I’m bleeding; a cut on my leg seeps with every step and my mouth is coated with blood from a bitten lip. I’d seen a dungeon a week before in the same segment that Oran’s people had taken Heric’s tribe and we’d descended it without hesitation.

  The worst part of the journey had been walking back through the gorge in which Heric had been ambushed. The marks of their assault were still written on the walls in gouges and burns. The bodies had turned putrid and were swarmed by insects, the scent assaulting our noses.

  I’d asked if Heric wanted to take time to gather them and bury them, but he’s simply said that they should feel the wind and the bathe in the light as long as they could. The architects would take them back into the ground soon enough and they’d become one with the world.

  It had been a sober walk after that.

  The dungeon is beautiful. The walls are covered with flowering plants and small slugs no larger than my thumb that emit glowing light of purple, yellow, or blue. The flowers are sweet; their smell wafts when we lean against the walls for rest and comforts us as we sit.

  The corridors are wide too. This is both a blessing and a curse as monsters crawl from the space between the intertwined wooden trunks that bend over us to form the walls, ceiling, and floor like we’re walking through the middle of a tree itself.

  The most common has been a monster made of leaves with a long stick body and huge pinching claws that descend from above. I break from Heric as the newest wave falls upon us; there’s a dozen of the creatures as large as I am and armoured with their leafy protection.

  I swing my spear in an arc to fend off a pair that have honed in on me. I don’t cause any damage with my wide sweep but they are forced back, giving me time to plant my feet and bring the point to bear. The length of my spear is my greatest asset and I slip the tip through the guard of one and between two armoured plates to where its heart would be if it were a human.

  Unfortunately it isn’t human lets out a shriek as shoves itself down my spear shaft and reaches for me with its claws.

  “Damned shadespawn.” I yank on my spear and dodge blows from the other creature. Heric is fighting four alone, three now that he’s dispatched one already with a cutting blade made of pure darkness that he’s attached to his arm to turn his forearm into a brutal sword. He is learning more of his power each time we clash with the creatures but there is one constant.

  Darkness leaks from Heric. Each time he dances back, aided by his power, he expels more darkness. It’s a physical thing. A cloud of purest night, darker than any null cycle, that drifts about him like fog. Already his fight is obscured; I see now the flashes of his power against the creatures and them rearing back in blindness as the dark takes their sight.

  I can’t linger on him as my own assailants are persistent in their assault. I brace my foot against the first monster’s abdomen and yank my spear free. It slides out with a crunch of armour and the slurp of ichor gripping at at the haft. It screams.

  I’m too slow. Again. I bring my spear up with both hands to block a descending claw but am a fraction of a second too slow. The tip of the second creature’s claw bites into the meat of my neck where it meets my shoulder and I shout in pain. My hardened body takes the strike better than I could have when I first turned Heightened; it turns a killing blow into a painful wound, but saves me from death.

  I bound back and brace my spear against my side, readying myself for their next charge. They’re wary now. Whatever primal motivation drives them to attack us as we descend into the dungeon cannot overcome their reticence to charge into my spear tip.

  I smile, the pain of my shoulder is a sharp throb that pulses with beat of my heart. I set it aside. I’ve become good at that now. I can ignore most injuries, cold, heat, discomfort of any kind that isn’t extreme. My mastery of my own body is as complete as I can make it. I know where my hands are and feel the gnarls and whorls of the trunks beneath my feet with clarity. My breathing is laboured but steady.

  As Heric expends more power, his darkness has drifted until the whole corridor has fallen into a patchy haze of black. The creatures suffer the most. They must use sight for navigation as the darkness causes them to slow; Heric is unaffected by his own dark and my new eye sees even in the deepest pitch.

  I dart in and out. I weave my spear tip through narrow gaps in the creature’s defences until it lands and bites in joints and tender places. It’s not quick. There’s no great blow to crush my enemies or sweeping slices that bisect the creatures. I peel them apart one piece at a time until they lie broken at my feet.

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  “Are you done?” Heric has half-turned back to me, he’s leaning forward down the corridor. He’s been eager at every step to move on, and move faster. There’s a stoic desperation in his words and the lines of his body.

  “Yeah, taken care of. I’m getting tired of these monsters.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “So are you.”

  He shrugs. “I’m learning. I won’t bleed any more once I get my weapon.”

  “We still need to clear the dungeon. The boss won’t be easy.”

  “I have faith, Pik.

  “Faith won’t save us from being gutted.”

  He walks back to me and his darkness precedes him. How he can smile even now is beyond me. He places a hand on my shoulder as he’s become fond of and squeezes gently; the motion pushes more blood from my wound and I wince. He withdraws at my pain and lowers his hand.

