My tribe is silent. I crouch with the others at the lip of a hollow; below us are monsters and above us is the dim grey sky of a low cycle. My hands shake with hunger and fear and I push down the bile that rises in my throat at the sight of the beasts.

  They sniff about our saviour, their hides are thick, scaled leather, their lipless mouths reveal teeth as long as my fingers. They are low to the ground with thick legs that protrude from their sides and bent at odd angles; it gives them a wobbling gait that belies their speed.

  The architects place many monsters in our paths; they are never content to let us survive without struggle, and I have seen some like this before. We were last in this segment years before and then too were filled with scaled, cold blooded beasts.

  We have no choice but to fight these creatures; our last food source, an architect provided obelisk dispensing food and clean water, retracted into the ground four days ago. We’ve been hunting for another ever since. Down there, somewhere beneath the dirt, is another obelisk waiting to be called forth.

  Oran and Lucil are the strongest of us, they’ve advanced to Marked and gain the mark on their arms that shows their status. They hold real weapons of steel brought from the belly of a dungeon they bested while the rest of us Heightened and unenlightened huddled in fright that they might not return.

  I am with the other Heightened but I should be sat behind with the children, we are about a match in strength. Oran and Lucil are Marked and so they lead, the others are weaker than Marked and don’t bear the same powers that true advancement brings, but they are a realm beyond me.

  I tighten my hands around a hard length of wood that I’ve pried from a fallen tree. It doesn’t stop the shaking wholly but it hides it from those around me. One of the Heightened vomits and I feel guilty as I feel glad that at least it was not me.

  Oran is keen. He leaps first, raising his sword above his head and channeling the power that is the gift of his advancement along its length. The blade bursts into orange flame that licks the metal and wraps about his arm but does not burn him.

  Lucil is a fraction of a second behind Oran but moves with the same rapid grace of all Marked practiced with their powers. Her spear shimmers gold as it overtakes Oran halfway down the shallow slope. While he has power of fire, Lucil’s is one of the most coveted; telekinesis. She controls the motion of her spear with her mind even as she tumbles after Oran, matching his fearful cry with one of her own.

  The battle is joined and we pour over the lip in a ragged tide. The creatures turn to us and roar their defiance. Their low bodies and heavy armour doesn’t slow them as they meet our charge with their own. Oran’s blade slices and Lucil’s spear pierces, and the wave of Heightened slams into the beasts with a crunch that shows no winners.

  I’m slower than the others, without the strength of a Heightened I am paces behind as I see the others take their makeshift weapons; rocks, clubs of wood, spears carved from long sticks of with rocks tied to the ends. We are resourceful people, but our weapons are poor substitutes for those gifted to the worthy as prizes from dungeons.

  “Pik! Down.” Homly, a lithe man twice my age with skin as black as obsidian and eyes of piercing amber, smashes his shoulder into one of the beasts the moment before it would have gutted me. I obey. The creature is taller than I am and stinks of something rotten; its teeth drip with ichor that smokes against the rocky ground as the droplets fall. Homly is not strong enough to do more than make it stumble. The Heightened’s knife skitters across its scales and it turns on its rear legs and swipes at him with the front.

  I swallow the fear the threatens to overwhelm me at any moment that I’m faced with the monsters of the Undercroft. I’ve survived longer than most Unenlightened, but it is not chance that has kept me living where others would have fallen. I hit the creature as hard as I can and the shock of the blow runs up my arms. It is all I can do to keep hold of my weapon as the creature fixes me with a baleful eye.

  My distraction works. The beast is watching me which means it has taken its eye from Homly. The Heightened strikes at the creature’s weakest point.

  The collapse of the creature is sudden and all its weight falls onto me. My ribs creak with the pressure of its body. Homly has stuck his knife into the creature’s eye deep enough to reach its brain in one fluid motion. The Heightened doesn’t wait to see if I’m fine; Homly rips his knife free and and runs out of view and back into the battle.

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  I struggle alone with the din of combat a cacophony around me until I push the heavy corpse of me; my hands are as scraped as my elbows and my face is covered in welts from where the scattered droplets of its ichor has scorched me.

  I regain my unsteady feat and hold my club out like a talisman to ward off danger. There’s no need. The creatures are dead to the last beast. Oran and Lucil beam as they stand atop a pile that must be a dozen high. They bear the marks of flames, great rends from Oran’s sword, and artful piercing wounds from Lucil’s spear. My fear fights for a moment with a swell of pride in the strength of our Marked.

  The rest of the tribe have killed their share; beyond Homly’s success — my tribe would never believe that the kill was partly mine — the Heightened have killed another three. A good showing. A smile that tries to sidle onto my lips fades as Oran scowls.

