Stone Leviathan:

Day and night caravans came, elephants and horses, camels and carts, anyone who had learned of the great tremors. The village of Kinnereth had a secret tradition, and it was ready to share it with the world. Earthquakes and eclipses, omens and signs, every layer of the cosmic neighborhood pointed to this place, or rather, beneath it.

The native villagers had developed an ancient system of torches and candles as they descended in the earth, a path kept for hundreds of generations. At the bottom of the path there was a foundry. The heat and pressure of the forge never ended. There was always someone in attention, someone pumping the metal heart. The foundry was dedicated to make a great chain, each link was made and formed by the villagers and attached to a longer series of links, and the longest chain could only be seen in pieces.

The foundry was immense, yet seemed superficial, and nearly peripheral to the bottom of the cavern beneath the village. The whole floor was a thick and unyielding black. The fires of the foundry could not pierce the inky fog. The chains were lowered into the darkness, and the nearby villagers listened. New links were then made, attached to the chain and the process repeated.

Until recently, the growing metal worm said nothing.

Deep below the villagers and their monotonous ritual of darkness, a creature had stirred; a terrible leviathan without name. It was gestating in its subterranean cave with a thick covering of slimy protection. The villagers had only discovered a small part of a larger cave, and the barrier of darkness had kept them from descending further.

Hundreds of people encircled the small village, and the population swelled into a septic nightmare.

No one knew what was beneath the black cavern, but the news had spread fast: The chain links had reached something, something which had responded with earthquakes and an audible clicking noise. Some suspected it was a great evil ready to unleash destruction upon the world. Some thought a new world was just beyond dark boundary, or perhaps a great treasure. Speculation spread over the growing village in candlelight conversations, handshakes, and allegiances.

The foundry was full of new workers, or rather new volunteers. The metal worm was increased each day, and with a new urgency of production.  The unknown had attracted the devout; those who took speculation to a reckless certainty. There were those willing to climb down the chain and investigate the darkness. They wanted to be the first, and their lives were unimportant to themselves, not when they could be part of something greater.

Not everyone was terrified or awestruck, some used the chance to sell their wares to a budding metropolis. They knew there was no infrastructure, no sanitation, no irrigation; this was a flashfire. Who knows how long the mystery would hold everyone here, or whether the frequent earthquakes would swallow up the village?  However, the devout and terrified would make great customers in the meanwhile.

Deep below the creature grew, the oily darkness was shell of an egg. Yet there was now a metal worm on its surface and the time immergence was near. Within the egg the creature pecked at a hole, a crack had formed, and its beak was smashing it out of instinct. With each gigantic peck of the creature, there was an earthquake.

A week was all it took before the pecking had broken through the darkness and the creature could be seen. They peered into the vast cave and saw an immense bird shape, but rather than feathers or down, it was covered in blue scales, vibrant and luminous. Yet when fully revealed it appeared to be sleeping, or at least resting.

The foundry chain was coiled near its head, like a thin hair on a human face. One by one the devout descended the chain and into the presence of the sleeping beast. Some prepared themselves to be devoured, some brought scrolls to attempt conversation, and others brought offerings of gems and crystals. Hundreds of people climbed down the great chain.

The creature however, had no such interests. After a few days of the human circus the creature started began stirring again. It gazed around at all the human beings. With a rumbling and subterranean thunder, it pecked at the human beings. Its beak was the size of large house, and devoured swathes of devotees at a time. Some managed to evade the oncoming monstrance, but where can you run when the earth is opening its maw to consume you?

The creature was fully excited and thrashed around as it shed the darkness. The village was overcome by a torrent of stone and earthquakes. The foundry was buried with the merchants and the caravans, the makeshift city fell into the earth by the displacement of the creature rising from the cavern below. Its newborn limbs caused fault lines to shatter and its roar was heard for a thousand miles.

It pecked through the debris, eating any creatures it could. Oxen, camels, horses, humans, dogs, chickens, all rolled down the scaly throat of bird-thing. It ate everything without consideration. After a few months, the creature coiled again and slept, its new body stretching itself in a restful growth.

During its rest, it attracted even more human beings. Armies came as ambassadors of nearby nations. Their metal weapons could do nothing against the sleeping beast’s scales. More devotees came and offered more desperate objects. They offered blood and ashes, they offered great golden hordes of treasure. The willing first wet the altar stone, followed by slaves and prisoners. The negotiation was generous.

