Chapter 5

Losing track of time down in the mines wasn’t unusual, but the pair had been following the light for so long that Lees wondered if they’d stayed past their shift end. It could have been a few hours, it could have been the full 10 hours. The light had slowed enough for them to keep a steady walking pace, the bobbing orange pendant always staying just out of reach. Lees tried keeping track of their distance at first as a safety measure, but reluctantly gave up after second-guessing her pacing. She'd be way off base if she were counting too quickly, but even having that thought threw off the whole count. Try as she might to stay focused, Lees’ concentration was slipping. 

“Have you ever wondered how long a second is?” Lees asked, breaking the silence for the first time since she’d agreed to follow him. 

“What? No, can’t say I have…” Meshi trailed off. Lees suspected he wasn’t actually thinking about her question and decided against asking a follow-up one. 

A second per footstep, a foot per step, but wouldn’t my stride be more than someone else’s? Numbers swirled in Lees’ head, refusing to come together in a discernible formula. 

Lees was too lost in thought to notice Meshi had stopped, and she smacked into his back. Something jagged in his duffel bag dug into her ribs. He lurched forward but kept his eyes locked on the corridor ahead. The necklace’s orange light had stopped several dozen feet ahead of them. He crept forward slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal, then broke into a full sprint. Just as his hands stretched out to snatch it off the ground, Lees caught up to him, and the necklace jolted back to life. It bounded wildly around the passageway before shooting straight upwards, faster than before, the light fading into the darkness.

“Is that thing taunting us?” Lees asked breathlessly. 

“We have to be close now,” Meshi whispered. Lees stared at him, but he didn’t elaborate. He started walking again without looking at her, but Lees paused, watching him creep forward into the darkness.

What isn’t he telling me? Lees wondered. 

“Ow!” Meshi shouted, then turned back to growl, “Can you please bring the light over here?”

Lees hid a smile before trotting over. Meshi stood a few inches back from a sheer wall, angrily rubbing his nose. As soon as the light hit the wall, Meshi’s fingers scrabbled against the lumpy and irregular stone. The orange light had faded entirely somewhere beyond this wall, causing his search to become more desperate.

“It went up, then down,” Lees said. Colder air pooled over them, and Lees looked up in alarm. The ceiling of stalactites and damp rock of the tunnel had vanished. Her light box illuminated the area immediately around them, but the darkness above them swallowed the weak beam.

She tried not to think about how far away they were from Last Light.

Lees shouldered past Meshi, who was now crouching to feel around the tunnel's edges. Lees stood on her tiptoes and ran her palms along the top of the tunnel. At the very height of her reach, with her arms extended as far as possible, her fingers curled over and felt nothing. She wiggled her fingers in the emptiness beyond the stone. 

“It’s a lip,” She said, straining to feel beyond the edge. “The stone must have bounced up and beyond…well, whatever’s on the other side.” 

Her eyes unfocused to conjure a mental image of what her hands were feeling, mapping out the possibilities. Was this just an unusual wall formation in the middle of a tunnel that had partially collapsed, or did it lead into a larger chamber in the cave? 

Meshi pushed forward, and Lees’ stomach dropped at the jostling. She teetered off balance and stumbled back, nearly tripping over his foot. Lees grabbed the back of his harness and yanked him away from the wall. She jabbed a finger in his chest and glared at him, noting with satisfaction that the lightbox on her shoulder was partially blinding him. Meshi threw up a hand to block the light, and Lees jabbed his chest again. 

“Back off me, soft hands, or we’re going to have a real problem,” She snapped. “Do you know how dangerous natural caves are?”

“It’s my necklace. I won’t let you take it from me,” Meshi sneered. 

“I don’t want your stupid necklace!” Lees said. But is that a lie? There’s something about it, but would I really steal it? An image of the multifaceted gem glowing brightly danced across her vision. The aching pull in her chest surged almost painfully. She released his harness, exalted deeply, and gestured at the wall. “There seems to be an opening here. This wall doesn’t extend all the way up.” 

Meshi felt along the wall to reach it, but he was shorter than Lees. 

“Push me up,” He demanded. 

“Oh, absolutely not,” Lees protested. “That could be a straight drop off on the other side.” She scanned the cave opening above them and the yawning darkness beyond before continuing. “I’m not pushing you to your death. We need to go get a long rope, or better yet, bring a crew back with us.”

