Chapter 10: Sunlight

Paradox could not see anything. Honestly, he was a little insulted that whoever was in charge of the glowing moon fruit in the trees had just decided to turn them off, but for now he probably shouldn't judge.
Out of the corner of his eye, Paradox saw a green light. When he turned, however, there was nothing.
Oh great. Paradox thought. I'm in one of those stories now.
Paradox saw the thing again in the corner of his eye, a little clearer now. It seemed like it was a face, but again when Paradox turned to look at it, the thing was gone.
That couldn't just be a hallucination, right?
Paradox's eyes were slowly acclimating to the darkness, allowing Paradox to scan the foliage for sinister figures. Finding nothing, he turned back to see if he could find his path again.
And then the thing was in front of him.
The only thing Paradox could see was a glowing green face like a jack o' lantern's. His first thought was Quantum Collapse, and he reflexively lashed out with his powers, pushing the thing backward. However whatever it was seemed to only receive half of the blow. The rest passed through it like it was a ghost. Maybe it was. As it was, the thing lazily drifted a few feet away before coming to a stop. Then the thing opened it's neon toothy grin and let out an evil cackle, the whole face simultaneously brightening and darkening with glee. It sounded like a toddler with a bad cough was laughing their lungs out through a fan.
Paradox suddenly had a splitting headache. Whatever this thing was doing felt like it was shoving pins and needles into his skull. the pain made it hard to concentrate, so Paradox did the first thing that came to mind. he grabbed the first loose object he could find; a hefty fallen branch; and he threw it at the face. For a moment the face looked surprised. In the next it disappeared, letting the branch spin through the air where the thing had been only a second ago. The pain was gone, at least temporarily, but Paradox just knew that the mischief wasn't done, So he turned tail and ran.
Paradox wasn't sure where he was going, but soon he knew where he wasn't going when he heard some impish cackling from somewhere in the darkness to his right. Paradox pushed through a tangle of branches to his left and used his powers to tangle them back into a barrier as he was still running.
Was that the sound of water?
Paradox skidded to a stop. In the darkness he had almost fallen into a river cutting through the woods like a knife. Hearing more cackling behind him, Paradox wound up for a jump across.
Then the reeds began to move. Paradox was afraid that the demon faces were rustling around in the foliage until he saw that the reeds weren't just moving, they were growing. They began winding into each other like snakes, weaving themselves into sturdy patterns that resembled a giant basket. When they were done, there was a green grass bridge spanning the water.
Paradox tentatively stepped onto the strange construct. Then, hearing more cackles behind him, he ran across the bridge, it's flexible construction bowing under his weight but not breaking. One the other side, Paradox mouthed a quick 'thank you' to the reeds before continuing. The reeds gave no response other than to untie themselves and return to just being plants.
Paradox continued running until he heard more cackles in front of him. He turned right, but suddenly another face appeared. It was pink, but it had the same toothy grin and threatening eyes as the last one. Paradox turned the other way, but grins and cackles were popping up all around him now. Trying to think, Paradox grabbed a nearby tree and began to climb. As he did, shadows and faces and sounds converged on him, threatening to swallow him whole. Paradox climbed into a split in the tree near the canopy and looked back. Faces of every color were staring back at him, waiting expectantly like sharks below a sinking ship. Some of them were floating up towards him. Paradox couldn't stop moving; he'd be overwhelmed; he climbed up further and grabbed a horizontal branch among the tightly-woven canopy. He then tried to work his way along the forest ceiling like he was going down the monkey bars.
Then a branch snapped. Paradox found himself momentarily hanging in midair for only a millisecond before gravity threw him down into the forest floor. Otherworldly screams beckoned him down. Paradox threw his arms in front of himself, but the hit was a lot softer than he had expected it to be. When Paradox opened his eyes, he found that his paws were being gently let down to the forest floor by soft grassy tendrils.