After a few silent months, it awoke again, and its beak was dry and thirsty. It gorged on the armies and the offerings, consuming all nearby. Its body towered over the horizon, and the armies fled in vain. Who can strike down a mountain? Who can flee an avalanche? The shadow grew to meet the sun and then rolled back. Again, the creature slept without interruption.

At this point, all the people of the world had heard of the giant who shook the earth, and the blue terror who consumed armies. Everyone rallied in fellowship, they tried again to negotiate, they offered more blood and bones, more armies, and more treasure. Yet when the creature woke it didn’t matter. It predictably ate all nearby and had grown so large it could travel the boundaries of a nation in a single step. Its beak now rose above the clouds, spanning and even greater distance.

A shadow fell over the world, the size and presence could be felt by everyone who remained. Its breath was a clock; each inhale could be heard and the ground shook with tremors. The exhale was a blasting wind which could scour the mountains. Wherever the beast walked and breathed, wherever it slumbered and rose, the surface of the earth was bleached clean by its growing appetite. 

Within a few years, there were few places on the planet the creature could not reach in a single step. Its resting period grew longer and its growth even more monstrous; of all of its body, its neck grew by miles. When it woke, its head could travel to any part of the globe, limited only by the eyes of hunger.

The floating head, which measured hundreds of miles in length at this point, roamed the equator in search of new prey. Any trees with scooped up below the soil and digested in the belly of the beast. Any towns or cities were likewise gouged out of the earth and fell into the gizzard of the behemoth. Those who survived the storms and earthquakes, those who hid from the blue maw of annihilation, cherished their shadows of safety. The spine of the creature appeared as a mountain range, floating in the clouds, and heard as a shearing thunder. The blue peaks rolled through the sky, like a river of stone.

Humanity was reduced to a mere witness.

As the beast grew, so did its hunger and soon the earth was not enough. Its eyes looked to the orbs in the sky. Within a month the moon was crushed in its jaws. The sky fell, and pieces of moon covered the planet in choking haze of red. Fire rained down for weeks, and the sun turned red and dull. The beast looked to the sun and tried to stretch its neck out to eat it. It needed to grow longer, so it rested, coiling its neck as a sleeping serpent.

With the moon destroyed, the earth started a descending orbit into the sun.

It was 45 years before the coiled creature opened its gigantic eyes. Its neck had grown long, and the surface of the planet was alive with fire. The sun had come close on its own accord, all life had been incinerated or burnt into clouds of ash. The corona of the sun was seen above, covering the entire horizon in a sky of red plasma, no longer a distant orb, now a sea of incandescent turbulence, flowing in currents of nuclear fire.

The creature stretched out its neck again, but the sun made the size of the mighty beast to be that of a tiny mite. It melted the scaled face and angry maw; it burnt the hungry eyes. The creature screamed and howled in pain, but no one lived to hear it; human beings were long since extinct, unable to deal with the heat of the approaching star.

The atomic foundry burned bright without consideration for the cries of the beast. It didn’t notice the planet approaching, and when the terrestrial body reached the proximity of the cornea, the planet began to disintegrate in a molten fury of cataclysmic thunder. Then into a radiant fire, until nothing of the earth remained.

The creature was dead, unable to hold the sun in its mouth; the star had taken the gargantuan beast and turned it to dust.

Kitchen Remodel:

Plasma swords are fussy things, a little alcohol, exuberance, and someone is soon missing a limb. They are however quite useful for hedge trimming, city clean up, and cooking food while camping. The suspended plasma is derived from a neutrino field generated by double captured electrons and recycled through a Bayesian friction amplifier. A plain lawn sword costs about 17 credits, or 1 weeks’ worth of universal income. A decorative plasma sword can cost anywhere from 200-800 credits, not including permits.

Jeremy had a 7-foot plasma sword, the massive thing looked out of place on the plain white wall of his small living room. Whenever Jeremy felt down or listless, he turned on the sword, and listened to the hum of plasma. He named the sword Sharpie, after the marker company; an inside joke about how the pen is mightier than the sword. Wouldn’t a plasma sword with a pen’s name be even mightier? He was ready to tell anyone the name of the sword and share his miniscule humor, but no one ever asked. Most people assumed his 7-foot plasma sword was overcompensation for having a small bank account.

