Chapter Three: The Heart of the Flame
Written by Jeff
“Uncle Morwy! Get up! C’mon Morwy, you’ve got to get up!”
Laureena shook Morwell’s lifeless body as violently as she was able, grabbing onto his shirt and attempting to pull his chest towards hers. Her spindly arms weren’t even strong enough to make Morwell’s back arch off the deck, let alone rouse the man back into consciousness. Just a moment earlier, she’d seen him from across the boat, searching for her as the storm began to howl, a worried expression creased onto his face. He needed to make sure that she was okay. Their eyes met, and she’d given him a look that let him know she was ready for whatever was coming. She wasn’t scared. She knew what she might be getting herself into when she stowed away on this journey. In return, Morwell had given her a look that wordlessly said, “I know you’ll be alright, little one, I’m just checking up.” And then before he could even break his gaze, the wind had whipped the sail and the boom came flying across the bow and smashed into Morwell’s forehead, sending him careening onto his back.
“Get below deck!” screamed Danvers, running up from behind and picking her up by her collar. “There’s nothing you can do for him now, Laureena! Get yourself someplace safe and don’t come out until I say it’s alright!”
When she reached the top of the stairs, Laureena paused and gave one last look at the adults on the deck. As she did, the boat slammed down awkwardly and a wave crested over the bow, soaking her grandfather and unconscious family friend. The force of the impact sent her tumbling down the small stairwell into the dark recesses of the boat. On her hands and knees, Laureena looked up and saw the same thick-planked, steel-reinforced barrel that she’d hidden inside to gain passage aboard the boat, still standing upright despite the tumultuous rocking of the sea. With a dexterous hop, Laureena was up and over the side of it and then crouched inside, bracing her back and the soles of her flimsy shoes against the barrel’s ribs for support.
The storm pounded mercilessly against the outside of the fishing trawler, tossing the small vessel back and forth like a loose branch in rapids. Laureena shivered inside of the barrel and grated her teeth, her clothing soaked through from the rain. It was already naturally dark in the hull, and with her face pressed up against the inside of the barrel there was virtually no light at all. Aside from the smell of salt on old wood, the only sensory information Laureena had was the movement of the boat on the water. At first it felt like the ship was being shaken, and her organs were being pulled from her navel up to her shoulder blades though her body lay still. When she felt so utterly scrambled that she wasn’t sure she could endure a moment more, the movement changed. Then there was only the sensation of pulling; a constant tug, like a blanket being yanked out from beneath her again and again, for hours, days, forever. At first the sensation was nauseating, but eventually she found a soothing quality in the rhythm of it and it rocked her to sleep. There was no dream in this sleep, only darkness, one much darker than even the inside of the barrel. She awoke with a frightened start when the boat slammed against something solid and then raked against it, sending the barrel careening onto its side and rolling across the floor.
Laureena had to use both of her hands and feet to climb up the stairs to the deck, which was resting unnaturally at a sloped angle. The rain was still falling heavily, and Uncle Morwy had slid across the bow into a heap along the railing. The girl had become so used to the repetitive motion of the world slipping away beneath her that it took her a moment to realize the boat had stopped moving. She cried out for her grandfather, shrieking and hollering, running from one end of the boat to the other, but there was no response. They had run aground somewhere, but they hadn’t found land. There was no beach, no surf. Visibility was low, but as far as Laureena could tell, everything was sand and rock around them. She cried out for her grandfather again, this time even louder and with greater intensity.
Papa Danvers wasn’t there. Laureena cried for him until her voice went hoarse, then she tried to shake Morwell awake again, but the massive man was still out cold, a goose egg welt now protruding from his forehead. The boom had broken in half and slid to the stern; she wondered if it was the storm or Uncle Morwy’s head that had split it in two. Laureena plopped down onto the ground, squeezed herself into the space between Morwell’s dangling arm and chest, and began to weep. She could feel his slight breath against her, which was a comfort, and looked up through tears at the man’s scarred, grizzled face. What would he do in this situation? Uncle Morwy would never cry, that was for sure, and so Laureena decided that she wouldn’t either. She wiped away the tears with an already-damp sleeve and heard Morwell’s voice boom in her mind: “This is a time for action, not for sulking.”
“What would Uncle Morwy do if he were awake?” she wondered. “He would ‘assess the situation.’” She heard his voice say it in that soldier way he pronounced things sometimes, when he was being real serious. For her, assessing the situation meant figuring out everything onboard that might be useful, so she got to scavenging.