  “Oi, Pik. Get over here and find the obelisk.” Oran’s words are met with grumbles from the tribe. They’re annoyed that I haven’t already scrabbled along the ground and located the place where we will raise an obelisk from beneath the dirt. They are hungry. I’m hungry. It would be easy to misunderstand their frustration and born from aching stomachs, but this is how my life is. I can’t carry our shelters. I can’t fight the creatures that guard every place of safety and every place we might find food or water, no matter how much I try.

  I know I’m a burden.

  I scramble, just as they expect. I’m as quick as I can be with bruised bones and scraped flesh. I find them. I dig into the dirt until my fingers meet the hardness of metal. I whistle the tune of the architects and tap a pattern of hope until the obelisk rises from the ground with a beauteous hum.

  I don’t feel a hand on me, but I am moved. Lucil has plucked my limp body from its place and deposited me where I belong; at the back of the line. It’s all right. No matter how starved I become, I dread the feeding tubes. I dread the grey slurry that it dispenses into my mouth. It knows how much we each need; a larger person will receive more, as will someone on a higher path as they need more sustenance for their powers. Someone like me with nothing but a body too skinny by half for all his height, I am given mouthfuls.

  It is my turn anyway before long; my tongue blanches and my stomach twists as the foul concoction flows into me. It’s done. I swallow and eat until it stops and go to my place at the edge of the tribe. I’m close enough that Oran and Lucil will be able to save me should any creature come out of the dark of a null cycle. Not that I’m sure that they will.

  The depression isn’t defensible, as the scaled creatures discovered. The ground in this segment of our sector is blackened soil, crumbly to the touch and rougher than some of the greener pastures that we’ve passed in other segments.

  I lie back on the cool ground; we’ve lost some luggage in our flight from our last, overrun feeding place so there aren’t enough blankets to go around. We’ll find more if the architects will it. Oran and Lucil could venture into dungeons and bring out weapons, tools, sometimes clothes or trinkets. We’ll have to make the rest ourselves.

  “You did well today.” Homly sits beside me with a grunt. His bones are aching with his age; while Homly isn’t ancient, he hasn’t gained a Mark in all the years he’s been with the tribe and he’s suffering from the life of constant motion and combat. I’m feeling the strain too, perhaps more keenly than Homly.

  “It doesn’t feel like it.” I don’t lift my head. The lights in the sky far above are fading as the twilight at the far edge of the low cycle fades into the true night of the null cycle.

  “We got one.” Homly jostles my shoulder and smiles. I meet his with own but I can feel the weakness of it as it fades quickly like ripples from a grain of sand in a still pool. “You and me did it. Took at least five Heightened to bring one of those big beasts down and you and me did it just with us. You’ve got to be proud of that, my boy.”

  “I suppose.” I sigh. “I’m proud that I hit it with my stick and you did all the work.”

  “We all play our part.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I roll my head to look at him. “Do you think you’ll get your mark, Homly?”

  The man stiffens as if he’s taken offence and I wait. Homly is kind to me, kinder than the others but he is still Heightened and I am dead weight. He relaxes. His shoulders sink and he hunches over his knees. “I don’t know, Pik. I think Oran and Lucil have the knowledge of advancement but they have not shared. I think my time has come and passed. I don’t think I’ll ever see the sun.”

  The sun. I’m not sure it’s real. It’s a mythical thing far above and away from me. Somewhere that only those who have advanced in their powers and ascended, an honour bestowed on winners of the trials, could ever dream of reaching. One day, perhaps, Oran or Lucil will advance to Banded after their trial and live up there, beyond the ceiling that grants us light and keeps us trapped within the Undercroft.

  “You and I both.” I try to laugh at the joke of it, for it is a joke. A Heightened with little hope and an Unenlightened without even that. “Do you think Oran and Lucil will ascend?”

  Homly hunkers, thinking. “They wouldn’t leave us together, not at leave us without a Marked.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Homly grips my arm and for all that he is only Heightened, his grip is strong enough to leave bruises. “They wouldn’t leave us, Pik.”

  “What if they did?” I whisper, leaning close. “Would any other tribe take us in? Would they give us Marked? I don’t think so.”

  “Blazing sun, Pik.” Homly drops my arm and shuffles to his feet. “This is why you’re on the edge. Not because you’re Unenlightened, this right here. Stay quiet, play your part, and we will all survive.

  Homly has moved far enough away that my mutterings don’t carry to him and my position at the edge of life means no one else is close enough either. “Yeah. My part. Whatever anyone else doesn’t want to do. At least you can fight; I can’t even do that.”