Like plasma swords, everyone had access to small penises. Genitalia could be removed, added, exchanged, augmented, altered, improved, and in every which way; fussed with. Some people had 3 penises, some had 2, some people had a half a dozen different kinds, one for each occasion. Also, like plasma swords the decorative models required years of saved credits or extra work. Jeremy had found much more peace in the death-blade than any pleasure a new penis would provide.

For Jeremy holding the plasma sword was an empowering experience. After a stressful day or tenuous social interaction, he would take the sword from its hanging place and hold the crackling weapon in front of him. As if he was posing for a comic book cover or practicing some lost form of Kung-Fu, he would hold the blade symmetrically in thoughtful meditation as he imagined all sorts of ways of annihilating the source of stress or perturbance. He was careful not to swing the sword too much. All the swooshes and curved arcs of destruction were in his head. After 20 minutes, he was centered, relieved, and returned to a tranquil confidence. For years Jeremy enjoyed his plasma blade, it became part of him, part of how he saw himself.

One evening while sleeping soundly, he was awakened to the sound of broken glass.

His eyes peeled open in a panic. The glass sounded an awful lot like the thin glass of his front window. He waited for another sound, anything to break the silence of the unknown. The noise came; drunk shuffling feet in his kitchen. Then the noise turned to clinks of dishes being gone through, then he heard the opening and closing of cupboards. Jeremy laid in the darkness of his bedroom, paralyzed with the terror of violation. The intruder was not attempting to be quiet; this was a smash and grab, they either had a weapon or were counting on the fear.

Jeremy found himself trying rally his courage. Should he call the authorities, should he lay and wait for it to be over? Or should he rush from his room and grab his plasma a sword? The darkness snapped with the idea. Like a practiced drill, Jeremy sprang to his feet, grabbed a nearby shirt and started to sprint for his sword in the living room. Jeremy usually slept nude but put the shirt on in an automatic action. The instinct to get dressed had been done for every year of his conscious life, but this time only his shirt made it unto his body before the emergency took over. His blue shirt and pale skin made him look like a wide-eyed Donald Duck.

The kitchen light was on, the burglar’s frantic motions could be seen when Jeremy emerged. He rushed to the sword and automatically turned it on and waited for the beam to come to its full crackle. Meanwhile the thief rifled through the drawers and put handfuls of foodstuffs, silverware and anything which looked of value in a crude plastic sack. It was clear to Jeremy the intruder was oblivious to anything else; they were shredded down to their insect intelligence. Either by drugs or mental derangement the rules of society had been abandoned in their eyes.

Jeremy had practiced the strikes with the plasma sword in his head, but his body was naive, and his imagination translated the motion into an awkward lurch. He entered the kitchen with a wide swing. The burglar jumped out of the way in surprise; a 7-foot sword was impossible to miss in the small room. They reflexively dodged the first attack. The plasma sword melted the doorway and cut a 4-foot gash in his kitchen wall. The next swing was an overheard chop. Jeremy redoubled his strike, his reasoning facilities shut down, unable to put anything into perspective. There was only the intruder and the sword.

The second strike blazed a cut through his ceiling, and pieces of the support beams fell to the ground with a red-hot glow. The intruder threw their plastic sack at Jeremy and tried to maneuver around him. Jeremy had been waiting a long time to kill his problems, and there they were trying to evade his strikes.

The third strike was a reversal of the overheard swing; a low uppercut dragged through the floor of his once pristine kitchen. The edge passed through his plumbing underneath and the body of the intruder and passed again back into the ceiling due to lack of control. Jeremy swung 3 more times at the body of the thief, as the darkness flowed from him. The plasma sword ripping a hole about 14-ft in diameter through his house.

Once the darkness cleared and the light of day returned, Jeremy called the authorities. He dressed himself in a civilized manner, set his sword down affectionately and described the occurrence as best he could. The new dawn creeped on his house, which now resembled a pile of rubble. His sword was confiscated as evidence, but Jeremy didn’t mind, he could always buy a new sword or repair his house, but the elation of righteous destruction was not something he could buy.

Jeremy bought another plasma-sword. This one was smaller, made no crackle, gave off no light, and was kept near this bed rather than presented as an insecure affectation.