There was always plenty of food and water onboard - more than there ought to be, per Morwell’s insistence. Laureena remembered hearing him argue about it with Papa when the two of them first started working together. Uncle Morwy had said, “The list of things someone needs to stay alive is pretty short, and water is at the top of that list. Since we’re not lugging packs through the jungle, we don’t have to worry about how much of it we can carry. You never know what can happen on the open sea, so we’re bringing along as much as we can.” She remembered the frustrated grimace on her grandfather’s face when Morwell had said, “It’s called being prepared, Danvers,” and it made her grin. She was sure they’d be grateful for all that extra water now.
In addition to a heaping pile of packaged rations that had spilled all over the floor of the closet-sized galley, there was also the small catch they’d brought in before the storm hit. The fish had come loose from their barrels and slid all over the hull, so Laureena gathered them up in a pile in the middle of the room. Unfortunately, the cold sea water they were being kept in had spilled all over and soaked into the planks, so there was nothing to store them in anymore. She wondered how long the fish would stay fresh out in the open. At least it was still cool down below deck.
At least, it was for a little while. Slowly, the weather began to change, and steadily, everything started to heat up. The rain stopped falling in droplets, instead turning to a kind of misty haze that was impossible to differentiate from the sweat that beaded up on her skin. In the time it had taken Laureena to get hungry enough to eat two packages of rations, the weather had completely shifted from cold autumn rain to muggy summer bog. It was almost as hard to see through the mist as it had been through the stormy clouds, but Laureena could now make out a little more of her surroundings: The boat was stuck in some sort of canyon, surrounded by what looked like mountains. Black sand stretched out around in all directions. Off the bow there was some sort of rock outcropping, but other than that, they were stranded in the middle of nowhere.
She’d never seen sand this color. It was so dark it seemed to suck away the little bit of sunlight that made its way through the gray and haze, leaving her in what felt like perpetual twilight. It was in staring at this strange black sand that she finally thought to look for footprints. Maybe Papa had gone off to find help, and she could see which way he had walked! She ran all around the edge of the boat, looking for clues in the sand below, but she didn’t find the outlines of Papa’s boots. Instead, she found something bizarre happening on the sandy surface. It was moving. Rumbling. Gurgling, like tiny bubbles pushed out through a straw into her milk. She bent over the edge, careful not to risk falling in, and held out her hand. There was hot air coming from the ground. Had the sand been doing this the whole time? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t remember for certain. If her grandfather had left the boat, this strange, bubbling sand would have erased his footprints by now for sure.
The prolonged twilight eventually faded into the proper darkness of night, but the temperature only seemed to rise. Laureena made sure to drink plenty of water, and every time she took a sip for herself she also poured a tiny bit into Morwell’s mouth, just enough to wet his lips and tongue but not enough so that the man might choke. She tried to sleep pressed up against his massive chest but found the heat from his body combined with the muggy air to be oppressively warm. It was so hot outside that sleep seemed impossible, even though she was exhausted. In this state of torrid insomnia Laureena remembered one of the only times her grandfather had actually allowed her to come along on the boat. It hadn’t been a fishing trip, just a quick jaunt out into the harbor the summer before to go swimming with turtles. It had been so hot that day, and she sat excitedly with Papa in the cabin as he steered, one had on the wheel and the other waving a small, fold-up fan. He’d wave it at himself for a bit, then point it over at Laureena to direct the air at her. That fan was probably still somewhere in the cabin.
The cabin room had been smashed apart thoroughly. The bunks were in pieces, with mattresses and splintered planks of wood strewn about. Laureena was able to slide past the wreckage in the doorway to the steering area up front, where there was a shallow cubby built along the side of the wall. If Papa kept his fan anywhere, it was there. Wreckage from the smashed console kept her from being able to reach the storage area directly, but she was able to bend down beneath and blindly run her hand along the inside of the opening. She felt some folded-up paper maps, Papa’s pipe and what was probably a pouch of tobacco, an empty bottle, and then...something hard and metal. She pulled it out. A flare gun. She stuck her hand back in the cubby and rooted around again. No fan, but she did find three flare casings rolling around instead.
Laureena ran outside and fidgeted with the gun to try and open it, looking over at Morwell as she did. She could only imagine the scolding she’d get if the first thing Uncle Morwy saw when he woke up was her playing with a gun. But this wasn’t playing. This was survival. After several fumbling tries, Laureena figured out the mechanism to open up the chamber and popped in one of the cartridges. It snapped shut with a satisfying click, she pointed the muzzle to the sky, and closed her eyes tight as she pressed the trigger. With a fwooosh, a stream of bright red light shot up from the boat and arced above into the darkness.
“Hopefully Papa sees that,” she said aloud softly. “So he knows we’re okay, and knows how to get back to find us.” Though she hadn’t found the fan, and the temperature hadn’t relented, Laureena fell asleep mere moments after curling back up against Morwell, content with having done something so helpful, and so adult.
