Mazorah awoke and opened his eyes. It was too dark to see, and he observed the darkness for a few minutes without much thought, just taking the time to breathe deeply. He didn’t remember anything aside from his own name. He cleared his throat and realized that he seemed to be inside some kind of cave, judging by the impenetrable darkness and the way the noises he made seemed so muffled.
Mazorah pursed his lips, shrugged, and laid down on the cold stone floor. He planned to sleep and wait for daylight. “Wait,” he said, then flinched in fright. The sound of his voice had surprised him. After a few seconds he realized what had happened and figured it was safe to continue talking to himself. “If I’m in a cave, perhaps it is daytime and I just can’t see the light.” After his initial shock, hearing his voice wasn’t so bad. In fact, he was quite certain that he enjoyed speaking to himself. Yes, he nodded in affirmation, he definitely enjoyed speaking to himself.
Mazorah stood back up and looked around again, hoping that perhaps some piece of darkness would be a little bit less dark than the other pieces. He put his right hand forward and it hit a wall. Frowning, he moved his hand around the wall and realized he was trapped inside something, in a small hollow space. This wasn’t a cave at all! It was like he’d somehow been shoved into a small hollow space in the middle of a rock! “What kind of horrible person could have put me here? No, don’t tell me.” He asked the question already knowing the answer. It was definitely him. Only he could screw something up so badly.
It was about this time that Mazorah realized it was getting more difficult to breathe. Perhaps being trapped inside of a boulder wasn’t great for his oxygen supply. He cursed and tried to stop himself from panicking. It wasn’t working, and he started breathing harder. “Did I teleport myself inside a boulder just to die here?! What was I thinking? I obviously wasn’t.” He cursed again. He pounded on the walls, trying to feel for some kind of crack or potential exit. Just as his lungs started really burning, he could hear a beat in his ears. His essence, flowing through his body, carried him the sound of the beat.
With his hand on the boulder and the beat in his head, panicking and gasping for breath, something odd caught his attention. The boulder was pulsing with the same rhythm. It almost felt familiar, in the same way breathing was familiar. Speaking of which, that was getting very hard. Mazorah closed his eyes as he felt for a connection point to the rhythm; any sort of anchor that would allow him to feel more than just the beat. “Would… You… Just… Move,” he gasped at the boulder, falling onto the ground and smacking his head against the wall as he did so.
Dizzy and laying on the ground, Mazorah felt his head where he’d hit the wall. It came back wet and… Glowing? This seemed familiar, and Mazorah instinctually formed a symbol in his mind then used the glowing essence in his hand to guide it directly in front of him, shooting it out. He saw a small bit of the glowing essence create the symbol from his mind in front of him, then pushed. There was a large blast of air and sound, but still only darkness. After a moment it became easier to breathe again. Then Mazorah realized his eyes were still closed. He opened them and saw that he was no longer in complete darkness; he seemed to have carved a path out of the boulder with that blast. However, it was likely still nighttime outside, so it was pretty dark outside of the boulder.
Mazorah was feeling pretty satisfied with himself and the small hole he’d made in the boulder until he heard –and felt- his stomach growl. Suddenly the small hole he made seemed way too small. It was barely bigger than his head and there was no way he’d be able to crawl through it. He cursed. However, hope was not lost. Obviously he could conjure some kind of explosive power, so he was destined to starve to death in the boulder. The only thing was that he needed to figure out what he’d done in order to do it again. “No big deal, just be awesome again.” He tried to think the special super thoughts to blow up the boulder, but he couldn’t seem to do it again.
Mazorah sat back on his butt and tried to remember what he’d done. He’d used the glowing essence on his hand to shoot the boulder. No, he’d used it to fill up a symbol, which had just seemed like the right sort of symbol for what he’d wanted to do. Mazorah held his hand in front of him and didn’t see anything glowing there. He was about to give up when he blinked, and he noticed the glow was still there. “I can only see it with my eyes closed?” After a brief experiment that involved looking very silly and opening and closing his eyes while doing different things with his arm, Mazorah was quite sure he could still see the glow with his eyes open, Only it was as though the physical things got in his way. Even the space in front of him between his eyes and the glowing essence seemed to try and drink it in, which made it extremely hard to notice visually.
With this in mind, Mazorah closed his eyes to ‘see’ the essence. Once he did so, he attempted to make it gather in front of him, floating in the air. Mazorah opened his eyes to see a tiny drop of dark liquid floating in the air. In the very center of the dark liquid, he could see the faint glow of the essence. Mazorah held out his hand, trying to imagine using it to cut open the side of the boulder. Imagining cutting or slicing or ripping or tearing eventually produced a symbol in Mazorah’s mind, which strangely made him feel that he should use his hand to complete.
