Legend of Ransera

"I should be so lucky to have been born platinum," she said with a smile, holding relatively still so as not to disturb the little fairies. It was rather more like white gold than platinum, but words were funny like that, and she wasn't going to opine about color given her deeper understanding of what light actually was, what colors actually were. It confused her too.

Kala continued to move along with the rest of them, trailing the sprites.

Between Semblance and elemental senses honed over the years, she could feel the shape of the plane around her beyond what she could apprehend with her eyes. When Hilana called a halt, Kala agreed that it was a suitable place. The Sentinels too seemed content for this to be the place.

With a smile and a nod, Kala accepted. Not expecting comfort on the metallic plane, she dropped with a dancer's grace to her knees, settling herself to meditate. Kaus did similarly, albeit more coltish in his movements than her. He was graceful enough in the air or with a blade, and often moved with an economy of movement that was akin to grace. Sometimes, he was still twenty-two.

Indric, Asallon, and Aito formed a little coven. Indric was the most powerful summoner of the three, while Asallon knew quite a bit more. Aito was the product of inexpert summoning, and so he was keen to learn from both of them. A circle scrived between them would attract the appropriate spirits, so this was more of a networking event for them than anything else.

Ceran huffed and stood guard unnecessarily. He hadn't quite mastered the elements to the point where he could attune to them, but if and when he did, Indric would be able to bring him here. Perhaps Kala ought to work with him on it. Her own understanding of metal had changed, feeling how they alchemized in the hearts of stars.

But for now, she emptied herself and let the essence of metal flow through her while the sprites tried to undo the plaits in her hair.

Briefly, Kala considered the ramifications of making her mortal seeming that of the platinum elves of Solunarium, or more Hytori in Sol'Valen. While still living out her mortal life, there were nuances that might prove beyond her. Eventually, when she left her mortality behind, it would behoove her to take a mortal seeming that would best set the mortals around her at ease or whatever suited her Purpose.

She set the thoughts aside in order to commune with Metal.

Ceran was only startled for a moment; he smiled down at Kalor. They had met ere Sivan bonded the spirit to the golem body, and was pleased the little creature seemed to remember him or remember their early affinity. Indric was better with spirits, of course, but the delighted the quiet giant too. He knelt long enough to offer hands, and then stood with Kalor upon his shoulder.

"Might as well experiment with metal while on its plane, no?" he asked rhetorically.

With his audience secured, he could see all of his people while he played with the element. A hunk of metal rose into the air at his beckoning gesture and he began to thread Fire through it to make it more malleable, forming it first into something akin to a blade.

The summoners spoke among themselves, and apparently with some spirits on the plane.

Kaus struggled a bit in his trance. Though a master, Air had chosen him. He had a bit of a block where Earth was concerned, and Metal as well. Everything is everything, Kala told him, and she would know. Perhaps today's attunement would help him understand the deeper truths.

Kala, however, had caught the attention of the Sentinels, but of course she would given her connection to Phocion and his branch of their order. Her clothes seemed to blur around her, then shifted as if substance were the same as memory into the maille sheathe dress she had worn to a party in Sol'Valen. Then, as her meditations continued, even that melted as if into quicksilver painted over her skin.

Or perhaps it was her skin, a demigoddess attuning to elemental metal, taking it into herself and changing, and changing it.

With Indric and the other summoners occupied, Ceran and Kalor played with bits of metal. It was easier for him to communicate with the little spirit now that it was housed in something substantive, and it seemed as though Kalor understood matter better now that he lived through it. The next time Athalia glanced there way, no doubt she would see them juggling without hands: perfect spheres of metal interspersed with balls of fire. Her little fire baby was getting a dose of engagement and Ceran was refining his elemental skills even if he couldn't attune yet.

Indric and Asallon were conferring with various metal spirits, attempting to form amicable relationships with those who might prove useful in the future. Aito had made a deal with a specific spirit who was spilling gold coins with Aito's face etched into them—or a roughly elven profile as its fine skills weren't so very well developed—into a sack he had brought with him. Eyes alight with avarice, he was chuckling like a villain in a play.

