A woman drops from atop one of the fallen buildings to land in a puff of dust and dirt. Her pack looms large over her shoulder, making her appear half again as tall. She ignores me as she stalks past to the entrance of the dungeon.

  “I’m too late, aren’t I? Blasted tribes.”

  I stumble a step and she glances at me only to look away a second later. “Thank you.” I stumble over my words too.

  She waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. There’s more coming.”

  “More?” I hold my club into my body and look around. My new eye doesn’t pick out any more ethereal lines, but that could mean anything, and I see no more lurking shapes in the light of the rising cycle.

  “What was in there?” She comes over to me and stands an arm’s length away, cocks her head and peers into me with eyes holding the warmth of an overhang sunk into the side of a rolling hill with rain pattering outside. “The dungeon. What was in there?”

  “Monsters.”

  “Monsters…” she nods slowly and then makes her words match. “Lo, Heightened. I know you’re afraid but I need you to answer my questions. What was inside the dungeon?”

  My eyebrows knit together, my back straightens, and I lower my club. She thinks me dense? “Traps, monsters, some awful creature made of metal and flesh that killed half the people I’d gone in with. I killed it though.”

  “You killed the boss of that dungeon?”

  “Yes. I stabbed it with a spear through its heart.”

  She looks around the space; empty except for the corpses and me. “Right. A spear. Which Marked was with you?”

  “Lakal.”

  “Leaf tribe. I thought so. I saw them a heading away a week back, so they cleared this dungeon then. Well, that’s a shame. I was hoping for some treasures. Thanks Heightened. Best of luck.”

  She turns to leave and in a fit of foolish fear I grab her wrist, not wanting her to go without me. The pain is instant. My arm is bent backwards and a white light fills my vision as her hand glows with light itself. I’m on my knees, panting with agony as the light forms into twin spikes that lower inch by inch towards my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, honoured Marked, I’m sorry. I — please. Take me with you. Please.”

  “Why would I do that?” She doesn’t recall her power but it no longer advances.

  “I’ll die if you don’t.”

  “That is a problem for you. Not one for me.”

  “Can you at least take me to another tribe?” I swallow, the thought of finding another and being betrayed again, or something worse, is terrifying. I’d run back into the wild alone if they turn on me. “Actually. I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure that you want to rejoin a tribe?” Her eyebrow lifts and she lowers her hand. “I think you’d best tell me your story.”

  I do. She stands and taps her foot, waves her hand to forward me through the parts she finds dull, and tuts at the betrayals. I tell her most of everything. All except the feasting on monsters and that my eye is freshly formed.

  “The leaf tribe lives in the shade.” She nods. “None of the tribes would take in a scattered wanderer though some will offer yourself more succor than others. You’ll have to fend for yourself and hope that you can find a Marked to take you through a dungeon for your seeds. Are you hardened, your body and mind?”

  “I don’t understand what that means, honoured Marked. I heard talk of it during my time with the leaf but I don’t understand it.”

  “Your body needs to be ready to process the seeds of ascension. Effort. Meditation. Understanding your body more than you’ve understood anything before. Only then can you eat the architect’s seeds and find your new form.” She shrugs. “You’ll be dead before long, little Heightened.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Pik.” I scowl. “If you’re condemning me to death then you should at least use my name to do it.”

  “I am not condemning you. Pik. I don’t care about you. I have my own worries and my own plans that don’t involve minding a Heightened that has no business being out in the wilds. One who can’t even secure himself proper clothing, let alone a weapon.”

  I feel every inch of my nakedness now. I am still covered in dirt and blood from my battle in the dungeon but beneath the grime I have nothing but a ragged pair of trousers. The Marked wears a mix of woven cloth, knitting, and monster hides cut and stitched together. A strange amalgam but not an uninviting one, especially to a naked man.

  “Help me become Marked. Please.”

  “Why would I?”

  “To show that there is a least a spark of the sun’s goodness in this forsaken place. To help a fellow human. To do the right damned thing!”

  She takes in a deep breath and slowly exhales. “You’ll do what I tell you? If I say run, you run, if I say fight, you fight. Everything we find is mine unless I give it to you. You don’t breathe unless I say and if you betray me in any way, Pik. I will burn you from the inside until there is nothing left but a husk to scare the children.”

