by Frank Morin
The food arrived and interrupted their discussion. A long procession of staff entered, each pushing a rolling trolley filled with mouthwatering dishes. All of the main dishes served in the dining halls that night were included, along with samples of all of the desserts, plus an entire trolley of Hamish’s favorites.
A pot of savory sauerbraten stew accompanied a tray piled with thin-sliced cuts of pork, grilled, and drizzled with gravy. Connor spotted mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, and fried strips of potatoes. Sixteen types of sausages were cooked into all sorts of dishes, including three different casseroles.
Connor recognized some of the Grandurian dishes by name, like roasted schweinshaxe. The pork was cooked to perfection, the skin crisp, but the juicy meat falling from the thick bone. Rinderroulade was a kind of beef roll, with the thin-sliced beef strips wrapped with sausage, bacon, onions, pickles, and mustard. They were served with small roasted potatoes and a type of dumpling that Hamish tried to monopolize.
They also enjoyed Obrioner meals like breaded fish, hearty meat pies, and entire roasted grouse slow-cooked in a delicious honey glaze.
Hamish eagerly grabbed the first cart and looked like he planned to consume everything on it right there. Jean made him wait until they moved into her private dining room, large enough to seat more than a dozen people. They dug in and for quite a while Connor let himself get lost in the simple pleasure of eating.
He consumed several plates of the main dishes, interspersed with eight different types of breads, then sampled bunches of the desserts. Cranachan and almond cake and shortbread petticoat tails from Obrion, along with Grandurian lebkuchen, dipped in Althing chocolate, followed by jelly-filled linzer cookies and plum-apple crisp still warm from the oven.
That’s when he discovered another new aspect of his enhanced healing abilities. As his stomach grew so full he felt like he might burst, he instinctively tapped sandstone again and connected with his overfull tummy. Distracted by a cream-filled pastry, he absently tugged at the food in his stomach, hoping to ease some of the hurt.
The food dissolved into energy that absorbed straight into his body, nourishing and strengthening him without the need for the long process of digestion. That flood of food energy poured right into his aches and pains, as if they were holes inside of him that the food energy partially filled. He rocked back, astonished as his pains noticeably faded and his vision cleared a lot.
Connor laughed and exclaimed, “No way! This is amazing.”
“I’m glad you like it. I’ll be sure to tell the cooks,” Jean said between bites of a huge, fluffy pastry dripping with nuts and honey. Somehow she had consumed it without getting any on her face.
“The food is delicious, but that’s not what’s amazing.”
He patted his stomach that was no longer bulging dangerously. “I just discovered that I can instantly digest my food.”
Hamish gaped. He glanced from Connor to the food spread around the table. “Can you do that for me too?”
“There’s one way to find out.”
Hamish vaulted right over the table, activating thrusters to avoid crashing down on a beef stew, and landed beside Connor. Connor yelped as the air blast from the thrusters threatened to knock food from the table. He caught a couple of cookies blown right off their plate and stuffed them into his mouth so he could save the fish from sliding over the edge. The stew pot rattled, little waves of gravy whipping across the top, but did not topple.
“Be careful,” he cried.
“Sorry,” Hamish said, cutting off thrusters and helping set the dishes right. He grabbed Connor’s hand and pressed it to his stomach. “Come on then. Test it.”
Connor shared his enthusiasm and extended sandstone senses. Sure enough, he could feel the mountain of food Hamish had already consumed. He glanced at his friend, newly impressed by his abilities. Hamish had eaten at least twice as much as Connor had. Without the protective layer of his suit holding in his stomach, it might’ve already ruptured.
Connor touched that food and willed it to dissolve. It did so, and pure energy flowed all through Hamish’s body. He whooped and started to leap into the air, but Connor caught him and said, “No thrusters!”
“Sorry,” Hamish said again and retreated several feet from the table before jumping into the air and triggering thrusters. Connor tapped air and deflected the blast away from the table, just to be safe. Hovering with arms thrown wide, Hamish laughed with pure joy. “I knew your ascension was going to be awesome, but this is revolutionary.”
Jean groaned. “Are you telling me you can seriously eat without ever having to stop?”
Connor shared a grin with Hamish and they shrugged in unison.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
67
Flipping the World Coin
The next morning Connor awoke feeling completely refreshed. He should. He’d consumed enough food that he probably could have fueled himself for weeks, but instead all of that food energy had poured into the holes that his fleshcrafting left inside of him, replenishing his inner self. He loved that he’d discovered an alternative to casting that price onto his family bridge.
He was tempted to try eating that much again some time just to see if he could really live off of that converted energy in lieu of eating. Then again, he wasn’t a fan of long-term fasting, so he would make sure not to share the idea with Jean. He loved research, but not starvation research.
At the moment he felt as good as if he’d been tapping granite and slate all night. He and Hamish had eaten everything, and had been tempted to sneak down and break into one of the pantries to test the limits of his newfound ability, which Jean had dubbed glutton crafting.
She had ordered them not to, even though Hamish had insisted it was purely for research purposes. She wasn’t fooled. As if they’d ever actually fooled Jean.
