Rune Seeker

Hiral sat back on the picnic blanket, his hands propping him up while he looked at the sky. A covered lunch basket sat beside him, while Drake sniffed around at the ground and occasionally dug something up with his massive claws. A mile or so to the other side, he’d left Nat and Milly with Right and Left. He’d promised them both a ride on the Dracolich, and they’d come to collect. His doubles would regale them with stories of his time on the surface so he could see to something overdue.

It'd been… how long since they completed their quest to save Fallen Reach? It’d all blurred together in his mad rush to repair the other Fallen’s towers before they awoke.

Let’s see… Twenty hours for the first. Ten for the second. Five each for the third through sixth… a few hours of sleep here and there…

Hiral shook his head—it didn’t really matter. He’d been working on fixing the tower until he almost made a mistake. The first one had taken the longest by far, but he’d learned so much the subsequent ones were going much faster. Still, in all that time, he hadn’t seen Seena.

It was time to correct that.

So, he’d decided to take a mental-health break and come check out the view over the edge of the island. A quick message to Seena let her know he’d be here, along with the subtle mention of the wine and cheese he’d brought with him. If his presence wasn’t enough to get her here, maybe the bribe would…

As if his thoughts had summoned the woman, she floated above the edge of the island in front of him, feet on Vili’s back as the phoenix gently flapped its wings. Her Mantle of the Phoenix fluttered behind her in the breeze, and she crossed her arms as she looked at him.

“Took you long enough,” she said, foot tapping impatiently, but then her lips quirked in a smile.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about…”

Hiral was interrupted by the ground shaking. Hiral and Seena both looked to find Drake happily loping over like an excited puppy at the sight of Vili. Getting to the edge just in front of the other Reflection, Drake turned his head to look at Hiral, then to Vili, then back to Hiral. And somehow, despite having balls of blue flame for eyes, the Dracolich gave him possibly the most pleading and pathetic look he’d ever seen.

“Vili was just as excited when I told her we were coming up—is it okay if they go play?” Seena asked, hopping off the phoenix’s back and landing beside Hiral.

“Of course. Just don’t go far. And stay where we can see you!” Drake leapt off the island to join Vili in flight, and within seconds, they were hundreds of feet away and chasing each other playfully in the open sky. “Sometimes, when I look at Drake, I really wonder about Li’l Ur’s ancient, unstoppable army.”

“The key to maintaining a powerful army is strict leadership and a series of achievable goals,” Li’l Ur said from Seena’s shoulder. “As well as the complete removal of the free will of the undead.”

“Drake seems to have plenty of the latter there.”

“The most powerful undead classes, such as the Dracolich and Death Knight—as well as the lich, of course—are the first to regain a sense of self,” the little lich said, his own glowing eyes watching the flying mounts. “It’s part of what makes us so strong, and gives us the ability to grow significantly stronger.”

The mention of the Death Knight class, however, had Seena and Hiral sharing a look. Nivian. They had no way of knowing how he and his brother were doing, but even with the islands saved, it wasn’t as easy as taking off to go look for them again.

“Soon,” Seena said, as if reading his thoughts. “We’ll go find them again soon.”

“And they’ll be fine,” Hiral agreed. “Probably stronger than we are.”

“Hopefully Nivian didn’t forget how to cook. I miss his stew.”

“Just don’t call it soup.”

“He does make soup sometimes, too. It’s goooood. But, all this talk of food is making me hungry. You said something about…?” Seena trailed off, her eyes pointedly going to the basket beside Hiral.

Hiral couldn’t help but chuckle. “You bet I did,” he said, then went about pouring them each a drink and setting out a selection of the cheeses he’d brought. After a few minutes spent tasting the different options, talk inevitably turned from the food back to other topics.

“The towers are coming along, then?” Seena asked him. “No more Fallen waking up?”

“I’m just over halfway done with them,” Hiral said. “Needed a break. Needed to see you.”

Seena’s cheeks reddened a bit at his directness, and she hid her face by taking a deep drink of her wine. That might be part of the red face, actually…

“I’ll finish soon,” he moved on, though his eyes didn’t leave the woman in front of him. “No more Fallen.”

“Good. One was more than enough. Do you… Do you think he’s dead?”

“It was a long fall,” Hiral said.

“You saw the wording in the notification. He could still be alive.”

“He could… but we can’t really check again until next rotation.”

