It’s hard to tell how long it has been between when the cocoon takes me and when I am spat back onto the cave floor, retching and vomiting bile into the dirt. It is a harsher transition that I’ve ever had, so many memories and feeling have been thrust into my head that I’m reeling.

  I stagger away from my vomit and slide down the opposite wall of the cave until the shaking passes and I feel like I’m once more on steady ground. “Blazing sun…” I glare at the ceiling, if the architects are in heaven then they will be up and beyond how every many floors there are above us. “What was that?”

  I rub a hand across my face and let out a deep heavy huff before getting back to my feet. The world sways for a moment and I stumble. My balance is off. I shake my head and take another step but I nearly fall. I’m not in pain any longer. That makes no sense. I straighten and a sense of vertigo threatens to topple me.

  I’m not sure what drives me to jump, some primal part of me wants to feel motion after days of pain and misery. “Damn. Shade take…blazing…Ow!” I lace my fingers over my head and swear until my words dry up and I curse some more. Only once my vitriol is vented to the empty cave do I comprehend what has happened to me.

  I jump again, but this time I keep it lower and touch my hand to the ceiling in place of my head. A smile creeps onto my face and I jump again, I jump and leap and twist and bound around the cave like a child filled with excitement. Like a child who has reached maturity and advanced to Heightened.

  I pull back the sleeve of my tattered shirt and my vision blurs; there, on my arm as plain as can be, is the print, no larger than the pad of my thumb, that will turn to a mark one day. After years of striving and suffering, I am finally Heightened.

  I cannot hold back the tears. I cry. I sob for all the years that I’ve been without. I cry because now I am alone and yet I feel more whole than I’ve ever been. I cry because I’m not weak, I’m not worthless, the architects have not abandoned me. I am worthy. I am Heightened.

  I check on the monster and find its flesh has turned sour, the smell is enough to drive me from the cave. The storm has passed, all that remains is a stiff breeze that tugs at the drifts of snow with the chill bitter but manageable.

  My body is a revelation to me. I twist and turn and leap and run as fast as I can, taking risks over steep ground and barreling through snowdrifts with abandon. I still lose my breath but it is after a distance I could not have contemplated before. I stop atop a rise, holding the bending trunk of a bare tree, and lean out over the rolling tundra. If this is to be Heightened, what then is it to be Marked? What is it like to be Banded?

  There is a worm rankling the edge of my mind that dampens my excitement by a degree. It isn’t enough to stop my smiling. Why has it taken so long for me to advance from Unenlightened to Heightened? Could the architects not have imparted this gift to me while I was still with the fifth tribe? Why is it only now that I am far from them, alone and cold, that I am finally given that which is the right of all children coming into their fullness? Perhaps now I am once more on the path towards the sun.

  The sun has always seemed a dream beyond my grasp. It is something known; knowledge imparted by the cocoons of the architects: The sun is upwards. We ascend sunward to heaven and it shall fill our lives with bountiful light and under its glory we shall have everything.

  I’ve thought of the heaven beneath the sun in moments both happy, and more often, filled with longing. There were few moments for me to be happy with the fifth tribe. Now that I know the gulf between a Heightened and who I was for myself, I can understand their frustrations. I cannot forgive it, but I can understand it.

  I look up and the ceiling is far above with wispy clouds obscuring the grey metal and hiding the great lights that brighten my way. Up there. How many layers and levels? It cannot be the next for the Banded would never return. Who could turn back form heaven to visit the Undercroft? No, there are more above and far beyond and I will ascend through them until I reach the sun.

  The wind bites at my exposed skin and I shiver. My clothes are not just tattered now, they are fading into nothingness by the moment. I have nothing to trade to a foreign tribe and have no bearing for the fifth. “I will find a way.” I preen a little. “I’m Heightened now, they’ll welcome me.”

  I can see the distant walls of the segment looming above me in jagged, black stone, capped with dustings of white snow. The other walls are further and I have no better idea so I set out towards the nearest.

  It is an hour before I sense that I’m being followed. I don’t know how I know before I hear the snuffling and creeping steps; there is some part of my mind that is more aware than my surface thoughts and I straighten even before the creature leaps.

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  I’m fast, but so is the beast.

  My stolen claw catches it beneath its belly and its teeth miss my shoulder by inches. I’m knocked down by the weight of it but even as I fall onto my back, I roll the creature over me and it somersaults over the same shoulder it tried to bite. It finds its feet before I do and it is all I can muster to turn its fangs away once more.

  The monster is kin to the creature in the cave; its snout is snubbed with creases as it growls, its eyes are wide and beady, marching up its face in two columns of three. It uses its six legs together, four on the ground and two hovering, ready to grasp, push, or claw.

  A chill runs along my spine.

