Trials of Stone

The Trial of Body

He blinked his eyes, but the brightness of the flames had blinded him. He waited until he could see his hand in front of him, then stood and looked around him.

He stood upon a rough-hewn platform of greyish, translucent obsidian that floated over a valley between two towering mountain ranges of the same material, that stretched in both directions to the horizon and that mirrored the mountains that hanging peak-down above them. Behind the range was another, and another, an array of mountain lines that repeated off into infinity. Tiny obsidian shards floated in the air and spun slowly around the platform, and he saw that the air was filled with them for as far as he could see, except for above the platform on which he stood. He reached forward to touch a slowly drifting shard, and the instant he did, it darted into his hand, curved and lanced away into the distance, leaving another line of blood down the length of one finger.

He grimaced at the pain and stuck the finger into the folds of his shirt. He turned to look behind him, and saw another platform, floating just a few yards away and slightly higher than the one he stood on. The space above it too was free of shards, though the air between him and it was not. Beyond it, more platforms stretched away toward the first line of mountains, rising just over its peak and then curving down behind it, out of sight.

He looked down and surveyed himself. His heavy leather vest that would protect his torso, and leggings that matched it, but the sleeves of his shirt, though long, were thin and would do little. His head too was completely exposed. He couldn't jump through the field of shards without being torn to pieces.

He set the hammer down at this feet, then pulled off his leather vest. He picked the hammer back up, this time over his left shoulder, and with his right, waved the leather vest into the shards. They were batted aside and spun off into the distance, but none of them hurtled towards him. He held the vest up to shield his face, took two steps back and then leapt forward. He felt minor impacts against the vest as he ran into the shards he hadn't managed to reach before, as well as brief touches on his ankle and left wrist that were immediately followed by flashes of pain. Then his feet landed on the second platform, he felt it wobble slightly as though it floated on water, and he lowered the vest to survey the next in line.

Over and over he jumped from one platform to the next, slowly drawing closer to the glassy grey mountains. On each leap he gained a few new minor cuts, until after dozens of jumps the back of his neck and head, his ankles and his hands and wrists were covered in lacerations. Though each wound was small on its own, together they built up into an itching, nerve-grating fatigue that added upon the bone-deep weariness the long series of leaps had induced.

Then, as he leapt to the platform that hovered just above the peak of the first mountain, he slipped. His foot landed on a sloped edge of the platform, and his boot slid over the glassy surface, abruptly down and behind him, the momentum of his leg pulling the weight of his body with him. He flailed forward with his right hand, releasing the vest to grab on to the platform and just caught an edge of its faceted surface that immediately cut into his palm. He gritted his teeth over the pain, until the shaft of the hammer slipped off his shoulder, the heavy steel head swung down and, as it reached the bottom of its ark, hauled on his body. The obsidian edge burrowed into his palm, and he screamed at the agony of it, barely managing to hang on rather than fall to his death. At the same time, his legs swung back and forth in the array of shards beneath him, and all of them immediately leapt for him. His leggings deflected many glancing blows, but more of the shards struck him point-on, and burrowed into his thighs and calves, eliciting more bellows of pain.

He shot a desperate glance beneath him, to see if he could survive a drop to the mountain below, but its peak gleamed like the edge of a knife, eager to slice him in half. He tried to wall the agony in his body away from his thoughts, but new obsidian shards kept attacking him, and he knew he had to act now, or else the pain would cause him to lose his grip and fall.

He turned the hammer around in his hand, so that the pointed end of its head faced outward from the platform. He started to swing it back and forth beneath him, building its momentum, until as it swung outwards again he added a haul of strength from his shoulder and carried it in a smooth arc up over his head, to land-point first on the top of the platform, digging into the obsidian with a whip-like crack that rang across the infinite landscape.

Immediately, the platform jolted against his body and, unexpected to him, started to list slowly but heavily down and to his left. The movement made it easier for him to haul himself on top, but as he looked up he saw the next platform pulling away from him. He had just enough time to grab his vest from off the platform, thrust it before him and leap blindly forward. He landed on the next platform on his knees, and he felt skin being sheared off his shins as he did, the momentum and weight of his fall letting the faceted surface cut straight through his leggings. His scream echoed louder than it ever had before. He fell onto his back, simply panting, exhausted.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the previous platform change the direction of its list and slam into the one he had just landed on.

The obsidian beneath him let out another hollow crack and started gliding to the right, faster this time from the added momentum of the collision. With no time to think, he scrambled to his knees, thrust the vest ahead of him and again jumped forward. The moment his feet left the surface the platform started drifting towards the one ahead of him. He didn't pause after he landed, immediately leaping for the next one and hearing more whiplash-cracks along with the crash of shattered obsidian behind him. He glanced around the vest, catching a stinging blow across the cheekbone for doing so, and saw that the series of platforms curved down and around, running into the mountain side out of his peripheral view. Shards of obsidian, some far larger than any of the gently drifting needles started tumbling past him, and the sounds of destruction behind him only increased. He felt the platform beneath him split just as his foot left it, and he accelerated as much as he could, sprinting blindly from platform to platform, letting the gravity of the infinite landscape carry him down the enormous spiral case of wide, shallow stairs.

Then, in the middle of his bound, his foot landed on a glassy surface far sooner than he had expected, and it slipped and shot out behind him. He tumbled forward, rolling multiple times before sprawling on the apparent ground. The crashing behind him reached a hideous crescendo, the light around him seemed to flicker on and off, and after a subjective hour he was left in utter silence.