I lost almost an entire day of my life to near dead sleep.

  When I finally woke up, it was dark again. I felt physically rested, but my mind was still foggy. It was like I was in a fugue state. I cringed and grasped my ruined shoulder as the ever present pain bled back into reality. It was a bone numbing ache and I could nothing but curl over and clench my teeth as I waited for the agony to subside.

  What happened? I couldn't remember what I'd done yesterday or why I felt so horrible until I rubbed tears from my eyes and saw the inky tips of my fingers. Then it rushed back to me. I had experienced my first foray into true knowledge, and it had put me on my backside for 24 hours.

  I wanted to dive straight back into the book. I wanted to tear it open, light the candle, turn the lights off, and search for more of its secrets, more of its power, more of its knowledge. Just the small taste I'd gotten already felt addictive. But my desires were tempered by my fear. The Hollow Tongue's warnings rang out: for everything that was given, something was taken. And I certainly felt like I'd been emptied out.

  No matter how exciting the knowledge was, I had to keep reminding myself it was dangerous. I didn't truly understand what I was messing with. I didn't know what the Hollow was. I didn't know what that eyeless creature was. I didn't know why it plagued my dreams, and I didn't know what the whispers were, where they came from, or what they were trying to tell me. Were they warning me, or were they cajoling me further down this path? Nothing is given without something being taken. For all my lack of subtlety and academic understanding, I knew that to be a truism more than anything else I'd ever heard in my life. Nothing is given without something being taken.

  I rubbed my face, trying to dispel the fog. Carefully, hugging my injured arm to my body, I sat up in bed. I didn’t even want to look at my shoulder. Once I was upright and steady, I realised how startlingly hungry I was. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. Was it maybe 48 hours ago? Was it that breakfast with Marilyn? It couldn't be. My stomach gurgled, and the pain lanced through my midsection hard enough to make me curl over. I groaned, knowing I had nothing in the flat. I picked up my WristPod and immediately began searching for a takeout. I stopped for a moment, checked my bank account, and then ordered double. I still had some of my pawned money left and more of the jewellery I could go and pawn if I ever managed to wake up when the sun was up again.

  I stayed in bed, hugging my injured arm and willing the pain to stop. Luckily, the food came quickly, as cheap, rubbish food usually does. I'd ordered the New London staple: chicken and chips. Fried chicken, greasy and tender, with mountains of chips slathered in three or four different kinds of sauces, hot wings, and enough fizzy drinks to wake up an elephant. I wolfed it all down happily in my bed, vaguely scrolling through the news as I did, half paying attention as I chomped my way through perhaps 10,000 calories' worth of crap.

  Once I was done, I felt more alive and slightly sick. I burped, then downed the last of my drink, then gingerly rolled out of bed. I tried to carefully stretch my body, but with the condition my shoulder was in I just couldn’t move it without pain. I washed my hands and then plucked up the courage to redress my shoulder. The wound was healing badly. It was still raw but there didn’t look like there was any sign of infection, which was a positive I guess. I thought about cleaning it again, but the thought of the fresh agony was too much, so I just wrapped it up again. I then fashioned a sling out of torn bed cloth to keep my arm stable and prevent the wound from opening again. I limped back to my room and looked at my journal. There was the sigil I'd seen.

  I looked out of the window and saw that it was dark, but not night just yet. I had probably a couple of hours before it was safe to go out. Curiosity finally got the better of me and I was desperate for a distraction from my the pain. I sat down with my journal and quickly scribbled down as many of Hollow Tongue's rules of Runecraft as I could remember. Of course, my rules were nowhere near as eloquent, but I think I got most of it down. I was hesitant to open the Codex to check, not knowing what it would take from me if I did, or even worse, if it would summon that eyeless thing again. I made a future note to myself to keep my journal with me whilst I ventured through the book.

  I remembered the Hollow Tongue’s guidance: I needed to be able to reproduce the Runes perfectly. Now that I thought about it, that was probably why a lot of my Runes failed or didn't activate when I wanted. They were being produced by hand and that meant there were probably natural variations and mistakes in every Rune I etched. That was probably why the Zap Knucks were the most effective, and reliable, gadget I had crafted: I wasn't doing it by hand. I was using science and technology to aid me. That’s probably the same reason why the labels worked so well.

