Rune Seeker

“Hiral? You going to get a hit in on this one?” Seena shouted.

He looked up from where he sat cross-legged on the stone road, the Emperor’s Greatsword perched across his knees.

“Hrm?” he said, noting only one of the five Lizardmen was still standing, its red health bar almost gone. “Right, sorry!”

He lifted his RHC off the ground beside him and promptly shot the monster in the face. The warrior dropped to the ground in a heap beside its comrades, and the next group was just barely visible in the distance. Right on schedule.

With his contribution to the battle complete, he put the weapon down on the ground, then went back to work studying the runes running in the shape of a diamond inside the sword’s blade. Unlike his RHCs, these runes were a permanent part of the weapon, and couldn’t be swapped in and out on slides. Some of them were also… far more complicated than the runes on his body.

Strangest yet, he could make out four distinct runes—the first four cardinal points of the diamond—but it also looked like there were several more that were blurred out.

“Thanks for your help on that one,” Seena said flatly, coming over to sit beside him.

“Sorry,” he said, a bit of heat running up his neck.

That was the third pack of Lizardmen they’d killed, and Hiral really hadn’t done much, other than chip in to make sure he got experience. The rest of the group had done all the heavy lifting.

“Nah, I’m just kidding with you. We have it handled pretty readily. Actually, do you even need to shoot one? Do Left and Right count as you contributing to the fight?” Seena looked over at the doubles, who were joking with Yanily in his new armor.

Hiral blinked at the sword, then looked up at Seena. “That’s a great question. Let’s find out with the next group.”

Seena groaned. “Did I just give you an excuse to pay even less attention?”

“I’m totally paying attention, just to something else,” Hiral said, pointing at the sword, but his eyes trailed away from Seena to the small totem in the middle of the road, which suddenly crumpled into a pile. “Uh, your totem’s duration ended again.”

“Already?” she asked, following his gaze. “Stupid Low-E-Rank ability duration,” she grumbled, then flipped a page on the tome floating beside her. “Still, I can’t complain with how quickly it’s leveling up.”

She shrugged and tapped a finger on the page in front of her. Immediately below the debris left by the previous totem, a new one burst out of the ground. Unlike the ones used by the Scholar, Seena’s summoned totem was made of carved wood wrapped in the usual thorny vines, and spat a mix of normal firebolts and infernal firebolts.

“How are the fireballs working out for you?” Hiral asked.

The woman beside him frowned slightly. “Taking some getting used to. Not sure how I feel about standing still for three seconds while they form.”

“Better than thirty, like the Scholar,” Hiral reminded her.

“True. Those ten it had each took longer—three seconds to my one—but they had a lot of power. Way more than what mine pack. Might almost be worth it, kind of like Balyo’s big hit.”

Hiral hesitated at the mention of Balyo. Since they’d entered the portal in a rush, they’d all been dancing around the topic of how the other party was doing. With their prior knowledge, Seena’s team had raced through downing the King and Queen, and then the Scholar, all in short order. They’d left the Scholar’s totem up, so as not to start the Prince encounter, and had come back to the road to farm some experience. Now that the rush from that was gone, well, everybody seemed to have something on their minds, though nobody talked about it.

And from the look on Seena’s face, not talking about it was her way of dealing with the worry for the moment.

“Will you ever get to ten?” he asked instead of broaching the other subject.

“Just eight, I think,” she said with a nod of her head, as though she knew what he’d been thinking, and was grateful he didn’t ask. “One more fireball per rank on top of my current three. Not sure how the Scholar had ten, but it’s fine. Eight will be plenty.”

“And you get more totems per rank too?”

“Yes! That part I’m really looking forward to. Having six of those little guys around will add up to a lot of damage.” Seena literally rubbed her hands together in front of herself. “Also, watch that guy. See how it’s turning slowly?”

“You doing that?” Hiral asked.

“Nope. I noticed it earlier. The totems always seem to want to face the closest opponent. Even when it’s not spitting out fire, it’s watching. Aiming. And, right now, it’s aiming at those Lizardmen waaaaaay over there.”

