Path of the Stonebreaker

Chapter 15

Decisions of Runewielders

So far no one had given Femira any real indication of what the soulforging ritual entailed. She gathered it would be strenuous and painful but other than that Misandrei had been ambiguous on what exactly would be happening. She’d met with Aden and Jaz beforehand to see if they had learned anything. To her surprise, Jaz hadn’t known anything about soulforging either and Aden had only had suspicions on why the bloodshedders were such powerful runewielders.

“It really is a groundbreaking thing,” Aden said. He was sitting on a crate watching Femira and Jaz run through a series of combat drills.

The main yard in the barracks was large enough for entire sections to be occupied by training groups under instruction from senior ranking officers with additional areas separated for smaller training sessions. By Femira’s insistence, it had become a regular habit for the three to meet and spar in between other duties. She always wanted to improve her combat skills and knowledge of runewielding and sparring was the most effective way she’d found to do that.

“But if people have been doing this since Queen Elyina’s day, why is it only being used now?” Jaz asked, moving into a practised defence stance, readying to parry Femira’s daggers.

“Yeah, wasn’t that like a thousand years ago?” Femira added while gauging Jaz for a break in his defence.

“Hardly,” Aden scoffed, “Queen Elyina only forged Reldon two hundred years ago,” Aden chuckled as if that was something Femira should’ve known. He should know better than that at this stage. She took a leap at Jaz’s opened flank but his blunt training sword whirred and deflected her daggers.

“But still two hundred years! How have we not been using soulstones this entire time?” Jaz rebuked, taking a step back and evading another attack from Femira.

“After the fall of the Sorcerer Kings, a lot of their knowledge was hidden or destroyed. From what I can gather, Elyina herself seemed to be behind that, maybe she didn’t want an army of soulforged soldiers threatening her authority?”

“Leaving her open to attack from another nation?” Jaz countered.

“There’s not a lot of information from that time,” Aden replied, “perhaps Reldon was the only country that had discovered soulforging?—Annali, what are you doing?”

Getting past Jaz’s defensive manoeuvres had proven difficult and she could feel her endurance waning. Instead of fighting clean she decided to use her earthstone to raise three mounds of rock from the dirt of the yard. She rolled behind one of them.

“Having stronger runewielders in your army doesn’t have any drawbacks,” Femira said, leaning her back against the mound. She could feel the vibrations of the earth around her. She isolated the space where Jaz stood, sensing his slow approach to her mound. She could sense the pressure of his feet against the earth.

“She could have conquered more than just Reldon,” she continued, “it was a wasted opportunity if you ask me.” As Jaz cautiously neared, she pulled at the earth at his feet—as much as she could draw in—and leapt up onto her mound. He stumbled only a fraction as the earth at his feet shifted, attempting to jump back. She couldn’t make a hole large enough for him to fall in like Vestyr had done to her but it was enough to make him stumble and that was all she needed.

She had him! She batted away his sword with one of her daggers and followed through with a kick to his torso using the higher vantage. The impact of her foot caused him to double over, dropping his sword.

“Yield,” he spluttered, holding up a hand to her before she moved in for another kick. “Yield! Yield!”

She hopped off the mound, and then swept her hand over it and the other two nearby, pulling the material into her earthstone. Normally, she would immediately fill her earthstone with it, but she kept it in her body as Misandrei had told her. She felt it surging, the vibrations moving through her in tune with her heartbeat. She’d never held so much in her body before. She felt heavy and rigid. Her skin didn’t look any different but it felt tougher to the touch as she laboriously ran her hand over her forearm. Moving her arm felt like moving through water, like she was resisting against her own body to move.

“Hit me,” she said, looking at Jaz with a wry smile.

“What?” he wheezed, “No—I yielded.”

“I want to test something,” she insisted.

“You’re going to hurt me aren’t you?”

“You don’t trust me?” She asked innocently.

“Not in the slightest.”

“I just want to try my hold ability,” she pleaded.

“Ah stoneskin,” Aden chimed, “you’ve figured out how to do it?”

