Lucas thought discovering the first skeleton had plunged his mood to rock bottom. Surely there was no lower to go.

  Every subsequent skeleton he found proved him wrong.

  A line of bones was slowly building at one end of his circle. They popped up at random in his steady traversal of the labyrinthine corridors. Some were relatively close to each other, some were off on their own in the middle of nowhere. There was no warning as to when he’d stumble across another set, no sign to look for.

  His walks through the corridors started to fill him with dread for more reasons than his own safety. Every time he stumbled across another set of bones that had once been a living, feeling, thinking person was just as harrowing as the first. The morbid sadness never went away.

  Every time he saw a new one, he thought: that could have been me.

  In another world, under slightly different circumstances, if he was slower, or less lucky, or a bit more tired, he could’ve ended up as a faded bone tangled deep in the heart of this monumental overgrowth, forgotten for who knows how many years before someone else came along. The thought of his remains sitting there, forgotten, affected him in a way few things ever had before.

  “Am I going mad, Jamie?” he asked, staring down at his growing pile. At some point, it had started to feel like he was actively looking for them, other things that should’ve been higher priority falling to the wayside.

  As usual, Jamie didn’t reply, but Lucas narrated a voice for him anyway, if only in the comfort of his mind:

  You were already mad. This is just your latest weird little obsession.

  “Sure, but this feels really unhealthy. It’s… I feel like I’m overreacting. Am I overreacting?”

  That’s a matter of perspective. You never know how you’re going to react to the reality of death until you face it for yourself.

  “It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel me. This isn’t how I pictured myself responding to a stressful situation, is all. I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but I certainly didn’t see myself obsessing over something like this. It’s like the idea is drilling itself into my brain, telling me I can’t leave their remains out here like this, now I know they’re here.”

  You were already talking to a cat and making up voices for it. Isolation does weird things to people.

  “Good point,” he conceded. Swallowed. Took another deep breath. He didn’t ‘talk’ to Jamie for a little while after that.

  Gathering up every bone he encountered and doing his best to leave none behind was a chore, but he endured it. Bringing them back to his safe circle, he did his best to lay them out in such a way that bones didn’t mix up between the bodies, but he didn’t want them to take up too much space.

  Handling the bones was perhaps the worst part. They were so rough and dry. Brittle, even. His skin felt dirty afterwards, like touching them tainted him on a spiritual level. He scrubbed his hands with rough leaves and some of his gathered drinking water every time, and it took way too long to feel clean, if he managed to feel clean at all.

  The temptation to leave them grew more enticing every time, though he knew he never would. Never could. He hated being in their presence and kept as far away from them as possible. He even made sure the skulls were facing away from him, unable to bear the weight of their accusing, empty eye-sockets.

  Their presence wore on him. It was so hard not to stare, to wonder. Questions churned in his mind. Who they’d been, why they’d been here, how they’d died. They dragged down his mood, dark possibilities abounding, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  He found himself staring at them in moments when his mind wandered, gaze drawn to the row of remains like they had a dark gravity. He’d always snap his eyes away when he caught himself doing it, but over and over he’d end up looking again.

  Even his dreams weren’t safe from them. Every night played out scenes of how they might have died. Trapped in deadly branches, screaming in terror. Devoured by a venus fly trap. Poisoned by the tiniest nick from a toxin-secreting thorn.

  All grim possibilities, and they never failed to wake him. He’d turn over in his creaking makeshift bed and stare into the darkness at where he knew the skeletons to be.

  The small ones were the worst. Children, presumably. Two of them. They occupied his thoughts more than the ten adult skeletons combined.

  All those morbid dreams weren’t so bad, compared to the ones where the skeletons sprung to life and attacked him, determined to add him to their ranks. They screamed the screams of agonising deaths, and the two small skeletons wailed like children who’d lost their parents as they dragged him into the bushes and held him still as the plants snaked their way around his limbs.

  He woke up screaming himself the first time he had that nightmare, startling Jamie awake and earning himself a scratch. It wasn’t the last time.

  Sleep had already been a struggle just due to sheer discomfort as much as anything. Things had been looking up on that front once he’d figured out how to weave himself some scratchy quasi-blankets and bedsheets out of plant fibre.

  Now, things were getting worse. He’d be surprised if he was getting more than two hours of good rest each night, and he couldn’t afford the exhaustion that came with that level of sleep deprivation.

  He found himself talking to Jamie more and more, muttering and meandering from sentence to sentence, narrating everything he was doing.

  “Have to find them all, Jamie. Can’t leave them here.”

  Sometimes, he even imagined the other Jamie there, watching it all with his typical sardonic expression, a quip ready on his lips. If he and Rian saw him in this state, they would’ve roasted him until he was charred as coal.

