Elemental Soul (Book 1 of 'A Fantasy in Time')

Chapter 8: Of Fire and Metal

Chapter 8: Of Fire and Metal

Day two of working at creating Monroe’s man cave, I had decided on bringing some extra items.  In addition to what I had brought last time, I swapped out the two apothecary bags for 5 empty ore bags that I had haggled from Kade getting them free saying that it would increase the amount that I could bring back.  However, I was not looking forward to lugging those things back once they got full.

On the way in, I had scavenged some firewood and starter branches to store in some of the empty bags, along with my flint and steel set in my backpack.  I planned to sit under the water fall again today for as long as I could, to grow more acclimatized to the experience and I wanted to be able to get warmer much more quickly.

Once at the slowly growing cave, I set all my gear in as safe a place as I could manage before getting to work on seeing what my new earth affinity/manipulation skill could do.  Placing my bare hands against the jagged edges of the wall at the entrance, to better feel the element, I pressed my energy upon it willing it to become malleable in my hands.  Pushing upon it with my own physical strength as well seemed to add to the feeling that more was getting accomplished.  

Soon enough, the stone began to give way as my will overrode its natural rigidity.  Smoothing away the sharp edges first to make it flow consistently, I then pushed harder upon it with greater strength as if to compress it further into the stone behind it, to shore up the more unstable parts.  Whenever I felt a decent sized fissure deeper in the wall where I was shoring it up, I would dedicate more time to infusing those weakened portions with compressed stone.

With my physical strength alone, I wouldn’t have a chance at budging this granite hard stone, but combined with the mythical energy that I wielded, it bent to my will with my influence slowly growing as I spent more time pressing on and shaping the walls.  Though I fully intended to go back over them later, I had managed to shore up the entirety of the wall spaces that I had no more need to dig into.  At one point, I did have to flip the ore cart upside down and stand on it to reach the portion of the ceiling that had caved in the last time, but soon it had all become much safer.  

Finally with relief, I took a brief break from the work that had taken me close to 2 hours to do.  I was nowhere near done with the chipping away at the walls as I planned to go much deeper into the cliff-side, but I now had a good start.  Deciding to try something new, I went to the still rough portion of the wall that I planned to break through.  Placing my bare hands upon it I focused my mind on the various aspects of it.  Those countless minuscule fissures were now going to work for me, becoming what I wanted them to be rather than having to search out the larger workable ones.

Mentally planning out how I wanted to design the area of the cave, I was currently able to shape the flow of the merging cracks that I forced to grow in the walls about a meter deep.  Through this entire process I had to meticulously guide the fissures as often they wanted to form their own pathway that could have potentially brought a large portion of the cave down upon my head.  With my first fissure creation complete I brought the pickaxe to hand and began to chip away.  Combined with my knowledge and active manipulation I intimately knew where to strike each time.  It was as if the portions I had changed for the purpose of destruction called out to me, guiding my well placed attacks.

Metal rang against stone time and time again with such veracity and frequency that it prompted a mental note from me to get ear plugs for next time.  With my new skills at play, despite having to stop on occasion to shore up the completed portion of the walls, my progress grew at an alarming rate.

Stepping out into the sunlight this time to dump my shattered stone on the ground by the water rather than in it, I gazed up at the sky to see that the sun had barely passed its zenith.  “Wow” I said to myself.  Mentally going over what I had dug so far into the cliff-side I began measuring what had been created.  The entrance way which had long since been finished was about 1 ½ meters in width by close to 2 meters in height, except the portions that had caved in which then extended upward close to another meter in height.  The length of the entrance ran about 3 ½ meters in length before expanding outward into the larger room I had begun to work on.