Chapter 9: Murals

The space before Jessica was a nightmare given form. A landscape so hostile, so utterly lethal, that her mind immediately filed it under a single, succinct category:

Maze Hell.

The ground immediately in front of her was a jagged field of magma rocks, their surfaces cracked and glowing with inner heat. Even as she watched, fresh fissures spiderwebbed across their surfaces, new veins of orange-red light pulsing beneath. The rocks weren’t solid, they were temporary platforms, slowly being consumed by what lay beneath.

And what lay beneath was an ocean.

A vast, churning lake of molten rock stretched as far as her compound eyes could see, its surface a hypnotic dance of orange, red, and occasional sickly yellow where pockets of gas ignited. Bubbles the size of her entire body rose and popped, releasing puffs of superheated air that made the whole cavern shimmer. The glow from below painted everything in shades of apocalypse.

The air itself was wrong. Heavy and pressing. Each molecule seemed to have gained weight, dragging downward, pulling everything toward the hungry lake below. Jessica could feel it, a constant, insistent tug, like invisible hands trying to pluck her from the air and feed her to the flames.

As if that weren’t enough, she looked up.

The ceiling was alive.

Not with creatures, but with lightning. A crackling mass of electrical energy writhed across the rocky surface high above, arcs of blinding blue-white leaping between stalactites and along stone veins. The voltage was so intense that the air beneath it ionized, creating a faint ozone smell that somehow reached even her locust senses. One touch. Less than a second. Less than a millisecond. She wouldn’t just die, she would cease to exist on a molecular level.

‘That sly old man…’ Her mental voice was flat, hollow, drained of all emotion. ‘He didn’t tell me. He didn’t even hint. ‘Not easy’ he said. ‘Be careful’ he said. This isn’t ‘not easy.’ This is ‘actively trying to vaporize anyone who looks at it funny.’ This is a death sentence with extra steps.’

<< His exact words were: “Let me remind you, this journey will not be easy.” Perhaps your hollow mind suffers from short-term memory degradation? >>

‘FLAMING HELL! That’s not the point and you KNOW it!’ The retort was automatic, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was too focused on the impossible landscape before her, too aware of every single way this could go horribly, permanently wrong. ‘Hey, bastard. What do you think about my survival rate? Give me a number. Something to work with.’

The system was silent for a long moment. Calculating Jessica’s survival rate.

<< …12%. Baseline. >>

‘THE HELL?!’ The scream was pure, undiluted outrage. Then, quieter, almost a whisper: ‘Is… is it really that low? But it’s just liquid fire, right? I’m a flame. Shouldn’t I be immune? Or at least resistant? Like… fire doesn’t burn fire, right? That’s basic logic.’

Another pause. When the system spoke again, its text practically dripped with exasperation.

<< Did I ever state that you lacked immunity to thermal damage? No. I did not. Your assumption is incorrect. >>

A pause. Then, with the slow, deliberate patience of someone explaining colors to the blind:

<< Sigh… I’m currently using your eyes for flames sake. Perhaps, instead of panicking, you could observe? The lava. Look at it. Actually look. Not with your panic, but with your eyes. >>

Jessica’s mental frown deepened. What was there to see? Lava was lava. Hot. Orange. Deadly. She’d covered this.

But she looked anyway. Really looked. Let her compound vision sweep across the churning surface, taking in details she’d missed in her initial terror.

The heat, yes. She could feel that, and it wasn’t actually uncomfortable. Warm, even. Like a pleasant bath.

The gravity, pressing down, trying to pull her in. That was dangerous.

But something else caught her attention. A movement in the lava that wasn’t thermal convection. A slithering.

She focused. And there, almost invisible, perfectly camouflaged against the molten rock, a shape. Long. Serpentine. Coiled and waiting.

[STATUS]

+

Level: 6 [Infant Rank]

Specie: Lava Viper

Magic Cores: [1/1]

Innate Abilities: [Flaming Poison]

Abilities: Unique Skill [Lava Breathe] [Lava Camouflage]

+

Her gaze tracked further. Another shape. Another. The lava wasn’t just a lethal environmental hazard, it was infested. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of serpents writhed just beneath the surface, their bodies indistinguishable from the molten lava until they moved. They were waiting. Waiting for any creature foolish enough to attempt crossing would become an all-you-can-eat buffet before it reached the first rock.

‘Shit.’

The word was small. Inadequate.

‘Shit, shit, SHIT!’

