Path of the Stonebreaker

Chapter 35

Dawn of a New Day

Femira clenched her fists.

Finally, she gasped, revelling in the familiar sensation of vibrations in her hands. But it was different than before, she could feel the vibrations from the stone around her, the solid tiles of the floor and the brick beneath, resonating in alternative beats. The entire room itself, the walls, the ceiling. Her senses could even perceive tremors beyond her sight. Giving her impressions of the hallways outside.

Grinning, she began to dissolve the training boulder in front of her without even taking a step toward it. The boulder instantly collapsed in on itself in a heap of sandy dust, most of its matter being sucked into her hand in fractions of a second. It was strange, not channelling the material into her earthstone. It was now part of her, ingrained into her being. She could feel the material of the boulder strengthening her skin as she absorbed it. She guided it to her heart where, in her mind, the earthstone still resided. Misandrei had explained to her that the earthstone was gone, that it had been diffused into every strand of her body. Despite knowing this, Femira couldn’t help but think of the earthstone as a separate piece to her but now contained inside of her.

Cracked lines of amber light showed under skin, glowing with the new reserve of stone material as she guided it through her body. It was the same light that her earthstone used to radiate when it was filled. The light snaked up her exposed arms and faded as she drew it all towards her heart. Misandrei had told her that she didn’t need to draw it there to fully absorb it, that she could do that instantly but the visualisation of bringing it to her heart helped her.

It also helped her sense the material of the boulder at her core. If she closed her eyes and really focused she could see it in her mind, swirling inside of an imaginary earthstone; golden red and brown with a silky lustre. The boulder had been a hard grey rock pulled up from the earth. She could feel it wanting to return to its previous state. The material mixed with others that she had already absorbed. Sandy, coarse earth from the courtyard outside and tiny flecks of metal; steel, iron and bronze. She’d never before been able to sense this. The difference between them. She had been able to distinguish between metal and rock, been able to call and shape those respectively. But now she could detect the differences between the metal sources and various types of rock. She could sense it from them.

The grey boulder had been in this form for longer than Femira’s mind could fathom. She could get a sense for its age, how it had been formed over millennia from pressure and heat. It was different from the loose rocks in the courtyard. Those had been sand once, pressed and compacted until it had become something different. She could sense these differences, and could pick them apart. If she tried hard enough, she wagered that she could reform it as a different rock entirely.

She knew the concept of the edir. Both Aden and Misandrei had explained it to her. She never really thought of her edir as an extended part of her the way that they did. It had always felt to her as an additional piece of her senses. Those senses were now heightened, like when the morning sun cast the bay in vibrant light; enhancing the colours. The bay itself was no different than before, yet looked to the eye as a completely different place, one alive with shimmering colour as the sun rose. It was like the sun had risen on her edir. Where before she had been fumbling in the dark, she could see it now with the vibrant glow of the morning light.

Misandrei had been correct; the soulforging had changed her completely and while her new enhanced senses were awe-inspiring beyond comprehension, they were also impossible to escape from. When she had first woke after the soulforging ritual, it had been overwhelming as her mind struggled to adapt to the senses her body could now perceive. The thrumming of all the stone, earth and metal around her. She had been familiar with it from her extended use of earthstone, but now it invaded every part of her. Misandrei had been at her side, guiding her through the change. Teaching her how to channel this new energy and focus her senses so that they didn’t overwhelm her. It had taken her two days before she had felt stable enough to even get out of her bed. And now, only a week later, she was standing in one of the elite training rooms, finally testing out the improvements to her abilities.

She wanted to push her abilities. She wanted to challenge someone. Vestyr or Endrin. She thought wickedly. She wanted to prove to them that, now they were on equal footing, she was better than them. Loreli, she thought with determination. Loreli would be her first challenge, she had been so close to finally beating her in the sparring yards. But then Loreli had been promoted and no longer trained with the recruits. She was soulforged now too I guess. Loreli had never confirmed which runestone she favoured, but Femira suspected at stormstone. The way she moved with such mind-bending speed was a dead giveaway. Not as fast as Landryn had, but close.

“I want to spar,” Femira said with determination. Misandrei smiled at her, “are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“Yes,” she said resolutely, “I want to challenge Loreli.”

“A healthy rivalry is a good thing,” Misandrei replied, “but do not let that passion cloud who the enemy is.” Femira flinched at the accusation in Misandrei’s tone, “you’re a bloodshedder now. As is Loreli, there will be a day soon where you will need to trust one another. Your lives will depend on it.”

Femira wasn’t sure if she’d ever trust anyone with her life, least of all Loreli or Endrin. Although hadn’t she already trusted Garld with it? The memory of the soulforging was a blur, she recalled getting on the bed. Garld’s hand on her forehead… and pain… Intense overwhelming pain… but also safety. She had felt secure and protected. It was a strange feeling… trusting someone.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Femira said.

“You are eager to prove yourself,” Misandrei began, “I can understand that. I was once like you, I was a stronger runewielder than everyone in my rank. I strived for more. Bigger challenges, more chances to prove that I was worthy, that I was stronger than everyone else. I was accustomed to being the strongest, of having no equal,” she held Femira’s gaze as she spoke.

“My first real battle,” Misandrei continued, “I faced a Reinish Foebreaker… my comrades broke, many of them fleeing outright. The Foebreaker and his men tore through them. Only myself and a few others in my squad held the line. It was then that I learned a crucial truth; you cannot do this alone. We were being overwhelmed, our muscles tiring, our resolve smashed to pieces. One by one, my comrades fell.”

