“I bought it in Revenshore,” Wellynd said, placing the strange artefact down next to the bronze cubes.
Kellog took a moment to examine it before asking “May I, Welly?”
“Sure.”
Kellog carefully picked up the stone, turning it over in his hand, running his thumb over every bump as he inspected it.
He cocked an eyebrow.
“So you’re telling me that you use this somehow when you’re weaving?”
“Well yeah, that’s what I figured since the time at Recluse’s cove. Or maybe Revenshore…I don’t know.”
“What happened at Revenshore? What happened at Recluse’s cove? Listen to me, I sound like you now! Could you tell me everything that’s happened since you found this? As much detail as you can give, even if you think it insignificant.”
Without hesitation, Wellynd began retelling the series of strange events that had occurred since his arrival in Revenshore.
Kellog listened intently.
His first interruption came upon hearing of the purple smoke that the woman in the blue tent created when demonstrating the stone.
Kellog scoffed and assured Wellynd that the smoke was a known sales tactic amongst vendors of “artefacts”, and there was a good chance she had no idea what she held.
Wellynd found himself thinking about the other things the peculiar woman said; had she lied about being an islander too?
He continued his story, but it wasn’t long until Kellog’s second interruption came. He spoke up as Wellynd finished telling of his encounter with the strange creature in the basement of the Mox’s hideout.
“You said there was a strange shape etched on the wall. Do you recall how it looked? Any chance you could show me?”
“Sort of, I can try...” Wellynd grabbed a stick and began to trace out the shape from memory with the charcoal from the fire.
The memory of discovering those dull red marks carved into the damp basement ceiling sent a shiver through his body. Each etching looked like a clumped tumbleweed that had grown spindly shoots that sprouted from its tangled core.
He stifled a tremble as he sketched the confusing mess of lines, finally setting down the stick when he finished.
“Hmm. No shape I know looks even remotely close to that. It seems off, somehow. It’s probably the ravings of some lunatic. Perhaps this Tanner fellow. What were those words the creature used?”
“It said Xandu-El is dead. Torix is here.”
Kellog scratched his chin as his eyes darted back and forth. “I don’t know what or who Torix is. Xandu-El is…well it seems familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it. I might ask…”
“Ask who? Someone at one of the Observatories?” queried Wellynd. The idea that there were people out there more knowledgeable than Kellog confounded him.
“Oh, well not really, no…not for a long time now. Just an acquaintance of mine. Someone of like mind, you might say.” Kellog mused, only half-present as he gazed off into the darkness.
Wellynd started “Well I wouldn’t want anyone knowing...”
Kellog refocused his eyes on Wellynd and raised his hand “Don’t worry, Welly. I won’t implicate you in anything. I can promise you that. Please go on. I won’t interrupt again.”
Wellynd wiped his hands, now damp with sweat, against his pants. The flicker of firelight flashed in his eyes, triggering a memory of the orange glare of that creature in the dark basement below the Mox’s sanctum.
He blinked forcefully, clearing his head of the memory, before continuing.
As he got to the confrontation with Klent in the early morning streets of Revenshore, he tried to recall exactly the feeling of whatever he’d done to the man.
He felt his voice choke up as he remembered Klent’s muted screams as he ran away. Wellynd had thought of the night many times but saying it aloud seemed to make the memory come alive. Kellog, for his part, handed Wellynd a small tin cup of coffee he had been preparing over the fire.
Wellynd took it, nodding in thanks as the warm metal radiated into his hands, rebuffing the chill of the morning air.
He moved on, brushing quickly through the explosion at the Revenshore docks and his return to Ars Illuve.
Looking up at the boulders floating above them, he described the events that led to their suspended state. How he’d felt when seeing his friends’ mantles. How he’d been helpless, and how he pulled from the silver lake of energy below the cave.
Kellog grinned at that, but his smile faded as quickly as his brows furrowed, nodding in thought as his eyes twinkled in the firelight.
As Wellynd told of his training with Henry and Klof at the shore of Recluse’s cove, he could tell that Kellog had something to say, but, keeping his word, he held his mouth firmly closed.
“What is it?” asked Wellynd, interrupting himself.
“You said slivers of silver on the beach, yes? But here, you said a lake of silver?” Kellog gestured to the cave floor.
“Uh yeah. I had to walk around the beach to find any slivers. When I searched out with my mind...it was just darkness mostly. When I was near a sliver, that’s when I got tossed into the sea by the wind.”
