Genesis

Chapter 11: Toils of Living Stone

I shot up into the sky through the small opening I had inadvertently created through the thick, black vines. I came to a halt a few feet above the mighty wall and hovered there and pulled a large spike out of my pant leg. I reached my hand through the new hole and wriggled my fingers, scoffing at the tear.

It wasn't quite how I expected my memories to begin returning, but at least I was invulnerable. If I hadn't been, then my encounter with the spike vines would not have been so G rated.

I don't know what that memory was meant to show me...or really even why it was important to me, but it really felt important. That girl though, Sarah, she felt the most real out of all of it. Her voice pulled my attention. The mere mention of her name made my heart skip. It was something about her that just got me going.

It made little sense as to why a situation like that would get her to talk to me. Were we friends back home before I disappeared? I had memories of her from when I was really young. Since before I got sick when I was eight and my power began to manifest. But, the memories were blurry. I could see her face, but something about them was missing.

Had whatever affected me taken its toll on my long term memory too, or am I just seeing them in a blur because they were so long ago. It didn't really matter a whole ton to me. All I honestly cared about was the girl. I wouldn't have left her, would I?

I shook off the thoughts, leaving them for a later time. I wasn't here to reminisce about memories that just showed up out of the blue and barely made any sense. Maybe I'd try and process through them later, but, for now, I was exploring some more.

I propelled myself forward past the second and third rings and into the tall, grassy hills that blocked view of most of the fourth ring. It was circular in form, but this ring was unlike the others. It filled the entire center of the field as a whole.

I dropped down and landed on the tallest hill, gazing downwards at my new discovery. About a hundred feet in front of me was a sheer drop off that led into a deep and wide chasm. The moon was almost directly above it, but the edges of the cleft jutted out in so many different directions and angles that the light of the moon barely reached into the depths.

I leapt the hundred feet to the edge of the drop and looked down into it. Below I could see almost nothing. My eyes would adjust as I got closer, but it was surprising that even I could see so little from this height. I wondered how deep it was.

What I could see penetrated the darkness like flickering, golden beacons. As if little lamps were lit all throughout the chasm floor. They were both scattered and clustered, some more clustered than others, and some more scattered than others. The scattered lights appeared to wander aimlessly, but the clusters moved from one location to another and then back again and repeated the same pattern. In total, there were about forty of the odd lights, but there could be more that I couldn't see.

Unsure of where the bottom was, and what was down there, I leapt into the chasm, but lowered myself slowly. I wasn't used to such slow descents, and it made me impatient and uncomfortable. I liked the thrill of speed while falling through the air, knowing that my body can sustain the impact when I landed, no matter how I landed. But this time was unique. With so little light, and whatever the beacons were below, it was a safer gamble to take it slow than to go fast.

The jagged stone walls continued to rise higher as I dropped lower: fifty feet; seventy; one hundred and it continued to descend.

"How deep is this thing," I thought, brushing my hand against a smooth portion of the wall.

The further I descended, the brighter the beacons became. Silhouettes formed around where the light came from. The Silhouettes were in the form of large, formless beasts, but I was still too far up to make much more out.

Finally, I landed on the cold stone ground. The chill of the chasm could be felt through my clothes, but did nothing to affect me any more than just noticing it was there. Had I tuned my hearing to listen before, I would have heard what I heard now: the heavy steps of the creatures that inhabited this place.

I took a single step forward and immediately leapt backwards as a massive, jagged stone leg the size of my body stomped into the place I had been standing. The beaming eyes of the beast of stone glanced down at me, but continued its march forward, clutching a massive stone to its chest.

I followed it forward as it strode on. The beast and I passed by a few more like it as we moved to its destination. The other beasts tinkered away at the walls. They were searching for something, but I didn't know what.

It felt like I had traveled across the entire length of the chasm by the time the stone beast began to slow. It strode carefully up to a raised, circular plinth and placed its burden directly beside another nearly identical to it.

The plinth was smooth and both long and wide. It raised five and a half feet into the air. Only my head could see over it. It was about the size of me, but it only came up to the stone beast's hips.

The creature began to walk away the way we had come without even acknowledging that I had followed it. I looked from it, to the plinth, and then decided to stay and figure out what was going on.

I leapt onto the plinth, landing at the head of the largest of the six stones that rested on it. They were each arranged in what appeared to be a specific order. The largest stone was clearly a body, and the stone the beast had placed, which sat next to its twin, looked like a leg, and then there were two arms coming out of the topmost sides of the body.

Were the stone beasts playing a game of puppets?

My attention was grabbed by a rumbling behind me. I turned to see another creature of stone standing at the edge of the plinth with a large boulder raised above its head. I put one foot back, preparing to rocket forward, but the beast didn't move. It simply held the stone.

It opened its mouth and released a sound like the one that got my attention to begin with. It was a sound like the grinding of stones. I couldn't see inside its mouth, but I imagined two stones in its throat grinding together like a mortar and pestle.

The creature's eyes were focused on a single location, and it was then that I realized that I was standing in the spot that it wanted to place what it was carrying. I didn't yet understand what was going on, but I stepped aside, allowing the beast to do its duty.