Chương 20: Brittle

"What do you mean?" The Kharuun didn't answer. He grabbed Solstice by the arm instead and hauled him out of the forge, moving fast enough that Solstice's bad leg screamed in protest with every step. His grip felt like gripping a heated stone left too long in a furnace, flaking at the edges where his fingers dug in.

"Hey! What are you doing! Let go, you small freak!" The Kharuun didn't let go. They cleared the forge and hit open hallway, the noise of hammers fading behind them fast enough to make Solstice's ears ring in the sudden quiet. The corridor opened up further ahead into something new. More metal. More furnaces, smaller ones this time, scattered along the walls like afterthoughts. A hut sat tucked into the far corner, and beside it a narrow passage cut away into shadow.

Above all of it ran a metal walkway, and figures moved along it hauling something up on ropes he couldn't get a clear look at before the Kharuun kicked a door open and dragged him through it. The door slammed against the wall. Solstice stumbled inside. A shape caught his eye immediately, sitting on the edge of a table just inside the doorway. His left hand found it before he'd finished thinking the thought through, and the knife was already swinging up toward the Kharuun's neck a half second later. It never landed.

The Kharuun moved before the blade got anywhere close, twisting his whole body, catching Solstice's wrist and stripping the knife from his fingers in one motion. A leg swept his feet out from under him, and the floor came up fast, cold stone meeting his back with a thud that knocked the air straight out of him. Pain shot up through his bad leg on impact, white and immediate.

"Ackk!"

"You've got some nerve attacking me boy!" The Kharuun's voice cracked with laughter, loud and genuine.

"Let go of me!" Solstice hissed through his teeth. The Kharuun climbed off him and stepped back, still grinning, watching Solstice haul himself back up onto unsteady legs.

"You're interesting, kid."

"Why did you bring me here, you scaly bastard!" The hostility rolled right off him.

"You're the first Alteration user I've met who can touch raw Uron." A short, disbelieving laugh broke loose.

"For Five hundred years I never seen it one do it."

"So what?!"

"Are you stupid?" The Kharuun leaned in close enough that Solstice caught the heat still radiating off his skin.

"I'm saying you're one cursed son of the ice." He straightened and turned toward a large box shoved against the wall, throwing the lid open and digging through it until he pulled out a pale blue stone, small enough to fit in his palm. He held it up between them.

"Tell me, kid. Can you see it?" His other hand gestured toward his own eyes. Solstice looked. Nothing looked back. No color, no threads, nothing.

"No. Can't see anything right now. Actually, whatever I was seeing back in the forge, it stopped the second we left."

"Right." The Kharuun let out something between a sigh and a scoff.

"Forgot you humans are weak to the cold." He turned back to the box and tossed something small toward him. A shard of Pale Salt.

"Eat it. Tell me what you see."' Play along. Might get more out of this guy if I do. Especially with my own Domain still a blank slate.' Solstice ate it. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Warmth spread through his chest almost instantly, metallic bitterness flooding his tongue right alongside it. Then the colors came, and with them, the pain, sharp and searing behind both eyes. He sucked in a breath through his teeth.

The Kharuun watched him, unbothered, something closer to fascination in it now.

"Now. Can you see anything?" Solstice turned toward the stone. Threads of color hovered around it, dense, circling it in tight, deliberate patterns like something alive underneath the surface.

"Yes." The Kharuun crushed the shard between two fingers on the spot, punched the wall beside him hard enough to crack the plaster, and laughed like something had come loose in his chest.

"You bastard! You can actually see it!" The Kharuun screams out of excitement.' This guy's lost it.'

"What are you laughing about?"

"You don't get it, brat? That's Lartone. A magic stone. The kind used for curio devices. For artifacts." He said it like it should have meant something on its own.

"So everything I see with color, I can alter?"

"No." Flat, immediate.

"Seeing the structure doesn't mean you can change it. It means you know what's changeable." He crouched down to Solstice's level, something serious replacing the manic edge in his voice.

"With a Domain like yours, you'd be worth a fortune to the right people. Nations would fight over you."

"What. Really?"

"Yes."

'If that's true, then this Domain isn't just something to survive with. It could be a way out. I just need to learn how to actually use it. Maybe from this frozenbitten bastard, of all people.' Solstice pushed himself upright.

"Can you teach me? How to use it?"

"No." He tilted his head.

"Why not?"

"Expressions." The Kharuun turned, facing away from him toward the wall.

"We might share a Domain, but our expressions differ. Mine and yours could work nothing alike." A pause.

"But I can help you some other way." Solstice's eyebrows lifted.

"What way."

"I can help you find your own expression. You clearly don't know what shape yours even takes yet." Solstice didn't answer that.

"I'll help you." The Kharuun's grin came back, sharper this time.

"But you owe me something in return. You alter what I can't." Solstice weighed it a moment.

'He seems genuinely interested. Doesn't mean I trust him. But he's the only Alteration user I've ever met. Not like I've got a line of teachers waiting.'

"Alright. Deal." The Kharuun beamed and jabbed a thumb into his own chest.

"Khufrol. Call me Khufrol." Solstice let out a breath and followed him back outside. Khufrol clapped a hand against his back, hard enough to stagger him a step.

"Meet me at the forge tomorrow. We'll start then."

"Sure."' And what about Emelia. Do I tell her I found myself a new job in her own turf? Do I even tell her about my Domain at all?' The thought didn't get far. A sharp, cold twist landed somewhere behind his sternum, sudden enough to buckle his knees straight out from under him. He went down hard, coughing before he understood why, the sound tearing out of his chest in violent bursts he couldn't control.' What in the—' His knees hit stone dusted with snow, cold enough to burn through his pants.

He cupped a hand to his mouth as another cough ripped loose, and something struck his palm on the way out, small and grating, shaking through his whole hand like static.' No.' He turned his palm over. Dust. Pale, fine dust, settled into the lines of his skin.' Fuck.'

"Kid?" Khufrol's voice sharpened, all the humor gone from it now. He took a glance on what's solstice palm.

"Kid. How much Pale Salt have you been eating."

"Just today." The words came out automatic, distracted, most of his focus still locked on his own hand. His thoughts scattered, then snapped back into place one at a time. He hadn't touched a shard of Pale Salt since the mountain. A Week now. A Week has already passed. So that couldn't be it. One shard, days apart, shouldn't do anything close to this. Which meant it wasn't the Salt he'd eaten just now. It was every shard before it.

All of it, sitting somewhere inside him this whole time, doing something he'd never once thought to ask about. His stomach dropped.' My organs are crystalizing'