Chapter 8 Indecisive Decisionmaking

With a comfortable sigh, Khall settled into her home of the past week. She didn't know how she could tell it had been a week, she didn't know why she knew what a week or a day was, and there was nothing that let her know that time had passed, yet she knew, and was confused by her confusion. The more time went by, the more she questioned what anything and everything was, and it made her uncomfortable to think about it for long, so instead she thought about her home. 

It was strange that she could survive in a place that had previously been so inhospitable, but the magma river was, after all, a perfect home. The magma provided protection against most creatures, like those bastard lavalines that loved to interrupt her sleep, since they couldn't survive the heat. On top of that, the river was full of the Magma Spitting Fry, Khall was provided a constant and easy food source, even if hunting the fry posed no challenge. And, finally, there was a strange comfort in the magma, similar to the feeling of being near the arcanite stone. It was different somehow, but she couldn't quite place what the difference was.

Khall peered out of her little tunnel and into the river, searching for any unaware fry that had come by. Once she had arrived here a week ago, she had been intelligent enough not to simply launch herself headlong into the magma, instead testing the tip of her tail, then an arm, and finally her head. Even then, it had taken her quite a while to decide to attempt to open her eyes within the scorching lava. Fortunately, she had been correct in her assumption that he would be able to open her eyes and see within the magma. That she could see within the river was strange, but there were so many things that Khall wanted to question that she couldn't bring herself to care about why this new evolution allowed her to thrive so easily within the magma.

Instead, Khall occupied herself with looking out and trying to find herself some food. The numbers of the fry in the surrounding area of the river had begun to thin, since they were all that she had eaten in the past week, and her initial search resulted in nothing. When she'd evolved, something had guided her to enter this dangerous area, and when a Magma Spitting Fry had tried to attack her like before, the splash of molten liquid that came near wasn't even hot, much less dangerous, which had begun her experiments with the magma. Once she'd been sure of her safety within the magma, it hadn't taken long to return the favor of attempted assault. Khall was more practiced and effective than the small fish in the art of violence.

Once she'd entered the magma after her rigorous testing, Khall felt as if she'd finally arrived where she had always been meant to be. Her newly flattened tail was built to help with swimming, and she quickly caught up to the fleeing fry. They tasted better when eaten fresh, but still they weren't delicious. Nonetheless, whenever she was hungry or the desire struck, Khall was able to find enough to fill her belly to bursting. When first she'd tried to eat something while still submerged in the magma, though, she'd accidentally swallowed a fair mouthful of the magma. It hadn't burned while within her, but it did… solidify. Khall had spent hours in agony as she'd passed the massive stone, and ever since, she'd been immensely careful whenever eating anything, even outside of the magma.

With the combination of the constant nutrients, the aid of the arcanite-like feeling, and the simple passage of time, Khall continued growing longer and bigger, even without the aid of any further evolution. Her shoulders, hips, and neck especially began to thicken with muscle as the days went by and she swam and hunted constantly. She figured that at this point she had grown to about 5 ft long, and this measurement was easy and accurate enough, since all she needed to do to measure herself was to dig until the tip of her tail was just at the entrance of her recently excavated hole, and however much her total tunnel dug had increased by was her body's total length.

Too lazy to leave her home to try to find some food, since none had decided to come to her, Khall settled onto the ground of the tunnel at the back of her home and instead watched the slowly, gently swirling lava. Her new home itself was a burrow she had initially dug from a small way away from the banks of the magma flow. She had taken it all the way down and towards the river until she had made contact with the scorching stone that made up the riverbed. After her… experience with swallowing lava, Khall now knew that this stone was solidified magma. 

Anyway, there, the stone had taken a surprising amount of strength to be pushed from the mostly solid bed of rock and then into the river to allow the magma to flow up and into her home. In fact, for the stone to finally give way, Khall had needed to smash her head repeatedly into the rock to get it loose enough to be pushed out. Fortunately, her head was more than sturdy enough not to be permanently damaged by her repeated and forceful headbutts. After the magma had begun flowing up into her burrow, she had watched it flow up, but she just knew that it would stop at a certain level, and once that was done, her mansion was nearly complete. 

The final step was to go back out of the burrow and bury the original, above ground entrance. That had been surprisingly difficult, but eventually she'd managed it after bringing up some of the stones she'd knocked loose from the bed of the lava river. Once that entrance was fully closed, the home was finished, giving Khall a perfectly hidden place where she could spend time in either the magma or air while still being protected from everything that approached from the land and protected from anything larger than herself coming through the other entrance.

As she laid there, watching the magma from the comfort of the warm air above it, Khall decided to return to the magma and there swam to the entrance of her home, where she could continue to look out over the nearby river. having gotten herself comfortable, Khall let herself gently sway in the current that slowly disturbed the magma in the entrance of her home. With a quick thought, she brought up the occupation options.

[Current occupational options:

Miner. Acquisition requirements: dig a total of 50 ft of tunnel. Completion: 109/50 ft.Fell Miner. Acquisition requirements: dig a total of 100 ft of tunnel, slay 5 creatures within a tunnel of your own excavation. Completion: 109/100 ft, 4/5 creatures slain.

No other options currently available. Would you like to acquire occupation: Miner?]

With a shake of her head, Khall dismissed the words. Over the past week, she had levelled up to 7, but hadn't met the requirements for obtaining the Fell Miner occupation. The fry were so comparatively small at this point that it had become entirely impossible for her to capture them without killing them, and her home had obviously been marked a no-go zone by the surviving river dwellers of the area, so she hadn't had the opportunity to complete the final kill for the final requirement to evolve to a Fell Miner. So what could she do to ensure she could get the occupation as soon as possible? 

With eyes wide open Khall continued to wonder about what it was that she could do to progress. She was comfortable, safe… sedentary. When she allowed herself to calm down, she could feel the draw of immutability, but the reality of volatility pushed her to move, to grow, to change, to do something. She was no longer a little mud lizard happy to sit in a little burrow under an unremarkable little bush. She needed to be more. Yes, Khall had created a comfortable little home here in the river, but that wasn't enough, and she didn't want mere comfort. She needed to find the end, the absolute limit, to push against what she was now and become more than she had ever dreamed, more than she'd imagined, more than she could begin to understand. Not that that was particularly hard, she had seen so little and understood even less… 

[Proceed towards the Divine Summit, Ascension awaits. The System guides Stines. Ascend from the Void below. The Stars await you.]

Most of her understood that she needed to and should go higher, follow the slopes to the end, to the final, Divine conclusion of the path she was on, but that volatility within rebelled against any idea of dependence or concession to something not herself. Listening to something's instructions? Allowing herself to be commanded to do something or go somewhere? Never. That was what a follower would do, what the weak and impressionable worked towards.

Nonetheless, there wasn't anything here in her comfortable, safe home that could challenge her to grow or force her to become more and to continue changing. Her character, her very self had become one of change and growth, the volatility of difference ingrained to her deepest being. Sure, comfort was nice, but that was no longer what Khall wanted, what she could want. The flames of the lavaline that had served to corrupt her stone essence had, in fact, actually served to be a purifying flame that had cleared out the imperfections of the still young Khall, and now she knew and was sure of her path… though a small part of her wondered if she would change just like that once again. But if she did, she could! For now, she would follow her own path, one that she created for herself.

So, with one last, happy look at her home, that comfortable prison, Khall set off into the river, following the stream up and with the upward flow, to ascend from the Void and begin to Ascend. After all, though she felt like ascending was what that unknown "something" wanted her to do, what else could there be to do than to go up?