Gritting her teeth, Amethyst fought to maintain her focus. She'd only known Fredrick for a few days, but the sound of his voice already made her angry. If he knew who she really was, he wouldn't dare make such cutting remarks. Steadily, she channeled the light she saw in her mind into the stone, and the frost crystals that had formed on it overnight evaporated. Slowly, the cylinder started to sink into the ice, sizzling as wisps of steam rose from the puddle that grew around it.
“Hey hey, she's doing it! And only a day late!”
The stone hissed and popped as it sank into the block of ice, slipping well beneath the surface. Though the cylinder was not red hot, the water around it boiled from its heat. At Fredrick's heckling, Amethyst took a deep breath and vented her frustration into the stone. There was a loud pop, and the block of ice split in two, dropping from the pedestal to the hard floor of the crater. The stone cylinder had cracked, shearing off at an angle, and the concussion had shattered the ice.
Rasul stood next to her as she shook herself out of her focus.
“Well done, Quartz,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Though the goal was not to break the stone, you have completed the task.” He extended his hand, and a pillar of stone rose out of the ground, identical to the ones the other Hopefuls were working with. “Perhaps a little more finesse would be in order for the next lesson.”
Rasul stepped away, observing the rest of the Hopefuls, and Tika leaned over. “The trick is to keep a balance of energy in yourself and the stone,” she whispered. “If you put too much in the pillar, it'll just get hot. If you put too much in yourself, you'll end up breaking it.”
Taking a deep breath, Amethyst closed her eyes, picturing the mountaintop and the wellspring of energy beneath her. Swirls of amber coursed between the other students and their stones as they shaped them. In her own pillar, there was only a soft glow, nowhere near the intensity of the others.
She set her hands on top of the stone and drew the light up through it. Though her eyes were still closed, she could see it growing brighter, shifting to purple as it entered her hands. After a moment, she pressed against the pillar with her fingertips, testing it. Begrudgingly, the stone gave under the pressure, pilling up around her fingers as if she were pressing her hand into hard clay. Pulling back, she opened her eyes to inspect what she had done.
On the corner of the pillar, there was the imprint of her hand, blunting the otherwise crisp edge where she had been gripping it. Setting her hand back into the mark, she squeezed, making a fist. The stone deformed under her grip, pushing between her fingers, though it was not hot.
“That's it! You got it! I told you that once it made sense, you'd be good at it!”
Tika had formed her pillar into a sphere, though it was lumpy and misshapen, like a crude snowball made of stone. She slid her hands over the surface to smooth the material until it had a rough polish to it.
Amethyst looked down at her pillar, considering what to make out of it. She brought her hands partway down the side and pulled up, smoothing and shaping the edges into six flat planes. It took her a bit to get used to how the stone moved under her hands, but by midday, she had shaped the top of the pillar into a fairly passable cluster of quartz crystals. They weren't clear, of course, being formed out of the same hard gray material that the summit was made of, but the shape was right.
“You are all doing very well,” said Rasul as he walked amongst the Hopefuls and their pillars. “This is the most rudimentary form of shaping stone that we have available to us. When we shape the earth around us in this manner, then we are directly causing the change that we wish to see with physical action. It is no different than when the potter shapes clay with his hands, or when the sculptor shapes stone with a chisel and hammer. You are the pottery wheel, you are the hammer. This method is more difficult, less efficient, but very effective for achieving quick, basic results.”
He reached to the ground and sank his fingers into the hard surface of the crater. When he pulled his hand back up, the stone came with it, stretching and trailing behind his grip as if it were bread dough. He led it in an arc over his head then back down to the floor, where it melded into the ground again. The stone kept its shape, staying suspended over Rasul as though it had formed that way naturally.
“With different techniques, you can create very useful structures,” he said, bringing another arc up, meeting the first one at a right angle to its peak. “For example, if you are stuck somewhere without shelter, you can simply draw from the stone around you and make your own.” A fourth arm was created and joined to the peak, finishing the second arc. “In a dire situation, you can pile branches over this structure, and you will have a functional – if rudimentary – place to get out of the wind and snow.”
