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The coast was clear, but Atro didn’t dare move. He crouched still on the thick branch for a few more minutes.

After reaching the forest, he had run as far as his legs could carry him: deep, deep, deep into the forest. He had grappled up a tree as he’d done countless times before, and hid in the intertwined leaves and branches. he had peered in silence as the soldiers galloped under him, deeper into the woods. It was a fluke that none of them had heard his pounding heart and looked above. If the winds of luck had blown the other way…

Birdsong behind Atro. He looked round; it was a nightingale, its brown plumage blending almost completely into shadows of the tree. It hopped from branch to branch, tweeting and trilling as it came, before sitting inquisitively by Atro’s side. Raising a hand, he gently patted the bird, and it gurgled softly. Such a pretty little thing. So pretty.

He couldn’t take it anymore. Atro began to sob. His hands retreated and clasped his head. His chest heaved in little fits, and his body shivered as the tears squeezed through his eyes tight-shut. He wanted to wail, but the soldiers could be back at any moment. So he sobbed, silently, up there in the tree. He sobbed for his cottage, his parents, his very life. All gone, stolen away. He was alone.

The nightingale hopped up close, nibbling at something by Atro’s feet. Looking down, he saw a few small berries at the end of a stem, right between his sandals. He plucked them one by one and offered them to the bird, who ate hungrily.

Atro knew he had to run and hide deeper in the forest. Eventually the soldiers would give up and head back to the rest of the troop. And then where would he go? He could not be a vagabond of the forest forever. Could he find refuge in town? What town, if the army was everywhere? And under no circumstance would he ever return to those soldiers. His mind turned the problem over and over, to which he could find only 2 solutions. He relished neither.

The coast was still clear. Atro climbed down the tree, using the branches as stepping stones just as he had in the rabid climb upward. He collapsed by its base and sat there, angry and tired and bewildered. Not an hour ago he was collecting fresh water from the river. Then he had killed a man, stabbed another, and altogether defied the empire of The Orrient. Treason and murder. Now he was a criminal. A person foul, to be taken away and punished for his sins.

No! he thought. None of this was his fault! A nightingale, no matter how gentle and tame, would turn feral if push came to shove. It was the soldiers who’d set fire to his home and captured his parents. It was General Stacy, that scarface monster, who had come to steal his life away. It was The Orrient, that proud, cruel, despicable empire that surrounded them all, that was sending people away to fight in pointless battles. It was them who were at fault, not him.

That man - Killian, he thought. Maybe he was right, in a putrid sort of way.

And those deaths, they weren’t his fault. He had only repaid the injustice that had been done to him. Was that not a just cause? If those things hadn’t happened in the first place, he would not be here. He would not be hiding in a forest, forever leaving his home.

All this he thought, and more.

If only there was a way to fight back…

He spied a protrusion of stone a couple yards away. It was a small hill, a cave’s entrance yawning on its flank. He did not recognise it; he was far deeper into the forest than he had ever dared to trek. After much hesitation, Atro stood up and stumbled over to it. Better to hide from soldiers in a cave than amongst the bushes.

Atro peered into the cave’s gloom. “Hello?”

It was a dark unending abyss, as if he would fall forever into its clutches if he crept fully into its shadow. The passage angled downwards, cruising along down to the bottom of the world. Not even a single leaf on the forest floor dared tread into the cave’s mouth, and yet there was no breeze expelling anything out from the cave. The nightingale in the trees whistled sweetly above him, but its song echoed into the passage and became distorted, the notes spoiling into a cacophony.

Everything about this made Atro want to leave the cave and never return. He should leave. Perhaps he should give up while he still could, and turn himself in to those soldiers.

What? he thought. What am I thinking? I could never do that. Not after they took away my entire life. I’ll never return to them. They can take me when I’m cold and dead.

He stepped into the cave’s gaping maw.

The cave’s passage was far, far colder than Atro could have ever imagined. As he descended, the air grew heavier and gloomier. Atro breathed in the stagnant air, and smelled… Nothing. Nothing alive, nothing dead. Nothing warm, nothing rotting. Nothing had clambered down here in years.

The cave was pushing against him - freezing the air, growing his fear. But his own emotions pushed back; he had watched all he had ever known burn away today, so what could this cave do? And a little part of him was curious - this cave was straight as an arrow, the passage smooth and cylindrical. Too queer to be of Nature’s make. He continued down the passage.

A faint glow, green in shade, pierced through the darkness ahead of him. It did not flicker nor waver. It merely persisted, the rays slicing through the black, the soft glows calling out to him. It could not be a lantern, could it? Perhaps some sparkling gem of old or confounded design? As Atro approached the source of light, its intensity grew and widened until the floor, ceiling and walls of the passageway were bathed in an ethereal emerald light. There was a pinprick source to this light, right at the very end of the cave.

The tunnel ended at a flat rocky wall. The source of light sat atop a roughly hewn pedestal. It was neither a lantern nor a gem - just a chunk of stone. Atro drew near. It looked chiseled into an angular shape like a cube, about the perfect size to hold and throw with one hand. And yet one side was jagged and rough as though it had been sliced off brazenly from some longer, rectangular statuette. Intrigued yet cautious, Atro stepped closer and closer. Tension rippled through his tendons like tightropes.

The stone itself did not emit any light. Instead, a single number was etched across its smooth surface:

2

The number glowed fantastically, blindingly bright. Atro reached for it. His mind was empty but for the sheer wonder of this little thing that shined so bright. A small part of him wondered if he could sell it for a good price in town, and make some money that way to survive. Another part of him just wanted to take it.

Green light danced across the walls in muted warning as his fingers closed in to grab the stone. His palm touched it.

A lance of pain shot through Atro’s hand. he cried out and fell to his knees, but he couldn’t take his hand off the stone; he was glued to it. Every fibre in his being began to tighten and tauten. All the nerves in his body gasped in shock, writhing and wriggling like a million lizard tails. He saw strange apparitions, smoky puppets dancing about in his mind’s eyes; queer shapes and forms just barely making cohesion before returning to the mindless soup of coiling light and dark. A tiny point in the centre of his brain burned with the fire of a thousand suns.

Then it was all over. Atro jumped away from the podium, somehow unscathed despite what had just happened. The pain had receded. The cave was now shrouded in pitch black. Gone was the ethereal green light. Gone was Atro’s courage and bluster. Gone was that feeling of curiosity. Now he was filled with intense and abject terror.

He could take it no more; he turned and fled up the passageway.

Bursting into the sunlight once more, he dashed away and through the underbrush. He didn’t care where he was going, or if he’d be spotted by the soldiers. As long as he was going away from that terrible, terrible cave.

It would only be much later that he would realise that the mysterious stone, its green glow diminished but not disappeared, was still held tightly in his hand.

So it begins.
This is a revised version of a story from 17 July 2021.