“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 bitbigger 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. “Nevertry 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 isa lotharder than stone to diamond.”
I nodded, lips tight. That certainly was a lot simpler ofan 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 thefailing a few hundred timespart.
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?”
