The stone under hand and foot burned to touch as I climbed through the gloom, my grip made increasingly precarious by the growing film of sweat and ash which greased my skin.
The path above was lit only by the distant glow of the flooding chamber far below, and the faint white shimmer of lichen clinging to the hottest parts of the rock.
The illumination grew dimmer with every yard I covered, but I could only trust that my eyes would be enough, even if I left the magma and lichen entirely behind. With Echo shielded inside my mouth, magic was impossible.
Even opening my mouth to breathe was a risk I meant to avoid – the air temperature was intense enough to have killed any normal person, even in the small pockets of air through which I navigated, so who knew how long Echo could endure it, in their defenseless core form?
But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to last indefinitely either. My body was still aching and drained from my encounter with the Golden Sepulchre, while the unrelenting heat made every movement an effort and the thick gases rising from the magma burned my throat and lungs with each breath.
Despite my exhaustion I moved quickly, holding tight to the surface as I scaled it, ignoring the pain which seeped into my fingers and toes.
Despite the difficulty the tight vertical passages were our sole hope, but lingering even a moment too long there could prove fatal.
Sounding out the lower reaches before I started had given me only the vaguest idea of what was behind these walls, but that was all I needed to know; there was molten rock all around us, pooling and flowing in what I suspected were vast layers of lakes and channels.
My hand found a round, bulbous projection, sticking out of the wall. From the glimmer of its surface I guessed it was another diamond. As my hand gripped it I could feel the dense mana inside, confirming that it was a gemstone of some kind, but what was more important was that it was a handhold.
I tested it, then shifted my weight over.
It held fast, and so I lifted my leg, stretching to try to reach the next crack in the stone.
With a dull crunch the handhold broke free.
As I started to fall I tensed my other hand and foot, but the bump I was standing on was only a slight dent, and I slipped from it in an instant.
I felt my body dropping.
If I fell it was all over.
Even if I caught myself, the impact would break the fragile walls of the old lava tube up which I had ascended.
If I didn’t… the landing this time would be far more lethal than the one I’d met with at Grand Chasm.
My other arm, my sole remaining anchor, went taut.
Layers of porous stone around my fingers crumbled into powder at the increased pressure, and I slid down the sheer cliffside.
Buried in the softer volcanic rock, my hand tore into a vein of some ore, streaked through like poorly mixed paint. It too started to give, but though it cracked it bore my weight just long enough for me to drive my fingers and toes into the wall, making new purchase.
I’d caught myself, but for a moment I feared that the new hole in the rock above me would disgorge magma directly into my face.
Instead there came an angry resonance from the opening, like the hum of glass panes grinding together, about to break.
What emerged was a creature like a bur of glittering transparent crystal, grown somehow into jagged, thorny lines and organic spikes, the gracefully arcing points drawing in essence from all around.
Its body was around the size of my fist, totally immobile like a sculpture, yet somehow the strange life-form floated out of what might well have been its burrow. Lighter than a feather it tumbled lazily in the scorching, deadly updraft, sinking through the plumes of poison towards me… then passing me by, descending down towards another gem embedded in the walls, where it settled with a clink of crystal.
For several minutes after that I just hugged the wall, shaking. As painful as it was, even the incessant, pervading heat felt welcome next to the threat of plummeting down into the flooded chamber of magma below.
I wanted to keep an eye on the strange creature too, or so I told myself, in case it should decide to attack me after all. It seemed fragile and helpless if anything, but being impaled by surreal crystal beasts like bundles of caltrops was exactly the sort of way I could see myself losing my grip and slipping.
The creature seemed content feeding on a green gemstone however, leeching up both essence and pigment from the food source, the clear diamond body tinting emerald green.
When I did set off I climbed with renewed caution, the trembling in my hands and the racing of my heart making it all the more dangerous.
Three points of solid contact at all times.
As desperate as I was to get there, to escape before it was too late and the magma flooded up the tube behind me, there was no point making good time if I fell before reaching the top.
