Chapter 1
"Orifog!" A fat dwarf cried out, panicking for his brother as the whole cavern shook. "Watch out!"
The ceiling ruptured, dropping a large sharp rock on the young prospector's head right before he reached the exit.
The dark shell shattered against the miner's head, pulping his skull with a sickening thump. Orifog slumped on the ground, instantly dead as his blood and brain coated the tunnel floor.
Amidst the jagged shards of the young dwarf's skull and the rocky shell, a simple talc pebble rolled out, bathing itself in a puddle of the crimson liquid as it pooled around the miner's corpse.
"Idiots! How couldn't ye notice that there's a thin crust of andesite?! Orifog's dead! Damn ye all!" Overseer Breadbeard yelled at his employees outside of the cave. "Morons! Cretins! Dornus dammit!" He heavily swore as if it was not his duty to secure the mine.
The dwarven swearing was the first thing the ellipsoidal white mineral ever heard. Of course, it did not care much for it. After all, its job was to merely sit in place and occasionally get crushed by the surroundings.
"…," the stone sensed. It realized something; it could feel things. It liked that.
"…," it thought. Another realization came; it can think. It liked that even more so.
"…," and again.
Thoughts flooded its proto-mind. However, those were not human-like at all; those were the thoughts of stone. Humans would call it emotions, but that was no more than a partial description.
After the quake finished, a few dwarfs returned and left again with the corpse. The awakened bloody stone was kicked out of the cavern to the wall.
It did not care.
"Hello," that was the second sound it could hear, but this time it was much sharper.
"…," the pebble ignored the strange noise.
"Hello!" The entity said, this time a little bit more loudly.
"…huh," the pebble reacted with some resemblance of sapience as the loud voice made it uneasy.
A coherent thought emerged on its miniature mind; loud!
"Hello!" The entity greeted again, even louder and with a hint of impatience.
"…," the little pebble still ignored the entity and revelled in its stony musing.
"Hey! I said hello!" The entity yelled and the panic was clearly apparent in its voice.
"…," the pebble was confused and irritated. Those were its first human-like emotions. It did not understand where they came from and got confused by them even more. It became a bigger and bigger conundrum for him.
"…," the stone vibrated as if to clear its mind and ignored the annoyingly loud sound and irritating emotions even more intensely.
"Damn. Where am I? I am supposed to be in a dwarf!" The entity exclaimed, bewildered, and with panic slowly raising. "Wait a minute. Where am I!?" He shouted in the minuscule mind of the small pebble with a full-blown terror.
The entity spread his awareness and figuratively paled. "I am in a fucking pebble! A piece of rock! Oh, dear gods! Help! Get me out of here!" He screamed, appalled.
"Loud," the stone complained by transferring the uneasiness. It was his first attempt to communicate with another being and as such it was very blurry. It was as if someone was talking in a foreign language through a badly tuned radio. Still, the message would be plain to anyone: it did not appreciate loudness.
"What?!" The entity metaphorically recoiled as it was with the wave of annoyance mixed with uneasiness, but promptly calmed down.
"Loud!" The pebble 'said' again, but this time it was much clearer. It learned every second it was... we could say alive.
"It's you! Look little guy, something very wrong happened. I am not supposed to be paired with you. Sooo, I will go now. Good day to you, sir!" It attempted to leave, but it bounced back.
After a few hours of erratic squirming inside the pebble's growing mind and searching for an escape, the entity quietly mumbled with a dread bubbling under his voice, "don't tell me… No, no, no, no. This can't be happening." The entity figuratively gazed at the bloody stone and asked, "are you… perhaps… sapient by any chance?"
"Sapient?" The pebble perfectly repeated the word. This was the first question the stone ever asked anyone. It got confused again. It did not like confusion.
"Don't tell me…. No! I am not doing this! A sapient rock! How! Who did this?!" The entity yelled. He forced himself to focus. He delved into his own mind.
The entity recalled what happened: he flew towards his target, a dwarf named Orifog Blackbeard that was supposed to be a dwarven hero, a new Paragon. When he passed through an unstable part of the mountain to sneak into his mind, it suddenly began to break apart. It was kind of his fault… That little charge of refined mana he held disrupted the fragile balance of the inner strengths in the deposit.
He was able to stop the complete collapse, but he used almost all the remaining refined mana. The falling rock crushed the Orifog's skull and the entity, distraught from the sudden loss of power, mistook the pebble covered in the brain tissue and leftover soul mark with the former future Paragon.
"Nooooooo!" The entity wailed. "Damn it! Anyone! Help meeeee!" The pebble's mind was filled with bawling and wailing, which made it annoyed.
"Loud! Loud!" It repeated, but was still ignored by the source of its annoyance.
"I can't leave! gods dammit! I really can't leave!" The entity cursed for at least another ten minutes while ignoring the complaints of his host. Then he gathered some of his composure and said, pretending to be calm, "Hello again. I am truly sorry for my bad manners. I am a Partner, which is also my name, and from this moment, I will be with you for the rest of your life."
"Life?" The stone repeated the word he did not understand.
"Oh, for the love of gods…," Partner sighed in exasperation, something he knew he would be doing often, "It seems like I will have to teach you everything from the ground. Hehe," Partner nervously giggled at his own joke while trying not to think about where he was or what was awaiting him. "We are in a mine, and that is…." The Partner began the lecture, and the just-born stone soaked up every single word like a baby he was.
For the next three month, the Partner patiently taught the pebble what he could about the world, languages and other important things. However, the stone, well, was a stone. He was not of the smartest bunch.
"Now, do you understand me?" Partner patiently asked. If the pebble would be observant, it would notice a hint of tiredness, exasperation and frustration; classical feelings found in high-school teachers.
"Yes," the presumably living pebble responded to the strange being residing inside of him.
It now understood a lot of things it didn't know before. That it was a stone. That it lived in the mountain, which was in the world which was situated in an infinite universe. It could not understand what infinite nor the universe means. Still, the strange voice tirelessly explained that nobody can truly understand the immensity of the universe. Partner said many complex sentences and the little pebble, failing to comprehend, ignored him.