“Hmm. That’s when you tossed yourself with the wind.” Kellog chuckled “You have faced quite a bit of trouble these past few months. I’m surprised you’re not worse off. Much of what you’ve told me is also troubling. For now though, would you mind doing something for me?”
“Of course. What do you want me to do?”
Kellog handed Wellynd back the stone.
“Hold this, and do your ‘mind’s search’ for me. Try to see the lake of silver light below us once more, and pull from it, if you can.”
Wellynd grasped the stone and instinctively made a fist around it.
“Ah, would you mind keeping the stone at least partially visible? I’d like to observe it while you focus.”
“Oh. Sure. Some of it will wear away though.” Wellynd said, loosening his grip and holding it between his thumb and his index finger.
Kellog nodded “I appreciate you using some of it for this demonstration. I do think it’s worth the cost.”
Wellynd couldn’t argue with that, so he closed his eyes, relaxing and letting the dancing light fade away behind his eyelids.
He was familiar with this space now, and searching out the silver mass beneath him came more readily to his mind.
He took a minute to observe it.
The silver light didn’t stretch on forever like he had initially perceived. There were bounds to it, but it was still enormous.
Ever cognizant of the collapse he caused when he was last here, he very carefully pulled some into him and felt the cool wash of kose in his body.
He suddenly felt confident. In control.
Breathing deeply, he slowly opened his eyes as they adjusted to the light.
Kellog, now holding a lump of skald, sat forward in his seat, eyes glazed over, the skald in his hand, and the black, cerulean-dotted artefact in Wellynd’s.
“That’s enough. Huh. Curious, to be sure. This confirms it, justly…I think…” said Kellog, seemingly to himself as he began to trail off.
“Confirms what?”
He glanced sidelong at Wellynd.
“Could you reach out one more time? You don’t need to take any of it. I imagine that’s what consumes the artefact. Look to see if the silver light also emanates from this vellunstun…uh..skald. That’s what we call it, you see.”
Wellynd did. He reached out. There it was. Right in front of him. He hadn’t even noticed it before, too preoccupied with the allure of the vast reservoir.
“It does. A very small amount. It’s hard to see.”
“It is kose. I knew it. I knew it. Or some aberration of it. I should explain. We’ve always known of the potential of vellunstun. Too much so, perhaps. It was outlawed after the last war due to the destruction it wreaked. Untold numbers of people were killed by our barbaric uses of it on the battlefield. It is perhaps concerning that your Observer friend, Selkis, is conducting experiments with it. I know nothing of his allegiances, but it probably means the Vertans are once again interested in its applications. The destruction of that ship in Revenshore is also, undoubtedly, a result of its use. In more academic circles, there have always been arguments about what the nature of that power is. Some, like myself, have always thought it must be related to kose, or be a form of kose. Others have speculated that it is a different form of power entirely. I always found their line of thinking untenable; the two energies are too damned similar. You see, all kose, over exceptionally long periods of time, becomes mineralized.” Kellog gestured to the brass cubes “I pulled the different Eikon’s kose into those cubes from deposits I located throughout the cave. The only problem with the vellunstun was that nobody could detect it or manipulate it naturally. We could only observe its effects. It also only seems to exist in mineralized form. You’ve changed that. Though if it’s just the artefact or something about you is…unclear…”
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Kellog eyed the strange looking stone in Wellynd’s hand curiously. For a very brief moment, Wellynd felt the urge to snap it back safely into his pocket.
But he didn’t. He stretched out his arm, offering the stone to Kellog, before lightheartedly adding “Maybe you can teach me something useful to do with kose after?”
Kellog chuckled before gently accepting the stone and passing it to his other palm. As he wrapped his fingers around it, his eyes glazed over.
Several moments passed in silence.
Eventually, Kellog’s eyes refocused.
He let out a slow sigh as he handed the stone back to Wellynd. The shadows on Kellog’s face were pronounced by the soft flicker of the dying firelight, and it dawned on Wellynd that the man was quite old.
“It looks like it’s just you who can wield this, Welly. You’re a piece of the puzzle.” Kellog scratched his chin “Though the puzzle’s greater shape remains a mystery. Hmm. I’d like to see if this repository below us shares the same material properties as the vellunstun that comes from the desert.” He stood and looked about “Can you tell me where the centre of this repository is?”
Wellynd grasped the stone and reached out with his mind.
“There.” he said after a few moments, pointing to a patch of flat ground just behind Kellog.