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Mazorah put the tips of his thumb and pointer finger together, forming a circle, then stuck his other three fingers straight out. He observed that it seemed like a small finger blade with a loop. Just as he was about to fill the symbol with essence and attempt to slash the boulder, he felt the boulder shudder, as though it was attempting to shrink away from him. Mazorah furrowed his brow, and after thinking about it he touched his third and fourth finger to his thumb as well, leaving only his pinky in the air. “Perhaps we start with less and only add more if we need it,” he said.
Mazorah filled the symbol with essence, connecting it to his hand to complete the symbol, then slashed forward slowly with his mighty pinky finger. As though the boulder was made of paper, Mazorah’s pinky ripped through it with almost no effort. And not only the place his finger touched: the entire boulder ripped apart, as if his pinky finger pierced through the whole thing. After another moment there was a large enough opening in the boulder for Mazorah to walk out of, and that’s exactly what he did.
Finally outside the boulder, Mazorah looked up. On each side of him, two rock walls rose so high he couldn’t even estimate how far up they went. Way up above the walls, he could see a pale blue sky. It was daytime. Not that you could tell down here, where he’d assumed it was night due to the darkness. Looking back down, Mazorah realized that he was at the bottom of a giant canyon that stretched as far as he could see in either direction. In fact, he seemed to be at the deepest part of said canyon. Judging by the debris and the way things all seemed to have been pushed away from his boulder, Mazorah suspected this was the epicenter of the event which had caused the canyon to exist.
Looking at his former prison boulder, he noticed that it seemed abnormal. A dark liquid seemed to be flowing through its surface and almost made the boulder seem alive. Mazorah wondered if perhaps this was simply the essence of the boulder, similar to the dark liquid that had come out of his head after hitting it. Perhaps not. Mazorah looked at the sky, looked back at the boulder, turned away from it and started walking. Minutes passed as he walked through the silent canyon. As he continued walking, he noticed that the walls and ground had a dark liquid just below the surfaces, similar to the boulder. It made them look almost fleshy. Mazorah could almost feel the squish under his feet as he attempted to avoid thinking about the unpleasant idea.
In order to avoid walking on the strange fleshy surface, Mazorah came up with a symbol that he could infuse with essence to push him slightly up in the air. He closed his eyes and noticed there was a faint glow in the floor and walls of the canyon. Mazorah pulled some essence from the floor and infused his symbol with it, and felt himself start floating. He attached the symbol to his head with essence, which allowed him to control the forward momentum of his levitation. He flew forward at high speed for a few minutes, feeling hungry and anxious to see anything other than a dark fleshy wall or floor.
After some time and observation, Mazorah decided the canyon was widening. Perhaps he could eventually reach the end, escape the canyon, and find something to eat in the world above. Mazorah suddenly stopped. “Above,” he said flatly, “I just want to go above.” He looked up. Feeling incredibly stupid and very glad no one was witnessing his mad levitating dash through the canyon, Mazorah realized that if he had the ability to levitate and move around quickly in the air, he could probably just fly straight up and out of the vexatious canyon.
Ignoring small tears of embarrassment, Mazorah adjusted his acceleration to push from below him, catapulting him upwards at tremendous speed. “I am not trying to outrun my stupidity,” he rationalized, fooling no one, “I’m just getting very hungry!” After only a few minutes, he had risen to a point where the light from above allowed him to see the red and blue walls of the cavern better. He regretted it immediately, cursing and lampooning the strange walls inwardly. He was a little afraid that if he insulted the creepy walls aloud they might not let him leave. Maybe they would close in and hold him there in their disgusting embrace. Nope, not going to think about it.
After what felt like eternity, Mazorah shot above the walls. The glance he got told him that the earth around his canyon was different, looking red and fleshy and with a strange red fog settled over it. He thought he might see something moving in that fog, so he looked away. Definitely NOT going there. He squinted and noticed he could see a different color in the distance: green! There was a large green forest straight ahead of him. Just as he turned his head to observe the other parts of the land, the essence he’d been siphoning from the walls cut off. This caused his levitation to stop, which he realized meant he was about to start moving down, fast. He scrambled inwardly, hastily creating a symbol behind himself to propel him forward and then using his own essence to fill it. It activated, shooting Mazorah forward at an incredible speed.
In retrospect, Mazorah realized that he’d poured too much essence into the symbol and could have diluted it more with the dark liquid it was covered in. Actually, was it retrospect? He was still flying forward at the moment. That far away forest was getting close very quickly. Yes, he decided, this was the sort of retrospect one gains when they do the wrong thing and instantly realize what they’ve done. One still has to live with the consequences of their colossal failure, but at least they could reflect on how they should have been better. With only that thought to cushion him, Mazorah cut off the essence, hoping it would lessen the impact as he flew headfirst into a tree.