“That could be really useful. How much solar energy does it cost you to drop one down?”

“Next to nothing. It’s only when it starts spitting fire that it gets more costly. Uh, once I turn on the fire, I can’t turn it off until the enemy is dead or the duration expires. That’s out of my hands.”

“Still, dropping those while we’re worried about an ambush or something, it could warn us. We’ll need to…”

“Let me guess,” Seena interrupted. “Run some tests. I have no idea how you didn’t become an Academic,” she joked, elbowing him gently in the side.

“And I have no idea how you’re not classified as a damage dealer,” Hiral responded with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I dunno,” Seena admitted. “Maybe it can change? How about you? You figure that thing out yet? We’re all kind of waiting to see what it does.”

“I feel like I’m getting close,” Hiral said, running his fingers along the flat of the blade. “See this rune here, right beside the crosspiece?” He pointed at the bottom-most rune.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“It’s far more complicated than the others. The two directly above it—these two that look like they’re linked to it—are like a single stroke from a pen. I mean, you could make each one without leaving the page, if you were writing it. Like the runes on my arms. One clean stroke. Anyway, this one here… it’s almost like three or four runes overlaid on each other. Maybe more.”

“And you have no idea what it could mean?” Seena asked. “You didn’t get a user manual with it or anything?”

“I wish,” Hiral sighed. “When I got the RHCs, the notification told me what the Rune of Impact did. The notification for this? Told me it had unknown abilities. Gee, thanks.”

“What’s your best guess? You must have one.”

Hiral looked at Seena out of the corner of his eyes, surprised by the sound of confidence in her voice. Confidence in him? Damn, maybe Right was… right. He really did need to get past his trauma.

“Well,” Hiral started, turning his forearms up so they could both see the runes there, “notice how these are opposites of each other?”

“Yeah, we talked about that before. It was part of how you unlocked the other two, right?”

“Yes. When you look at these, and then you look at that rune in the sword, do you see any similarities?”

Seena leaned over, staring down at his arms, then at the sword. Back and forth her head turned as she looked, then she reached out and started tracing lines over the flat of the blade. “They’re both there, aren’t they? If I ignore some of the other lines, and just look for these, I feel like I see them crossing over each other here.” She tapped a central point of the rune.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” Hiral said. “Though, maybe it’s just because I want to see that?”

“Assuming it’s not, what could it mean?”

“Best guess here,” Hiral said, referring back to what she’d said earlier, “I think these simple runes—and I use ‘simple’ very loosely here—are kind of like foundational runes. Basic concepts. Rejection and attraction, for example. Almost like core, observable forces. Also, did I mention I never actually became an Academic? I don’t have the right words to describe what I mean.”

“You’re doing great. Keep going,” Seena said. “Attraction and rejection, like magnets, right?”

“Yes, like magnets. Simple to watch… to observe, but really difficult to explain. And this rune in the sword—it’s like an equation of runes, but written all over each other, instead of in a line like we would do for math.”

“I hate math,” Seena said. “Don’t get me wrong—I know how important it is, I’m just not very good at it. Back to the sword, though. You think it’s like a magnet?”

Hiral shook his head before he even thought about the question. It was a good one, but that idea felt off. When he looked at the rune, it didn’t make him think about magnets, though he did get a similar impression from it. “Not quite. I think actual magnetism, if done through runes, would be like this—some kind of an advanced concept rune. Argh, but that’s not the right word for it either.”

“That’s okay; let’s use it between us,” Seena said.

“Thanks,” Hiral said. “When I look at this rune, I don’t think of magnetism, I think of… But never mind; that can’t be right.”

“What can’t be right? Spit it out.”

“It makes me think of gravity,” Hiral said, even the words coming out of his mouth feeling almost correct—but not quite. “The attraction part, and some of these other runes. It makes me feel like I’m falling. That’s mainly why I’m sitting here, actually,” he said with a laugh. “But, this Rune of Rejection here? What would it be doing in a rune for gravity?”