“Good! Well, come on. Get up. You wanted a lesson. Now’s your chance.”
Kellog clasped his hands together behind his back and cleared his throat “So, how do you suppose we might go about unearthing the ore?”
Wellynd eagerly pushed himself up and stretched his arms out at his side.
“Okay. Well I thought you were a Spade when we first met. You seem pretty good at moving dirt and stones around. So, I’m guessing you would do something similar to what you did to the wall, except in reverse, like you did when we went out to test my mantle.”
“Ah, right on several counts! Wrong on one. I won’t be doing it. You will.” Kellog grinned devilishly before walking over to one of his satchels and rummaging through it.
He returned, holding a roll of parchment that he began to unfurl.
As he unrolled it into a flat sheet, dark grey lines began to imprint onto the page.
Wellynd blanched. “How are you…”
Kellog held the parchment away from him and angled it towards the fire light, squinting as his eyes danced over the imprint. Seemingly satisfied, he let go of one end of the parchment, allowing it to roll back into a furled coil.
“Scribing with kose is quite difficult. Let’s start with something a little easier, yes? Here. Take a look. This is one of the shapes I used earlier to manipulate the stones in the cave wall. Mind you, this is specifically for transmuting stones. There is a more generic form that can be adapted to other scenarios, but I think the subtle differences will be difficult for you to grasp at first.”
Wellynd took hold of the scroll and felt his heart begin to quicken.
A shape.
He unfurled the thick parchment. Three hand-spans wide, the yellowed page bore intricate markings, connected and intertwined in a neat fashion. This was an immense improvement over the dirt-etched shape that Henry drew for him and Klof back at the cove.
“Aren’t you afraid of writing it down? That someone will get a hold of your shape?”
Kellog chuckled “You’re like me, Welly. You don’t need to keep your shapes secret. You can learn all of them. Koshai and Craftsman keep their shapes secret because it makes them unique, allows them a niche or distinct advantage. They’re stuck with it. People like us don’t have to worry about that. Our advantage is that we can always change. Always learn. Take a few moments to examine that.”
Minutes stretched by as Wellynd traced his eyes over each line of the diagram. It was immense, but his weeks of practice at Recluse’s cove helped bolster his confidence.
He would learn this one, too.
It obviously looked different than Henry’s shape. Very different. But it also felt different. When he wasn’t focused on the curve of a specific line or a particular intersection, when he stared at it as a whole, he couldn’t help but get a sense of the coarse abstract geometry of a cave wall. There was the faintest apprehension of stone, even though he couldn’t actually see, smell, or feel it.
Then again, maybe the feeling was the result of him having lived in a cave for two days.
Fetching a stick that had been poking out of the fire, Wellynd used the blackened end to trace the shape onto the ground, checking the diagram every few lines to ensure his accuracy. He made mistakes, wiped away the lines with his hand and re-drew the failed lines, until he had them close to perfect.
Stepping back, he compared the shape on the ground to the one on the page.
Frowning, he wiped at the charcoal with his hand, shifted over, and began drawing it again.
Kellog remained silent as Wellynd repeated the process ten more times. When Wellynd finally did look up, he was surprised to find the man sitting back near the fire, sipping something hot from his tin mug.
“So what do you mean by trans..what-ing?” asked Wellynd, stepping back and surveying his most recent work. This had to be close enough.
“Transmuting. Changing form. This shape specifically turns stone into finer particulate. Sand, dirt, whatever its smaller form is. It’s not a significant change in form, so it shouldn’t be difficult for you to weave. Obviously, you won’t be able to do it all at once. As you transmute layers of the cave floor, I’ll sweep away the dirt.”
“Wait, so this isn’t what you did to tear down and rebuild the cave entrance?”
“Not really. The shapes aren’t entirely dissimilar, though.”
Wellynd tried to think through what that might mean.
“You’ll spend a good part of your life pondering the meaning of the language of the world, Welly. For now, let’s just focus on this. Come. Sketch it out once more, then we’ll take a go at it.” said Kellog as he walked over to where Wellynd had pointed earlier.
Wellynd drew most of it from memory, though after checking against the parchment, he smoothed over some lines and corrected them.
“Good enough. When shaping it in your mind, if it’s not perfect, don’t worry, just carry on. Weaving the shape into the bedrock is a bit of a personal touch. It’s different for everyone. If I recall, Henry had told you to ask the wind nicely and hope that it will listen, yes? If that works for you, then go with that.”
