The doors open as death fills the air. Backwards. Forwards. I could move either way and yet I am still.

  Whatever gift of light that Aviela had in life she retains in death. Her body is shorn; cut nearly in two and lying amongst the ichor and gore of her executioners. Her eyes glow. They’re stuck open as if in the middle of a blink; half-lidded and tired. They’re my only light in this dismal place.

  “I’m sorry.” I whisper but in my isolation my words echo back to me from every rock spire, pillar, and wall. “I just wanted to be stronger. I wanted—” My breath catches in my throat. “You were going to teach me to read. I wanted to learn. Now this place is a tomb for your kindness.”

  I swallow and my mouth waters. “No.” Louder. “No!” I push to my feet with my blood boiling and fury swelling in my chest. “This isn’t right. I can’t be starving, not when she’s dead. I should be—”

  What is it that I should be? Weeping? Sobbing? Throwing myself into the dirt and waiting for death to take me too? I don’t know the answer, but I know that it isn’t hunger. The ravenous hunger that fills me to the crown of my head and sets every nerve of mine aflame.

  “Faith in the flesh, eh? Faith? What’s that done? I killed the Monarch and I ate its flesh and I still couldn’t fight. I was nothing against the boss. I couldn’t…I couldn’t help her.”

  Silence answers.

  I do cry now. Fat gobbets of salty tears fall from my eyes and strings of snot join them on the dirt as I collapse to my knees and rail against the injustice. I don’t know how long it lasts, my tantrum, my grief. I’m still hungry after but my throat is hoarse and I am spent of my emotions like a bladder run dry.

  I pull her away from the shadow creatures and lay her beside the entrance doors. She is lighter than I thought she’d be; she always looked so solid with her huge pack and towering presence.

  I take another moment to grieve as the light in her eyes dims. When it is gone I’ll be alone in the dark.

  My stomach rumbles and my mouth waters. I ignore them both even as it drives me close to madness.

  “What would you want?” I ask her quietly. “Will you lie here and become one with the architecture; or would you prefer to be taken up and laid closer to the sun? I’m sorry, Aviela, I cannot carry you to heaven.”

  It seems macabre to carry her body out of the dungeon. Perhaps that is the culture here in this sector, but I don’t know enough to say. At least here, in the bottom of a dungeon hidden by traps and guarded by monsters, she would remain away from the strife of people. There’s a peace in that.

  Her pack is heavy, but manageable. I rummage in its depths to come up with what I’d hoped to find. She’d replaced the sticks and bound them beside her flint and steel. I put the pile together like she’d shown me and strike, fail, strike, fail, and strike again until there blossoms an orange bloom that I nurture with careful breaths into a flower of light.

  I suck in a haggard breath as the the light of flame overcomes the last of the light from her eye. She’s gone. I close her eyelids with gentle touches.

  I cannot control myself any longer. I take a glowing branch and venture into the boss chamber. I have no knife of my own so I used a shard that has broken from the obsidian blade of one of the creatures to carve slabs of its own flesh. I eat the first without waiting and it is the sweetest kiss on my tongue. My eyes roll and I tremble as some arcane power of it seeps into me. I slice its companion too; taking a larger piece. Finally I approach the great serpent that we’d taken for the boss and gouge a hunk from its neck.

  I have enough sticks and enough meat that I feast. I prop rocks close to the fire in a narrow channel and lay the sticks inside and the meat atop. It grows hot quickly. A few of the stones pop and crack and the fat of the meat drips juices into the fire but it is cooked. My sticks will run out soon and my light with it but for the moment I have nothing in my mind or heart but to eat.

  “Faith in the flesh.” I take a piece between two fingers and wince at the pain of heat. It’s no more than I deserve. Perhaps it can be training, too.

  The flesh of the executioner slides into my mouth and melts. Barely a touch of my teeth and a worrying with my tongue and the meal falls to nothing but bliss. My hands are shaking. Rather than filling the place inside me that demands flesh, it makes it sore and angry. I want more. More and more again. I tear into the great serpent and devour its flesh until my stomach is filled and I fall back, replete.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I can’t.” I cannot afford to sleep like I did before. I cannot be unconscious in the dark for weeks. I am tired, though. My eyes want to close. Then I picture Aviela’s eyes closing for the last time under my touch and I force myself to stand.

  The fire almost goes out. Sticks are not good for carrying flame. I make it through the dank room; haunted by my loneliness and the dancing shadows of the stones. I step past the great serpent and to the final doors. They’re small and made of the same stone as the entrance. They’re barely wider than my shoulders I push them open and walk to claim my treasure.