“But how do we stretch the stone without it becoming too thin?” asked Amethyst.
“It is all in where you focus the energy,” said Rasul. “In the sculpting that you have done today, you're infusing the energy directly where you're working, which is what makes it malleable. However, if you instead focus more at the base or source of the stone you wish to pull, then that is the part that will bend and stretch.” He gestured to the ground next to her, and another pedestal of stone rose up. “You try.”
The rest of the Hopefuls watched her as she stood in front of the new pillar. Though she was used to being observed by hundreds of people, such as when she was in the throne room at Castle Lonwick, she found herself nervous. What if she couldn't do it? She'd never hear the end of it from Fredrick.
“Focus on the top and the bottom of the pillar,” said Rasul. “As you draw it upward, do not let the energy at the base move with the stone as you draw it up. Instead, let it spread out like roots into the mountain.”
Closing her eyes, Amethyst took a deep breath and started bending the mountain's elemental energy to her will. Sinking the fingers of her left hand into the top of the pillar, she pulled upward, envisioning the glow of the mountain intensifying and spreading through the ground beneath her, winding through the stone.
Slowly, the bottom of the pillar slid out of the ground, stretching and deforming as it went. It was all Amethyst could do to draw it out; nevertheless, she pulled with everything she had. She braced her right hand against the growing arc and used it to guide the stone over her head, then back down to the ground.
“Excellent!” said Rasul, smiling broadly. “Now, concentrate the energy on the end of the pillar where it touches the ground. Push them together and roll the energy between them. That will seal it in place and fuse the end.”
Though she had never fused stone before, Amethyst did her best to follow his instructions. She shifted the energy from under the base of the arc where she had drawn it up, and instead imagined a vortex swirling between the end and the floor of the crater. It was only a moment before she felt the stone meld into the ground, completing the process.
She released the arc, breathing heavily. A thin sheen of sweat beaded on her forehead, cooling swiftly in the stiff breeze atop the mountain. Forming the stone had taken a lot of effort, and she was tired. She leaned against the structure to catch her breath.
There was a loud crack, and the formation slowly toppled towards Rasul. Frantically, she grabbed hold of it, trying to stop its fall, but it was far too heavy for her.
As the archway leaned further towards Rasul, two long, narrow pillars sprang forth from the ground, catching the arch as it fell. There was a flash, and the stone she was holding grew so hot that she had to let go, shaking her gloved hands to cool them. Steam rose from the frozen ground where the arch and pillars contacted, and the air around the structure shimmered slightly from the heat radiating off it.
Rasul calmly tucked his hands back into his sleeves. “When you have learned to see the element as it lives in the stone around you, you will be able to bend it to your will without touching it.” He gestured for Amethyst to step back and lifted one hand. Immediately, the arch and both pillars crumbled into gravel, scattering across t
he ground and leaving trails of steam where they skittered across the ice and snow. Once the pieces had settled, they melted, merging with the surface of the crater until it was as if they had never been drawn from the ground at all.
“That will be all for the day,” said Rasul. “You may take your meal in the Temple and return to your tents. If you wish to continue practicing, you may do so until sundown. Do not stay out past dark... the cold here is dangerous, as I am sure you are aware.”
Amethyst stared at the patch of bare stone where the gravel had melted into the floor of the crater. She hadn't expected Rasul to display such fast reflexes, and was still shaken from almost dropping the stone arch on him.
Tika's hand on her shoulder startled Amethyst. She jumped and caught her breath.
“Hey. You okay?”
She nodded. “Yes. I just... I could have crushed him if he hadn't been watching.”
Tika snorted. “Rasul was never in any danger, I'd wager. If he wasn't capable of handling anything we could throw at him, do you think the Master of Earth would have him guiding us?”
“I suppose not...”
