Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  While Erimdag caught his breath and Harrien tied his wrists, while Adi-Boto and Kaya fussed over Judah, I went from dweller to dweller, taking their elementals.

  When that was done, I gave three to Harrien, three to Cleavon, and kept six for myself. I took my hunting knife out and then sifted through the pile of dead creatures, looking for uncharred meat.

  “Harrien, Tosvig, can you help? You’re better at this stuff than me.”

  Together, the three of us cut away whatever flesh we could. I added my share of these to my inventory.

  Items Received:

  [Corruption] elementals x3

  [Speed] elementals x2

  [Mapping] elementals x1

  Dweller flesh pieces x3

  CHAPTER 41 – Runes

  The eight of us walked in a rigid formation now. Two at the front, two at the back, two spread out left and right, and two of us in the center who were tasked with keeping watch above us.

  It seemed pretty strange to admit to myself that I felt safe, especially in a place like this. Especially after having just been attacked by giant spider freaks.

  We were doing our best. Our formation gave us cover in every direction as we walked, and Tosvig and I spread yellow alchemooze on our blades. Not only did the goop give off a yellow glow, but it was an anti-trap ooze, and theoretically should reveal any traps or secrets. You never knew what waited for you in a place like this.

  Not only that, but we’d all eaten some dweller flesh. It tasted surprisingly good, even uncooked. A little spicy, in a weird way.

  Once I swallowed it, the dweller flesh buff replaced my hellgre one.

  Buff received: Dweller Sense

  Your senses of hearing and smell have become those of a dweller.

  Now, this wasn’t just enhanced hearing or smell. It didn’t just mean that our collective body odor became stronger or I could hear Tosvig singing songs under his breath better.

  “Wow!” said Harrien. “Amazing!”

  “Hasn’t done anything to me,” said Tosvig.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes. When I breathed in, the smells of the mines were like a punch in the face. Sounds came to me, sounds from far away. But not just that.

  The smells and sounds transformed in my mind, forming a mental map of the caverns that I could see. It was as if I could view the tunnels ahead, the dark passageways we hadn’t set foot in yet.

  In this way, with our formation and anti-trap goo and our buffs, we followed the passageways without fear of ambush. We knew that the materials we needed from the mine were in the deeper levels, and Judah and Tosvig and Harrien knew the song of the originals and could watch out for the clues it contained.

  “If you ask me, it would have been helpful to write this song down,” I said.

  “Song?” said Tosvig.

  “The things within the song. Landmarks to watch out for. You know, an actual written guide to finding what we need here.”

  “And if something happened to clan, and your paper guide was found?” said Tosvig. “Song is sung only to those we wish to learn it. A song in a head can never be read. If clan was attacked, words of song would not fall out of our heads and scatter our secrets on the ground for our enemies to gather.”

  “Ah,” said Judah. “The tooth.”

  He pointed ahead, where a chunk of rock was pointing down from the ceiling. It was bigger than my arm and looked like it would do damage if it suddenly decided to fall on an unsuspecting passer-by. Rather than a tooth, it seemed more like a stone stalactite to me.

  “And whence our traveler heads south and east,” sang Tosvig… well, more of a growl, actually… “He will see the tooth of the beast.”

  “We’re taking the true path,” said Judah.

  I was glad to know we were still on course. We’d been presented with a few choices of passageways over the last few hours, and each one had involved a lot of puzzling out and, I was worried, more than a little guesswork.

  We headed on, and I could feel the mood among us lift. Every time we saw a clue from the song and knew we were headed the right way, it was like getting a big hug from the mines.

  I had only taken a few more steps beyond the tooth when the yellow light on my sword flickered.

  At first, I thought the alchemooze was wearing off, but that didn’t make sense. It was supposed to last for hours.

  Light pulled away from the tip of my sword. A thin stream of yellow, slowly unraveling as though someone was pulling on a bundle of yarn. It drifted ahead of me, floating twenty feet through the air until it began to fall to the ground.

