The tinder runs low.
Millions upon millions of tons of solid rock surround me, only parted by the occasional river of magma. But there is no warmth, here, so far below. Only a crushing loneliness. A crushing hopelessness.
I press my cheek against the wall of rough-hewn rock I had been laboring at for the past hour. It isn't simply cold to the touch- it seems to draw the heat right out of me, reducing my sweat to ice. I shiver, and pull away, rubbing my calloused hands together.
The steel-headed pickaxe propped against the wall gleams dimly in the torchlight, as if it's lost the will to be lustrous. I feel the same way; I run my hands along the dulled and notched axe-head, wiping away the sooty rock-dust.
Around me, silence. Silence, and-
Murmurs. Whispers. Scratches. Scrapings. Soft, unplaceable sounds. Each one seeming to be only just out of arm's reach, just behind the next rockwall. Just under my feet. Just over my head.
I squeeze my eyes shut, seeing tiny stars dance in front of my eyes from the firelight. No matter where I went, they found me. When I washed up upon the shore of this forsaken, unknown continent, they sought me out when I took shelter under a beach tree, huddled miserably around my tiny fire. When I retreated to higher ground and built myself a crude yurt from the palms, created torches to stake out an area of safety, they found me, snuffing out my fires with less than a breath. A blink.
Then again, I don't think they breathed. Or blinked, for that matter.
Nowhere was safe. I had built an abode within a tree, the only way into it a clever means of throwing a palm-sinew rope up onto the balcony and shimmying up. But even then, they found me; night after night, I heard them scratching, pacing, murmuring. Each morning, I would descend to see huge gashes in the trunk of the tree; a tree over four hundred years old, maybe more, cut to the bone in the space of a week. I was afraid.
I ran. By day, I fled west, foraging for berries or fruit or the shoots of herbs I could identify as nonlethal, drinking from streams or from the rainwater that pooled in great bowl-like leaves. By night, I formed a circle of torches, usually upon a cliff's edge or mountaintop, and waited for sunrise.
They always found me. I could always see them- sense them, just out of eyeshot, moving with more softness than a breeze in the night, with less definition than shadows, not the slightest scent to them. But I could always hear them, murmuring, muttering to one another, just out of earshot- how many of them were there? What could they be? What did they want? What were they saying? Why me? Why?
If I shut my eyes, I would only see blank faces staring back at me, or whatever creative horrors my dreams could conjure. Did they walk upon two feet, or four? One mouth, or seven? Thirteen eyes, or none at all? My nightmares never seemed interesting in answering this deranged questions. Only perpetuating them. Making the wondering ever more maddening.
Did I ever have the urge to reach out, gaze upon them, throw all caution aside? Oh, every other moment! How I longed to know my tormentors, my persecutors! But something told me that maybe I wouldn't understand if I did stare them in the face- if they had faces. Perhaps I would lose all will to live, all hope, and resign to death or worse at their hands- if they had hands. It was the not-knowing, the burning curiosity, that fueled my escape from them.
For miles and miles, I had run. This new continent bore beautiful flowers, rushing cataracts, birds and beasts of colors and calls I didn't know possible in nature, but these were all forgotten by dusk- as fear took hold of my mind. My sanity.
In my homeland, I would've been branded a coward, a failure of a man for not facing these faceless, nameless fiends the very first night they accosted me. So be it. I would rather be a living coward than a foolish corpse.
It was on the hundredth day, or thousand, or- I don't know, I lost count. Each breath seemed to be a miracle, each heartbeat a blessing. I stopped having a plan of escape- all I could concentrate was surviving each night.
That is, after crossing countless humid jungles and waterless dunes, I came face to face with a mountain range that seemed to uphold the heavens. Thunderclouds swirled around their peaks, making them look more like great earthen walls than mountains. I will admit: when I saw that impassable range, those bars of my mortal cage, I fell to my knees and screamed. I sobbed. I laughed. It had been a matter of time. I had always seen them, looming in the distance like a death sentence, but I had never paid them any mind, only caring for my life that night.
So that was it. I sat down on a bed of tropical flowers, watched a few butterflies flutter around me, and let the tears run down my face. This was it.
Until I noticed something odd about the closest mountain- it seemed darker than the rest. All interest in preserving my life gone, I excused myself from the butterflies and wandered the ten miles to feet of the peaks. Indeed, they were even more massive up close- had you asked me as a boy, I would've told you this is where the world ended and the sky began.
But as the nearest mountain looked at me, I looked back, and the urge to live sprang into my heart once again. I scavenged the jungle, creating a heavy bundle of torches, and plunged into the mountain's heavenward-staring eye, into the darkness of the earth. Into the safe embrace of the earth.
At the cave mouth, I built four torchholders, shielding the fire from the wind and rain. In that cavern, I began my work- creating my last bastion of defense. Of defiance. The nights came, my pursuers did not. The torches kept them at bay.
