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Excerpt from the recovered letters of Martim Walker

For the Guildmaster’s eyes only:

I have emerged from within the Churn-infested volcano at the center of Shichi Shima Shotou, which we call the Seven Islands, thanks to the environmentally sealed suit that I commissioned with a considerable amount of my own wealth and in utmost secrecy. I am unharmed but for bumps and bruises and full of never-before-reported information. I have not yet stopped to rest, as my mind races with the magnanimity of what I’ve witnessed.

I traveled alone into that heart of that darkness, and I am unashamed to admit that I was terrified. Ashen, slow-moving magma cooled into igneous pathways that I followed, spiraling down wherever I could find sure footing. I soon found evidence of life: Silversword plants and green-red moss struck out from the porous rock faces with threatening beauty. The ground thickened with shrubs and ferns and then various jungle trees which grew to monstrous size the further into the volcano I ventured.

All was silent while the Churn took notice of me, stalking me like a predator, sniffing at my fear. And then, it began to speak. I heard its whispers in the small hairs on my neck, uttering a language I have never heard. When I spun to see what whispered, I saw nothing. Soon it was inside my mind, replacing my own language, so that my thoughts spooled out in these strange syllables. “Ebbet ikro ido?” it demanded, and somehow I knew to respond, aloud, with my own name.

Behind the giant leaves, I observed enormous scorpions and beetles that skittered, without sound, away from the dim light. Growth burst from every available finger-width of rich soil, vines and leaves and slithering things fighting for space, twisting around one another. A bright red frog eyed me from its perch on a tall branch; a snail wide as a dinner plate made its slow way up a thorny tree; pigeons the size of eagles sailed overhead. I snapped a flower twice the size of my head from its stalk and the flower struggled in my grip; I watched it grow a new stem that plowed deep into the volcanic soil by my feet with haughty indignance, and the whisper said, “Astek givav ikri edu buvad bebu…”

I might have wandered forever in the Churn, lost in its endless wonders, if not for the storm. As I approached the heart of the volcano, the mist grew thicker and swirled with igneous dust. I pushed forward even when I could not see, drawn to the whispers which grew louder and more insistent with every step, until the ground beneath my feet trembled. I lost my footing and was tossed away by the storm. My arms flailed in a panic; I grasped a thick palm branch, but I was flung away again by the strong wind.

In that Churnstorm I experienced a most strange phenomenon: I saw visions of myself reflected in the fog and dust all around me. I call them visions, for they could not have been me, but they were solid as I. So disturbing were these visions that I couldn’t bear to not embody them; in this one thought I felt in my body a painful buckling, a sensation like all of my bones breaking, folding in on themselves and then unfolding again into another of the visions.

When the hurricane began to sweep me again deeper into the volcano, I willed myself to be another vision of myself, and traveled to it in the same fashion. In this way, trespassing from vision to vision, I managed to make my way toward the visible sky. As my men pulled me by the arms to safety, I heard the whisper insist, “Ikro vli ve shavod.” I am told that I responded, “Oeda vli stishad!” I do not remember this, nor do I have any understanding of this phrase.

My terrified fellow Explorers have surmised that this would be my last — indeed any human’s last — excursion of its kind. This belies nothing but an unforgivable lack of imagination. I have already begun sketching out a pulley system to be worn upon the shoulders of my sealed suit, through which would crank lengths of chain and hooks, to secure me into the ground or onto sturdy plant life for encounters with future Churnstorms. The scientific implications of Churn study cannot now be denied.

All secrets are worth knowing,

Martim Walker

