Lighter Days, Darker Nights (Rune Breaker)

by Porter, Landon

  She didn't know a great deal about magic, but she was sure that wasn't normal. Then again, the link itself was like nothing she'd ever heard of. So instead of thinking about it, she just redoubled her efforts and moved it by force of will.

  The link stopped constricting and withdrew its thorns from the mage. But the damage was done. No new pain was being inflicted, but that which remained; and it kept Ru slumped on the floor, breathing deeply and rapidly.

  “Ru?”

  His voice came in incoherent rumbles. It was too difficult to speak, but Taylin's worry was all encompassing in the link, nearly as suffocating as the phantom pressure still crushing his lungs.

  None of your concern, Miss Taylin.

  “I think it is my concern, the link nearly killed you and while we're linked, you're my responsibility.” She moved to try and help him up, but he backed away, bumping into the chest behind him.

  Can't kill me. He replied, sounding amused at the very idea even through the pain. Nothing can. Wants me alive to punish.

  It took her a second before she realized he was talking about the link. “It wants to punish you?”

  He was silent for a second. The pain wasn't going away, but amid his still unsettled emotions, Taylin felt something solid, adamant. He was steadying his mind with a powerful act of will, blocking out the pain with sheer stubbornness. The aftermath of the link ate at it like acid, but for a moment, he was steadfast.

  Not in the way that you or I can 'want', but the link has objectives and its primary purpose is not to do what the master wishes, but to punish me, to inflict torment. It is able to adapt to previous events, even reconfigure its own pattern to accomplish this. I have said it is a dread machine, but it is also the work of a master in the craft, as near to intelligent life as mortal magic can create.

  He managed to raise his head and look at the line of white scratches on her wrist.

  It can only cause me pain as punishment so that I am forced to follow orders and the bounds of the link, but as I have become more clever with circumventing them, it has adapted its definition of things like 'harm'. Those scratches were a reflex. An accident. But it used the excuse all the same.

  Taylin frowned at the scratches. They didn't even hurt and yet the retribution visited because of them was horrific. She knew Ru would shrug off the apology she considered offering, so instead, she asked. “Is there any way I can stop it?”

  No. The iron clad will he summoned was slipping. The link does not serve you.

  Somehow, she had expected that. Everything connected to Ru seemed to, if possible, be even more needlessly cruel than himself. “Then we have to give it less excuses. What made you scratch me then? I think I saw some of it... a nightmare?”

  “I do not dream.” He mumbled aloud, managing to sit up against the chest beside the bed. For the first time since the link assailed him, Taylin saw his eyes. His pupils had constricted so far that it was almost as if he had two gold coins resting on his eyeballs.

  “Then what...”

  “Memories of a dead man. Also not your concern.”

  She refused to let it go and didn't fully know why. Possibly because that jumble of images and events was still in her head and none of them had any context. “I saw a boy. They threw him down the temple stairs. A man named Gand saved him.”

  At the mention of Gand, Ru blocked his end of the link with a suddenness that made Taylin flinch. “It sounds like one of Arunsteadeles's stories. The start of something great where the old mentor takes in the urchin and teaches him his hidden potential. And that did happen, Miss Taylin. But the boy did not grow up to be a shining hero. He became the one the heroes were sent to slay. And years later, that boy died on a frozen, blasted mountain, his mind, body and soul captured in eternal bonds of magic.”

  He tried to stand, but he wasn't used to standing in the first place, and beyond that, still weakened by the link's wrath. He collapsed again, clipping the chest and landing with his back to the wall. The last of his mental shields came down and the pain wracked him once more.

  Taylin watched him with concern and, at last, couldn't sit idly by. “Ru, heal yourself.”

  “No use. And I cannot concentrate enough to cast as it is.”

  “Isn't there anything that can be done?”

  Ru raised his head to look her directly in the eye, conveying the seriousness of his words. “Fix a form in your head, then order me to take it.”

