Rune Seeker

With the building finally cleared—no more Troblins on the third or fourth floors—the party regrouped at the oddly neat room in the back of the inn.

“This can’t possibly be the Troblins’ room, can it?” Cal asked, her eyes wandering to the half-finished portrait in the back, then snapping away.

“You think maybe one of our missing groups stayed here?” Seena asked Seeyela. “When was the last time we lost a party in the area?”

“Not since we were little kids,” Seeyela said. “This was the Troblins, as hard as that is to believe.”

“Little bastards are neat-freaks,” Yanily said. “This room is spotless.”

“I’d avoid sampling what was for dinner, though,” Nivian said. “Who knows what’s in that soup.”

“After Splitfang Keep and that smokehouse, you won’t see me anywhere near Troblin food,” Lonil said.

“I hate to say it,” Hiral said, “but this room is the one in the best shape. If we’re going to sleep somewhere, this is the place to do it. No windows to let the rain in, and it even has the best lighting.” He pointed to the network of roots stretching across the ceiling.

“He’s right,” Seena said.

“I know, though it makes my skin crawl,” Seeyela said. “Okay, folks. Left and Hiral, can you two keep watch? One of you watch the lower floor, and another go up to the fourth? The rest of us are going to clear out this room. We’ll figure out a better watch rotation to give you a rest after that’s done.”

Hiral glanced at the portrait, shivered, then pushed himself up from where he’d been sitting to recover from using Enraged. “Sure.” He nodded to Seeyela, then exited the room with Left. “Why don’t you take the first floor? I want to get a better view of the town from the top.”

“Sure,” Left said, heading toward the stairs leading to the ground level while Hiral took the stairs up to the third, and finally the fourth floor.

Up there, the rain hammered against the roof, a constant drumming of lashing water and whipping wind. Cold air swirled through the halls from the missing section of the building, and Hiral went in that direction, sheets of water pouring down at the end of the hall.

It’s amazing there’s even a roof at all. I guess it makes sense, though; it’s not like we do many building repairs up in Fallen Reach. Though… why is that? Some kind of magic keeping the buildings in good repair? Runes? Or, am I overthinking it now that I know runes exist?

Do I just want to see the possible uses of them?

Getting to the end of the hall, he tried looking through the deluge falling from the broken section of roof, but a violent gust of wind hurled water into the hall—and onto him—and he couldn’t see through it anyway, so he turned into a nearby room. Like below, the window to this room had been ripped or blasted open, though there was no damage from anything like the infernal flames they’d seen in the Troblin Keep. No, it looked more like brute strength had peeled the stones out.

But how big did a thing have to be to rip apart windows on the fourth floor?

Hiral lifted his arm up to block some of the water spraying in, but then stepped back and instead pushed a trickle of energy into his Rune of Rejection while concentrating on the rain. This time, when he stepped forward, the cold wind still blew, but not a single drop of water touched him.

These runes have a lot of versatility.

Maintaining the slight shield of Rejection, he stepped up to the hole in the wall and peered out. Lightning cut across the sky, illuminating the buildings of the town like a snapshot of the end of the world. Roofs lay caved in, walls were little more than piles of rubble, and the rain was the only thing that moved. Another flash, and Hiral looked at the empty street, thunder cascading above him in a long, drawn-out series of booms that shook the building.

More flashes, and Hiral looked up, forks of wild lightning arcing between the clouds and toward the ground. On and on the display went, almost to the point there was constant light to show off the fury of the storm.

And to get a better look at the town.

Tearing his eyes away from the show in the sky, Hiral instead leaned further out the window, relying on his rune to keep him dry, and looked down the street. Would Troblins go out in weather like this? Would anything else?

To his left was the path leading to the next dungeon, winding between the enormous trees. Bound to be more of those lizards that way…

But that thought gave Hiral pause, and he focused on the spaces between the booming thunder. No croaks, not even one. He stayed still and listened, letting the seconds turn to minutes, and yet still nothing sounded. Those lizards had been making noise the entire trip between the dungeon and here, but now they were quiet? Did they not like the rain?

