Chapter 34 Izzy
IZZY
I rose feeling refreshed and a little more hopeful that this final day of training might be enough to save Myel tonight.
I started the day with enchantments. This, thankfully, wasn’t hard to learn.
I didn’t know why some magic felt far more natural to me than others, but simply putting someone to sleep, that didn’t take long to master.
Like Lhorine had said, it was like a binding, but far less invasive and intense.
I had a good grasp on that after about an hour and a half, then moved on to transmutation.
This required a change of instructors since my grandmother was better with transmutation than Lhorine. I had to hope Olinara had some miracle way of describing transmutation that made it make sense, like she had with my nymph form.
“Now… I can’t use earth magic,” Olinara began. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t move earth.” She focused on her hand and I watched as her fist turned from flesh to diamond.
It didn’t look comfortable. Granma Oli winced and grimaced as she finished. Then she dropped to one knee and punched the floor so hard stone bits went flying.
Holy crap-buckets!
Olinara rose and hissed as she returned her hand to normal.
“That didn’t look like it felt good,” I commented. “Also, damn, Grandma! That was amazing!”
She smiled. “You’re right, it hurt like hell.
Skin and bone and muscle weren’t meant to be turned to diamond.
I couldn’t feel my hand anymore, and honestly, what hurt was the area where the rest of me connected with that bit, since it didn’t know how to merge with such material. But yes, pretty neat, huh?”
I nodded.
“But let’s start with something a bit easier.” She gathered a bit of stone shard from the floor and clenched her fist around it. When she opened her hand, it had turned to a rough diamond.
“No wonder you’re rich,” I mumbled.
She laughed but shook her head. “No, as much as I can change this, it will revert to stone eventually. I’ve tried to lock its form, like I do with my own when shapeshifting, but I can’t. You may be able to, with a binding.”
I nodded. That was my hope. Though my goal wasn’t to turn stone to diamond but turn Myel’s flesh into something much more durable.
“So… is transmutation like shapeshifting?” I asked.
She bobbled her head. “Yes and no.” Dropping the diamond, it clattered to the floor and slowly returned to stone.
“When we shapeshift, we’re only really changing our outsides, the rest of us, our inner organs and such, remains the same.
We may stretch bones and make things a bit bigger or smaller, but that’s not the same as turning all of that into something else entirely. ”
That made sense.
“And, like I said, it hurt when I turned my hand to diamond, the connection between flesh and diamond isn’t natural and it resisted the change.”
That didn’t bode well for my plans with Myel.
“Would it be easier to change all of you to diamond, then?” I asked.
She gave me a stern look. “Never try that.”
I raised a brow at that warning.
“Think about it, if your heart was a diamond, if your brain was a diamond, would you be a living thing anymore? No. Doing that essentially kills you, turns you into an unliving lump of material, a statue. You should technically return to normal eventually, but the damage is done, you’d be dead.”
“Oh.” Right… so I wouldn’t be able to change all of Myel into diamond or stone or steel to make him tougher. But I didn’t give up. There might be other things I could do. First, though, I’d have to learn more about transmutation.
“So… how do I think of it? What’s the easy trick for me to understand this?” I hoped there was one.
Olinara sighed. “The trick — if there is one — is to believe it’s easy.
I can see it in your eyes, you’re stupefied by me turning one thing into another.
You have to believe it’s as easy as snapping your fingers.
And for someone who knows what they’re doing, it is.
I wanted that stone to become diamond, and I used my anima to make it so.
Now… it should be said that the closer something is to the desired state, the easier the change.
Flesh and bone to diamond is a lot harder than stone to diamond. ”
I nodded, lips tight. That certainly was a lot simpler of an explanation than I’d been given in transmutation class, which had focused on the theory behind the changes, the molecular shifts and such. But as much as Olinara’s description seemed simple, I wasn’t so sure that would mean it was easy.
“Try it,” Olinara said, picking up the same stone and handing it to me.
“You won’t learn until you’ve tried it… and failed…
a few hundred times. So, let’s get going on that.
” She gave a sweet smile. “Let’s start with something easier than a diamond.
That’s a metamorphic rock… so try changing it to… marble.”
