"Please, Charlie, be gentle!"
He knows how pathetic he sounds, how hypocritical it is of him to beg for mercy when it's his fault she's trapped in the darkness in the first place. But he can't help it; he's terrified, stumbling over roots and grasping hands as he tries in vain to outrun the night itself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! What kind of idiot wastes their torch during dusk?
The dead kind.
He had been nervous, that's all. Winter's just around the corner and he had been doing one last resource rush before the warmth of Autumn fled for good. So many puppets up at once had sent his head spinning and shadows crawling in the corners of his vision and he hadn't been able to take the dim light of the setting sun. The puppets are gone now, abandoned along with their resources (what a god damned waste), leaving Maxwell with no light, no means to make another, and just enough clarity of mind for regret.
It's over. Charlie won't be gentle (she never is), and Max will be lucky if the others ever find his corpse in the upcoming snowstorms, much less bother to bring him back to life.
No. No, he refuses to die like this. This is still his world, and he must have something up his sleeve--
In the momentary glow of a firefly cluster, Maxwell holds the Codex aloft, murmurs to himself, and summons her.
@radiosent -- !