Paradox took a mental note to thank the grass later and stood up to face his attackers again. They surrounded him, but for some reason they kept their distance, smiles turning into sneers. Paradox was a bit puzzled until he found that he was having trouble seeing into the darkness. Paradox was in sunlight. Paradox looked up, keeping his hands in a defensive position just in case one of the creatures decided to make a move. Sure enough, there was a shaft of sunlight where Paradox had broken the canopy wide open. None of the creatures seemed to want to come near it. Even though the afternoon sun was putting the shaft a few feet to paradox's side, the ambient light seemed to scare all of them enough that they didn't want to come any closer. However, the gap was closing quickly as creepers and branches began to fold back over the hole.
You don't like light? Paradox thought. Right. of course you don't. I can work with that. Paradox reached up with his powers and widened the hole in the canopy, bathing the space around him in golden light. The faces reacted by backing further into the darkness. Paradox opened it up further, pouring as much light as he could onto the ground. The faces all retreated, some of them hissing like wet cats, but none of them disappeared. Paradox was still surrounded. They were at an impasse.
Paradox decided now was a good time to contact Kira and the professor. If anyone knew what to do, it would be the one's who'd been here before. He pressed the button on his earpiece. The dial tone only sounded once before the professor picked up.
"Yes? Hello? Are you all right?" the professor said. He sounded genuinely concerned.
"I'm fine." Paradox said. "I'm just in a bit of a sticky situation."
"Oh dear." The professor said worriedly. "You haven't got caught in the grass?"
"No. No that's fine." Paradox said. "I'll explain later. Right now I need to know what you did about the- the ghost things." Paradox stuttered as he discovered and folded back a regrowing portion of his skylight.
there was a pause on the other end of the line. "the what?" he finally said.
"The scary ghost face things!" Paradox said. "There are, like, fifty of 'em! All around!" Paradox pushed another swathe of leaves back where they came from.
"I- have no idea what you're talking about." The rustling of paper could be heard on the line. "There's nothing about any ghosts or faces in any of the reports."
A ghost face snarled, making Paradox jump a bit. "Okay, but that's not very helpful, professor."
The professor made a worried sound that communicated perfectly that he had no idea what to do. "You don't sound like you're running." The professor said. "Have you lost them somehow?"
"Uh- nope." Paradox replied, eyeing one particular specimen that was venturing a bit closer than the others. "I'm in a column of sunlight; they don't seem to like it." Another section of leaves was torn away. Was the regrowth getting faster?
"Well, that could be your answer." the professor said. "Previous expeditions cut down the trees to make paths for the vehicles. It's possible the destruction of the canopy kept them at bay."
"Great." Paradox said, simultaneously grunting with the effort of buying himself more time. "But I'm barely keeping up with the canopy here."
The other line was silent for a moment. "Perhaps their fear of sunlight is more than a psychological affliction." He said eventually. "A concentrated photon burst could, possibly, harm them, or at least scare them away."
"What?" Paradox said, a bit too preoccupied to translate science speak into normal speak.
"A laser pointer or a strong flashlight might do." the professor said.
"I don't have either of those!" Paradox said. he didn't mean to be rude, but this was presumably life or death.
"Then- then use the sunlight!" the professor said.
"I'm trying!" Paradox said. "But they're retreating too quickly for me to open the canopy above them! I'm losing ground, too." It was true. The regrowth of the canopy was slowly beginning to overtake Paradox's efforts.
"I mean, with light bending!" the professor said.
Paradox waited for an explanation, but none came. "With what?" he finally said.
"Oh, right, you probably wouldn't know how to-" the professor paused for a brief moment. "I'll have to get my notes."
"Professor!"
Furious paper rustling was followed by what sounded like a book slamming down onto a table. "Right." said the professor's voice while pages turned in the background. "You've mostly just been using telekinesis thus far. Light bending should be much the same for you, but the concentration point can be a bit tricky. You can't focus on what you can see, because light is invisible until it hits something. You need to choose a point in the air and focus on the photons passing through it. Are you getting any of this?"