  Her wings bristled and she let him feel her anger. “I will not give you orders. I thought I made myself clear on that.”

  He growled in frustration. Of course, she would be difficult, it was the core of her being somehow. “I am not attempting to trick you. The link can force me to do things even if I am unable to mentally undertake them. Shifting will ease the pain enough for me to return to my right mind, but I...” another growl. He did not like explaining this, “I cannot do so on my own.”

  Taylin relaxed her wings, but started chewing her lip. “But... well what should I ask you to become?”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “It does. I don't want to turn someone into an animal against their will.”

  “Then don't pick an animal, Miss Taylin.” He said through clenched teeth. “Have me become Bromun, or Arunsteadeles, or Raiteria. Just choose a form.”

  She nodded, sensing the urgency in his voice. It was obvious now to her that he was concealing more pain than she thought, trying to save face. Then a brilliant idea hit her and she knew exactly what form she needed in her head for this.

  “Alright, Ru.” She said, unsteadily. Even with her idea to mitigate the violation of the act, issuing the order made her stomach turn. “I order you to take the shape that's in my mind right now.”

  Chapter 4 – Daire City

  Healing by shapeshifting wasn't the same as healing by magic. Healing spells used vitae to construct new tissue in order to reconstruct the damage. Shapeshifting was just that; changing shape so that wounds were no longer there. There was no spreading warmth to it. Instead, Ru felt as if his body was wax being spread around to fill in the injuries.

  He took a shuddering breath as the disorientation and weakness lessened and then he took stock of his new form. As a shapeshifting master, there was no need for a mirror; he was innately aware of his body by necessity.

  Not much had changed. The long, wild hair that previously hung untamed and dull to his waist was now hanging just past his shoulders in waves of glossy obsidian and was tied back in a scholarly tail. His clean shaven face now sported a short, neat beard. Those and a few inches lost in height were the extent of the transformation. He was still dangerously thin beneath his robes, his eyes were still feral yellow, and he still looked inhuman in ways that refused to become clear.

  He looked up to see Taylin staring back, expectant. He ducked his head in thanks and sat up straighter.

  “So this is how you really look.” She speculated, going to sit at the foot of her bed. “Only, it isn't is it? I saw tattoos earlier. And scars.”

  “I am a shapeshifting master, Miss Taylin. My markings and scarifications are the product of rites by which I increased my powers, but they announce many of my capabilities to skilled opponents, so I have trained myself to reflexively conceal them.” The pain was gone, but he still felt terribly drained from the experience.

  Part of the design of the link, the weakening rendered him unable to defend himself or mitigate damage should his master wish to supplement the link's retribution with their own.

  She nodded and poured herself another cup of boiling water. “Why did you look different when I first released you?”

  “Why do you care?” He managed to snap back.

  “I don't, but I'm curious.” She replied, but the link revealed her lie. Though she might not like the Rune Breaker, she cared about everyone she knew to one level or another. That Ru was still her de facto slave made her feel obliged to overcompensate in his case.

  Ru didn't call her on it. Whatever madne
ss in her head was beneath his concern at the moment. “What I look like does not matter. The last master who cared about my appearance was a woman named Arethlana, who ordered me to alter my default form. That bestial mane and smooth face reflected her preference in men.” Taylin gave him a questioning look, which he ignored. “Thereafter, no one has cared to rescind the order.”

  “And the only way to change it is another order.” She guessed.

  “Indeed.”

  There wasn't even a flicker of thought or emotion in the link before she said, “I order you to make your default form whatever you prefer.”

  He shot her a look of recrimination and muttered, “Hypocrisy.”

  Taylin swallowed the entire cup of boiling water in one pull and set the empty container on a nearby shelf. “I disagree. I realized when we fought the King of Flame and Steel that I can fight for good reasons as easily as the bad ones I served before. Now I realize that I can use the link to do things that make you less of a slave.”

  “An odd bit of philosophy: ordering me to be free.”

