The stone

He lay there, his fear crippling him much more than his mangled legs that were currently soaking the dirt with his blood.

His life was seeping out of him by the second; his fall was too great to survive without assistance, and that assistance was what he feared.

The person closest to him when he had been attacked was a man who lived to destroy him.

Ignatius knew that if the man found him, he would spend his last days praying for death.

The irony was that it would be the first time he prayed in years.

Ignatius founded a church some twenty years ago and worked to convince the nation that he was God's chosen messenger.

He had schemed and lied his way to the proximity of power and waited until the time was right to seize power himself.

He bit his tongue at every stupid suggestion and bowed his head to prevent the disdain that was ever present on his face from showing.

Every moment where it would have been easy to betray these fools, he instead shored up their power.

Fattening them up until the day of his choosing.

That day had occurred a mere five days ago.

Having succeeded, now all he had to do was kill all these God damned rebels.

The Hemlocks, The Sugar Beets, The Long Knives, The True religion, the storm brigade.

Any of whom could contest his supremacy, any of whom could be behind this attack.

Ignatius knew, however, who it was who hunted him now, who had shot him out of the sky and had hunted him in his sleep, who was even now chasing him to the end of the earth.

It was a man who refused to die; no matter how often he was cornered, betrayed, captured, and broken, he kept coming back.

A man who had been on the receiving end of Ignatius's schemes far too many times.

Alan Fumegate.

If he was found by Alan, he would face fifteen years of pent-up fury, and death would not come quickly.

Ignatius had started to believe that the man was his hubris personified, coming to steal away everything he valued.  

The ground had shaken, the forest burned, and there had been explosions and the shrieks of his abandoned followers.

Alan, in his unmistakable mech, buzzed around killing many of the most prominent members of Jehovah. The finance minister was set aflame.

The secretary of defense impaled on his own mech.

The treasurer and a group of CEO's were decapitated by the blades of the mech known only as Agony.

Members of the opposition party, as well as members of the shadow government, all flattened at once.

People that Ignatius would have had to slowly get rid of overtime had just been murdered before him.

It was interesting how the Hemlock kill list and his own were so similar.

Ignatius would be giddy with relief if he wasn't at the top of their list.

So he had fled at the first sign of danger, fleeing so quickly he had forgotten that he had his own mech that offered a measure of defense.

He could hear the mechanized behemoth in pursuit until he stumbled into a cave and, in desperation, tried to dig himself out of the back of it.

A bomb had gone off, and the ground had opened up and swallowed him whole.

Sometime between his frenzied escape through the forest and his fall into the cavern, he had emptied his bowels.

He had broken his femur, ruptured his spleen, his arm was burned so badly the bone was visible, he could barely hear from his right ear, and he was concussed.

But he was alive.

He set about to correct that.

As it turns out, the ends of the earth were in an underground cavern.

A cavern that seemed to have all of the world's riches.

Not only would he be tortured, but his dreams would be destroyed.

When they found him, they would have enough money to rebuild everything he had destroyed and to replace him.

Money and faith were his only tools for controlling the fools who had placed their lives in his hands, and now the enemy would have taken both.

Shit, they may have also taken his hands.

Ignatius looked around him, taking in the jagged rocks of Jade that had cut his hands as he reached out to arrest his fall.

The sharpest edges were too high for him to reach.

There were silver coins in piles around him, large enough to bury him alive.

But suffocation was not the way he wanted to go.

He continued his appraisal when a thought struck him that forced him to pause his frantic search for death.

Why could he see so well if he was underground?

It was dim, to be sure, but he could see everything around him.

He looked up at the hole he had fallen through, trying to figure out where the light was coming from.

It was too high up to provide this much light.

He looked around him, ignoring the trinkets and jewels that he would have killed just hours ago.

There.

He looked and saw that the light was brighter to his left.

He did not know why he bothered, why this mystery compelled him to move his battered body.

Perhaps he just did not want to die in this dimly lit, dirty room.

He crawled towards the light.

Every inch was an inch closer to death.

Every inch was an inch closer to destiny.

His arms started to bleed, then his hands and his one working leg ached from overuse.

The journey could have taken minutes or years; he would not have known.

