We rose the next morning to the sunny vista of the ocean before us. Despite my soft sleeping back, the hard, rocky ground had done horrible things to my back and I stretched to undo it, but painful tension remained, even during the cold breakfast we had. We were soon back on the mountain’s slopes, heading towards the promised side-chute.
“This is it, we’re here.” Our guide stood hands on hips ahead of us at the beginning of a level area of broken rock.
I saw no entrance to a magma chute, but the Professor walked to the low cliff face. He looked at the wrought-up rock, tapped one spot twice with his staff, then turned to Chrysita. “Your part, old girl.”
The golem stepped to the part of the cliff face's rock the Professor had tipped. She raised her arm and with a single swing downward, smashed the rock apart. Revealed behind was a hollow chamber. With a few more acts of stone-breaking ease, Chrysita had soon cleared away enough rock to reveal an entire tunnel leading straight into the mountain at a shallow angle.
I stepped closer to peer inside, but a hand pulled me back by my shoulder.
“HAAAALT!” Anne-Liese pushed her way through. “Let the alchemist have a look first. By all good things, you’d jump head-first into a pond without knowing how deep it is.” From a pocket at her belt she pulled what looked like a wick coated thick in wax. With a match, she set it alight, turning on a white blaze so bright I had to shield my eyes. With the wick in her hand she headed into the tunnel with a slow steck, Lifting the wick as high as she could, held it close to the floor and waved it around. Finally, she threw the wick on the ground a few moments before it fizzled out.
“The indicator flame showed no dangerous abnormality in the air. It seems there are no noxious gases remaining in this chute. We can go ahead.”
The Professor turned to Chrysita and nodded. Two Crystals in her pauldrons lit up and shot beams of light forward into the tunnel, reaching hundreds of feet in the distance. “Let us not wait any longer.”
We all took our own light vials out, some more bulbous, some pointier, some more elaborately carved, but all less than fist sized and of clear crystal, inside flux powder. With a turn of the glass plug, the powder was slowly consumed like sand in the top of an hourglass and turned to an even white glow. With those hanging from our necks or belts, we followed the Professor down the tunnel.
The Professor used this opportunity to tell us of the formation of these caves, of the difference between shield volcanos and compound volcanos, the way the cooling magma could bring forth many different rocks and other peculiarities of igneous geology, sending his free lecture’s echo forth and back in the tunnel.
We eventually reached the central shaft. What I saw there, illuminated by Chrysita’s powerful beams of light, was the central shaft roughly fifty feet across and widening as it ran downwards vertically. If there was a bottom to this, it was far out of light’s reach.
We stared for a while into this darkness before I realized that we would most likely have to get down there somehow. “What do we do now?”
“You let me check ahead again.” Anne-Liese answered. She took another waxed wick, lit it and then dropped it down the shaft. It remained consistently white again this time. We also saw that it landed on a ground. Probably nine hundred feet or more down. The magma pipe made a slow bent there, whether it reached the horizontal we could not tell, but it very well could.
“How will we get down there?” Brad asked while watching the wick slowly fade to dark. “I have not enough rope for all of us to reach the bottom, especially not that humongous construct.” His words echoed throughout the empty citadel of rock.
The Professor turned to me with a smile. “It is your time, Havellan.”
I nodded with determination. I knew which spell to use and opened my small spellbook at the bookmarked page. I had to memorize every single part of the spell so I could weave it; the formulae describing the shape I wanted to bring about, the geometry of force-distribution in such a shape, the plethora of variables to make the stone malleable, the energy required for it. When I finally was confident enough that I had memorized the spell, I reached for my pouch of powdered flux and took a big fistful of it with my left hand.
With my left above my head, I stretched my staff out in front of me, concentrated through the glass crystal as it bent and distorted the arcane weavings of reality, amplifying my mind’s reach. I repeated the mnemonic devices I had learned over and over again, I felt the energy contained within the flux and demanded it for me. I sucked it up through the veins in my hand, my arm, my shoulder and into my heart. With this pressure within me, then I forcedmy will from my mind through my veins upon the world before me.
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A triangular wedge of stone tilted out of the rock face in front of my feet, forming a step of one by three feet, level with the ground and ready to stand on.
I relaxed my mind and exhaled, then turned to the Professor with a nod. He ordered Chrysita to step ahead. She had no issue balancing her entire weight above the yawning abyss. I sighed with relief.
Brad leaned over and inspected the step. “We shouldn’t go down there without some security.” He retrieved belts with metal hooks for us as well as a long rope. Each of us was secured with a rope, excluding Chrysita, none of us could catch her fall in case she should slip.
