Earth Descended: 1.06

Ming makes it out of the fog a day after leaving the lighthouse. The angler dog keeps following her, which she doesn’t understand, but she figures she shouldn’t worry. It will leave once it sees the village people gathering to welcome her home.

She hums as she hikes, only absently focused on the path ahead. She’s far more interested in her strange souvenir.

As far as she knows, no one has ever brought back anything like it. People who journey to the undead fish fields for their right of passage always bring back fish. People who go to the lighthouse always bring back bits of metal to be recycled. People who make the trip inland to the plains return with berries as big as their heads.

Ming has something hidden and secret, and therefore far better than anything anyone else has brought home.

In daylight, the little metal rectangle is even more strange than it had been under the intense brightness of the lighthouse. Its markings are more distinct; they hover over the metal surface in a shimmering yellow that darkens in the light and glows in the shadows. As Ming examines the marks, her souvenir inches away from her eyes, she notices that the markings look familiar somehow.

They curve and bend in abstract shapes, but they piece together in ways that look like writing. In fact, if Ming looks closely enough, one character might be an ‘O,’ and another might be a funny, drunk-looking ‘H.’

“I wonder what it says,” she murmurs absently, holding the metal to the light.

And then she trips.

Ming falls on her face. The toe of her boot bends uncomfortably, probably because it’s wedged into something. When she tries to stand, her free hand scrapes against unsanded wood, and she winces at a set of new slivers. Trying and failing to be helpful, the anglerdog trots over and huffs in her ear.

“Oh, shove off,” Ming grumbles. Somehow, she sits up. She glances at her injured palm and groans, and then sees her surroundings.

When she’d come through here on her way to the lighthouse, the path had been clean. Now it isn’t.

Bits of wood lay strewn around the path, some charred, some clean, all new. Corn husks flutter in the light breeze, and colonies of ants march to and from mangled, unrecognizable bits of rotten food. Ming would never be so messy.

But worse than the wood and the food are the carcasses. Now that she’s paying attention, Ming can smell the rot. Its acrid, smokey scent churns in her gut and sparks tears in her eyes. She almost refuses to look, but curiosity gets the better of her.

Oh. Anglerdogs. That’s why her companion keeps following her. With a gulp, she tries to peel her eyes away and look at something less upsetting, like the trees.

Ming thinks back to the lights she’d seen from the top of the lighthouse. She had guessed they belonged to the anglerdog’s pack, but maybe they’d been something else. Or, of course, someone else.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. If she’d seen people from the lighthouse, they could already be at the village. They might be pillaging it right now.

Letting out a desperate laugh, she squeezes the little metal rectangle tight in her palm. Its sharp edges bite her skin, not sharp enough to bleed, but enough to hurt. “Maybe they were just scared of creatures they’d never heard of?” she rationalizes. It sounds breathy and desperate, even with her vocal chords rumbling in her throat. “Maybe the dogs attacked first?”

That can’t be though. The anglerdog following Ming is so friendly.

“They’ll be fine!” she tells herself. “Everything will be fine! No one will die. The village is totally safe. It’s not even on the main road. Whoever these people are, they won’t find us. Maybe it was just like a weird anglerdog pack war!”

The campfires and food indicate that her last hope is completely unrealistic, but Ming only says it to make herself feel better anyways. With another breathy laugh, she marches onward. “No looking at the stupid metal anymore,” she hisses. “It’s not important.”

So of course, Ming looks at it more. She can’t stop looking at it. She doesn’t know for sure that anything has happened to her village, but she has the souvenir right there with her, calling her name, and she won’t move fast enough to get home in one day so she might as well look. In the name of going a little faster though, she waits until dark, after she’s set up camp, to examine the thing.

She forgoes lighting her lamp. The angler dog sidles up to her, not cuddling but apparently trusting enough to lean against her legs. Ming frowns, but decides the behavior is harmless. The dog’s light bauble hangs in front of them, providing just enough light for Ming to keep looking at the marks. One of them might be a ‘P.’

Then, with a start, she decides she ought to try something. Licking her lips, she leans forward and taps the little metal stick against the anglerdog’s bauble. It sparks, and Ming pulls back. She’s watched a blacksmith work; sparks are bad.

She notices though, that her fingers are fine. The metal isn’t hot, either. With a little hum, she tries again, gently taking hold of the bauble with her other hand, and pressing it firmly against the metal stick.

It sparks again, longer, and then the sparks turn into a glow, and then into a beam of light, and then-

Well. Ming’s not sure how to describe it. She blinks, open-mouthed, as a tiny person made of light jumps up from nowhere to stand on thin air right above her hands.

“Hello?” she asks.

The tiny person doesn’t respond. He instead straightens his strange, form-fitting clothing and clears his throat, totally ignoring Ming’s greeting.

“Good day,” he says. He talks… differently. His vowels are weird, and he says ‘good day’ more like ‘goat tei.’ He continues on, but Ming has to lean in close and focus very hard on his itty bitty mouth to understand what he says.

“It is I, Phosphor. If you have received this message, then it means the worst has happened.” The little man wrinkles his eyebrows, and his watery eyes shimmer with genuine regret.

Ming squints. “Huh?”

“Hydron is dead. The waters are unsafe and uncontrollable. You may be worried that more of us will die in the coming years.” He places a hand over his heart and looks away. “I cannot lie, for I am truth as well as light. Several more of us are likely to die before this catastrophe abates.”

“What does ‘abate’ mean?” Ming mumbles. “Who even are these people?”

“Ugh,” says a female voice from nowhere. “We should have asked Kosmos to talk. At least he can lie a little bit.”

“Shut up Mel!” the tiny man shouts. He fidgets with the hems of his sleeves and bristles by somehow glowing brighter than before. “Anyways. We’re going to be in a rough patch for a bit, but we’re all very sure that Genis will keep things from getting out of hand. This is a hopeful message.”

“Oh great,” says the disembodied woman.

“Fear not the darkness and chaos!” Phosphor calls, deepening the timbre of his voice. It does little to inspire Ming. He just sounds pompous. The invisible woman scoffs.

“Fear not the chaos!” Phosphor corrects, though Ming isn’t sure why. “We shall pull through as always with our strength and ingenuity! May Genis guide and protect us through these dark- I mean, unsettled times.” He ends with a strong, firm pose, one fist raised, feet shoulder-width apart. It’s probably supposed to be cool.

“Good grief,” says the woman.

The tiny man flickers out, and then jumps out from nowhere again. “Good day,” he says. “It is I, Phos-

Ming pulls the stick off the anglerdog’s bauble and stares at it. She gawps. She blinks. She spends so long doing nothing that the dog wiggles its head under her free hand and rests its chin on her knee so it can look up at her imploringly.

“What?” she breathes eventually. For once, she doesn’t even know what questions to ask. She has so many. Her gaze drifts away from the metal stick; the line of questions that would pull her to it is so long that she can’t even look at the thing. Dazed, she sits in the dark, barely hearing the quiet rustle of trees around her.

Eventually, her eyes make it to a shining red dot in the distance. She registers it blankly, and then a little voice in her head reminds her that she’s facing northwest. Towards the village.

The village is on fire.