WARNING: RESTRICTIONS LIFTED. SYSTEMIC INTERVENTIONS OVERRIDDEN.

  The architects had blared out their warning as I emerged into the light of the rising cycle. That had been two trials ago and a year passed.

  I grasp the haft of my spear in a practiced hand and dim its light with a thought. My eye scans the ground below my perch with highlights of blue; it tracks the monsters that are more present now the restrictions are lifted, and it follows the group of Heightened that trudge through the dangerous valley below.

  A small group of monsters approach from the ridge above; a cry rises from the Heightened as they’re noticed. These people have learned from a year of barbarism. They fall back into a circle, the weakest of them in the centre; there may be two or more Unenlightened amongst them. The architects have been strange, in a way, they plunged this sector into a turmoil of violence never before seen, and yet they increased the numbers birthed from cocoons.

  I take a bite of jerky made from the corpse of a monster. It’s tangy and savoury.

  The monsters are quick. Eight legs in a circle with a pyramid of flesh and tentacles mounted on top. They slide down the slope, some tumble and lie broken but enough reach the group that their defences are strained.

  Some Marked or other has likely taken everything this group has of value; they fight with sharpened sticks, heavy bars of metal, or sharp rocks. Had they even a single Marked looking over them, they wouldn’t have lost a person. As it is, they are winning, barely. Two Heightened have fallen but the rest are holding their own.

  My eye flashes a warning. I have been puzzling the symbols; I use Aviela’s book and context as best I can to learn, but without a teacher my guesses are just that. I do understand some of the symbols from their context, so when the warning flashes and highlights another group of monsters, it is clear what my eye is telling me. These are reinforcements. If they reach the group of Heightened, that will be the end of them.

  I stuff the remnants of the jerky into my mouth, hike Aviela’s pack higher on my shoulders, and drop from the tree. I land softly for someone carrying as much weight as I am. I’m not Marked, still, but a year of running, fighting, and feasting on the flesh of monsters has hardened my physical shell to be a rival to a Marked. Of course any true Marked would rely on their gifts and take me apart; I hope if it comes to that then my speed and strength will shock them enough that I could land a decisive blow before they could react.

  The second group of monsters are approaching the ridge from my right; they are crossing through a patch of trees nestled between gentle slopes of grass and rocks. My eye traces the line that I’ve already seen. They’ll funnel through a narrow space between the hills and empty into an open space that leads to the edge of the ridge.

  “Perfect.” I smile. I’ve become used to speaking to myself. Apart from the occasional risky trade that I’ve made or a fire shared with a small group of Heightened, I’ve been mostly alone for the year. I even avoided the trials, not wanting to risk a bloodbath if Oran had been present. He is the worst of them now. A petty warlord carving a kingdom on the backs of the Heightened.

  I jog, my strides long and purposeful, eating up the distance. My eye tracks everything; the Heightened are surviving, the monsters have regrouped and are pressing them on all sides, but the people are winning through attrition.

  The group that approaches me is ten members strong. They barrel through the narrowing pass between the hills and I shrug Aviela’s pack off and set it aside. I roll my head on my neck to loosen my muscles and spin my spear through circles about myself.

  I’d been clumsy at first. The first monster I’d fought after I’d emerged from the dungeon had almost overcome me even with my steely skin and powerful muscles. I’d simply not understood how to use a spear. Now I do.

  The beasts are slavering by the time they see me; they can smell a meal, a victim, whatever twisted designs that the Architects put into their minds are all focused on me. I lift my spear and keep its leaf tip steady, slightly upwards, and pointed towards the monsters.

  The lead creature crashes into the point of my spear with enough force that it’s lifted from the ground, skewered, and crashes down behind me as I slip the blade out of its twitching body. It might have knocked me down had I not braced.

  The second and third I dispatch with twin jabs through their central pyramids. The next does bowl me over as it crashes into me with grasping tentacles and a mess of spindly legs. I roll out of it, my spear stuck to my hand with the miasma of light forever leaking from it. It’s a cruel joke by the Architects, I think, in reverence or mockery of Aviela to have me carry a spark of her light in my weapon.

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  I spin back to my feet and fend of a flurry of blows from all sides. The haft of my spear is warm like wood but stronger than any steel I’ve found; their legs and tentacles only ring on its length as I block them.

  I’m breathing more heavily now. Ten monsters is still too many without a mark. Not the worst odds that I’ve faced since the interventions were overridden, but far from the easiest fight.

  Stab. Block. Roll. Grimace as one of their blows snakes through and I spit blood onto the dirt. I’m back in and this time the blood is not my own. I’m showered in it. No matter how well I strike and how elegant my spear dance, the creatures bleed, they die, and they leave their mark on me.

