Page 1461 -- CLVI.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Six: ‘O, banneret of the Underworld...’
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“You see,” said the Hun’Sho man named Torveis with a hand over his open chest cavity, “as long as we have this, we do not require sustenance as you do.”

Hector stared with wide eyes as he listened. The man’s chest was largely hollow, apart from two dark, pulsing lungs and a small, glowing sphere suspended where the heart should have been. There were no bones or muscles. There wasn’t even any blood, unless a few streaks of dripping lava counted.

“And if I do this--” Torveis breathed in deeply, visibly inflating his lungs. The magma coating the outside of his body suddenly retracted inward, filling his open chest so completely that he had to close it again before it started leaking out of the front hole he’d made earlier. “--Well, you can see the result.”

Hector didn’t know what to say. On the outside, at least, the man no longer looked like a being of molten rock. Torveis looked far more normal--relatively speaking, at least.

In fact, he looked uncannily similar to the Hun’Kui. The ashy gray skin tone, the glowing eyes. The only real differences that Hector could spot were that the glow was more orange than white and that it wasn’t just the eyes glowing but also the mouth and several other porous marks all along the man’s arms, legs, and chest.

He didn’t think he should bring up the Hun’Kui, though.

“So that little round thing in there makes it so you don’t ever need food?” Hector decided to ask instead.

“Yes,” said Torveis. “As a matter of fact, I imagine that most of us here in Himmekel did not even understand the concept of food until Carver first appeared.”

“That just seems crazy to me...”

“At times, however, we may choose to absorb extra rock in order to replenish any core magma that we may have lost. So perhaps you may find that similar.”

“Hmm. How would you lose your, uh... core magma?”

“Overexertion or being wounded, perhaps.”

“Huh...” Hector wondered what qualified as a wound, then. He noticed that the big hole that Torveis’ had made in his chest had sealed back up already. And the man hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about ripping his own skin open, either.

‘This is the first time I have ever seen a Hun’Sho’s core in person,’ said Garovel, who had been hovering by Hector’s side. ‘It was quite bold of you to show us, was it not? And awfully trusting, too.’

“Trusting?” Magma began gradually accumulating all over Torveis’ body again, oozing out of the holes in his skin--thankfully not through the eyes or mouth, though. “Ah, do you mean in the event that you decided to attack me?”

‘Pretty much, yeah,’ said Garovel. ‘Not that we would do such a thing, of course.’

Torveis tilted his head. “I had not considered that, but I suppose you are right. All of the surface-dwellers whom I have met have struck me as quite trustworthy, and you are no different, I feel.”