Several more times I gripped a bump or ledge on the wall, only for it to break off or crumble, but each time I avoided slipping.
Eventually I emerged into a larger cavity at the head of the tube, breathing out hard through my nose in relief as I rolled over the lip of the cliff to lie on my back.
I regretted it at once, as the fresh intake of boiling air stung my sinuses, and the stone under me attacked my skin, but even so I couldn’t make myself get up and leave behind the solid floor for a while.
Once again I wondered if I could really get out of the mess I found myself in. There was no certainty that there would be a path up to ‘dry’ land, and this level of the Underworld really was deeply inhospitable to life. Any mistake, such as the one with the handhold earlier, could be my last, consigning me to burn to death in molten magma.
Or possibly to drown… perhaps in my own blood, as tiny volcanic daggers of cooling obsidian lacerated my insides….
Or worse yet I might suffocate, if it should set inside my lungs… left alive just long enough to realize what was happening, to feel the agony of setting rock inside my chest, with no hope or surviving, yet time enough to despair….
There were so many options, each more horrific than the last!
That all assumed it would kill me to begin with. If I should meet such a fate but survive it.... The thought made my breath quicken, as if I feared it could already be happening, but I made myself focus.
If this experience was teaching me anything, it was that panic never helped.
Checking the misshapen cavity, similar in shape to a peanut tilted at an angle, I saw that light was entering from the elevated far end, where a crack connected the chamber to a far larger space beyond.
Approaching it I felt an unpleasant slick sensation underfoot, almost losing my balance as I walked over something unpleasantly greasy.
Checking underfoot revealed I was treading on tiny black nodules, shells thin and hard like glass, carried down the stone slope by a dark slick like oil. Each one was no more than a speck, but they were clustered in the thousands, and each contained a gooey resinous cargo, released by the pressure of my steps.
The scent of musty decay met my nose as I examined the fluid and the growths, and I recoiled in dismay at the thought of the ichor I’d so recently escaped.
But neither oil nor capsules seemed actively harmful - unlike the far more sinister, darker substance I’d encountered below the Sepulchre.
If anything it reminded me more of the creatures in the mushroom forest. But that too was a wholly unwelcome recollection, enough that I was quick to try and wipe it off my skin, using a nearby surface of stone.
Even if it was nothing to do with either source, it felt and smelt revolting, and at that moment I had even less desire than normal to get any oily slime on my body, even if it was just naturally occurring.
Unlike the tunnel I’d just negotiated, the rock here felt relatively firm, so I chanced jumping, rather than trying to scramble my way up the long slope, crushing what seemed almost like tiny eggs the whole way.
Landing at the top I cleared the patch, but then waved my arms in horror as I almost overbalanced forward instead, into a red-hot puddle of lava!
Once I’d caught myself I fell back on my ass, strength leaving my exhausted, terrified, poisoned and boiling body.
Hugging my knees to my chest I gave a muffled, closed-mouth laugh at the absurdity of it.
Almost burned alive just to avoid walking in some goo.
Fate really was out to get me that day – thanks of course to Myr and his curse.
When I was a little more composed I looked back over my shoulder to check for the source of the strange mess which had so nearly made a very dead fool out of me.
A few feet away I saw a mound of what seemed by the shape to have once been a life-form. Now the corpse, if indeed it was one, was more like glass than flesh, as if some many-limbed aquatic creature of liquid silica had collapsed on the spot and frozen into a statue. From cracks in the body innards were still oozing however, the source of the oily mess and the tiny nodules both. The latter were being pushed out as the insides underwent whatever passed for decomposition, a small mound of them piled against the side of the body. The smell of corruption and death was stronger from the unpleasant remains, but there was nothing to indicate where the thing had come from or what had killed it – or even if it had truly once been alive.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
It recalled for me the horror of the research station, and the remains I’d struggled to identify…. I decided not to look any closer at the rotting shape, rather than learn more and regret what I might see.