Natural Order:

Sometime, in perhaps a distant future, but one with some semblance of familiarity, there was a farmer. Who after some time of growing into their job, had excepted their task. They didn’t have much of a choice, and choice wasn’t something people were overly concerned with anymore, much like chivalric honor or the belief a camera could steal your soul.

Choice died to serve the greater good.

In the arms race of microbiology, humans continued long past the finish line. They did not know they were behind the game. It wasn’t from lack of trying, or ingenuity, it was simply from the slower rate of change. A single month to a human being is perhaps hundreds, or thousands of generations for the microbes. As technology advanced to combat the microbes, it proved marginally successful: antibiotics, sterilization, isolation, all sorts of strategies were used. With each success, more human beings became more and more connected. With each connection, so did the bacteria and viruses, and with their superior rate of change, began to reverse those momentary success. Antibiotics put pressures on organisms to become more and more infectious, stealthier, often infecting huge amounts of people before blooming into symptoms.

Soon it was clear, unless we allied ourselves with something, we were never going to get control. The something, the ally would need to change as quick as the microbes. The hero was computer intelligence.

Once the new oversight intelligence was implemented, there was a noticeable decline in infection and death from viruses. The quality of life was again on the rise. The computer intelligence required obedience; if it demanded quarantine, the governments complied, and if a few thousand people needed to be processed, their deaths were justified.

Which brings us back to the choiceless farmer, who after being told what to do, had no other option, other than being processed. The object of cultivation however was not a typical farm. It contained a stream, a shallow pond, and trees for shade. They were a frog farmer.

Unknown to the farmer, the computer intelligence was only superficially able to address the ongoing struggle with the microbes. It had managed a neutral and slow peace, where small victories were savored as long as possible. However, the forces of nature rarely abide atrophy, and soon the microbes would find a subtle and quiet way to inch back unto the infectious throne. The computer intelligence realized it too would not be able to hold the peace indefinitely, since the system required an increasing amount of future sight. The computer intelligence could not quantify the number of variables required for determinism, it defaulted to the same pragmatic reactions as the humans who programed it.

The computer intelligence had contrived a way to deal with microbes was to deal with the insects. In this future there is an absence of biological variety, only a few mammals and insects could deal with technology. Insects, who are capable of overwhelming a system, and without predators soon dominated the same physical landscape as human beings. The microbes use the insects in the same manner human beings used cars. The world was a superhighway of bacteria, phages, virus, all connected by the milestones of progress.

So frogs became the answer. The computer intelligence dictated the development of ponds and swamps, and valleys of fertile muck for them. Frogs were good predators for mosquitoes, and soon the greater good understood why frogs were being farmed.

Then the computer intelligence also developed other creatures but made from synthetic DNA. Within 20 years there was a myriad of new creatures ready to play a role in the New World ecosystem. No one knew what a Hisstat was, but trusted the computer intelligence, if the Hisstat ate a couple people, the greater good would be invoked and the Hisstat was allowed to live. The frog farmer hated the Hisstat, they ate his frogs. The farmer’s self-worth as a dignified human being depended on the frogs his farmed produced eating the most mosquitoes. The farmer chased the Hisstat away by making noises and flailing their arms wildly.   

So the new world ecosystem grew, one frog farmer at a time, slowly spreading the net of variety out to make a stable foundation. The computer intelligence did as it was programmed and lots of people died, but the greater good was maintained.

The frog farmer still had to deal with Hisstats and frogs, and one evening when the sun was setting, a large Hisstat descended into the frog farm. The farmer rushed to the ponds failing his arms. The creature moved in such a manner as to avoid any detection by the frogs. Its legs moved at a different speed than its body. The frogs could not see the creature as a whole thing. The Hisstat walked around without concern as it gulped the frogs down one by one. The failing didn’t work this time and the farmer simply watched as his self-worth was symbolically swallowed by a strange walking bird thing.

Self-preservation proved stronger than obedience. They grabbed a bucket and hurled it at the lumpy stomach of the Hisstat. The hit was solid, and the frogs within croaked in surprise, as they were starting to understand their world was about to take a predictable turn towards another mucky transformation.

