Fifth of Twelve: The Change-Soul

“The Stative Pair of Souls, i.e. Change and Still, contain a uniquely emotive quality, specifically that of satisfaction. The Change-soul is dissatisfaction itself, the quality of not desiring existence how it currently is. Yet, this does not always appear as an abhuman or destructive personality. Many Manglers I have known throughout my tenure are men and women who simply wish to improve the world, see positive change. Still, there exists a few who believe that change, any change at all, is better than stagnation, even if that change is for the worse. Redhame Callias, a Mangler of some renown, champions the idea that the Fall of the Iledaein Empire was a boon for its populace simply because of the cultural stagnation that had been occurring for the last century of its existence. Obviously, Callias ignores the fact that it was plague that befell Iledar’s brood, not internal upheaval.”

- From a transcript taken from Redhame Aldous’s lectures on the differential qualities between Worldsoul pairs

“Energy under the effects of Change behaves erratically, difficult to predict or constrict. And yet, it provides the valuable ability to increase or decrease the intensity of energy input and output.”

- From The Book of Souls, Article 5: The Change-soul

(NOTE: This version of the text has been vandalized by its previous user. Above “behaves erratically”, WELL DUH has been written in the margin. The Librarians of the Augur Academy will be notified of students defacing historical texts)

___

Etalia missed living next to a volcano. Even within the carriage that was currently hauling her up the side of Mt. Dumak, protected from the winds that were her namesake, she still felt the chill biting her to the bone. If only the Change-soul could alter the temperature, by Thunai’s flaming mouth she wished it were so.

She was a fool to come here, yet a fool by her own design. Etalia, as a Redhame, never went to a university to learn her power. The Augurs, the pompous bastards, prided themselves on their academies and universities, their mundane Mysteries. They visited the Sibyllance, merely a guest before leaving once they had gotten what they wanted. Etalia basked in it, Beholden to its majesty, since she was born.

The Isle. Wonderful, warm paradise. A utopia built upon Fire’s own mount, fueled by its own lifeblood.

And yet, she had left perfection to come here.

Ettora. Harsh, cold damnation. A culture built upon the rancid bones of Iledarn, clawing its way through snow and stone towards a meagerly better existence.

Yet Etalia was here, doing the same. Clawing out a better life.

As she was no longer bound to the Isle, she had to bind herself in other ways. For the sake of food in her belly and a roof over her head, Etalia had bound herself, by a contract of employment, to a nobleman of Ettora. She did what he said and she got paid. Went where he pointed and Changed what he wanted. Yet, she was only one among a dozen Beholden who her Lord “rented out”. Etalia’s reward for such labor? Money, stagnated by the Royal Mint, unable to be changed by the touch of the Souls. What a pitiful thing, yet who could live without it?

Wooden wheels came to a creaking halt as the carriage finally rested, far up the mountainside. Etalia pushed apart one of the curtains to see where her employer had sent her today. What looked suspiciously like a coal mine greeted her on the other side, although there was a large pile of pipes on one side of the clearing. Oh, joy. Time to get her hands dirty. Etalia pushed open the door to the carriage, not waiting for the driver to get it for her. Without any semblance of the grace she once had, the Redhame hopped to the ground. Sturdy boots met the rock soil with a soft thump.

A stone-stained, heavily calloused hand extended forth, with uncomfortable amounts of dirt under the fingernails, from an equally dirty man. The Ettoran, his clothes seeming as thick and dense as that awful mustache, appeared to be the foreman of this operation by the orange band around his bracer, a steel plate sewn to a leather sleeve with multiple sigils stamped into it. Etalia had yet to see any child of Ettan without such a piece. Workmen had their made of hardened leather, or a partial assembly such as this. City guards wore their bracers as part of their armor, sure to always have them on display to show their heraldry and deeds. Even the nobles of Kota, with golden gloves and jewel encrusted scael, were never without their ancestral garment. Many had the marks of Ettan or Old Iledarius himself put on there, regardless if they were truly related or not. Though her employer spat in the face of many regulations, be it lawful or fashion, never was he without some form of bracer.

Etalia looked at the hand suspiciously before, with all lady-like grace, shaking the appendage. At least the foremen didn’t try and break her wrist like some of his profession.

“Milady. You’re the Mangler sent by Lord Orsivel?” Thank Fate that the man didn’t speak like one of those foul Geodites, all thick with twang and timbre. Though, Etalia never did like the term “Mangler”. Sounded like some understreet serial murderer rather than a lady with the powers of alteration within her soul.

