Before I could even hit the ground, he was on me again. I boosted myself out the range of his claws in a panic and skidded away as fast as my winds allowed.

I couldn’t win. This guy, this tiger was on an entirely different level. I was bleeding liberally from a glancing strike, and despite my speed, he was keeping up.

I had to leave behind Stony Tony, my one trusted comrade. I conjured a buffeting wind to slow down the tiger, but he adapted within a few seconds; previously unseen Ether suffused his limbs and kept him moving towards me. I couldn’t slow him down.

This wasn’t a game — he was closing in for the kill. He didn’t even try to hear my end of things.

There were entire kilometres of cavern ahead of me, and I was going to bleed out before I could reach any semblance of safety. Seeing as how this tiger was keeping up with me as I desperately turned corners and ricocheted off walls, he wasn’t going to let me go.

He was going to kill me.

It hurt to just keep moving — I didn’t have a body, but I could still feel pain.

The wound in my core was a weeping gash that spilled out all of the energy I had worked so hard to collect.

A puncture through my chest, exposing my lungs and entrails to air. It was a physical wound engraved into the intangible existence that was me, delivered by a white tiger.

It was like nature itself was conspiring against me, trying to dust me before I could understand anything at all.

Well, given the circumstances, it definitely was. There was a goddamn Ether wielding tiger on my tail.

Here, all animals had some control of Ether. It was part of their diet. They killed and were killed for it. They could sense it in the air, and went after it when it was easy to harvest.

Yet no animal could actually see it. I previously hunted them by saturating the air with Ether, and they never knew the wiser. Then this guy showed up.

I took a sharp turn, veering to the left. Then, using a slanted cavern wall, shot myself to the right into a different cavern while wailing my little heart out. But even then, the tiger didn’t let up.

He was following my Ether trail. As long as I kept bleeding, he would follow me. When he caught me, he’d tear me to shreds.

Those were not the eyes of an animalistic killer. They were the eyes of a seasoned, human killer — somebody who remained calm and calculated moves to corner their prey.

If he could see Ether as well as I could, he already came to the same conclusion.

My core would bleed dry kilometres before I reached the inner caverns. What would happen if I started bleeding my Soul?

A deep, aching pulse ate away at my thoughts. With each mote of Ether I lost, the pain only got worse.

I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to hurt anymore.

I didn’t want to die.

This tiger was superior in every single way, and agile in ways my wind couldn’t compete.

There had to be a trick, some way out of this. I had to think.

—That’s it. That was a trick I could use, but I wasn’t sure if it was possible.

When some lizards feel threatened, they detach their tails and flee.

When a limb is infected, you have to cut it off before the infection spreads.

When trapped by glue, a rat gnaws off its leg to survive.

To trick this tiger, I had to amputate part of myself and send it off a different pathway. I had to keep the facade going long enough for me to escape.

I manipulated my Ether before, but I never dared touch my Soul.

Was it possible to split my very existence in two? What would happen to my mind? Would I be myself anymore?

Up some few hundred metres ahead was a particularly sharp corner, a branch that separated into two long stretches of cavern.

I was scared. I was so scared that, if I had a mouth, I would’ve been vomiting and crying uncontrollably.

But I had to do it.

If I was going to die, then something insane like this was worth a try. And even then, if he fell for the trick, it would be a fifty-fifty that he’d follow the other rock.

Survival was a pure gamble, a coin flip separating life and death.

I prayed with my imaginary eyes open, splitting what was left of my Ether in two.

The tiger slowed down as I made my move, as though challenging me to go right ahead and try it.

Oh? You want to be that generous?

Very well.

I blew on myself, forcing myself into a clockwise spin.

Let’s make my death exciting, then.

I rammed directly into the corner, forcing my body to break apart. Through the shrill, burning pain, I sent my bleeding half to the left, and my whole side to the right. I couldn’t amputate my core like I wished to, but I faked a similar bleeding wound.

The tiger hesitated, skidding briefly. Redirecting himself, he chose the pathway on the right.

He was kind enough to save me the trouble of puppeting a clone, then.