I feared too that I might encounter more like it, or worse yet whatever creature might have hunted the thing, but as I scanned the area I saw nothing of either sort.
It was a relief, given the universes’ recent propensity for throwing fresh torments at me.
Reality was being almost suspiciously kind now it seemed, as there weren’t even any other bodies to be seen – I’d feared that I might yet have to swim through more of the foul effluence to make my escape.
Instead the new area was actually quite encouraging.
It was still hot enough to immolate a human on the spot of course, and toxic enough to scour their lungs even if they were warded against the heat. That was no wonder, given the river of magma running through, joined by several tributaries that sloughed down the walls, seeping in from various seams and cracks in the sides.
However, the material of those walls wasn’t just crumbling, soft stone. Rather it seemed to be a gigantic hollow dome of metal ore, one that could withstand the heat. Better yet, many of the holes towards the top permitted air, rather than liquid to enter.
Wondering if perhaps this was it, the final end of the layers of lava and the beginning of something more solid, I headed over to the centre of the chamber to investigate hopping over the glowing streams.
I couldn’t tell what was up there, but with dry and solid land under me and sturdy looking walls, I simply picked the best candidate for a way up higher and leapt rather than climbing to reach the mouth, some fifty feet up.
Despite my precarious situation and overfilled mouth I even cracked a smile at how refreshing it was not to have to climb the walls by hand.
What I found as I explored the hole was another welcome surprise – lights.
There were colors beyond just the glow of magma!
As I passed eagerly through the passage I was ready to burst out into the great chambers of the Underworld proper, the open grasslands, the forests of ferns… even the sinister wood of mushrooms would do.
But once more the Underworld meant to prove to me that I could scarcely comprehend its true scale.
The metallic bubble I’d passed through was just the first.
Ahead and above me the stone fell away, opening into a colossal cavity in the bedrock, a riddle of eroded forms stretching out as far as I could see in every direction.
It was a gigantic space, yet one packed densely with structure, the open air weaving around a three-dimensional maze formed by natural structures of porous, foamy stone, embedded with metallic bubbles like the one I’d just left, but of an infinite array of sizes. Some were huge as cathedrals, others mere specks that glinted in the stone, with a myriad of sizes in between.
All were frozen in place, as if the rock had set around them. Some larger specimens stood atop jagged, bent spires and pinnacles, warped by the bulges of their smaller kin. Others were only half exposed in the surfaces of the rock, or almost totally buried. Some were even linked to several walls at once by the multiple arms, curtains and bulges of rock that weaved through the air overhead and in and out of holes in their sides.
The sight was not so dissimilar to the bridges and walkways of stone of the Dweomer capital, but where there all was straight and angular forms, here every surface was a froth of petrified bubbles, evoking movement even now they were stilled.
It would have been a rock climber’s dream – if not for the lava anyway.
There were no great rivers of magma flowing through the vertical terrain, but while mostly obscured, the ceiling was just visible far above. I could see where holes permitted the faint glow of magma to enter in places, dripping and trickling down the sides of spectacular stalactites, not only remarkable for their scale, but their composition – formed as they were of metal. It seemed to be deposited as the streams cooled enough for some impurities to freeze against the solid surface, creating natural pillars of shining wavy layers, at least a dozen colors glistening in each, representing the differing unknown elements or alloys, like gorgeous rippling works of art. A few were so large and ancient they had even engulfed some of the metal domes, further complicating the shape of the place.
From the walls too, many waterfalls oozed lazily, emerging from glistening multicolor spouts that opened like mouths.
These orifices were surrounded by beards of dried metal droplets, making them seem like ancient, hoary dragons, made complete in the resemblance by the fires they vomited forth along with magma.