“No,” Meshi replied. Without pausing, he took a running start toward the wall and kicked off hard, hands scrambling to reach up and up, just managing to latch onto the lip. Using the uneven wall to gain purchase, he pulled himself awkwardly over the edge. Lees rushed forward to stop him and locked onto his legs. She wrapped herself around his knees and tried to think heavy thoughts to pull him back. 

“Let - me - go!” He shouted. “I can see it! It’s just - there - let go!”

“Do you have a death wish, you idiot?” Lees shouted back. She braced herself against the wall but was losing ground. Even with her full dead weight pulling him down, he was pulling her up, inch by painful inch.  

“How are you this strong?” Lees groaned. 

Meshi was doubled over the wall now and using his weight to pull her up with him. Gravity won in the end, their combined inertia pulling them violently over the wall. The pair fell fast and hard. Lees' and Meshi’s screams bounced around them as they tumbled down, separating somewhere along the way down the fifty-foot slope. Lees was very aware of the blood rushing to her head from this angle. Sharp edges jabbed at Lees’ shoulders and elbows as she struggled to flip around, every bump threatening to snap her neck. She tucked her knees and managed to orient herself feet-first, then saw stars as her chin slammed against another rock along the slope. Lees was skidding on her stomach now, and felt one of the buckles on her harness snap. Bile crept up her throat to mingle with the taste of blood and grit. She couldn’t stop. There was nothing to do as her body spun again in a bounce that rearranged her internal organs. Stone scraped every inch of her exposed skin as she skidded to the bottom of the bowl. Lees rolled over a few times before coming to a stop on her back. 

Safety training kicked in again, and Lees carefully checked herself. Head, face, throat, chest, stomach, legs, fingers, toes… Her heart raced beneath her fingers, but she was more or less intact. 

Satisfied that she wasn’t bleeding out, Lees wrenched her eyes open and stared in awe. The massive chamber around them was alive. Brilliant shapes of every color imaginable twisted and spread across the cave walls and ceiling hundreds of feet above her. Ribbons of dazzling blues, reds, and yellows intersected and twisted, crashing into each other before separating just as quickly. 

So enthralled with the sight, Lees hadn’t even bothered trying to count how long she sat like that. A soft groan somewhere to her left pulled her out of the trance, and she slowly sat up. Lights exploded across her eyes, and a wave of nausea rolled over her. She waited for it to end, breathing in through her nose and looking around to keep herself from barfing. From here, she could see even thicker bands of colors wrapped around jutting stone shapes all along the walls and floor of this huge cavern. 

Meshi was struggling to roll over. A few strings of greens and pinks rolled beneath him, illuminating the shape of his body from below. Lees looked around and noticed other natural entry points speckled along the cave, including a vast pit of darkness just beyond the thin plateau she and Meshi sat on. Lees swallowed painfully at the sight and glanced back at Meshi, who grimaced and turned his face away. She reached over and turned off the now pointless light box that had once again blinded him. 

Lees’ head cleared. With eyes mostly adjusted to the light and her stomach contents firmly in place, her attention snapped to the platform they were on. How thick was this stone? How safe were they? The rock beneath them was smooth and flat, almost unnaturally so. She placed an open palm to the smooth surface and noticed it was warm to the touch. Thin tendrils of purple light twisted up and around her fingers, appearing to almost lift off the ground to drift along her skin before continuing their journey on. 

The purple light raced toward the center of the room, as all the other veins seemed to do. Her eyes traced its path and finally saw what the lights were rushing toward. At the tip of the plateau stood a large stone sphere, its surface worn smooth from a steady stream of water falling from high above the cave. The water pooled at the top and ran down the sides off the plateau and far below. Lees was struck by the serenity of this strange natural water feature, its surface sparkling as multicolored lights shimmered through the water. 

Something blocked her view, and she looked up in alarm. Her less-than-favorable companion’s frame towered over her. Lees blinked at him and watched Meshi touch something wet on his face. He scowled as he realized it was blood, a souvenir from their tumble over the wall. 

“You happy? I got cut thanks to your flailing,” He spat. 

“You’re still breathing, aren’t you?” Lees retorted. 

Meshi’s head snapped to the side at a tiny but persistent sound in the distance. Their lovely little guide was repeatedly clanging against the central stone sphere now, smacking into it, bouncing off, then speeding back towards it again and again. Lees hadn’t even noticed it before. The pendant’s orange shine seemed much duller against this cavern’s glow, and the rushing water from above almost completely drowned out the sound of its assault. 

Without a word, Meshi darted in its direction. 

“Oh, yeah, sure. ‘Thanks for your help, Lees, I’d be crushed upside down in a hole without you here to guide me,’” Lees muttered. 

