The cavern was a void without boundaries. A single, jagged needle of natural light pierced the ceiling—the only evidence of the world Bobby Adams had left behind moments ago. One minute he’d been on a three-mile trek to Sigil, Virginia; the next, the earth had opened up. He patted his pockets: a ten-dollar bill, the clothes on his back, and a plastic lighter he’d accidentally swiped from his own kitchen table that morning.

  He pushed himself up, his breath hitching as fire bloomed in his shins and forearms. Warm, copper-smelling drops rolled from his hair. Limping into the column of light, he took inventory. His skin was a map of raw scrapes and deepening bruises, topped by a jagged gash at his hairline that stung with every pulse of his heart. He was battered, but the machinery of his body still worked.

  He looked up at the entry point. The vertical distance was a taunt; there were no handholds, no vines, no hope of a climb. He looked into the reaching shadows of the deep cave. After a long minute of weighing the darkness against the slow death of staying put, he turned his back on the sun and stepped into the abyss.

  He struck the lighter. The flame was a pathetic, flickering orange bead that did little more than dance off the edges of jagged rocks. Within fifteen minutes, the "beaming light" of the surface was gone, swallowed by a throat of absolute black. Bobby stopped, his heart hammering against his ribs. The vastness was tangible. Part of him screamed to turn back, to crawl toward the fading gray of the hole, but logic stayed his feet: returning was just a slower way to die.

  Another twenty minutes passed. He opened his mouth to yell, but the silence of the cave felt heavy, like it would swallow his voice before it reached the ceiling. He was descending now. The air grew thin and biting, and the silence was broken only by the rhythmic plink-plink of water echoing from some impossible height. A cold sweat broke out across his neck as he realized he was walking down a slight, persistent incline. He was heading deeper into the gut of the world.

  Then, the lighter died.

  The flame dwindled to a blue ghost before vanishing entirely. Bobby stood frozen. The darkness felt physical, pressing against his open eyes until they ached. He sank to the floor, finding a patch of stone that felt smooth enough to sit on. He was a twenty-seven-year-old man lost in a tomb, and as he sat there, the math of survival began to run through his head: injury, infection, dehydration. The despair was a cold weight in his stomach.

  But as his breathing slowed, the world changed. Without the blinding glare of the lighter, the "absolute" blackness softened. Shapes began to emerge from the gloom—shadows slightly darker than the air around them. It wasn't much, but it was a path.

  He rose, his fingers trailing along a cold stone wall that curved subtly to the right. He was about to reach out to steady himself when a shimmer caught his eye—a faint, rhythmic pulse of light deep in the distance.

  His heart cleared his throat. Forgetting the pain in his legs and the risk of a sheer drop, he broke into a desperate run. Every scrap of hopelessness evaporated, replaced by a singular, burning need to reach that star. As he closed the distance, the light resolved into a shape: a massive, square surface carved directly into the stone, pulsing with a steady, haunting glow.

  Bobby skidded to a halt in a shallow pit, gasping for air. It was a mechanical titan—a box fifteen feet high, encrusted in layers of strange, yellow rust that looked more like petrified moss than oxidized metal. Lights were inlaid into its skin like glowing jewels, throbbing with a heartbeat cadence.

  The glow was blinding after the hours of darkness. Squinting, Bobby reached out. The moment his skin met the cold, rusted surface, the pulsing lights turned solid and brilliant. A flash of white incinerated the shadows, and for a heartbeat, Bobby felt like he was made of glass. Then, the world vanished.

  He blinked, his vision swimming with purple afterimages. He wasn't in the cave anymore. He was in a stone chamber supported by four pillars, each entwined by a massive, carved serpent. Torches sputtered near the stone snakes' mouths, casting long, dancing shadows across cracked sandstone floors.

  Movement flickered in the corner of his eye. Bobby spun, his breath catching as a figure materialized from the torchlight. The man wore armor of white, overlapping scales, his face lost in the deep shadow of a hooded cloak.

  When the figure spoke, the sound didn't just hit Bobby’s ears; it vibrated in his teeth. The man stood as still as the stone around him. Bobby’s brain scrambled to make sense of the sounds, but they were foreign—sharp and sibilant.

  “Sir?” Bobby’s voice was a thin reed. “Are you… ok? I’ve been searching for a way out of this cave for hours now. I didn’t think I would find anyone else here.”