“What am I asking the stones, though?”
“Well your goal is to change the stone into its smallest form. Ask whatever you’d like. You’ll get it.” smiled Kellog.
Wellynd began to walk over to Kellog, but the man threw his hand up “Leave the artefact. You can’t grow dependent on it. It will eventually fade away, after all.”
Wellynd looked down at his hand. He hadn’t even realized that he was holding it. Trying not to appear too worried about the pain he was undoubtedly about to experience, he shrugged and placed the artefact on his seat near the fire before approaching Kellog.
“If you can make contact with the bedrock, it might be easier. It ultimately doesn’t matter, but I always found it helped when I was starting out.”
Wellynd crouched down and placed his palm against the ground. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and began to pull in kose, wasting no time as he began to form the shape still fresh in his mind.
The pain was intense, as usual, but he found he was able to ignore it by keeping all his focus on moulding this new shape.
Once he had formed the kose into a rough semblance of what he had been practicing for the past half an hour, Wellynd began to focus on the cavern floor against his palm. It was cool. Damp. Using his experience weaving the wind as a reference point, he tried to connect with the stone, to coerce it into turning back into dust, or dirt, or whatever it once was, while he maintained the pulsing shape in his mind’s eye.
The feeling of the cavern floor suddenly vanished and Wellynd fell forward a few inches, his hand landing on something soft.
Dirt.
It was dirt.
Wellynd opened his eyes to see a circle of dirt, about three yards in diameter, centred around his hand. He looked up to see Kellog standing above him, a wide grin plastered to his face.
“Not so bad, eh?”
“I did it. I did it in one try. Yes” Unwilling to let the tears that rushed to his eyes spill out, Wellynd stood up, clenched his fists and shook his arms as he let out a triumphant yell.
In the wake of all of his failures, all of his doubt, here was a success. Achieved wholly by him. The news about his Mantle had been encouraging, but this, this, was something he did.
Without the artefact. Without fearing for his life. Entirely on his own.
“Yes, very well done! A little bit easier than coaxing the wind, but a great victory nonetheless. As I said, you would have been a great success at the Observatory. Nonetheless, let's not rest on our laurels now. Repetition is the key to consistent success.” said Kellog, who waved his hand above the sphere of dirt as a wind with mysterious origins swept it away.
“Right. Let’s do it.” said a triumphant Wellynd, as he kneeled back down.
All told, it took them nearly an hour to reach the reservoir. As Kellog swept the final layer of dirt out of the now five yard deep pit, Wellynd could tell that the stone was different.
“Can you get some light in here?” Wellynd asked.
Kellog, to Wellynd’s surprise, leapt out of the pit in one bound and disappeared for a few moments, only to return with a torch, jumping back down and landing softly beside Wellynd.
“You have to teach me that.”
“Oh I don’t know if I’m the right person to do that. Anaturgy can be incredibly dangerous and I’ve only learned enough to help me out of binds. Hmm. This looks like vellunstun, no?”
Disappointed, Wellynd scanned the ground in the torchlight. It was the same coarse, dull, grey stone that was all too familiar to him. This just happened to be the largest piece of skald he had ever seen.
“It definitely is. What does this mean?”
“I have no idea why it’s here. We’ve found deposits of each of the five Eikon’s kose all over Estioch, but never this. Vellunstun has only ever been found in the Vellen Kellek. What I do know is that I will need to take a trip up the coast to resupply and take care of a few things. What are your plans, Welly?”
“I should probably get back to Kellek’s Watch. My Uncle said the Brinebreaker crew needed to be back today and is probably wondering where I am. It’ll take me a few hours to get back. Damn. Just as things were getting exciting.”
Kellog let out a hearty laugh “Not to worry Welly. We can reconvene soon, if you can manage it. A few hours though, eh? Hmm. Well, I have yet to go to Kellek’s Watch. Let’s say I meet you in the centre of town in a week’s time. Do you think you could manage that?”
“Definitely. Do you need me to do anything while I’m there?”
Kellog scratched his chin “Hmm. If you can get another sample of vellunstun, it might be useful. Though, I don’t want to put you out.”
“No problem. That I can definitely get.”
Kellog nodded. “You’re a curious figure, Welly. And something tells me you’re the key here. I’ve never believed in fate, but I can’t help but feel its work at play on Ars Illuve. That, or I’ve spent too much time living in this damned cave with nothing but goats for company. Well, let’s get to it. One week.”
“One week.”