Sweat stung Paul’s eyes as he moved slowly and silently through the cavern, concentration etched on his face. Above his head, four small orbs of light floated, traveling with him through the endless caves and casting blue-white light against their walls.

It was the fourth light that was giving Paul trouble. Weaving and knotting his intent together to create the semi-permanent lights had become almost second nature to him after a few days of practice, but maintaining multiple orbs simultaneously stretched Paul’s concentration to its limits and beyond.

He had assumed that because each light no longer took more than a tiny trickle of essence to maintain that he could continue to create them almost indefinitely, but that didn’t prove to be the case. Managing only one orb didn’t take much in the way of conscious thought, and keeping two spheres had become relatively straightforward. Adding more, however, strained Paul’s ability to maintain awareness of his intent, and if he became distracted the additional orbs would often unravel and dissolve into the air.

Paul might have been content with the two lights he could maintain comfortably, if not for the consistent skill gains that he earned while stretching his abilities. Not only did each gain in [Channeling], [Intent Perennity], and [Intent Focusing] make manipulating and maintaining the lights easier, but Paul had begun to suspect that there was another benefit to raising his skills.

He was becoming stronger, quicker, and agiler. He could think more clearly, he healed faster and didn’t tire like he used to. Paul had initially chalked up many of those changes to the same unknown force that kept resurrecting him when he died, but he now believed the skills he was learning were the source of those changes.

His strength had been easiest to test. He had found a rock that he could barely lift in his main cavern. Each day after he gained a rank in a skill that seemed like it might be related to his strength - such as [Bash] or [Blunt Weapons], Paul would lift the rock and carry it as far as he could before dropping it in exhaustion, marking the distance on the cave floor.

His hypothesis had proved correct. On days that he had ranked up in a skill, he was often able to carry the rock significantly further than the day before, whereas, on days where Paul didn’t rank up in a physical skill, he made little or no progress over the day before.

To Paul, this begged the question - if physical skills were affecting his strength, endurance and agility, then were mental skills doing the same for his intellect and memory? He couldn’t think of an objective way to test himself, but if he was going to get out of these caves, he needed every advantage possible to survive, and if that meant that he worked on gaining skills for their ancillary benefits, then so be it.

In addition to the four orbs floating above him, Paul was also trying to [Move Silently] and use [Tracking] as he explored the caves, mapping and documenting his progress with [Pathfinding].

He was currently further from his home cavern than he had ever been before, exploring a section of tunnels he had found that seemed to angle upwards. He hoped they led to the surface. Keeping time in the dayless caverns was still beyond him but by the lightness of his waterskins and the growl in his stomach he knew that he was coming to the point in his exploration that he would soon have to turn back toward one of his camps in the caverns.

Paul knelt near a pile of bones that lay scattered on the cavern floor. He immediately noticed that they were from Cave Muskox, but they were cracked and burnt. He gaped, and one of his orbs almost flickered from existence. With a frenzy, Paul threw the bones to the side to plunge his hand into the remains of a fire beneath them. Dumbfounded, he rubbed cold, old ash between his fingers.

A fire. Someone built a fire. I’m not alone.

He sat down hard, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere inside him he thought was lost. Seymore crawled out from his buckskins to investigate the strange noise, and Paul petted him as he let go weeks of pain, fear, and hopelessness in heaving, teary laughter.

Wiping his eyes, Paul turned to Seymore, smiling. “Let’s go find a friend.”

With redoubled purpose, Paul strode through the unexplored caverns, using [Tracking] to guide his way. More and more signs of the cavern’s inhabitants littered the caves the further he went. More fire-cracked bones, a small piece of knapped stone, a long, thick ax with a broken stone blade; they were like beacons to Paul, beckoning him onward despite his dwindling supplies of food and water.

The tunnels twisted ever on, but Paul was encouraged by the fact that more often than not they rose in elevation, leading him higher and higher. He was now confident many people used these caves by the number of bones and amount of refuse. He hoped that whoever these cave dwellers were, that they lived near the surface.

Ahead of him, he noticed the tell-tale glow of bioluminescent fungus. He quickened his pace. In his travels through the caves, he found that the glowing mushroom only grew near a water source, and he was dehydrated, his last waterskin having run dry.

The caverns opened up into a substantial chamber of speckled limestone. Glow-fungus nestled near a small pond, and Paul hurried over and set his spear down, cupping his hands in the brackish water and drinking deeply. Once he had drunk his fill, he sat on a warm shelf-fungus near the shallow pool, unstrapping his waterskins to dip them in the water and refill them.

He shrugged off his pack and fished a piece of cave muskox jerky from it and broke off a bit for Seymore, who skittered down Paul’s arm to lap at the water before tearing into the dried meat. Sitting on the fungus, Paul absently stroked Seymore’s head.

It was only then that Paul looked at the opposite wall. He was so fixated on the water that he hadn’t given the rest of the cavern much of a glance, but now that Paul looked, he realized cave paintings covered the entire opposite side of the cave.