It became clear the next day that the fish in the hull weren’t going to last much longer before spoiling, so Laureena tried to think of a way to cook some up before they went bad. Lighting a fire on the wooden boat seemed like a particularly bad idea, and the galley was completely ruined, so she had to get creative. She remembered a strange way Papa Danvers had shown her to cook fish before, where the whole thing was covered in salt and then placed in a hole in the ground and buried with a bunch of coals. When they dug it back up, the salt was like a shell, and after cracking it open the fish was cooked beneath. She didn’t have a bunch of salt, but the sand here seemed to bubble as if it were boiling, so it might be hot enough to cook the fish. Digging through the wreckage in the cabins, Laureena found a long, thin piece of molding that still had a “T” attached on one end, so she used it like a spear and slid a fish down the shaft until it caught. It was long enough that she could stick the fish into the ground from the side of the boat closest to the sand without having to bend over the edge too far. There was some initial resistance trying to stick it into the ground, but once she’d broken the surface tension the fish slid right in. While she waited, Laureena decided to set off the second flare, as it had been several hours now since shooting the first one. It might be helpful to let Papa know he was headed the right way, and they were still safe on the boat.
The speared fish came out of the ground steaming and covered in black goop. She let it cool a bit before slicing it open lengthwise and was pleased to see that her plan had worked. The fish was perfectly cooked through. She peeled out the spine and scraped out the guts, realizing she probably should have cleaned it first before cooking it, and ate. Not the freshest fish, but still ok. She’d have to clean and cook as many as possible today to get the most from the catch before it spoiled, saving the packaged rations for later. Those things never went bad.
It was as Laureena was pulling out her fifth fish from the bubbling sand that she heard a voice in the distance and nearly dropped her makeshift spear off the side of the boat. Someone was coming towards her, waving their hands, and she waved back and yelled excitedly, assuming it was her grandfather. But as the voice grew louder and the body on the horizon came into focus, it became clear that this was not Papa Danvers. It was just a boy, no more than a year or two older than her, and still at least that far removed from being considered a man. She looked on perplexed as the boy made his way to the side of the boat and asked, in all seriousness, “Permission to come aboard?”
She slid the cooked fish onto the deck and held out the pole out over the side for the boy to grab on to. He took it with both hands and she lifted with all her might, getting him just high enough off the surface of the sand that he was able to reach the edge of the boat’s railing and pull himself up the rest of the way. He swung both of his legs around together over the edge and plopped down onto the deck. She looked at him, silently and with utter confusion.
“I thank you kindly!” he said, unbuckling his feet from what appeared to be large-framed snowshoes. “It sure is hot over here. The weather’s not like this at all where my boat went aground. Name’s Calix, what’s yours?” He stuck out his small hand, and she hesitated just long enough for it to be awkward before extending her own.
“I’m Laureena. Sorry if I seem, I don’t know, disappointed to see you, but to be honest, I was hoping you were my grandpa.”
“Ah, so that’s who you were setting off the flares for,” said the boy matter-of-factly. “Well, I sure hope he saw them too - we’re going to need all the help we can get out here with boats and no water.”
“Are you out here by yourself?” asked Laureena. “What happened to your...adults?”
The boy’s face soured, but he spoke strongly and with resolve. “My dad didn’t make it. He tried to go down onto the sand to explore but it sucked him down. He thought it was just going to be like sand on the beach, but he was wrong. I threw him a rope but it didn’t go far enough. He couldn’t pull himself out. I’m on my own now.”
“Oh, Calix, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” She was genuinely sad for this boy she’d just met, and he appreciated the sentiment, but he could see in her face that even as she spoke the kind words, she was wondering if the same fate had befallen her grandfather.
“In a way, my dad getting sucked down into the sand saved me from the same fate,” Calix continued. “Because he went first, I knew not to try and walk on the sand directly myself, or the same thing would happen to me. When I saw your flare, I knew that there were others nearby, and that my best chance of survival was going to be teaming up with whoever else I could find. Safety in numbers, and all that. Luckily, since we live on our boat year-round, we had our winter gear packed away onboard.”
“Those are snowshoes, right?” asked Laureena, bending down and examining them. “I’ve never seen them in real life, since it doesn’t really snow all that much on Delvorn, where I’m from. I’ve only ever seen them in books.”
“These aren’t just any snowshoes,” said the boy excitedly, crouching down to show her more closely. “These were given to us by an Irapa shaman in the Northern Plateaus, and he even enchanted them!”
“No way!” gasped Laureena, picking one of the shoes up with wide eyes. “You’ve been to the frozen north? And met the Irapa!?!”
