My world is cold as I wake. The flickering lights have dimmed as though the life has been plucked from them while I slept, replete.

  I cough.

  My mouth is dry and dusty, the blood that had covered me is flaky, floating away as it is disturbed by my motion. I groan and roll over. The rubble and scattered junk that covers the floor of the dungeon boss room jabs into me with jagged corners and I wince as I rise to my knees.

  The bulk of the great creature that I killed is diminished. When I ate from its flesh it was a towering hulk and now I see it sag and shrink until it is a bag of bones, metal, and scraps of flesh that look years in the withering. I reach out a hand and touch the closest limb; rough, rusted, and cool. It clangs to the floor in a cloud of dust and a sound that echoes throughout the dungeon.

  I freeze.

  A heartbeat. Another. The dungeon creaks but there is no scuttling or scurrying to carry me away. I relax. Gaining my feet is an exercise in frustration; I miss a hand hold on the creature as my poor depth perception betrays me, I dust myself off and rise fully.

  The doors that lead back into the corridor and to the surface are ajar; the gloom beyond is pierced in staccato rhythm by the failing lights. The bodies, pieces mostly, still lie by the entrance. Like the beast they are reduced. Withered.

  Ahead, where the living leaf tribe went, the light passing through the porthole windows is lower. It glows with a softer orange than the harsh lights above me. I walk there. It is inviting, in a way, and also it is not back. I hope that there might be something left of the dungeon treasure that I can take to aid my survival. If there is not…

  The doors creak at my touch but open easily enough for me to slip aside; the only difficulty is the thin pile of dust and dirt that is bunched by its passage to form a line marking how far I open the door.

  The room beyond is small. To my right are two nozzles, one for feeding and one for thirst. I go to these and suck deeply on the water tube. It is only as the cool water touches my parched tongue that I realise just how lacking my body is. I gulp until my belly is full and water drips from the corners of my mouth and over my bare chest.

  I wipe my mouth and look at the rest. There are the remnants of cocoons to the left, used and turned dark, and an altar ahead. Behind the altar is another door. Closed and solid.

  “Damn you.” I swear at the leaf tribe. They’ve left me nothing. I spend a minute poring over every part of the room, looking and hoping for some crumb of something to appear in a missing crevice. There is nothing but a fine layer of dust. I lean against the husk of a cocoon and sink down until I’m sitting. The softness of its shell is a welcome touch of kindness in this violent place.

  I’m helpless as I’m grasped.

  I try to squirm but soft ribbons have wrapped me in a firm embrace. I’m drawn in. The cocoon has not asked for me, not beckoned for me, it has taken me against my pleading and it fills me with a terror that I’ve never felt. I despair as the cocoon closes about me and the world descends to grey.

  Is it thought? What makes you different, Pik? Is it something else?

  I float in an endless void of grey speckled with light so distant that its rays will take an eternity to fall onto me.

  What do you want, Pik?

  “What?” My voice is hollow in the vast expanse. This isn’t real. My voice is the distant sound of thought and not the product of my throat. It is the difference between holding something in your hand, feeling the breeze on your cheek, and the taste of the world on your tongue and trying to hold the image, the feeling, and the memory of taste in your mind.

  You grow stronger. Your body is hardened. Your mind too. Is your soul prepared, Pik?

  “Who are you?” The voice is without body. It speaks with a tone different to my own monologue so I know it to be separate from myself. “What do you want from me? Can you help me escape? Is this…Am I advancing?”

  The voice chuckles and the sound is too human. You are not ready. Not yet. Do you think differently little wanderer? Would you want to test yourself against the seeds of advancement even with the meat of abomination heavy in your stomach?

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  “I deserve it. I want to ascend.”

  Petulance is unbecoming, Pik. Why do you deserve to ascend ahead of all these others who’ve striven harder than you for longer? You’ve barely entered your Heightened state and you are already reaching for the heavens? Patience, Pik. There is more ahead of you than you can imagine.

  “If I don’t become stronger, how will I escape this dungeon? How will I survive out there without a tribe?” I swallow. Even in this place of unreality my throat closes with pent up sadness. “I…why did they leave me? I didn’t ask for his shirt. Was that all? I took something that was offered and it was enough for them to betray me and leave me…alone.”

  Loneliness can be strength. You’ve been alone in company for your whole life, Pik. Who else is like you? Do you think they could eat the forbidden flesh and find themselves?

  “Wait. How do you know? Are you the —” I bite my tongue. What am I doing? Am I truly so lost and lonely that I am talking to a disembodied voice? What was I going to ask it? Am I speaking to the architects?

