37. Volcanic Core

ℂ𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕟 𝕠𝕗 𝕀𝕟𝕤𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥: 𝕍𝕠𝕝𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕔 ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕖 (𝔻)

𝔸 𝕤𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕦𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕨𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕚𝕟𝕗𝕦𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕖𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣𝕤, 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕒𝕝 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖. 𝕆𝕟𝕝𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕜𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕠 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖 𝕞𝕒𝕪 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣.

ℝ𝕖𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕤: 𝟙 𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕒𝕝 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖

The air sweltered with heat, sweltered with Law. Zane felt the rolling out of the chamber in thick waves. Laws did not feel like one another. That other cavern of insight was crisp and quick. These Laws lingered in the air, unwinding slowly, like the air above a blacktop on a hot summer's day.

After that last Law Zane found he hadn't had his fill. He wanted more—he couldn't get enough. He was panting a little, maybe from the heat.

"Well drat," Avery said. "Can't go in. What am I supposed to do?"

He shrugged. "Wait?"

She made a face. "I'll take a nap," she said. She sat down against the cave wall, drew up the cords of her hoodie, and curled into a ball. A rock shimmered into being where she used to be, and she was gone.

Eagerly he made for the Cavern.

The Cavern was a pressure cooker, fueled by the heat of the volcano. He'd only taken a step inside and already he couldn't see straight. The air in here was warped all over. When he breathed it, and he felt it scorching his lungs, drying out his throat. He looked down at his leg and saw it twisting, shimmering.

He took another step and grunted. It was hard not to go to his knees. The heavy air beat down on his back, and the heaviness flooded his arms, his ears, his head. It was getting into his thoughts too—making them come sluggish and lazy. He blinked, bit down, felt a sharp, clear jolt of pain, tasted salt and steel. This place was like those lava-falls, he sensed. A test.

He had to make it to the center. There the pressure was greatest, but the Law was greatest there too, shimmering so bright it was almost corporeal. He forced himself to take another step and another, dragging his feet across the chamber. There was a seat there, a lily pad of molten rock. He sat down, and hissed.

It was so painful hot he was surprised his skin wasn't melting off his body. He got out his crystal, the Heart of the Volcano, and clasped it tight in his fist. Then he closed his eyes, breathed out, and started to meditate.

He was never very good at sitting still and clearing his mind. He liked being in motion. He liked the feeling of physical connection. Meditation always felt like death to him, felt like the grayness. When his doctor suggested it, he'd fallen off within a week. The meds always worked so much better.

But this felt different. It wasn't passive at all. Every second he had to wrestle against that oppressive heat, the heat trying to crush him into nothing, trying to melt him not only physically but at the level of the soul, at the level of thought. Every second he sought out that crystal in his palm, reached out with his mind, grasping, asking it to reach back and pull him through. He was was stretched out between here and there, and all the while the heat crushed down. He let it marinate, brow furrowed, jaw set. It was a weirdly pleasurable kind of pain.

He could have sat there an hour, or six, or twelve—time lost meaning here. Slowly he started to drift away from his body. He wasn't a person. He was a soul in a body feeling sensations play across the skin, the back, the arms. The boundaries of the body faded away. Only feeling was left. After a while even that too felt distant, unreal.

The crystal in his hand felt more real. The more he reached out to it, the hotter it grew, like he was stoking its flame with his mind. He poured in more, kept up that grasping—all he'd done was sit here, yet it was still somehow exhausting.

Slowly he slipped away…

Everything felt a little hazy, like he was revisiting a poorly preserved memory. Was this that Law vision Avery had been talking about? Meditate long enough, and the Law treasure drew you in, she'd said.

Only… where was he? Everything was dark and blurry. The vision resolved a little. Still black, but prickled with white. He seemed to be floating in space. A great void yawned around him. The specks were stars.

His vision shifted away. In front of him was a massive red sun. He was so close to it it blotted out half his vision, seething with a corona of bloody light. Tongues of flame licked up and down its surface. It all felt surreal. Somehow he wasn't shocked. He felt calm. The heat of it felt like a gentle summer breeze on his wrinkled skin.

…Wrinkled?

He glanced down. His arms were wrapped in silken gray sleeves, embroidered with a strange crest: a bird carrying an elephant in its claws.

His body began to move, slowly, surely, flowing the way Zane had seen some of those old men doing Tai Chi at the park. The hands made signs.

A spark flickered into being. Just one, between the gnarled old hands.

Then another.

It joined the first, and together they made a small flame, burning on nothing. Another, and another—

The air between the old man's hands was another field of stars, suddenly full of sparks, and they all rushed in, rushed to join that little flame. The field replenished as soon as it emptied. The flame got brighter, got thicker, took solid form. Zane felt calm, controlled, as he watched it.