  When it is done I’ve killed eight. Two more slip past me and down the ravine to harry the Heightened. It wrenches my heart but I harden myself. I did what I could. They lost another one for my weakness, but I did more than I needed and…one day I will be stronger. Soon. I can feel myself at the cusp of breaking through to Marked; I have stepped through each of the tribulations that Aviela told me of, all but the final step: to situate myself in the universe.

  Everything else was obvious. Grow stronger. Practice my mind. Become quick and nimble beyond reason. Then bring the physicality of myself together until I knew myself inside and out, so intently that I could feel sickness a week away or control a single muscle to the exclusion of all others. A year of practice. A year of introspection. And yet I cannot take the final step for I do not understand it.

  I’ve considered taking the seed that I found in the treasure room and seeing what would happen, but each time I consider it in the dark moments, when the storms rage and my body bleeds, I stop. I consider the words of that strange entity: find faith in the flesh.

  They were right. I do find faith in the flesh of these monsters. Even as the battle drags on below and the Heightened win their match, at an unfathomable cost, I cut into these creatures. I slice into their bodies to find the sweetest flesh. I carve their carcasses with the knife from the treasure room and know that it was given to me for just this purpose. I wrap the meat in waxed cloth and my mouth waters at the scent of it.

  No. I won’t eat the seeds of the dungeons. I will find the way as laid before me and I will place my faith in this odd path. What else can I do?

  I take up my pack once more and slip to the edge of the ravine until I’m looking down on the Heightened. There are three monsters remaining and two dozen of them. They’re worn. Haggard. They’ve been traveling and for the settled people of this sector, that is harrowing. For tribe five it would have been no matter to march for days without a bite, but these people have lived an existence of indolence and plenty.

  My eye plots me a path and I follow the blue line as it guides me, sliding down the side of the ravine, picking up speed until I bound out of my slide with my spear forward. I take on the creatures in the centre of its pyramid, spin, and disembowel a second. With no support it falls quickly to the assorted weapons of the Heightened.

  I roll my head again, my neck popping with each motion. Satisfying.

  “Lo.” I say.

  They wait for a moment. Weapons raised and wary. I shrug my arm out of my coat and lift my shirt sleeve until they can see my full arm. With the pseudo-mark of a Heightened the only smudge on my arm, they visibly relax. Weapons are lowered and faces of fear and anger melt into sadness, or smiles. Battle does things to a person. There’s no telling whether you will see your friend decapitated and sob or be so relieved that it was not you that you laugh. Sometimes it can be both as the moment swamps you in emotion.

  “Lo, Heightened.” A man steps forward, skin darker than mine by a few shades with tight curls atop his head and a thick, impenetrable beard.

  “Lo. Sorry I couldn’t come sooner. There were some above you.”

  He looks up to the ridge from which I’d slid. “Many?”

  “Enough.”

  He nods. He’s smart, he doesn’t want to question how a single Heightened was able to defeat even two of the beasts. He’s smart enough to be thankful but savvy enough to be wary of me. I watch his eyes flicker up to my new eye; it is much alike as my old but holds inside a dot of blue light that betrays its strangeness, but I know it isn’t the eye that draws his attention, it is the burn that puckers my skin.

  He flicks down too, the hole in my hand is less terrible that it had been at that dark moment in the woods, but it will remain forever a pit in my palm and a gnarled mass of flesh on the back of my hand. I’m thankful that it hasn’t hindered my motion and know it is only the strength of the Monarch’s flesh that has made me this whole.

  I hesitate. The worry of whether to ask to stay with the group for a null cycle or disappear into the wilderness to be alone is taken from me. A child, they cannot be more than ten years old and still without the blemish of a Heightened, bounds to me with the spring of the innocent.

  “Lo!” His smile is broad and genuine and I find myself responding in kind. My eyes crinkle at the edges as my own smile sneaks on.

  “Lo.”

  “That spear is amazing! Where’d you get it?”

  I hold my spear out for the child’s inspection and his eyes widen in wonder as I let a fraction more light seep from it in clouds. “I went into a dungeon and this was my reward.”

  “A dungeon? I’ve not been in one of those before. Papa Heric was talking about going into a dungeon, weren’t you Papa?” He turns to the man who’d greeted me.

  Papa Heric blanches. “It was idle chatter. Pay it no mind.”

  I shake my head. “Without a Marked, it would be difficult.”

  “As I say, it was just a thought. Now, would you like to spend the night with us? I wouldn’t turn away a friendly spear, not after…” He looks at the group gathering their fallen and I see the sorrow hang heavy on his slumped shoulders.

  In his invitation there is a caveat, though, the explicit statement that this is for a night. One null cycle of comfort together and then I am to be gone and they will begin again their long journey.

  It has been a long while since I’ve spent time with a group of friendly people. I extend my smile, tuck my spear against my shoulder, and put out my hand to be shaken.

  “Lo, Papa Heric, I’m Pik.”