“Yeah! They saved us! We go up there every winter to hunt ursua. My dad learned how to do it when he was younger, when he stayed with an Irapa tribe for a few years. Well, two winters ago, we were tracking a pack of ursua out onto an ice shelf and it broke off and started to drift out to sea! We had to eat the ursua meat and use their skins to keep warm enough to stay alive for four days until we finally got in range for someone to pick up our distress transmission. The Irapa came out in their canoes and took us back to land, to their village. As a thank you for the rescue, we gave them all the ursua pelts, and as a thank you for that, they gave us these amazing snowshoes! The shaman said the frames are made out of a special root called karu that lives way beneath the ice, and he said he enchanted them so that they were impervious to changes in the temperature. No matter how cold it gets, supposedly they’ll never break or bend. I always wondered if it also worked for heat, and after walking across this boiling sand, I guess I can finally say that it does!”
Laureena’s heart skipped a beat. This was the single most interesting boy she had ever met in her life. He was just looking at her now, waiting for her to respond to the amazing story he had just told, smiling pleasantly and patiently. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She looked around, frazzled, hoping anything in her field of view would guide her towards what to say next. Her mind blanked. She saw the pile of steaming, black lumps by the edge of the deck. “Do...do you want some fish?” she finally asked. “Are you hungry?”
“Oh, that'd be great!” said Calix, completely ignoring the prolonged awkward silence. “I’ve been walking all night and I am famished. Even though the shoes kept me up above the sand when I walked, I was still too nervous to stand still for too long, so I never stopped to take off my pack for something to eat.”
The two of them plopped down on the floor in front of Morwell and Laureena cut them each open a fish, which they scooped up and ate with their hands. Laureena introduced Calix to Uncle Morwy and told him what had happened during the storm. He listened intently, and when her story was caught up to the present, he began to ask her about Delvorn, and what her life was like there, and about her grandfather. She talked and talked and talked until both of them were hungry again, so they cut open two more of the fish and continued to chat as they ate. It wasn’t until it was starting to get dark out that Laureena realized that she had been talking the boy’s ear off for hours and that he’d hardly said anything during that time about himself. He’d just kept asking her questions about her life and she’d been happy to tell him everything. She also realized that she’d forgotten to set off the third and final flare, so she loaded in the cartridge and sent a red stream careening into the darkening sky.
“I’m sure your grandfather will see it,” Calix assured. “We just have to wait here until he gets back.”
Laureena slept curled up against Morwell again, with Calix settling down a few arm’s lengths away, using his rucksack as a pillow and falling asleep seemingly as soon as he laid down. She looked over at the boy as he slept, trying to make sense of him. He was so nice, and so interesting, and even though he had just suffered an incredible loss in his father, he seemed to simply will the grief of it away and put on a brave, positive front. She thought of what he must have felt, seeing his father sucked beneath the sand, unable to grab the rope he hadn't thrown far enough, and then she thought of Papa Danvers, wherever he was, and Laureena began to sob. Calix woke up to the sound and looked over at her with soft eyes and asked if she was alright.
"I’m sorry that I’m the one you found out here,” Laureena cried.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not sad that you didn’t find someone who could actually help you? You lost your dad, a great adventurer, and followed a flare to meet up with others who could protect you instead, and all you found was some scared kid.”
“There’s a lot worse things I could have found than you,” Calix smiled. “At least now we’re both not alone. We’ll be even less alone once your sleeping giant there wakes up. He’ll keep us safe for sure. I’m not sad I ended up here at all, Laureena.” They gave each other one last warm look, closed their eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
When Laureena woke, she found Calix standing by the edge of the boat, smelling an uncooked fish he must have grabbed from the hull. The look on his face was enough to know that the fresh food had finally turned and that they’d be having packaged rations for breakfast and every meal after that for the foreseeable future. They dug through the packages scattered across the galley floor, as well as the ones in Calix’s rucksack that he had brought along from his boat, looking for anything that resembled a breakfast dish. Once they had decided on the menu for the morning, they sat together and ate in the same place they had slept, in front of Morwell. The man was still breathing, and as Laureena dribbled some water into his mouth, she asked Calix if he thought they should also put some food in there. The boy wasn’t entirely sure, but if he had to guess, he thought you probably shouldn’t put anything solid into the mouth of someone who was unconscious. Laureena agreed with a sigh, running her hand gingerly over the scars on her fallen friend’s face.
The two of them spent the entire day talking again, and this time Laureena made sure that she didn’t hog the spotlight. They took turns asking the other about their lives, excited to learn about their similarities despite how different their upbringings had been. The subject of their parents came up early, and often. Laureena had never known her father; he didn’t stick around after she was born. Her mom had gotten sick a few years before, when Laureena was still pretty little, and when she died Laureena had gone to live with Papa Danvers instead. That just meant moving from one side of Delvorn to the other, so it wasn’t too big of a change, but she still missed her mom every day, even though the actual memories of her were fleeting and kind of soft around the edges now.