  The room beyond is smooth, black obsidian like the blades. My flame casts light into the recesses of it, hiding fire in their depths. In the centre of the room that is three times wider than my arms outstretched and the same long is an alter. Atop the alter are three items.

  On the left is a dish the size of my palm with a solitary seed.

  On the right is a knife; small, silver, and plain.

  In the centre is what I’ve hoped for in all my dark nights. I had worried on my walk to the chamber that it would be hollow. My victory tarnished by the price of it. But as I look upon the weapon laid out across the width of the alter I smile.

  My spear shines with inner light; wisps of white float above it, an homage or mockery of Aviela’s power, I cannot tell. I choose to think this an apology from the architects, in a way. It is silver in its haft and its tip is fat-bellied like a leaf before it glides smoothly to a razor tip.

  This is the weapon of a Marked.

  No.

  This is the weapon of an angel.

  I take it into my hand and it thrums with power. It speaks to something inside of me that I can feel awakening. It is made for me and I for it. “With you,” I whisper, “I will fly to heaven and tell the sun of all the deeds of Aviela.”

  I admire my spear for a moment more and drop my flame. My wish for light has been fulfilled. I slip the seeds into a side pouch of the bag beside Aviela’s gloves that I’d taken from beside her body. No matter my grief they were too valuable to be left in a tomb. The other knife I slip into its sheath and tuck into the waist of my trousers where I can access it easily.

  I look back the way from which I came and smile with a tremble in my lips. “Goodbye, Aviela. Thank you.”

  I cannot turn.

  My ennui turns to fear as the cocoon wraps my legs first then springs over the rest of my body in an instant.

  My world turns dark and I am within its warmth.

  You heeded my words, Pik. You’ve feasted on the flesh of the abominations and have grown strong.

  “What? Why have you brought me here?”

  Your body is like diamond and your mind is honed. You are ready, are you not, to advance?

  “To advance? I don’t…I’m ready to be Marked? Can you do that? Can you make me strong?”

  To be Marked, yes. The voice is wistful. But to ascend to the next floor. To move beyond the Undercroft. That is the progression, yes.

  “Can you help me do it?” Am I shouting in the endless, warm dark? There’s no reference.

  I have helped you, Pik. I gifted you a new eye so that you could see the truth of things; use it better. I gave that person a book. I taught her to read.

  “You…What? How? How did…if you can do that then…could you have saved her?”

  I cannot interfere. I am meddling beyond my bounds as we speak. She is not important, Pik. You are important. You must advance. You must ascend.

  “Not important?” I sputter. “She was important to me. She was my teacher. She was…kind. She…She liked to dance.”

  The worst of it all is that I do not know Aviela. Not really. She came into my life as a saviour and left it as the same. She’ll never fail to be a hero in my mind and memory but she wasn’t truly a person to me. I know so little of her and that is the greatest tragedy I can imagine.

  Be wary, Pik. You are close to breaking through the limitations of your self. Care that you do not damage what cannot be fixed. And… For the first time the voice sounds worried. Be careful. The restrictions of the Undercroft are to be removed. Those protections afforded to the fledglings will become null. Still, you should be safe from the higher beings for now as they will suffocate in this place.

  Find yourself. Find your power. Come to the trial armed and forewarned and ascend. Goodbye, Pik. Remember, your power is in the flesh. Find faith in the flesh, Pik.

  They are gone as quickly as they arrived and yet I scream, scream, rail into the dark as I’m held as tightly as a swaddled babe. How dare they make demands of me. If they reached a hand into this place of the architects and gave Aviela that book then they could have touched it once more and saved her from her fate.

  “I don’t forgive you. Architect or not, I do not forgive you. How can I have faith in anything you say if you rule over such cruelty?”

  Their words, though, their warnings ring true. The flesh is my salvation, I know it. It is also my curse. I need it. I crave it like a man days without water begs for the obelisk. I will not stop myself eating. Even now in this place of nothing I feel the strength of the serpentine beasts leeching into my bones.

  Aviela gave me a new appreciation of my body and I will not squander a word of her lessons by being less than I might otherwise be. If the cocoon is going to hold me, I will learn, I will find that part of myself that must be greater and I will make it so.

  Then I will break from this place. I will ascend to heaven and the sun. I will find that voice that makes demands of me and I will take its speaker by the throat and make them understand that all life, that every friend of mine, is important.