“Just you. Time to die.”

Dek rubbed hard at his face. Blinked. This was no dream. He was here—atop a block of toppled gneiss—surrounded by forest at the very foot of the titanic up-thrust of the mountain wall. Worse, he had no clue how he had come to this place.

“So, which way is Two Falls Gap?” he wondered, staring wistfully off to the east. Had to be that way. But which trail did he take? How could he keep his orientation once he was back in the trees?

Instead of an answer, all he got in return was the rising and falling of the chime.

“Think, Dek. Think.”

Try as he might, cudgel his brain all he could, the only image was of a mazework of trees and a torturous path that he’d run at high speed. The forest floor had been a jumble of giant roots, all knotted and intertwined, of ups and downs, twists and turns.

No clue remained as to where he’d been, how he had managed to get here.

“Talina!” he bellowed.

The only answer was the monotonous shifting of the chime. And, damn it, as loud as the invertebrates were, if Tal wasn’t within a hundred meters or so, she’d never hear his call. Not even with her quetzal-augmented senses.

Dek knotted a fist, turned as several buzzing flying things whisked past his ear like slow bullets. Creatures like he’d never seen before. They paid him no heed.

“How the hell did I get here?”

“I brought you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You brought me here to die, you piece of shit. Why?”

“Talina. What she calls ‘payback.’”

“The problem with learning about humans? You’re starting to think like one.”

“Talina is a blunt tool. Your way is much more cruel.”

“My way? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“As you did to Kalay.”

“Go fuck yourself, Demon.”

Demon didn’t reply, just uttered that infuriating chittering.

Dek kept turning, searching desperately to discover some sign, some clue that would lead him back to Two Falls Gap. All he could see was trees, their leaves and branches slowly moving as they shifted and jockeyed for a better exposure to the morning light.

“Think, Dek.” He swallowed hard, realized that his mouth was dry. Where the hell was he going to find a drink? He didn’t even have a knife to cut a hole in an aquajade to tap one of the veins for water, toxic though it might be.

Glancing to the west, he studied the closest of the waterfalls tumbling down the mountain. That was maybe a hundred meters to the south across impossibly piled chunks of colluvial rock intertwined with trees and vines. Not even a quetzal could cross that.