Up close, the stone sphere was massive, rivaling that of Teeg’s two-story shop. Lees walked a few paces behind Meshi, drawn forward by the pendant’s attempt to break through the sphere’s almost crystalline exterior. 

”What could have made this?” Lees wondered. Meshi didn’t respond, instead running his hand along the rough stone side of the sphere, and sliding his hand into a water-worn divot. The pendant clanged away above them, but he paid it no attention now. 

Lees reached up and looped her finger through the chain before gently pulling the pendant away from the stone. It struggled weakly against her before rebounding straight into her palm. She pinched the stone between her fingers almost on instinct, and the weak ache in her chest exploded out across her body. She gasped at the pain that tore at her, a pain not physical but of something more profound. Loneliness, cold and empty, and loss, sharp and persistent.

And then the feeling faded just as suddenly. 

She turned the stone over in her hand and noticed just how bright it was compared to the dim yellow Hyper dust she mined every day. Real gold ringed the pendant, and the finely looped chain was so intricately woven that Lees couldn’t help but wonder who could be skilled enough to Shape something like this. 

“I think we can break this open!” Meshi called from the other side of the sphere. 

“Wait, what?” Lees snapped back to reality. The dazzling light display was incredible, absolutely astonishing once-in-a-lifetime type stuff, but this wasn’t a dream. They were potentially miles below Last Light, hours away from the foreman and their team, and without supplies to last more than a day or two. Sure, it was weird that the necklace was moving on its own, but there was no way Lees was going to die for a mystery. 

“It doesn’t seem that thick. The water has eroded a lot of it away, so we don’t need to get through much,” Meshi continued. 

“Are you kidding? We have no idea what this thing is made of,” Lees said. 

“Yes we do,” Meshi said as he rounded back towards Lees. “It’s clearly Hyper dust.”

“Yes, clearly, of course this massive sphere is pure Hyper,” Lees replied. “So says the mite who’s only been in the mines for less than a day. You have no idea what’s inside this sphere. It could be gas or even some kind of incendiary material lying in wait to blow us into a thousand pieces.” 

Meshi glared at her and noticed the necklace in her hand. He held out his own and wiggled his fingers before saying slowly, “It’s mine, remember?” 

Lees slapped the necklace back into his hand, then jabbed a finger at him again. 

“No, we don’t go around breaking open strange stones. If we get out of here – if – we wait to get a crew down here to inspect it. Then maybe we crack it open.”

Lees craned her neck to look up the slope they’d fallen down. Could we scale it with pickaxe alone? Would that give us enough grip? She started to unclip items from her belt, feeling an uncharacteristic lightness on her side, when –

CLAAANG! 

The sound of a pickaxe hitting stone echoed through the massive cavern. Frustration boiled over, tightening Lees’ chest and rushing up her neck. She whipped around to see Meshi peering into a tiny fissure he’d made in the stone with her pickaxe. He lifted her pickaxe and arced it backward with a clumsy grip. 

Lees flew across the distance between them and grabbed the pickaxe as it reached its apex. Meshi jolted off balance and fell onto his back. Lees leaned over him now, gripping the pickaxe menacingly. 

“You idiot. You absolute fuckass piece of ungrateful shit. I protect you from being beaten black and blue, get dragged back into the mine without pay because of you, and I follow you and this stupid glowing necklace down an uncharted drift for hours. I keep you safe, I’m nice to you, and this is what I get in return?” Lees shouted. Her own voice echoed in her ears, partially drowned out by a persistent ringing sound. She threaded her hands through his lapels, pulled him to his feet, and slammed him against the sphere. His head bounced against the stone with a thwack. He clamped onto her wrists and tried to wrestle her away. The golden chain of the necklace grazed her forearm, and the pendant bumped against her hand as he struggled. 

White-hot rage coursed through Lees’ veins, and she repeated the gesture while cursing through gritted teeth, “You are an entitled, spoiled, soft, helpless child who got everything handed to him and can’t stand the idea of not getting his way.” 

“Stop, stop, let me go!” Meshi begged. He wasn’t focused on her, even as she smashed him against the sphere. “It’s here – I know it’s here. Let go!” 

“No!” Lees snapped. “Not until you listen to me and admit you don’t know everything. You’re just a mite like the rest of us, with a shitty attitude and a fancy necklace.” 

Meshi looked nervous now. He tightened his grip on her wrists, and a panicked, reckless look flashed across his eyes. Lees recognized the look. With a final burst of anger, Lees drew him back and slammed him into the sphere again. A crack splintered across its surface on impact, splitting it almost perfectly in half. She let go of Meshi more out of shock than malice, and the boy slammed backward into the hollowed sphere. 