Seena blew the air out from her mouth, but she nodded. “There was too much going on up here to go down and look, I know, but it’s going to bug me until we’re sure. How about the island? Without the tower, are you seeing any, I don’t know, power shortages?”

“Gauto and some of the other Academics are looking into it. So far, their calculations don’t show much of a change. Gauto had actually found evidence Fallen Reach had been slowing slightly over the last few rotations, and his current theory is that it was caused by Vorinal starting to wake up. It’ll take them at least a full rotation of measurements to be sure.”

“No immediate danger, then?”

“Doesn’t seem it,” Hiral said slowly.

“You have another theory,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“More like a worry. The islands seem fine, but we have to remember what the whole point of Fallen Reach is. Or, maybe the secondary point? Whatever. It provided power to the PIMP. With one less tower, we’re seeing one less pulse per pass. That’s an almost ten percent power loss.”

“How bad is that?”

“No idea. Maybe the PIMP only needs one pulse to work at full capacity, or maybe it needs all eleven? Maybe it has a store of energy from the long years it didn’t use it, or maybe those wild dungeons we found took a tremendous amount of power. I just don’t know…”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“But you’re worried it may cause trouble down the line.”

“Maybe. We’ll have to see about clearing a zone’s worth of dungeons when things calm down, maybe get to an Asylum and see if Dr. Benza can tell us something. Speaking of dungeons, how are things going?”

Seena took another sip of her wine before she answered. With Hiral working on repairing the towers, she’d taken charge of getting the Growers and Makers talking to each other. If the two peoples cooperated, more and more groups could run dungeons. There just wasn’t a downside to everybody getting along.

“It’s not going… badly,” she finally said slowly. “Grandmother and Ilrolik are getting along far too well, if you ask me, but some of other elders are holding grudges. Some of your council too. Your father is pushing hard for—What did he call them?—exploratory parties. Small groups of three and three to test out what we’re saying about the dungeons. Start small and scale up—his words.”

“Like what we said or did isn’t proof enough?” Hiral asked with a sigh.

It wasn’t his father’s fault. If anything, his dad was playing politics. The man knew he wouldn’t be able to change every opinion all at once, so he’d ease them into it. Probably the smartest plan, but it would take time.

“There’s also the issue of the Spear of Clouds again,” Seena said after a moment. “Now that everybody knows where it is, there are both Growers and Makers who think we should be able to find a way to wield it directly.”

“Grandmother and Ilrolik?” Hiral asked.

“Adamant in keeping it where it is. The storm did a lot of damage to our islands, and I hear your city got hit pretty hard too? That’s keeping most people at arm’s length for now, but Grandmother has actually put guards around the Grandfather, just in case.”

Hiral popped another piece of cheese in his mouth while giving himself a minute to process what she said. “I hope the guards are decently strong,” he finally said. While he hoped it would never come to testing that strength, it was better to be safe than sorry.

“B-Rank,” Seena said. “People Grandmother trusts.”

“Good,” Hiral said. “As for Fallen Reach, the city, yeah, there was quite a bit of damage. A lot of it came from those spheres Vorinal woke up. Thousands of them flooded the streets and attacked anybody they found.”

“Your family?” Seena asked, obvious worry in her voice.

“All fine. They had a C-Rank Shaper with them, as well as the weapons I took from that basement we came through. A few minor injuries, but nothing too serious. And, despite all the damage the Fallen did, him waking up all the sleeping systems of the island was a huge boon.”

“Oh? Find some fun new toys?” Seena asked.

“You could say that. Lots of systems we didn’t know about to maintain the buildings. More constructs like those drones to defend the island if we get attacked again. Gauto was saying he thinks one of his colleagues may’ve also found libraries underground. Libraries with historiesin them.”

“Wow.”

“Yup. And, as an extra bonus, the Artists and Academics discovered a new ability for their classes. Both pretty similar, but apparently Artists can ink the constructs, binding them to somebody from either of the two classes. They can act as a kind of medium. The constructs keep some of their offensive abilities, but also gain some class-specific stuff as well.”

Seena seemed to think about it for a few seconds, and then her eyes widened. “Enough to run dungeons?”

“Exactly,” Hiral said. “They aren’t as straight-up strong as Shapers, but I think they’ll be powerful healers and support classes.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It is. How are Yan and your sister doing? I feel bad he just… came back from the dead and I’ve hardly seen him.”

“He wasn’t dead,” Li’l Ur said.

“I know, but it just feels like that,” Hiral said.

