The stone sucked the light from the room in a gasping sigh, sending the band deeper into darkness with each breath. It was a startling visual paradox, the stone that glowed sun-bright, but lit nothing. There was an uncomfortable silence as the group took in the new disaster.

“New rule: no touching the nifty glowing rocks. Agreed?” There was a rustling in the darkness that Amy assumed was agreement.

“Should we bring it with us?” The shadow of a hand fell over the rock as Devin started to compulsively collect yet another adventuring trinket.

“No. Touching. Rock.” Amy swung her walking staff in the general direction of his shadow and was rewarded with a solid thump. “Need smaller words?”

“What would we need a rock that eats light for anyway? Everything down here can see in the dark anyway–”

“Hey!” Devin cut Ruth off with a happy yelp, “It’s a backwards torch!”

“What?” Raised eyebrows lost some of their effect in the dark, and Devin escaped Amy’s sarcasm unharmed.

“It’s a torch! Only in reverse. See, we put light into the room to see. They take it out. Convert it to a different frequency or something.” The shadow-hand descended on the rock again as he squirreled it away into one of the hundreds of pouches in his overcoat. “See?”

The room was slowly fading back into light as the rock’s powers dimmed. Devin was apparently right. Again.