The light grew brighter with each inch; he could see now that he was not crawling through the dirt but flecks of gold.

Ignatius made his way to a room that was getting wider as he descended to what must be the center of the world.

His mind could not comprehend some of the things he saw,

things he had never seen before, and things that should not exist.

Dead things suspended in glass appeared to be monsters of legend.

Things that had too many arms, wings, and heads.

Things that existed only to terrify.

Some familiar things seemed out of place: the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and the Hope Diamond.

Stacks of every currency that had ever existed were packed in tight bundles strewn about the room, stuffed in suits of armor, tossed atop piles of gold bars, and spilling out of  

Whoever this place belonged to appeared to have made a habit of hoarding everything of value that had ever existed.

As he crawled towards the now blinding light, it became clear where he was.

Ignatius had spent many of his forty-five years stealing, first from his father, then from his parishioners, and finally from his allies.

He could steal, beg, and borrow for a thousand years and never have half the wealth he could see around him.

There were statues in a semicircle around the pond.

Their eyes glowing in the light emitting from the statues were reflected off rubies larger than his head.

Their forked tongues were clearly silver.

The rest of the statues were gold, from their sharp talons to their outspread wings.

They were surrounding a raised giant obsidian slab in the middle of the pond, under the warm lights, six petrified eggs the size of pumpkins.

Ignatius had discovered a dragon lair.

There was no ignoring that he had passed unicorn horns, werewolf skulls, and a well-preserved cask of Basilisk venom - even if he would not know these things for a century.

He crawled through more gold in this room than in the Nation of Jehovah.

That myth and mysteries were the only things that could explain where he was.

Ignatius had always been able to jettison his understanding of the world when it became inconvenient and adopt the ideals that helped assure his survival.

That is why he ignored the gold-plated swords, the knives carved from emeralds, and the diamond-encrusted pistols.

That is why he focused on the plain black stone placed casually on the pond's banks.

The stone was the only place where the light seemed to shrink away.

It seemed like an ordinary rock, out of place here.

But Ignatius knew what it was; he felt it in his bones.

It was surly delirium more than faith that guided his movements.

Maybe his will was so strong that fate bent to it; he must survive because he was not done with this world.

He reached the stone, seconds from death.

He touched it.

His fingers tingled painfully as his flesh weaved itself back together. He let go of the stone in shock.

He looked at his now healed hand, his vision starting to blur.

He would not die today.

He grabbed the stone with both hands and cradled it to his chest.

Ignatius thought he had known pain, that being launched out of his mech into a tree was the pinnacle of agony.

He had been stabbed, shot, burned, and choked.

But as his bones fused, his cells split, and his skin regrew, he saw that he had never truly known pain.

The fact that he could now hear his screams was his only proof that his body was healing.

The stone whispered to him, asking a question to his very soul.

"Would you like to live long enough to discover the meaning of power?"

A question that had only one answer

Darkness found him.

A day later, Ignatius woke up.

He willed himself to sit up and found it to be an easy task.

He looked at the stone still in his hands.

It no longer tingled, and his body no longer hurt.

Its task is done; it now appears to be just an ordinary stone.

But Ignatius knew differently.

This stone had healed his body, not just the wounds he had received in the last 48 hours.

Ignatius had the energy of youth.

He walked over to the pond, careful not to touch the water, and leaned close to look at himself.

His hair was black again and no longer receding, the wrinkles around his eyes were gone, and his teeth were whiter than ever.

Logic would eventually lead him to the conclusion that the stone had spoken to him as it saved his life.

This was the philosopher's stone.

Having accepted his destiny, he could now see the words on the stone carved in small gold inscription:

"If you would like to live long enough to discover the meaning of power, carry me.

Here are my powers three:

Drink my elixir and live for all eternity.

Bathe me in your blood until I glow scarlet, and you will bask in my wealth.

Give me your will, and I will heal.

Lose me, defile me, betray my secrets, and you will lose it all.

I bless you and all who follow with greed that is unquenchable.

I am the philosopher's stone, and you are my student. "

Ignatius sat there for an eternity, the ramifications of his discovery dawning on him.

He thought he knew whose lair this belonged to, a man who had always seemed out of place.