  I am not the architect of this place. I know your thoughts as well as you, Pik. I have watched and waited as you’ve grown into this man before me. I am pleased. You are who you are meant to be.

  “You’ve watched me? Even when I suffered?”

  Even when you triumphed and found yourself. I cannot linger, Pik. It is more than I should to reach out to you in this manner; all I can do is leave you with some words and a gift. You walk a long path to the heavens, but you step out true. Keep close to the desires of your heart, guard yourself, and become the man you know you can be. Find faith in the flesh. The voice speaks faster, its tone changes as though it speak over its shoulder as it walks away. You grow stronger with victory; look not to the seeds, Pik, feast and become more.

  So goes the voice into the vast nothing and comes the pain. I long for the gentle dark that cocoons bring but this one sinks pain into every nerve in my body until I scream. My voice never grows hoarse as an ember falls into my broken eye and burns until it is born anew.

  I gasp as I am thrown from my cradle and onto bare floor. My hands tremble as I kneel, my head bent down and my back flat. It is all I can do to hold onto existence as the pain and memory ebbs from me like a tide of flame. My sweat dries cold on my burning skin, quenching me and bringing me back to bitter reality.

  “A gift?” I spit and it comes out bloody.

  For a moment I see double. Something whirs inside my head and my vision is clear and depth returns. I blink rapidly to clear my tears and I can see again, not only from my working eye but from the ruined as well. I close my working eye and the world is not snuffed out like it has been these past days; things are like they were before but more vivid.

  I laugh and jump to my feet. “A gift indeed! Blazing sun I can see again.” I rub my fingers across my face and am met with bumps. “You couldn’t remove the scars too?”

  No voices respond to me.

  I’m back on the surface outside the dungeon entrance and there is no sign of the leaf tribe nor any creature. I stand still and listen and can hear nothing but the wind amongst the fallen giants of concrete and metal.

  I’m still nude from my waist upwards and now I have no claw either. “I have my eye back, that’s worth something.” I swallow. “But not if I don’t make it out of here alive.”

  I turn at a scuff. As if drawn by my contemplation, three creatures of stature equal to my own appear, with skin like grass left to mulch and each bearing a club the length of my arm. Their eyes are black from corner to corner; I see no warmth in them.

  I blink. There are lines above the creatures and through them. Pale spectral lines of faintest blue overlaid into my world. Hovering beside them are symbols, some flashing and some static but all changing with the moment. I step edge away as they approach cautiously. When I close my right eye the lines remain but when I close my left they disappear with the vision of my rebirthed organ. My eye is more than new, then; I wonder if I will have time to explore it.

  The creatures move with animal intellect. They spread until one remains in front and the other two approach me from equal angles on either side. Their mouths hang open in a parody of a smile and I see their sharp teeth oozing with whatever feast they had before me.

  I’m tense, my body aches but the fear of the moment runs through me, setting my nerves alight with excitement to replace the recent pain. I can’t let them attack me first.

  I throw caution out and rush towards the right-most creature; it isn’t ready for me and I move with a speed I’ve never shown before. Even more than when I fought in the mountains and more than when I killed the dungeon boss. Something in the dungeon or the cocoon has changed me again and I revel in the moment even as I slam into the creature.

  We go down together in a rush of fetid breath and I come up the other side ready to bound back at it. Something crunches when we clash and it doesn’t rise again. I hide my surprise that it wasn’t something in me that broke in our collision and dart forward to scoop up its club before its companions have a moment to orient themselves.

  I have no finesse in my assault and the second creature is wary of me. It meets my rush with its club swinging and I cry out as it cracks against my arm. In return I slam my club into its ribs but it moves back as I hit, robbing it of its strength.

  I edge away once more and circle to keep the pair from getting behind me. The injury to my arm throbs, the skin reddening and swelling even as I pass my club from hand to hand and keep moving.

  We bat each other back and forth for so long that my breath comes in ragged gasps and even the monsters are sagging. They are relentless, though, no matter how many small blows I rain on them, they keep coming.

  “Come on you stinking shadehumpers.” The taunts flow from my tongue but fall on deaf ears. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? Someone else to eat, maybe?”

  I am reaching my limit and I know it.

  The creatures bunch together and bring their clubs up in front and I know now that it is their final attack and my final moment.

  “I’d win if you fought fair.” I whine.

  “Fair?” Someone scoffs. “Nothing is fair.”

  A thin beam of light punches through the two creatures and they collapse without a sound.