Stylized cave muskox ran from what looked like representations of death-rats, a chalk serpent wound its way across the wall, and crude bipedal figures threw rocks at each other.

Paul smiled. If this wasn’t proof that there were others in the cave, he didn’t know what was. He set Seymore down near his pack and stood, walking over to the paintings. His smile faded from his face as he drew closer to the cave art and began to make out their details.

This isn’t right. This is all wrong.

Paul’s steps grew slower and his stomach churned. Upon closer examination, the painted figures didn’t seem human at all. Their heads were strangely angular, their limbs overly long. Worse, instead of two arms and two eyes, the figures had four.

It’s just a painting. Maybe it’s a representation of a deity?

He remembered stories of some religions back on Earth that had depicted gods with multiple sets of arms, or a third eye. He had almost convinced his dread to recede when he noticed the hand stencils.

Dotting the cave walls, they showed the outline of a hand that was utterly alien. Four fingered, with six finger joints, each extremity was the size of Paul’s chest.

Oh no. Definitely not human.

Trembling, Paul raised his hand to the wall, placing it inside the stencil. His hand looked like the size of an infant’s in comparison.

What made these?

Paul didn’t have to wonder long. The sound of scraping footsteps from one of the cavern exits caused him to whirl around. There, emerging into the bioluminescent light of the shelf fungus, were five figures.

The cave paintings didn’t do justice to their size. Paul estimated that each one stood nearly 3 meters tall. Wedge-shaped, mantis-like heads sat on top of a long, lanky body that seemed to be all leathery skin, knobby joints, and long limbs. A set of large, bulbous eyes closed as the creatures entered the well-lit cavern, but the second set of beady, intelligent eyes beneath the first remained open. They wore no clothing but sported what looked like jewelry - necklaces of bone and teeth and armbands of fur. One of them wore a colorful headdress.

All had weapons, two carrying stone adzes, while the others wielded wooden clubs in their upper set of limbs. Their lower set of arms cradled huge rocks, for what purpose Paul didn’t know.

Up until now, Paul had been able to rationalize the appearance of the strange creatures he found in the caverns. Despite occasional extra eyes or limbs on the larger inhabitants of the caves, or different body plans for the insects, Paul had always been able to match them with an earth analog.

These new creatures, however, were completely alien, there was nothing Paul could compare them to, nothing he could use as a frame of reference. Instead, his mind roiled and gibbered, trying to come to grasp with something so completely alien and other. Paul’s concentration lapsed, and one of this light orbs dissolved and faded away.

Mantis-men? Trolls? Mantis Trolls?

There was no question that they had seen him, pointing and calling out in strange, rasping voices. Paul held up his hands and began to edge back toward the pool of water, where his pack and weapons lay.

The creatures shook their weapons and shouted as they advanced toward him.

Well hell, first contact is not going well.

“Hi there,” Paul spoke in soft, low tones. “I don’t mean you any harm, and I didn’t mean to trespass. I’m just going to take my pack and leave.”

He was surprised to see the alien creatures pause when they heard his voice, staring at him but stopping their advance. Paul continued to talk in soothing tones as he side-stepped his way toward the pool, his pack, and Seymore.

He thought that the situation might end peacefully when the Mantis Troll with the headdress suddenly pointed toward Paul’s spear leaning up against his pack near the pool and shouted what Paul assumed to be a command.

The other four trolls charged toward him, their long legs propelling them forward with frightening speed.

The Paul that woke up in the caves for the first time two months ago would have frozen in fear or flown into the dark. This Paul, however, had died nearly a dozen times since then. Each time, he had learned something, and each time he had grown. He had spent weeks developing his skills in a dangerous environment and had explicitly trained to improve specific ones.

There was one skill, however, that Paul had worked to improve above all else.

He didn’t hesitate. Paul sprang into a flat sprint, and all 12 levels of his [Sprint] skill kicked in, propelling him toward his Seymore and his gear with near-superhuman speed.

The trolls moved to cut him off and one swung its club at Paul with its improbably long upper limb. Paul tucked himself under the swing, using [Tumbling] to somersault to the ground and spring back up. He spotted Seymore sunning himself on one of the bioluminescent fungi as he reached the pool. He scooped Seymore up, dropped him into his buckskins, shouldered his pack, grabbed his spear, and turned back to face the mantis trolls.

They were upon him immediately. Paul ducked frantically as an adze descended at his head then backpedaled furiously as another troll swung at his chest. Paul dodged among the shelf-fungus, trying to keep them between him and his attackers.

Paul lashed out with the spear, stabbing it when he could at the troll’s eyes. He didn’t connect, but it made them flinch back, giving Paul time to edge closer to the exit of the cavern.

The troll’s size and numbers worked against them among the tight spaces of the shelf-fungus grove, allowing Paul to weave in and out of the fungi while the struggled to squeeze between them.