I had a lead now. But that was my only trick, my only way to survive.

So I did it again.

The pain was excruciating, as a matter of course. It was like I was split in two and every nerve, every blood vessel, every pain receptor was writhing in agony. It was the pain of falling into a vat of acid, of tripping into an industrial deep fryer. The pain only grew as I broke into a quarter of myself, but the tiger was confused by the move. I earned an even bigger lead.

So I did it again.

And again.

By the fifth break, I was an uneven, fist-sized lump with a smidge of Ether to my name. I had to sacrifice my Ether until I only had one-thirty-second of my former reservoir left, and it didn’t seem like I was getting it back.

But I couldn’t sense the tiger anymore — he finally went down the wrong tunnel.

I stilled my thoughts, forcing silence for the better half of the day as I snuck through the inner caverns.

When I reached the bat-infested outer caverns, I found a nice crevice to bury myself in, covered myself in bat shit to dissuade anything from coming near me, and shut down for emergency mental maintenance.

When I was ready to think again, there was a crowd of baby bats feasting on a lizard corpse outside of my hidey-hole.

Look at them, the absolute scum. They had parents to feed and care for them.

There was no way they took down that thing by themselves — their fangs and claws were tiny, toothpick sized things that couldn’t pierce flayed skin. Admittedly, they were a little cute when they were small and fuzzy, but in a week, they’d be indistinguishable from the rest of the bats around here.

I tried feeling around myself to figure out how badly hurt I was. My initial delirium-riddled analysis was unfortunately correct: I destroyed my entire core during my escape, and rest wasn’t helping it regenerate.

I had even less Ether than what I first started with, and I was pathetically small. A few more knocks and I’d look like something found in a chemistry starter kit.

One wrong turn and I was all the way back at the beginning. I blew myself out of the crevice I was hiding in, not quite sure what to do next.

It was all over, wasn’t it? I had been stripped of everything I had earned and endured something that left me crippled for days on end. This place would be my grave.

I landed a bit further than I anticipated, accidentally tipping over and falling into another crevice. Swearing, I pushed myself out gently, making sure I wouldn’t fling myself somewhere silly.

When I got out, I wasn’t sure where I was anymore. The baby bats and carcass were nowhere to be seen, but I—

Oh. That was why.

The lizard carcass had rolled some distance away, and the baby bats were taken for a home run.

I underestimate the force of my push. But that wasn’t my problem — it’s the bat’s fault for leaving their kids unsupervised.

More importantly, my wind hadn’t abandoned me yet.

What gives? I thought I had figured out a direct relationship between Ether and wind strength, but that wasn’t the case. It may have been my mind playing tricks, but it even seemed marginally stronger.

Fine then.

If my wind was willing to stay with me, then I’d keep moving forward.

I was about to give up. I was this close — if I didn’t realize I kept something, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

Seriously, wind, if you were planning on helping me out, could you at least explain yourself clearly? These kinds of tricks weren’t good for my heart.

I had to start again from the beginning. In order to grow the amount of Ether I had, I had to take it directly from living creatures and pry whatever I could from fresh bodies.

My most efficient hunting technique was to suddenly increase the air pressure in an area saturated with Ether. If I achieved that level of Ether, then rebuilding myself would be made easy.

By directing all Ether in a sphere towards a central point, I could create something like a pressurized implosion. Of course, if said target had any way of disrupting the uniformity of Ether or a way of breaking my complete and utter concentration, then it was effectively useless.

These ordinary animals out here didn’t know any better. They fight against it.

Ten accidental deaths allowed me to utilize enough Ether to create small implosions. From there, I harvested anything that came across my path.

Eh? This was needlessly cruel, malicious, and immoral?

Nope. I was just a harmless rock passing by, so if they attacked me, that was all their fault. A rock poses no threat to anybody at all unless it was radioactive, which I was fairly sure I wasn’t.

Semantics aside, I had a different objective this time.

If I couldn’t win against that insane tiger, then I wouldn’t try. I wouldn’t even think about him, if I could.