Calix never knew his mom at all; she had died during childbirth. He thought that her death had probably changed something inside of his dad, and was the reason he’d decided to live on the sea year-round instead of in any one particular place. Ever since he was a baby, Calix had traveled the world with his father: Fishing, hunting, trading, crafting, and finding new ways to make their way in the world. Laureena listened in rapt attention as the boy regaled her with stories of lands she’d only ever read about in books at school. He’d seen the magical and technological marvels of the Capital Islands, with their mechanized streetcars and buildings that rose up into the clouds, and he’d visited remote islands like Ranga, where the people still lived simply, almost the same way they had hundreds of years before. When she asked him if he’d ever been to the Outer Rings, Calix just laughed. His dad was crazy, but he wasn’t that crazy. For all their survival skills in the wild, they weren’t at all equipped to deal with exiled Magi in the Outer Rings. Laureena told him that Morwell had spent lots of time out there, and the boy was impressed. He asked if the man had been a soldier, and she said that she had overheard something about Iso.
“He was in an Isorropia unit?” Calix gasped, looking the man over. “We’re definitely going to be glad to have his help out here.” Laureena had never learned what this part of Morwell’s history actually entailed, but she played along that she also knew how impressive and useful the man’s past would be for their survival.
Calix had seen so much of the world already and yet he was only a little older than she was. Laureena was instantly jealous of the boy’s experiences, but not in the way that she wished she had lived them and Calix hadn’t. The feeling wasn’t at all competitive. As he talked at length about catching a tankfish on the edge of the Shelf that was almost half as big as his boat, Laureena found herself daydreaming of having lived these adventures as well. In her imagination, she was simply plopped into Calix’s story, an active participant in his lived experience. In all of these daydreams, she found herself sharing the experience with Calix, not replacing him in it.
When the two got hungry they ate more rations. When they got sore from sitting too long, they ran around the deck playing a game they invented where they had to trade off finding and touching different items that started with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Calix started by touching the anchor, then Laureena ran and touched the bow, Calix wriggled under some wreckage and touched the captain’s chair, and so on, until they got to “V.” At this point, Laureena couldn’t think of anything and ran around for so long that she collapsed in a sweaty, laughing mess. As they took deep drinks of water, each sweating through their shirts, she realized that she hadn’t once thought about how hot it had been that day, even though they were practically baking.
That evening, Laureena went to curl into Morwell’s chest but stopped, and asked instead if she could sleep next to Calix.
“I’ve always preferred to sleep next to someone else,” she explained. “I love Uncle Morwy, but it’s a lot better to snug up against someone who can snug you back.”
Calix patted the wood next to where he was laying and she slid up beside him. Though they both quickly found it too hot to have their bodies pressed together, they soon got comfortable with Calix on his back and Laureena curled up like a pillbug at his side. Calix left his arm draped over her hip, his hand clasped with hers from across her body.
“I’m really glad we found each other out here,” she whispered. “It seems like we were meant to be together.”
“I feel the same way,” Calix responded. “We’ve got each other now; that can’t be by accident. We’ll never be alone if we have each other.” Laureena felt her face flush and a quiver in her stomach. She gave Calix’s hand a soft squeeze, and he moved his thumb affectionately across hers.
Laureena thought she felt herself slip into sleep, but then she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or awake. Her body moved forward, drifting, though her legs stayed still. Off the front of the boat she floated, over the bubbling black sand, to an outcropping of stone that led to what looked like an entrance of a cave. The ground was covered in strange symbols, and they seemed to illuminate as she hovered over them. She passed through the entrance, but it wasn’t actually a cave, at least not like any she’d ever seen on Delvorn. The inside was rock, but it was painstakingly carved and polished, and the cavern stretched on and on into the blackness, with the only faint light coming from the symbols on the ground and the walls as she moved past. The stone tunnel was deep: She moved down it for several long minutes before finally emerging into a larger chamber that was arched like a dome carved into black stone. In the center of the room was a rectangular metal box that stood just slightly taller than her height. The surface of the metal was covered in thick, jagged welds, fusing together what might otherwise seem like random metal sheets and angles into a cohesive cuboid. On top of the box sat a perfectly round, smooth black stone. There was no visible light source in the room, and yet Laureena could still see, almost as if the black stone were emitting a light simply so that it’s darkness could be better perceived. Entranced, she floated towards the orb and cupped her hand along its curve. The moment her skin touched the stone, she woke up, and it was morning.
As Calix sat and ate a ration for breakfast, Laureena stared off the bow at the stone entranceway in the distance, trying to make sense of what she had seen in her dream. Calix didn’t pry into her introspective state, instead letting her figure out what she needed to, with the understanding that he would simply be there if she needed him. Laureena saw that he was doing this and was silently but deeply appreciative. When she had thought about it enough, Laureena came back over to the boy and told him all about what she had seen in her dream the night before.