He was always too prepared, too eager for war, and far too wealthy for his job as CEO of a Mineral company.

Clearly, dragons were real, and so was magic.

A dragon masquerading as a person couldn't be too out of the realm of possibility.

If the stone's words were to be believed, stealing this stone may lead to Nox's death.

Not stealing, Ignatius corrected himself.

Ignatius had found destiny.  

It was not theft to claim it.

He looked at the inscription; he would certainly keep this a secret.

His life depended on it. If even 1% of the stories about dragons were accurate, Nox would never stop searching for his treasures.

He would have to ensure that Nox did not discover who defiled his lair, and he needed to escape before he returned.

Luckily, Ignatius had just the tools to destroy this place.

He would make it look like a bombardment from the battle had caused it.

If he could make it look like the rebels had done it...

If he did this correctly, he could solve all his problems in one fell swoop.

He continued to think about the inscription; the stone would heal him only if he willed it to do so.

He thought of the many ways around that, poison, sudden attacks, theft of the stone, starvation, exposure, paralysis, killing him while he slept...

He would need to remain vigilant and hire security.

He could limit his sleep as long as he could heal himself from the consequences.  

If the stone could indeed extend his life in perpetuity, perhaps he could afford to slow his ascent and create fewer enemies.

He would have to test the stone further.

For starters, how does the elixir of life work? How did he create it?

He suspected that the stone's proximity to the pond was not a coincidence.

Other than the stone, the water was the most ordinary-looking thing there.

Water was scarce, but not enough for a rich immortal being to find it as valuable as gold.

The arrogant bastard had created a pond out of the elixir of life to showcase his wealth.

The elixir of life from the stone.

Ignatius tipped over the stone and shook it near his ear. He could hear a faint sloshing like milk in a coconut.

Hmmm promising.

He looked around until he found what he was looking for, a large silver helmet with topaz and quartz.

Ignatius inspected it before bringing it to the pond.

After a short pause, Ignatius plunged the helmet into the pond.

The water was pleasantly warm, and when he drew his hands out, they were completely dry, though the skin was refreshed and new.  

Ignatius dipped a pinky in the water and dripped it into his mouth.

It evaporated immediately, and he felt a surge of energy.

Looking into the helmet, he saw half of the water was already gone.

Water that wasn't wet and would evaporate as soon as it touched air.

Interesting.

There was one more thing to test before he escaped.

He took off his shirt, which was barely hanging on as it was.

It took a few minutes, but he was able to fashion the shirt into a makeshift sack.

He grabbed a few items from the piles of weapons, a smile bible engraved in ivory and some type of scaly leather, 10 stacks of cash, some of the older bills, and some jewels.

He knew it was a risk but also knew it would take him some time to fully understand this new world.

He would need a few of the trinkets to properly frame the rebels.

As for gold, he brought the stone to where his blood was still wet on the cavern floor, placed the rock on it, and watched it slowly turn scarlet, then ruby, and finally a crimson so bright that its light outshone the incubation chamber.

Dust swirled around the stone and landed on the ground where his blood had been. The stone greedily lapped up his blood, leaving gold dust in its wake. The flecks of gold around him made sense now.

Ignatius shuddered, wondering whose blood he had crawled through. How many people had been brought here to bleed out on the floor to feed the stone?

No matter. The important thing was that the stone worked, and all evidence of his presence had just been wiped away.

He intuitively knew that the effects would be better if the blood was fresh and if the blood were his.  

It seemed the stone would give him enough information to work with, but mastering its powers would take time- that was okay; he now had all the time in the world.

He wondered what other powers he could discover and how much magic he could harness now that he knew it was real.

There was a better time to figure them out, however.

Ignatius needed to escape while he still could before half the world descended on him.

He looked up at the jagged jade walls, plotting his path out.

He tied his makeshift sack of riches to him and secured the stone.

He tore scraps of cloth from his ruined pants and wrapped his hands before plunging them into the gold dust.

He hoped that would help him grip the sharp walls without shredding his hands too badly.  

He would have to move quickly.

His fall had been excruciating; his rise would be even more so.

But he would survive, and he would conquer.

He smiled and climbed toward his destiny.