Infinity Blade 01- Awakening

TEL said, settling down his rock body. He leaned back against some of the bamboo, and the grain of the wood spread across the stones of his shoulders. His body collapsed, the stones becoming chunks of wood, and the puppetlike wooden version of TEL broke from the center of one, cracking out of it like a chicken from an egg.
    “Flesh bodies are notoriously poor at dealing with extremes in temperature,” TEL said, shaking his head as if at the shame of it. “She will need warmth for the night, or she will likely not survive.”
    Siris looked at the unconscious Isa. Maybe if he held her . . .
    “A fire would be preferable,” TEL added, “particularly with this dampness.” The golem sounded amused.
    “Right. Of course.” Siris could make a fire, couldn’t he? He gathered some wood, but everything was sodden to its innards. He dug in the saddlebags—they were crafted in a way to keep the water out—and came up with some tinder and straw.
    An hour of frustration later, he still didn’t have any fire. He could get something started, but the wood around him was just too wet, and the occasional drizzle didn’t help either, though he’d created shelter as best he could by draping a blanket on some bamboo stalks over the fire.
    He knelt in frustration over the makeshift firepit, feeling completely useless. TEL sat to the side, silent and motionless, like a wooden statue. TEL didn’t seem to mind the rain—and had explained, regretfully, that he had no skill in fire building. It wasn’t “part of his designated parameters,” whatever that meant. Neither was fighting, which explained why a creature that could craft a body for itself out of stone had cowered before those daerils.
    “I’ve been a fool,” Siris said.
    “For what purpose?”
    “It wasn’t intentional,” Siris said. “I thought, all those years practicing, that only one thing would matter in my life. Fighting the God King. That was everything . Now, here I am, as helpless as a three-year-old when practically anyone else from Drem’s Maw would have been able to start this fire.”
    “That may be true,” TEL said. “However, I doubt seriously that anyone else from your town would have been able to perform the Patterns of True Swordsmanship.”
    So he knows what it was I did, Siris thought. He kept that in the back of his mind—along with a healthy distrust of this creature—but didn’t have time to focus on either right now. Was Isa’s breathing more shallow?
    He would find a way out of this. There had to be a way. He fished in his pocket, pulling out a handful of rings. He held one of them up, one of the very first he had found. It generated blasts of fire. Like most of the others, it had stopped working soon after he killed the God King.
    “TEL, can you tell me why this ring stopped functioning?”
    “I would guess,” TEL said, “that it was set for local power, and something disrupted the source of energy.”
    “Can I set it to work out here?”
    “It depends on the ring,” TEL said. “If you wanted to make it function, you would probably need a similar source of energy to what it creates. Then it could draw on that and transport it to you.”
    Siris turned the ring over in his fingers, and—for the first time—noticed something on the inside. A piece was designed to come off, a tiny shard. About half the size of his smallest fingernail, it reminded him of the disc that was paired with the ring that summoned the sword.
    Draw on a similar type of energy, he thought, and transport it to you. They were actually very similar, this ring and the transportation one.
    “I need something hot,” Siris said.
    “Might I note,” TEL said, “if we had something hot, would that not solve our problem in and of itself?”
    Siris looked down at the metal disc, then grasped it in his hand. He took a deep breath, putting the ring on his other hand.
    TEL stood up. “Oh, oh dear . No, no, no. That is a bad idea, BAD . You don’t have enough heat inside of you to start a fire. I’m sorry. Ninety-eight-point-six, across a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh. Oh, you’ll get a burst of flame, but you’ll be dead at the end of it. Please, do not, do not, do not—”
    “Fine,” Siris said, holding up a hand to TEL. “I won’t. But I’ve got to find something warm to use.”
    He looked right at the horse.
    “Still not hot enough,” TEL noted.
    That was almost a pity. But what . . . The steam vents, Siris thought. Isa said they