Chapter 1 - Eyes

Thick dust sealed Mari’s eyelashes shut as cool, dank air enveloped her still form. She drew a ragged breath that caught, the dust heavy in her lungs. One arm swept out to trace the dirt-laden stone floor while the other paw rubbed her eyes free. A faint blue glow pooled in the cavern's corner, delicate and steady. She blinked into it, and her pupils widened.

She sat up. A shattered mural stretched across the wall in front of her, fractured and scarred into illegibility. Overhead, stalactites hung, their tips lost in shadow. Sulfur stung her nostrils as she inhaled.

Mari searched her mind for how she’d ended up here, but the memories eluded her, fragments of a dream slipping away.

I’ll figure out what’s going on, even if I can’t remember how I got here.

Struggling to stand, she raised her arms overhead in a deep stretch. How long have I been lying like that? A shiver of uncertainty ran up her spine. Her stomach growled. She put a paw to it, as if pressure alone could calm the gnawing.

Must have been ages. I haven’t been this hungry since the war.

A scan of the chamber drew her toward the sole source of light. Recognition lifted her face. Her lantern. Picking it up, she turned the compact rectangular prism over in her paws, inspecting it for damage. She wiped the opaque emitters clean, then clipped it back onto the shoulder strap of her pack.

Under the cool, milky-blue glow, the surrounding space sharpened.

Back at the chamber’s center, Mari noticed the walls formed a rough arch filled with rubble, like a passage collapsed on purpose. Or crushed by time. She crouched where she had awoken and ran a nail along the ground. The dust held a shallow impression of her body.

Was I carried here? There would be tracks. Someone else’s. Something. Anything.

None. No tracks led to this spot, Mari’s or otherwise.

The mural drew her closer. In the lantern’s light, the details gained depth, shadows catching in every crack and gouge. The mural stretched the full length of the wall. Much of it had deep scratches that broke it into pieces and defaced it, leaving large sections illegible.

In the center sat an emblem marked with three diamonds. They formed a triangle. The bottom two joined at their middle points, with the third set above to complete the shape. A circle circumscribed the diamonds. Beneath it, sharp lines joined in grouped segments of varying length, like a language made of angles.

Mari dropped her pack off one shoulder and swung it around in front of her. Rifling through it, she pulled out a metal cylinder and a small piece of chalk. Unscrewing the end exposed a roll of parchment. She drew it out and flattened it over the emblem.

Holding the chalk flat against the parchment, she rubbed quickly, transferring the outline of the symbol and its markings in pale, dusty strokes.

I’ll bring this back to The Burrow. Rufus might know something.

She tucked the parchment away and closed the cylinder, then crossed the chamber to the blocked passage. A crisp breeze pressed through the cracks between the boulders. Both paws found the debris as she leaned in, then turned her head and rested an ear against the loose wall.

Only her heartbeat answered, loud in the silence.

A few steps back gave her space to think. Okay. A mind blast could clear this. The thought tightened her chest. In class, it usually came up empty. Still, Mr. Craghorb’s lesson. 

Clear your mind and… She paused, breath held. I almost forgot.

She knelt by her pack and pulled out what looked like a petrified watermelon half. Precisely engraved across the brow read Stonepaw, preceded by a series of nested chevrons topped with a bar and two dots. She spun it around, lifted it over her tiny head, and set the helmet firmly in place. The world narrowed as it gathered her mind, shielding the noise from her thought.

With the pack on her back again, Mari refocused on the rubble pile. Paws came tight to her chest, shoulders rounding forward, fingers curved around an empty sphere. The same mental pep talk restarted, one she’d used a hundred times in class.

Okay, clear your mind, clear your mind and focus on the intent.

Her palms rotated outward toward the loose stone as her chest opened and her gaze fixed on the wall. She felt something internal catch, like a hook in her mind. Let the intent move through you and see it thro—

A blast reverberated through the space. Mari’s lantern shuddered, and dust choked the air. Her short, smooth fur stood on end as static snapped between the fibers. A moment later, the sounds of rock and rubble impacting somewhere beyond the chamber echoed back around her.

Her throat seized. A hard cough punched out into the dark. The effort left a metallic taste in her mouth as pressure welled like she’d clenched a muscle deep inside her skull.

It worked. It actually worked.

Warm sunlight broke through the swirling dust, reflecting off millions of suspended particles. The glinting haze coalesced into familiar shapes. Almond eyes guided her vision to a thick nose resting above a mouth interrupted by two smooth teeth. Coarse hair framed the features. The space held like a breath, then let go, and fragrant air rushed inward through the new opening. 

Mom?

Her unease faded, replaced by warmth. Nostalgia washed over her and brought her back to the days before the war, when she was small and her mother’s unrelenting affection dominated her world.

She scrambled over the pile of debris, chunks of rock shifting underfoot. Nuts. Wish that one had been in class. Maybe then the others would stop acting like I can’t manifest at all.

As Mari moved into the next room, she found the source of the daylight. An opening nearly forty tails up cut a pale rectangle into the stone. No second chances from that high. A rope hung from the edge all the way to the floor, its slack coiled at the base. She looked back at the passage she had just come through.

Most of the chamber was lined with unremarkable rock walls, but the doorway itself was different. Sculpted images of burrowing rodents framed it ornately. Some battled fish. Others defended against aerial assaults from birds. Near the top was a bipedal creature that Mari had never seen before. Surrounded by burrowing rodents of all types, it looked less like a threat and more like a partner. A friend.

She reached out a paw. As it drew near the carvings, a wave of energy pulsed through the inscriptions. Reflexively, she withdrew. She paused, then reached back to see if it would happen again.

