The Heightened below us hunch over their fire and huddle together for warmth. This segment has the same characteristics as the dungeon we cleared; gnarled trees, glowing slugs that light our paths, and abundant flowers. But it also comes with a bite of wind that seeps through the trees in the null cycle; it carries a chill that sinks into our bones and slows our thinking. It must be worse for the Heightened who are less advanced on their journey to power.

  “Is this the only entrance?” I ask Heric. He squats with me in the hollow created by intersecting branches high up in this tree.

  “We’d have to cross two more segments to find another entrance. Too far and too long.” He’s barely spoken any words more than necessary since we were expelled from our cocoons at the dungeon entrance. Whatever memories or thoughts were placed into his head he won’t speak of. We only lost a day, but even that has him quietly fuming.

  “So we need to go through them, then? I don’t feel good about hurting Heightened, especially if they might be enthralled by Oran’s people.”

  “Who knows what drives them. All we know is they are guarding the entrance and we need to break through.”

  “We don’t know what’s on the other side either, Heric, there could be a band of Marked just waiting for us to try.”

  “Could be. Might not be. Who knows. I don’t want to waste my time worrying about maybe’s when my people are suffering. You might be content with that, but I can’t stomach it.”

  “But what if they’re innocent?”

  “Then they’ll die well.”

  “Heric…”

  He turns to me with his full black eyes and glares. “What do you want from me, Pik? You can’t tell me that you actually care about those people. I have to rescue my own, I can’t worry about everyone else too.”

  “You would have cared when I met you.”

  “Things change.”

  He faces away from me and my stomach sinks. He’s right. I don’t care about those Heightened; but he used to. I’ve only known him for a week but I could tell the measure of the man from our first meeting. He cared deeply about his people and I’d wager that he’d have considered any Heightened struggling under the yoke of a Marked’s oppression was one of his family too. This callousness worries me.

  “I don’t think we need to resort to violence this time. If we use your darkness as a shroud, then we can walk through without being seen.”

  “And if they notice us? Even if we make it through they could raise an alarm once we’re in the next segment.”

  “How many people have you killed, Heric?”

  “That’s a stupid question.”

  “None. You’ve never killed a person before. Neither have I. So why are you speaking of it so casually as if it is no matter at all?”

  “Do you believe we can rescue my people without bloodshed?” He taps the flat face of his hammer against the wood with dull thunks.

  “I don’t have qualms about the blood of Marked, but I’d like to spare anyone who isn’t part of this of their own will.”

  He contemplates for a while. The light of a purple slug casting his face in soft relief and sinking into his eyes; they have no reflection. “We can try it your way. But if they see us, I won’t hesitate to remove them as obstacles.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  He stands, takes a step forward, and drops to the ground below. I follow with more care. He is walking forward, exuding a miasma of darkness that blends with the natural dark of the null cycle until we are walking within a cloud of it. He hasn’t asked me how I see in his darkness. It’s not clear whether he hasn’t wondered, or if he doesn’t care.

  Our footsteps are soft on the petal strewn ground; supple leather wraps both our feet and muffles the sound that might escape our concealment. My eye shows me the path even as Heric leads us through, pinpointing the flare of the Heightened’s fire and wreathing their bodies in shining blue.

  There are five of them. Each bowed forward as if the fire is their solace in the cold night and they mutter to each other, quietly, and with sporadic words. We close in and I know that it is not a conversation they share; there is no back and forth banter between them, they are cold and tired and have only complaints or questions for one another. There’s no camaraderie.

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  The Heightened closest to us notices first. Heric’s darkness envelops him like a creeping fog and he yelps as his sight is snatched from him. He can’t see the fire in front of himself now, the dark is so deep and so thick it is like having a cloth folded thick and wrapped about your eyes.

  The others startle too; first at his sound, then at the wall of encroaching darkness. They don’t have long enough to be surprised before the wall overcomes them and they too cry out for sight.

  I hold my spear close and eye Heric’s back; he has slowed now that we’re closer and I can see the outline of his hammer bobbing up and down as he clenches his fist over and again. I speed up my step and get close enough to whisper.

  “They’re blind, let’s get through quickly.”

  He’s slow to respond, his head pivoted to watch the group of Heightened stumble about this makeshift camp. One steps into the fire and falls back with a pained cry, the others shout at his confusion and it is a riot.

  “They’ll tell.”