She pulled back, her mind racing through options that all ended the same way, with her in a stomach.

Fly through? The gravity would pull her down. Even if the lava didn’t burn her, and that was still a massive ‘if’, she’d land right in the middle of a viper convention. Breakfast of champions.

Fly high, above the gravity? The ceiling waited. A millisecond of crispy nothingness. Not an improvement.

Wait for luck? She’d be old before anything changed. Older than Old Gramps. And then what? Die of expiration?

‘Sigh…’ The sigh was deep, ancient in its own small way. ‘I’m doomed. Doomed in every direction. Doomed in every possible way. This is it. This is where the flame finally—’

She stopped.

Her compound eyes, still sweeping the environment in that panoramic way of locusts, caught something. A detail. An anomaly.

At the far end of the right wall. The wall she had passed when entering this chamber. There were markings there. Carvings. She hadn’t noticed them before, had been too focused on the immediate horror of the lava lake, but now, with nowhere else to look, they stood out clearly against the dark stone.

‘Markings?’ Curiosity flickered through the despair. ‘I didn’t see those when I came in. I passed right by that wall.’

<< I did not notice it either. >>

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Even the system admitted it. The markings on the wall had been invisible to both of them until this moment. That alone was enough to make Jessica’s antennae twitch with unease. She leaped closer, not too close, caution still warring with curiosity, but close enough to finally make out the details.

It wasn’t just markings. It was a mural. Roughly painted, ancient, the pigments faded by time and heat, but still visible. Still speaking.

‘A mural,’ she thought, her mental voice hushed with the instinctive reverence of someone standing before something old and significant. ‘A story, painted on stone.’

Her compound eyes traced the first image.

A man stood on what appeared to be a mountain peak. Red hair, vivid, unmistakable even in faded pigment, cascaded around shoulders cloaked in dark robes. He stood calmly, impossibly calm, staring upward at a figure that dominated the sky.

A wolf.

Not an ordinary wolf. This one was the size of the heavens themselves, its body stretching across the mural’s upper frame. But strange, its form was indistinct, blurred, as if the artist had painted it through fog. Dark, hungry mist swirled around its massive shape, obscuring details, leaving only impressions of fur and fang. Only one thing was clear: its eyes. Two gleaming red points that stared down at the small figure on the mountain with what could only be described as amusement.

Jessica stared, captivated. There was something about those eyes. Something that made her feel, for just a moment, like she was the one being watched.

Then the mural moved.

Jessica flinched, her locust body instinctively Leap-boing! backward a full meter, flame flaring with alarm. But the movement wasn’t threatening, it was narrative. The image shifted, like pages turning in a comic, transitioning to the next scene while she watched.

‘Interesting…’ A mental smile formed despite her caution.

She moved closer again, drawn by the story.

The second panel showed the same red-haired man, but now he held something in his hands. Something that glowed from within, a warm, inner light that the ancient pigment somehow conveyed across millennia. An egg.

Not a chicken egg. Too large. Too significant. A dragon egg, like in the fantasy tales she’d devoured ever since she was a young girl. But this egg wasn’t just an egg, it glowed. It pulsed with inner light, as if it contained something struggling to be free, something meant to bloom but deliberately, cruelly, kept from doing so.

‘Why?’ The question was involuntary, pulled from somewhere deep. ‘Why would he hold something that wants to shine? Something that wants to be free?’

An emotion rose in her, unbidden and sharp. Anger. Hot, irrational, furious anger at the red-haired figure in the mural. How dare he? How dare he keep something caged? How dare he look at that glowing, struggling light and decide it should remain trapped?

Her flames roared brighter, responding to the emotion. The anger wasn’t just about the egg, it began straying into something deeper, older, rooted in places she rarely visited. It was the loneliness of a little girl in an orphanage, staring at walls that seemed like a cell rather than a living space, waiting for parents who never came. It was the fury at being abandoned before she could even form memories, left to wonder what was wrong with her, why she wasn’t worth keeping.

‘Why am I feeling this?’ The thought was distant, barely heard over the roaring in her mind. ‘Why now? Why—’

<< Jessica. Control yourself. >>

The system’s words cut through the red haze like a blade. The anger receded, leaving confusion and a strange, hollow shame in its wake.

‘…Sorry.’ Her mental voice was small. ‘I was… out for a moment. I don’t know what happened.’

<< …If the mural is affecting you. Then I strongly suggest withdrawal and reassessment. The potential for hostile memetic— >>