Maybe it would be safer to move when it’s raining after all.

Putting the lizards out of his mind, Hiral turned his head to the right, down the street they’d just come. No sooner had he done that than lightning flashed overhead again, and huge red script exploded into his field of vision, startling him so much he fell back from the hole in the wall.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

The words repeated over and over again as Hiral’s ass hit the floor and he scrambled back from the window.

What in the name of the…?

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

ENEMY DETECTED!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

Hiral’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at the words, the new sequence repeating rapidly in case he’d somehow missed it the first ten times.

Enemy detected? Dr. Benza’s Enemy? I have to tell the others!

Pushing himself to his feet, Hiral didn’t close the notification, but sprinted back to the stairs and down to the second floor. Around the corner, down the hall, he ran into the room. Grower heads snapped in his direction at the unexpected entrance.

“Hiral?” Seena started to ask, but Hiral silenced her by making his notification window visible to all of them.

Twelve heads stared at the large red text in the yellow status window, then turned back to him.

“Enemy?” Seena asked the question on everybody’s lips. “As in the Enemy?”

“I don’t know,” Hiral said. “I was scouting out the town from one of the windows up on the fourth floor, and when I looked back down the street we’d come up, this exploded in my face.”

“What did you see?” Seeyela asked.

“That’s just it. Nothing,” Hiral said. “Nothing but the rain.”

“The PIMs must be extra sensitive to the Enemy,” Wule theorized.

“If he isn’t making it up,” Fitch said. “Said himself he didn’t see anything. Convenient.”

“Don’t think I could fake this if I tried,” Hiral said, thumbing toward the flashing notification.

“You couldn’t,” Seeyela agreed, deep in thought. “Close that. The blinking is distracting.”

“Sure,” Hiral said, and concentrated on closing the notification. Oddly, it took more effort than a normal notification, like the PIM really, really wanted to make sure he saw it.

“What do we do?” Lonil asked Seeyela.

“I’m thinking,” she said.

“We could make a run for it,” Picoli suggested. “Use the rain as cover and keep going toward the next dungeon. The lighting of the path should make it so we don’t get lost.”

“We don’t know how far it is,” Cal countered. “It could be five minutes from here, or five days.”

“Hole up here, then?” Nivian said, speaking to Seena. “Set up some kind of barricade at the top of the stairs to slow down anything coming up? Plenty of debris around to work with.”

“Didn’t work so well for whoever was here on the first floor,” Yanily said.

“We don’t even know what we’re up against here,” Wule said. “Does it need to come up the stairs, or will it come down from the fourth floor?”

“Then we set up more barricades at the stairs down as well,” Nivian suggested.

“And how long do we hide in the building?” Lonil asked. “How long do we wait for something we don’t know is actually even out there?”

“Pretty sure my PIM isn’t lying about this,” Hiral said.

“Did it see you?” Lonil asked. “Does it know we’re here?”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Hiral said. “I have no idea what it knows or doesn’t.”

“If you bring something down on us…” Fitch threatened.

“I thought you didn’t believe it was actually out there?” Right said. “Might want to pick a complaint and stick to it.”

“Cool it, everybody,” Seena said. “To be safe, we’re going to assume something is out there. We’re also going to assume it might have seen Hiral. I agree we have two main choices: stay or run.”

“We could go out and kill it,” Vix said.

Seena shook her head. “Not without knowing what we’re up against. With how much Dr. Benza warned us about this Enemy, I don’t want to run into it blindly. Sure, maybe the Enemy is Troblins, and we’ve been slowly wiping them out, or maybe it’s something much worse. Stay or run, those are our choices. Both might involve fighting, but let’s keep that as a last resort.”

“We stay,” Seeyela finally said. “Seena is right. We’re not going looking for a fight until we know more. We set up barricades at the stairs and keep watch. If it comes in, we deal with it.”

“How long do we stay hiding?” Picoli asked. “If we head for the dungeon now…”

“The storm is bad,” Hiral said. “Even dealing with a lizard in that would be extra difficult. The thunder and lightning are distracting. The rain would make footing treacherous, and the wind would constantly be in our eyes, slowing our reaction time.”