  When it touched the ground, it spread out. First, it became a wide circle on the stone surface. Next, the light formed a pattern within the circle; a series of lines, shapes, and strange letters.

  I’d seen something like this before.

  “The alchemooze has detected a secret,” said Erimdag. “Lucky that you decided to use it.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not a secret, it’s a trap someone left for us.”

  “Runenmer,” murmured Tosvig.

  “Who else would leave one? If it is him, he knew we would come this way, and he left a trap for us,” I said. “How could he know? And how would he get into the mines?”

  “To lay a trap in our path, he must have walked the path already,” said Tosvig.

  Judah leaned on his sword. Despite Cleavon’s powder, he still looked exhausted. “The Runenmer does not need to touch where he lays his little symbols. He needs only to know of the place. To be able to picture it. I believe that he must be a certain distance close to it, but I do not know how much.”

  “So he’s been to the mines before,” I said.

  “The Runenmer lives many lives, so it is said. Who knows the places they have taken him?”

  “But how would he know that we were coming?”

  “He may have laid this trap long ago, in another life, in another time when he walked these stone halls.”

  “Or,” I said, “He’s here, somewhere. And he knows we are too, and he knows what we are looking for.”

  “We can go back,” said Harrien.

  “That might be best,” agreed Erimdag.

  Tosvig gave them a look of contempt. “And what then? Clan numbers are low. Our equipment is old, some of our best mages are dead, and we have no home where we can recover in safety. Without medallions and metal from Mines of Light, we are worthless. And unless we have weapons and metals to bring back to Tallsteeps, those selfish bastards will not help us.”

  “Now wait, Tosvig,” said Kayla. “Is it selfish, or is it logical for preserving our clan? We will not help without something that, in return, pays for our help.”

  “Pay or not, help or not, the finger of fate that points at Lonehills will one day jab at Tallsteeps, too. Ogres, Runenmer…you cannot beat them alone, which means they will eventually grow too strong for you. For every clan whether they be Lonehill, Tallsteep, or gnome.”

  Judah gave Tosvig a kind smile. “I agree with you, friend Tosvig. But Chief Fergus will not see it as the same. We have never had a chief with such young eyes, and he knows he stands upon a rickety bridge of support. He will not dare show anything that is seen as concession or weakness. So, he will not agree to help you unless we take something back.”

  “We press on and get what we came for, or both clans are as good as dead,” I said. “Maybe not now, but in five years. Ten. Is that the size of it?”

  “Size?” said Tosvig, confused.

  Judah stared at me. “You understand this well, Isaac.”

  Their motivations were clear enough; the survival of their people.

  But for me, they weren’t my people. I wasn’t here for their survival, and that reason alone wouldn’t have been enough to make me go further into the mines, especially with a trap ahead.

  Only one thing made me want to go on; the prospect of the treasure nestled in the mines. Magical metals, medallion, weapons. Whatever it was, it had given the
first people to come here great power.

  I had come to realize that life in the wilds was all about advantages. Weapons, elementals, buffs, whatever. Every edge you could take over your enemy, you took it, and that was how you survived.

  This mine might give me an edge that few things outside of it could match. Not the ogres, the bastard gnomes, or anything else.

  I didn’t just want to survive in this world. I didn’t want to have to tread carefully through forests and over plains, hunting hares to sustain myself, scavenging elementals and buffs from the dead.

  I didn’t want to just survive; I wanted to become a predator of the wilds. Something others feared. Because that…that was true survival.

  No, I wasn’t leaving the mines without getting what I needed.

  “Is there another way through?” I said. “One that doesn’t lead us across the trap?”

  “The route we took is the truest one. There may be other true ways, but it is a risk. We would be walking with no guidance whatsoever.”

  “And we might stumble into a dweller nest. Or a dead end, where dwellers trap us. Fine. So, let’s figure a way across the trap.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Air from the passageway ahead of us and then the room beyond it drifted to me, and the dweller buff worked with it.