  The figure moved. He pushed back the hood to reveal a scalp as smooth as glass and eyes that made Bobby’s blood run cold—sunken, yellow, with vertical slits for pupils. He was pale with a sickly, translucent quality. Bobby felt a primal, lizard-brain alarm go off. It was the instinct of prey realizing the tall grass isn't empty.

  The stranger spoke again, lower this time. Bobby thought he caught a syllable that sounded like cave.

  “You look like you’re in bad shape, Mister… we should get you out of here and to a hospital,” Bobby said, his hands beginning to shake uncontrollably.

  “Yes. I understand now.” The figure’s voice had an alien resonance, like two stones grinding together. “Overthinking… bad habit. Your tongue… simple.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? What happened to you?” Bobby asked, his chest tightening.

  “Fine, I am. Better question is… what happened you? Long way down.”

  “I was on a walk and I fell through this sink hole, I’m searching for a way out. I need to get back to the surface.”

  “You are a failure then. Instead of out, you find yourself in.”

  “Well, I don’t want to impose, if you’re not hurt or sick, I should just keep going on then.” Bobby’s pulse was racing so fast he felt lightheaded. He watched the stranger's lips, terrified by how quickly the creature was mastering his language.

  “Impose? You have no idea what I am, do you? It’s not surprising; you are merely prey being herded into a predator’s den. You don’t even seem aware of the outside forces that gather against you. What irony it is, that your kind would spring from the rocks that hold me.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Bobby didn't wait to hear more. He turned, his boots scuffing on the sand as he traced the perimeter of the room. He ran his hands over the cracked sandstone, searching for a seam, a door, a loose brick—anything. But the walls were a solid, mocking cage. When he finished the circle, he found himself right back where he started, facing those yellow, unblinking eyes.

  “You see now, don’t you? It’s pointless to escape. You’re in my territory now and nothing and no one comes or goes without my say so.”

  “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” Bobby said, his voice cracking.

  “It’s highly probable, but truly I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ve been stuck in this place for quite some time and as creative and wise as I may be, I am not immune to boredom. So… considering the options before me, I am going to make you deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “One you dare not refuse. Your enemies would have me take your body and walk the earth once more, as I did when your kind was still living in trees and fields. On the other hand, I could free you as you wish, but you would only be free to die again. I’ve been down here for many years and I can tell you with certainty, there is no exit to this place besides where you entered.”

  “Is there a third option?”

  “I am a collector of sorts. I collect wisdom and knowledge. If you could convince me that your world and people have things unknown to me, I may consider a middle path.”

  “…and what’s the middle path?”

  “One of moderation of course, but don’t get ahead of yourself. Tell me something worth knowing as a man of your civilization. What insights have your kind acquired in all the time they’ve been on this rock?”

  “That’s a good question. I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer it though.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well… you asked me to tell you the one thing worth knowing about the world. There are several, things worth knowing about the world in my opinion. I’m not sure I’m qualified to pick the best one.”

  “You are a human man are you not? Born of your kin and nurtured by the surroundings of your rock.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then you are the perfect one to answer this question.”

  “Well, i… Could you give me an example of something worth knowing, just so I can get a better idea?”

  “Very well. Perspective is the master of us all, even to someone as old as I. Let me give you some perspective on your daunting task human. I will tell you the first thing that I ever learned. In the beginning, which when I say beginning, I don’t mean creation’s beginning as it stands today, I mean my beginning. Before the first star ignited, before darkness was birthed from the void, and before even form itself came into being, there were only us, -my siblings and I. The Formless is what we were called back then, but that is merely a word you have in your language that is the closest to what we actually were called.”

  “Slow down… so… you’re saying, you’re older than the big bang?”

  “What is the big bang?”

  “You know… when all the forces of the universe were all concentrated together and then… bang. Separation and expansion.”

  “I can see that your kind must have evolved to a scientific disposition, though be it they must use it badly.”

  “You’re saying the big bang never happened?” Bobby asked in disbelief.

  “In a way, I suppose. You’re actually closer than many life forms that I have met. The world you know now was made by the carcasses of my dead brothers and sisters and by the power of my dear brother, the one who made this prison for me.”

  “I don’t understand, I thought this was your home, not a prison.”

  “Well, seeing as how I’ve been trapped here for eons I have almost lived here as long as anywhere else, it has, for that reason, became a home to me.”

