Kneeling, I gently picked it from the leaves and draped it across my left hand. The chain had snapped, as if its wearer couldn’t be bothered with the clasp. In my mind I could see her eyes glazing over as the life was drawn from her, till at last her dead hand had reached up to pull the last remaining annoyance from her prior life away. The creature she had become had ripped the pendant from her neck and tossed it as far away as possible.
There were tears on my face now, but I paid them no heed. Standing I tried to think of a course of action, but all my paths seemed dark and meaningless without her. I will have to hunt them down, all of them, I thought to myself. The shiggreth were a scourge meant to destroy humanity. Too long I had waited to act, and now my wife and unborn child had paid the price. Eventually I would find her too. And I’ll have to burn her as well, came the unbidden thought to my mind. With it came a torrent of rage as the floodgates of my soul opened up.
The air turned red as my anger boiled up, like blood from the earth, filling my mind and erasing my doubt. My heart beat like thunder and my body swelled as adrenaline filled my muscles with energy. A small voice in my mind warned me, I was losing control, but I didn’t care, not any longer. Power filled me with exhilarating potential to match the rage that had consumed my mind. I could see the world below me for miles; I could feel the earth’s blood deep below, crying out in anger and pain to match my own.
Around me the world grew smaller with each passing heartbeat and soon I could see all the way to Albamarl and further, beyond even that. Below it all the earth boiled and seethed in anger. The world of men was built upon a thin skin of crusted rock that barely covered the hot reality underneath it. It would take very little to unleash the fury below and wipe the surface clean with fire and magma. The thought had just occurred to me when I knew I must do it. Too long I had lain dormant, too long I had slumbered while the world grew cold and strange around me. I would wipe it clean.
I felt a hand resting atop mine now, a woman’s hand, long and slender. I looked down to see whose it was and I was surprised to see that my arm was red and swollen. It appeared to be made of molten rock. Resting atop it was a dark brown arm and following it I found its owner, Moira Centyr. “Stop Mordecai, this is not the way,” she rebuked me softly.
I gazed at her with tears in my eyes, tears that fell to the earth and set the dry leaves there aflame. Moira was tiny now; she had never looked so small to me before. “Who is Mordecai?” I asked her. The name felt familiar but it held little meaning for me.
“Mordecai is the man you were, the man you must remain,” she answered sadly. “Do not let your anger destroy everything you have worked to build.”
Her words brought my memories back and I suddenly understood my anger. “They must be punished,” I told her.
“No,” she said. “Not all of them, if you do this everyone will die. Does your mother deserve to suffer?”
A face appeared in my mind when she said those words and I remembered Miriam. I didn’t want to hurt her, yet my anger was beyond restraint. “I cannot stop now,” I told her.
“You must Mordecai, let go of your anger. You must not give up your humanity, not yet. Let the fires cool. Remember how your father banked the hearth at night? Relax… the fire will not die, just let it slumber, it does not need to burn so hotly.” As she spoke I grew calmer and I began to breathe again, though it seemed an unfamiliar practice.
After an unknowable period I finally regained myself. Moira talked to me through it all, soothing me and reminding me of things from my mortal life, helping me to regain my perspective. When I had finally recovered my sanity I was astonished at the change in my physical body.
I seemed to be made of molten rock; I was so hot I glowed like an iron pulled from a furnace. Now that I had calmed down though I was cooling off and my color had changed to a dull orange. I was also a lot bigger than normal. I stood at least fifteen feet in height and everything else had increased proportionally. Now that my mind was back to normal I felt close to panic at the changes in my body. I had no idea how to return to being flesh and blood again.
I looked down at Moira, desperate, “What do I do now?”
“I’m just relieved you’ve finally recovered your senses,” she replied.
“What about this?!” I said in a panicked tone, holding up my enormous stony hand.
“Now that you are yourself again I would think that part should be simple for you,” she said. “In case you don’t remember you just nearly wiped the face of the earth clean of all life. I think the rest of us deserve a minute to collect our wits.”
“Perhaps if you could just explain how I got this way,” I offered.
“I’m not sure how you did any of what you just did,” she said in an odd tone. “Normally when someone melds with the earth the way you did their mind is completely absorbed and they lose all conception of their prior emotions, yet somehow you projected your emotions onto everything else in the process. I even felt angry. You didn’t just become part of the earth, you made the earth become part of you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice held an almost petulant tone. “Except that you shouldn’t still be yourself. You went too far, and that’s an understatement. You should be like me now.”
I glanced at my body, “I think we do share certain features.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she snapped. “I’m not real; I’m a shadow of a person that once existed. You are still yourself.”
“I can’t go back to Lancaster like this,” I informed her.
She sighed, if elemental beings can be said to sigh that is. “You have shifted your physical body. In this case it was a side effect of your joining the earth but if you had gone any further your body would have completely lost humanoid form and become indistinguishable from the earth itself, does that make sense?”
I nodded. “So how do I undo this?”
“Idiot,” she said suddenly. “To think you would do so much yet be unable to manage the most fundamental part of shape shifting.”
“I haven’t had the most communicative teachers,” I replied sarcastically.
“Close your eyes and envisage yourself as you were before,” she replied, not deigning to respond to my remark. “Block everything out but your personal self, cut your ties to everything else. You must not think of anything but your body, and it must be the body you remember. Listen to the substance of your current self and coax it into becoming the self you remember.”
I thought about what she said for a moment before speaking. “Can I change anything?”
“What do you mean?” she said with a frown.
“I had a chipped tooth,” I said by way of example, “could I reimagine myself with a whole tooth?”
“You occupy the body of a giant, composed of rock and magma, and you want to know if you can rebuild yourself without a chip in your tooth?” Her expression was less than sympathetic.
“Yes.”
She stared at me for a long moment, pondering before she spoke, “Yes you could rebuild your body with a perfect tooth; however such a thing would be risky. You must remember your body, not just mentally, but viscerally. If you make a mistake you could die. Trying to alter your remembrance during the process could produce a tragic failure.”
I clenched my granite jaw, “I just discovered my wife is dead and my best friend along with her, I don’t really give a damn if I fail.” With those words I closed my eyes and tried to do as she had said, imagining myself as I had been. At first nothing happened, until I listened to my body. Once I had its voice in my mind I began to change it. It was a shocking realization, I was a rocky giant because my body’s song said I was, and by simply changing its reality, I became the flesh and blood human I remembered.