“Yes, I am.”

The foreman’s thick mustache spread in a smile. “Good, good. We called for one of youse.” He began walking towards the mineshaft, intending her to follow.

“What are you doing, foreman, that you require the use of the Soul of Change. My services do not come cheaply.”

The foreman nodded swiftly, before leading her farther towards the cave mouth. It was obviously a recent dig, maybe a month or two old, with new beams and supports that had yet to rot. Good. At least it shouldn’t cave in on her.

“We had a cave in, ya see.” Damn it. That’s the last thing Etalia wanted to hear. The foreman showed Etalia a table, by the entrance to the mine, where a diagram had been laid out. The parchment detailed the mountain itself, hundreds of mine shafts and tunnels from hundreds of years of mining interconnected throughout the rock. Besides various shafts, survey notes had been scratched in with horrible penmanship, the foreman’s own no doubt. Stability, history, what ores and stone made up those sections with the strength of them all laid out. A geomaarn’s dream, but barely a curiosity to Etalia.

The foreman pointed to a basin on the backside of the mountain. “Ya see, folks down in Kota have been gettin’ antsy. The reason why? This valley here don’t exist.”

Etalia raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “A valley? Not existing?”

“Well… I guess the valley’s there, but the problem is what’s covering it. A glacier, real old and real big. Now, some of those rocky fellas-”

“Geomaarn.” Etalia corrected.

“Dae, daein.” The foreman waved his hand at her. “Those rock types down in Kota been saying that mostly glaciers stay wheres they’re supposed to be. But this one ain’t. Its sinking down, ‘cept there’s nowhere to go.”

“A couple tunnels collapsed, so what?”

The foreman, mustache wrinkling in irritation, jabbed his dirty finger into the map. “Nothings broke. Well, that’s an untruth. Something’s broke. Rest of the tunnels are fine, though. Just ours that is giving us some trouble. Ya see, we’re hired to put one of yer Augur manufacts down there, at the bottom of this big icy fella. One of yall’s types said it would shrink the glacier down by melting the base layer and sending the runoff down to the river.” He pointed at the pile of piping on the other side of the clearing. “Now, I ain’t saying it’ll work, but it’ll sure make the thing smaller so I don’t care. And I’s got paid good money to put the thing in. ”

“So,” Etalia looked down the earthen tunnel “you want me to go down there and see what’s broken?”

“That’s right, lady. One of the tunnels caved in down there, ya see, cutting us up here off from the machine. Last man who saw it, as rock was falling on his head, said that the whole manufact was going right through the floor.”

“I won’t be able to fix anything.” Etalia said, voice impertinent.

“I aint asking ya to fix nothin’. Just get down there, have a look’s see, and make sure we can follow later. Simple as that.” The foreman’s mustache, or perhaps the dirty caterpillar that had taken up residence on his upper lip, stretched apart in a grin. Something told Etalia that it would not be as simple as that.

___

Not this. The Chant whispered in her mind, it’s inhuman voice made the flickering light of her torch amidst the dark tunnel far creepier than it had any right to be. Etalia had long left the foreman and the few miners behind, trudging farther and farther into the mineshaft. Anything else.

Etalia tried to block the whispers from her mind, but the partial darkness made the voice seem to come from all around her. Like she was trapped in a box, her captor tormenting her just out of sight. The world shouldn’t be this way. Make it something else.

“Leave me alone.” Etalia spat at the darkness, but that did little to hush the Chant. No one truly knew what it was, the Chant. What few Redhames she had heard speak on it never had quite all the answers. Only theory and conjecture. How could they not have this all figured out? Why did the Worldsouls have to be more an art than a science? How long had they had them, yet still know so little? It was almost insulting.

“Fine.” Etalia said. “Fine. I’ll give you what you want.” Holding the torch up with one hand, Etalai stooped down and picked up a rock with the other. “This better shut you up.” Taking in a deep breath and concentrating on the stone in her palm, the Redhame woman began her mantra. “Be else. Be else. I don’t want you like this. Be else.”

Etalia released her breath, and the stone shifted under her touch. What was once steadfast and immovable, changed, and became little more than a puddle in her hand. A pool of liquid rock.

The Chant quieted, supplicated by such a release. Like slightly opening the lid on a pot of tea.