A rumbling, grinding sound came from the front of the pillars, and Amethyst looked up to see Fredrick lifting an arch of stone out of the crater. In a single smooth motion, he brought it over his head then back to the ground, a burst of heat pushing back the ice. He brought up several more arches, connecting them all at the peak, with an obnoxious smirk on his face.
“And I did it without putting anyone in danger,” he said, shrugging. He approached Amethyst, his cold blue eyes locked on her. “Maybe you should be more careful, and leave the magic to those strong enough to control it.” Fredrick jostled past her, pushing her out of the way with his shoulder. Tika caught her as she stumbled, and they watched him walk away.
“The more time I spend around that boy,” Amethyst said, “the more I hope he falls off the mountain.”
Tika laughed. “That's how I feel about most of them, honestly. Precious few have any real redeeming qualities. Come on, let's get some food, skinny girl.”
“I'm not skinny!”
“I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of the wind blowing you away!”
Amethyst shoved Tika. “Maybe I should use you for an anchor.”
~~~
By the time Amethyst and Tika went into the temple, the shadow of the crater rim was already nearing the entrance. Some of the students had remained outside to practice the techniques they had learned that day, so there were plenty of seats to go around. This evening, the meal was thick beef and vegetable stew - peppered more than Amethyst cared for - served in bowls made of bread.
They ate quickly and retired to their tent, ignoring the snickers from Fredrick and a group of boys that had gathered around him. Though he was as rude as could be towards the young women, the younger boys of the group tended to gravitate to him. Maybe it was because he was confident in his poor behavior, maybe it was because he was older than most of them... Amethyst honestly didn't know or care. All that mattered to her was making sure she spent as little time in his presence as possible.
Tika climbed into the tent first, the temperature outside already painfully cold. As she started to enter, Amethyst saw one of the halves of the obsidian sphere she had been given by Rasul on the first night.
“Hold on,” she said. “I'm going to grab something real quick.”
Amethyst tried to lift it off the ground, but it had frozen into the ice. She gripped it with both hands and threw her weight against it. The half-sphere snapped free, causing her fall onto her backside. She fished around in the snow until she found the other piece nearby. With both pieces retrieved, she ducked inside the tent and tied the flap.
Tika was already heating up her warming stone, but it was still frigid under the thin canvas. She looked up as she set the stone aside, warmth radiating from it. “What do you have there?”
“It's my broken heating stone,” Amethyst said. “I'm going to try to fix it.”
“... How?” Tika asked, lifting an eyebrow. “That's made of volcano glass. It's not as easy to work as normal stone.”
“Well, someone, somewhere made it. If they can do it, so can I.”
She sat cross-legged in front of the door, cradling the pieces in her lap. Focusing on them, she channeled energy as if she were trying to heat them, and the ice slowly melted. However, the broken edges became unbearably hot, and she quickly set them down.
“Why does obsidian get so hot so fast?” she grumbled, slipping her hands back into her gloves. A small cloud of steam rose from each half of the sphere as the ice melted and sizzled away.
“Maybe it has to do with how it was born?” Tika suggested. “If you channel a lot of energy into a cluster of crystals, sometimes they'll grow. Maybe the stone remembers the volcano?”
“That's impossible,” Amethyst muttered, squinting at the halves of the sphere in the failing light. “Stones don't have memories.”
Tika scoffed. “Two days ago, it was impossible to see something with your mind if you couldn't feel it. I wonder what will be possible tomorrow?”
“Alright, alright, you've made your point.” Carefully, Amethyst lifted the now dry and ice-free halves and fitted them together. They were still warm, but not hot enough to burn her. It took her a moment of rotating them back and forth, but she eventually found the correct position that lined up the minute imperfections in the color of the stone. She pressed them together and closed her eyes, pondering. The way she had tried to connect the arch to the crater floor hadn't worked very well; she wasn't sure if she should try it with the obsidian, or come up with a different way.
