“Demons feed off the power Runenmer leaves in his runes. Like wood tossed into a fire; when fire chews through wood and no more is left, fire dies.”
I felt a sudden spark in my head, like the flash of a blacksmith’s hammer pounding links in a red-hot chain of ideas.
“What if we could activate the runes and then leave? Just let the demons burn out?”
Judah scratched his chin while looking at Harrien. “Can this be done?”
I could tell by the look on Harrien’s face that he didn’t know, but wasn’t ready to relinquish his status as Runenmer expert yet.
“That needs a trial,” he said.
“Can the demons leave the runes?” I asked.
“No.”
“If I stepped into a rune and activated it, would it trap me?”
“No, but the demons would summon before you got chance to leave it. Not worth risking.”
I paced a little now. “Unless I was too quick for them.”
“We could all try to run across the rune before it activates,” said Harrien.
I thought about it. “Maybe. It’s a risk, but it might work. Then again…that’s a waste of the situation. This isn’t a problem, guys. It’s actually an opportunity.”
“Huh?”
“We know that the Runenmer anchors his runes with power, but that the power isn’t taken from him until the runes activate. So, why not activate them on purpose, and let him waste some power?”
“Do you have a way to activate them while avoiding horrible death?”
“I could try wolf meat and see if I get a speed buff. Unless there is something else? Wait! I know.”
Heading through the passageway and toward the tunnel, I heard the others shout after me. I stopped at the end of the tunnel, a meter before it opened into the diamond-shaped cavern.
It was dark ahead, and I could barely make out the rune marks on the ground. That was the problem with the dweller buff; it did nothing for my actual sight. In fact, I was sure it had hampered it a little.
I took some stones from my bag. I had collected these from the gnome pit prison, back when I was desperate for a weapon. My bag was due a spring clean, but at least they had come in handy. Not that there was a shortage of rocks in a place like this, but it seemed symbolically proper that I’d use something I had gained from the gnomes to help me here.
“Here goes.”
I threw the stones into the room ahead, and then I backed away another meter and braced myself for activity.
But seconds went by and the runes didn’t activate. No lights, no demons. Damn.
I rejoined the others. “Looks like you can’t activate the runes remotely,” I said. “One of us will have to stand on them. Harrien, do you know any spells that make someone faster?”
“Hrr-spee.”
“Great! Can you cast it on me?”
“I know its name, but do not know it, Isaac. It is not a spell learned by all of the clan; only hunters.”
“Damn it. I guess that means you never learned it either, Cleavon?”
“I have never been a hunter.”
“Then we are pretty screwe…”
I stopped talking.
Hrr-spee! Of course!
Opening my bag, I pulled out a book. It was thick, with paper that looked like it had been sliced directly from tree bark without any further processing. On the front was a title written in blue ink; Hrr-spee: Un gata fur Novicien.
I showed it Harrien. “This was with Siddel’s things.”
“Even in death, good Siddel helps us,” said Tosvig.
“This will take a little time, but it will be worth it,” I told the others.
I flicked through the book and studied the stance diagrams. This was a novice spell with only four stances, and a couple of them resembled the ones for hrr-levita and barrer. This wasn’t going to take as long as I thought.
With Siddel’s medallion improving my movements, and with my body conditioned to the stances now, I learned hrr-spee. Harrien stood beside me, copying the movements too.
While we worked, Kayla retreated further up the tunnel behind us and took watch, while Tosvig guarded the passageway ahead. Judah parceled out some berries and mushrooms he’d foraged on our journey before the gnomes captured us, and he even gave some to Erimdag.
Twenty minutes later, I had put together a crude chain of stances. They weren’t perfect, but I could tell from the build-up of energy in me that I had done enough.
Harrien, meanwhile, was still practicing moving from the third stance to the fourth, and I understood now why he was obsessed with reading about mages more powerful than him, and especially the late bloomers.
I had put real effort into analyzing stances and working out the best way to move from one to the other. I had trained my muscles as much as time allowed.
But Harrien looked clumsy to me. I wouldn’t have been able to notice that even a month ago, but my eye was more practiced now.
Was it some kind of innate potential that separated us?
No, I’d never believed that kind of thing. You weren’t born with skill, you earned it. In anything that needed technique, it was all about how often you practiced, how focused your practice was, and your inner drive to improve. Being a newcomer, feeling like my survival was hanging on a thread, I’d been more motivated that Harrien to push myself.
So, I guessed it would be my job to go to the rune now.
Knowing the technique, I took a deep breath and I let my nerves settle.
And then I cast my new spell.
“Hrr-spee!”
[Speed] elemental depleted! [Total: 8]
Discipline Unlocked: Speed
Rank: Grey 0.00%
Spell Learned: Spee [Cost: 1 [Speed]elemental]
[Faster than light? Moving quicker through time? However a mage thinks of it, the result of spee is the same; it makes you faster.]
BONUS!
You have now unlocked 5 mage disciplines, furthering your abilities as a mage. With five separate disciplines, you are now more than a mere novice in your craft. Tremors of power are building in you, like tides birthing in the ocean.
