Declan’s only instinct was to duck, and for once, it was right, as stone errupted from the ground. Earthen Rampart didn’t just keep his head attached, it blocked the blow that would have shattered his ribs. “I think I pissed it off.”

  “You have that effect. What’s the shield?” Tegan hit it with Destroy followed by flames again, then orbited two new runes.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help. It was that he only got a glimpse of the shapes and they were moving, and it was at a distance and also a little thing called fear of imminent death. “I’m working on it.”

  “Work faster.” She pushed it to the side and activated Ice Sheet, which caused it to collapse, scrambling to its feet and failing, buying time for another Destroy. “I can’t keep this up.”

  He’d seen something that time. They weren’t just lines, but had meaning. “I don’t do this from a distance. Or in battle. Or just from the runes. I don’t know how.”

  “Learn!” Tegan went on the offensive, a new rune, Earthen Strike, which drove stalagmites up from the ground. And those actually hurt it, not just pain but deep wounds.

  “That! Earthen Strike, it’s vulnerable to that.” Declan had to stop to slice a mankey that had been hiding in a building. His boot was a better weapon, breaking its leg and leaving it to scream on the ground. “Keep using Earthen Strike. This would be easier if I was holding the rune-stone. This would be possible!”

  Tegan didn’t answer. She’d used Wind Lift to sail over the manape as it healed itself and threw a spear of frost from her palm. It shattered on the manape, who didn’t even glance her way.

  “Did I say Glacial Touch?” Declan shouted. “What about Earthen Strike did you misread as Glacial Touch? Fire and earth. That’s what it’s vulnerable to. It’s a fucking wind and water based monster.”

  “The shield!” Tegan hit it with Destroy again. “Stop telling me the weaknesses and start figuring out the shield!”

  Declan threw himself face first as the manape hurled a mankey like a weapon. “I would really like to help. These are not ideal conditions.”

  “There won’t be ideal conditions if you don’t tell me how to break the shield.” Tegan had circled as it healed, using Earthen Strike to knock it back. “You want a close up look, right?”

  “No!” Declan said as he grasped her plan.

  It was already charging. She wrapped her arm around him and triggered Earthen Rampart followed by Destruction.

  The manape staggered back, snarling, then staring. The shield rune blossomed into existence, but the shield had stunned it for a moment, or it was lost, sniffing the air.

  Declan, too, was lost. It really had helped, letting the swarm-heart monster charge them. This close, the lines weren’t blurry, the shapes resolved into roots and modifiers. “It’s got a third rune. It has to have a third rune. The only way that could possibly work is if it’s modifying something else.”

  The rock around them crumbled as Tegan ran, desperate for distance.

  The manape’s healing rune flared into existence and circled, which was unfair. It was doing one thing, while Declan was doing three. First, he was leading them further from the foundry. Second, he was attempting to dodge scale monkeys. Last, he was desperately trying to put the puzzle in his head together. “It’s not the shield that’s causing Destroy to fail. I mean, it is, but that’s not the root of why.”

  “How about half the theory, twice the solution?” Tegan unleashed Earthen Strike.

  It charged straight through the pillar, screaming and eyes wide.

  Another Destroy fizzled.

  Another shield bloomed.

  Declan would never have time to try every combination until he ruled out every wrong answer. But the modifiers were the key here. “Air is the base but the modifiers are like your Wind Lift mixed with Mist Step. And that’s why Destroy doesn’t work. That’s why!”

  His moment of clarity was shattered as the manape leaped. Tegan was already moving, sprinting toward it. But it hadn’t leaped at her. It was after Declan, descending like a bomb, arms outstretched and mouth open.

  Deflect blazed into existence, throwing him one way and it the other. Declan hit his head and came up dizzy. Tegan caught him as he stumbled. “What did you do to piss it off?”

  “I don’t know. We could write it a letter and ask or you could kill it,” He snarled. He’d dropped his sword and didn’t know where, and also, it was really hard to think at the moment. Blood dripped from his forehead.

  Tegan’s earthen rampart blasted up around him, blocking the manape. Then Wind Lift threw him into the air, sending him tumbling head over heels to land on his ass beside her. Another Destroy. Another shield.

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  Absolute confidence. “I know the third rune. I haven’t seen it but I know it’s there. It’s Protect. That’s what it’s doing. Destroy is a thousand tiny hooks that spin and rip. It’s splitting the Protect into a thousand tiny, worthless shields. Destroy can’t get started.”

  Tegan swore. She looked at him, fear in her eyes. “You’re sure?”

  She lashed a Vine Whip to his ankle and slung him out of the way as the manape lunged. It was crazed, focused and yet simultaneously unthinking. “I think it knows you’re a threat now.”

  “One of us has to be.”

  “Fuck you!” Tegan screamed, throwing him much harder than she needed to.

  “You wish, Tegan. You wish.” Declan had no weapons but he did recall killing a blood mist spider. “Earthen Strike this son of a bitch to death. It’s piercing, fast damage.”

  He didn’t wait for her to shield him, jumping off cart wreckage and springing past it. “What are you waiting for?” He recognized the Wind Lift this time and almost rode it as she lifted him to the second story of the tenaments. It probably wasn’t required to throw him into the door so hard it cracked.