"M-maybe." Paradox said. The sun-column was shrinking, so he hoped he was. Paradox tried to concentrate on a spot in the air, but it was tricky. He kept focusing on what he could see behind it too much. After trying a bit, Paradox had an idea. He dug a paw into the earth and pulled out a fistful of dirt. Then he threw it into the air, creating a thin, soily mist. Paradox tried to concentrate on the sunlight glinting off of the dust. For a second, the air shimmered, but the dust was what Paradox was grabbing, not the light, so Paradox closed his eyes. He tried to remember the direction and distance of the dusty patch of air, but he tried to keep his thoughts more abstract than that. He was trying to grab light, whatever that meant, not those tiny bits of rock adrift in the breeze.
The gap in the canopy was closing quickly now. Paradox was no longer trying to keep it at bay, concentrating fully on capturing the light. The glow behind his eyelids darkened as the shadow passed over him. Eerie cackles told him he didn't have much time.
Paradox opened his eyes. he was holding his hands toward an empty spot of air shimmering with a faint green light. Paradox could be holding sunlight in his grasp. Then again, he could still be holding dust or the air itself and he wouldn't know the difference. However, the ghosts were closing in and Paradox would have to use whatever he had right now, so Paradox closed his gaze on the first smug face he saw and threw whatever he had at it.
And for a split-second, it was midday.
The plants nearest to paradox seemed to turn white with reflected light. Screams of pain echoed around the clearing, which was the only clue Paradox had to the fate of the creatures who had been pursuing him because in the next moment he found that he was blind. Paradox blinked a couple of times before his dark vision began returning.
"Paradox? Paradox are you all right?" asked the professor, obviously worried.
"Oh! uh- uh- yeah! I am I- I think." Paradox said, blinking a couple more times. He tried to scan the perimeter for monsters. He didn't see anything, but in his current state that didn't mean much. "I might have blinded myself a bit."
"Hahaa!" the professor exclaimed happily. He almost sounded like he was crying. "Oh, my dear boy. I wish I could have seen it!"
"I was here and I could hardly see it." Paradox said, blinking again. His eyesight wasn't getting that much better, but the moon fruit were gradually regaining their glow. Some sort of safety mechanism that deactivated when monsters were nearby, perhaps?
"Dear boy," the professor said. "Do you realize what you've just done? You've begun to master an entirely different school of psionic theory! It's something I only theorized before! This will push the field of psionics years ahead!"
Paradox stood stock still a moment. "You mean, you didn't know that it would work?" he asked.
"Well, No." The professor said. "I mean I've theorized that such a thing might be possible, but I've never had a suitable test-"
"Y-you mean you didn't know that it would work?" Paradox said again.
"Yeeeees. That's what I just said... Are you sure you're all right, Paradox?"
"Uh- yes. sorry." Paradox said. "Just a bit..." Paradox wasn't sure what to say. "It's just... what are the chances I suffer permanent eye damage from this?"
The professor gave a chuckle. "I think that may have been enough adventures for one day" he said. "Pulling you out of there would perhaps be prudent; suddenly there are too many unknown variables at play here."
Then Paradox heard another, more faint voice on the line. It sounded vaguely like "Excuse me?"
The professor's voice became muted as well.
"Hello?" Paradox said. "Anybody there?"
It sounded like a heated discussion was going on on the other end of the line. Paradox caught things like "Lives on the line" and "Unsafe"; Paradox presumed the other person in the room was Kira, since there wasn't supposed to be anyone else that knew about this operation.
Paradox looked down the trail of moon-fruit. The two persons on the other end of the line were debating whether he should go further. Was it safe? Probably not, but suddenly, somehow Paradox knew that he could do it.
"Guys?" Paradox spoke to his earpiece. The arguing continued. "Guys! I can do it! I'll go!"
The arguing stopped, which was followed by the Professor's voice, directed to Paradox this time.
"Paradox, you don't have to go in further than you already have." he said. "I'm not willing to risk your life for it."
"It's important." Paradox said. "So I'm willing to risk it."
"Paradox..."
"Lives are on the line, right?" Paradox said. "So if someone's gonna risk their life it may as well be me."
The professor gave a worried whimper. He didn't like it, but sounded like he didn't have any counter arguments.
"I'll let you know when I reach the village." Paradox said. Then he ended the call.