Chicken awoke among stars. On the way to the ground, he had wanged his head a couple times against the rocks. Also, his limbs were bruised. But in addition to what was likely a mild concussion, he saw literal stars. Light yellow dots populated a blackness as dark as the space behind his eyes. He could tell his eyes were open only because blinking made the lights go away. Some of them. His body felt cold and heavy as he lay on his back looking up at the moon.

No, not the moon. But what could explain a dot of light as big as this? It was easily a hundred times larger than a star, and it was an irregular, pointed ellipse like a waxing or waning moon.

A shiver made him twitch. He heard a simultaneous splash. It was the final piece to the puzzle regarding this cold, weightless feeling. He must be lying in a shallow pool of water. Slowly flexing his arms and legs, he tested the billowing feeling. Yes, it was cold water in a shallow rock pool. He and Amerigo had been near underground water, and they had seen the geyser. He was careful around the geyser and its resulting pool, but on his way back to pick up Amerigo…

For the water to be this cool, he reasoned, it would have to be shielded from the daytime sun. One of the stars detached itself from darkness and made a lazy, loopy path in the sky, like a beetle. He watched the little light dance, mostly certain that it wasn’t in his head. When it stopped, and there was nothing left for him to do, he decided it was about time to face the world.

Somewhere nearby, another consciousness stirred slowly from slumber. A mind as old as stories with thoughts like thawing treacle began to waken.

Chicken managed to get onto his elbows and eventually sit up. He still couldn’t see anything but the little lights. He could, however, use them to judge the width and breadth of this hidden world. The sedentary lights were clinging to unseen walls and ceiling around him. Distance was difficult, but he was getting a sense for outcroppings overhead and where the walls met the floor. He thought he could make out the faintest trace of colors.

He tried to find the edge of the pool and was aided by a gold lining he only just noticed. The edges of the pool were lined with a string of stars like a glowing pearl necklace dropped haphazardly. It wasn’t enough to see by, but he stood up and made his way carefully to it.

“Glow bugs,” he whispered to himself. Despite the smallness of his words, the dark of the cave swallowed them anyway. The bugs however were lined up along the water to drink. There were none swimming or floating on the water, and they took every precaution to avoid the ripples sparked by Chicken’s movements. They scuttled away from the tide, outlining the shore like a string. A portion of the necklace burst in slow motion as the beads made their way to a far away surface elsewhere in the cavern.

The water had gotten shallower as he walked towards the bugs. The floor of the pool was smooth stone the whole way. The bugs were lined up at a little beach area, outlining where the water met the shore.

He approached some bugs that hadn’t flown away at his watery approach. With no wild ripples in the water, they paid him little heed. Though, when he put out a hand to pick one up, it flew away.

Chicken followed its path through the darkness, and he found his eyes growing more accustomed. He could make out the surface of the cavern walls, which were dotted with clusters of translucent crystals. There were purples and greens and magentas, though he didn’t know what the gems might have been called.

While there was no path, Chicken made his way from the pool to get the lay of the land. In this direction, away from the hole he had inadvertently opened to this underground world, the ground sloped slightly downward. He staggered onward, dazed by the natural beauty and the shock to his cranium.

Abstract thoughts swirled like the stir of glaciers, colored in kaleidoscope hues of emotion. Thoughts no younger than millennia were now being recalled.

Amerigo was making slow progress down the hole that had eaten Chicken. It was dark, craggy, and vertical. Some of the time he was seated and sliding. Some of the time he was feeling for solid ground with a toe-tip. But he continued down the tunnel, nonetheless. His friend was down there.

His eyes adjusted well to the darkness. As gnomes go, he had an affinity for seeing in low light. This darkness was not as impenetrable as all that, especially when he was giving himself ample time for his eyes to adjust.

The tunnel began to open up, allowing Amerigo to switch things up and mountain goat his way down to level ground. He could smell water nearby. Not the sea-salt of home, but a slimy, sterile sort of water. And he was starting to see stars.

He looked back up the way he had come, realizing that it did not double as a way out. He steeled himself, determined to find Chicken. Together, they would have a chance down here.

Off to the side, he saw the water. There was no sign of Chicken.

He too took time to inspect the stars up close. They approached him as he came near the pool where he moistened himself, reapplying water to his clothes that had evaporated away in the sunlight up above.

They alighted on his shoulders and arms, and he made no reaction.

Somewhere, a heartbeat pulsed once within a stone memory of flesh. A blue glow stabbed the wider darkness as crude rock fell away from around it.

After he had been walking some time, Chicken realized he was lost, cold, and steeped in eternal night. By now he could make out vague shapes at a distance of ten paces. The natural corridor in which he ambled was about three times that at its widest.

The sound of shattering stone grabbed his sluggish attention. The faintest hint of blue was that direction. As he made his way, he rationalized his attraction, telling himself that it was daylight and, therefore, a way out. It explained the almost physical pull he felt coming from the light.