“I think we have to go in there,” she decided. “I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but that cave is...important. And it’s also the only thing around here we can actually see. Papa hasn’t come back yet and Morwell hasn’t woken up. I think we’ve waited around long enough, and now we need to at least go and explore our surroundings. There’s a chance that Papa might even be in that cave, that he walked over there before the sand started boiling and now he’s stuck. Will you take me there, Calix? It might be dangerous, and the last thing I want to do is make you do something that could hurt you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. Of course I’ll take you there,” the boy responded. “My snowshoes are just like my dad’s, only a little smaller, and he weighs way more than me.” He stopped, and his eyes quivered. “Weighed. He weighed more than me. Anyway, I think it would work just fine if I carried you.”
“Ok, let’s do it,” she said with manufactured enthusiasm. “But just a quick trip, in case Uncle Morwy wakes up, or Papa comes back from somewhere else.” She looked around the deck, hands on hips as she noticed the rubbish they had absentmindedly strewn about in the last few days. “But before we go, let’s pick up all these food wrappers and stuff. I don’t want to get scolded for making a mess and not cleaning it up, even if the whole boat is all broken up and trashed.”
They packed up Calix’s rucksack with some water and food and used a rope attached to a buoy on the side of the boat to lower the boy down onto the sand. Laureena wore the pack, carefully stepping down the outside of the boat with the rope in her hands until she had lowered herself into a sitting position on Calix’s shoulders. He didn’t seem to have any problem carrying her weight or keeping his balance, and as soon as she was in place and his hands were securely grasping her ankles, he started off towards the rock outcropping in the distance. As he walked, Laureena looked down and was utterly perplexed by the footprints he left in the sand. Though his feet were strapped into ovular wooden frames with what looked like a series of leather straps on the bottom, the only imprint left in the sand looked like the bottom of his regular shoes, not the outline of the snowshoes. It was as if the frame wasn’t touching the sand at all.
“How is it that the snowshoes aren’t leaving any tracks?” she asked him. “You’re just leaving regular footprints in the sand.”
“I told you,” he grinned. “They were enchanted by an Irapa shaman. They’re special.”
It didn’t take long for the two to cross the hundred or so meters of black sand and reach the rock formation that stuck out so conspicuously in its surroundings. Both stopped and gave each other a look of bewilderment as they stepped up onto the stone and instantly felt a respite from the otherwise oppressive heat, like a cool breeze had been whipped up even though the air was still and stagnant. Calix bent down and began to inspect the pictographs etched into the stone, but Laureena walked forward directly to the entranceway, ignoring the markings completely. The boy looked up at her and was about to ask if she wanted to try and figure out what the carvings depicted, but seeing her move so intently into the cavern he simply got back up and followed behind her instead, clumsily clomping on the stone in his snowshoes.
Laureena walked forwards slowly and deliberately, staring intrepidly into the dark tunnel ahead, uninterested in the elaborate symbols etched into the perfectly carved and polished stone walls. Meanwhile, Calix’s head was moving around like it was on a swivel, soaking in his bizarre surroundings and trying to mentally note everything he saw. He paused when he noticed something particularly strange, which he couldn’t explain in the slightest: Though the only source of light in the cavern came from the light seeping in from its mouth at their rear, Laureena appeared to be casting a shadow behind her as she walked forward into the darkness. The farther she descended into the cavern, away from the light, the longer her shadow grew, obscuring the symbols on the ground as it spread. Before long the tunnel was completely dark, and Calix activated a light on his wrist that shone the way forward. Laureena didn’t seem to notice or care that the light was shining in front of her, still pacing dutifully forward.
At the end of the tunnel they reached an archway similar to the one they had passed to enter the cavern, with this one leading into a large, domed chamber. The instant they passed through the entranceway, the light on Calix’s wrist went dark. He hit it with the palm of his hand and fiddled with the power switch, then walked back outside the arch and the light flickered back on. When he went back into the chamber, the light disappeared once more. He looked up at the archway, wondering what sort of barrier it was, trying to make sense of the strange characters inscribed on its sides.
Laureena was unsurprised to find the room exactly as it had been presented in her dream. In front of her stood the large metal rectangle with thick, gnarled welds, and on top of that stood the perfect black orb. She reached up to try and touch it, but she wasn’t tall enough to get her hands over the edge of the metal box, so she walked around the side of it to see if there was another way up. There were small, curving sets of steps carved into the wall on both sides behind the box, coming together in the center to create a shallow shelf and a platform that led out to the metal box where the orb rested. Along the shelf a variety of different crystals had been placed, each a distinctly different color, though they were barely distinguishable in the chamber’s low light. Laureena walked up the small, curving staircase, tiptoeing gracefully around the crystals like a cat on a crowded countertop, then walked out onto the platform that extended to the black orb. She dropped to one knee and reached out for the sphere. Calix looked down from the archway and turned to her, seeing her up on the platform, and had only enough time to say, “Maybe you shouldn’t--” before Laureena grasped the black orb tightly with both hands.