Nothing.

Mari studied the scene a while longer, committing what she could to memory, then made her way to the rope. She climbed toward the opening, broke into the light, and ascended into the day.

Her eyes squinted. The setting sun was intense.

She pulled off the helmet and slid it into her pack, then reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a pair of shades. Donning them instantly relieved her eyes. The round frames mechanically expanded a thin layer of canvas that covered even the sides, effectively sealing her from the light.

Mari surveyed her surroundings. She knew she was at the north end of Long Valley. Scrub and stubby pine trees marked the red rocky landscape. Nearby mountains towered, lining the horizon in all directions. Beside the opening she had just climbed from, sat a large boulder. Fresh drag tracks betrayed any secret that it had once covered this entrance.

No way I moved that, unless… I manifested like that before. Before I woke up here.

She drew a breath, pressed her tongue to her big flat incisors, and released it into a powerful whistle.

From a nearby bush, a large rabbit leapt out, dark tan fur peppered with black and white markings. Its sail-like ears eclipsed the sun. Mari guessed it was just over an hour from slipping below the horizon.

Relief softened her face into a smile. “Ah, there you are, my beautiful boy,” she said, patting his muscular haunch.

His nose twitched vigorously, each nostril flaring and shifting as it searched for rogue scents. Glossy eyes, empty of thought, stared toward the horizon.

A riding harness, saddle, and bags were strapped to him. Mari reached into one of the saddlebags and pulled out another long tube. She unscrewed the flat cap and withdrew a thick roll of well-used paper.

“Alright, Phlip,” she said, glancing between him and the landscape. “What were we doing out here? And why can’t I remember anything?”

She unfurled a large map, turning Phlip’s backside into an impromptu table. Her thin finger traced the route back home.

“I’m not seeing any notes…” She gave him a side-eye. “You remember anything?”

Phlip dropped a few quick pellets onto the dry, rocky ground.

“Yeah. Thought not,” Mari muttered. “Alright. Let’s get home before dark. The birds will be out soon.”

She grabbed Phlip’s harness and, in one swift motion, levered herself into the saddle, then kicked firmly with her heels. Off they went, bounding down the valley at high speed.

As they wove through familiar terrain, the last bits of bright blue of daylight faded and were replaced by deep warm hues. The clouds shifted into light pink puffs, stretched by the wind. Mari turned the strange events over in her mind, trying to remember what she had been doing before waking in that chamber. The last thing that surfaced was a conversation with her friend Jerro. He was an engineer from Deepworks, a subsurface dam and power station. But it had been ordinary. They’d been talking about her upcoming psionics exams and what she planned to do after the academy.

The wind whipped through her fur. “Well,” she said to Phlip but mostly to herself. “I suppose that’s somewhere to start.”

Ahead, ancient megalithic ruins lined a wide path of crumbled black gravel that stretched down the valley and into a pass leading out of Long Valley. A distant cawing snapped her back to the danger of being exposed on the surface. Instinctively, she pulled her body tight to Phlip, pressing her chest into his back. She tilted her head toward the sound and spotted two winged forms approaching.

Ruins are bad luck. Birds. Birds are worse.

A bent metal stick held the twisted remains of a red octagonal panel. The turnoff point. Mari pulled Phlip’s reins hard and directed him sharply into the ruins. She slid her leg over and dismounted in one motion. Together they ducked under a rectangular gray pillar that had toppled and come to rest on another dilapidated structure. Rusted sticks of ribbed metal protruded from its broken end, tangled in each other’s grasp.

Mari and Phlip slipped into a windowless room and hunkered down in a nook. Dust coated everything. Framed compartments rose to the high ceiling, their contents long since scavenged. Shards of glass littered the black-and-white checkered floor. Some sections were torn away to reveal a yellowed underlayer. A smooth red counter was tilted against the main entrance. It struggled to prop up part of the collapsing roof, bracing against time and gravity.

Two sets of sweeping wings disturbed the silence. The clacking of talons replaced them on the firm surface outside. Mari looked into Phlip’s eye, placed a paw on his ear, and pressed a finger to her pursed lips.

The tapping shifted to a sharp crunch as something entered the decaying building.

A loud squawk startled Mari, and she drew closer to Phlip. She could feel his heart pounding fast and hard, but his face stayed ignorantly stoic, as if he still hadn’t decided this was dangerous. More cawing followed, an exchange between the two birds. The sheen of deep black plumage flashed in the shelving gaps. Mari was frozen in fear. Then there was a loud scuff, and the clatter of claws retreated.

Mari let out a slow breath as the sounds disappeared entirely.

After another moment of silence, they returned to their path. Twilight had taken over, and stars began to poke through the darkening violet sky. The landscape softened as they rode, shifting into verdant foliage. Clusters of towering trees gathered along a creek, tracing its path like a dark ribbon.

Mari guided Phlip toward the thick, meandering line of vegetation and used it as cover. They had transitioned into the foothills now, and the hidden entrance to The Burrow wasn’t much farther.

A downed tree signaled the location.

She rode up and hopped off Phlip’s back, then quickly scanned the area. Her paw found a familiar limb worn smooth from use. She gave it a twist. A mechanical click answered, and a small metal pad slid into view as the tree shifted.

Without waiting for it to fully open, Mari pressed her paw onto it. A red light glowed beneath her skin, then flipped to green and faded out.

The gray mass of wood hinged at one end. Soft lights, similar to Mari’s lantern, lined a descending ramp and spilled outward into the night like a quiet invitation. Mari led the way with Phlip close at heel, and they began to descend.

The chirping of crickets faded behind them. A deep thud followed.

Mari glanced back as the entrance resealed.