  And then they undoubtedly would’ve helped out.

  Throughout all this, he’d been continuing his slow exploration, day by day. It felt more dangerous, in his current state. His vitality was harder to focus on when he was so tired. Shaping it both within and outside himself took more effort.

  It meant both progress on mapping his sub-channels and protecting himself against the plants were, together, far slower. Even one at a time wasn’t what it had been when he was in sound mind. He had to pick, and he hated neglecting his internal manipulation, so he was spending less time exploring, which meant he was going to spend far longer here than he wanted to, which meant more time around the piled skeletons.

  It was a vicious cycle.

  He was on the verge of giving up on exploring the complex entirely, not wanting to find any more bodies to wonder and worry about. The edge of the complex was calling to him. The mysteries of this grand place had lost their shine; even the array he’d awoken in the centre of was falling down his list of priorities. Any more of this, and the command for Jamie to show him the fastest way out would surely pass his lips.

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  Lucas grimaced, sitting at the edge of his bed on another cold morning. He’d positioned himself so there were no skeletons in his line of sight, clinging to Jamie in his lap like a lifeline keeping him above the dark waters of madness. Last night was another bad one. The days had bled together, and he no longer knew how long he’d been here.

  … no. That’s not the only reason I haven’t left.

  He had to do something with the skeletons. Bury them, honour them, even if that didn’t follow their religion. It wasn’t like he could incinerate them. Did bones even burn? Didn’t matter. They needed to be dealt with. They’d never leave his dreams if he just abandoned them here. He just knew it.

  His frown deepened. His eyes fell closed, almost pained. He had to stifle a groan.

  There could be more out there, among all the fucking plants.

  He knew himself well enough to know that it would haunt him if he didn’t check to make sure, and he was starting to think it might actually haunt him. There was something to the bones. A resonance. It prickled his skin whenever he was near them, a phantom feeling like a breath on the back of his neck, but in his very soul.

  No matter how he felt about it, he was going to have to scour the entire complex. Find them all. The compulsion felt foreign, but it couldn’t be ignored.

  Every time he looked at one of the bones, he saw himself trapped in the constricting plants, slowly decaying, forgotten. He'd want someone to get his remains out of there, if it had happened to him.

  “Fuck me,” he whispered, letting his eyes fall shut and tilting his head back. “Fucking heeeeeell.”

  And so his exploration continued. He was no longer hoping to find any useful supplies or answer any questions; his only purpose now was to ensure there were no other bodies, then get the hell out of this place. He’d find somewhere to bury the skeletons and from there… he didn’t know. He just couldn’t stand to be in the overgrown complex for any longer than he had to. He told himself he’d come back in the future, when it wasn’t all affecting him like this.

  That desire to escape was ever at the forefront of his mind in the ensuing days. It overpowered everything else. He couldn’t fathom how a cavernous room like the domed hall could feel small, but in his tired haze the walls seemed to constrict. He’d find himself watching the dome, expecting a chunk of marble to fall away and crash down on him.

  The corridors were far worse in that regard. Even when they were wide enough they could’ve fit a two-lane road with room to spare, they felt too small. He barely dared to step into any of the smaller rooms, only glancing in and ensuring there were no lost remains.

  Being inside was driving him mad. Only Jamie’s presence kept him from falling over the edge, the reminder that there was another living being in this place acting as a lifeline that he clung to desperately.

  Ironically, these feelings drove him on faster, to the point he felt like he might’ve been moving only a little slower than he had been when his vitality was under more clear-headed control. He wasn’t stopping to carefully inspect his surroundings anymore, his slim hopes of finding something he could put to use brutally suppressed.

  So while he wouldn’t go so far as to say he was making good time, things weren’t too bad. There was no way to estimate how long it would take him to check this entire place over, but it couldn’t be too long, surely? A matter of weeks. Maybe a month.

  Lucas paused as that thought came to him, standing in a corridor that was wider and taller than a bus, but still made him feel like he’d crack his head on the ceiling if he jumped. There was a bramble in his hand, letting him pulse his vitality through the overgrowth and give him a 3D mental map of his surroundings for miles.

  He focused on it, turning it over in his head, and tried to form an estimate of how much ground he’d covered so far. The vitality signatures in different plants were mostly uniform with the greater will’s intelligence flowing through them all, but he was learning to pick up on the subtle distinctions. Younger plants were an ever so slightly paler shade of gold; more resplendent with the life that had birthed them.

  Looking at that schematic of vitality, picking out the sections where the colour was a tad brighter, he estimated he’d covered maybe a tenth of the place.

  Lucas’ stomach dropped between his feet and settled on the floor. His throat closed up. His breaths started coming faster, and he couldn’t stop them. Suddenly, there wasn’t enough air in this place. The dark was more menacing than it had been a moment ago, and before he knew it his feet were carrying him forward. An area on the vitality map had blown large in his mind’s eye, and he hastened towards it.

