Sixth of Twelve: The Still-soul

“Similar to its transformative opposite, the Still-soul of the Stative Pair has a satisfaction-based emotive element. Where Change is dissatisfied with the condition of the world, the Still-soul is entirely content with how things are, consistent in both mood and temperament. This particular soul, more often than most, will cause ‘abhuman’ tendencies in its attuned Beholden. Many of my Stagnant colleagues can forget what boredom feels like, the touch of fury or bliss. They lose, not emotions themselves, but the extremes and live within the median of temperament. Most Stagnants lack the spice of human existence, yet remain completely content with their current lives. Places such as the Royal Mint or the Records Office take advantage of them for this, hiring Stagnants for inhuman hours and worse conditions. And those deepest within the grasp of Stillness will never lift their voice to complain.”

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

“The Still-soul, within manufact engineering, is used to stabilize flows of energy, bringing consistency to that which is not. With it, the fiercest of rivers becomes the gentlest of steams. And yet, few utilize it to halt the flow entirely, preventing disasters by stagnating the device at the point of eruption.”

- From The Book of Souls, Article 6: The Still-soul

“What can the Still-soul do? WHAT can it DO?! Try to stop the rain. Try to cease a flow of blood. Try it. Just try. With a touch, a wisp’s breeze, I could stop the air from going in your lungs, stop your heart from beating. And you dare ask me what the Still can do?”

- Quote taken from a Senior Stagnant at the Augur Academy in Vaheen when asked, what was in his opinion, a dumb question

STORY CONTINUED FROM FIFTH OF TWELVE: THE CHANGE-SOUL

Kedan looked at the dripping cave with horror. Stone should not look that way, should not be that way. It wasn’t supposed to run down the side of a wall. It wasn’t supposed to drip from jagged ridges. Rock should be immovable, impregnable.

Be as stone. That was his mantra. Be as stone. Be steadfast. Be reliable. Be unmoving.

Yet this was none of those things. How had the world gone so wrong?

“My Lord, this is so far above my paygrade.” Kedan said to the man in front of him.

Lord Eridiktus Orsivel, the Back-street Baron, the Master of the Docks, looked over to Kedan from where he stood, conversing with an aid that had accompanied him up here. Orsivel, his neatly trimmed beard only making his face seem more dark, strolled up to Kedan, a cane resting comfortably in his left hand.

“What did you say, Stagnant?” Orsivel’s voice resonated in Kedan’s chest with a deepness Kedan had not heard in years. So different from the bells of the Mint. The thousands of shining bells, birthed everyday, still sang within his mind, a day dream, a reminder from the Stillness of what he should be doing right now.

“Sir,” Kedan said, his right hand tracing a sigil stamped on his bracer, “I’m not prepared for this. This, this is not something that should be done, can be done.”

“Are you not a senior stiller of the Royal Mint?” Lord Orsivel asked.

“I got that promotion two weeks ago. I-”

“Are you not a senior stiller of the Mint?” Orsivel removed his spectacles, cleaning one of the lenses on the inner edge of his silk shirt.

Kedan took a breath in. “Yes, my Lord. I am.”

“Then you should be well suited for such a task.” The Merchant Lord replaced his glasses, their animantine rims shining in the sunlight.

“But-” A finger pressed into Kedan’s sternum.

“Now listen here, young man.” Orsivel leaned in close, fury on his brow and speaking softly. “Do you have any idea what this is costing me? Can you even conceive of what I stand to lose down there?” The noble pointed at the cave-that-should-not-exist, still dripping liquid rock. “Down that tunnel is an innocent woman. One who has no idea how she is doing this, who has no idea how this is happening. Every second you wait, whatever is going on down there sends a little more of that sludge sliding down the tunnel, filling that last cavern. By now that innocent Redhame could be drowning in liquid stone, and you are the only one who can get down there and help her. Understand?”

Kedan stared into Orsivel’s eyes, and swallowed the spit that had been growing in his mouth. “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

“Of course you will.” Orsivel grabbed him by the shoulder, gently shaking it. “You are a Royal Stagnant. You’re supposed to be the best there is at what you do. Now go do it.” The noble began walking away from Kedan, his assistant quickly coming up to Orsivel’s side.

“I make coins!” Kedan yelled after Orsivel. “I make coins.” That time he said it to himself.

Kedan felt his eyes slowly slide back to the unnatural cave, still damp with stone. He would have to descend into it, walk straight into the beast’s maw, with only the Stillness to keep his flesh from becoming like that stone. He knew what the Change-soul could do to a man. At the Academy, Kedan remembered seeing skin drip from a teacher’s fingers after an attunement accident. That moment had forced his hand, made his decision for him. Kedan swore to himself that such a thing would never happen to him. The Still-soul was his shield, his bastion against such change.

One of the city guards, an Ettoran of middling height and a tanned fisherman’s face, saw him staring at the cave and walked over to Kedan.

“You alright, Stiller?” the guard asked. “We could always call up for someone else from the Mint, if you’re not up for it.”

“It’s Stagnant, and no, I’m fine. Just nerves.” Kedan said, voice sounding not as sure as he would like.

“It’s natural,” the guard put a hand on his shoulder, in an attempt at comfort, though the act held a hit of awkwardness. Was that hand heavier than it should be? It felt like his shoulder supported a whole shipment of coins. “A man like that would put anyone on edge.”