  It was almost like a baker rolling out pastry in my mind, using the smell and the air and the sounds and rolling a picture for me to see.

  I saw the room ahead. Roughly diamond-shaped, with wooden beams across the ceiling fifteen feet above. Metal lamps hung from the beams. That was strange; the gnomes hadn’t made it into the mines, so who had left them there?

  But it wasn’t the beams or lamps that got my attention; it was the rune on the ground.

  Circular, ten feet in circumference and drawn in blood-red lines. In the darkness of the mines, it would have been difficult to spot until we had walked into it, but the pictures the dweller buff painted in my mind were vivid.

  I couldn’t help wondering how it worked; did the rune give off a smell, and the dweller buff turned this into a picture? I was fascinated at how these creatures had evolved to live in this pit.

  Whatever the answer, it meant we had a problem. But it was a problem we had seen early, rather than stumbled into.

  “Does everyone else sense that?”

  “Another cavern,” said Tosvig. “That is fine; I see no dwellers.”

  “You don’t see the rune?”

  “Rune?”

  Interesting; the buff concentrated differently in all of us, and mine was stronger than Tosvig’s. I wondered why that was. I had portioned the meat equally, so it must have been something about us as individuals. Were all buffs stronger for me than for the others?

  I told them what I had seen in the room ahead. Kayla and Judah had sensed it too; maybe because they were scouts? Perhaps the buff worked more strongly in them than Tosvig and Harrien.

  “So the Runenmer has left a trap for us,” said Judah. “It gives us little choice; we either leave, or we cross through. In doing so, we will evoke his rune demons.”

  “We decided that we cannot leave with nothing,” said Tosvig. “I will not return to Mardak with nothing but tidings of a doomed future for our clan.”

  “Can we just walk around the rune? Avoid stepping on it?” I said.

  “You are thinking of his rune too literally,” said Harrien. “It is not just a thing on the ground. The rune is merely an anchor for his magic, but the true spell will be diffused in the air of the cavern.”

  “Is there a…” I began, trying to order my thoughts. “An anti-spell? Magic that dispels other magic?”

  “An advanced spell,” said Harrien. “Elder Red knew it. Perhaps Pendras, too.”

  “Cleavon? You are the most advanced Lonehill here.”

  He shook his head. “I am a healer by pursuit. I learned other spells in my youth, as any Lonehill does, but when I set on the path of healing, I forsook other spells.”

  “So if we want to cross the room, we can’t avoid setting the rune. That means we need to deal with the Runenmer’s demons. What do we know about them?”

  “They are terrible,” said Tosvig. “Spirits of dark energy, but they feed on flesh at the behest of their maker.”

  I smiled at him. “Tosvig, I don’t say this to be mean, but we need absolutes here. Truths that we can work with, grounded in practicality. First, how does the Runenmer summon them? Does he use elementals, like us?”

  “The Runenmer does not need elementals,” said Harrien. “Mardak told me this.”

  “Then he isn’t as limited as we are. Does that mean he can cast as many runes as he likes?”

  “Yes, and also no,” said Harrien.

  Tosvig folded his arms. “Now who talks in riddles?”

  “The Runenmer does not need elementals to cast his spells. He went beyond them, in a way even Elder Red could not. He lays his runes as anchors, like traps ready to spring. When the runes are activated, they will take power from him. This is why he must always be careful when placing them. If he placed too many, lost track of all his runes in the wilds, some might activate without his knowledge, and drain power from him when he is not ready.”

  I thought about it. It was as though the Runenmer’s power was a tank full of water. Every time he anchored a rune, it was like fixing a tap to the side. When a rune was activated, it was like turning a tap and draining some of the water away.

  So, he could lay as many runes as he wanted, but he couldn’t afford them all to activate at once. He would have to be strategic in how he used them.

  “Some he lays as deceptions; illusions that have no power behind them,” said Harrien.