“Seeyela has been practically attached to Favela since she got back,” Seena said, chuckling. “Did you know she lost an eye in the fight with Fitch?”

“What!?” Hiral’s eyes widened as he remembered the cut down the front of her helmet. But… he’d seen her…

“Left healed it with that tattoo of his, combined with the phoenix aura,” Seena said, and Hiral let out the worried breath. “Still, she said it was pretty scary. Makes her appreciate things a bit more, I think.”

“If we go back down for more dungeons, will she…?”

“She will. We talked about it. She’s savoring the time with her family, but she’ll be right there with us if we go back down to the surface. So will Yan, if you were wondering.”

“That experience junky?” Hiral joked. “Wasn’t even a question.”

“Hiral,” Seena said more quietly, leaning closer, “Yan won’t really talk much about it. He says the storm dragon is his sponsor, like I have the phoenix. And he’s pretty sure there’s another advanced class waiting for him when he reaches B-Rank…”

“Of course there is,” Hiral said with a roll of his eyes. “And he calls me overpowered.”

Seena just thumbed over her shoulder at the cleaved-off edge of the island while she raised an eyebrow. “Anyway, that aside, he’s not saying anything about… whatever happened to him. I almost think he’s surprised he’s back with us. I really think he thought he was going to die in that dungeon.”

“If I had to guess?” Hiral said, and Seena nodded. “The Spear of Clouds sucked him in when it reclaimed the storm dragon.”

“But that was in a dungeon. It wasn’t the same spear. How did Yan come out of the real one?”

Hiral nodded at the question. He’d spent plenty of time asking himself the same question, and it always came back to one possibility—the Rune of Connection. “Remember how Yan’s slash cut open the boundary of the sky in the dungeon? I don’t think it was just the sky. I think he actually punched right through the dungeon and out into reality, even if only a little. From there, the Runes of Connection on both spears… well, connected. Yan got transferred from the dungeon spear to the real one, and then when we needed him… there he was.”

“That’s possible?” Seena asked.

“Who knows? This is an S-Rank item we’re talking about.”

“The true S-Rank items bend—if not outright break—many of the universe’s rules,” Li’l Ur added. “That’s why they were built, after all.”

Hiral pointed at the lich and shrugged. “Either way, Yanily’s back, and that’s what’s important.”

“It is, and did you see his face when we reached B-Rank from the dungeon experience?” Seena giggled. “He was so jealous.”

“He’ll catch up, I’m sure. He got some impressive abilities from the achievement rewards, too.” Hiral flexed his hand with his new B-Rank strength. He’d joked about Yanily getting a second advanced class at B-Rank, but Hiral’s instincts told him he was just as close. One small inspiration or epiphany was all it would take.

And then what?

Hiral’s eyes drifted to the distant storm wall, once again a solid hundred miles from Fallen Reach. The powerful new abilities and equipment they’d gotten, along with the new Rank… What was it for? More dungeons, or…?

“I don’t know what we should do,” Seena said softly, and he looked over at her to find her likewise staring at the storm. “Should we try and fight the Enemy like Dr. Benza wanted us to? We’re safe here, for now.”

“For now,” Hiral agreed.

“Which could easily also be forever. We just don’t know. But, going and fighting means we’ll lose more people.”

“Probably,” Hiral said. “I don’t have the answer, either. I just… I don’t think we need to figure it out right now. We’ve got enough on our plates to get the islands back to normal, or at least close to it. What comes next may not even be up to us. The possibility is out there.” He pointed at the distant sky. “For today, though, we completed our quest. We need to savor that, and the small peace we’ve found.”

“An adventure for another day?” Seena asked.

“Exactly. For today, it’s just wine, cheese, and good company.”

“There’s also room for death,” Li’l Ur said. “I’m still waiting on my apprentice.”

“Can’t we have a day off from death?” Seena asked her little lich with a soft pat on his head.

Li’l Ur sighed, a small puff of blue flame even coming out from his mouth. “Fine. For my mistress, I will wait a little longer.”

“Thanks, Ur,” Hiral said as he felt Seena’s fingers twine around his, and they sat back to watch their two mounts frolic in the sky. It was kind of nice not to be fighting for their lives. But, despite even his words—and Seena’s—he’d be ready if they needed to take the fight to the Enemy.

Just because Fallen Reach was safe didn’t mean the world was.

Hiral chuckled. Save the world? He didn’t have a quest for that.

His laugh cut off as a blue notification window sprang up in front of his eyes.

Dynamic Quest!

…

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