Chương 7: Alteration

The passage narrowed with every step. Murren went first, tearing through solid rock by will and wind alone, chunks of stone screaming apart ahead of him. Solstice slid through what was left with room to spare, small frame, frail body, the one advantage starvation had ever given him. Lere wasn't so lucky. His shoulders scraped both walls at once, breath coming in short, ragged pulls.

"Can't—" Lere's voice cracked.

"Feels like the rock's closing in on me."

"It's not."

"Feels like it."

"Then don't feel it. Walk."

"You're a terrible person to be stuck in a hole with."

"I know." Somewhere behind them, someone else wasn't handling it as well. A man's breath had gone high and fast, bouncing off rock too close on every side, and another voice hissed at him to shut up before he brought the ceiling down on all of them. He didn't shut up. He just went quieter, which was worse. The passage spat them out into somewhere else entirely. No snow here.

Glaciers, thick and blue-white, walls of hard ice throwing the lamplight back in fractured shards, like the whole cavern had been carved from something that used to be a river and forgot how to move. The air itself felt thin, scraped clean of something Solstice couldn't name, and every breath came up short no matter how deep he pulled it in. He counted heads out of habit. Ten, counting Murren. Counting Lere.

Ten sets of lungs pulling on air that already felt like it was running out before anyone had done anything to use it up. Ten people breathing the same starved air.' This won't last long.' For a few moments, nobody spoke. Then Murren pulled out his water supply. He tipped it back and drank deeply, draining most of what remained before lowering the container. Only a small amount of water was left. His eyes swept across the group.

"Give me yours." Nobody moved. Murren's expression hardened.

"I said, give me your water." A woman near the back immediately clutched her water pouch against her chest.

"B-but this is all I have…" Murren stepped toward her.

"Then you won't need it if you're dead." Her hands trembled as she slowly handed it over. She was already crying by the time Murren snatched it from her. He drank without hesitation. Nobody stopped him. Solstice watched in silence, his expression unreadable. Beside him, Lere's face twisted with disgust, his eyes following the woman as she wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. Solstice didn't feel the same anger. He looked at Murren instead.

'Would killing him make things easier?' His eyes drifted toward the dark passage ahead.' Maybe.' Then back to the group.' Would killing him make things safer?' No. Not necessarily. Murren was violent, stupid, and impossible to control. But he was also the only person here who could actually fight.' Besides, if someone wants to get rid of him, they can do it themselves.' Solstice adjusted the red scarf around his neck.' I'm not dying just to make everyone else's lives easier.' Something dropped from above.

Every head turned. Solstice's went with them. Spikes of deep blue ice studded the ceiling, and at the center of them something massive clung upside down and black, chitin plated, wings already buzzing loose from its back. Cold mist rolled off its body in slow ribbons, pooling and sinking like it was heavier than the air around it. Two fangs curved from its mouth, long enough to go through a man clean, and its head turned toward the lamplight with a slow, deliberate patience that no starving animal should have had.'

What in ice's name is that.' Panic swept through the group. Murren stepped forward immediately, crushed a handful of Pale Salt between his teeth, and swallowed. Wind gathered around his arms. At the same time, Solstice felt something stir inside his palms. He looked down. The particles were there again. But there were far fewer this time. They were faint, scattered, barely clinging to his skin compared to the dense swarm he'd seen before.' Why are there so few?' His eyes drifted across the frozen cavern.

The air felt thin. Every breath was harder than the last.' Is it because there's less air?' He barely had time to think before Murren struck. A violent blast of wind tore across the cavern and slammed into the roach. The impact shattered chunks of ice and shell. A jagged shard broke loose and flew through the air. It struck a miner directly in the head. The shard punched straight through his skull and buried itself in the ice beneath him, leaving his body standing upright for a moment before it went limp.

Someone screamed. The cavern filled with white dust. Then the dust began to settle. The roach was still standing. Its black shell was barely scratched. Solstice's stomach tightened.' That didn't even hurt it.' Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. The creature's wings suddenly screamed to life. It lunged.

"DOWN!" Solstice threw himself to the ground alongside Lere. And the lunging roach grabbed Murren by the shoulders, yanking him out of the ground. Lifting him mid air. The blood came immedietly. Murren came up swinging his fist slammed into its head. Nothing. The creature barely moved. Murren cursed, reached for his canister, and shoved another handful of Pale Salt into his mouth. He thrust both palms upward. A massive spike of ice erupted above him.

It shot straight into the roach's underside and punched through its outer shell. The creature shrieked. Its body jerked violently before it released Murren. He crashed onto the ice, two holes bleeding heavily through his shoulders. He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. Then he fired again. And again. The ice spears tore through the creature's already damaged shell. Finally, the roach collapsed. Its enormous body slammed into the frozen floor, legs twitching as blue-green blood slowly spread beneath it.

Murren stood over the corpse, breathing heavily. For a moment, nobody moved. Then someone behind Solstice let out a shaky breath. A sigh of relief. They had survived. Solstice almost believed it. Then he heard it. Bzzzzzzzz. His eyes slowly lifted. Another buzz answered from somewhere above. Bzzzzzzzz. Then another. And another. The sound multiplied through the cavern, bouncing off the frozen walls until it became impossible to tell where any of them were coming from. Solstice looked up.

