text: A hundred years ago, a small group of Englishmen were sent to South Africa on a mining expedition to gather gold for her majesty the queen. However, weeks of digging inside dark and empty caves yielded nothing, nothing save a conspicuously round boulder. The men thought its curious spherical shape charming enough they sought to take it. After all, they needed something to show for the time they'd been there, and it was a fun project to keep them busy before they returned. It took the entire force of ten men and the whole day to roll it out, and by the end of it they were all exhausted. Once in the daylight, they noticed cuts and tiny grooves which glistened. After several hits from a pickaxe, the boulder split open into two halves, revealing a glowing red centre of pure crystal and gemstone. Realising the rarity of what they found, the ten men agreed to break it down further into ten pieces - one for each member of the group - and take their share home. On the last day, they got on their planes and left. But they wouldn't make it back to England. The planes ran into a tropical storm and the pilots lost control. All of them came spinning down and crashed into a heap of scrap on the dusty plains somewhere within the Angolian desert. Both of the pilots died immediately, but the ten miners on board survived unscathed. How was this possible? The only explanation was the chunk of rock they all had in their backpacks. Realising they'd found the key to immortality, the men rejoiced, throwing their hands in the air and weeping tears of joy. But when they searched the backpacks for their respective crystals, all they found were piles of gravel and crushed glass. The impact of the fall plus the explosion of the engine had obliterated all but one stone. And, just like before, they cut it down into ten smaller pieces. Using the powers of the gemstone, they survived a week in the Angolian desert without food or water, treading through oven hot sand and baking in the equatorial sun. They were all exhausted and in great pain, for the crystal would save them from death but it could not cease their physical ailments and deficiencies. Finally, they arrived at a small settlement. They were in so much pain that they gave their crystals to the people there for water and shelter from the heat. After all their efforts to obtain and keep their jewels, death was far more favourable than the relentless thirst that pulled at their guts and scorched their mouths. Not long after giving away their gems, the men began to feel strange. That night they slept in tents, and in their sleep some events prior to their arrival began to replay their effects. Scratches and bruises appeared. Large lacerations. Bones snapped. Limbs just fell off. Organs ruptured, and their bodily functions began to collapse one by one. They feared that death was coming, so the strongest and least damaged among the men exited their tents under the intentions of stealing the gems back from the settlers. However, barely fed and hydrated, the men fell to the ground and suffocated in the sand. None of them survived. Not realising that they held ten immortality gems, the settlers traded them off for supplies of cotton and livestock. Over a hundred years later, their whereabouts is unknown.