The latter lazed its way unremarkably down the walls, in and out of the swiss-cheese surfaces, but at the lips of the natural gargoyle spouts gases within the flow combusted on meeting the air to create the strange and glittering plumes of flames, with unnatural shapes and all imaginable colors, a shifting display that reflected off the metals of the stalactites and the deposits lining the walls to fill the place with a riot of hues.
Where the magma finally reached the lower surfaces streaks of duller materials suggested other mineral deposits, yellows and reds, blues and greens all blurred together down the walls.
But unknown minerals and ores weren’t all there was to behold – far from it.
For all the challenges the environment presented, I wasn’t alone in surviving there.
After seeing the lava-flies spawning in the chamber far below, and encountering the strange urchin-like life-form on my climb, I’d been ready for the place I now found myself not to be entirely desolate. Indeed there were lichens growing, and lava-flies buzzing here too, but there was so much more besides.
Even in the midst of the awesome geological forces of region, of flooding, searing magma, suffocating poison air and crushing bedrock, the Underworld around me was flourishing. Plants, with real glowing leaves, clung to the sides of the walls, growing in hundreds of varieties from between the ancient bubbles, feeling on the caked residues and dribbles of minerals.
Admittedly, the leaves in question were some sort of metal, like spun foil or gilding into the shape of veined hearts, but still they glowed with life as a good leaf should, adding lighter yellow, gold, silver and pink tones to the dominant red of the lava.
The flowers too were far from what I was used to on the surface, coming in a wide but alien variety, such as the silvery blossoms that grew in broad trails from stony vines high above, each one an intricate gem, petals intertwining like cages.
Beautiful and strange insects flitted about between the shining flowers, weaving in and out of the cage-like petals, the small creatures seemingly coated in the same metals as the leaves about them. I supposed that must be the way for most things that could endure living so close to lava.
Some were fat and round, made of dull grey metal shaped and sized like a bean, with six short legs poking out of fuzzy black wires like fur, buzzing with a metallic tone between flowers. Others were sleek, coppery hunters with long bodies like dagger-blades, indistinguishable from a shard of a knife when they hovered in updrafts, catching the rising air with their flat bodies, yet and darting around on wings that flooded out of their sides with extraordinary speed when they sighted suitable prey.
Predators and prey alike, all moved as freely and nimbly as if they were flesh, far from the sluggish and clumsy locomotion metal exoskeletons would suggest. I could only imagine that the seams of the gleaming segmented armor must be so thin that the joints could flex and bend, but that left me no clue as to what lay beneath it.
With the sheer density and variety of life it was like a subterranean rainforest, but one fed by liquid rock in lieu of water, with a deadly environment that would surely kill any unfortunate explorers who somehow found their way down here.
Of course I wasn’t there to explore, but to escape. As beautiful and fascinating as it all was, the plants and creatures wouldn’t get me or Echo to safety.
There was also the danger that there could lurk larger, deadlier predators somewhere in the expanse. I’d already seen remains after all, but I had no idea what was responsible.
Trying to move quietly and quickly I set off through the great vertical jungle, using some of the ancient vines as ropes to get started, the metal-bubbled rock still painful to grip, but offering far more secure hand and footholds.
My progress was smooth and rapid compared to the earlier climb, and I even found it quite satisfying, weaving in and out of the larger bubbles, through arches of stone, leaping up gulfs and chimneys in the sides of the surfaces whenever I dared, cutting huge chunks of hand-climbing out of the journey.
Had I not been worrying about escape and monsters, choking on toxic air and sweltering with the volcanic fires all about, it might have even have been rather fun.
With so many structures and options to climb I was able to keep away from the external walls and the bulk of the magma and flames, however there were several nasty moments when drops of molten metal from the stalactites struck me.
Whenever it caught me the dense liquid passed through my clothes as though they weren’t even there, my mushroom leather seeming to evaporate into cinders wherever they stuck me, while the heavy cooling drips hissed against my skin and left painful welts.