Something like dreams filled something like a mind which was coming out of something like sleep. It knew it was not alone.

Above Chicken, embedded in the wall, was the source of the blue light. It wasn’t light like the glow bugs, but proper light. It flickered as he watched it from below, sometimes like a candle, sometimes like lighting, sometimes it ebbed and flowed like the banks of a pool.

It was coming from a brilliant blue gem, about the size of his palm. An adequate description, as Chicken, soon as seeing it, desired to hold it in his hand.

Why did it no longer feel alone? It only wanted to be alone. It wanted only to be among what it had earned. What it had taken. What it had yet to take. It knew greed and power. These were the primary colors of its understanding.

Chicken found scalable rock. It would not be easy to take this gem, but he was a puppet to his desire. He had never more wanted water while thirsty or food when hungry than he wanted this object. He would carve handholds with his fingernails if he had to. This gem was coming with him.

A memory flashed in a thing like images. Others had been jealous. Others had been greedy. What did we do to deter their desire?

Chicken was hanging precariously from an outcropping with full intention to swing monkey-style across a gap to another foot hold. He was almost there. He could imagine the feel of it in his hand.

It was becoming distraught and restless. It remembered hate, yes, and hate was flooding back in like mercury. Not one dram of precious metals. Not one ounce of lovely gems. It could keep even the sparkle and luster to itself. What it owned, it kept. Thieves deserved tooth and fire.

Chicken had only one hand and one foot touching solid ground. He reached desperately over open air. The pull was so strong, he felt it was suspending him. He felt the attraction would embrace and hold him if he could only get closer. His very blood called out to this magical blue light. He would have to jump.

Amerigo rounded the corner, following a faint blue light. He was anointed in glow bugs. They ticked as they moved, desperately taking in whatever nutrient the water provided.

They didn’t notice when he stopped cold. They couldn’t have detected his blood draining from him in horror. They didn’t see the kobold suspended in mid-air, bathed in intense blue light.

The reflections on the wall, the shadows of the rough surfaces, began to move like a living thing. Blue scales with black lines defined a serpentine neck. Thick legs, a long tail, and bat wings were expressed by the projection of the blue gem. It was stirring, and a face of teeth, horns, and horrible cold fury stared at the suspended kobold.

Amidst all of this, however, were the bones. Embedded like the gemstone was a crushed and ancient skeleton. Its four legs drawn under its partial ribcage as though bracing itself, and its tail ending abruptly, it spread its wings out along the rocks like it was soaring magisterially on the stretched skin it no longer had. A skull menaced with spikes, seen in profile. The projection paid no heed.

A hiss like a wind tunnel came through in a voice. It spoke in a language that Auntie had taught each cresh she had raised.  A language, she had said, that was older than the world.

“I am the fire alight in the meadows. I am the torchlight burning from every tree,” the voice said slowly. The reptilian eyes projected on the wall blinked.

“Who are you to take what I have taken? Who are you who challenges the one who turns the ley to ash?”

Chicken, through the terror of recent events, made a grab for the gemstone hovering above him, free of the stone wall, but it was just out of reach.

“There is something familiar about you,” the voice in the tunnel intoned. It talked like one asleep.

“Thieves deserve tooth and fire,” it said ominously, “Are you a thief?”

Chicken nervously shook his head.

The voice rambled on, “I defy the gods. I taunt death. What’s mine is mine is mine…” It repeated the mantra ever softer until the echoes died.

Chicken began making swimming motions in the air, both eyes on the blinding gem. If he could only touch it…

“All shall know my name and despair! Give praise unto Ashley, the Burning Sky, the Desert Queen! Immortal One! Death does my bidding, and kings and gods tremble!”

The projection on the wall writhed. The terrible head shook, snarling its teeth.

A finger lightly grazed the gem.

All at once, and with a whipping of wind and hissing screams, the light was sucked back into the gem. The projection disappeared. The darkness reclaimed lost territory.

Chicken fell to the ground heavily with an “oof”, but clutched the gem to his body.

The light show now ended, Amerigo shook himself and ran to aid his friend.

Chicken had a dusty blue glow about him.

Blueness clung to his shadows and edges. There was a light blue glow about his claws and horns.

“Where did it go!” he shouted instead of asked. He wasn’t holding the gem, and was in a panic.

But Amerigo was looking intently at Chicken’s chest. With a touch, he drew his friend’s attention. There was a pulsing blue light showing through his scales.

“It’s…inside of me?”

At once, his head jerked back involuntarily. His eyes glowed a homogenous blue. He roared like the wind in the tunnel, the sound tinged with confusion and surprise.

From his back arched spectral bat wings, and the light within him lengthened his claws.

Amerigo pulled back in awe, though not in fear. It was due merely to Stormhaegen’s words, and the power of revelation.