[A]It was clear the moose monster suspected something.

  Ever since it had brought her into the rain room it had been watching her. She wasn’t sure if it had simply known that its magic wasn’t working from the start or if she had done something to make it suspicious. Either way, it was hard to escape its eyes.

  Since it clearly knew that she wasn’t being controlled, she decided to simply learn as much as possible. The moose monster had always used cunning before, having it know its pn had failed just meant it would come up with a new pn. A perfect opportunity to gather as much knowledge as possible. She had no doubt she would eventually fall under the monster’s control, but the more she learned before then the better chance she had of breaking free ter.

  If she could even work up the desire.

  While the idea of being food for a monster wasn’t all that appealing, all of the other benefits she had been receiving made it a much harder choice. Paying close attention as she followed, she had learned a number of new words. Even if she couldn’t use them yet, just having them was a boon. That alone would be enough to consider offering herself, but to also receive the disks that needed the monsters’ magic to create and the smothering warmth from its nest made things all but certain.

  If only she gave up her freedom.

  A terrible decision to have to make, which is why she had been resisting. So long as she could walk along the possibility rather than make a choice one way or the other than she could take all the good without consequence. Unless the monster had only shown her the bare minimum to get her interested.

  Which very well may be true, considering what she was watching.

  She was crouched in the monster’s ir, watching as it took strands and used its hands to make them rger. She couldn’t guess the purpose, but the implication that the monster had much more magic she wasn’t aware of made her second guess her stance. Did the monster let her be passive and not make a choice because the reward came from the choice, not as a way to entice her?

  Was… was she robbing herself of something better by not choosing?

  A worrying thought, both in that she had thought it and in what could be better than what she had experienced. There was a distinct possibility that the monster’s cunning had not faltered yet, its pn not so much failed as incomplete.

  As she was pondering her ultimate fate, the monster finished what it had been working on. A bnket now accompanied the strand, folded in a strange manner. She tilted her head slightly to try and comprehend the purpose of this new creation. Something that didn’t take long as the monster moved the strands in a way that opened a hole in the bnket. When the monster put the small book it sometimes carried into the hole, that purpose not only became clear but also very interesting. How many treats could she fit into something of that size, all of them? Even if it was only half, it would be several sleeps worth of food and a much better way to carry things she needed.

  As she pondered all the things she could accomplish with such a creation, she failed to notice the monster pick up her trinket.

  Once she realized that the monster was doing something to it, she quickly lost interest in future possibilities and tried to determine what the monster wanted with it. Ever since the trinket had stopped working, she had put it to the back of her mind. As far as she was concerned, if her trinket didn’t work then she needed to stay by the monster’s side forever. The trinket was protective, but it had clearly never worked against the moose monster, so there was no point in having a broken trinket try to protect her from something a working trinket failed at.

  She had also realized that nothing would dare to attack the moose monster, not even the darkness.

  After the rubbing in the rain room, she and the monster had returned to its ir only to find the darkness still inside. While the darkness lingering in the corners of a room before it was banished was nothing strange, the darkness in the moose monsters ir was resisting the light. As the light in the tunnel had fallen to the darkness, she realized that the darkness inside the ir was simir to what it had been before she had left. She could see clearly and the tiny lights still fought, though they were more dim.

  As the monster worked, the tiny lights seemed to gain some strength, though not as much as they had when she woke. She had felt it obvious at that point that the moose monster was interfering somehow. Clearly the darkness had not attacked the monster in its ir. It didn’t dare to attack the monster at all it seemed. The tiny lights in the ir were the prey that the darkness was chasing and the moose monster was….

  Prolonging the conflict?

  What was the moose monster doing? It clearly didn’t want the darkness to win, as the lights dared to live in its ir untouched. However, it didn’t let the light win either, as she had seen the light banish the darkness completely before. Was the monster enjoying the conflict?

  More mysteries to figure out ter. She still hadn’t determined what the monster was doing to her trinket, though it seemed to involve a small bnket. While a broken trinket couldn’t protect her from anything and her following the moose monster made it irrelevant, she would still prefer it stayed intact. It could be a valuable thing in the future if it could be fixed.

  She was wary of what the monster pnned when it stood with her trinket in its hand. She stayed crouched where she was as it walked into the tunnel, prepared for what it might do. She was not prepared to be attacked by the light, however.

  She had been too uncomfortable when the moose monster woke to really think about what had happened, but as the light and darkness had always fought, she thought it was easily understood. Now, as she covered her eyes to stop the painful light, she had to once again question everything she knew.

  Had the light attacked her and not the darkness?

  Or had it attacked both?

  If she had been marked by the darkness somehow and that had made her an enemy of the light, it would expin why she had never been attacked before. The fact it only attacked her eyes meant that they could be what was marked. It was strange, as the darkness had never been painful when it attacked her, it only stole her vision. She already knew she needed to learn so much more about the conflict between the two, but the more she learned the more she believed she had chosen the wrong side.

  As the pain subsided, she noticed the moose monster looking at her. It gestured and walked a bit away from the opening. She scrambled to follow it. As safe as she felt in the ir, there was nothing preventing other monsters from catching her there if the moose monster was gone. She believed that nothing would bother the moose monster’s ir, but she didn’t want to test it.

  Once in the tunnel she watched the moose monster. She couldn’t see what it did, as she was behind it, but she definitely saw her trinket fly far into the tunnel, the darkness falling away as it went.

  It… it worked again?

  The monster had fixed it. Why had the monster fixed it?

  She stood stunned by the turn of events. Her mind unable to figure out the monsters pns, even in the short term. She had thought she had grown better able to predict the monsters’ next steps, but this made no sense. When she noticed the monster watching her, she was startled out of her swirling thoughts.