  So if I was going to handcraft something, I had to practice first. And then there was the medium to consider. I felt rather foolish that I had never thought about it before. Of course the medium made a difference, that was just common sense. For example, the Zap Knucks barely made a spark when channeled through the medium of stone, but crackled with enough energy to render men unconscious if channeled through metal. Whatever I crafted now, I had to think about the most effective material for it.

  I looked at the Rune pattern in front of me and tried to picture what I had seen depicted in the Codex. It looked like some sort of cloaking enchantment that would help me blend in with the night. I sucked some leftover chicken from my back teeth and thought. Putting the Rune on something heavy and dense seemed to work at odds with what I wanted. So using stone or wood or metal was out of the question. Maybe paper then? But that wasn’t permanent. Paper could get wet or torn too easily. That only left flesh.

  I looked at my own skin and balked at the idea. What was I going to do, carve the Rune into my hand or get a tattoo? Neither of those options seemed particularly feasible. Plus, I remembered the Hollow Tongue's warnings about scribing onto flesh. I leaned back and stared around my room for inspiration.

  If all I could use was flesh, it didn't have to be my flesh. What else counted as flesh? I saw my jacket hanging up, and two things hit me at once: one, leather counted as flesh, and two, that was most likely the reason why my protective charms on the jacket weren't particularly effective. I was using far too soft of a medium for a spell that was supposed to be firm and strong, and I'd scribbled in the enchantments so roughly, I'm amazed they worked at all. I realized something else: whether it was coincidence, fate, or dumb luck, I had been making fairly good decisions with my Runecraft this whole time. Take my Grandad’s bat, for example. Enchanting it with Runes of protection and the explosion Rune made sense for the medium of wood. Wood could be both strong and flexible in a way that hard metals or rock couldn't. The same was true for the Zap Knucks as copper was conductive. It was hard, and could carry the voltage, but it dispersed well since metal is a conductor, unlike rock or wood.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  That felt good to know. I almost wanted to give myself a little pat on the back for somehow getting things right despite being a complete idiot. Looking at my Runecraft, it all suddenly looked so amateurish under the light of my new fragments of knowledge that I had gleaned from the Hollow Tongue. I suddenly felt like everything I had done up to this point was just blind luck, and it could be so much better.

  I took the leather jacket down from the hook, inspected it, and then hesitated. Something told me that this particular pattern of Runes I wanted to attempt was more complex than anything I'd done before. Whether it was the fact there were four Runes in this matrix or the precision of their drawing, intuition told me that this wasn't the same level of Craft I'd been dealing with up to this point. As such, I had to be more considerate about everything. From the drawing of the Rune to the medium, to the fuel. I didn't think air would be enough for this one. As for the medium: it needed to be something I could access, something compact and small.

  Fortunately, there was a second leather item I wore every single time I went out and didn't even think about: my belt. When you're a skinny guy, you always have to wear a belt. Otherwise, soon enough, you'll be wearing your trousers around your ankles. My Grandad was always very meticulous when it came to leather goods. He always said to pay more and buy once was better than buying cheap and paying many times. So, he bought me a good, sturdy, broad leather belt that I'd been wearing for years now, and it still held its colour and shape marvellously.

  I took the belt out of the cupboard, gave it a few practice snaps, and knew it was the right choice. I marked out a rectangle at the front of the belt, somewhere I could access easily. I then practiced drawing the Runes, copying them exactly as I had seen them. I did this perhaps a dozen times before I felt confident I could replicate them on the belt.

  I eased my arm out of the sling and gave my shoulder a few practice rotations, that was a bad idea. Pain flared across my torso. I cursed, gritted my teeth, and then forced myself to breathe through it. I would need both hands for this. I just had to keep my shoulder as still as possible. I took a deep breath and began.

  First, I took a silver marker and drew out the Rune matrix. Then, I took a scalpel and began focusing my mind. Knowing that what I was doing was exactly the right thing made it far easier to concentrate. I didn't feel like I was just probing into nothingness, and maybe doing the right thing, and maybe not. Now I had the power of certainty to guide my hand and mind.

  With confidence, I pictured exactly what I wanted the Runes to do. I imagined a smoky blackness enveloping me, obscuring my movements, making me almost imperceptible to the enemy. I focused hard on that thought. I pictured the cloaked figure in the forest, then I pictured that figure as me, creeping through the dark, dense foliage, completely camouflaged into the inky darkness of the night.