The farmer started to throw anything and everything at the Hisstat, until the Hisstat stopped moving. Confident in the death of the intruder, the farmer investigated the corpse. Killing a Hisstat was illegal, or rather, did not “serve” the greater good, so the farmer began burying the creature, hoping no one saw the act. The farmer was elated the frogs were saved and felt confident they were serving the greater good.

Unfortunately for the farmer, the Hisstat had another body part which moved even slower. Unlike the legs and stomach, this part moved disembodied. Once a predator killed its body, it would consume the foe and reconstitute the corpse. A black streak of crackling energy flowed from the Hisstat’s disembodied upper mouth and enveloped the farmer. Within moments the farmer’s body was used to rebuild the Hisstat and the remaining frogs were eaten without interruption.

Evolution:

Julie had just put in a shower pan in her bathroom. She was never good at home repairs so the feat of going through the 57 steps for a new shower gave her a sense of accomplishment. She was waiting 24 hours for her bathroom specific caulk to dry.

The pluming haunted her when she went to sleep. 3 times she had failed to seal a pipe, and water greeted her in the morning with painful mystery. Her hands were shredded with tiny metal scratches. Julie rung her hands in satisfaction in the morning when the bathroom was dry. She could feel her heartbeat in the tiny cuts.

The 24 hours wasn’t long to wait, she was ready for a shower. The sweat from the last week was starting to feel like a second skin. Julie had half-thought about seeing how long she could go without bathing, avoiding the shower construction altogether, but she liked society and the cost of a little physical maintenance wasn’t so bad. The shower would feel great, and it would be a good victory lap for her success.

The 24 hours was up, the bathroom cleaned and ready for use. Julie stripped down and put her dirty corpse under the hot water. It felt like she expected. 20 minutes later she was clean, baptized by the last step of a long process.  As she looked up, elated in the stream of a hot shower, she noticed some brown and red crust near the corner of the shower. It had not been there 24 hours ago, and the shower wasn’t used until this moment. How could decay or mold build up so quickly? Her victory lap was interrupted. She felt vexed, irritated to be so close to perfection only to discover some crust at the edge of her work.

She inspected the red crust, it flaked off easily and left a little pock in part of the shower’s plastic covering, but after a few moments the crust was removed. Julie went to sleep that night thinking about the corrosion and dreamed of crusty surfaces of large showers awaiting her attention.

There was nothing visible when she woke up, the shower was pristine. However, when she returned home later, the crust was seen again. She also found the red and brown crust forming on the acrylic shower pan below. She removed the crust as she did before, but this time she collected the flakes in a small cup and decided to ask someone at the hardware store for some help. She had developed a warm repour with some of the employees over the past string of days. The number of trips had given time for small talk.

No one at the hardware store knew what it was, they shrugged and said, ”I dunno maybe rust?” Julie felt more frustrated with the dead end. She knew it wasn’t rust. She picked up some cleaning supplies on the way home, perhaps it was something more organic, something like mold.

When she got home, there was new crust on the edges of the shower. Julie vigorously scrubbed and cleaned the flakes off and afterwards thoroughly sterilized the bathroom. She used bleach solution, antiseptic wipes, and dried with hand towels. Everything was thrown away or washed.

The next morning, the crust had grown more. Julie was more determined to rid the bathroom of its condition. She cleaned it all again in the morning. On her way to work, she checked her phone at a stop light and noticed a little of the crust forming on the edge of her screen. Just a little flake, and it was flicked off easily out the window.

Julie finished her work day in a distracted emergency. Would she be cleaning crust from objects forever? She called a mold specialist before heading home, scheduled an appointment for the following day. She took a mental health day and rescheduled tomorrow’s meetings for next week. During her drive home, she wiped crust from her phone twice.

When she got home the crust had spread to a variety of places: Her computer screen, refrigerator, toaster, and she even found some crust in her bed sheets.

Julie gave up, there was no time to clean everything. She started with the seal on the refrigerator, but soon discovered her Tupperware, vegetable crisper, and the handle was starting to crust. She needed help, and put her hopes on the eyes of the specialist scheduled tomorrow. Julie slept in light and frequent turns, worrying about the growing red and brown invasion of her life. She dreamed of endlessly scrubbing surfaces with the whispers of the crust flaking off and floating to the floor.

Julie woke to a larger nightmare.