Paul’s breath grew ragged and his lungs burned as he continued to weave, dodge and tumble. Eventually, however, his luck ran out, and he found himself with his back to the cavern wall with an adze descending toward his head. He tried to dodge right, but a shelf fungus grew from the wall at shin height on that side, and Paul fell to the ground.

He managed to block the descending adze stroke with his spear, but the power of the swing shattered the spear in two and left his hands and arms tingling with the force of the impact. Paul struggled to his feet, only to catch a club blow to his side.

Paul exhaled with a shout as the blow forced the air from his body and he felt his ribs crumple from the impact. Every breath was pain.

Grimacing, he ducked under another blow and ran for the exit. His moccasins slid against the cavern floor as he scrambled for purchase. He retreated to the relative darkness of the tunnel and ran down its winding corners. His legs burned and he felt dizzy, the wound in his side preventing him from taking anything more than short, shallow breaths.

The footsteps of the trolls following him sounded like they were 30 meters away or more, so Paul was caught by surprise when he was thrown off his feet by a massive blow to the small of his back, knocking the wind out of him. The beach-ball sized stone that hit him clattered to the ground, and Paul rolled to avoid another that narrowly missed his hip.

Paul gasped and coughed blood as he staggered to his feet. He drew a javelin from the brace of spears on his back and threw it back at one of the trolls, hitting it square in the chest, where it stuck. The creature staggered backward before contemptuously ripping it out and roaring a challenge Paul’s direction. Paul could see dark ichor flow from the wound in the wan light of his glowing orbs, and threw a second Javelin, this time catching the troll in the neck. Black blood flowed between its multi-jointed fingers as the troll clutched its throat and faltered.

In the darkness of the caves away from the bioluminescent fungus, the trolls had opened their upper set of eyes again, and their pupils caught the light from Paul’s orbs like the glow of a wild animal’s eyes in the headlights of a car.

Paul saw another troll wind up to throw. His instincts told him to dodge, but Paul fought them down along with the pain and exhaustion and focused his intent. With a massive push of will, Paul sent one of this three remaining light orbs streaking toward the troll’s large upper right eye.

Paul could feel his control of the orb ebb as it shot away, but its momentum carried it the rest of the way, and the troll dropped the stone it was going to throw and screamed, holding one of its vast palms to its eye.

Paul reached for another Javelin but saw the other two trolls running toward him. Thinking better of it, he turned and ran again, scrambling down the cave’s twisting passages and sliding around its tight corners.

Eventually, he staggered and slowed, tucking himself into a rock fissure to try and catch his breath. He listened desperately for any sign of the trolls approach but had a hard time hearing anything over his labored breathing.

He realized his mistake as soon as he saw the first stone arcing toward him out of the darkness. The tight fissure didn’t allow him to move to either side. Paul threw himself to the ground, wincing as the stone hit the rock wall behind him and shattered into sharp fragments. Then he saw the second stone. It was aimed lower, toward where Paul’s feet would have been if he hadn’t fallen to the cave floor to avoid the first rock. Now it was headed straight for his head.

He had no way to dodge. He was out of options.

In desperation, Paul threw one of his light orbs toward the approaching stone, willing all of his intent into the glowing sphere, forcing all of his will into the energy bound by the weave. Hardness. Mass. Resistance. The strange power that he harnessed rebelled and squirmed, resisting Paul’s shaping of intent, but Paul clamped down on it, using his pain, using his exhaustion, using it as fuel for his will.

Paul knew it wouldn’t be enough. The small orb of light was just too tiny to stop the boulder hurtling toward him. So instead, he didn’t use the sphere, and wove something else instead.

The stone flew toward Paul’s head and impacted on a shimmering disk of glowing light. The disk faltered and cracked, but the boulder fell to the ground and broke into two pieces.

Paul slowly clambered to his feet, eyes not leaving the two trolls at the other end of the tunnel. One threw another boulder at Paul, but instead of dodging, Paul stood his ground, moving the disc of light with his mind to intercept. More followed, and the circle of light met and deflected each one.

The trolls had no more stones to throw. They looked at each other, and slowly began moving down the cavern toward him. Paul thought the trolls looked unsure of themselves, but he realized that could have been wishful thinking.

Paul’s head felt like it had been struck like a gong each time a boulder hit the disc of light, and blood ran freely from his nose and eyes. He spat a bloody wad of dark blood on the cave floor and set his pack on the ground. Paul took Seymore from his shirt and tucked him in his pack before drawing his two jawbone war clubs. He could feel his ribs knitting themselves back together already.

Paul knew that at this point he probably could have just walked away. But he had noticed something when he first encountered the trolls in the cavern with the cave paintings. A necklace that one of the trolls wore had a feather on it, and Paul needed to find out where it came from.

A feather means a bird. A feather means sky. A feather means freedom from this fucking cave.

He strode toward the trolls, clubs held at his side, hands tight around their rawhide grips, face and side bloody.

“You know, we could have been friends.” He spat again. “I think we’re past that.”