He kept the luminosity of the light sphere low, just enough to see by. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold it. He was tired, weak, and didn’t relish having to draw more ether than he already had.
The light revealed the trail sidling down the mountain range on his left. It dropped deeper and deeper into the rift with no sign of ending.
This was some mess he was in. Would they really have dropped him on some random part of the moon? Or would they have put him where there was at least some human habitation nearby? He thought back all those months, to what that prison guard had told him. The Treaty of Chiron stated the League only needed to get the exiled mage to the surface. He’d said the Treaty had ensured nothing about the mage's survival, so Lucian had to take that into his own hands.
Lucian’s train of thought was broken when he stepped on something organic and squishy. He pulled his boot away with a squelch, looking down at what appeared to be a pile of mud. A pile of mud that was warm.
That was when the smell hit him.
His mouth twisted. “Disgusting.”
He wiped his boot on a nearby rock but couldn’t get the residue completely off. There were two piles of it, not quite steaming, but hours-fresh.
He supposed that answered his question about whether there was animal life on this moon. This observation was not helped by the fact that the creature was bigger than him. Far bigger, and nearby.
Shelter was sounding like a better idea every second. Turning back wasn’t an option. Up above were only dry wastes. The area he had come from hadn’t held so much as a snowbank for water, despite the freezing temperature. That told him little precipitation fell here.
Whatever life was here had to live below, between the mountains. But other life also meant competition for resources. He had to be prepared that the natives were not friendly.
Lucian proceeded cautiously, rounding a bend that wrapped around the mountainside.
That was when he saw a light in the distance, the unmistakable orange glow of a fire.
He immediately cut off both of his streams and crouched. His mind hummed with the positive afterglow of magic. How he had missed this feeling. And because of that, Lucian understood more than ever why magic was so dangerous.
He kept his attention on the fire. It might have been a hundred meters away, but he couldn’t see anyone around it. He thought about reaching for Radiance to home in on the infrared spectrum. Doing so would allow him to see any heat source besides that fire. A heat source like another human. But he already felt strained from holding his light sphere. If there were people around, he needed enough magic to defend himself. It was a risk he couldn’t take.
The best way to proceed was to move carefully, to watch his steps, and not make any sound.
He edged along the trail, keeping the rock wall on his left. If he veered too far to the right, he would fall into the rift. Even with the lower gravity, a fall from this height would be fatal.
As he approached the mouth of the cave, there didn’t seem to be anyone within a few meters of the fire. But from the even burn of the flames, it was clearly manmade. The only question was, where was the man?
Lucian crouched in the shadows, waiting for what seemed half an hour before moving in. He felt exposed, stepping into the light like this. He reached for his Focus; he needed to be prepared for the worst. He stood a few meters from the fire, which was almost burned down to coals. Beyond the firelight, he could see the cave went even deeper.
What was he doing in here? Half of him wanted to turn around and head back out into the night, and the other half wanted to explore further.
A sudden crashing noise emanated from deeper within the cave, like metal falling on rock.
“Hello?” he called.
He winced. Why had he given himself away? After a few seconds without a response, he creeped deeper into the darkness of the cave. He really should be turning around right now, but there was no way he was going to spend the night out in the darkness. Not with whatever had made that gigantic pile of crap. He needed shelter, or at the very least, directions on where to find food, water, and his own safe place to hole up.
At a bend in the tunnel, he heard a woman’s voice, singing softly. He strained his ears to listen, the hairs on his arms rising. If there was anything he’d learned from watching horror holos, now was the appropriate time to leave.
As soon as he started backing away, there was a witchy female cackle. “Leaving so soon? We haven’t even started, yet.”
Lucian ran, but tripped over a rock. Footsteps approached from behind.
He tried to get up, but he was so heavy, as if he weighed ten times what he should have. The ground below him glowed silvery. With horror, he realized it was a gravity amplification disc. As the disc pulled him down, hard, it was impossible for him to budge. Even his lungs fought for breath.
Well, he’d made a poor showing of it. After only a few hours on the surface, he was going to die.
2
It was Lucian’s first fight with a rival mage with his life in the balance. And from the way things were going, it was probably going to be his last.
If he wanted to survive this, then he knew he needed utter calm and to reach for his