“Hrm,” Seena said, putting her finger to her lips in thought. “Are you looking at the runes individually, or as a group? Didn’t you say your RHChad slots for you to add other runes? And… and that they’d interact with each other if you did that?”

Hiral’s eyes widened at the question. “Individually,” he said slowly, looking again at the sequence of runes. And the way they were linked.

“And this is a weapon,” Seena went on. “Don’t just think about gravity—think about how it could be applied to the sword. To combat.”

“Seena… you’re a genius,” Hiral said, voice barely above a whisper, moving his finger from the advanced concept rune to the two linked runes. Runes that were just inverted versions of each other. “These two. They just apply an effect, a modifier, to this one…”

“And what’s that modifier?” Seena asked.

“It’s so simple. How did I not see it immediately?” Hiral lifted his hands from the blade in disbelief. “Increase and decrease.”

Like before, as soon as the thought solidified in Hiral’s mind, scripts of solar energy flowed from the double-helix patterns on his arms and chest, this time consolidating on his shoulder blades. The familiar yellow energy flared, power building as the scripts swirled into larger shapes. Left and Right vanished in a flash of light at the same time Hiral’s solar energy dropped straight to zero.

“Oh,” was all he had time to say before he collapsed straight back to the road, only Seena’s quick reflexes catching his head before it bounced off the stone.

“Damn, Hiral, I guess you got it right?” she asked, gently lowering his head to the stone.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, feeling like he’d just run a marathon.

“Left and Right…” Nivian started, rushing over, only to see Hiral on the ground. “Oh, this again? He got new runes?”

“I think so,” Seena said. “Hiral?”

He pulled up his status window, then nodded from where he lay. “Rune of Increase and Rune of Decrease. On my shoulders… which means… Oh, wow. Left is going to be happy. Hrm. Or maybe really annoyed.”

“Why? What’s on your shoulders?” Wule asked, coming over and kneeling down beside Hiral. Refreshing energy flowed into him, soothing the very minor pains from toppling over.

“The Wings of Anella,” Hiral said. “With both, he’d be able to fly. With only one, though… we’ll have to test. Help me sit up?”

“Sure,” Nivian said, coming around and propping Hiral back into a seated position. “We’ve got a few minutes before the Lizardmen arrive. You going to be okay?”

“More than okay,” Hiral said. “Thanks to Seena, I figured out what this is.” He pointed at the complex rune on the sword. “There is a rune of gravity in here, these lines,” he said, tracing the complex rune out on the flat of the blade, “and…” He cut off, energy suddenly exploding out of his body.

Party members shouted in surprise as they got thrown back from Hiral. The double-helix pattern burst out and surrounded him in a sphere of glowing lines of script, then lifted him to hover in the air. His arms and legs jerked out as though ropes wrapped his ankles and wrists, and a huge weight settled on his chest, crushing him down even though he lay unmoving several feet above the ground.

Beneath him, he heard the cracking of stone as the runic script expanded the sphere of influence, and he fought to force air into his lungs. Nothing came. Darkness clawed at the sides of his vision. Flashes of light and dark specks raced across in front of his eyes. His heart hammered in his chest, blood pounding through his veins, while his tattoos and Meridian Lines tore off his skin to hang an inch around his body.

The dungeon sky faded from sight as unconsciousness claimed him, though the glowing script continued to whirl within the darkness. And in that darkness, some of the script made sense. Like he had almost understood the gravity rune by looking at it. Knowledge of the foreign language etched across his body was right at his fingertips.

Another second, and…

…he thumped down to the ground, the impact shattering the moment of comprehension. Basic bodily needs—like breathing—quickly rushed to the forefront of his attention, and he curled up on the ground, coughing and gasping. Long seconds passed before he could take a real breath, and he rolled onto his back to look up at the sky. He lay in a curved indentation in the ground, the bottom-most point a good three feet deep, and he had to sit up to see over the lip.