The instant her skin touched the stone, Laureena’s body went translucent, locked in a kneeling position with both arms outstretched. In that same instant, Calix recoiled as the room came to life. The light reignited on his wrist and the temperature exploded, causing him to gasp as the air that filled his lungs began to burn with each breath. The rectangular metal platform started to vibrate and shake violently, rocking back and forth until it fell forward away from Laureena, the black orb scraping against the metal as it toppled over lengthwise. A layer of dark, rusty grime flaked off as it slammed into the ground, its surface beginning to lighten as if it were heating up in a forge. The heat that emanated off of the metal box was brutal, like a supercharged radiator, and Calix slid along the ground into the corner trying to escape it, but the stone floor was searing hot as well and burned his skin. He got back to his feet and ran to Laureena, screaming for her to come to. He tried to grab her wrist and pull it away from the orb, but his hand phased directly though as if she were a ghost. In desperation, knowing full well it was a bad choice, Calix steeled his resolve and tried to pull the sphere - which still appeared solid - from her grasp. He clutched it with both hands and yanked. It was like grabbing a globe of molten rock. The skin seared and burned away from his fingers and palms and Calix collapsed onto the ground.
The metal box continued to shake and convulse, rocking itself up into a standing position and then slamming itself violently down onto the stone floor. As the heat behind the metal intensified, the thick welds that held the box together began to loosen and melt away, and with each leaden crash into the stone floor incrementally came apart. In this way, the box glacially crashed end over end down the corridor towards the entranceway of the cavern. By the midway point of the tunnel, most of the welds that held the box together had splintered, permitting a bright fiery light to seep out from the cracks between the metal plates. One of the sides of the box broke off, releasing slithering tendrils that licked the sides of the steel and wriggled against the stone floor, beading piles of sand into black liquid glass. After another 50 meters down the corridor, the object no longer resembled a squid stuck in a box, but a helmet worn by a gawky, molten creature that pulled and slithered and propelled itself forward, now far too large to move comfortably through the passageway. The metal was visibly contracting, shrinking down, a fraction of the size that it was when the cube functioned as a platform to hold the sphere. The creature whipped its head as if trying to send the metal helmet flying away, but the steel clung petulantly to the flames. By the time it was close to the entrance, the fiery creature was almost sliding forward, through its dangling arms dragged and its shoulders scraped against the stone ceiling.
As it stepped through the deactivated outer archway and into the world, the creature extended its back and gangly limbs, exulting in a mighty stretch after countless years trapped inside its metal tomb. As it did, the creature’s fiery core fully reignited, sending a blast wave of searing white light and heat in all directions. The miniaturized supernova shot back through the cavern, illuminating the symbols carved into the walls and floor for only an instant, leaving the etchings glowing a fiery red after it passed. Unimpeded, the blast traveled through the tunnel and into the domed chamber in the back, the incinerating heat passing harmlessly through Laureena’s frozen, translucent body. Only a moment after the wave of light and heat had washed over the black orb, the stone seemed to glow and flash and fell from Laureena’s hands onto the stone floor below.
Laureena came to with a gasp, her outstretched hands retracting instinctively to her chest as searing hot breath entered her lungs. She looked around in terror as all the symbols carved into the domed chamber burned like flame runes, illuminating the once-dark room in bright orange light. In the moments it took Laureena to regain a modicum of composure, the flames in the carved symbols dimmed like a smoldering campfire, the oppressive heat in the room dying down with them. She knew intuitively what was happening: These symbols were pulling the fire from the air, containing it. Her head ached and her tongue scraped against her dry mouth. She pulled Calix’s rucksack from her back and went to grab some water when she realized, oh god, where was Calix? She screamed the boy’s name and scrambled off the pedestal onto the floor, spinning around searching for her friend. The light was dying now in the chamber as the runes swallowed the last of their flames. She peered down the tunnel and saw a faint, glowing blue light at the other end. Was that him? She had to go see. It was when she turned around to grab the rucksack from the platform that Laureena saw Calix’s snowshoes sticking out from beneath a pile of ash and charred bone next to the small stairway.
It was night outside when Laureena finally left the cavern. She had spent hours curled up on the stone floor in the pitch black, crying uncontrollably next to Calix’s remains until she simply couldn’t cry any more. Before she left, she felt around in the dark and found the black sphere and placed it inside the rucksack. It seemed so much lighter than it looked, but once the thing was in her bag the thought of it left her mind. After much deliberation and turmoil, she chose to grab the snowshoes from beneath the ashen pile as well. They were not hers, and she wanted to leave them with Calix, but there was simply no way for her to get back to the boat without them. The snowshoes were darkened with soot but seemingly undamaged by whatever had incinerated her friend. Special indeed.