Lees froze, not sure what to expect. To her astonishment and relief, no hazardous gas, liquid, or even creepy crawly emerged from the gaping hole. The necklace in Meshi’s hand yanked wildly, snapping against the chain over and over again, like a dog tied to a leash.

“What did you do!?” Meshi screeched.

She didn’t respond and instead stepped over him into the shattered sphere. 

“Huh, you were right,” Lees muttered, her anger dissipating.

The sphere's interior was made entirely of hardened, crystallized Hyper dust. Its violent swirling pattern of brilliant light was disorienting – she’d never seen anything so terrifying and beautiful. The jagged shapes pulled and rolled over one another, forming eerie tendrils that strained to reach the sphere's center.

It took a few moments for Lees’ eyes to make out the shape amid the flashing and crashing lights. But there, resting atop a thin pedestal of chaotically hardened dust, was a star-shaped, blood-red stone. It was small, tiny even, no bigger than the diameter of a carrot, its surface covered in dozens of rounded points. The moment her eyes fixed on it, truly seeing it amid the swirling explosions around her, it lit up with a flash that emitted such a bright light that it drowned out everything else and bathed the entire cavern in red. 

She had to squint to keep her eyes open. The light that danced across the surface of every facet and divot of this stone wasn’t reflecting from another source but from within it somehow. The hardened Hyper dust shone in a thousand different ways, erupting with countless shapes and patterns. 

It was painful to look at, but Lees didn’t turn away. She couldn’t. 

The air left Lees’ lungs as she looked at the star-shaped object. Its light filled her mind and swirled around her thoughts, bathing even her insides with its crimson light. And it was comforting, a warm embrace, a welcome presence. 

The world around her fell away. She barely noticed. Until the dazzling lights abruptly shattered giving way to a deep darkness. An enormous shape appeared, a disembodied, crystallized hand of a giant held tight in a fist. A scream rose in Lees’ chest but died before it reached her throat. The impossibly enormous hand opened to reveal the star-shaped object floating in its palm. 

That pull again – the ache in her chest – intensified, as if beckoning her forward to take the object. But Lees hesitated, taking a step back. 

Hyper dust crumbled under her weight, and Lees felt the heel of her foot dip down. A quick glance down, and fear shot through her body. She stood at the edge of a flat crystal platform, her weight teetering enough to coat her back in a thin sheen of panicked sweat. Lees threw herself forward, away from the edge, but there was nowhere else to turn. 

“Let me go,” She demanded, summoning any dredge of bravery remaining in her. The giant hand did not move. 

“I don’t want it,” Lees lied. “What have you done with Meshi?” Again, the hand did not move. “The boy who was with me—don’t hurt him.”

Two fingers on the enormous hand twitched, and the others curled inward almost imperceptibly. Then it reached out towards her again, tilting the palm down to beckon Lees to grab the stone. 

She tried not to look at it, but the ache in her chest felt like it was escaping her ribcage. Desire consumed her like she’d never felt before, not for her favorite meal, or Jez’s embrace, or revenge on the chippers who dragged her from her home. She had never wanted anything more than this in her entire life, Lees was sure of it. 

Whatever brittle willpower she had left snapped. Lees reached for the stone slowly, tentatively. Her fingers hovered over it, and electricity radiated through her palm and up her arm, leaving tingling goosebumps in its wake. Her mind raced with images of the blood-red stone’s shifting plasma-like form. She saw herself holding it high above her head until the red light consumed Last Light. Thousands of eyes peered at her from the darkness, tendrils reaching out to tear at her flesh, to pull her into their writhing mass. 

Lees’ stomach flipped, her breath caught in her throat, and she jerked her hand back. Even if she had to jump, she would escape – but the electricity of the stone held her fast, as if her hand were a magnet drawn to it. The giant crystal hand was a deeper, richer color now. It reached out to grab her, the fingers spreading to encompass her body easily, and the star-shaped stone’s points shot out in all directions to pierce her and the walls of the black void. 

She screamed as the stone twisted and shifted, her skin ripping against the spikes spinning wildly. The crystal hand reached for her, to squeeze, to destroy—and suddenly the vision vanished.

Lees was back on the plateau, standing in the now darkened, shattered sphere. Sweat matted her hair and dripped down her face, and one hand was outstretched over the Hyper dust pedestal. She was whole, unharmed, but the stone was gone – and so was Meshi.