“Hm?” The guard sneered over to where Lord Orsivel spoke in hushed tones with his aid. “Lord Orsivel?”

“Nevermind that crook, I’ll get him dead to rights one of these days, right now, it’s time for your star to rise.” The guard led Kedan towards the cave entrance until they stood mere feet from the maw. With a kick of his foot, the city guard sent a rock rolling through the threshold. The stone warbled for a moment before slumping down and melting, slowly, into the earthen floor.

“Ready?”

Kedan pushed the guard’s hand from his shoulder. “As I’ll ever be.” The guard smiled before backing off. The Stagnant felt everyone’s collected eyes on him as he stepped across the threshold himself.

Fear erupted inside him as he felt the sickly moist field wash over him. Kedan felt himself changing, his very being becoming malleable, supple.

-nothing else-

The Chant roared in his head, a trumpeting defiance against its opposite. He could feel the Still-soul, like reassuring steel, charge up from within, pushing away the effects of the Changing.

He was fine. He was safe.

-be as you are-

Kedan forced his breath to slow, and calm himself. Everything was okay. His boots sunk slightly into the stone and a droplet of rock dripped onto his head, but everything was fine. Still-wisps, like the ever expanding rings that disturb the still water of a pond, played across his skin, bouncing back and forth.

-unchanging-

Steeling himself, Kedan began to descend down the ever-dripping tunnel towards the Redhame woman trapped in its deepest depths.

___

Kedan could barely see the manufact device over the continually increasing rock-fluid pool that filled the floor of the cavern. There, at the center of the stone lake, clinging for dear life to the animant piping, was the Redhame. Kedan only just spotted her, the liquid nearly drowning her by the second as only her hands and head edged above the surface.

Cracking his knuckles and mentally preparing himself, Kedan raised his hands forward and attempted to Still the whole area.

The blue ripples of the Still-wisps barely made it two feet past his hands before dissipating completely. His soul seemed only able to make the stone around his ankles the texture of a thick mud before going unnaturally fluid once more.

Minds and souls, he would have to wade in there. Oh, how he had hoped to simply walk to the edge of the cavern, throw around some wisps, and call it a day, but the Soul of the World had other plans.

Briefly considering removing his coat first, but throwing the idea away just as fast (it wouldn’t do him or it any good), Kedan began wading towards the machine. For some unknown reason, there was a kind of floor to this place, rock that had simply gone soft, not entirely fluid. But, the more Kedan thought about it as he pushed his way through tons of rock, it made more sense. He supposed that the whole mountain hadn’t turned into the largest non-water flood in history, blanketing Kota itself under the rock-fluid. Kedan couldn’t even guess at how this all was happening. He was no geomaarn, no student of the Elder Mysteries. A Stagnant, that’s what he was, and Stilling is what he did.

The rock started to push against him, slowing his progress to a crawl.

Was the Change-soul within the woman reacting to his Still and fighting against it?

No, no, no. He had to do this. The rock kept rising and Kedan could hear the Redhame’s gasps for air. He couldn’t let her die.

Stilling the floor at his feet to gain more leverage, Kedan pushed farther and farther into the stone lake. The rock reached his hips, then his chest, then his shoulders, as he descended deeper in. Kedan began stilling whole sheets of stone in front of him, pushing it away, before stepping into the cavity it left behind before more rock-fluid rushed in to take its place.

Finally, his hand hit pure animant. The soul-reacting metal sapped at his stilling effect, making him seem only more tired. Kedan looked to the right, and saw the woman.

By stilling the ground, he was slight above her, his shoulders just edging above the stone while she was almost completely submerged.

Kedan reached over to her and felt a sharp pain as his hand made contact with something else under the lake. One of the Redhame’s hands was clenched around an animant pipe, but the other? Was it holding something else? Another device?

Whatever it was, it hurt Kedan, he definitel wouldn’t mess with that right now. Instead he went for her other hand, the one holding on to the manufact.

As he pulled at her fingers, thinking that whatever was causing this effect was some connection between the device and whatever she was holding, the Redhame’s eye’s shot to his, hazel orbs in the throes of terror.

With an obscene amount of effort, Kedan pulled her small, delicate hand away from the manufact and felt her go limp as whatever effect had occurred seemed to dissipate.

Whew, that was one problem solved.

But Kedan had no time to celebrate. At the edge of the lake, just before the tunnel he had come through, the stone began to reharden, the Change-effect no longer making it as fluid as water. Staggeringly swift, in a ring around them, the rock became immovable once more.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Kedan cried as he pulled the limp woman up and out of the still fluid stone, making stepping points with his Still-soul. The ring of solid rock collapsed closer and closer as Kedan heaved himself and the Redhame above the “water”line. Whatever she had been holding, the other device that had bitten Kedan, just barely clipped the edge of the rehardening line, getting pulled from her grip and left deep in the stone.

Kedan laid on his back, one of his feet still encased in solid, unchanging, immovable rock, on equally correct stone. Using one hand to shake the sand out of his hair, Kedan turned to see the woman he had saved.

Etalia stared back at him.

“Hi.” Kedan said.

“Hi.” She returned back. He couldn’t help himself from staring at her face, a small bit of stone encrusted on cheek.

The Redhame looked down at his foot.

“Hi.” He said again.

“Do you want help with that?” The Mangler pointed at his leg, still in the stone.

“Uh, sure. Yeah.”