Despite Hamish’s loud protestations, Connor had let Jean overrule them. He didn’t usually like acting like a glutton, but glutton crafting was a heady thing. He would have to watch Hamish because over-eating could easily to go to his head. And if Connor stopped helping him fast-digest, it would definitely also go to his stomach.
He had work to do. Time was short, and although the previous night’s achievements had restored his sense of optimism, he needed to study what else the ascension had accomplished. So he skipped breakfast, tapped basalt, and raced out of New Schwinkendorf and onto the plain to the north.
He spent some time simply running at full fracked speed, circling the plain again and again. He loved the freedom of basalt speed and couldn’t help simply enjoying that fracked sprint for a while. He felt convinced his top speed had improved again, even though he hadn’t believed that was possible. He flew more than ran, and if he turned too sharply, sometimes he slid whooping for fifty yards across the grasses, still damp from early morning dew.
Luckily he had the space all to himself. Most of the Builders and Petralists had left with the reinforcements, along with the vast majority of the Arishat League forces. Those who remained were focused on building additional mechanicals and Arishat League weapons, particularly the ambitious Ilse’s Revenge project.
Connor eventually slowed and tapped his elemental powers. He found that he no longer needed to tap porphyry, obsidian, or pumice to help stabilize his tertiary affinities. He was loving this ascension. It felt like somehow he was linked tighter to his affinities, as if they were a part of him more than external connections to foreign sources of strength. Tapping his affinities felt right at a fundamental level. Water appeared in the air beside him, looking stately and beautiful as ever, although she looked rather cross. Before he could ask her about it, Fire joined them, and he too looked grumpy.
“What’s going on?” Connor asked uneasily. He had big plans to explore the effects of his ascension. He hadn’t expected they might have wanted to sleep in.
“You spurned my counsel last night,” Water stated, her tone definitely annoyed, hands on hips exactly the w
ay his mother used to do when scolding him as a child.
“I don’t understand. Last night I healed a lot of people, just like you told me to.”
“Why did you not cast the burden of that healing across your final bridge?” she demanded. Fire paced around them, scowling, little explosions of crimson fire erupting out of his ears at every step.
Connor blinked in surprise, then grinned. “I didn’t need to. I discovered how to use food energy to deal with the consequences.”
“Food energy,” she repeated, sounding disgusted. “You have no concept of the difficulties your ignorance creates for us.”
“I thought it was a good thing. I didn’t like what I was doing to that bridge,” he told her, feeling confused, which made him feel angry in turn. He had never heard of elements chiding their Petralists.
She fixed him with a stare that mesmerized him. Her eyes were filled with enormous, cresting waves, the foam whipped off the tops by an invisible wind. The waves looked far too big to remain constrained within her eyes, as if he was somehow looking through portals at a scene of a stormy sea somewhere. It reminded him that the elements were not human. They were more than he ever assumed, and he needed to tread carefully until he understood them better.
Fire said, “You assume the bridges Water showed you should always remain in place.”
That surprised him. “Actually, I did. Those were bridges to my affinities. I can’t lose those, or I’d lose my affinities, wouldn’t I?”
“The final bridge contains no affinities,” Water told him.
“What is it? It seemed to stretch back to my old home.” He chose not to tell them the name he’d given it. It felt too personal.
“That is a truth for another day,” Fire said quickly.
Water added, “You called us to inquire about additional truths this morning, is that not true?”
He nodded, happy for the turn in the conversation. “I sensed energy flowing through my patients’ nerves last night. It reminded me of the Varvakin strum. Do you know anything about that?”
“Perhaps, but should I risk sharing additional truth if you won’t take my counsel to heart?” Water asked.
Not good. He was finally able to speak with them, and he sensed he could learn so much. He hadn’t imagined they might refuse to answer his questions. “I need to practice, to explore, and to understand what I’m learning. You said yourself that you are trying to understand humans. Did you know that I could use food like I did?” Connor replied, keeping his voice respectful. He couldn’t afford to offend the elements. It still felt weird to consider that he might.
She didn’t answer immediately, and he wished he could read her expression. It was calm, like the surface of a loch at dawn, but he sensed invisible turbulence below. Fire continued pacing, but his expression seemed less annoyed. Connor took that as a good sign. The two shared a look, and Connor sensed they were communicating, but he couldn’t read it.
Water’s expression cleared and she smiled warmly. “Never mind that. Perhaps there was something lost in translation. Let us move on to the next lesson.”
“Great.” Connor was happy that little misunderstanding seemed to have been resolved. He needed to be careful, but how could he have known using food would annoy them?
Then he realized they couldn’t eat. How would he feel if people ate mountains of food around him that he couldn’t partake of? The idea was really depressing. He’d have to be careful not to remind them constantly that they couldn’t enjoy the benefits of humanity.
Fire spoke first and surprised Connor by asking, “Have you realized yet that you can tap all of your primary affinities at the same time?”
“What? Really?” Connor exclaimed. It made sense, and he should have realized it, but he’d been mostly focused on his miraculous fleshcrafting.
“Don’t get so distracted by one new bridge you’ve crossed that you fail to see the rest,” Fire chided.
