PHANTASIA by R. Atlas

like that. It looked like it had a life of its own. Was it a critter?”  
    “I don’t know,” Red sighed. “I’ve never seen it either.”  
    “It was after you, or at least it looked like it was after you.”  
    “Specifically, me?” He meant it almost as a rhetorical question, he knew it was after him. But he didn’t want Butz to think he was hiding something. He wasn’t, after all, at least not intentionally.  
    “Well, when everyone broke out, it seemed to ignore everything and go straight for you. And when Raven took you on her bike, it wasted no time in chasing you guys.”  
    “Hmm…” was all Red could reply, as he tried to piece together everything that had happened. “You guys shouldn’t have followed us into the whirlpool, it probably puts you in danger too.”  
    “As if I’d ever not follow my team into danger,” Butz grinned. He leaned against a stalactite and closed his eyes briefly. “This foam thing, it makes me want to fall asleep.”  
    “I know what you mean,” Red smiled. “It’s like a giant breathing blanket. Inviting in a strange way.” He felt a tickling sensation at the end of his arm but tried not to look down. The image of the stump never failed to bring back a sense of shock, despite his conscious awareness of his injury.  
    “Hah — exactly.”  
    “But we should find everyone else before we think about sleeping.”  
    Butz nodded before taking out his microAI to map a path to their closest team members — Magnus and S. The two of them were already traveling towards Red and Butz. Raven was still a few days worth of travel away, not counting for any terrain blocks they would run into while within the caverns, which meant they would likely have to make camp at least once before getting to her. “Well that’s odd,” Butz quipped after studying his compass.  
    “What?” Red asked quickly as he stepped closer to Butz to study the compass along with him.
    “Raven - she seems to have been standing still for the last thirty minutes. Her location just froze. And her vitals are…abnormal. Look at her heart rate.”  
    “That can’t be right,” Red replied. He shuffled out his own microAI to check his compass but saw the same thing. The green dot that signaled Raven’s position was now frozen in a single location at an altitude far lower than theirs. Her heart rate was half of what it should have been, and her microAI indicated that her energy was in flux, constantly dropping below average and then returning to an unusual peak.  
    “She’s probably resting while practicing energy trance techniques, or something,” Red offered, although he knew how unlikely that was. Butz gave him a doubtful look, suggesting that he also thought that it was improbable for her to be taking a break to practice controlling her energy at a time like this.  
    “Well, her vitals don’t indicate that she’s in danger or anything,” Butz added hopefully.  
    “Yeah, I guess not,” Red agreed, but he still had a bad feeling about her sudden inactivity. It occurred to him that he had never felt this way before; he could not remember ever having to worry about Raven. There was never a doubt that she could take care of herself, but now things were different. They were out in the wild, and far deeper underground in the Alloy Desert than he imagined anyone had ever come. It was his fault that she had ended up here, and she was the only one on their team that was still alone.  
    “I’m sure she’s ok. There doesn’t seem to be anything dangerous here, besides whatever I saw before, but I don’t even know what that was. I haven’t seen a single real critter.” Butz said assuringly.  
    “That could be a very good thing or a very bad thing. What if everything alive that comes here —” A flicker of movement in the foam cut Red’s sentence off and made him jump. He saw it from the corner of his eyes; something that leaped out of the foam and then fell back in one swift