Kaus, mid-trance, pulled his pact weapons out of the aether, laying them around him in a circle of forged steel. The metal around him seemed to react to it as if there were some sort of magnetism at work.

Kala, fully entranced, was a figure of quicksilver, meditating upon how stars created metallic elements within them. For all that her attunement was the flashiest, it was complete quicker than the others. In a relatively short amount of time, she was back to the diminutive woman sitting on the ground. Via bonds, she could tell all her people were fine without even looking at them, so she glanced first at the sisters, and then at the Sentinels.

She offered Ævril a mysterious little smile, then rose, dusted the back of her trousers off and went to listen in to what the summoners were saying even as she smiled at Ceran and Kalor's pyrotechnics.

Not long after that, Kaus returned to himself and began to send his weapons back where they awaited his need. There had been no violence done with them, so the discomfort wasn't so very great. All the same, it was careful methodical work for him, which only helped anchor the attunement, he thought.

Air had chosen him, but Metal was often his weapon and tool.

While Kaus considered how the very aether in this place was metal-coded, he could see himself flinging flechettes about similarly as to how Raithen did so with an entirely different rune. Whether he could do so on their material plane was anyone's guess, but he would explore later.

Kala turned, smiling as the sisters approached.

"He has always been a joyful thing," Ceran said, voice resonant even as it was quiet. When Kalor began to squirm on his shoulder, the gentle giant moved to accommodate him, helping him until Ceran was holding him out to Athalia like an infant. "It is good to see you treat him so well. In Kalzasi or in Solunarium, there are too few kind people like you and Master Sivan."

That was more words out of his mouth than most of them had ever heard at one time.

Kaus walked up to them, eyes intent on his hand as his fingers curled and he turned it over.

"I can sense the iron in my blood," he said with quiet wonder.

Kala was considering other things. Most metals were conductors of lightning, and being here as who she was, the new attunement made her consider things she understood on a fundamental level but lacked the words to describe, from magnetism to gravity to the strange behaviors of the smallest motes of matter, where the delineation between matter and energy grew more and more vague.

A variety of metallic spirits remained around the summoners, though most of them were concluding their communications. Only Aito was whispering to a specific little spirit, occasionally casting furtive glances at Kala.

No doubt Kala would stop him from convincing spirits to just create gold for him and threatening the stability of economies, local and global.

"Successful for everyone, I think," Kala said, looking around curiously in case anyone wanted to share with the group or contradict her observation.

No doubt someday Athalia would be in Kalzasi with Kalor and the little fire spirit would delight in toying with the buttons on Sivan's clothes. Whether they were functional or merely used as decoration would depend on what he was wearing. Kalzasern style relied more upon folding, tucking, and draping than buttons, but he had traveled much of Karnor and he was even incorporating more styles from Turoth, specifically Silfanore, since returning to the land of his birth.

"Sometimes," Kaus admitted softly, "the amount of power is terrifying, especially when it comes to violence."

This from a warrior race, but if he contradicted himself, he contained multitudes.

"I believe we are ready to depart," Kala affirmed. She could sense the readiness of her group. They were saying farewell to the metal spirits in their various ways. She was finding it difficult not to meditate upon images and sensations of the tiniest particles of matter collapsing into new arrangements, putting out energy, changing.

There were deeper mysteries there. She would need time, perhaps in her tower, where she could expand beyond her body and understand the weave of the world better, and better work it like clay in an artist's hands.

"How do you find working with elemental spirits while wielding elemental power yourself?" she asked Hilana. "We all have one or the other, and work in tandem, but none of us has both Runes."

She had found that people used the Runes differently in different places, even had different names for them in some cases. Some mages attempted to make a science out of it, while others treated it as an esoteric mystery, as much an art as a science. To her mind, the science was one hand, the esoteric another. With both hands, she could do more. Burgeoning divinity was less another hand than an expanded mind and capacity.

But there was still much wisdom to be gleaned from other mortals.