I would have liked to stop and treat the minor, but painful injuries, but that would have meant taking echo out of my mouth. As uncomfortable as they were in there, my flesh was keeping out the searing temperatures well to far, my tongue actually feeling close to normal – where as I had no idea just how hot my surroundings were at that point. To melt metal and rock alike it must surely thousands of degrees at least. I had no idea if Echo’s core was rated for heat like that, and I refused to risk them just for a little comfort.
It wasn’t just for Echo’s sake that I pushed myself on either.
For all its beauty and relative safety, the extreme environment was still a trial. Despite my excellent resistance to the temperature and toxins, the heat and the noxious volcanic air were taking a toll on my still-recovering body.
Cresting a pillar over five hundred foot high, I stepped up onto the round, smooth surface of the giant bubble at its peak, and looked back down at the path I’d taken. Through the muddle of stone and bubbles that filled most of the empty space I could just make out the glowing patch of lava I’d almost fallen into.
I felt a sudden dizziness, realizing that I was multiple miles above where I’d started, so high up now that were I to fall, and somehow miss all the obstacles, it could be minutes before I hit the ground.
Looking up gave me heart however – the titanic pocket of air through which I’d journeyed was starting to close in once more, my paths becoming fewer as I neared the top.
I readied myself to leap up to the next surface and continue the climb.
Towards the pinnacle of the gigantic region the plant and animal life grew plainer once again, but my focus was on the route through.
Several crevasses in the ceiling at the top of the chamber seemed the only paths which might take me up higher, but in most I could see magma flowing down the sides, the openings ringed with stalactites of metal.
Choosing the deepest of those not glowing with molten rock I elected to try my nonexistent luck.
Passing up through the tear might mean facing another hard climb, but with the stronger material of the walls I had a better idea in mind, inspired by my way of crossing the desert.
Kicking off the small ledge to which I had climbed, I fired myself like a missile, right into the far side of the bottomless canyon overhead.
Crashing into the surface with a boom I punched my fingers deep into the shattering rock to latch on tight.
Finding a good stable grip, I bent my legs once more, tensing my thighs to leap up at the opposite side.
A series of thuds and the sounds of crumbling rock cascading down into the open cavity below marked my ascent, but destructive as it was I felt little concern – the walls here could take some punishment.
The process was also very noisy, but even if I was causing quite a ruckus, I’d yet to meet any hostile creatures – and the thought of climbing up by hand, risking falling multiple miles back down through the expanse below, was not an appealing one.
Despite the booming impacts and the miniature rockslides I made it safely up the giant crack in the ceiling, which narrowed as the walls became increasingly thickly blanketed in layers of former lava, eventually forcing me to start climbing by hand again, up the terrifying overhanging sides, struggling against the powdery stone until at last it terminated, now a narrow crack that I could just barely fit through.
Emerging with a muffled sigh of relief, I found myself in a half-dome.
My face fell however, as I saw there were no other openings or paths onwards from there. I’d reached a terminus to my route by the look of it.
The rounded roof was yet another metal bubble, one around the size of a house, but the flat floor had been created by what seemed to be more dried magma, which had burst in through several places in the sides at some point, then set solid to plug its own entrances.
Judging by how ludicrously hot it was, I suspected that the more liquid variety was still lurking outside.
But even if there were no paths visible and there was magma about, I wasn’t ready to spend hours climbing painstakingly back down the cliffs just yet.
It was time to put my improving mana control to the test.
Over the course of what I guessed were hours my mana had indeed been gradually recovering as I’d hoped. The pace was distressingly slow compared to normal, but it felt like my body was still healing from whatever damage I’d done to myself, so it made sense that my mana output had temporarily dropped too.
At least I hoped it was temporary. As problems went, having too much magical power was one I was happy to return to, especially after this sensation of being so drained, so bereft of supernatural essence.
But I still had enough to try the same trick I’d devised in the cave under the formorian hive.
This time gathering and controlling the mana in my body was easier. The process of reinforcing my hearing was a familiar one now, but just moving my mana had gotten faster and easier.
