Chapter 403: The Stoneborn

I did not reply to him yet. I just sat down on the bench and did not hesitate to shove a spoonful of soup in my mouth, and the eyes of the old man lit up, amused at my boldness or the ease with which I had accepted his hospitality, and the next moment, it was my eyes that lit up; the soup was good.

To tell you the truth, I was beginning to forget what good tasted like. We did not get the best of meals in the Academy, not unless you were rich and could afford it, and when we went on the expedition to the Caelith, our cook was not really the best.

Then the loop took over my life, and for so long it had been nothing but blood and death for me, and I had not realized how much I had missed the simple act of eating something warm and solid.

The soup was thick and hearty, filled with chunks of root vegetables and something that might have been meat, and it settled in my stomach like a promise. I did not care about poison; if there were any that was potent enough to cut through the defenses of my ridiculous body, then I would be back. Death was just a teacher.

The old man watched me eat. He did not hover, but he was present, moving around the forge with an unhurried ease, as he made small adjustments here and there that could as well mean nothing to me.

I finished the bowl and set it down. The old man appeared and took it, and I blinked because I had not seen him cross the room.

"Stoneborn," he said, as if that explained everything.

"What?"

"Me. I am Stoneborn. The closest your kind has to a word for it is ’earth elemental,’ but that is not quite right either."

I stared at him. "Earth elemental?"

"Your kind has a limited vocabulary for anything that is not shaped like you." He shrugged, a motion that was oddly human for someone who looked like a walking rock formation. "I have had a long time to get used to it. You can call me Dorrik, Stoneborn."

I opened my mouth, and I stretched out my hand before putting it down, different traditions, "Hello Dorrik, I am Elric, Human."

He nodded and took my bowl from my hand, and before I could blink, another steaming bowl appeared in front of me, and I collected it without asking any questions, because his answer would probably be Stoneborn.

I ate this bowl with gusto, and in less than a minute, I was done, and I felt a wave of satiety fill my body... this was not normal food, but I could not place my finger on what made this soup great.

Watching me put down the bowl, the old man pushed the pot towards me with one finger.

"There’s more."

I smiled, "I’ve had enough."

"You’ve had two." A bowl appeared in his hand, and he spooned soup for himself before he settled back on the chair. "Nobody’s ever had enough of a good thing."

I thought about it for a second, and shrugged; he was right, and I took a third bowl for myself, and he looked pleased.

∞

I finished my third bowl, and I dropped it beside the pot, and I noticed that the bowl was now spotless. How interesting, what sort of magic is this?

"All right," I said, as I turned to Dorrik. "You called me chained."

Dorrik glanced at me. "I did."

"What does that mean?"

He stopped chewing and put his spoon down, quite carefully, and looked at me in a strange manner.

"Say that again."

"What does it mean to be chained?"

"Right." He sat back. "And you’re not playing at something?"

"No, I am not."

"You are a strange man, Elric, and you carry the weight of power, so you understand what I need to confirm: that you do not know the meaning of what you ask. In my experience, powers like yours must always come with knowledge." He paused, "There’s a game where a man pretends not to know a thing so as to hear how you say it. I’ve had that played on me by better than you."

I watched the eyes of Dorrik, and I did not flinch. "I believe you, and I’m not playing that game."

He looked at me a long moment. Then he got up, came back with a jar and two small cups, and poured something into both that smelled like it could take the varnish off a table.

"Then we’ll be a while," he said. "Drink that. It’s rude not to, and I’ll not have poor manners in my own hall."

I glanced at the cup before I drank it, and I do not have the words to describe the burning heat that passed through my body; even several of my channels lit up as though something had gone wrong somewhere.

Dorrik laughed and looked at me with clear appreciation in his eyes. "Good?"

I coughed, sure that my face was going red. "No."

"Aye, it’s an acquired taste." He drank his own without a flicker. "So. Chained."

∞

His next words surprised me, "How old d’you think the world is, boy?"

I thought about this question for a moment before I replied, "Older than anything in it."

"Hm, diplomatic." He turned the cup in his fingers. "Try this instead. How old d’you think the arrangement is? Souls, contracts, faith one way and blessing the other... the whole tidy business."

I let myself think for a moment before replying to him, because the question he was asking was truly massive, as he was describing what I could see on my status screen, but I did not have an answer for any of that, so I took the safer option and said, "I’d have said as old as the world."

He smiled, "So would most, but I know that it’s about three hundred years."

I blinked, speechless. Was he saying what I thought he meant? How far back have I been sent? Was it on the eve of the Caelith descent or even farther back?

"Aye," he laughed

"Sit with it."

∞

My head was bowed in thought, and as Dorrik began to speak, I had to leave my head to listen to him.

"Before," he began, "there was no arrangement. There was no faith given and `blessing returned and a contract written down. There were gods, and there were people, and where the two touched, something happened... miracles happened. That was all of it, and there were no terms. This was how the world was meant to be, and gods were everywhere and in all things."

I cocked my head to the side, "A god could be anywhere?"

"A god was anywhere." He replied to me, his voice flat. "You’ve a god of stone, and he’s in the stone. Every rock in every mountain in every land you’ll never walk to, and he’s not traveling to get there; he’s simply in it. There was no name to hold him, nowhere he was supposed to be, nobody above him. That god was not a man or a woman; he was stone, and that was all that mattered. " He set the cup down. "That was the shape of things for longer than anyone kept count. And then the Dragon went into the void."