  This is the kind of creature we’d leave for the Marked. Something so clearly created by the architects to rend and hurt was not meant to be faced alone. We never left one another, we always cared for one another, that is the compact of the tribes.

  Oran had left me. Worse.

  My fear does not have time to take root as the creature snaps and snarls. I slash with my claw that is so small in my hand. I long for a sword like Oran’s, even after all he has done to me, I still long for the strength of is arm and the power in his steel.

  I catch the beast on its snout and gouge an eye. It’s wary of me now, but I’m not without my own pain. My arms are covered with scratches that ooze blood and I have a cut on my chest that I can feel is deeper. I will weaken if I allow the monster to dictate our combat.

  It circles, waiting for an opening, but I surprise it with a guttural yell as I fling myself at it. I hug the beast close and it can’t shut its jaws on my flesh. Its paws batter at my back while my claw sinks deep into its body. Again and again I strike into its flesh until its quivering stops and I am holding nothing but a husk.

  I fall back into the snow and it quenches the fire in me. “I did it.” I whisper, then laugh. A snowflake lands on my nose, tickles me, and I laugh more. I howl as the absurdity of my existence crashes against me.

  I raise my arms above my head, still clutching the claw as it drips with coagulating gore. “How’s that? I’m Pik! Remember me!” I shout into the wind, hoping that my words are whisked unto the ears of the architects and carried sunward to heaven. Then quiet as I lower my arms. “I’m Pik. I’m Heightened now. I’ll be Marked soon and I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  The snow doesn’t care for my declaration. The architects taunt me too as I have no flame to cook with and no bag to carry meat as I head onwards. There are still howls in the distance but nothing creeps close to me as I reach the segment boundary and spend half a day finding a passage through the towering rock.

  The next segment is light; it is a contrast after the twilight of the frozen segment. I have the familiar ache of hunger growing in the pit of my stomach, but I’m used to the pangs and the thought of finding a feeding obelisk and taking in its sustenance makes me wince.

  I enter part way up a steep slope with a path winding back and forth that leads down into a forest of tall trees with red leaves that sway oddly as though each moves of their own volition.

  I wait for a few minutes to watch and to listen. I hope to find tell of a tribe somewhere out amongst the plants but it is not to be that simple. With a sigh and a quick prayer to the architects to grant me fire and safe passage, I descend.

  It is as I fall under the canopy that I consider the strangeness of being alone. In the fifth tribe I was surrounded by people, even if I was relegated to the fringes. Perhaps it is my new found advancement that buoys me and I feel less isolated than perhaps I should. Or maybe it is natural for me to be alone after how I grew up in the tribe. Still, I am wanting of company.

  I smile; I want to find a tribe so they can see how strong I’ve become.

  The segment darkens and the null cycle is pitcher than normal with the leaves blocking what twinkles remain on the ceiling. I hunker inside the hollow of a tree and listen for monsters.

  I can hear them quietly padding on soft feet that betray them with cracking branches and rustling leaves. Snouts dip low to the leaf litter and disturb the small, crawling things that infest it. I’ve removed a few of the more adventurous critters from my person already.

  My growling stomach seems worse after my change in diet; it is louder, more insistent than it was before. I rest my head against the soft heartwood of my hollow; I can’t rush out and kill a monster. I’m best off waiting for light and finding signs of a tribe. It could take me days or weeks to find others. I grimace. Hopefully not that long.

  Something niggles at the back of my mind. I went into sleep, with the violent aid of Oran, in a rocky land soaked with rain and I woke in blistering cold atop a mountain. I couldn’t have moved myself and there is no reason for the tribes to have done it. Besides, I was disgorged from one of the architects’ cocoons so they played the greatest part in my displacement.

  A small, scurrying thing tickles my leg with whiskers longer than its body. It’s fast, but my Heightened reflexes shock me as I am faster still. I dash it against the wall, holding it by its tail until it is limp.

  My mouth waters.

  I have no fire to cook yet there is knowledge in me that is new. The cocoon must have imparted more knowledge than I realised. I turn my stolen claw into a knife and gut the small creature. My hands are deft as I strip it of its organs and offal, cut adeptly into its skin and pull its coat off whole, fur and all.

  I should find this process wretched, my blows were never enough to break the skin of monsters and even those that I’ve killed in the last few days were trying to or would have killed me given the chance. What I’ve done here is different. A word rises from the morass of my subconscious…butchering. That is the word for what I’m doing. I’m butchering this small monster.

  It doesn’t matter that I have an understanding of what I’m doing; a word doesn’t alter my actions. I bite into its flesh, rip, chew, tear, chew, eat until I am full. I sink back against the wood of my hollow.

  I’m disgusted. Blood coats my tongue and it is delightful. It cakes my lips and my hands and I want more. I’m disgusted but I am sated. No matter what rebelling the small parts of mind puts forth, I will do this again.