“What happened?”

“Salvation,” she replied, “reinforcements arrived and the Foebreaker was killed and his battalion broken—Not by me, I was finished, I could barely lift my sword. Garld himself had been part of the reinforcements but he wasn’t a General then. He healed my wounds and had me sent back to the rear lines. I fought him on that, I wanted to stay at the front, but he was right… I was of no use to anyone.” She paused and fixed Femira with an intense stare, “I couldn’t fight as part of a team and my comrades died because of that.” Femira didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure what to say. She could see the lesson in Misandrei’s story, but also didn’t want to accept that she would have to trust Loreli and Endrin.

“I’m arranging a team for a mission,” Misandrei said after a few moments, “if you feel you are ready. I think you should join.”

“What’s the mission?” Femira asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Hunting corsairs,” Misandrei replied.

“My abilities aren’t exactly suitable for combat at sea,” Femira said with concern. What use would a stonebreaker specialist even be at sea, surely a team of wavecallers would be more suited?

“We won’t be taking them down by ship,” Misandrei replied, a smirk pulling at her mouth.

***

“That’s amazing,” Aden said as he watched Femira smugly form six rotating blades of glass. They weren’t perfect glass formations, far from it. But she’d found that with the more material she gathered and extracted she could retain the tiny parts of quartz in the stone that could be made to form something that was almost like glass. Crystal blades would be more accurate, but they looked like glass so she settled on calling them glassblades. She still had a limit to how much material she could hold. She wasn’t sure exactly how much but it was a few times her own body weight of material. And each day she trained her edir, that limit seemed to be increasing. Her own weight didn’t seem affected when it was fully absorbed into her, if it was then it was negligible. But when she was moving through her body in shaping or using her stoneskin ability, she noticed her weight and movement were still massively affected.

She focused her edir on balancing the six blades around her, moving them in an intricate dance.

“How strong are they?” Jaz asked, reclining on his chair. Jaz being from a wealthy family, didn’t keep a room in the barracks. Instead he rented a permanent room at an inn only a few blocks from the barracks. The inn was called the ‘The Queen’s Hand’ and it was an obnoxiously patriotic place with tapestries of Queen Elyina and the founding of Reldon decorating the common room. It was a favoured establishment for highborn who didn’t want to live in the barracks but wanted to stay nearby. Jaz’s room—rooms, more like—were exactly the kind of places that Femira used to spend her evenings trying to sneak into.

She could already tell at a glance where Jaz likely kept his hidden stashes. The lounge room where they were now had a low coffee table in the center with two drawers. Both of those would be empty but the secret middle one would have gold hidden in it. Behind the mirror, she suspected that there would be nook in the wall. This was a rented room, so the ‘secret’ spots were generic. Highborn folk had to be a lot cleverer at hiding their valuables in places like these. Femira doubted that Jaz gave it much consideration. He would keep his runestones on him, notably his topaz as he was a grenadier. Well it’s inside him now too, I suppose. Jaz had also been promoted to the bloodshedders alongside her. His own soulforging having been done a few nights previously.

“Have you made a decision yet, Aden?” Femira asked.

“It’s hard,” He replied with frustration, “picking one runestone effectively means I’ll be giving up all the others entirely. It’s a massive sacrifice.”

“You’ll never master more than two anyway,” Jaz said, “you’re being an idiot if you think that you could.”

“I’m not talking about mastery,” Aden said defensively, “right now I can use all of the elemental runestones. I bet I could learn the ethereal stones too if they were available to me. I know the soulforging would make me a significantly stronger runewielder—I know that! But I just can’t decide!”

“You don’t have to rush it,” Femira said flippantly, “Me and Jaz will just take all the good missions, and get all promotions and further soulforgings,” she teased.

“What do you mean good mis—”

“—and when you’ve finally decided which runestone you’re committing to,” she cut him off with a menacing grin, “we’ll be your superiors.”

“Have you,” Aden looked between the two of them, “have you both been put on the Altarean corsairs mission?” Femira glanced at Jaz, their eyes met in a knowing agreement and said nothing.

“They’ve been gathering only elites for that,” Aden said with accusation. Femira shrugged, letting

her glass blades dissolve and absorbed the crystal dust back into her.

As before, it lit up the veins on her arms as it drew into her. That’s going to make sneaking around in the dark a lot harder. She’d need to get new gear that covered her arms. She would normally leave them free as it allowed her more manoeuvrability while climbing. She hadn’t even tried, climbing since becoming soulforged. I could probably scale the barrack’s wall in under a minute now, she thought confidently. She would have to give that a go later. Maybe not the barracks though. She was supposed to be keeping her new abilities a secret so it was best not to show off to the other recruits. The city wall is high enough. She could try sneaking over it and back. She obviously wouldn’t get caught by the cityguard… maybe she could try the Pillar, the palace guards would probably give her more of a challenge.

“Do you want to do a little demonstration too?” Aden asked Jaz.

“Nah, my new abilities are a bit more… destructive,” he replied, “wouldn’t want to damage my rooms now would I?”

“How about a sparring session?” Femira proposed, “You against me. We can use the training rooms in the barracks.” Aden had an eager look but Jaz was uncertain. Come on, Jaz, don’t wimp out on me.

“Fine,” he replied, reluctantly.