No—these weren't Zane's feelings. These were the old man's.

What the hell was happening?

Sparks drew in faster and faster. The flame became a roiling ball of pure white light. It started to shake. It wanted to break loose—there was just too much energy.

But the old man's will clamped down. He forced it to stay. He forced it to cave in on itself, thickening, brightening, heating up, and only now did Zane realize that each little spark was hotter than any flame he'd ever seen. Each little spark was laden with Laws so dense, so vast, he couldn't even perceive them at first. Not until the old man's attention shifted briefly over them, and he saw the breathtaking infinity hidden in that little spark.

The oddest thought came to Zane. He'd fostered a cat once, a tabby. He used to watch Breaking Bad reruns with it. It stared so intently at the television screen, though it obviously didn't know what was going on. One of the greatest pieces of human cinema flashed in its face, and all the cat saw was meaningless noise. He felt in that moment like that cat. He was reeling.

The moment passed. He tried to catch up. A thousand sparks spawned a second, and died the next, swallowed by the burgeoning flame. You couldn't even call it a flame anymore, or a fireball—they didn't do it justice.

This old man held a star between his hands.

And that star hated him.

It hated being so small. It wanted to blow out, to swallow the world, but the old man didn't let it. His will forced it in place.

What did it mean to erupt?

It meant to turn up the heat, more and more. And when the fire couldn't take it anymore, to turn it up still, to throw spark after spark in, and to hold it there, in a state intolerable to nature. It meant to create an intense tension, an intense pressure, and with that came a want, a desperate, passionate yearning to be free.

Eruption, then, was simple; he felt it. At its essence it was to clamp down. And then, only when the pressure grew unbearable—

Let go. All at once.

But not carelessly—no. An eruption was an explosion bent to the will, destruction given direction. It went where you wanted it to go.

The old man extended a hand, gestured at the red giant floating before them.

One white line cut across space at the speed of light. The sheer power there… Zane couldn't begin to imagine it. It boggled the mind. He was starting to feel a little freaked out, which was saying something.

Then the star exploded.

The scene whited out. He was sweating so badly his hair was matted to his head. He couldn't think.

What the fuck?

𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕕!

𝕄𝕚𝕟𝕠𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔼𝕣𝕦𝕡𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 (𝔼𝕝𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕃𝕒𝕨 𝕠𝕗 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕖)

What the fuck?

He sat there in a daze for a long while.

Had that been real? Had that old man just…

What?!

What Level was he? A thousand? More? And those Laws…

He shook his head. He couldn't hold on to it anymore, just the impression of it. It felt like he'd woken from a dream. All the specifics were fading from him. The only clear impression he was left with was awe. Utter awe.

And then, when that ebbed…

A burning want.

You could get that strong?!

He felt like a man standing at the base of some huge mountain whose peak went beyond the cloud layer. He couldn't see it, but…

Fuck. Fuck!

He wanted to learn that power.

No. He wanted more than that—he wanted to be just as strong as that man. But it wasn't just that either.

In that instant he desperately wanted to fight that man. Just to see what it felt like. He was grinning wildly just thinking about it. He was trying to imagine what a fight would look like at that level… He couldn't.

He just knew, deep in his heart, it would be beautiful.

It was all a dream for now. It felt like one. So distant, so unattainable, those little point thinking on it much. He slowly drifted back down to earth.

He just got a new Law. They all seemed to fit together suddenly—there was a natural flow to them: Ignition, Combustion, Eruption, Undying Flame… what did they all add up to?

Some Major Law. He had all he needed. But finding a way to condense them… what could they make? Avery's major Law was 'Harmonic Balance'—a synthesis of her minor Laws. Maybe his was Major Law of the… Flame Lifecycle?

He frowned. This wasn't a guessing game. The name was just a label. Whatever it was, it would come as a phenomenon, a feeling. He needed to experience it. And to do that, he somehow needed to hold all four Minor Laws in his mind at once…

God.

He kept drifting back to the old man with the sun in his hands. It was suddenly incredibly hard to concentrate on the Major Law.

He spent another two hours sitting there trying to focus. It wasn't happening. He managed to get his mind off the old man, but he was shot. Some other day, he decided. He stood.

Avery wasn't there, so he waited by the entrance. About an hour later she came back, looking cranky. The top of her hoodie was singed black, lightly smoking.

"What happened?" he said.

"I got bored," she said. "And… okay, maybe I was a little jealous of all those Levels you got at those lava falls. So I found this patch of lava, and… look, I don't want to talk about it. Why do you look so stoned?"

"…"

They went off to fight the final boss. The Brimstone Golem.