sudden thing, perhaps there is no true boundary between the states, but I know when the heat of the lights fades and my skin cools that the world had changed and I have moved on with it.

  My stomach rebels at the thought of another meal from the obelisk. I look longingly out, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the great trunked creatures, or one of the smaller monsters that had scurried between their legs to hide amongst the rocks. There is little hope.

  “I can’t hide forever.” I speak into the cave; my voice is louder than I’d intended, but I don’t lower it. I own my volume and assert myself in this place. “Right. Pik, you stink. The least you can do is wash yourself. After that, we’ll see.”

  With my declaration made and only the architects to witness me, I strip off my new clothes and lay them out on the cave floor delicately. I’ve never owned anything so nice. I wince at the small scrapes and the blood stains that are a result of my adventuring. “I’ll clean you too, tomorrow though. I’ll be freezing if I do it all at once.” My clothes don’t care for my apology.

  Stepping out, naked, I feel both bold and stupid. I’m good at stupid, it’s the bold part that is new to me. I march myself across the flat ground and, without a moment of hesitation, for I know I would balk if I allowed myself that doubt, plunge into the stream.

  No matter how warm the water, a sudden dunking takes away your breath. It’s a long moment before I find mine again as I hunker down. The water would only reach my chest if I stood, so I hunch my shoulders and bend my knees until it is just my nose above the placid water.

  My aches are washing away with my dirt. I settle back with one foot on the bed of the stream, I lie backwards until my face is upturned to the dimming lights of the ceiling and I am half-floating with my arms out to my sides.

  Much like in the cave I am assaulted with new sensations. They are things that I’ve felt before but I assess them more deeply. I understand them on a level that I’ve never been able to do before. The lightness that comes with the water lifting me. The cool breeze that wicks the heat from my face as it passes. The subtle shifting of the currents against my skin and the occasional nip of inquisitive fish. All are part of me.

  I stay for a long while as the lights dim towards the null and I know that I should leave, but then in the darkening bank something stirs. It’s not so large as the great trunked creatures but not so small as the monster I ate in the heartwood hollow.

  I am quiet. I am more patient than I have ever been as the beast approaches right to the edge of the stream. Its smaller than me. Half my size and weight with four stocky legs and a surprisingly slender body. It dips to the water and drinks from a trunk that could be a stubby cousin of its greater kin.

  I kill it in one strike.

  In one moment my body is still in the water and then I bunch my muscles in perfect form and launch from my watery hideaway and into violence. My punch is harder than it has ever been. Its skull crunches beneath my balled fist and I am left elated and empty. Is it that easy?

  I look down on my prize and my mouth waters, my stomach rumbles so loudly that I worry that it will summon more monsters to my temporary home, and I groan because Aviela took with her the flint and steel so I am feasting on raw flesh once again.

  I do.

  I feast and I find strength in the flesh.