“I’ll practice with them today,” Connor promised eagerly. After his second threshold he had no longer needed to fear double-tap sickness, but he’d still been limited to only two of his primaries. He couldn’t wait to try granite, basalt, obsidian, and pumice all together.
Water said, “Make sure you do. Now, your question leads us to a pair of principles that are vital for you to understand.”
“Wonderful. Thank you,” Connor said sincerely.
Fire laughed, and flames twirled around him like a glittering shroud. “We can share some of the things the queen discovered, but why limit yourself? Now that you can walk with us as our champion, you don’t have to share her limitations.”
“What do you mean by your champion?” Connor asked.
He had never imagined the queen as limited. What could he possibly tap that she might have overlooked? He needed every possible advantage, but that was not the first time one of the elementals had mentioned a service they required in return. He still had no idea what they intended, and he’d spent enough time around nobility to learn that one couldn’t leave an undefined debt hanging around too long.
Water took his hand and the landscape around him faded to a mindscape Connor didn’t recognize. He stood atop the vast bulk of a great mountain at night. The sky was clear, and snow covered the landscape. The air smelled clean in that way that he’d only ever smelled during fresh winter snows. It was bitterly cold, but he felt unaffected by it.
Water and Fire stood to either side of him, with Water still holding his hand. Fire gestured into the air toward sheets of soft light flowing high overhead. Green, blue, and shades in between flickered like immense curtains in the sky, flapping in an invisible breeze. In that moment he realized where he must be and what he must be looking at.
“Those lights are what the Varvakins call the Merry Dancers, right?” They were awe inspiring.
Water nodded. “Take Fire’s hand also.”
He did, surprised to feel Fire’s skin cool to the touch, despite little flames dancing along his arm. As soon as he connected with both of them, Connor suddenly felt the glowing sheets of light overhead flickering in his mind as much as in his vision. That had to be the power of strum that the Varvakins had learned to harness.
Connor grinned. “How can I feel that energy so clearly?”
“Because you walk with both of us at the same time,” Fire said. “Now you have gained the sensitivity to access this, one of nature’s great forces.”
Connor reached out fingers of thought to touch the Merry Dancers. He expected to feel the lightning-like power that had struck him when he ran into the invisible field on the plain. He did sense some of it, but mostly felt a different type of force. Invisible, but powerful, it seemed to tug at his core and pull upon the very fabric of the earth beneath him.
“That’s magnis, the grip force that pulls on steel, right?” he guessed.
Fire nodded. “The Merry Dancers that fill the night sky are made up of a combination of two types of energy that are closely intertwined. The Varvakins have discovered these forces and have begun to learn how to manipulate them, but they don’t understand them. These two energies are fundamental forces of the natural world and they offer tremendous power.”
Water said, “These powers are found in the movement of the earth, the shifting of the seas, and the strength of raging storms. They generate the lightning and can exert remarkable influence upon all the natural world.”
“Their potential for destruction rivals our own, so of course we felt it appropriate to help you connect with these energies first,” Fire added with a wink.
“The Varvakins call them strum and magnis, but they are two halves of one coin,” Water said.
“So it’s kind of like a world coin, then?” Connor asked.
Water chuckled, the sound like the bubbling of the Upper Wick in springtime. “World coins. A unique turn of phrase, but apt.”
Connor loved that sense of discovery. It was one of the things he enjoyed most about exploring new affinities and new aspects to h
is powers after ascending. He wished he could share more discoveries with his friends. No one else got to feel that unrivaled thrill as often as he did.
“Teach me,” he urged.
Water smiled and said, “The key to accessing these fundamental forces of nature is to recognize that they pull matter out of its neutral state into a charged state.”
Connor frowned. “So I can only access magnis and strum when I’m charging at someone? What if they’re charging at me?”
He thought back to the time he faced the torc, so long ago when he had virtually no concept of his curse. He bet a charging monster like that could generate a lot of strum. Was that why they were so terrifying?
Fire laughed. “His brains are going to leak if you’re not careful.” Water scowled, and he added to Connor, “Haven’t you ever noticed sometimes if you drag your feet over a carpet, then touch something, especially metal, sometimes you feel a little spark?”
Connor grinned. That was such a fun game. He and Hamish had often tried to out shock each other in the winter. They had worn right through one of his mother’s favorite rugs. That’s when she insisted they find other things to do, more productive things, like catching rats and releasing them into Cinead’s kitchen.
“That’s what Water was trying to say. The rug, your feet, and that metal don’t usually shock each other. All of you, and most things in the world, naturally tend to a neutral state where shocking things doesn’t happen.”
He obviously didn’t know Hamish very well, or most teenage boys for that matter.
Water took up the train of thought. “The force you call strum is a movement of tiny bits of energy attached to every bit of matter. Generally that energy moves between points where one side has built up a charge, a concentration of power. It may be a static charge like Fire just mentioned, which is caused by friction. It causes the little charges on the carpet to wake up and shake themselves out of their neutral state and collect together so they can accomplish something. Living beings like you humans use tiny bits of that energy in your bodies, as you sensed last night.”
