In darkness and confusion I lifted my head above the rubble.

I was in a dark place, somewhere in the distance, the light of a vial cast a white light on rusty reddish stone.

“Is everyone alive?”

“I am.”

“Me too!”

“Me also too!”

“Is that everyone?”

“Yes.”

“What about Brad?”

“I am Brad.”

“So are you alive?”

“Yes.”

A light rose up between craggy rocks. It was Professor Scutolith’s vial. I undid the rope around my waist and stood up. My own light vial had received a thin crack from its neck to and around the waist, rendering it completely useless, now that the crystal’s in-grown weavings were disrupted. But my body was whole safe for a few bruises and scratches I was relieved. We found each other at the remains of the golem.

The Professor looked upon the even more broken mess of rock and crystal. “My poor girl. You did well.” A moment of silence passed. “I might have to take her mostly apart to restore at least some functionality.”

I threw a look up. There was nothing to see except for a weak, dark-green iridescence.

“Do we have time? What if the magma finally comes down to catch up with us?”

The Professor too looked up. “To make it down that narrow, long tunnel will take it possibly ages, now that it is filled with air. And even if, we will see it far ahead of time.” He was already inspecting Chrysita’s limbs. The legs seemed the most damaged, as they had taken the brunt of the force. Many of the white rods were fractured, some hung still together by the fine metal filaments. “I can do this within just an hour or two. I am sure I can find some material to patch her up.” He looked around. When the darkness would not reveal much, he raised his staff and sent another ball of light into the darkness.

The cave we were in was about twenty feet high at this point and there sat a heptagonal opening framed by the same dark green material as on the other end of the tunnel. I could even make out the same kind of symbols, although from memory I was sure they formed a different inscription. The floor was covered by rough and fresh volcanic rock. It did not take Professor Scutolith long to start his lecture. “Ah yes, as you can see, the magma shot down here through that heptagonal tunnel and filled this chamber. You can tell by the walls that the foundation is of much different stone that cooled slowly, while this rock cooled quickly and is mostly fragile and brittle.” He picked up a rock and smashed it to dust against another.

“Oh, this won’t do. Seems I have to again salvage what is left of my dear Chrysita. Anne, dear please take care of our cargo once again. Havellan, transcribe the second set of runes. It may be that this and the other end of tunnel stand in some important relation to each other.”

We again did as we were told. I had to use my own light spell and good eyes to read the inscription from this far, but I managed and I was correct in my assumption that it were different inscriptions.

The new scaffolding that Anne-Liese and Brad had made had proven most effective. Since Chrysita’s legs had taken the brunt of the impact force and she was encased in my bubble of thick air, the supplies had remained entirely untouched, a small glimpse of hope in that dark place.

Brad was looking around the darkness the entire time, his eyes undoubtedly seeing things ours couldn’t. “Where are we even? I always thought the scholars agreed that the interior of the world is molten rock?”

“Well...” My own knowledge of geology and geomancy was not so detailed that I could give a good lecture as the Professor could, but I still tried my best to come up with something that at least sounded plausible. I took a deep gulp from my water skin. “I guess we have found some kind of underground pocket of cold. Maybe during the Great Sundering, the seafloor was torn asunder and somehow caused the cooling ocean to flood deep into the hot interior of the earth, just like the hot rock is pushing outside. Maybe? I do not know for certain.”

Anne-Liese rolled her eyes and clenched her jaw at my attempt at formulating a thesis. “Does it really matter how this came to be? By the time and distance we fell, we can easily deduce that we will never get back topside. We will not find water, food or salvation here! And it’s all your fault!” She whipped around with an accusing finger shooting towards the body of rock that the Professor was working behind.

The Professor poked his head out from behind the body of rock he was working on. “What did you say, Lieschen?”

“This is your fault! You and your silly ambitions to climb down a mountain of flames, just because you wanted to prove some insignificant eventuality to other crusty scholars like you!”

The Professor put on a smile and made an assuaging gesture. “I don’t know what got you in such an uproar, Lieschen, but I can tell you it’s alright, Uncle Ottegar will fix this and then we’ll be home soon.”

I too had to gawk at the Professor in disbelief. “Professor, don’t you think this situation warrants a more serious contemplation than ‘everything will be alright’?”

Anne-Liese meanwhile had raised her fists in struggle against the gods themselves, cursing them for such an obstinate uncle. She groaned in anger and turned around, walked to a boulder and sat down with her back to the rest of the group.

I meanwhile, tried to get something useful information out of her uncle. “Professor, do you have any idea where we are and how we get back?”