“I think so, I didn’t even know it was a thing until yesterday,” with difficulty, Femira raised her heavy fortified arms in a defensive block. “Come on, come at me, Jaz.”

He was hesitant at first, walking slowly at her. “Come on already, you wuss!” He swung at her block. She certainly felt the impact of his fist connecting with forearm but instead of a sharp pain, the attack felt like a child swatting at her.

“Ah,” Jaz recoiled, waving his hand limply in front of himself, “felt like punching a wall,” he grumbled.

“Guess it works,” Femira grinned, “thanks Jaz.”

“Yeah—whatever,” he replied walking over to pick up his discarded blade, “you want to try against this?” he offered.

“Stoneskin from what I've read won’t protect you much against an actual blade, it will still cut through you,” Aden warned her.

“Yeah,” Femira considered, “I think I’m good on that one Jaz, thanks for the offer though.”

She pulled herself up onto the crate as Aden jumped off. He cracked his neck and worked his shoulder joints before drawing his own sword, readying for his round with Jaz.

“I assume you both are going for the topaz infusion?” she asked, knowing they both had a preference for that type of runestone.

“Traditionally, there wasn’t much combat applications for topaz runestones,” Aden began, “a topaz specialist can use carbon pulled from their bodies to and ignite external objects. This is an incredibly dangerous practice that has quite detrimental long term physical effects on the body. Most commonly a Grenadier will carry a host of incendiaries on hand and use their topaz to create bursts of flame with those.”

“Grenadier?” Femira asked, she hadn’t heard that term before.

“Combat topaz runestone users, like I said, there isn’t much practical use for topaz in the military. In other divisions of the military Grenadiers will throw incidiaries and ignite them across the battlefield,” Aden informed.

“They’re not considered particularly versatile,” Jaz added, “I was Grenadier before being recruited into the bloodshedders. Enemy topaz users can quell the fires pretty quickly, and if there’s a wavecaller in the opposing line, then you’re useless.”

“So if there isn’t much use for Grenadiers in combat, why are you even here?” Femira directed at Jaz.

“Someone needs to bring up the average attractiveness of division,” he threw back, flashing a grin at her.

“I suppose we don’t really know what Grenadiers will be capable of with soulforging,” Aden shrugged, “considering how powerful you’ve described Vestyr and Endrin’s abilities are with the eradite infusion, it’s possible that the ideas around the practical uses for topaz in warfare has changed. We do know that an adept topaz and salphedine wielder can manipulate water and temperature and they can make pretty effective projectiles of ice.”

“You still hung up on those iceblades?” Jaz jibed.

“I can almost get it,” Aden rebuked, “I don’t own my own salphedine runestone though. The barracks will only let me train for a few hours a week with one. I don’t know if you’ve noticed Annali but if you want to get skilled with a particular runestone, you kinda need to own one yourself.” She had noticed. She’d only been able to practise with her own eradite and her repeated failed attempts to use the stormstone she’d stolen. Is it really stolen if the guy was dead? Looted, was that a more accurate term. It sure felt like stealing regardless of the technicality of it.

“You can use waterstones—the salphedine—too?” Femira cocked her head at Aden, from what she’d seen he was already an adept topaz and eradite runewielder.

“Aden is a bit of a prodigy if you hadn’t copped on to that vreth,” Jaz chuckled to which Aden blushed, “I’m not a prodigy,” he replied awkwardly, “I can just pick up runewielding a bit quicker than others is all. It’s why I was recruited here.”

“I’m surprised your family didn’t try to push you into being a wavecaller, they’re the most respected runewielders in the country,” Jaz noted.

“There’s a reason for that, wavecalling is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and there’s a lot more at stake if you get it wrong,” Aden said, his brows heavy.

“Yeah but you’re all prodigy-like,” Jaz replied.

“There’s a big difference between controlling a stream of water and diverting an entire ocean.”

“Is that why the tides in Epilas aren’t that big?” Femira said, “you use waterstone wielders to stop it?”

“Kind of… but not exactly,” Aden replied, “there’s the tidewall that takes the biggest brunt of it. The wavecallers though—they work the city’s coastwall to guide the ocean currents away from Epilas. That prevents the bay from flooding, it’s a monumental undertaking.”