- [Fire] discipline improved by 10% [Rank: Grey 55%]
- [Kinesis] discipline improved by 10% [Rank: Grey 28%]
- [Shield] discipline improved by 10% [Rank: Grey 39%]
- [Ice] discipline improved by 10% [Rank: Grey 25%]
- [Speed] discipline improved by 10% [Rank: Grey 10%]
Tremors of power? Tides? I didn’t feel any tides of power in me. Certainly nothing like tides of an ocean. Not even pond ripples. But when I called my mage stats to mind, I saw each discipline and I saw that they had increased, so I knew it was true.
Rather than new strength, the starkest feeling in me was a kind of buildup of nervous energy. It was concentrated in my chest, and I pictured it as a sphere taking up space behind my ribs.
It wasn’t physical, because it would have made my ribcage explode, but I felt it there. I felt like I had all this energy, and that I had to use it, or it would burn out. This was what hrr-spee felt like.
I focused on the tunnel. “I’ll be back soon,” I said.
Without giving them a chance to answer, I ran down the tunnel.
Huh. Even with hrr-spee working through me, I wasn’t going any faster. I knew the spell had worked because I had used up an elemental, so what gave? At my normal speed, I couldn’t risk running into the rune.
Come on, hrr-spee. I need to be quicker, I thought.
With the thought, I felt the energy from the ball in my chest throttle down to my legs. The sphere of energy in my chest grew smaller, and my running speed increased so suddenly that I lost balance and fell onto the ground. Pain sprang in my right wrist as I protected my face from the fall.
I sat up, rubbing my wrists. I could feel the others behind me, watching. Face-planting in front of a crowd was surely in most people’s top ten list of embarrassing moments, and the pain in my arm didn’t make matters be
tter.
At least I knew how to control hrr-spee; if I thought about it, the spee energy or elemental energy or whatever it was in my chest would send pulses to my legs or arms, and then I’d be faster. I just had to brace myself for it so that the change in motion didn’t take me by surprise.
An image flashed in my mind then; no, not an image. A memory.
Me, on a moving train. It was pulling into a station, and I was stowing away in an unused cargo carriage. I knew I had to get off the train before it reached the station, but it was still moving.
I braced myself, concentrated on the ground, and then I jumped, and I started running as soon as I hit the ground so that the change didn’t make me face-plant.
That was what hrr-spee was like; jumping from a moving carriage.
I tugged at the memory, trying to get more of it, but it was like trying to stay in a lucid dream; the harder I concentrated, the more I felt it slip away from me.
I focused on the runes. Okay, you rune bastard. I can do this now.
I got up, swept dirt from my shoulders, and I started running. With a mental command, more of the spee elemental energy left my chest and reached my legs, and this time I braced myself for the speed and ran into it.
There had been a small breeze in the tunnel, but at this speed, it felt like a storm lashing against my face. I felt tears come from my eyes as the cold gust blew on my eyeballs. It was amazing to go so fast. Freeing, impossible, exciting. If only I was on the surface now, on some great plain instead of in a tunnel…
I reached the runes before I even realized it. I stopped.
And now came the dangerous part.
Just need to hold my nerve until they activate…
Nothing happened.
The rune was a fake. A con. A trick left by Runenmer, who must have been conserving his powers.
“Guys, this is-”
Light caught my eye, snatching the words from my mouth. The circumference lines of the rune lit up, glowing red like coal taken from a forge. When it completed a full circle of light, the glow began to move inwards, spreading over the strange lines and shapes that made up the heart of the rune.
Time to go.
I commanded spee energy to my legs again, and I set off at a sprint.
And then, I stopped with a lurch so sudden that I didn’t even have time to put my hand out. I smashed into the stony ground face-first, the flicker of pain so great that my eyes teared up.
Behind me, I heart a gentle whooshing like flames on gas, and I knew the rune was filling up with light.
What had happened?
My chest. The energy was gone!
I put my hand on the ground to push myself up, only to feel pain in my wrist. I used my other hand, and I got to my feet. I tasted blood on my lips.
Turning around, I saw the rune was complete now, and four towers of light were rising from it.
Demons.
I needed to be quick.
Focusing myself, ignoring the pain in my nose and wrist and the taste of iron on my tongue, I cast hrr-spee again, and I fled from the cavern.
[Speed] elemental depleted! [Total: 7]
[Speed] discipline improved by 5%!
Rank: Grey 15.00%
The rest of them awaited my arrival with anxious looks on their faces. And Harrien winced when he saw me. Man, I must have looked rough.
Tosvig put his hand on my shoulder and held me steady. “Did rune work?”
“Yes,” said Judah. “I can hear them. Listen? Their voices.”
He was right. I could hear the demons now. Their throaty voices, like how darkness would sound if it could talk. I couldn’t understand them, but I knew they were talking and not just making noises. I could tell from the cadence and rhythm of their growls.
I desperately wanted to see them. Not because I had a thing for demons; but if this was Runenmer’s main weapon, I wanted to know as much about it as I could.