“Well, all I can say is that while we were ‘falling’ through that tunnel,” he pointed to the heptagon. “I heard no songs. Not of primordial fire, not of stones or oceans or winds. Nothing. It might be that we were not truly falling downwards. Maybe we reached a completely different world, maybe we fell sidewards to the shores of Botrelandt, maybe we fell straight through the world’s core itself and landed on the other side. This tunnel is far away from normal.” He pointed to Chrysita. “I will get her back into working condition, then we can head out. We must find a body of water.”

I tried to answer something to that, but in the end, I could do nothing but accept the Professor’s decision. “Fine then.”

“I’ll be done with Chrysita ina minute.

It took some time more than a minute, but eventually, Chrysita – or what was left of her – stomped out from behind the rocks. Her arms were missing, while her legs had gotten significantly shorter and her upper body seemed stunted.

“I had to disassemble the arms for replacement parts, but as long as she can walk and carry our supplies, I consider it functional.”

He had a point. Chrysita had been an excellent pack mule so far.

“Now we just need to find an exit. Havellan, hand me those transcripts.”

I did as told and the Professor started to ruminate over what he saw, humming to himself. After he had examined all the symbols several times over, he turned to Brad. “Our dear guide, will you take the lead and find a path through this cave? We should try to keep moving to find water, these caves often do have bodies of water in them.”

Brad, who up until just then had seemed rather glum, listened up and looked around the dark cave. “Well.... I guess it is what you hired me for.”

With Brad at the head of the group, finding a path between razor-sharp rocks laying disorderly, we ventured into the darkness.

The cave was elongated and slightly descending, between ten to fifty feet wide at places. How deep it had once been nobody could tell, but at the walls we could see the natural gneiss sprayed with rusty red volcanic rock. Some places, the rock had cooled so rapidly that it was filled with gas bubbles. Combined with its brittleness, it gave way and collapsed more than once under our feet, especially Chrysita’s. All the while the Professor was humming in confusion about the runes I had copied to paper. How he was able to not stumble was a mystery to all of us.

The Professor’s statement proved to be true soon: there was a body of water here.

The body of water before us was infinitely long for all we could see and filled the entire width of the cavern. No waves rolled onto the craggy shore, which was yet to be worn down to smooth pebbles. For the moment, it was water, nothing more and nothing less.

Professor Scutolith threw his arms up. “Finally a glimmer of hope, we can refill our water casks!” he quickly hurried to the water.

“HAAAALT Uncle!” Anne-Liese caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Who knows what’s in this water? It could have washed arsenic or lead out of the rock here for all we know!”

Again, hopes dashed to the ground.

“Let me do an analysis first.”

And a glimmer restored.

Anne-Liese set down her small laboratory and sorted out various vials of clear liquids and coloured powders. With a sample of the water, she conducted her tests, at the end of which she sighed. “With my limited supplies, I cannot find anything that could harm us. I guess it is safe to drink.”

We refilled our cask and our water skins, then we got to the riddle of how to get across. While I and the Professor were talking about spells that could get us across a body of water of undetermined size, Anne-Liese made a great proposition: she would make some tea.

We all sat down around an oil cooker onto which she put a metal kettle. When I finally inhaled the aroma of the mix of herbs and leaves, my mind came to a calm. With the familiar scent of luxury in this cold and dark place, I managed to think much clearer.

The discussion between the Professor and me continued. We were gauging how far we could walk across the water or fly or walk in a bubble of air at the bottom of the lake with our current supply of flux, but without further information on how far the next shore was, all such spells seemed infeasible. We were interrupted by Brad, again tossing rocks into the water.

“Are rocks supposed to float?”

Such a strange question made all of us turn to Brad, who pointed to a speck floating on the waveless surface. He then held up another pebble and threw it in the water, where it happily swam on the surface like a cork next to the other one.

The Professor again was in jubilation over this serendipitous discovery. “OF COURSE! This magmatic rock is filled with gas bubbles, it is pumice or scoria! That is why it is so brittle! If we find enough of it, we can make ourselves a stone raft!”

I had to groan. My mind was calm but exhausted, my arms were heavy and my body ached. I did not feel capable of hauling rock and building a raft out of it. The Professor meanwhile set forth with great gusto towards a large boulder and bent down to lift it. An audible crack was heard from his bones. “Ouch. But maybe not today. We should rest.”

A chuckle of relief made its way out my chest and I turned to the others, who seemed equally amused.

We all found a smooth and even spot to sleep and got out our sleeping bags. It was an oddly calm sleep that took me. In the distance I heard drops of water fall upon the surface of the lake, in tune with the calm beat of my heart.