By now, I realized that portions of these caves were artificial. Somebody made this place, so there had to be a way out.

There were still some straggling tortoises trying to prove their dominance, so I swept in and commandeered some friends to my cause. These turtles could eat the stones all around us; the potential allies I gained were much more important than a casual snack. These were the guys who would help me with my eventual rescue mission — I couldn’t leave Stony Tony behind, especially since I was the one who left him there. But he had to wait until I got my bearings once more.

Beryl was the strong man, a big lump of a guy. He’d taken some battle scars before we met, but seemed happy to see me. Galahad and Tintin came together, brothers born from the same shell. Galahad told me his name came from the shield-like shape he came from, since he was chipped straight off a tortoise's back. Contrary to his brother, Tintin was long and spindly, and admittedly, not the best looker. He was a sharp guy, though, and real quick on the draw. I knew the four of us would be fast friends.

It took some effort to get used to them, but we were swinging and dancing like nobody’s business in no time at all.

Huh? Me, talking to rocks and people that didn’t exist? Don’t be silly, these were my friends, and there was always somebody willing to listen to me. I was the greatest philosopher of the underground, after all. Probably the only philosopher of the underground, actually.

Anyway, after we got to know each other, I told them about my plan. It was a doozy: me, them, and a one way ticket to the surface. Easy said, and for once, easily done.

Galahad, god bless his soul, was wide enough to carry our troop straight up. We scaled the walls of the outer cavern, occasionally taking breaks on cliffs and in cracks to recover our energy. When we made it to the very top of the ravine, we had a round of high fives and a sappy group hug that Beryl was a bit too into.

After I dislodged myself from my friends, we kept moving. Not that there was much to see up here.

The upper caverns were infested with tortoises, but the ones that lived up here were placid and docile. The ones that got close to me snorted and just walked past, like I wasn’t even worth their time.

There was no competition here. Peace and harmony, a tortoise paradise embedded into those gradually sloping caverns that led to the ravines below.

I thought about trampling over everything and squeezing what Ether remained, but I had a begrudging respect for these things. They may have almost eaten me once, yet they taught me how to manipulate Ether.

This was my wit’s end. All I could think about was escape, so I kept my head low and rode on Galahad towards the exit.

The stars I had once admired were getting close; the last thing I needed to do was get through the crowds of Ether clumps hanging above us. I didn’t have to fight my way through whatever awaited; Galahad would serve as our shield as we raced towards freedom.

We were so close now. I could barely contain my emotions as we turned those last few corners; there wasn’t anything that could stop us now.

The smart move all along was to simply run. Don’t deal with situations you don’t want to. Who would’ve thought it was that easy?

Smiling to myself, I turned the last cavern corner on our road away from this wretched place — only to be met with a solid white door protruding from a rock wall. I came to a sliding stop, ready to deal with any guardians that would stop me from reaching my freedom.

Nobody was here.

This door was closed off by man-sized bolts. The one downstairs may as well have been a child’s safety lock — there was no way to brute force past this wall of metal.

To the right of the door was a terminal with a glowing screen. I had nothing to lose, so I performed a wind boost and landed on the keyboard. I hadn’t read anything in a long time, so it took some adjustment of my perception to turn the terminal’s light into legible text.

Scan. Analyze. Processing...

!!!BREACH IN PROGRESS!!!

QUARANTINE IN EFFECT, REACTOR UNSTABLE

IMMEDIATE EVACUATION RECOMMENDED, PROTOCOL [DEVA] IN EFFECT

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

!!!BREACH IN PROGRESS!!!

Wait. This wasn’t right.

Unstable reactor? Quarantine? Here?

To test the hardness of the door, I flung Beryl, the bruiser of our group. He bounced off with an echoing clang, unable to leave a single scratch. I tried the wall next; Beryl made a small dent, but a dent wasn’t enough to dig through a wall of solid rock.

There were Ether signatures beyond the door. Figuring they may provide a clue towards what the terminal was saying, I looked towards them and tuned my vision — then immediately regretted it.