“So the main thing stopping Epilas from being smashed away by the tides is the wavecallers?”

“That’s right,” Aden replied, “wait until you see the harbour on Unionsday and Lua Nova, the uniontide is so massive that the wavecallers form an enormous wall of ocean to stop it.” Femira shuddered, remembering the uniontides on Altarea. The waves were lapping up over the tall cliffs of the island, the stormguards had to keep it contained from flooding the city. She could imagine what would happen here with no cliffs along the shoreline to protect the city. Without the wavecallers this city would be swept away, surely.

“If you admire them so much, why didn’t you try to join them?” Femira pointed out.

“My family,” Aden sighed, finally resigned, “both my parents were in the military and theirs before them. We’re quite low nobility—my grandparents were commoners,” he directed a glare at Jaz, “and I’m not ashamed of that.” Jaz didn’t respond but Femira sensed this was a topic they’d discussed before, Aden continued, ”my family is where we are because of the military. I can’t turn my back on that.” That response seemed to satisfy Jaz who just nodded in understanding but Femira wasn’t sold.

Who cares what your parents did? You’re not obligated to follow them. Last Femira had heard her mother worked in one of the brothels in Altarea and Femira didn’t feel any sense of familial duty to follow her into that vocation. Even if she’d known her father, she didn’t think she’d be in any rush to follow in his footsteps either. Annali—on the other hand—she’d moved to a different country and married a total stranger because her family told her to. She’d just blindly gone along with it as if she’d had no choice in the matter. She felt like telling Aden to stop being ridiculous, that if he wanted to be wavecaller, he should stop caring what others wanted of him and to just do that. She restrained herself though, highborn had a strange way of looking at the world and she’d already let herself slip back into Femira too much around Aden and Jaz.

The pair had started their bout and were moving through the rhythms of practised sword fighters. Jaz was considered one of the most skilled amongst the recruits, although he often restrained himself when training against Femira. Aden was one of those people that seemed to naturally excel in anything he was given, he wasn’t the best sword fighter but he was certainly a great deal better than a lot of the other recruits.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Femira called out to them, interrupting their fight.

“What’s that?” Aden asked, the moment of distraction was enough for Jaz to deftly disarm Aden by knocking his opponent's sword out of his hand with a sharp whack with the flat of his blade, flicking Aden’s sword into the air and snatching it.

“What infusion are you going for?” Femira asked.

“Oh,” Aden said, rubbing at his swordhand, “I don’t know, yet.”

“Did Misandrei warn you about not being able to use other runestones?”

“She did,” Aden replied, “and that’s a concern. I might take a little more time to decide—Jaz, you’re going for the topaz infusion today, right?”

“Yep,” Jaz replied, looking at Aden's sword in his hand appreciatively, “stick to what you know. This sword is actually pretty good workmanship,” he noted with surprise.

“Just because my family isn’t as wealthy as yours doesn’t mean we can’t afford quality weapons,” Aden replied, defensively.

“Didn’t mean any offence,” Jaz replied, and flippantly tossed the blade back to Aden, “I’ll take a guess, Vreth, that you’re going for the eradite infusion?” Jaz asked and Femira nodded, “stick with what you know,” she agreed.

“What was the deal with the three mounds?” Jaz asked, rubbing at his neck and giving her confused look.

“What do you mean?”

“In our last fight, you made three mounds of earth. I watched you duck behind one of them, so what was the point of the other two?”

“You thought about them right?”

“Yeah,” he conceded.

“So it distracted you?”

“Barely,” he scoffed.

“That was all I needed,” Femira shrugged, “you approached more cautiously because you weren’t sure what I was planning.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Jaz replied, uncertain.

“Well I won,” she said, smugly, “so my three mound strategy worked.”

“How—If it didn’t distract me?”

“The outcome didn’t change, I still won,” she answered, jumping down off the crate, “I’m going to finish up and get some lunch. They haven’t told us much about what’s involved with the soulforging, but something tells me, I’d rather not do it on an empty stomach.”