  “Fakes,” I said.

  “Duplicitous symbols, that he lays knowing they will deter people from somewhere he does not want them to be. Our camp, for example. He placed runes all around us, yet they did not activate. He was trying to drive us away.”

  “I thought he needed to complete a circle of them, or leave a certain number?” I said.

  Harrien nodded. “It is true; his most powerful spell is a chain of runes, making the land within them a place of death. But not all his runes act this way.”

  Judah looked at Harrien strangely. “How do you know so much about this creature?”

  “You are suspicious of a fellow Lonehill?” said Tosvig.

  “Not suspicious. But I would like to know.”

  “When I was younger,” said Harrien, “Stances did not come naturally to me. I struggled with them. To better myself, I used to read the books our old loremaster wrote of our clan, though we abandoned the practice. I would read of mages, hoping to find one like me who struggled with his spells but then became great. The Runenmer was one such mage.”

  Kayla stepped forward now. “He was a lonehill? This creature? The terror of the wilds?”

  “Once,” said Harrien. “No longer. He has long gone beyond his ancestry to us. He is no more a Lonehill than a shark is a fish.”

  “Sharks are fish,” said Cleavon.

  “You know my point.”

  “The rune beyond here could be a fake, then,” I said. “But we’ll work under the understanding that it isn’t. So, you said that he can’t cast limitless spells?”

  Harrien nodded. “When he places a rune, he binds some of his power into it. Ask me not how; if I knew that, I would learn it myself.”

  “You would do no such thing,” said Tosvig.

  “I was not being serious. But he must give some of his power into each rune. Once he does, the power he used will regenerate within him, but only with time. So…”

  “So he wouldn’t gamble all of his power on one rune,” I said. “Especially when he couldn’t be sure that we would come here.”

  I didn’t add the next thought that brought to my mind, but I couldn’t stop it circling in my head.

  What if the Runenmer did know for certain that we were coming to the Mines of Light? That would mean that someone had t
old him. Either someone within our group, or somebody in one of the clans.

  Chief Fergus, maybe? Mardak? Hell, it could have been anyone.

  The only thing I felt reasonably safe in guessing was that nobody in our group would have done it. We had all suffered in getting here. With the komonauts and the gnomes and everything else. Nobody had been spared pain, fear, and all the hell our journey had brought.

  Besides that, we had all sworn on the oathstone that we wouldn’t harm each other, and even though I thought the oathstone was a placebo, the others didn’t.

  I thought back to being in the tent while Chief Fergus said the oath. We’d all been there, hadn’t we? I tried to think if anyone had been missing, but I could picture us all standing there.

  So, maybe the Runenmer had left this particular rune long ago.

  “When I first saw the Runenmer,” I said, “he came through a portal. That would imply that before that, he was elsewhere. So, where was he?”

  “The Runenmer can be killed,” said Tosvig. “But not for all of time. He comes back.”

  “And do the runes he leaves behind stay here, or do they disappear when he dies?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Harrien?”

  He shrugged. “There was no tell of this in the clan books. Mention of him was scant. I believe that one loremaster wrote more about him, but the elder before Red burned the book. He would hear no mention of the Runenmer. So it is told, anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said, speaking aloud to organize my thoughts. Truth be told, my head was spinning. “First, you guys really need to start writing things down. Songs don’t cut it. Secondly, the rune in the room beyond might be fake. If it isn’t, then it has some of his power in it. The power he chose to allocate to the rune affects the number and strength of the demons that it summons. Is that right?”

  Judah, Adi-Boto, and Kayla all looked to Harrien now. The teenager shuffled a little, uncomfortable, but the slight grin on his lips showed that he liked being counted on for his knowledge.

  “Isaac has made a grim, but correct summary.”

  “Okay. So, let’s assume that the rune is real and that he put a tremendous amount of power into it. If that is the case, let’s talk demons. How do we beat their asses?”