  “Nothing about this is normal.” The link stirred with her trepidation. “Though I wouldn't know normal if I had both hands on it.” He didn't reply, Taylin turned a gaze on him that made him feel as if she were looking at the insides of his eyeballs.

  “I accept that I'm the mistress of the link, but I won't be your master, Ru. I can't and I don't want to.” She folded her wings in close and rose from the bed. “I'm going to go see if Rai is up. She and Kaiel are showing me the city today and you're welcome to come along if you'd like.”

  Ru watched her go to the door. Only when she was halfway through it did he speak. “I will be there shortly, Miss Taylin.” She nodded and started to move again, but the link buzzed in the back of his head, pregnant with threat. “Wait.” When she looked back, he gestured for her to come over to him; he still lacked the focus to levitate and he didn't want to even attempt standing with muscles and tendons alone.

  The moment it was within range, he took her wrist, ignoring the surprise that spiked from her. It was a little thing to heal the scratches there, but the link would have continued assailing him over them. The emotions that ran down the link made him twitch.

  “You have a very strange reaction to healing.” He commented. There was no getting used to it.

  “I do? Doesn't it feel like that to everyone?” She withdrew her hale and healthy arm.

  “Vitae-based healing is warm, perhaps comforting to the recipient. I have neither observed, nor heard of someone who received pleasure from it.”

  She turned away from his dissecting gaze and once more directed herself to the door. “I'm going to find Rai and help her with breakfast. Thank you for healing me. You didn't have to; it wasn't that bad.”

  Of course he had to; the link demanded it. But he chose not to remind her this time. Once she was gone, he spent several minutes regathering the fragments of his concentration and power.

  ***

  Morning at the gates of Daire City was a bustle of activity. The traders from the outlying farming enclaves arrived with first light to set up their carts among the nir-lumos wagons while merchants with enough coin to afford booths and storefronts within the city itself, along with their suppliers, trundled through the gates.

  The road teemed with beasts of burden, not just horses and oxen, but spiders and ten-foot flightless birds Kaiel called rag-thieves, whose presence made the non-fear bred horses shy away. Other animals, meant as pets and guard animals, prowled at their masters' side as well. There were dogs, wolves, large foxes, hunting cats and a dozen breeds of bear, from hulking brutes with silvery fur to blonde creatures whose only methods of locomotion seemed to be charming their way in the arms of prim ladies astride fine horses.

  None of them were much of a surprise to Taylin. She'd encountered most of those creatures on the field of battle (or slaughter). Even the miniature breeds of bear had been popular with the hailene nobility, though she'd never seen one so small that it could be carried comfortably while mounted. What caught her attention were the city walls.

  They were seamless; no single block distinguishable from the next. As if the entire thirty foot structure was raised from the earth in one piece. The gates were just as much of a marvel; a massive stone arch flanked by identical towers half again as high as the surrounding wall. The only decorations on either wall, arch or towers were razor-straight lines of runes carved deeply into the stone in precise spots. Upon close inspection, they glowed the faint orange of a dying ember.

  Kaiel, strolling slightly behind Taylin and Raiteria, but a distance ahead of Ru, noticed her gawking. “Architectural runes.” He explained. “They reinforce the structure and help it support its own weight. Daire City's structures rarely top six floors and so don't really need them; they're just a symbol of wealth here. In Harpsfell, where buildings can go up twenty, to twenty-five floors, they're needed and it's more fashionable to cover them up.”

  Buildings as tall as twenty-five floors tall, Taylin marveled. What could anyone even do with so much space?

  They passed beneath the arc under the watchful eyes of human guardsmen in battered armor flecked with the old white and orange of the previous Prince. Someone had tried to cover this by giving them cloaks in red, lined with yellow, but it only served to make them look like toy soldiers.

