power I had found. No wonder I had been restless and half-mad, with an abundance like this close by! It was a miracle I didn't split in two. Those first minutes of bathing in that wealth exploded in me. If I hadn't protected myself on the way down, it might have eaten me like a chip of wood.
Floating there, the part of me that still had sense knew I was in danger. It found a mess of spells I had made once to soften, then harden, rock to trap an enemy. I used the spells now, with some changes. I grabbed power, not stone, and turned it into a tough shell of protection around what I already had.
Then I drifted, my magical eyes taking in my surroundings. I had come to the ceiling of an immense chamber under Starns Island. Below me was a huge pool filled with melted stone. Minerals, metals… they all swirled together in different colors of hot. The chamber squeezed them together in a stone vessel that melted even while it kept them underground. The moving colors enchanted me, calling to me. I thought I saw faces in them and hands. They beckoned me to join the fiery spirits that swam in that pool. I could feel myself melting around the edges. What would it be like down there? Maybe it would be like joining one huge lake of melted stone and magic, with no beginning, and no ending. I thought I would like that.
Flare and Carnelian
I was starting to sink down through the air toward the pool when two shapes rushed out of the stone-melt.
They grabbed my protection-sphere, hauling me back up to the crack I had just left. Hello, hello, look at you! one of them cried, twirling around me.
You're new, you're not old, you're not cold and dead, who are you? the other demanded, twirling the other way.
You're sparkly and you came from the cold place above, said the first. How did you get in? Show us! Take us out of here!
They danced me around like two kids who had found a new playmate. Then they wrapped their hot, snakey bodies around my shell. Now I was really glad for my protections. Even with three layers of magic around me, these two kids felt hot. Quickly I dragged more strength from the melted rock below. I put it into my layers to keep from being eaten. My magical body was all ideas and power, controlled by my mind, but I was certain that if my magical self burned to ashes, my real body would die, too.
Who are you? I asked. Where did you come from? Are you mages? What are your names?
What are mages? The one who felt more like a boy slowed down. He trailed a shock of sparks and flame from his top end, like a flare. To keep them straight, I decided to call him that. We came from below to here, Flare said. Now we want to go up. We must go up.
Can't you feel it? The other one had a prettier voice, more like a girl's. Her core fire was a darker, cooler orange, like carnelian. I thought it would make a good name for her. How important it is to go up, and out?
Slowly, though they kept spinning me around, they were changing. When they'd first grabbed me they were like a pair of comets, gripping me with long, molten stone tails. Now they were shifting, their bodies getting shorter. The tails became two legs; arms split off from the trunk. The ends at their heads settled into their bodies until they had formed necks. Were they copying the shape of my magical body? I had always liked to appear human, maybe so I wouldn't forget.
Once they had simple bodies, they changed even more. Flare was sapphire blue, still with his trailing flame of hair. He had black-rimmed eyeholes around flame eyes. Carnelian had turned her fiery hair black like mine. She made herself a nose and mouth, as well as eyes.
What are you? I felt like an idiot for having to ask again. A real mage would know, it seemed to me. What are you doing here?
We're the children of the pool. Flare spun until he was a blur, then stopped and took his humanlike shape again. We were born there. We swim there, too, sometimes, but that isn't all we are anymore.
We want other things than just melting together now. We want to go out.