NARRATION 11: THE VOLCANO

a. TONGUES OF FIRE

They were rising.
Not at great speed, but their upward motion was irrefutable.
The hot bubbling water that surrounded them gradually began to inspissate, ultimatly
becoming a thick, boiling lava paste. A heat haze, created from vapours, hung menacingly
above the angry, molten surface.
Unlike the dormant crater of Sneffels, where they had begun their journey, the volcanic
shaft they were in now was active.
The intense heat, eased only by the now incredibly rapidity of ascent, was almost unbearable.
A sepulchral light penetrated the vertical gallery as tongues of fire danced all about them.
The absence if burning lava confirmed that they were not in the main shaft of the volcano,
but in a parallel, accessory conduit.
Their continual rate of ascent grew at an alarming pace as they fought their way through
burning clouds of volcanic cinders toward the opening of light above, itself racing
downward, at equel velocity, to meet them.

b. THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

Upon reaching the yawning mouth of the auxiliary shaft, their speed decreased rapidly and
they found themselves gently floating away from one of the myraid of earth's pores that
littered the mountainside.
Numerous additional streams of lava ran all around them like fiery serpents seeking out
their prey. In relative safety they watched the main eruption fire vast amounts of molton
lava high into the air.
Three thousand miles from their original starting point, amidst the eastern archipelago of
mythological memory, they gazed in wonder, as had journeyers of two hundered years
before them, upon the Blue Mountains of Calabria and the mountain that had expelled
them, Mount Etna.
So ended "The Return To The Centre Of The Earth".