  Further back from where the road entered the city, close enough to rush to the aid of their human comrades, was a guard squad of a different race. Almost one and a half times as tall as a man and twice as wide, the minotaurs took greater care with their leather and scale armor and thick leather kilts, which were polished until they looked new. Their long, dark hair was kept in tight braids, hanging down between their horns, which themselves were capped by polished ceramic or metal tips.

  Taylin stiffened at the sight of them and the behemoth swords they carried, which were larger than even she could wield with one hand. She knew for a fact that a minotaur armed with one of those could cut an ang'hailene soldier nearly in half. Her memories added images of similarly massive cudgels that could dash the top of a head so far down that it was even with the shoulders.

  Only Ru reacted in the least to her discomfort, and even in his case, it was in the form of noticing the minotaurs and subjecting them to his usual disdainful sneer.

  “Why does no city do the wise thing and use the coin paid for their private armies of glorified sellswords to simply hire one or two good mages?” He pondered aloud.

  Kaiel didn't even bother looking back. Beyond the gates and blocky guardhouses, they entered a wide, brick paved plaza. Wooden merchant stalls formed neat, wide aisles around a central fountain depicting an armored figure in the process of thrusting a spear into the belly of a huge serpent in bronze. The water issued like blood from the serpent's wounds, and from its mouth.

  A less impressive stone wall bounded the plaza on two sides, protecting those merchants with permanent buildings from the sights, smells and noise of the market square. On the west end was a collection of stone buildings: a tavern, stable, outfitter and flophouse catering to travelers too weary to venture further into the city in search of quality goods and services.

  A less than kind smile appeared on the chronicler's face. “I imagine it has something to do with the unavoidable fact that magic or no, putting all of your resources into one man is a mistake. A crossbow quarrel to the throat fells a wizard as easily as a soldier, but at ten times the price.”

  “Only a very stupid wizard.” Ru said petulantly. “Who would allow themselves to be pierced by a mere crossbow.”

  “Rifle then.” said Kaiel. “I do recall you being 'pierced' by one of those.”

  Ru growled low in his throat and Taylin could tell that it was more from having his outdated mode of speaking called to task than anything else.

  Meanwhile, Rai, like Taylin, was staying out of that discussion. She paused in the middle of the square, ignoring the calls of a good half dozen traders who obviously hope
d that she was in charge of buying staples for the entire clan. “It's been a long time since I've been to Daire. Where should we go first?” She gave Kaiel a pointed look.

  He took the hint to stop antagonizing Ru and looked thoughtful for a short while. “As Grandmother wants me with her when she has her teatime meeting with Solgrum, I suppose I should waste no time showing you the most important bits. Let's head toward the Merchant's Quarter. I can show you the Street of Cunning Peoples and the Gold Quarter along the way.”

  “This isn't the merchant's quarter?” Taylin looked around, curious as to how the people trading goods and services for coin everywhere failed to be merchants.

  Kaiel shook his head. “This is the market square, where traders and the poorer merchants cater to people from the outlying enclaves and travelers. Barely anyone in the city comes here to buy anything except on days when a caravan is outside selling exotic goods. Otherwise, the craftsmanship and service here is about as good as the tavern there.

  “The Merchant's Quarter is where the craftsmen and serious traders set up shop. If you want to buy something someone took care and pride in making, that's where you go. Same goes if you want something made to order.”

  “For example;” Rai chimed in, “Clothes and armor for a frightfully tall woman. For true, that's half the reason we're here.”

  Taylin reddened at their comments, knowing they were very true. At the moment, she had all of three outfits and one of those was a sleeping gown that she refused to wear for fear Ru or Kaiel might see her in it. “And the other half?” She asked to deflect attention.

  Rai pointed dramatically up a street leading away from the market place. “In that direction, on the Street of Spinning Silver, is a placed called Little Ueparia. It is named after a region in the south of Rizen where the most magical things are done with rice, peppers and any meat they can shoot, fish or spear. I would be a terrible sister if I didn't introduce you to their cuisine before Kaiel ruins your sense of taste with his cane sugar fixations.”