At the head of the cavern, Laureena found that the source of the blue light was something she couldn’t identify at all. She couldn’t tell if it was a living creature, or an inanimate object, or something in between. It looked like some sort of glowing squid with monkey arms that had a ratty metal box stuck on its head, splayed out on the stone, no bigger than her. Its skin seemed unreal, oscillating blue light. It wasn’t moving, but the way that its skin seemed to radiate with light, it didn’t seem particularly dead either. She examined it briefly and nudged the metal box with her foot, but decided she didn’t really care what this thing was. She needed to get back to the boat.
As she turned from the strange creature and started to walk back towards the boat, Laureena realized that nothing was clearly visible in her surroundings. It was dark with no moon, so there was little she could make out anyway, but the outside world seemed to be steeped in a thick curtain of steam that refused to lift or dissipate. She followed the pictographs back to where the rock met the sand, but there was no clear edge that separated the two as there had been before. It was almost like the roughness of the stone ended and then simply became smooth. She got down on her hands and knees and traced the boundary with her fingertip. The space beyond the edge of the rock outcropping was black glass, still warm to the touch. She got back up and pressed at it with the tip of her toe. It seemed sturdy, but it wasn’t something she particularly felt comfortable walking on. She couldn’t see how far out the glass spread in the steam, but she assumed that she was eventually going to reach sand again, so she dropped down to one knee to figure out how to put the snowshoes on. As she slid her right foot in and tried to make sense of the buckles, Laureena noticed something in the corner of her eye. Another pile. Oh no, oh god, it looked just like the one in the domed chamber, only much, much larger.
At first, Laureena told herself to ignore it. Don’t look at it. Don’t go over there. But she knew she had to see it through. Her eyes welled with tears again as she knelt down to look at the heaping pile of ash and bone. There was something else in there, sticking out and glinting in the steam. Something metal. She reached in, shaking with trepidation, and pulled it out. They were dog tags, singed and melted around the edges but the engraving still intact. Francois Alintus Morwell, Isorropia Specialist First Class. A clump lodged in her throat and Laureena choked and heaved, her eyes dry and empty from the hours she had already cried for Calix.
“Why is this happening?” Laureena screamed into the night. “What did you do to me? To my friends? To my family?”
She pulled the smooth, black orb from her bag and stared at it furiously, trying to recall what she had seen inside of the cavern when it had transported her. The sphere was dull now, lifeless. She closed her eyes and went back to the vision.
Flames. A world of flames. Laureena had been there, inside the fire, consumed by it. But she wasn’t burned or harmed, she was simply observing, transported. Even though she wasn’t physically present, Laureena cowered at the heart of the flame, at the sheer magnitude of its destructive power. At first she had felt tiny, insignificant. Afraid. But the longer she stayed at its center the stronger she felt herself, as if its fury emboldened her. How long had she been in the vision? It had felt like hours. An incessant, unchanging inferno. Except, it did change, at the very end of the vision. Then she had seen a face inside of the fire, and she knew that she was not there alone.
On the edge of the black sand, Laureena squinted hard and forced herself to remember, trying to imprint every small detail of the vision onto her memory. The woman she had seen in the flames had dark red skin, richer and more intense in its hue than that of the fire itself. She had long, bright white hair that didn’t burn in the flames. The unending fire in the vision hadn’t burned Laureena either, but it had incinerated two people she loved in the real world. In the sea of flames, the crimson woman was screaming maniacally. Laureena could not tell if she screamed in agony or ecstasy.
Fate Index:
1. Kill co-writer’s protagonist
2. Someone important to the protagonist dies
3. Protagonist meets first love
4. Protagonist has great power but loses it
5. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
6. Flashback episode
7. Protagonist learns unsettling information
8. Protagonist joins or befriends powerful creature
9. Protagonist leaves home for the first time
10. Something consequential turns out to be an illusion
11. Shift in power
12. Betrayal
13. Protagonist finds powerful item or treasure
14. Protagonist discovers great power
15. Semi-permanent transformation
16. Goonie squad
17. Protagonist takes up cause of beleaguered
18. Protagonist becomes antagonist
19. Protagonist becomes famous
20. Protagonist becomes infamous
Outcomes Used:
2. Someone important to the protagonist dies
3. Protagonist meets first love
Added outcomes:
Character loses a limb and has it replaced with an unexpected alternative (thanks to @nljberlin on Twitter)
Protagonist has/develops some incurable urge they must sate daily
(thanks to @noahpepexburns on Instagram)