  “Overcast. I can overcast. It’ll destroy the rune and if it doesn’t kill it, I have nothing. Ten orbits.” Tegan had dismissed every other rune, and Earthen Strike began to glow brighter than any rune possibly could.

  The manape was completely focused on him, clawing its way to the second story. Declan had only one choice, and that was to run. He leaped from the second floor of one block and caught himself on the bottom of the railing on the next, but now his feet were on solid ground and he could run.

  Of course, there were no Earthen Ramparts to slow it down.

  Fear was a wonderful source of inspiration.

  Declan had never run that fast in his life. Every corner, every blind, the overhang where the fruit vendor’s shop lay, all of these were his ramparts. The manape screamed in frustration. He risked a glance back. It was both the right thing to do and a mistake. It gave him warning but also told him he was about to be hit by a slag barrel thrown by an enraged monster.

  His answer was to jump forward and up.

  The impact broke bones and threw him through the shop separating him from the street where Tegan had begun her overcast. Earthen Strike cast a shadow that circled her with every orbit. Her eyes were shut tight, her fists clenched in concentration. “Four. More.”

  The manape came for him, sprinting through wreckage. He was out of weapons and had only one functioning arm. But he could throw a rock, and did, hurling the mana stone at it. To his shock, it stopped, catching the stone. It shoved the rock into its mouth and chewed, crunching stone before swallowing. Then it began to stumble forward.

  The damned thing was smiling.

  Declan unslung his pack and swung it like a weapon, aiming for the chin, and the manape twisted, catching the strap. Its jaws ripped the leather apart and it gripped the bearing.

  It wasn’t frustration or fear but raw rage that welled up in Declan as it opened its mouth to bite. That was eight years of his life. A gift from his pop. The first step on the road to being an arcanist, and a gods-damned monster that could chew stone was treating it like an apple.

  His will locked like iron, and Declan yanked, jerking it clear of the bite, though not from the manape’s grip. It snapped jaws shut and then bit again, unclear why its mouth was empty. When it bit again, he foused that will, ripping the bearing. It didn’t exactly sail, but it circled at Declan’s knee height. The manape pursued, and he willed it faster.

  It was a mistake, one he recognized as the orbit completed. An ocean of mana poured in. He was drowning in power, unable to breathe, but now was not the time to stop. He willed it around again, this time, it rose to eye height.

  The manape stopped chasing. It spun to catch the mana bearing.

  It wasn’t a rune. It had no special powers, it didn’t let him soul-cast, but what it was was twenty pounds of metal, and Declan had pushed it to orbit at a speed that left him unable to control it. It slammed into the manape’ jaw and shattered bone, then slipped free to complete another circuit.

  Declan was dying.

  He was dying of mana exposure. Channeling it down did nothing, it was like draining the ocean with a teacup. Dying gave him clarity. It let him see the similarity in Earthen Strike and Strike, and that reminded him of the way Deflect was Strike with a rebound.

  The manape had ceased chasing the bearing and instead raised both hands for an overhand smash.

  In his mind, he traced the path. Felt the jagged edges, the rebound that strangled mana from the rune. The way mana struggled to fill in the rest of the rune, the moment it reached the end.

  Deflect flashed into existence, knocking the blow to the side. Equally important, it had drained some of the mana choking Declan. He let the bearing drop before it killed him for real.

  One moment he was looking at his death.

  The next, an over-cast Earthen Strike errupted, a forest of stone spears that ripped through the manape, mangling its body as surely as any Destroy could have. It slumped over, head back.

  Tegan rose, activating Healing first on herself. Then for a brief moment on him. “You’ve got two breaks in the arm. I don’t have enough mana to fix that. Just stay still, now that the swarm-heart is dead, the underlings will fall by the dozen.”

  Declan shivered as mana began to drop, but forced himself to pick up the bearing in his one good hand and sling it in his ruined pack. Protect was gone. Deflect, that was different. He felt it, the pattern, distant and yet a clear memory he couldn’t quite reach.

  Tegan cut deep into the manape’s corpse and drew three stones. Then she slipped them into the pack. “Those are yours, no one will say different. And if they have a problem with you registering them, tell them to take it up with me. Insight is terrifying, you hear me?”

  “It doesn’t work right. I don’t have the real skill.” Anything to keep his mind off the pain.

  “You have something. I never told you I was using Glacial Touch. Had you held that rune at the armory?”

  He was too tired, too hurt, too confused to be sure. “I could have read about it in the rune atlas. It just felt right.” He sorted the three stones. One was a basic Protect, no different than the one he lost. One was a tier one Healing with very minor modifiers that worked to drag out the effect. “I was wrong, it is Healing Bloom.”

  The last was the shield dissolver. Divider? “

  Shield Multiplier: Multiply the number of shields protecting you by reducing their power. The mana cost is directly reflected in the nunber of sub-shields produced. Mana Cost: Minor, Variable. Tier Three Rune. He repeated that to Tegan. “It’s not that complex,” he said, commiting the runes and modifers to memory.

  Tegan carefully put one hand on his good shoulder, making him look her in the eye. “This is really important. It’s not me saying this, it’s me protecting you from what will happen. If you want to live don’t add that to the rune atlas. Stay here. The monkeys come to kill you, I’ll kill them.”