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HEART OF STONE:
The Story of the Hero Known as The Human
Mountain
by Theodore
Foss
PART
ONE:
UPHEAVAL
Foreword
Like
so many Heroes before him, The Human Mountain began his career
reluctantly,
a pawn in a war centuries old, the victim of forces far beyond
his
control. Like a novice swimmer, he was thrown into the deep end of the
battle between Good and Evil.
Until his eighteenth birthday, Vic
Grant knew nothing of Paragon City, save
its reputation as the city of
Heroes and world shaking events like the Rikti
Invasion. He knew nothing of
the vile descendants of fabled Mu, diabolical
sorcerers who called
themselves the Circle of Thorns, manipulators of arcane
power, plotters of
the downfall and enslavement of the human race. And he
certainly did not
know of their plans to murder him.
After his motorcycle was struck and
his month-long recuperation in a
hospital bed was over, Vic wondered daily
if his life would return to
normal, but in his heart he knew it would
not. How could it? His left hip
and several bones in his legs and arms
were shattered by the “accident”. He
was out of the hospital, yes, but he
was still confined to a special bed in
his parents’ home for 20 hours a
day. He didn’t have to stay in bed, but
his attempts to rise and move
around were met with such pain he was reduced
to only minutes of standing
per hour. Walking was nearly impossible.
What happened to Vic Grant on
that day was tragic, but, as he would later
discover, unavoidable. Vic
would ask himself many times over what would
have happened had he not gone
to that party. Would he have been able to
avoid the violent event that
ended his promising football career? Would he
have escaped all the pain,
loneliness and misery of being seen as a
horrifying monster conjured from
the depths of human fear? Would he have
known the stomach-turning paranoia
of being hunted like an animal? Would he
have been able to have a normal
life? And he would slowly accept that he
could not have. Normal lives are
for normal people and though he did not
want to admit it to himself at
first, Vic Grant was definitely not normal.
He considered ending his
life. Anything to stop the pain, he told me. The
drugs weren’t
enough. They helped his physical pain, but sadness and
depression were
another matter. Sometimes his anguish was so great he could
barely
breathe.
But Vic Grant was also a fighter. Football player or no, he
understood what
it meant to get hit and get up again. He knew what it meant
to hit back.
So that’s what he did. For the next 6 years, the young man
called The Human
Mountain (a name he hated), delivered hit after hit on his
quest for the
source of his pain. And when he found it he made perhaps the
most
surprising decision of his life. This is his story.
Theo
Foss
Paragon City 2009
Chapter One:
The Hand of
Fire
In the early morning hours the man came to him. At first Vic
thought he was
dreaming, for seemingly out of the very air a stranger
appeared standing at
the foot of his bed.
“Victor Grant,” came the
oddly sonorous voice. It was a statement, not a
question.
“Who are
you? How did you get in here?”
The man ignored him. “I have heard your
pleas. I have come to grant your
wish. I have come to right the wrong that
was done to you.”
“My pleas? Right the wrong? What are you talking
about? Who are you?”
“I have come to take away your pain. I have come
to give you a chance at a
normal life. Is this not what you have
wished? Is this not what you have
been silently hoping for since the
attempt on your life?”
“Attempt on my life? It was an accident, a car
accident. Mom! Dad! Call
the cops!”
The man only shook his
head. His amber eyes glowed in the dimness like a
cat’s.
“Your parents
are in a very deep sleep. They cannot hear you,” he said.
“And it was no
accident, Victor Grant. For you have great power inside you,
power that
waits to be released. Power that can undo much that has been
done. Some
have seen this power. They have communed with the stone and
seen it. Far
away in their caverns deep under Paragon City they have seen
you waiting in
the shadow of the Mountain. They know what harm you could do
to them and
their plans. They have already tried twice to kill you.”
“Look, mister,
I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care. I
want you to get
out of here!”
But the man continued. “You doubt who I am. That is
good. You must
question everything from now on. Nothing is as it
seems. Shall I prove to
you I mean to help you? Very well. When you were
a boy you were on a trip
with your family to the Salido Caves. You were
drawn to them, were you not?
It was like the pull of a giant magnet. You
walked away from your
campsite without even so much as a backward glance
toward your parents.
Like a moth to the flame, you ignored the danger signs
posted there. You
had to walk inside. You became lost while exploring
them. Alone in the
dark you heard a deep humming sound that seemed to come
from the very walls.