  He moved fast enough that it was a struggle to keep the plants away to the fullest extent of his territory, but his legs disobeyed him when he told them to slow down. Jamie let out a yelp and darted after him, soon catching up and staying right on his heels. When he glanced down, he found the cat staring back up at him, eyes narrowed in consternation.

  “Sorry,” he huffed, then broke out into a sprint, pushing his vitality sphere with everything he had. Jamie charged after him.

  Time blurred along with his vision. He was both hot and cold at once, and his chest hurt like icy fingers had grabbed his lungs and squeezed. His heart was pounding against his ribs like it was trying to escape.

  Along dark corridors, up black stairs, through shadowed archways, he walked, hastily forming a tunnel ahead of himself barely a metre wide and just tall enough to fit through. Eventually, he had to stoop.

  Up and up he went. He’d noticed five towers the first time he’d discovered the trick to piggybacking off the plant life’s vitality, but he hadn’t appreciated how tall they were until he found himself climbing the staircase of the southernmost tower. They seemed to go up forever, surely carrying him high into the sky and above the clouds.

  He was a fairly fit man, marathon and all, but weeks of berries and fruit for sustenance had hollowed him out a little. Lactic acid was burning him from the inside out by the time he made it to the top of the staircase what felt like a lifetime later. He was sore all over. Everything hurt, physical and metaphysical. He’d been pushing his vitality through his channels to give himself a boost unconsciously. When he relented his grip on it, he felt a deep spiritual ache.

  But he couldn’t stop yet.

  The topmost room of the tower was large and hexagonal, with tall ceilings and bare white walls. The floor was stained with sickly green patches, and Lucas was careful to avoid them as he made his way to the nearest wall. When he found what he was searching for, he exhaled a long breath that felt like it deflated him.

  A gap in the wall. No brick or marble, just a gap filled by vines as thick as tree trunks latticed together to block all sunlight.

  Sweeping away the last defence of the plant life keeping him in took more effort than it should have; his concentration was shot. He was so desperate for what lay beyond, it was hard to think of anything else, and his frustration built the longer it was denied to him. Eventually, he just blasted them away with an unnecessary amount of power, pushing his vitality out as far as it would go with his feverish fury as fuel.

  The sun shone on his face, and for a giddy, delirious moment, Lucas wondered if he’d become a plant himself; energy filled him up, like the sunlight was rejuvenating him. Warmth suffused his body. Fresh air had never tasted this good.

  In a trance-like haze, Lucas stepped out into the open air. Narrow bridges spanned the gaps between the towers, linking the top floors, and even they were covered in thick vines serrated with razor-sharp thorns. At another time, being this high up would have been terrifying. The waist-high walls flanking the bridge wouldn't have been enough to comfort him. He'd never been afraid of heights, but this was ridiculous.

  Mania had brought him up here, but he couldn’t find it in himself to chastise himself for it. Even if he’d been thinking more rationally, he was sure he would’ve eventually had the idea to climb one of the towers so he could stand atop one of the sky-high bridges and see for himself that these overgrown plants didn’t cover the entire fucking world.

  And they didn’t. Oh, they went on for a disturbing distance. Miles, easily. A space the size of a city had been covered like something out of a fairytale; a verdant blanket draped over the surrounding buildings to form a surreal impression of a stormy green sea frozen in place. Only the tips of the tallest structures poked through. The dome, the towers, and a few other buildings.

  But beyond, far away but not so far as to be called truly distant, there was a forest that looked entirely natural. There were rolling hills. A flowing river.

  The true marvel of it all, of course, was the sky. Big and blue and beautiful, with fluffy cotton buds drifting lazily along here and there. Seeing it unobstructed and free was liberating. A gentle breeze sighed past him, ruffling his rough clothes, and it carried the scent of grass and pollen.

  There was nothing Lucas wanted more than to be out there. Away from this complex. Away from these plants.

  Away from the bodies. The obligation.

  Soon, he told himself.

  That night, back in the circle, he felt more grounded than he’d been in days. Darkness still surrounded him, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel that he’d been struggling to see as he spiralled deeper into a pit of depression.

  He was tired. Deeply tired. Barely able to keep his eyes open or lift a limb, having collapsed onto his bed the moment he got back from the day’s efforts, Jamie immediately hopping up and taking his customary position curled up against his chest.

  But he had hope.

  Grasping around by his bed, he took a stick in hand to help with his pre-sleep meditation. Then he let his mind sink into his vitality, content to continue mapping his channels until he fell asleep.

  It wasn’t until morning that he realised it was not a stick he had picked up.