I was tempted to conclude that it was just because there was so much less of it, given my past ineptitude, but as I tried to hone and enhance my perception the results were better too.
As I knocked at the walls I could hear the resonance, and notice how it shifted as I moved around the chamber, giving me a very clear idea of what was behind the walls.
Unfortunately, that idea was a single one, repeating everywhere I sounded out; something thick and heavy that deadened all vibrations within just a foot or two.
It was easy to guess that was magma, or possibly even a layer of liquid metal, however as things were I had no idea how thick it really was. It could be hundreds of feet thick on all sides, or worse yet miles….
The thought spoke to the same terrifying idea that had remained at the back of my mind all this time – that there might be no way through the layer of magma at all.
Echo and I might already be doomed, and not even realize it.
But conversely, as I told myself, pushing back down the rising fear, if the layer was just a foot or two thick I could be almost out.
I might be able to break the wall open and let it drain into the gulf through which I’d entered, or in the worst case I might have to find out just how indestructible I really was by trying to swim for the surface.
I was forced to admit that the latter idea was moronic even by my recent standards, but the possibility of draining a small pocket seemed worth investigating.
That just left it up to me to figure out how.
First I tried to further hone my hearing, to sharpen my sense enough to detect the limited portion of each clinking knock on the metal wall which made it past whatever layers of fluid barriers it was hitting.
Improved as my mana control clearly was, that was expecting too much for now, my mastery over my essence still far too blunt and crude.
The practice was just what I needed, but I didn’t have the time for that there in the metal dome.
But I wasn’t out of ideas just yet.
If I couldn’t up the gain, I just had to strengthen the signal – to make each strike something louder, easy to detect despite the damping.
Physical impacts seemed wholly insufficient for that, given that I was already starting to leave knuckle marks in the metal surfaces, but there was no reason I had to keep using sound alone.
Heightening my other senses too took me a few minutes of experimentation, and made the noxious, eye-watering, throat-burning atmosphere even more unpleasant to inhabit, but the process itself went surprisingly smoothly, being very similar to enhancing my hearing.
Pleased with myself, I even pumped my fist as I felt it working, giving a silent cheer for picking up a transferrable skill.
The final step in my scheme, working mana into my hand in large volumes, proved the easiest of all.
Not needing any precision or having any particular requirement for speed, I was free to accumulate it slowly, until my fingers and palm were glowing with a visible aura of energy, a dark, glittering radiance starting to leak out.
With my fist as charged as it seemed likely to get I balled it up once more, then sharpened my senses to the utmost.
With a boom that vibrated through the air I rung the dome like a bell, ripples of mana issuing in all directions, the vibrations spreading in a shockwave that tore through the space around it, heedless of obstacles!
In a moment I could feel it all, the shape of everything around me, as if a flash of lightning had cut through a pitch black night.
What I perceived was not good.
All around me was a huge sea of liquid, stretching out as far as I could feel.
My climb had placed me atop a thinning column of safety, where the metallic bubbles had risen up, but the next bubble up, the next island of safety, was far enough above me that the distance was a blur. Perhaps it was as close as a single pool length, perhaps it was many.
Either way, it was much too far.
But that left the question of what I was going to do now.
Backtracking far enough to bypass all that molten rock would take a long time, and even if I did, nothing I’d just sensed suggested there was another way up. This was it, the best hope I’d found.
And it had proven false.
I stood there, trying to run over my options and not to panic, my hand still pressed against the burning metal.
I heard a groan.
For a horrible moment I thought I’d hit the dome too hard, but then I heard the sound again.
It was closer this time, less a groan, more of a cry.
An inhuman scream.
Another sounded, from the other side of the space, reverberating through the dome, an almost rumbling wail of pain and fury, like the sound of shattering glass and fracturing stone.
More rang out from all around me in answer, chilling, otherworldly howls, coming from the boiling magma.