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 couldmanipulateearth but not change its nature.
I tried tofeelinto 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.
