Chulak looked upon the horizon and saw the great city of Aiti standing before him, he smiled to himself and quickened his pace towards the city teeming with life. He felt a strange sort of nostalgia as he approached Aiti, it reminded him of the first time he set foot in the mines as a young boy. He built his resistance to the cold down there opposed to on the snow covered topside. The mines were colder than anywhere else in the world, and no matter how much Chulak bundled up for his first few trips down he was never prepared for the blistering cold he was met with.
Chulak walked into the outskirts of the city and looked around. He saw shacks built of wood, straw, discarded scraps, anything the people could get their hands on was used as a building material. He walked around a bit in the slums feeling nothing but pity for the inhabitants.
Eventually Chulak found an elderly man collapsed in the street, nobody else seemed to pay any attention to him though. Whether that was purposefully or not Chulak didn't want to know. People's dark sides were no business of his and he did not want anything to do with them anyway. Chulak approached the man and looked down at him, he was still breathing. The elderly man lay face down in the sand, his clothes were nothing but tattered rags, just like everybody else's in the slums.
Chulak flipped the man over and looked down at him with a slight frown, he was parched just from the sight of him and Chulak couldn't just leave a poor old man to die of dehydration in the streets. He sighed in exasperation and pulled out his bowl, he held his hand above the bowl and closed his eyes. The concentration it took Chulak to form liquid water from the vapor in the air was huge because of the glass containing his small soulstone.
After a moment Chulak opened his eyes and the bowl was full to the brim with water. Chulak felt proud of himself every time he managed to pull off any sort of magic with his soulstone, and this time was no different. He held his bowl to the man's lips and slowly started pouring water into his parched mouth. A couple of moments after the water was gone the man opened his eyes and smiled at Chulak. He smiled up at him and jumped to his feet with an agility that contradicted his apparent condition. "Come on son, the least I can do is give you some free shelter for your help. I can tell by your clothes that you're a long way from home." The man said to him.
Chulak looked down at himself and nodded. It was true that his white jacket made him stick out in the crowd of brown rags but he didn't realize he was quite so obvious. Chulak followed the man to his house. He called it a house even though, like all of the other "houses" in the slums, it was just a run down little shack in the sand.
Chulak walked in and the man ushered him into the bathroom. "Hear son, you can wash up, you seem like you've been on quite the journey." The man said to him. Chulak smiled to himself at the man's comment. After a month of walking through the desert "quite the journey" was an understatement. Chulak smiled back at the elderly man and shook his head slowly. "No need sir, I've got my own supply." Chulak flashed his small en-capsuled jewel to the man. The man's eyes widened before he simply nodded and stepped out.
Chulak walked to the small bath tub. closed his eyes and held his hand over it. The concentration and mental strength he used to fill the bath, plus his resistance to the cold meant he didn't mind the icy cold water once he got into the bath. But, after getting into the bath and closing his eyes for just a moment, Chulak was forced to deal with the worst part of prolonged use of his stone.
When Chulak opened his eyes the walls of the room no longer surrounded him. Instead, he was surrounded by walls of darkness on all sides. Straight in front of Chulak two red eyes glowed in the dark. Peering deep into him as if into his soul. The eyes narrowed as if the rest of the face hidden by the impermeable shadows was grinning. "Come on boy, let me out." A deceivingly feminine voiced teased. Chulak knew exactly who the voice belonged to, and it most definitely was not a woman.
"I could be so powerful, no, WE could be so powerful if you just let me out. It'd be so easy, just break the glass. I won't hurt you. Remember when you first found me? And every time after that? I've never touched a hair on your head." The voice continued through the silence.
Chulak stared back at the darkness with tired eyes, his mind and body both exhausted from overuse of his soulstone for the last month. He sighed before speaking back. "We've been through all of this before Frosmoth, the stone is too unstable to be taken out of containment. I can't control it."
The red eyes came close to Chulak's face and stared him in the eyes. "Sooner or later you'll break that glass boy, whether you like it or not. And just make sure you remember. You can't control the weather."
With that the darkness disappeared and Chulak found himself alone in the bath feeling tired and in need of a good nights sleep.