The specialist called her back and said they would have to reschedule. They were sorry, but the situation was unavoidable. Julie slumped in her crusty chair, defeated and surrounded by a growing tide of flakes. She turned on her television and found the phenomena was common. Every local station was reporting on the crust growing at an alarming rate. They were interviewing specialists who were reluctantly scratching their heads with awkward answers.

The best description came from an industry scientist who worked with polymers. “Some common bacteria has probably found a way to break down plastic without the use of oxygen.” The quote repeated 45 times in an hour. Julie watched, grateful there was finally some sort of answer or explanation. The news stations were pumping out information, instructing people to not breath in the plastic-eating organisms.

The television shorted out with a puff of smoke during a commercial break. It contained enough plastic to lose physical integrity. After the second hour it collapsed into a slump of metallic bits and a single metal bar. Julie stared at the space the television had previously occupied, aghast the void. There was no specialist coming, the world was falling apart.

The first day was the hardest; Julie wasn’t sure what could work or not in the next few days. How much plastic was inside her car? Should she try and get to a place before the traffic systems dissolved? Her house had been surprisingly unaffected, at least by comparison. The shower still worked, although it kicked up a cloud of the flaky red and brown dust. Water turned brown and metallic, but there were no other sources yet. All of the plastic bottles fell apart in their warehouses and shipping containers. Julie drank some tap water, but only sparingly, there were still aluminum cans out there somewhere.

After a week, the dust too seemed to disappear, leaving the world with a great void of purpose. So many objects were now crippled designs, half-formed knots and patterns, and only those born before the plastic sterilization would know. They too would be the last to remember neon toothbrushes, or computers, those whose existence would have to be remade without the use of plastics.

Julie looked back on the first week of no-plastic and realized how small of a concern her shower was. Her world had been suddenly connected to a wider experience. The clarity of global crisis made sleeping easy, and for all the discomforts of a new way of life, she was content to be part of something rare.

The Writing Stone:

The City of Eog grew in the mouth of the River of Ang. It grew more each year, and a few more faces were counted. No one had yet recorded the events of Eog or how it came to be. A fog of knowledge floated in the clusters of ragged people. Counting as a skill had been newly learned, offering a clarity in the fog of new civilization. Base 12 had temporarily replaced base 10, which required both hands. Base 12 could also translate easily into the lunar calendar.

Eog was a pool of sweaty Neolithic mathematicians.

At the deep end of the city was a sorceress, who had a keen sense of geology. She collected every variety of crystal and stone and was able to count them in the new methods. She had recently developed a habit of digging in the old waste yard. This section of the city had been used once, but for whatever reason had been abandoned. She found tools of alien design, things whose purpose and use were lost. She felt the same about rocks from the caves near the city. Were they too like the abandoned tools?

Her scavenger nature netted all sorts of strange baubles. She battered with stones of refraction; light dappled vistas of quartz and botryoidal. As an onlooker would gaze with squinty wonder, the sorceress would weave an enchanting spell, rendering the onlooker dazed and muddled, and open to all sorts of agreements.

The sorceress lived like a feather; weightless on the back of a fledging city. She took little and didn’t stay around long enough for people to see the same radiant glare twice. She stayed on the move, slept where its dry, avoided violence, and disappeared into caves when feeling the itch for new stones.

She once used her sparkle and charm to lure some strong backs to help move some stones. She promised them meals and locations of useful tools. During the reckless excavation, the cave collapsed, and the mouth of the earth was sealed. The sorceress survived, and alone found a way back outside. She lived in the caves, surviving on the sparkle and magic she could conjure to navigate the subterranean world.

When she emerged, she brought a few stones of worth, having hours of time to inspect the recently inaccessible cave networks. She brought back one artifact, a relic she suspected had been like a tool, left behind by some older society or people. A black stone which had caught the glint of the sorceress’s arcane light. It was found on a square tablet, one which seemed to have been removed, or reduced from the surrounding stone walls. The intention was apparent, though half-finished, the black stone rested on its surface.

The stone was small and elegant, and not unlike other polished stones, except for the moving liquid beneath the surface. It swirled as the stoned was picked up and swayed from side to side with the inertia of being moved. The weight of the liquid was noticeable, and after days of investigation discovered the stone to be like a bottle, being primarily a vessel with a hollow body. She could not determine how to open it with control. She knew how little it takes to shatter a rare find. When she returned to the surface, she would have more precise tools to manipulate the small black stone.

