Lucian had been walking for hours, and night was falling.

  He stumbled on a rock, almost face-planting on the rugged ground. The only reason he caught himself was due to Psyche’s lower gravity. He panted, trying to catch his breath. The air was thin up here, but maybe it would be thicker at a lower elevation.

  He was following a trail, but it was impossible to tell where it was leading. For now, it led up a set of broken steps carved into a cliff. Those steep, shattered stairs would have been impossible to climb in standard gravity.

  Climbing hand over hand, his muscles strained under the exercise. He had done nothing for months besides sit in his cell. Coupled with the low transit gravity of the prison barge, he was the weakest he had been in his adult life.

  Pulling himself up the final step, Lucian gasped for breath. Once standing, he peered beyond a precipice before him. It fell hundreds of meters, the trail crisscrossing down before it was lost to darkness. Even in low gravity, it would be hell going down that. But there was no other way to proceed. And the lower he descended, the darker it would become. He just couldn’t catch his breath. He needed to find shelter before night fell. And he needed to find water.

  Wherever his escape pod had landed, it was far from any sort of life, human or otherwise. Maybe this part of the moon was isolated, and he was the only living person within a thousand kilometers. If that was true, then it almost certainly meant his death. He would be doomed to wander this moon until he collapsed from thirst, hunger, or sheer exhaustion.

  He tried pushing these dark thoughts from his mind, descending deeper into the rift. He tried not to think of what threats might be lurking in the gathering darkness.

  One thing was sure. The further he descended, the dimmer the sky grew. Was that due to the onset of evening, or the twisted mountains blocking more sunlight? Those mountains didn’t look right, anyway. Through the violet mist, they were warped like some lurid vision of hell. Even Volsung hadn’t been as bleak as this. Low, stunted trees growing in rocky crevices were the only form of life. There was no wind whatsoever, while the air was cool, dry, and . . . dead, for lack of a better word. If there was water, it had to be at a lower elevation. And with water, hopefully, there would also be life. And where there was life, there was food.

  The mere thought of water made his throat feel even more parched, but it was almost too dark to proceed. Of course, he could stream a light sphere and search late into the night. But light might attract unwanted attention. It would be better to find water without it, but for all he knew, that would be impossible. And of course, it would mean dismantling the block he’d formed around his Focus all those months ago. Lucian had never been afraid of the dark, but the darkness of this moon terrified him. Anything could be lurking behind the copious boulders, crevices, or pits he passed.

  In the end, Lucian had to stop because he was tripping over every stray rock and crack. And now, the trail was skirting the edge of a mountain, and one false step could send him falling hundreds of meters. He needed light, but first, he had to see if it was even possible to stream.

  He reached for his Focus. There was no sentimentality as he worked to dissolve the block. It was a knot he had practiced untying countless times in his head during the long journey here.

  And just as it had been in his imagination, the block was unraveled with a simple stream of Psionic Magic. A strange heaviness departed from him. It would take some time to regather his ether, so to stream a light sphere, he would have to overdraw. There was little choice unless he wanted to stumble over the side of the trail and into the fissure.

  The image of his focus, the Septagon and its seven colored points, formed perfectly in his mind. He reached for the Radiant Aspect.

  He siphoned ether directly from the Manifold. The energy that powered all magic entered him, shocking him like cold water. But it also burned him at the same time, as if there were acid mixed in. He hadn’t expected so much ether to enter him so quickly, especially since he had been out of practice for so long.

  There was little time to wonder at it. He created a thin stream, and a dim light sphere manifested before him, illuminating the area up to five meters.

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  Now, he had to get that light to follow him. And for that, he would need to test his Binding. His heart pounded a bit, not knowing what to expect. He would have to stream Binding at some point, so he might as well do so now when he wasn’t under any immediate threat.

  While holding the Radiant stream, he reached for the Binding Aspect. He bound the light sphere to his right shoulder so it would follow him. He didn’t notice any discernible use of ether – it was as if his pool had remained at the same level. Granted, such a simple tether didn’t use a lot of ether anyway, but at the same time, it should have used at least some. It was further evidence that the Orb of Binding was real, and the Oracle had not been lying to him.

  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 an end.

  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 old.

  He supposed that it 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 he was. Far bigger, and nearby.

  Finding shelter sounded 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 temperatures. 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 to make any sounds.

  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 almost certainly man-made. The only question was, where was the man?

  Lucian crouched in the shadows, waiting for what seemed like 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 that 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 scraping on rock.

  “Hello?” he called.

  He winced. Why had he given himself away? After a few seconds without a response, he crept 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 dashed away but ended up tripping 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 with silvery light. With mounting horror, he realized it was a gravity amplification disc. As the disc pulled him down hard, he couldn’t 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.