  I don't know when I started to carve, but by the time I focused again on what I was doing, I was already halfway through the pattern. It was difficult. I had perhaps two and a half inches of space to work with, which meant I had to be very precise with my cuts. The triangle was fairly simple to carve but the circles were much harder. If you've ever tried to carve a circle into leather with a scalpel, it's very hard to be precise. Following the template I had drawn for myself I focused, and took my time, knowing that this wasn't just a Rune I was going to use once like the Bang Rocks. This was going to be part of my gear and something that could potentially save my life one day.

  By the time I felt satisfied with my work, two hours had passed. I had been so deeply focused I had forgotten all about my wounds… and my body was going to make me pay for that. My muscles screamed in protest from being sat hunched over for so long. My shoulder was pulsating, hot and angry, as my gunshot wound flared in agony. I scrunched my eyes closed and clenched my jaw, praying for the pain to pass. Working so carefully and in such small detail had made my fingers and wrist ache, But as my mind refocused back into reality and I acknowledged all of these pains, I looked down at the belt. It couldn't have been more perfect. It looked exactly like the Rune I had seen. I knew with almost complete certainty that it would work, that it was right, that I had done it. I flicked sweat from my forehead and beamed proudly down at the belt. I grabbed the half empty bag of salt on my desk and poured it over the matrix, filling up the carvings and watching the Runes darken as they locked.

  I felt the ache of tiredness again on the fringes of my body, working its way to the back of my head and into my eyes. I wanted some more painkillers. No… I needed some more painkillers. My body cried out for the sweet numbing effect of the pills. I shook my head and cracked open another can of something cold, fizzy, and caffeinated. I glugged half of the can, burping sonorously afterwards. The pills were becoming too regular and I knew that was a slippery slope.

  I distracted myself with my new belt. I hauled myself up, carefully keeping my shoulder still, and looped the belt around. I checked the placement of the Runes to ensure that I hadn't accidentally obscured them with the loops of my trousers. When I was satisfied with the setting, I took a deep breath and forced my mind to clear, which took longer the more tired I became and the more my shoulder hurt. Thankfully, I had the image of the forest to help me. This time, I imagined I was the figure, and I pictured activating the Runes. Standing, topless in my bedroom, I dramatically pressed two fingers to the Rune… and nothing happened.

  I frowned and checked in the mirror just to make sure. I looked down at the Runes and saw they were just the same as they had been. I went through a quick checklist in my mind. I knew that I had drawn them precisely. I knew I picked the correct medium. So that left… fuel. What had the Hollow Tongue said? The more powerful the Craft, the more powerful the fuel. I ran through the options in my mind and one stood out. I hesitated for a moment and then pricked my finger with the scalpel blade. I squeezed until blood welled up in a fat drop. I took a breath, focused, and then wiped the blood across the Runes. I felt a surge of power. The Runes changed. They didn’t light or crackle with energy like the Shock Rune: they darkened. They went almost completely inky black. There was a puff of darkness all around me. I could feel the ethereal shroud obscure me. It felt as if I had become darkness.

  I looked in the mirror and stood completely still. Even under the naked light of my bulb, and even knowing that I was there, I was still somewhat blurry, somewhat obscured. I could only imagine what it would look like in the darkness of the night, all dressed in black, creeping up on unsuspecting foes. I revelled in the power, and the fact that I had done it correctly. It was a wonderful feeling. I grinned like a dumb kid. I wished I had someone to run to, to show like an excited schoolboy with his report card. I tested the boundaries by jumping about and moving, and realized that the more and the quicker I moved, the more the mist would become dispelled.

  I remembered the figure creeping achingly slow through the forest in the picture, and I got the feeling this was more of an illusion than an actual physical barrier between sight. If I moved slowly and avoided direct light, staying in shadows, I'd be almost completely imperceptible. If I moved too quickly or direct light was pointed at me, then I would be exposed. Suddenly, the Runes blinked out, and I looked down. The carved Runes had reverted back to their normal leather look. I looked in the mirror and saw just plain old me again. So there's a time limit. I looked at my watch and wished I'd actually put a timer on, but I guessed it was somewhere in the region of about maybe 2-3 minutes. I nodded and looked in the mirror again. It was time to go out hunting. I felt my knees go weak and exhaustion wash over me again. I stumbled and just about made it to my bed. I felt as weak as when I’d fallen unconscious last night. Damn, that cloaking enchantment had wiped me out.

  Okay… maybe I’ll rest for a little bit first. Then it was time to hunt.