I had seen the faint shapes of the Ether stars on my approach, thinking they were outlines that were merely distorted by distance and low viewpoint. Even humans look weird if you get to only see their feet. I chose not to look carefully, busying myself with delusions of grassy fields and open skies.

I didn’t have anywhere else to look now. And my pattern recognition routines were not doing me any favors.

A human has two arms, two legs, two hands, and two feet. A face has one mouth, one nose, and two eyes.

There were things beyond that door. They couldn’t be called human — they defied the rules that composed the human body.

It was hard to see exactly what was going on, but there were cores out there. If I wasn’t mistaken, these cores were already poked full of holes.

I didn’t want to call them faces.

Some had too many eyes. Others, too many mouths. Some had no features at all.

I didn’t want to call them faces.

However, when I looked at them, all of them stared back.

I screamed.

A panicked burst of wind blew me to the ground. Without thinking, I picked up everybody and ran.

These shapes weren’t the same shapes I gazed upon long ago. If I wasn’t mistaken, they were growing — and they never stopped growing, not even for a single moment.

No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t look away. My senses didn’t allow the mercy of turning my back.

They were still staring directly at me when they reached that door. The silhouettes were piling on top of each other, struggling to breach the door. They cared not for each other; I saw faces being trampled as they pushed, limbs being torn from their bodies, and to my growing horror, the faces that weren’t faces screamed with delight.

Just for me, they were smiling.

I ran. Following only pure instinct and panic, I picked a direction and didn’t stop.

The very second I saw them, I knew death was the cleaner, kinder fate.

They were cannibalizing one another, using claws and their too-wide mouths to chow down on Ether. The cores weren’t granted merciful oblivion; they were absorbed and mutilated. The horror on their vague expressions warped into even greater smiles as they assimilated into their new bodies.

I ran until I reached the only place that could possibly make me feel safe.

The cavern I first woke up in looked the same as it ever did, albeit with a few new crystal growths and a garden of soft, pastel mushrooms. Faced with the familiar scenery, I picked a rock cluster to hide underneath. It was the closest I could get to clamping my hands over my ears and shutting my eyes until the bad thing went away.

When I dared peek out from underneath my umbrella, the silhouettes had assumed new positions close to where they were before. I decided to ignore them and try to take a breather.

Rolling out, I noticed that Beryl wasn’t around anymore. I was tempted to mourn his loss, but I couldn’t bring myself to indulge in any of my delusions. Not after witnessing the true form of the stars I had once gazed upon.

I was back where I started, both mentally and physically. I spent all this time building myself up, and I still couldn’t deal with any of the real obstacles in my path.

—The time. I needed to check the time.

It would be foolish to assume that the world does not go on without me. Both the white tiger and those abominations topside must’ve had some time to grow, but there was only one thing that could help me tell the exact time.

A great blue-capped mushroom marked the place where someone died, a great and opulent cap that cast a gentle light on the surface of the underground lake.

I paid my respects, then cut the damned thing down.

What? Why are you looking at me like that?

To me, the ‘Spirit of the Black Cavern’, Samson offered what was left of his life. I was a living memorial, so there was no need for the mushroom. This mushroom only subsumed his corpse; I still had priority when it came to offerings.

I kept my spirits high as I did the grisly work of cutting down a mushroom whose flesh was a bit too red for my liking. It may have been screaming and bleeding a little as I stabbed into it with Tintin and Galahad, but I paid it no mind. I was the superior non-living creature, after all.

Somehow, the distress beacon was still giving off a signal. However faint it was, I dug towards it, hoping that I wouldn’t accidentally break the thing.

Here it was. Still had a few fungi bits on it, but that couldn’t be helped.

Carefully, I used Tintin as a wedge to pry out the beacon and scrape the screen clean. Everything else could wait — I wanted to know the time, first and foremost.

What day is it, I asked?

The beacon blinked at me and said:

Samson, LE 1428, First Solar. No astral signal. Last message recorded on 4/3/1114. Routine: Distress (Preservation)

Oh.

So my internal clock wasn’t broken.

Without any accomplishments or deeds of note, three hundred years had passed me by.