#// early early early skrael learning ice? yes pls

[nrth-wind-a]

🍖

GLUTTONY - What are my muses Vices?  What do they indulge in to the point of self harm or health risk?  What do they not know when to stop?

It had been at least one moon cycle, that much Skrael knew. At least one moon cycle, and perhaps into the waxing of a new one. But that didn’t matter. Time wasn’t important. This was.

He breathed in, the air suffocatingly warm around him. When he breathed out, ice swam into the space in front of his mouth. Good. He wasn’t overwhelmed by the heat yet. 

His staff flashed into his hand, cold and heavy, and comforting. A short twirl to satisfy his restlessness, and then it stilled, as he, too, stilled. His eyes slipped closed. Holding the thing aloft into the air, arm wavering, only slightly, he chanted softly. Softly, but confidently. Reverently. 

As the words flew from his mouth and drew to a close, his arm moved. 

He slammed the bottom end of his staff into the ground, into the obsidian, ashy ground. 

The sound crackled through the cavernous mouth of the volcano in which he stood, and ice streaked furiously from the end of his magical focus. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating hard, forcing the ice outward, willing it to go farther, and farther, and farther, willing it to push. Push past the heat, push past the bubbles and the liquid rock and the speeding molecules. Grip the things and still them-- freeze them. 

Faster, he willed his spell, go faster.

Flash-freeze the molten earth, stop the roiling heat, take hold of the very nature of the force that surrounded him, and turn it against its own will, flipping it entirely the other way. Flipping it to its own opposite, its own other. Its own enemy, its own inescapable companion and friend. 

He planted his feet with the force of the magic that poured from his being, but his hands on his staff were beginning to become less guiding and more grasping for support, stability. He growled and worked harder, tried harder, forcing himself to extend, extend, grow.

It was a trial by literal fire. 

But he wasn’t giving up. Not this time. Not when he was so close to victory. Not when he could feel the very temperature of the mountain lowering around him-- could feel every degree decrease, and could practically taste his success against his teeth. 

As the last of the boiling earth become frozen and quiet and stagnant, he opened his eyes to look at his handiwork. The immense crater in the plates of the earth’s crust had gone from a fiery pit of energy and life to a barren blue crystal of cold and ice. 

He’d done it. 

He’d done it.

But... it wasn’t until he found himself in Bellroc’s arms-- when had they gotten here?-- that he realized his vision was blackening around the edges, and that his breathing was reduced to ragged, short bursts of oxygen. He could feel himself quivering, and he felt his staff slip from his fingers, though it vanished before it could clatter against now frozen rock. 

He rasped aloud, “I did it, Bellroc... I did it.” 

It was the last thing he could recall for more than a few moon cycles later.