Xoria: Stone
Over the lip of the ledge, a figure climbed. The lights from her helmet picked out viscid walls in pink and green and streaks of gold. Reflected illumination lit up her in turn, the drysuit signed with sigils, the harness and the myriad tools it distributed, the sleek helmet with its impenetrable glossy mask.
She looked around the ledge, broad and almost level, firmed by cartilage that would likely support it even if the surrounding muscle relaxed. Protected from anything falling half-digested from above by an overhanging cyst. There were cilia, pawing uselesly at her boots, but manageably short and without fangs or stingers. It would do.
She reached to her backpack and took out a small brass jar, shook it twice and pulled out the stopper. Mist poured out and coiled with its own will, to forming first a canopy, then precipitating like a mirage a stove, a bean-bag, a lava-lamp and a small cupboard. The figure sat, opened the cupboard to remove a pan, some sachets of dried beans and meat, and a tiny orb that burst into water enough to cook with when cracked above the pot.
Once the fire was set, she reached up and touched a hidden button, and the visor slid up away from a face somehow perfectly made-up in the depths of the beast.
“Zeor, take dictation.”
“Yes ma’am.” The crystal ball dangling from her hip flickered with an industrious light.
“Travel diary of Bavaria Megaragusa. Xoria expedition, day eight.”
A mosquito whined up the tunnel, attracted by the sound and smell of prey. Its vicious six-inch proboscis quivered at the sight of motion. Then the lamp flickered, and the creature plunged distracted into the lava, burning up in moments.
“Spent most of the day ascending the tunnel, and believe I am now approaching the top. The gold runoff at the base has continued up the walls, further evidence for the presence of the stone upstream. No sign of pursuit by the hungry men, but some difficulty navigating a number of tapeworms attached to the interior who fancied a supplement to their diet. Quakes becoming more frequent.
“Sincerely regretting my poor background in Ars Animae at this point, but managing. If nothing else this hell is an education in it. I recall the school magi telling me life is a ‘refining fire’ that will purify my spirit, but I am hard-pressed to find purity here. The thesis of perdition is clear: life is hunger. Everything here has a yawning lack within it, and seeks to fill it by consuming others. Frankly I find this a more plausible essence of life than purification…”
~~
After a meal, and a rest, and a sleep under cover of strong mist, Bavaria set off upward again. She hammered stake after stake into the wall - each once an impaler of an aged vampire, and more than a match for demonic flesh.
Denizens of the nightmare were evaded with the tricks the cuckoo-things had taught her, or warded off with reminders of her station as Magus, or when necessary despatched with words of power. Near the top another quake hit, and threatened to crush her in the folds of flesh, but she had bargained knowledge of this from a crone years before, and knew where to hide to weather it.
She reached the top. Her lights shone about a chamber more than large enough to swallow them. She pulled up from the orifice into the unwalled void and took a moment to rest before going on. The stone was likely here - it showed in the golden veins of the flesh beneath. Their tracery took her up the sloped floors, through the cavernous lobes, past streams of rancid acid and half-digested sin. Twice she had to freeze and uncork the mist, as spindly legs passed by around her, supporting things unseen above. Twice she had to dig into the soft ground and hold desperately as the chambers flooded and drained. But the golden thread was eternal, and she traced it through the caverns of the beast, until she found its source.
Bloated, tumorous, jammed in an orifice and unable to move, weeping pus from innumerable sores. Parasites squirmed in its skin and jutted from the folds, sprouting new children as fast as its limbs could scratch them free. All dwarfed by the great canker, veined in gold, weeping gold.
“There you are,” she said, drawing a knife. “The one who ate my stone.”
She stepped up to the mewling mass and began to carve.
“It must have seemed so tempting. So valuable. The fount of immortality, of the absolute.”
Her knife parted flesh layer on layer in rancid, glittering sheets.
“But that is the very problem, isn’t it? You are a demon. A being of sin. You cannot abide becoming whole - it would end you. You are your hunger, your lack.”
Nuggets of gold fell away from the heart of the tumour.
“So you have suffered from it, wrapped it in your agony. A beautiful golden pearl.”
The stone revealed. A milky sphere cloaked in gold, grown branch and tendril through the flesh as like worms, hungry for the Absolute. Metastasised perfection.
The knife dug around it, prised it out into a waiting hand.
The hand closed and crushed, and the stone was no more. Then she laid the hand gently on the beast’s quivering flank.
“I’m the same, you know. I never used it for elixir, only rarely for gold to pay the bills. Because I realised when I had it - it’s not for the likes of me. Always hungry for more, a human. Just like you. You stole and ate my stone, and I could not you suffer forever from my own carelessness.”
The air trilled with the sound of raptors, scenting prey.
“Get well soon.”
She left it not knowing if it would recover before the worms and vultures came to dine on the victim. Her obligation had been fulfilled, and she had explorer’s notes enough that she needed feel neither that the journey was a waste of time, nor too conceited about her selflessness in making it. This, she felt, was about as good a result as one could hope for.