“He just wants more time to look around the town,” Fitch accused.

“Do you ever give it a rest?” Hiral snapped at him. “That would require leaving this building, which I don’t think is a good idea at all.”

Seeyela held up her hand, palms out, as more mouths opened, but nobody else spoke. “You all have good points. Really. But we’ll stay here for now. Better to have us all together and make a possible enemy come to us. If we go out there now and run, then we have the enemy at our back, and no idea where it’ll strike.

“However! We can’t stay here forever, and we won’t. Once the storm calms down again, we’ll make a break for the dungeon. Yes, we’ll assume the Enemy saw Hiral, but there’s also the chance it didn’t, so I want us to be careful we don’t do anything that could give away our presence to someone or something outside the building.”

“Where are the Troblin corpses?” Hiral asked, realizing he hadn’t jumped over any bodies when he’d returned from the fourth floor.

“We took them down to the first floor so they didn’t stink up the place,” Yanily said.

“Where did you put them?” Seena asked. “You didn’t throw them outside, did you?”

“No! Give us a bit of credit,” Yanily said, looking at Vix and Fitch. “Over in the corner by the hole in the wall. Figured the falling water would hide the bodies from the outside, and they would be out of our way.”

“Not bad thinking, but maybe we want to make sure there is zero risk of them being seen from outside,” Seena said.

“Left is down there. He’ll give us warning if he spots anything,” Vix said.

“Good,” Seeyela said. “Okay, let’s start getting chokepoints set up. If anything wants to come in here for us, we’re going to make them work for it.”

“I don’t think we should leave Left down there alone,” Hiral started, but then cut off as the tattoos reappeared on the left side of his body.

What the…?

“What did you do?” Fitch asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Hiral said, pulling open his status window.

He noticed a 1/2 beside his Foundational Split. His solar energy capacity was still also at only twenty-eight percent. Since Right was standing next to him, that meant Left had somehow returned.

Returned? By choice, or…?

“You didn’t cancel or… call him back? Or whatever it is you call it?” Seena asked.

“Of course not. But let’s see if he can tell us,” Hiral said, and activated Foundational Split.

Left peeled off Hiral’s body and staggered for a moment, reaching for his throat, then looked around the room like he was confused to be there.

“You okay?” Hiral asked, reaching out and steadying his double.

“The last thing I remember was being on the first floor,” Left said. “And now I’m here with you. I was… killed?”

“Look pretty good for a dead guy,” Yanily murmured.

“Seems that way,” Hiral said, ignoring the comment. “Do you remember anything before that?”

“Yes,” Left said. “There was a sound over by where the Troblin bodies were, and I went to investigate. When I got there, the bodies were gone.”

The Growers looked at each other at the comment, but then most of their eyes settled on Yanily.

“Uh…” he started.

“What kind of sound?” Seena asked, cutting off the comments before they could start.

“Like something moved through the falling water. The constant splashing was broken up for a brief second,” Left said. “I suspect I only noticed it because of my higher attunement.”

“There’s something in the building with us already?” Nivian asked, moving to peek out the door into the hallway.

“I’m not sure,” Left said. “I thought the same thing, so I turned back to look around the room.”

“What happened after that?” Seeyela asked.

“I felt a brief touch on my shoulder,” he said, reaching up to pat his right shoulder, and drew his hand across his neck. “Then, I assume I died. That’s where my memory ends.”

“When I summoned you back, you were reaching for your throat,” Hiral said.

Left’s eyes moved back and forth like he was thinking. His hand rubbed his throat, and he nodded. “Yes, whatever killed me happened around my neck, I think.”

“You see anything, Nivian?” Seena asked.

“Nothing. Looks quiet,” Nivian said. “No flashing warnings from my PIM either.”

“We’ll use the PIMs to our advantage,” Seeyela said. “Even if Hiral didn’t see whatever is out there, his PIM warned him. If anybody gets one of those notifications, speak up right away. In the meantime, let’s secure this floor. Sorry, folks. Looks like nobody is getting any sleep tonight.”

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