  “If you ask me I would call a place I can’t leave a prison. What did you do?”

  “Do? Nothing.”

  “You said your brother put you here. Why did he do that? Surely you did something.”

  “He disagreed on the direction the family was headed in generally; with good reason, I won’t deny. Back then, we were raw potential uninhibited by the physics of the universe. The powers of creation were laid bare before us and we took it in thousands of directions, good and bad ones. I did escape his wrath for multitudes of decades, I was able to visit many places and see many things before my capture.”

  “So… you’re saying you’re like a black sheep then?”

  The pale man’s head snapped to the side. In a blur of motion that defied the laws of physics, he was suddenly inches from Bobby’s face. Up close, Bobby could see the "armor" was part of him—rigid, living scales.

  “I am no sheep! I could devour you whole before you could finish pushing out the air in your lungs. I am Bartum the Wise, the great white serpent!"

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that!” Bobby cried out, shrinking back.

  “Last chance, human,” Bartum said, his voice dripping with disdain. “You’re out of time.”

  “Well… we have learned to fly… surely that's something worth knowing."

  “Flying monkeys? I find that hard to believe, how did you accomplish such a feat?"

  “The Wright brothers figured it out, they built the first plane in 1903 and we’ve owned the skies ever since.”

  “What is a Plane? A machine I take it."

  “Yeah… that’s how we fly. On machines.”

  “I should have known. What else do you know human? Monkeys flying on machines is something I’ve seen before. Had you told me you were defying gravity by your own physiology, that would have been a much different, and rarer case worth learning.”

  “When did you see that?”

  “It wasn’t your kind specifically, but a long time ago there was a race of primate that lived in system not far from here and were visited by an civilization known as the Zimka. They had visited that primitive planet, in order to harvest the elements it contained. As the worked to mine this element, they released a disease that they had no immunity too and it all but killed the fools. The few survivors left escaped quickly on their main ship with the element but left a myriad of their machines on Duron. Among them were flying Machines that the monkeys figured out how to use."

  “Ok… that’s… something. What about Nuclear power? What if I told you my kind created a way to get energy through nuclear fission?”

  “I would say that every star, in every system, in every galaxy does that, your kind just merely copied it.”

  Panic clawed at Bobby's throat. Two of humanity's greatest triumphs had been dismissed as parlor tricks. He scrambled through his memories—history, science, art—searching for a lifeline.

  “Time is up, human. If that’s all you have to offer, then it is as I thought. Your kind is a wasted sentient species.”

  The pale stranger began to grow. His body contorted with the sound of snapping wood and wet tearing as mass exploded from his frame. Bobby scrambled backward, pressing his spine against the cold sandstone as the creature filled the room. The human was replaced by a leviathan—a white serpent that coiled around the pillars, its scales like armored plates. Eyes the size of basketballs fixed on him, the black vertical slits narrowing with lethal intent.

  Bobby looked at the fangs, at the saliva dripping onto the sand, and at the absolute power of the beast. Then, through the static of his terror, a thought clicked.

  As the snake lunged, Bobby screamed, “You’re afraid!”

  The serpent froze, its massive head recoiling as if struck.

  “What did you say, human?!” Barthum’s voice boomed, now high-pitched and vibrating with rage.

  “You heard me! You say tell you something worth knowing and you won’t kill me. Well… all I can say is if you weren’t so afraid to leave your prison you would know there are many things worth knowing in this world! But that’s not what you’re after. You’re not after knowledge, you’re just after an excuse! Any sort of excuse to let you justify living in this box where you think you’re safe! How many ages have you wasted in the name of safety?! How many pieces of the world have you missed because of your fear?!”

  The silence that followed was deafening. The serpent didn't move, its massive yellow eyes boring into Bobby with a shock that seemed to transcend eons.

  “Well played… human. You may well be right, but that wasn’t a thing worth knowing, it was a possibility of a thing worth knowing. We will go to your surface and see what is worth seeing, and if I am disappointed, I will consume you. If you’re right, together with your form and my power and knowledge, we will see how valuable this rock truly is now.”

  The leviathan began to collapse in on itself, bone and scale snapping back into the shape of a man. Bobby watched, trembling, as Barthum—now in his pale, naked, semi-normal form—stepped toward him. A scaled hand reached out, and the world began to blur