The ceiling was too dark to see anything. But something was moving up there. Lere's eyes swept the dark, expression going grim.

"I can't feel it clean, too much magic in the air. But something's moving." A beat.

"Five." Five of them dropped from the ceiling at once, and the cavern turned into noise and blood. They tore through the group like it wasn't a group at all, biting, hauling bodies mid-air, slamming them into ice hard enough to crack it. One took a man clean off his feet and didn't bother killing him first, just flew him straight into a wall of glacier until the screaming stopped along with everything else.

Murren went down under two of them, blood pooling fast beneath his shoulders, canister already rattling empty at his hip. Everyone else stood frozen, weaponless, useless, watching it happen like it was already over. Solstice's stomach dropped through the floor.' Our only fighter is down. Everyone else is dead weight.' He turned to Lere.

"Can you fight?" Lere's face went pale, jaw working like the word wasn't coming out right.

"I—""If you can't…" Solstice tightened the red scarf around his neck and stepped forward. His voice remained flat despite the chaos around them.

"Then you don't have a choice." He ran toward Murren.

"FIGHT!" Solstice reached him and ripped the metal canister from his belt.

"You—brat. What are you—" Solstice ignored him. He popped the lid open. Empty.

'Fuck.' He threw the canister aside and grabbed his blood-stained lamp before it could be crushed beneath the fighting. Then he snatched up his pickaxe with both hands and swung. The pickaxe struck the Pale Salt beside Murren. Crack. A shard broke loose and Solstice caught it and shoved it into his mouth, instantly the warmth came. It spread through his chest, down his arms, into his fingertips. That familiar buzzing returned, only stronger this time. Then the particles appeared. Not a handful, Hundreds.

They filled the air around him, drifting through the cavern like an invisible storm suddenly made visible. Solstice stared.' Now what?' A blur passed across his vision. Lere was already doing the same. He hacked a piece of Pale Salt from the ground, swallowed it, and thrust both hands forward. The air warped. A translucent plane of distorted space snapped into existence and swept across the cavern. A charging roach slammed into it.

The creature was thrown sideways, crashing against the ice before immediately recovering, wings buzzing furiously. Solstice barely noticed as his attention remained on the lights. He slowly raised his hand. His fingers brushed through them. They moved, not randomly. It moved with him. He dragged his hand sideways and the particles followed.' So I can interact with them.' Solstice's eyes narrowed.' But what do they do?' A shadow suddenly swallowed him. Solstice looked up but he was already too late.

A roach crashed into him. One of its fangs punched through his thigh.

"AH—!" Pain exploded through his leg. The creature lifted him into the air and dragged him across the cavern wall, his body scraping violently against the ice. His fingers clawed uselessly at its shell. He slammed his fist into its head and the buzzing sensation on his fingers returned. Stronger. Much stronger. The particles gathered around the creature's body. This time, they were different. Red, Blue and Yellow. Compressed all together. Like the lights are harmonizing with each other.

Hundreds of tiny lights clustered tightly against the black shell, forming strange geometric patterns across its body. Solstice's eyes widened.' What…' He dragged his fingers across one of the patterns. And It moved. The roach twitched. Solstice froze. He had felt it. Not the creature's movement. The movement of something underneath it. Something he had touched.' Again.' He dragged his fingers across the pattern and the roach's leg jerked violently. Its wings stuttered.

Solstice didn't understand what he was doing, He didn't need to. His instincts took over. He swept his hand outward and the particles followed. They scattered across the creature in a wide arc, dragging along its body like invisible threads being pulled violently from one side to another. The roach convulsed. Its fang buried deeper into Solstice's thigh, tearing through flesh. He screamed But something had changed. The buzzing stopped, the wings twisted. The creature wasn't flying anymore. It was falling.

Its legs bent at impossible angles. Its shell warped inward, joints folding where they shouldn't. The entire body seemed to have been forced into a shape it was never meant to hold. Solstice stared.' What did I just do?' The roach slammed into the wall. Solstice went with it. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. He hit the ground beneath the creature and coughed blood, his wounded leg still trapped beneath its crooked body. For several seconds, he couldn't move. Then something surfaced in his memory.

A story. Something he'd heard long ago. A Domain people called both a blessing and a curse. A Domain capable of changing things that were never meant to be changed. A Domain that could supposedly purify even the deadliest waters of the Last Sea. Solstice's breathing slowed. His eyes opened. A view of absolute hell unfolded. He should have been looking at the monster. At the bodies of miners being mutilated, At Murren. At Lere holding off a massive roach. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the lights. The colors.

The patterns. The countless particles floating around him as though they had always been there. As though they had been waiting for him to notice. He slowly raised his hand. The particles drifted toward it. Solstice's fingers trembled. The realization came before he was ready for it.' Alteration.' The word surfaced in his mind. And for the first time, Solstice understood what his Domain was." Domain of Alteration."