“Everybody okay?” he asked weakly.

“Does soaking wet count as okay?” Yanily asked, sitting in the swampy muck on the side of the road.

“I thought your armor had elemental resistance,” Vix asked, also standing up from the swamp.

“Apparently, water doesn’t count as an element,” Yanily said.

“Did the water hurt you?” Wule asked.

“Just my feelings,” Yanily replied.

“Then the armor protected you just fine.” Wule turned his attention to Hiral, but didn’t approach. “You finished exploding?”

“Uh…” Hiral started, then held up his hands to keep everybody back. A quick check at his status window showed him back at three percent solar energy already, and he had a new Rune of Gravity listed. Unlike the last few runes, however, this one was listed immediately under the Rune of Separation.

Hrm. Is this going to give me something like Foundational Split? Or… did I completely miss the fact I could use the Rune of Separation like I used the other runes? More testing…

“Well?” Wule asked. “More exploding or not?”

“There actually might be one more,” Hiral admitted, and Wule took a step back. “I think I figured out what that fourth rune on the sword is. And, if I’m right…”

“Exploding,” Nivian said. “Got it. Could you get it over with? We’ve got Lizardmen coming.”

“You’re talking pretty casually about me exploding here…” Hiral said flatly.

“Not the first time it’s happened,” Nivian pointed out. “Seriously, get on with it. We’re on a schedule.”

“Fine. You might want to take an extra step back. This one was gravity, and you saw what it did to the ground around me.” Hiral reached out to get the sword, then stood in the center of the small bowl in the ground.

“And what’s this other one?” Seena asked.

Hiral looked at the rune on the sword, finally understanding how it worked in unison with the others he could see, and probably with the others that still appeared blurry. Those, he would figure out in time. For now, all that mattered was the fourth and final rune.

“Energy,” he said, tracing the rune on the blade, and it was more than just his double helix that erupted from his body.

Pure yellow energy cascaded out of him in a column that stretched to the sky and blew the clouds away. Light filled his vision as the ground rumbled, and wind whipped around him like a tornado. On his status window, his solar energy capacity climbed and climbed, blowing past one hundred percent. Heat spread through him.

Two hundred percent, and it felt like he was standing in the sun.

Four hundred percent, and his skin ached like he’d gotten a sunburn.

Six hundred percent, a fever washed through his body, setting his limbs shaking.

Eight hundred percent, and fire ran through his veins instead of blood.

One thousand percent, and he was the sun, glowing like he was about to supernova…

Zero percent, and he collapsed back to the smoking ground, heat rising and shimmering the air, but still blessedly cool on his skin.

“That’s your fault, Nivian!” Seena shouted somewhere above the lip of the depression in the ground.

“How is that my fault?” the tank asked.

“You just had to joke about him exploding,” Seena shot back.

“Is anybody going to check on him?” Wule asked.

“You’re the healer,” Yanily said. “And… oh, look. Lizardmen are almost here. Guess we should go take care of those, right, Vix?”

“Safer than getting near the exploding Islander,” Vix said.

“Didn’t… explode…” Hiral said, pulling himself up by using the Emperor’s Greatsword as a crutch. In his status window, the Rune of Energy appeared beneath the Rune of Gravity, and there were even new labels beside them.

Rune of Separation – Primary

Rune of Gravity – Secondary

Rune of Energy – Tertiary

No idea what the primary, secondary, tertiary thing means, but that’s for later.

“Hiral, you doing okay?” Seena asked. “You’re… uh… done… exploding now, right?”

“Yeah, done,” Hiral said, his solar energy climbing quickly. He hefted himself out of the depression in the ground. “And, if you don’t mind, could you let me take the lead on the Lizardmen?”

“Sure. Why?” Seena asked.

“Because you wanted to see what it could do,” he said, activating Foundational Split and pushing solar energy into the Emperor’s Greatsword. A blade of solid energy extended out of the broken edge to bring the sword to its natural size. “Time to find out.”

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