Rune Seeker

As soon as Hiral touched the aura of red light, two things happened. First, the room around him vanished, replaced by a seething, red ocean of blood and the small island he stood on. Second, and most pressing, he was slammed by pain, like thousands of not-so-tiny needles entering every inch of his body. His eyes, chest, arms, legs, and soles of his feet, just to name a few, felt like they were being scoured clean of flesh and muscle.

His first brush with the Blood Aurahad been just that—a brush. Now he’d dived in headfirst, and Fallen’s balls, it hurt. He tried to curl up on himself to protect, well, anything, but every movement hurt more than the last. And this was with the resistance bonus from the Coat of Ur’Thul. What would it have been like for somebody else?

That question fled his mind as pain became everything. His entire world. Red, bloody torture.

And then it faded as warm, refreshing energy flowed into him, pushing back the worst of it, and Hiral’s blind eyes saw something. A blinking notification.

You have been afflicted with the Blood Corruption debuff.

Blood Corruption: Reduces resistance to blood-type damage and effects, and increases damage taken from blood-type damage and effects.

Note: Blood Corruption stacks with itself up to five times.

Note (2): Stacking effects are additive.

And, right under that notification…

Blood Volatility: Pain and injuries mount as blood vessels explode.

Suffer damage every second blood is infected.

Note: Blood Volatility lasts 5 seconds, but duration refreshes every second while within a Blood Aura.

No wonder it hurt so damn much this time. The two debuffs were feeding off each other while he was in the Blood Aura. Without Wule’s heal and debuff removal, Hiral would’ve been completely at the mercy of the stacking abilities.

I can’t count on Wule to take care of me. He needs to focus on Nivian.

Already, he could feel Wule’s healing energy waning under the constant onslaught of the Blood Aura, and Hiral took the moment of lucid thought to investigate his surrounding. Directly in front of him, motionless, stood the Spectre of Ur’Thul, though it wasn’t on the small island with Hiral. Instead, it hovered with arms wide above a roaring whirlpool in the sea of blood. Frothy black foam formed along the swirling edges of the vortex, while white lightning shot from the turbulent sea to the clouds above, where it arced across the sky over and over again.

Wind buffeted Hiral from all sides, forcing him to crouch lower and spread his feet for balance as he kept his attention on the lich. Its name sat above its head, though it was noticeably absent a health bar.

Actually, that wasn’t the only thing absent—Hiral’s weapons were gone. In fact, so was all of his gear other than his Second-Skin of Ur’Thul. Something about the second-skin must make it different, but this is just like the Cycling trial.

And it was; he could feel it. This realm was real, and yet not. Some kind of projection from the spectre, or maybe a corruption of the root circle. Either way, like he’d done in the Cycling trial, Hiral would need to take control of the energy all around him. The blood.

First, though, he needed to deal with the debuff. Focusing on the two blood afflictions, Hiral pushed energy into his Rune of Rejection, just like he’d done the last time he’d been exposed to Blood Volatility, and aimed at the spectre. Nothing happened. The spectre was only partially there, nothing more than a projection of its body in this realm of control.

He needed to do something else, but the pain was already starting to ramp up again, a feeling like thorned vines slowly running up his legs and tearing gashes in his skin as they went.

I can’t reject the debuff onto the spectre. What about pure Rejection, like I did with the rain?

Hiral thought about his whole body pushing the afflictions out. The pain crawling up his legs lessened for a heartbeat, then squeezed all the harder, like it needed a place to reside.

Nope, not that. The thorns were all over him now, squeezing and pushing deeper. Scarring his bones and tearing muscle. Vines wormed their way into his lungs and stretched for his heart. His teeth clenched so hard it felt like his jaw would snap at any second.

Maybe… maybe he couldn’t remove the whole debuff, but what if he…?

Pulling the energy away from his Rune of Rejection, Hiral instead focused on his left hand and threaded energy into his Rune of Attraction. All at once, the pain shot across his body, running up his chest to his shoulder, then down his arm to his hand.

“Aaaaaargh!” he finally screamed, everything from his wrist down burning like he’d dunked it in molten metal. Was this better? No, not really, but at least he could breathe. Think. How long could he keep it up, though?

His mind went back to Nivian, literally bathing in death energy, and Hiral clenched his agonized fist.

He’d keep it up as long as he needed to, and he raised his face to look at the motionless spectre across from him. “I’ll be taking it from here,” he hissed. Then he began Cycling.

Instead of the smoke from the trial, the wild sea of blood was the solar energy in this realm. At the briefest graze of his mental touch, corruption and death stung Hiral’s mind, but he pushed past it, ignoring the source of where it’d all come from. Like the smoke, he would need to take control and push it… Push it… Push it where, exactly?

That was what the spectre was doing—pushing the energy to Ur’Thul, down through the whirlpool. If anything, Hiral needed to do the opposite, to slow it down. Maybe if he reversed the spin of the vortex?

No, we can’t win that way. A battle of attrition favors the lich. So, what can we…?

Then he felt it, just fleetingly, in the sea of death all around him and the lightning arcing to the sky. A touch of life. Of pure, solar energy, so buried within the death energy it was hardly noticeable.

What did Li’l Ur say? Pure solar energy is anathema to Ur’Thul.

Could he separate the life and death energy? Keep one here in the node, and send the other—the pure solar energy—straight up Ur’Thul’s undead ass?

As Seena would say, only one way to find out.

Throwing his will against that of the spectre’s, Hiral concentrated on the energy spread throughout the sea, on turning it to his desire and forcing it somewhere other than the whirlpool. It was there, he could feel it, and he pulled on it, away from the whirlpool.