She drew up the energy of the mountain into herself and concentrated it into her hands, but not the stone. Slowly, she fed it through the sphere, crossing it from one side to the other as if she were passing a needle through layers of cloth.
She felt warm hands against hers, and opened her eyes to see Tika leaning in, clasping her hands around Amethyst's.
“What?” she said, her golden brown eyes clear and curious. “I want to see!”
“Fine,” Amethyst said, huffing as she concentrated again. Now she could see Tika, dressed in the same dancing garb that she had worn before, holding her hands up and staring at the energy as it passed between Amethyst's hands.
“You're sewing it together!” Tika exclaimed, grinning. “I wouldn't have thought of trying that!”
“I'm trying to. I don't know if it'll work.”
As Amethyst kept passing the energy back and forth through the stone, it started shifting from amber to purple, until both girls were bathed in a violet glow.
“I really wonder why it does that,” said Tika, staring raptly at the energy as it moved back and forth.
“I don't know,” Amethyst replied. “Here, hold on. I'm going to try something.”
She took a deep breath and did her best to shut out any distractions. From one hand, she pushed half of the energy she had amassed into the other, so that she had an equal amount on both sides. Simultaneously, she passed a tendril through the stone halves opposite from each other, each tendril feeding the other side. The glow from her hands grew immediately brighter, and the heat from the stone intensified.
As it moved back and forth, the energy developed a current of its own, spinning faster and faster between her hands. She tried to direct it to rotate around the poles of the sphere so it would intersect the entirety of the break, but the energy didn't want to obey her. Instead, it careened around the stone wildly, slipping deep into the obsidian before it sprang back out again. She gasped as the sphere became too hot to hold any longer.
The stone fell, hitting her leg and rolling onto the blanket between her and Tika. The halves did not separate as it settled on the cloth. She had done it!
Gingerly, Tika reached out and lifted the stone. She juggled it back and forth to keep it from burning her. “I didn't expect that to work!” she said, examining the sphere as it cooled. “I can s
till see the crack, but only just. Do you think it'll work now?”
Amethyst shrugged. “There's only one way to find out.”
“Let me do the honors. You broke it last time.”
“Pfft. Fine.”
Tika held the sphere out in front of her, and it immediately it lit up amber, like the other stone, flooding heat into the room. There was a light sizzling sound, and Tika gasped, dropping it as Amethyst had. Before it left her hands, the two halves slid apart, revealing charred, brittle stone between them.
Amethyst quickly tossed the hot stones out through the entrance of the tent before they could burn the blankets.
“Well damn,” said Tika. “I was really hoping that had worked.”
“Are your hands okay?” Amethyst asked, reaching out and examining Tika's fingers. The patterns of her fingertips were shiny, but it didn't look as though she had been badly burned.
“I'm fine. I didn't hold it for very long.” She flopped back on the ground, stretching out. “It looks like once lava rock is broken, it won't go back together.”
Amethyst lay down beside her, staring morosely at the ceiling of the tent. “I really thought that would work.”
Tika absently patted Amethyst's leg. “I did too.”
“Maybe I could try to make a new one tomorrow.”
Tika rolled to her side. “I wouldn't worry over it too much. We've still got mine, and it works. I'd focus more on learning what Rasul has to teach us if I were you.”
Amethyst helped Tika spread their blankets over the top of them both. She was determined to figure out how to create a new heating stone. As much as she enjoyed spending time with the other young woman, she didn't want to be without one if she ever needed to use it when Tika wasn't near.
Soon, Tika's breathing deepened, and Amethyst's eyes grew heavy. It had been a long, exhausting day, and if she weren't sorely mistaken, tomorrow would be the same.
~~~
6th Waxing Moon of the Long Night
Another day, another lesson. They had spent the prior day drawing stone from the ground, making arches and other structures, until Rasul was satisfied that they were all proficient in the skill. Once more, they stood in the cold, open air of the crater, but instead of pillars of arches, this time they had a large pile of rocks in front of them.
Snowfall Page 10