  She loosens her grip on my arm and I can finally stand. “I’ll do it. Anything you want.”

  “You make promises too quickly. You’ll learn that too. I’m Aviela. Not Marked. Now, gather whatever you can from these things and follow me. I hate these dusty segments.”

  “Right. Yes, I’ll do that…” I hurry over to bodies of the creatures and rifle through their pockets. They have nothing but a few stones and scraps that have no use to anyone but themselves, and they have no use for them any more.

  Aviela sucks her teeth. “You know, Pik, some days this place rains with treasures and some, like today, are a total waste of time. I’m leaving, keep up if you want.”

  She’s quick as she goes; she’s not slowed at all by her huge pack as she bounds back up onto the fallen edifice and shields her eye from the rising light to scout the distance. Thankfully she hops back down with equal abandon and I’m not forced to clamber up to a place that I have no business without a mark of my own. Her pace is brisk and I keep up by lengthening my stride more than I’m used to. Oddly I find it easier than I’d expected.

  Our pace eats up the miles in quiet companionship. Aviela doesn’t speak much except to point out dangers or to send me off to search the bodies of monsters that we encounter and she quickly dispatches. I am content to keep my own counsel. As curious as I am to understand more of the preparations needed to become a Marked and the seeds of ascension, I am wary of pushing the Marked too much and being left behind. Besides, the words of the disembodied voice within the cocoon were clear: find faith in the flesh.

  The bright cycle comes and the low follows and we haven’t found a place to rest, eat, or water. We push on and I am invigorated by the exercise. My body is stronger than I remember. I must have advanced in some way from eating the flesh of the boss, perhaps I’d already reached the readied state for advancement? What confuses me most is the time that I lost. It isn’t unusual for someone to stay in a cocoon for some time while the architects impart their wisdom, but I woke from my feasted slumber to a world that had moved on.

  My hands are still my own. My feet shod in stitched leather are working. My legs are thicker, perhaps, than they were but not grossly so. My hands have the same lines, the same wrinkles and folds and the same callouses from labour as they did before. I am the same person inside my shell of a body. Of course my eye is new but that is a mystery gift to be unraveled in time.

  Why then, if my body is my own, does it feel lighter in its step? Why can I jump higher and walk without exhaustion for so long when weeks before I would have collapsed? Being Heightened is to be stronger, that I know from watching for my whole life, but this newer state is like I am more than that.

  I am far less than a Marked, though; Aviela’s powers are blinding and frightening. She cuts with beams of light. Conjures knives of pure white glow and thrusts them into creatures without moving. She jumps and runs and carries more weight than I’ve seen of anyone and she doesn’t tire.

  “Where are we going, Marked Aviela?” I ask as we approach the wall that divides us from another segment.

  “Just Aviela, Pik.” She points to a gap halfway up the steep slope that leads out. “Through there, out across two more segments, is the static of the river tribe. I want to visit, pass off some supplies and maybe make a trade or two for some things I need.”

  “Static?”

  “A camp where a portion of the tribe remains to raise the young and make what is needed.” She looks at me askance. “Do you not have those in your sector?”

  “How do they survive? Our food would move every day or maybe two. We were always roaming from segment to segment, looking for our next obelisk.”

  She stops dead in her tracks and fixes me with a glare. Her eyes are still warm but there is a hint of something more behind them; or perhaps it is the shade of her thunderous brow. “You were raised on foot? No statics? Pik, how did your people survive? That is insanity.”

  “I thought that was how all the tribes worked. It isn’t as though I’d met anyone outside of our sector before I was brought here.”

  “No. At least that is not how it works in this sector. Blazing sun, Pik, that sounds awful. Even wanderers go into the tribal statics once in a while. Who could be moving for their whole life and not turn mad?” She bites her cheek. “Maybe no one.”

  It takes me half an hour and another two miles across the dense brushland of the next segment to realise that she’s mocked me. “I’m not mad.” I grumble beneath my breath.

  “Sure you’re not, little Heightened.”