At this time the city of Eog was just starting to count the number of heads each year, as more people were being born or moving in. Writing was a new art, reserved for only wizards or sorcerers. Anyone practicing magic who was not trained would be kicked out of Eog. Wielding magic could be reckless and lethal. Everyone could die in a violent cloud of fire, at least as far as accusations of sorcery went. The art of writing required blood or ink and, writing itself wasn’t as important as understanding the symbols. The eager populace was fertile for emerging math-cults with exotic symbols of bizarre imaginations. What did 9 mean, 11, 144, or XXVII? Numbers were appealed to with pageantry; burnt offerings were dedicated to all sorts of numbers in the temples of Eog. The number 3 being the most traditional, allowing the older folks to fellowship in their ancestral counting system.

Some of the metals and substances the sorceress had collected were starting to take their toll.

The sorceress had started to give herself a name and was introducing herself as Nix. She carried a piece of tanned hide with a series of symbols. Nix was supremely interested in the process of ideas themselves being etched. The idea of Eog as a city would have to be etched, Nix talked about it all the time, rambling on about the city having a name like she has a name. She tried to suggest that the city of Eog be counted like the heads of people every year. Soon there would be larger and larger cities, full of people being counted. Nix was growing mad with the burden of knowledge.

For all of her madness she found a use for the black stone; a small tap of a finely weighted rod, she had opened a hole in the tip the stone. Within was a black ichor, and it smelled of pungent rank, something sulfuric and unending. However, it proved both catastrophic and practical to use as a writing medium.

Nix had collected 5 tan hides for writing. She had conjured the most aggressive animal she could think of, snarling her lips in an involuntary growl. Then she put the stone to the leather and pushed it slowly across. She paused and suddenly changed direction, erratically moving in small motions, trying to draw the likeness of teeth and claws. The thick fluid moved like tar and took a small shape of a pointed creature.

The following day there was a rumor floating in the pre-talk the of the city. A strange pointed animal was seen, mauling 3 people before disappearing into the night. Every description reminded Nix of her drawing, and she decided not to show anyone her picture, she did not want to be accused of reckless magic, even if she was a sorceress.

If the ink had power, or magical properties, she was going to have to investigate. The second symbol Nix thought about was the largest number. She stretched her mind, focusing in the number of leaves on a tree, 200, 300. How many on each branch? She channeled the feeling into the same pointed and jerky motion. The number was a mix of crude swirls and horizontal marks.

The more exposure to the ink Nix had, the more madness she raved about. She claimed to have the highest number and dared anyone to challenge her. One person debated her but gave up from frustration; her methods too eccentric and strange for them to follow. Nix took the lack of further objection to be a sign of victory.

Urban mania is rarely a soliloquize. Once enough people begin to move in the same direction, agreement happens. Another spelunker had recently been infected with the same degenerate symptoms of heavy metal poisoning. Then the hide tanner began to understand the ravings of Nix,. The symbols were divine symmetry; beautiful runes of perfect form. Nix wrote more and more, making symbols for fire, wealth, and finally the 5^th hide containing the symbol for plague.

By the time the 5^th symbol was scrawled in the soft leather, parts of the city of Eog had fallen into a maniacal clarity. Nix continued to write with the black stone. Everyone exposed to the hide or the ink was beginning to suffer some sort of mental deterioration.

New wizards and sorcerers lashed out, Nix was the first, rending an entire group of frenzied mathematicians blind with an intense beam of white light. Her power growing with the onset of confidence. She claimed to be queen of Eog, as Sorcerer Queen of Highest Numbers. No sooner had she claimed the title; a plague of frogs infested every corner of Eog with vile tides of amphibian waste.

She fled again into he caves, avoiding the responsibility of leadership, preferring the safety of darkness while madness washed over the city. There, within the dark cave walls the sorceress Nix died from mental disintegration, but she left a piece of the writing stone, the inkwell of madness. The stone was buried by the fires of the city and later abandoned. A small amount remains, although the fires seemed to have sealed the madness within, inaccessible.

The inkwell which was perhaps responsible for the fall of the city of Eog and has still enough ichor to etch one more symbol.