  “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to the powers of my mark. We’re doing well, right? You’ve been in dungeons before, are we less successful than you were before?”

  “We’re doing well enough, I suppose. I’ve only been in two so my experience is almost as limited as yours.”

  “We’ve navigated the traps. We’ve weathered the assaults of these insects. I have faith that when we reach the boss, the strength of your spear and the might of my mark will allow us to overcome it.”

  “Don’t be complacent.”

  “I won’t.”

  I let out a long sigh and force a ghost of a smile. “Good. I’m trying to be positive, Heric, it’s only that I have poor experiences of dungeons and I’ve been in both times with more experienced companions.”

  “You think me poor company on this expedition?”

  “Inexperienced. Besides, you don’t have a weapon yet.”

  “A failing soon to be rectified.” He raps his knuckles on the haft of my spear and smiles broader. “Do you think I’ll get a spear too? Maybe one that lets out dark like my power instead of the light of yours.”

  “Maybe. The architects seem to like their humour.”

  “Ah. Yes. Behold their entertainment.” He sweeps an arm across the battlefield, taking in the littered corpses. The ones he has killed are broken by heavy blows or cut apart by the blade of his darkness. One of them has no marks on at all. That one he choked with the void. He has taken my words to heart.

  “How much is left do you think?”

  “Who knows. I hope not much more, I’m growing impatient with this delay.”

  “They’ll be close to Oran’s lands now.”

  “Inside most likely.”

  I look to the ceiling and trace the wood grains with my eyes. “What is it like? The Oran I knew was something dark. He gave me these.” I raise my burned hand next to the scars on my face. “He enjoyed it.”

  Heric sets off down the corridor with his power leaving dark footprints in his wake. “We were not under his control totally, but we saw what his people did. A few of my Heightened had fled his segment. It’s bad. Worse than I could have imagined. I couldn’t press them for too many details as they’d each break into tears at the memories.”

  “Blazing sun, it’s that bad already?”

  “Truly awful. I hear of press gangs forcing Heightened to delve into dungeons and bring back treasures for him; most of the time he doesn’t even send in Marked to escort them. He gives the seeds to those who are loyal to him. He’s got more Marked than any of the other tribes now.”

  “I’d have thought he’d want to consolidate himself, be the only Marked with real power around.”

  “He wants something else. Domination. Everyone works for him. They weave or build or anything he demands and he rules with fire and fist. What can a Heightened do against someone that can torch them to a husk with a thought?”

  “What of the trials?”

  “What of them? The architects have only asked for volunteers so he remains. Why would he ascend if he has a kingdom here?”

  I punctuate my steps with taps with the butt of my spear. Tap. Step. Tap. Step. It helps me maintain focus as the old anger burns within me. Heric has reason to hate Oran, more than me really, but mine is an old and festering hatred. A fearful loathing that I thought I could set aside, once, but eats at the inside of me like a swallowed ember.

  “Everyone should want to ascend. What else is the point? Heaven is up there.”

  “Some people have given up on heaven, Pik. I expect that after this ordeal, there will be more still who begin to believe that heaven is nothing but pretty fiction.”

  “Not me. It’s real, I know it. I’m going to get there.”

  “An ambitious vision.”

  We lapse into quiet as we both scan the walls, floor, and ceiling for any sign of traps. My eye has been invaluable; it paints me a path of light to follow and highlights dangers before I would otherwise notice them. Not for the first time I wonder why I was blessed with this vision; I’ve never heard of another receiving such a gift.

  We are attacked again before we reach the boss room but it feels perfunctory. There is no heat to the assault, just the falling of three of the same creatures we’d dispatched before. I kill one with a spear strike through its head and Heric tears the others apart from within. It’s a sight to see his dark power enter them, to see their bodies twitch and writhe as he peels the armoured skin from their bodies and pops off their limbs.

  “You’re growing more skilled.”

  “I have to. It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

  I wobble my head, unsure how to answer. “It’s power. It’s killing. I think it has to be disgusting or we will find it so tasteful that we cannot get enough of it.”

  “And your spear? When you stab these creatures, what do you feel?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Like cutting wood, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then it isn’t power that’s disgusting. But if that were a person it would be moreso.”

  “I can’t find value in these creatures that’s only living will is to kill us, Heric.”

  He chuckles. “We are the ones invading their space. What would you do?”

  “I’m not sure they exist before we come. This whole place is a contrivance of the architects, who’s to say whether these beasts have a life beyond their role in this grand trial.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I can’t find it in myself to care, Pik. My treasure lies over their corpses and through that boss. I’ll take what I need and not feel anything until my people are free, then I can afford contemplation.”

  “Remember that you’re a good man, Heric.”

  “I feel less good with each passing cycle.”