Uuhmmm—uhuummm—uuhmmmmm. Like so,
yes? Somehow you knew which
direction to turn, which of the many dark
tunnels to take. You followed the
humming sounds through the labyrinth and
came out into the sunlight once
again. You parents never discovered you
were gone. Is this not correct?”
“How --, how could you have known
that? I never told anybody.”
“The sounds you heard were creatures of
stone, servants of the Elder Gods.
They are called Pumicites by some, but
their real name is the Auhua, the
Minions of Igneous. They live deep
beneath the roots of the world. They
sensed you as I have sensed you. They
knew who you were, what you were.
They spoke to you, in their way, and you
understood. They heard the beating
of your stone heart and guided you
out. They saved your young life.”
“But I never felt like I was in
danger,” replied Vic. “I felt --, I felt
--.”
“Safe? Secure? As if
you were among your family? Yes, I’m sure you did.
But something evil
lured you to the caves. Something evil made you want to
enter, despite all
warnings. Something wanted to see you starve to death
alone in the
darkness.”
“But why? I haven’t done anything to anybody,” replied
Vic.
“Oh, but don’t you see?” replied the man. “You were born with
tremendous
power, and that is a threat in itself, to some.”
“Even if
I was born with this power, so what? I don’t want any of this. I
could’ve
had a normal life. Why wasn’t I left alone?”
“Those who wished to kill
you were struggling against those who wished to
protect you. In such a
conflict innocents are never left unscathed. We
knew we would have to
reveal the truth to you eventually, but we still held
hope for you to have
your normal life. We hesitated and now you are here,
like this. We have
failed you.”
“And who is ‘we’?”
“I am a mage. That is to say, I
use my knowledge of the occult to
manipulate the natural forces all around
us. You would call me a wizard. I
am one of a few of my kind who have
rejected the dark plans of the Circle of
Thorns and lived to fight against
them. I have done terrible things in my
life, Victor Grant. In my
all-consuming evil I have even taken the life of
my only son. But I come to
you now an agent of a group called the Order of
the Rose. I am no longer a
Hierarch of the Circle. I am a fugitive, hunted
for my treachery. Some day
they will find me, but until then I have time,
precious time. And hope for
the redemption of my past transgressions. I
have come to end your pain and
my own. I have come to prepare you for the
path ahead, and by so doing
attempt to further redeem myself.”
At that instant there came a
bloodcurdling scream from outside. The man’s
head snapped around. “Great
Iaia!” he exclaimed. “A hordeling! They have
found me!” When he turned
back, the man’s eyes burned even fiercer than
before. “There is no more
time, Victor Grant. Whatever happens to me, when
you are able,
RUN!”
The man threw up his hands, uttering a guttural incantation in a
language
Vic could not understand. The room began to pulse with
energy. There was a
dull roar in Vic’s ears like the thunder of an
approaching train. Then the
man announced, “Gaea, All-Mother, look upon
this boy! See that he is your
son. Bestow upon him your protection! In
your wisdom let him be rooted to
the earth. Armor him with a shield of
purest marble. Lend him your
strength! Put the earthquake in his right
hand. And also this I ask: give
to him the Heart of Stone! Make him once
and forever a Child of the
Mountain. If it be done, let it be done now. If
he be changed, let him be
then forever unchanging. If it be so now, let it
be so until the Mountain
cracks and the Heavens fall!”
Suddenly the
man was at Vic’s side. He raised a hand glowing red-white with
heat and
light and placed it on Vic’s chest. Instantly, Vic’s t-shirt was
ablaze
with arcane fire. Vic cried out from the burning pain. The world
became a
chaos of thunder, light and heat. The roar in Vic’s head was
deafening. The man was screaming something above the roar, something about
being formed in the Forge of the Earth. He realized he couldn’t
breathe.
His lungs filled with smoke and his mouth filled with the sharp
cold taste
of metal. The last thing he remembered was falling to the floor,
the mage’s
hand, now a nimbus of searing white heat, still pressed to his
chest.
When he awoke it was on the floor of his room. The man was gone,
but the
heat of the spell remained. Vic’s chest burned where the man had
touched
it. His eyes roamed the ceiling of the room. It was black, as with
the
soot of a fire. Tentatively, he tried to move. To his surprise he was
on
his feet almost immediately. But that surprise soon turned to confusion,
then to horror as Vic saw in his broken mirror what he had
become.
From outside there came another piercing shriek, closer than the
first. Vic
began to run.
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