“Good girl.” Etalia smirked as she threw the liquid away, becoming scattered sand as it rehardened in the air, away from her touch, away from the Soul of Change.

See, she was a Redhame, no matter what that bastard Council said. So what if she couldn’t figure out any other souls. So what if she accidentally melted things when she got stressed. Its not like the tower collapsed. A couple of Affixers, attuned to Bind, fixed whatever she broke. Its not like she was a damned Shatterhand.

Her foot hit something. A large amount of something. Etalia looked up from her thoughts and found the cave in right before her. Finally. Time to do a little work and then she can go back to her apartment. Placing the torch into a setting built into one of the supports, the Redhame-for-hire got to work.

Etalia put both her hands on the pile of stone and dirt, it filled the whole width and breadth of the tunnel, and changed it. Many other Manglers said that they simply let the material become whatever shape it wanted to become, let whatever forces acting upon it act. Etalia was not so complex. She simply imagined it as water, flowing away. And the stone did just that. Like a slate-colored flood, the cave-in flowed out pooling around her ankles. Quickly, careful not to let the whole mountain fill this little tunnel with rock-water, Etalia re-hardened the walls, allowing the stone to return as it was.

Hidden behind what once was the wall, lied what was obviously the manufact, a large device made of animant wires and coils, half submerged in the ground. It looked as though the cave-in had occurred just as they were scraping the last of the rock away from the glacier, evidenced by the whole far wall of the little cavern being made of dark blue ice. Retrieving the torch from its setting, Etalia inspected the half buried device. The changed rock rehardened to stone as she stepped from the pool it had created.

The hole the device had dropped into seemed far too dark, as though there was a deep pit below. And yet, the manufact was only partially submerged into the floor. The world is not right. For once, Etalia agreed with the Chant. This was not right, by what she could see, it should have fallen far deeper. Leaning over the edge, Etalia looked down into the hole, her torch illuminating the deep shadows.

Was that… tile? The bottom of that hole had some sort of pattern to it, like a whole bunch of lines cut into that surface, crossing each other. Or, much more reasonably, as though someone had covered the floor with tile.

Betting that she was right, Etalia threw her torch down there, before shifting the edge wider with the Change-soul, and following it right down. Her booted feet were met with the characteristic clatter of a tiled floor.

Picking up the torch from where it had fallen, Etalia surveyed the room.

A skull appeared in the darkness. The Redhame screamed and dropped the light.

Fumbling for it, Etalia quickly re-raised the torch and looked to where she had seen the skull. Calmed down and more prepared for the sight, Etalia had found what had kept the manufact from completely falling into this lower room. The device, its weight far too heavy for the thin floor, had broken through the roof of this room and became lodged on a stone sarcophagus in the center of what could only be a mausoleum. Half the lid of the casket had been shattered, cracked to pieces by the weighty industrial mechanism. From under that half broken lid, the skull’s empty eyes stared at her.

What a way for a grave to be disturbed.

But this, this was impossible? Wasn’t it? How had a tomb of all things found its way under a glacier of all things?

Somehow, there must have been a settlement here, before the glacier. Maybe even one of the satellite cities of Old Iledarn. And this… must have been someone important.

All around the stone table, ancient writing had been inscribed. A eulogy for the dead, or a curse upon graverobbers. Pray it was the first.

On the tiled floor, something had fallen from within the casket. A long, metal staff with a skeletal hand, fused by age, grasping it firmly. Attached to its head, an ornamental lattice upon which the four-pointed mark of Iledarius’ Star had been etched. Definitely Iledaein. That was their sigil.

Well, Etalia thought to herself, a dead man had no need for staff. And she could get a pretty penny for the thing, if not from her employer, than from the market quarter. The Redhame took up the metal rod and, putting one foot on the sarcophagus, climbed out of the hole.

Suddenly, as Etalia wrapped her hand around one of the animantine pipes of the manufact, something felt very wrong. nOt tHiS! NoT ThIs! The Chant screamed in her head, if in pain, as some circuit arced between the device and the staff, with Etalia being the conduit connecting the two.

The Change-soul exploded out from her as Etalia felt her mind subsumed by the wailing Chant within her soul. The last thing she could see was stone, flowing like water down into the mausoleum.

That can’t be good, Etalia thought as liquid stone began rising up to her ankles.

TO BE CONTINUED IN: SIXTH OF TWELVE: THE STILL-SOUL