But it was too much of a risk to show myself. If I walked further down the tunnel so I could see the runes, it meant the demons would also see me. I didn’t think they could leave their rune circle, but why provoke them and take a chance?
“How long will this last?” I asked.
Harrien shrugged. “For as long as Runenmer decided when he anchored his rune.”
“So we just have to stay here and wait it out, then.”
An hour passed.
Then another.
Soon, we had spent five hours in the passageway, and still the demons chattered to each other in their bilious language. As horrible as the sound was, at least it meant we didn’t have to risk going down the tunnel to check on them.
It would have been an opportunity to rest, except that the powder Cleavon had given us kept us wired. But as much as we had energy physically, we were all weary. Weary of travel, of darkness, and each other. And so, we didn’t say much. Everyone was lost in their thoughts.
Kayla crept toward us from the tunnel behind.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Dwellers.”
The word was like a blast of arctic wind in my skull. “Coming this way?”
“They are distant, for now. Too quiet to tell where they go, and how many there are.”
“If they track us to this tunnel, we’re stuck between them and the demons.”
The news was enough to shake everyone out of their thoughts. Judah crouched on one knee, but then winced and rubbed his kneecap. I had seen him do this a lot. Don’t get me wrong, he was fitter than I was. But still, he was getting old. I guessed his chosen vocation wasn’t easy on his joints.
“How far away are they?”
Kayla shrugged. “Hard to be precise, Judah,” she said. “Perhaps four minutes away.”
“That sounded pretty precise to me,” I said.
Harrien looked at one direction of the tunnel, then the other. I knew the question circling in his mind; was it better to face demons, or giant spider-humanoid-things? Toughie.
I listened, and I couldn’t hear the dwellers at all, even with my dweller buff still working.
Then again, I couldn’t hear the demons, either.
“I think we might be clear,” I said.
I crept forward until I could see the cavern again. There were no demons now, and the rune itself was gone.
I called back to the others. “We’re clear!”
Judah yelled something in response.
And then Harrien shouted something.
“What?” I asked.
Next, I heard noises that I really, really hadn’t wanted to hear.
The sounds of dozens of feet scuttling over stone.
“Isaac, run!”
The group fled down the tunnel. I didn’t need them to tell me that the dwellers had found us. I started running, fixing my gaze on the passageway across the tunnel, which marked the next part of our journey.
CHAPTER 42 – Cleft Lip (2)
Alone in the forest, after waking up to find his people had abandoned him here, the first thing Cleft did was to take the knife by his feet and cut the rope from around his legs.
He stood up, holding the sheet of folded parchment in his hand. This, along with the knife, was the only thing they had left him with. His name was written across it, and it was Hacinda’s handwriting, no doubt about that.
Had she been part of this? His love, half of his soul that he had given everything for? He had eaten a part of his friend just to live long enough to get back to her!
He thought then of Arnet. Poor, poor Arnet, and the dreams the flesh gave him; nightmares of runes and death and sorrow.
He shook it all away. They had brought him here while he was asleep. They must have done something to take him into an even deeper slumber so that he didn’t wake while they carried him away.
Well, he wouldn’t just rest on it. Did they really think he couldn’t find his way back to them?
This wouldn’t go unanswered.
Before doing anything else, he unfolded the pa
rchment and saw that Hacinda had written him a note.
Cleft,
I hereby formalize the dissolution of our union. You are no longer my husband and no longer of the Lonehill clan.
Witnessed by the elder, henceforth you are not of our people, and must not approach our camp again. Leaving you alive was a mercy that I begged the elder to grant, and I pray you take it.
No longer yours,
Hacinda
He tore the parchment into pieces and threw it on the ground. His blood boiled, the veins in his temple pounded.
Dissolution of marriage? Banishment from the clan?
A face loomed in his mindscape. Cleavon. The bastard must have told them what Cleft did; that he had eaten part of a fellow circle child so that he could survive.
Back in the cave, contemplating eating part of Arnet to survive, Cleft had known that it went against everything the clan stood for. That it was the most important of their rules; that not even in starvation would they do such a thing.
Cleavon had held fast to the rule ingrained in him and trusted in fate to provide for them. Cleft had given in, not content to leave his survival to chance. He wouldn’t let Hacinda live her life alone. He had given in to his needs.
No, not given in. Giving in was cowardly. What Cleft had done showed strength; to go against such a strong truth, to eat the body of one close to him just so he could get back to his wife. If pushing past his revulsion, if mastering his fear of the rule wasn’t strength, then what was it?
And this was where it had taken him. Alone, in the forest, his marriage over, his life in tatters.
They thought they could just leave him here. That he’d be thankful they didn’t kill him for breaking the rule. They probably thought that this was just and merciful. Bastards.
They hoped he would just accept this and never go back, and thus they’d never have to face abandoning him.
No. He’d make them look into his eyes and say the words to his face, even going back there killed him. Especially if it killed him. Because out here alone, he was alive, but he had no life. Without Hacinda and his clan, he was nothing.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 45