So the Builders did have lead. It was still unclear how advanced they were, but they'd moved along some different evolution of technology than he knew. He would've expected this ammunition to be a simple iron ball, given earlier finds.

As he inspected it, the material grew briefly cold and rippled. Its texture shifted. Arlen dropped it, then found it again. "Iron? It's iron, now?"

His ears flicked forward, high atop his head. "Maybe I can change it! Let's say... gold?" He envisioned what he wanted. Again his material sample shifted and flowed, now taking on a distinctive shine that put greed in his heart.

Arlen laughed. "Gold, whenever I want! Eureka. Yet it's worth almost nothing here. I'd give my golden bullet for half a pizza."

He felt worn out in the way that an intensive spell training session left him drained, not in his muscles but in some internal fatigue in muscles that didn't quite exist. Fair enough; he'd just worked some small miracles.

He walked back to the area he thought of as the reception desk. There were other rooms to explore.

From the depths he hadn't yet seen, something large rumbled. He decided today wasn't the day to dally here. He hustled back the way he'd come until he reached the upper level of shifting walls. More grinding of stone sounded behind him and there was a hum of machinery. He kept moving. Down the halls, to a dead end where he froze in fear before hurrying to find another route. Farther around corners. Down an angled way, and at last back out to the afternoon sunlight! He panted and stood with his hands on his knees. The gateway rumbled shut behind him.

#

He made his way downhill toward the village. The sky swirled with chaotic clouds and there was an eerie orange tint to the daylight. His lungs burned and his new tail threw off his balance, swinging back and forth and slapping against the back of his legs. Farmers were converging on town as rain began falling. He reached a wide public pavilion of woven branches.

Meadow had just arrived. "Arlen! Good timing. Storm's coming; we ought to get under a better roof."

He looked up worriedly. "Did I cause this?"

She and a bystander laughed. She said, "The spirits don't make every storm meaningful. Wait... you have a tail!"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Arlen blushed and felt his ears flick backward. "I noticed. I've got something to show you, once I can rest a bit."

The rain picked up. He and the others went indoors, which put Arlen in the chief's large vault with Meadow.

The chief was stirring soup. "How did it go?"

Meadow said, "Look at him!"

She eyed Arlen and chuckled. "A handsome improvement. But how?"

"I'll tell you the story, for a meal."

They listened and ate together. As Arlen explained the new magic he'd used, they grew quiet. Meadow finally said, "So all this time, there was some amazing relic down there?"

"I'm not sure. My guess so far is that it was being built or improved over time, by a process that involved a lot of terrain shuffling. I want to see what it can do."

The chief muttered, "The power of the Builders was on our island, not just trinkets." Her eyes met Arlen's fiercely. "If you've taken this might for yourself, you should use it on our behalf. The spirits have decided that you should be one of us, now, and not an outsider."

"Did the spirits really do this to me? Seems that it was the Builders."

"It was their will that you find it, not that of some long-dead people. The spirits are the ones with us today. They didn't revoke your water power, and the spells of earth are theirs as well. You work with what's only a stronger version of their blessings."

The fire in her voice made Arlen relent. "All right. But what do they want from me? To the extent I understood them in the cave on Decim, they seemed to oppose Thoko and maybe his tools and ambition in general."

Meadow said, "But they obviously don't hate you personally. If they're willing to communicate, you should go back to Decim to speak again. Or to Gull Crater."

"Worth trying." Arlen stretched. "I want to try something." He walked to the doorway and brushed its curtain aside. Rain sprinkled across him in the strong wind. He crouched in the dirt and tried willing it to shift and harden. The scarlet light of his new power snaked into the soil and began changing it, making him feel he had the grip of a giant hand. Earth became tan rock and formed a roughly square patio.

Could he do more? He mentally lifted his grasp and more stone emerged, either flowing up from underground or springing into existence. The patio's edges rose like taffy, only an inch a second but climbing all around him. The bare, rain-spattered new doorstep was becoming a new room added to the chief's home. "Higher!" he said. He pulled the walls around him and realized he didn't even need to touch them, only to be nearby. He laughed and shaped each side to begin curving upward, sealing overhead and leaving a doorway in front. It took only a few minutes!

The chief and Meadow stood behind him, stunned. Somebody peeked out of a building at the unusually close-by thunder and saw that it was only this spell, powerful enough to shake the earth enough to feel.

Meadow said, "How!?"

Arlen concentrated, solidifying his creation and gingerly letting go. "The Builders' machines apparently spent a long time after they were gone, getting this to work well. Lots of re-alignment of the energies feeding into the ruins, or testing designs. That's not even all I've learned to do. By the way, see this arch? It's an improvement over the stepped kind you've got in your main room; I can make a more open space than this."