  Was it a test?

  It didn’t matter. If the trinket was working again she couldn’t afford to let it be lost. She scrambled and picked up her trinket, seeing the changes the moose monster had made. It seemed the small bnket was attached to the trinket’s arms with the strands. When she looked up to see what the monster was doing, it had disappeared. While it was likely that it had simply returned to its ir, she now had a difficult choice to make.

  The thought caught her breath. A choice to make. Was that the monsters pn, to force her to make a choice? She struggled for a moment, but the choice was clear. She had so much information to parse, so many new things to think about and new things she needed to test without the monster’s interference.

  She padded down the tunnel out of sight of the monster’s ir. There was so much to do when she got back to her home. Enough treats to st for some time and her new understanding of the darkness meant the only thing to fear were other monsters.

  She just hoped the monster would let her return after she finished.

  [B]‘I knew no one could resist the parachute soldiers.’

  Lacking a ser pointer, cat toy production had been limited. Considering his audience, he figured kids toys could work too. Not really having much material to work with left him with simple stuff and he had a nice base in the stuffed cat. Grabbing a pillowcase and some leftover rope from his pouch, he had made a pretty basic parachute. After he had coaxed the girl into the hall, he had punted the toy as far as he could manage with the space.

  Sure, kicking the toy probably wasn’t the best, but between the very low ceilings and his desire to get the parachute working, which would need an arcing path due to those ceilings, there wasn’t much he could do about it. It certainly wouldn’t have gone that far with a throw. Besides, the girl didn’t seem to mind much.

  As she ran off down the hall to grab her toy, he returned to his room. Expecting to have to show her how the thing worked a few times before she started enjoying it herself, he grew a bit worried when she didn’t come back. A quick peek out the door showed empty hallways.

  ‘Guess she only needed the one demonstration.’

  Probably for the best. The industrial tunnels would be a much better pce to throw the toy around, the ceilings allowing a longer fall. If he ran into her on his way down he would make sure she had what she needed. The things he could help with now were a limited list, but he could at least make sure she had choco-sticks and some entertainment. He was only gonna be gone a day or two before his own stores would require him to return, problem fixed or not.

  If he found any wood on his way there he would knock on that as well.

  ‘Can never be too safe.’

  He didn’t run into the girl on his way to the elevator, so he made sure that there was something to eat in the mess hall’s lower cabinets. He was fairly sure at this point there wasn’t anything that could physically attack the girl on this level. Once she had that first shower and he had a chance to look around he hadn’t found any evidence of life beyond the two of them. So long as she didn’t open any doors while he was gone, she was safe. Well, safe from outside threats, she could still hurt herself.

  That was all a bit too much good news though. His trip back to the other level didn’t have any hiccups and he was in a strong position now that he was here due to having had the time to do a little transting. Something would need to go wrong. The sooner the better, as the longer things were going his way the worse the bad thing would be.

  He decided not to follow in his footsteps from st time, thinking that it was better to cover new ground. He was tempted to follow his ears and ignore the markings, as machinery that could take enough power to flicker the lights should be pretty loud. He settled on a compromise approach though, following the markings in the direction with the loudest noise.

  Opening every door he came across with his pan out in front, he decided that he had to be in some kind of bio b area. He wasn’t sure what made this b different than the one on his level, but he made sure to close all the doors once he passed, no reason to tempt fate more. The only worrying part being that nothing was active when he opened the doors.

  He seemed to be going in a good direction though, the background noise now included liquid sounds. Either pipes or some kind of open pnt. He wished he had the time to examine some of the rooms he was looking in, if they were actually bio bs they could have medicine and other chemicals he could use. Like something to clean water for example.

  He stopped.

  The room he had just opened seemed to have some kind of gssware. The temptation to go in and start looking around for things was hard to resist, but this wasn’t what he was here for. The best he could do was mark it on his map as he updated it and move on. This level was going to be a treasure trove once he found that pesky machinery.

  It took him several hours of being an aggressive door to door salesman before he made his next big find. The rooms stopped appearing and the markings on the wall slimmed way down. There was only a single line left heading off into the wide hall in front of him. He hemmed and hawed a bit but this was much too intriguing to ignore.

  As he walked down the hall that seemed to be much longer than he imagined, the auto lights making the distance hard to judge, he could hear the liquid noise grow louder. Any other day he would consider this a jackpot. Even if this was a dead end, he knew there was a lot of liquid flowing behind the walls in this location. He even made a note in his book as he was walking, making sure he knew to check back here.

  It seemed the note would be irrelevant though, as he came to the end of the hall and a rge door. He really wasn’t used to things around here being properly industrial sized, but he had to give it to the door.

  “This is clearly a boss arena.”

  Hefting his pan, that felt a bit cking now, he approached the wall on the right side. Looking around for a while he managed to find the panel. Said panel seemed to have questions for him though, obviously angry that he had yet to take it to a nice restaurant.

  Or maybe it preferred something more intimate, wine, candlelight and all that?

  Whatever its preference, the only part of the text he understood was the very universal yes/no at the bottom. Seemed like that hadn’t faded into history at least.

  “Course I meant it when I said I would take you to dinner!”

  Admonishing the panel for being impatient and hoping he couldn’t sign his soul away to technology yet, he hit the yes button. It seemed to be enough for the computer, as the door started to open after a series of unlocking noises.

  He hoped they were door noises at least, his pan wasn’t gonna cut it otherwise.

  Stepping up to the threshold of the door as he squinted against the ever-present brightness, all he could do was stare at what he had found. Breaking out of his awe-inspired staring he thrust his hands into the air in triumph.

  “Fuckin yes!”