Entry 13:

I swear I must have slept for about ten minutes before hitting the hard, ashen ground. Rivulets of blue lava run around me, and the rock, who seemingly considers itself harder than a god, is unscathed. Ilucaris’ sense of humor, skyclad.

As for me, I think I broke shy of a hundred bones, I see brain matter and blood scattered all over the basalt, and my right femur decided to poke out to get some fresh air. For a landing done while I slept, I consider it a success.

Little islands scatter through the lava river, onto which anyone that has climbed up here could leap, form a way leading to the floor’s guardian. Crystal spikes like violet hexagonal pencils jut out from the ground and conform its foot or nest, and its body is a cylinder sprouting arms, humanoid ones, like a pine sprouts dense branches. This body is crowned by a neck long and flexible, like a bubblegum pulled from between one’s teeth, and it ends on a head that I can only describe as Paleozoic: big composite eyes, dark chitinous spines sprouting from the shield that makes most of it up, and armored appendages dangling from it, wiggling, twitching. It regards me with a tilted stare, as if I were as alien to it as it is to me.

“Greetings. You are the guardian of this floor, or so I assume. Do you know my name?”

The creature moves it’s three insect-like mandibles and a voice full of little taps and chitters reaches my ears. “There’s no such thing anymore. Do you wish to keep on descending through Our Mother?”

I walk over the lava to reach the island where this creature stands. “Very much so. I assume an offering is needed.”

“Not yet.” The guardian says, to my surprise.” You have that which many desire. Do you really want to give it all away?”

“I am determined to die, if that’s your question.” Its neck describes a half circle to my right, and now to my left. The guardian is regarding me from every possible angle. “And if you have a name, I’d be pleased to know it.”

“I am born from Ilucaris. I am one or I am ten thousand. I am, ostensibly. At this moment, before you I am, but there’s no need for a name when I exist in loneliness. Your name is lost; mine is unneeded. Why do you, adopted by her, receiver of her boundless grace and gifts, wish to die.”

I shrug. I had forgot how guardians often behave. Many may have been humans once, stuck in the tower, unable to advance anymore. This one is not the case, and that is bound to make things more difficult for me.

I straighten my back. “Novelty. Closure. And because I have a right to.”

“A right to.” Silence settles between us, and even the wind calms down to listen. “Do you believe gods, siblings of yours and of mine, deserve an expiry date? For our lovely mother to slaughter them once enough blood has drained from their clepsydrae?”

“I do. Sooner than later, many would ask for. It’s death or insanity, inhumanity. Incompleteness.”

I don’t know if it is smiling or that gesture in its head means another thing. Its labrum is risen, little tongues like albino worms come out and play on the borders of the hole. “Then pray tell me, considering the so-claimed universality of rights, and according to your beliefs: how soon should a spire slay her son?”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“That should be the decision of said son.”

A whistle comes out as the creature pulls its neck back. “That sounds like a right so precious. What is, then, the counterpart? The obligation that exists to balance it out?”

I hesitate just a few instants. “This. Descending Ilucaris when one is ready to die.” I cross my arms under my cape. “Does this mean that, in your eyes, we already have such right?”

“No. I don’t consider gods to have rights. Rights are for the feeble. For the flesh. Gods have a will, as does Ilucaris. And it is her will for you to be able to pursue your ends, even if they go against her own.”

I hum for but an instant before answering. “Useless chatter, then. You don’t understand what is to have been born a man.”

Then the guardian got his monstrous head closer to mine. “Oh, and do you?”

“No.” I admit, despite wanting to say yes and yearning for it to be true if I did. “But perhaps by descending Ilucaris I will remember. I need the pain. I need the fear. I need the end.”

His breath felt cold on my skin, polar. “And what about the love, the hope, the infinite little delusions and cute tales they tell themselves?”

“I am positive some of the things I lost during my life too long are irretrievable. I am beyond loving any person or rock. I am beyond hating them, too. I have hope, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, before you. As for the delusions, I don’t believe them to be exclusive of men.”

“Interesting.” The neck retreated into the slimy from which the arms sprouted. “Then, it must be time for you to continue your march towards death. What do you offer?”

I sit on a nearby mound of basalt and begin going over my powers. I have already thought what to give up, but a guardian probably is free to refuse an offer.A second and third choice are most likely merited at this point.

Ah, I know. Few are the things I am willing to part so freely, but the sacrifice is necessary. “I will begin by offering that which could be a curse, instead of a blessing, without omniscience: my ability to become omnipresent. You could guard this pathway and be anywhere else if you had it. Do you want it?”

“I don’t want it,” the guardian says, flatly.

I groan a little. “I am not so willing to part with it, but what would you say about the power to force others to swear oaths? Do you want it?”

The guardian answers the same thing again, in the same tone. I curse under my breath.

“Mind reading? Do you want the power to read minds?”

“I don’t want it.”

I think about gathering power in my hand and throwing a little star at it. obliterating the guardian and have to look for another in the vast expanse of this room. I open my hand and look at it. It’s likely not worth the effort. “What, then, do you want? Answer!”

“I have no wants.”

For a second, I remained in silence. For ten, I guffawed. For another five, I catch up in the diary, as the surprise made me stop writing. Now, seventeen seconds later. I speak. “And I thought you were being picky! So, you don’t want any of my powers. But which one would you accept as a tribute so I can be let through?”

It extended its neck back out. “Which one would I accept, you ask. Any is the answer. If for none I have need, how would I choose while behaving as it is only fair and neutral? All have the same value for me, so to ask for the one you treasure the less would be an ask of benevolence, and benevolent I am not. To, instead, ask for the one you cherish the most of those you offered would be an act of malevolence. And malevolent—”

“You are not.” I say, without any ill intent towards the creature. I reach for its head and place two hands on the chitinous, bumped surface between its eyes. “Have my omnipresence, Guardian.”

I disappear from everywhere else I could be. I feel the universe closing its doors to me, my existence condensing inside my body, like water rushing into a submerged, empty bottle. Bottle that would eventually swallow the whole sea. So many wonders seem to me now forever lost, but that’s okay: I don’t need it here, in Ilucaris. In my coffin.

The guardian retreats inside the hole of its crystal base, the arms pulling the cylinder down, and with it, dragging the neck and head. “May you perish at last,” it wishes me before his head disappears among the sharp crystals, revealing beyond them a cave with stairs chiseled out of what seems to be quartz. And in a flaw in them, I notice an eye rimmed in teeth staring at me.

Hello there, Karerak.