To be a good man is to live with virtue and integrity on the hardest of roads.

  - A Quassian aphorism.

  The path ahead curved upwards, becoming also more natural in its formation. Here and there, stactites and stagmites grew from the floor and ceiling, occasionally meeting to form pilrs. Glowing purple lines threaded through the rock here, making the formations look like living blood vessels. It was a sign, as good as any, that this pce was most ancient in its origin.

  Za was ahead of me, scampering this way and that, chirping the occasional comment about our local environs and sniffing the air. After a few moments, she helped to confirm my suspicion that we were close to a source of water. And where there was water, there was food. I was used to privation, but I could no longer ignore the hunger pangs that a few strips of jerky could simply not assuage.

  “We are close to fresh water. It will taste more like blood as we get closer to the Bright. They say it is because a sky-god bled here once,” she informed me, her eyes focused downward, subserviently.

  “Good. Find it, and we will drink,” I returned simply, gd that we could refill our skins.

  Regretfully, not all of the skins had been filled with water.

  Some had filled with noxious liquid that burned my throat and set my limbs afire. In short, it gave me wings. I would have kept the energizing liquid, but it caused me to sweat a river and left me even thirstier. Regrettably, over half of the skins were of extremely poor quality, fashioned from fragile animal bdders that ruptured when their former owners discarded them hastily before taking flight. I had to discard them, as they were unusable.

  Between us, we had six usable containers, of which three were about half full. Things were not desperate, not yet, but I knew enough to pn a few steps ahead.

  Also, without a way to gauge how much longer it would take to reach the surface, this news was a godsend to me. The ‘blood taste’ description might be these primitives’ allusion to the heavy metal content in the water. The thought of drinking water with actual blood in it, was on some level, a little repulsive.

  I pointed at her to go ahead. “Go. Scout out ahead. If you do not return I will find and gut you,” I commanded.

  Gulping, she nodded her head a few times before and she scampered off.

  Ever since the encounter with the fearsome Zlesh Viper, I felt that she saw me as something of a protector. Those who were weak would always take shelter behind the strong, it was the way of the world. She was used to taking orders.

  Za returned to my side, with a worried look on her face. “Water, a small watering pce. Clean, I think. But there is one problem…”

  “Spit it out,” I barked. I kept my responses short as, despite my magical ability to learn nguages quickly, I still only had a very basic grasp of their underground nguage. With that in mind, I surreptitiously cast an Identify.

  “Yes, yes,” she continued, surprisingly unfazed, as if she was expecting this response, “There are other things at the water. No big ones, like the Zlesh. We were lucky with the Zlesh, you were wise for not moving. No doubt you saw that it was sated and slowed. The Zlesh are known to move faster than a thrown spear. I saw some Ghostwalker Crabs. They are, of course, no threat to one as mighty as yourself but…” There was always a but, “They have begun their courtship dances and they will be most territorial.”

  I waited for a few moments, to really absorb her words. Every word was being added to my lexicon as my mind digested them. Having learned one nguage already, the acquisition process had become much easier for me. It turned out that my teachers had been right, up until now, I had just been zy all along. When your survival depended on it, one picked things up quickly.

  Finally, I formuted a response, “The Crabs, they can be eaten?”

  “Yes!” she piped, perking up almost immediately. “They are most delicious. We used to…”

  She grew silent as I ended my Holy Aura, the darkness returning as the golden light withdrew. The golden song that had been pying faded, and with it my righteous sense of purpose. For some reason, I felt less sure. The reality of the task of returning to the surface somehow felt like it was becoming an impossibility.

  I rolled my shoulders, cutting off such nihilistic thoughts as my eyes grew accustomed to the dull gloom. My light extinguished, I noticed now that the area we had entered was brighter than where we had come from, with more of the luminous rocks casting their glow. Here the darkness was, by an order of magnitude, far less stifling.

  Looking in Za’s direction with an appraising eye, I could see that her choice of attire was actually less primitive than I had originally thought. Now, I could see that instead of being a haphazard mix, her ensemble seemed to be a deliberate selection for our current environment. Here in this poor visibility, her garb did a good job of breaking up her outline, its texture and lines rendering her as just part of the background rock.

  I realized I had overlooked something rather basic.

  “You. How long before we reach this Bright?” I demanded.

  She shifted, seemingly startled. She looked down and to the left before she nervously gave an answer, “The Bright… I would guess four dreams, no eight… eight!” I could almost taste the deception in her words.

  Not only was she lying, but I could only discern the vaguest of ideas regarding how long it would take. I was going on the assumption that a ‘dream’ was their equivalent to a day, for there was no sun to mark the time here.

  And here in the dark, my light was her sun. She had, at some point, come to accept that the light of my aura, that had once caused her discomfort, was actually a sort of shield that protected her from the creatures of the dark. In a way, it did, as it was healing the minor hurts she had acquired along the way. It was not so long ago that she could not look directly at me without squinting her eyes.

  Though the jury was still out on whether I actually counted her as a person. My stomach rumbled, catching me off guard.

  “The crabs, I assume you people hunt them, yes?” I asked my prisoner.

  “Yes…but” she began worriedly.

  “But nothing. If pathetic creatures like you can kill them, then I can kill them. I will kill them. All of them. Then we will drink from this water. If you are lying or preparing treachery, you know what will come to you,” I interrupted, growling in my most threatening voice and causing her to just fearfully nod.

  Why did going down to get some water have to be so difficult? Why did everything in this world have to be difficult?

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Show me the way, and be quick about it,” I commanded, and I swore she almost jumped to attention before heading off to heed my command.