It seemed almost like fate was lifting me back to my feet. In that cavern network, I found iron ore studding the walls. As I traveled deeper, I found coal alongside the fossilized remains of trees and beasts. I was no professional, but I learned from trial and error; I built a crude stone furnace, and with that coal, I began to purify the iron. My hands now bear countless burns from the work, but I eventually fashioned myself an axe; now, I could chop down those jungle trees, sharpen them into stakes, drive them into the ground. With a shovel, I dug out a moat ten feet deep, the bottom bristling with needle-sharp stakes. I unearthed a freshwater spring in my cavern, which was host to a good number of blind yet delicious fish, and supplemented that with whatever fruit or birds or beasts I found out in the jungle.
I was a god. Of fire, of steel, of nature. Nothing could stop me. For those days- or months- or years- I slept peacefully. Arrogantly. Let them come, thought I. They will be met with steel and fire and vengeance.
So they did.
One day, I emerged blinking from my cave to find my stakes torn from the ground, scattered like twigs in a raging storm. The next day, my moat was disemboweled, as if a great hand had raked its fingers along the mouth of the cave, leaving only wavy soil. The next, the torchholders were destroyed, the stones scattered like sand on the wind.
I did the only thing I could do.
I ran.
Into the belly of the earth, I carved a passage miles long, each five strides punctuated by a dropped torch. At first I followed the freshwater spring, using the fish to keep myself alive. But eventually I had to abandon my tasty friends and delve deeper into the stone- so deep. The shafts I excavated could never be climbed; I knew that. This was a one-way journey.
It didn't matter. For each torch I left behind, two were extinguished in the distance. The passage I carved became narrower as I rushed to escape- I eventually had to crouch, my back aching, my legs screaming in pain. But that pain was nothing compared to what the fear in my mind could imagine.
Somewhere, somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth, surrounded by their whispers, their murmurs, and so much free time, I finally began to understand. It was when the temperature began to spike uncomfortably, and I figured there was a magma flow somewhere near.
They left great claw marks upon my yurt, my tree-home, instead of climbing up the tree or onto the roof with their wicked talons. They tore the earth and soil apart like water as they searched for me. But they left no footprints, no evidence. How I had been awestruck at seeing so many gaping caves as I fled west, their mouths of stone seemingly smoothed by some benevolent, mason-god. Why the cavern I found was so perfectly formed, the walls and floor as smooth as glass, the stalactites and stalagmites seemingly ornamental. Why they only came to gaze upon their prey during the night, becoming less active the fuller the moon became.
They came from below.
What a fool I was. I had been so driven by fear, I had walked into the den of my enemy. Their breeding ground. But it was too late now-
I leaned on my pickaxe, eyes squeezed shut, despair overcoming me. My last torch flickered weakly at my feet. With my last ounce of strength, I lifted the pick and assaulted the wall with all my might, sobbing and screaming as I did. The magma would free me. My last hope.
But as my arm muscles seemed to melt with exhaustion, I cracked a small slit in the wall- and magma and volcanic fumes spurted out, spattering my hands, my arms, my face. I howled in agony, fell backwards and crawled away, curled in the corner of that small pocket of air, blind, crippled.
It grew hot. This was it. My release. My freedom. I had won. They had chased me across an entire continent, and I- a pathetic smile spread across my charred face- had won!
So I laid back, waiting for the fires of the earth take me. No regrets. No remorse.
It was only when I felt a number of thin, spiderlike arms scoop me from the floor, and lift me away from the dreadful heat. At first I was in too much pain to care, but then I began to thrash and shriek- it was them! It was THEM! But those arms, thin as sapling branches, were stronger than steel, holding me tighter than death's own grasp. Resigned, I stopped struggling, and eventually went limp and unconscious as the burn pain overtook me. It was all over, anyway.
The next thing I knew was that the sun's glare was burning my eyes, and my hand shot up to cover them- a healed, if still crippled, hand. Gasping, I felt at my face, my body- a sort of black primordial fungus or moss had been applied to my wounds, and as I pulled the odd spongey stuff away, I found that my wounds were at least in some state of repair. I rubbed at my eyes, and found that this strange lifeform had been applied to my eye sockets as well- restoring my sight in one of my singed eyes. A miracle.
It was only then I looked back- and I saw a bizarre black horror of a creature, its spiderlike legs folded in death, lying on its back as its thorax was bared to the sun, smoke rising from the hard carapace. In its massive claws were some pieces of healing fungus, and around its neck was a sort of sling-bag, from which more of the fungus and what looked like some dried fish spilled out of.
For those years, misery and fear had ruled me. From that point onward, on the other side of that mountain range, only misery was my master. From that day onward, no matter how I waited, no visitors came to me in the night. No matter how I searched, I could not find the cave from which the good Samaritan had rescued me from.
Maybe a decade or so later, from my hut on the far coast, I saw a ship on the horizon. It came to shore, and a small party of armed men and explorers set foot on the sand, driving a flagpole into the beach.
As I watched, one of them walked up to me. "Are you... are you a survivor from the shipwreck, so many years ago?"
I nodded.
The sailor seemed awed, as if he had met a legend. "Are there any good men here who are in need of rescue?"
I looked at him a long time, and with a sad smile, I shook my head. "There are no good men here," I replied quietly.
I left him there with his compatriots on that unknown shore, and returned to my hut.