And so began a morning of frustration. Grandma hadn’t been wrong about the failing a few hundred times part.
Hours later, as noon drew close and I still hadn’t made any progress. I threw the stone across the room and shouted in frustration, before collapsing to my knees in tears.
Transmutation wasn’t a key part of my plan, I might be able to do without it, but I’d been worried that enhancing Myel wouldn’t be enough, that I’d need to change him fundamentally for him to win. And I needed him to win. I couldn’t let him die.
Then I’d die.
I had to do this… but I couldn’t!
I was putting too much pressure on myself, but I couldn’t not.
“Let’s stop for now,” Olinara said softly, kneeling next to me, a comforting hand on my back. “Believe it or not, you’re doing well.”
I huffed a snarky, sobbing laugh.
But then I wondered… “How would you even know that?”
That’s when it hit me. “You… can sense what’s happening with the stone?”
“And there it is,” she whispered.
I wiped at my tears and swiveled my head to look at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Yes… because me saying “feel the stone,” would have helped you and not frustrated you more?”
I grimaced and bobbled my head accepting this.
“What… am I feeling for?”
Her turn to grimace. “That’s the hard part.
That’s where all that theory you didn’t like comes into play.
If you know the essence of stone, you can see how to shift it to something else.
Think of it like healing, searching within a body for the injured parts to fix, only they’re not injured they’re just…
not the material you want them to be, and it’s the whole thing, not just a part.
All of which is easy to say, but there’s still a lot of chemistry involved, and if you’re like me, it took me a while to understand all of that. ”
I rolled my eyes, my frustration returning
“But… luckily… you’re not like me,” she added quickly.
I raised a brow.
“You’re part elf… you know earth magic. Use that! Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that bit.”
I blinked.
Use earth magic?
Of course!
Still on my knees, I laid my hand on the stone floor and softened it, so I could scoop up a handful. Then I hardened it again. That I could do easily enough. So… could I just…
I tried changing the stone to marble with earth magic, not transmutation…
Nothing.
Oh…
So earth magic could manipulate earth but not change its nature.
I tried to feel into the stone. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the lump in my hand.
I did feel something, but since I didn’t know what stone was supposed to feel like it was all a mystery to me.
Still, I used my connection to the stone — probing deep within it — then added some anima, to will it to change to marble.
The stone shifted… slightly.
“Oh! Hey… you did it… sort of…” Oli cheered. “I think that’s quartzite!”
Opening my eyes, I looked at the stone in my hand. It had changed, just not to marble.
“Huh…”
That… hadn’t been so hard.
I smiled at my grandmother, got up and went back to work. An hour later, I could transmute stone to marble. I was still a long way from changing flesh to something harder, and I still didn’t know if it would work without Myel being in constant pain… but I’d taken the first step.
We kept going after lunch.
Since my goal was to be able to do this on another person, that meant we got Koar involved. He volunteered, ever eager to help. He had no clue what he was getting himself into, however. He spent the next few hours screaming in pain as I tried to change him into stone or steel and failed repeatedly.
As evening set in, I finally had some success.
I changed Koar’s hand to steel, which I’d found easier than stone.
The only hitch was… I could only do it while holding his wrist and actively maintaining the barrier between his flesh and the steel, which took a lot out of me, and was far from my ideal result.
But I’d run out of time.
In a couple hours, I’d be infiltrating the arena prisons to see Myel.
I ate my dinner — a large one, since I was famished from all this grueling work — in silence. After dinner, Koar gave me more of his life essence to help revive me further. I wanted to practice a bit more after that, but both Lhorine and my grandmother said they had a better idea.
“You know the basics at this point,” Lhorine said. “Everything you wanted to know, you know. You need time and practice and hopefully you’ll have that tonight with your bonded. And perhaps the bond will help the process?” She didn’t sound convinced of that.
“And since you need to conserve your energy,” Olinara picked up the thread, “we thought we’d take this time to tell you more about your parents.”
My parents?
Now?
“Do you think it will help?”
The two shared a look, then nodded.
“Yes,” Olinara said softly. “You need to know the legacy you carry, the power and potential within you. Maybe, once you understand that, you’ll see how powerful you really are.”