Something small and thin poked him in the side. The rock slid off him. He breached the surface. He got up and breathed in the blessed air in large gulps. His broken arm was bleeding. He looked down into the water and saw the rocky shape moving on its own accord around down there. Isaac turned and waded back to shore, despite his fatigue. He wasn’t staying one moment longer with that thing out there in the river. He’d been seconds away from doing the equivalent of drowning in a kiddie pool.

  He’d waded out of the water and was just about to turn around and see if the thing had followed him when something clamped around his ankle. He toppled over once more and ate a healthy serving of sand. The same sand he had so meticulously spent hours upending.

  He spit the sand out and made some not so manly sounds while trying to paddle his way further up the beach, away from the thing that would surely drag him back into the water. The thing was very heavy however, and he dug two long troughs in the sand more than he propelled himself forward.

  A grinding noise made him pause. It sounded like two rocks being wound together. Like the grindstones in an old fashioned mill. He stopped paddling and looked down. The noises came from the stone creature. For he could see that it was a creature now. It had two wings, tiny in comparison to its feline body. It wound it’s head back and forth his leg like a cat three times and then turned its head up at him and blinked.

  Its face looked like a cross between a panther and a demon. Two horns, two elongated fangs, a squashed face and a snout. Isaac hesitated. The grinding noise didn’t abate, if anything it grew more pronounced as they made eye-contact.

  “Are you— are you purring?”

  The stone creature let go of his legs, made a yelp that sounded like a rock smashing against a cliff, then jumped around in circles a couple times. It looked proud somehow.

  Now that his panic had diminished somewhat, Isaac began putting two and two together. The creature must be his new key power. There was no other explanation. It certainly seemed friendly. More unsettling was the fact that Isaac could swear Aster had told him you needed skin contact to use a key. But he couldn’t spot the key anywhere.

  And Aster had never mentioned that the key powers could have sentience. This— thing, seemed like a fully aware and intelligent animal. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the thing was made entirely from what appeared to be a mineral of some kind, he would’ve sworn it was alive.

  Isaac marveled at it. Now it was trying to rub the top of its head against Isaac’s chin by standing up on its two hind legs to reach him, just like a cat would. The more pressing concern though, was what could he use it for?

  “Hey, eh, stone-thing,” the creature made another of its grinding yelps, “fetch me a fish.” The creature angled its head to one side, looking at him. Isaac pointed to the river, “go, fetch!”

  The walking stone thing yelped again and bounded into the water, spraying sand behind it’s small but surprisingly powerful hind legs. The thing didn’t need to swim or dive, it walked across the bottom. Isaac began to worry. Would it need to breathe? Had he just sent his newfound power off to die by drowning. Isaac didn’t know whether it would preserve itself if it couldn’t fulfill his command. He didn’t even know whether it had understood him.

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  How long would it last? And did it factor into the daily mass he could create with a key? Aster had spoken about that bit at length. Isaac didn’t feel any more tired than he already had before he used the key. But then again his fatigue was bone-deep to begin with.

  The rock thing came out of the water, splashing droplets everywhere. It paraded up to him with a bobbing gait, stopped in front of him and dropped a large and rounded rock in his lap. Then it sat down on its haunches and waited.

  Isaac looked at the rock. The thing yelped. Isaac sighed. It had been too much to hope for. He should’ve known his luck was cursed. First a key that did nothing, now a petrock. The thing purred in its peculiar rocky way and brushed its head against his forearm. A horn snagged on his coat and prodded his skin below. It hurt. Isaac shoved the thing away.

  “Would you stop that!”

  The thing pouted and looked like the next twenty birthdays had been canceled. The pitiful display tugged at Isaac’s heartstrings but for some reason it made him start cursing the creature.

  “Go away! I don’t need you!” Some part of him wondered what he was doing, shouting at a sentient rock, but he couldn’t stop. “I don’t want you!” The thing buried itself partly in the sand. “Do you understand? Fuck off!” The rocky face blinked at him, but didn’t move.

  Isaac realized he was standing. The pointlessness of what he was doing sank in, and he sank down himself. He threw a couple stones into the river. The rocky creature watched him throw, half burrowed in the sand.

  “FUCK!” he screamed. He grabbed the chain around his neck and snapped off the useless key that hung there. He brought his hand back behind his head and poised to throw the symbol of his failures as hard and as far into the river as he could muster. The creature mewled like a bag of marbles.

  “What? It’s my damn key, I don’t need your permission.” The creature looked behind him.

  “Isaac?” He spun in the sand. Aster stood there, bleary eyed, clutching her hand with the missing fingers in the other. “What’s going on? Why are you shouting?”

  Isaac sighed and cleared his throat. “Khm, nothing, Aster— I— I just got frustrated, is all.” He hid his outstretched arm from Aster’s view.

  “What are you throwing?”

  “Hm? Nothing.”

  “And what is that?” She pointed at rocky.

  “Oh, this? I have no idea, to be honest I—” Isaac turned back towards the creature as he spoke just in time to see that it had moved almost on top of him. Its mouth gaped and closed in on his hand. Isaac didn’t have any time to react. The creature chomped down, Isaac yelped and let go of the key by instinct. The creature swallowed.

  The rock thing made a curious sound as if it had a stomach ache. It looked at Isaac, blinked once, mewled again, then it doubled in size. Isaac jerked back, almost having collided with the creature as it ballooned. The gray bubbles and the smell of sulfur from earlier returned, and the creature continued growing.

  “Woah.” Isaac got up on his feet and staggered away. Rocks popped and burst, cracks formed and reformed all over the rocky skin of the creature.

  “What are you doing?” Aster asked, “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know!”

  They watched in awe as the creature extended in every direction.

  Finally, it stopped growing. From a size not much larger than Isaac’s head, it had grown to about the size of a small elephant. Its limbs had thickened, and the body now appeared more mammalian than feline. Its horns now curled in long spirals like a rams. The creature had grown from a petrock the size of a watermelon into a ten-ton gorilla.

  The creature let out a grovely yelp, with a considerably larger amount of bass in its voice than before.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Isaac said.

***