  “What will they say? That they didn’t see anything. That there was darkness? If a Marked believes them and thinks that it was someone passing, what more does that give them than if we leave their corpses. Then the Marked would know for sure that someone passed by.”

  My logic stirs him and he keeps walking until we are past the Heightened. I hear the moment that the trailing edge of his darkness passes over them and reveals their surroundings to them once more. Their cries of relief are palpable.

  The way through to the next segment is wider than others I’ve traversed; the walls start as hard wood at the edges and fades to grey stone. A few minutes later we step out into a different world.

  My lip curls and I want to break something. Oran’s domain is beautiful; even in the dim light of a Null cycle I can see over the rolling hills covered in grass waving in the soft, warm, breeze. There are trees here and there is small copses and I can hear the babble of water flowing over pebbles in the crevices between hills. Mountains rise to our right until they touch the ceiling itself so far above; their tips wreathed in the white of snow. It’s fragrant too. The flowers are closed in the low light, but even now they release a perfume that pleases my nose.

  But there is another sight. Another smell. Something putrid. Rancid. An evil thing. Ten feet to our left stands a stake; straight upright, tall, carved from the heart of a living tree and thrust into the ground as a warning.

  He’s used vines to bind them. He hasn’t even wasted a rope or chain on his symbol. Vines about ankles and wrists, tight, taut and pulled apart so shoulders touch ears and knees crunched together.

  They are dead. Unclaimed by the architects and left to putrify; they are a nursery for flies and crawling things that lap at the juices that spill from the body. Death begets life.

  My hands shake. I can’t move. My heart races so fast that I cannot hear Heric’s words. His voice is a bass growl and I comprehend nothing.

  He’s so fast; his hammer rings with a thud as it strikes the stake just below the body. The stake breaks. It isn’t clean; the wood fractures and splits but he’s already brought his hammer back and down and another blow rains. This is enough. He catches the stake and body before it reaches the ground and carefully lays it out.

  “Cut him free.” He speaks to me and I don’t react. “Pik. Get out your blazing knife and cut him free, damn you!”

  I can’t. I’ve seen death. I’ve seen Heightened smashed by a boss until their bodies are broken and useless. I saw the death of my mentor and yet this is something more. It’s beyond the bounds of nature.

  “How could someone do this to a person?” My voice comes from afar; it’s small. It’s the voice of the Unenlightened, the one who follows, the one who cannot be trusted to carry the weight of shelter. The one who wasn’t good enough to even look after the children. The one who was worthy of derision, of pity, of scorn. I’m not so far from the person that is bound to that stake. I have a spear and strength, but in the face of a Marked, what am I?

  Heric is in front of me before I finish speaking. He pushes aside my arms and my spear would have fallen had my hands not clenched. He reaches into the waist of my trousers and takes my meat knife. With a grunt, he turns and frees the poor statement from their gruesome sign and lays their body onto the soft grass.

  He closes their eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Caleb. This should never have been your fate.”

  Caleb? My mind churns; still it is clouded by my emotions but there is a name. This isn’t just a person, this is a person with a name. A story. A…life. Caleb. I take a shaky step forward, and then another, until I fall to my knees beside Heric. He doesn’t push me away; he hands me back my knife without looking at me.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger for you. I promise you, I will find those who are responsible and I will make them choke on their blood for what they’ve done. I’ll hunt them until there is nothing left. Our people will be free, Caleb. That is my promise, my oath, to you.”

  Caleb is silent. I can see now the wrinkled lines in his face. He died in pain and that agony is written in in his flesh in a language all can read. He isn’t comforted by Heric’s declaration. There is no more comfort to be found.

  “Caleb.” I say his name aloud to make him real. “I will speak your name in heaven and you will be remembered.” I have a list now. What a terrible list.

  “Is that your promise, Pik?” Heric looks out over the beautiful segment. “Is that your oath, then?”

  “It’s all I can give him, Heric. There’s no more comfort in this life for him so I will carry him with me to heaven and give him there would he could not have here.”

  “There are still more of my people out there in this awful place. I will free them. We will see more of this, I fear. Will you be ready?”

  I swallow and it is hard. “I will steel myself.”

  “Be sure that you do.”

  Heric stands. He seems taller to me now; he was resolute before, stoic, distant, but now he holds himself with a stature of assuredness that is at once a comfort of solidity and a terror. I hope there is enough of the kindly Papa Heric within him to take us to the end, for if there is nothing remaining but the vengeful dark, then I cannot see an end that is not suffering.