I conjured the formula up in my mind once more and shaped one step after the other, in a descending spiral from the rock wall of the shaft. Every pinch of energy I drew from the flux through my veins left a warm and coarse feeling inside of me. I knew I would never build up stamina and resilience if I did not practice regularly, but flux being expensive left me, a penniless student, unexperienced, if willing.
The descent dragged on and a worn-out feeling had settled into my veins. I still had the spell tightly in my mental grasp, I had even gotten better, fast at it; the steps formed faster and more accurately, I even felt like I could shape even bigger steps. I bridled my enthusiasm for now. I would not disappoint the Professor and Major Colonel Corbula by letting vanity get the better of me.
It was a simple step I took, but for some reason, my tired feet refused to set exactly where I told them. My left foot set an inch to short, right on the edge of one step. I slipped.
It was a mere moment of panic, I could not prevent a scream to escape me, neither could the Professor. We fell off the stairs and down towards the invisible ground, then the rope jerked my entire body as it held on. Right next to my head, a glass bottle of some sort flew down and shattered on the ground, now just close enough see but far enough to be a threat.
“UNCLE!” The others were in panic as well. “HOLD ON!”
I looked down, into the darkness, but looking up was almost impossible, the rope would not allow me my own motion, but I knew that on the same rope as me, the Professor too must be hanging above the blackness and by her panicked grunts, I could tell that Anne-Liese was holding onto the edge. Brad was apparently trying to pull all three of us back up, but with little success.
I heard the heavy, slow steps of the golem come to the edge, then I heard Anne-Liese again.
“AAAH, YOU’RE PULLING MY ARM OUT!”
I felt myself being pulled up, slowly but steadily. The Professor thanked Chrysita as he felt hard ground again and in just a moment, I would too.
But there was a disquieting sound. A sort of RRRREEEEK as the metal loop on my belt slowly tore free from the leather. I could feel the belt disintegrating for a fraction of a heartbeat, then the free fall, again.
Another jerk threatened to pull my leg from my hip. I screamed in pain. Then I saw Chrysita holding me up like a caught fish. She put me back down again and I breathed with relief. Again, within two days, I was saved from a most perilous fall.
“Thank you Chrysita.” I almost hugged her as I stood up, but restrained myself in time. “Height and fall seem to be a fierce enemy of mine recently.”
The Professor looked at the end of the stairs. “I shall do the shaping now, Havellan. And next time, say something before you lose your focus. Don’t be so proud as to not accept help.” His look told me his disappointment and it was already enough punishment for me. He glanced over the edge to the ground just barely touched by our lights. “I guess we are close enough that I can do the rest of the way down without exertion.” He straightened his back, assumed an attentive pose and stretched his staff out in front of him, murmuring melodic incantations that made no sense to me as my own did. In a sudden, unified motion, he slapped the stone wall with his right hand while clicking with his tongue. The slap seemed to reverberate through the stone walls and down the tube as within mere moments, stone steps emerged from the stone wall one after the other, spiralling perfectly down the shaft all the way to the gentle slope of the bending shaft.
I stood there, put to shame by the master. He had done it with a suddenness and accuracy that even experienced mages could only achieve with a few spells. “To have heard the song of stones certainly helps with control and accuracy when dealing with stone.”
I guess he was right, to be inoculated in ancient secrets by spirits of rock and stone itself certainly would provide a strong foundation for such skilful wielding of knowledge and magic. And so, I placed my steps with much more confidence than on my own creations.
We came around the bent and saw the tunnel coming to an almost perfectly horizontal direction, again far out of our lights’ reach. “Astonishing!” the Professor uttered, his voice echoing up and down the chute. “We might be walking this path deeper yet. Quick, we must take measurements at this bend in the magma's flow!” A growl interrupted his anticipation. He held his stomach and I could feel my hunger too. “When we are all fed well again. Let us make a late lunch!”
After we had enough to replenish our strength, Anne-Liese and Professor Scutolith started to unpack their instruments again. I came to the Professor’s side as I was used to now and noted down his measurements. It had surely gotten warmer as we descended and the air pressure had increased significantly as well. The measurements indicated an odd absence of energies that should by all accounts surround us. The Professor’s enthusiasm was only strengthened by these readings, indicating
We did not out up our tent, as our current environment would most likely not surprise us with precipitation and so I rolled into my sleeping bag and stared out into the dark vista before us. The next day, I know now, would surprise us with many dread discoveries.