The blood resisted. No, that wasn’t quite true; the spectre was fighting for control of the energy—and it was stronger. No sooner had Hiral shifted just a few litres of the blood than the spectre ripped it away from him like an adult taking a toy from a newborn.

A small spike of pain shot across Hiral’s head, from temple to temple, at the control being torn away from him, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his hand. The spreading pain in his hand, now halfway up to his elbow. Without time to waste, he moved his concentration to the opposite side of the whirlpool and pulled again.

One second passed, two, three, as he pulled energy away from the whirlpool, until the spectre’s stronger grasp descended on the area. Another spike of pain, and the lich’s reflection ripped control away, causing Hiral to stagger to the side. Was it slower to get to me that time?

As soon as his brain didn’t feel quite so scrambled, Hiral again moved to another part of the sea near the whirlpool, snagging the energy and pulling it away.

One. Two. Three. Four… A hint of the spectre’s will, and Hiral severed his connection. The energy surged back towards the whirlpool, but Hiral was already on the other side, tugging on a different section.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five… and the spectre followed, though Hiral was already gone by then.

It’s stronger, but I’m faster. Wis versus Atn?

Still, even with the speed advantage, what was Hiral going to do with the energy in the few seconds he had control of it? He couldn’t move enough of it away from the whirlpool to make a difference…

Ka-rack! A flash of lightning sizzled the air as it shot from sea to sky not thirty feet away from him, and his eyes rose to the lightshow above. Pure solar energy bounced around the clouds up there, almost nonstop, where it had been purified. He was looking at this the wrong way.

He couldn’t do it all at once; the lich was too strong. One bolt of lightning at a time, though? He could do that. And, with that plan, Hiral had a trick up his sleeve—or, more accurately, on his chest.

Left hand a fiery pit of agony up to his elbow now, Hiral lifted his other hand above his head and pushed solar energy into his Rune of Separation while concentrating on the sea of blood. One small section at a time, just a few seconds, then he moved on as soon as he felt the slightest touch by the lich. Far out to the right, close to the left, behind him, on the edge of the whirlpool, Hiral moved the focus of his Cycling around almost at random, staying just ahead of lich.

Waves and whirlpools thrashed around him at his interference, slamming onto the small piece of land he stood on and washing past his feet. Above, the clouds twisted red, a funnel forming directly above his outstretched hand, and a sound like thunder cracked in the distance. Thooom.

Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thooooom. The sound repeated, but it wasn’t thunder. It was life ripping away from the corruption of death. Of Hiral’s Rune of Separation cutting them cleanly apart. Soon, streaks of white light began to mar the crimson funnel above Hiral’s hand.

More and more, he pulled arcs of lightning from the sea of red, but instead of zipping to the clouds above, they slammed into the tornado in his hand. Around and around the tornado spun, light spiraling within, black mist rising on the surface of the ocean before it dissolved into nothingness. His plan was working! Without the solar energy he was pulling into the tornado, the death energy was simply falling apart.

The lich seemed to notice the same thing. A sense of foreboding reached for the tornado in Hiral’s hand, and the Blood Corruption and Volatility debuffs flared stronger on his arm. Now up to his bicep, it was getting harder and harder to ignore the pain, but he couldn’t afford to pull his attention away from his Cycling.

Just a little longer…

Something physical grasped his left wrist, though there was nothing there, and the pain in his arm doubled.

What!?

Hiral’s eyes went from his wrist to where the spectre floated above the whirlpool and… yes… it had its hand extended like it was holding onto something. Was its spectral body in the physical world touching Hiral? How could it…?

The pain spread to his shoulder, his whole arm feeling like the flesh and muscle should be flaking off to leave only the bone beneath. His hold on the tornado of solar energy slipped, and the stream of lightning bolts slowed. Another pulse of agony, and it spread deeper into his chest, as if reaching for his heart and lungs.

It grew harder and harder to focus with every passing breath. Hiral tried to pull more energy from the sea, but he was too distracted now, too slow, and the lich caught up before he could separate the energy. The spike of pain through the side of his head only made things tougher, and suddenly it was everything he could do to hold on to the tornado.

I’m not just holding on; I’m also holding back. This isn’t the time.

With a grunt, Hiral activated Eloquent and Enraged, his new stats bringing him a moment of clarity.

That feeling on his wrist indicated the lich was touching him. And if it was doing that, it had to have a physical form… which meant…

Hiral focused on the spectre—on the feeling of its cold hand around his wrist—and then activated his Rune of Rejection.

Blood Corruption and Blood Volatility flooded from his body. Hiral almost passed out in relief from the pain, and the grip on his arm immediately vanished.

Now!

With the spectre distracted, Hiral hauled on the power of the ocean, tearing a mad storm of solar lightning towards the tornado in a show that lit up the entire realm. The whole plane shook, geysers of black mist jetting from the blood where the separation took place, like dozens of undersea volcanos erupting at the same time.

More!

Hiral pulled and pulled until the tornado above him shone like the sun itself sat within it, not a trace of red or black scarring its surface.

Ahead of him, the Spectre of Ur’Thul finally seemed to get its wits together. It looked at Hiral, once again ready to resume the battle of wills.

“Too late,” Hiral told it, and then he activated Terminal along with his Rune of Energy.

The tornado above him condensed in a heartbeat to a true sun, sucking down the clouds in the process, and Hiral threw his hand forward. In the blink of an eye, the sun sat directly above the Spectre of Ur’Thul, warmth and light flooding across the realm and pushing back the darkness. Then, as the lich looked up at its fate, Hiral jerked his arm down.

Like the Annihilation of Amin Thett on a much larger scale, the hundred-foot-wide beam fired straight down. The lich vanished in an instant, completely consumed by the column of energy as it went through the whirlpool and tore the entire realm apart with a sound like reality shredding.

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