They decided to stay overnight. The group had a sparse dinner and talked for a while, but Char’s heart wasn’t in it. She liked hearing them talk and share stories, but there were too many things weighing on her to truly enjoy it. As soon as her food was finished, she excused herself and went into the hallway.
Lulu followed her, and when she took a seat on the top stair of the staircase, Lulu stretched out behind her, leaning her warm bulk against Char’s back. She sent her person waves of support and comfort. There were threads of confusion and concern, and Char sent back reassurance. The dog had gotten smarter with her evolution, but she wasn’t quite ready for the complex problems of leadership, identity, and galactic tyranny.
Char didn’t feel ready for those problems, either. Sooner or later, she needed to dive into her inner sanctuary and face the changes there, but right now, she had a more practical problem that made a perfect excuse to put it off a little longer.
She had a new spell to learn.
She pulled a thread of Rune mana into her… what should she call them? They were like veins and arteries, but weren’t physical organs. They were pathways, channels that the mana naturally fell into when she pulled it through her body. Meridians, maybe? She tried to remember the books she’d read, both fantasy stories and Eastern mysticism.
Some of the fantasy stories she’d listened to had something similar: cores and mana channels. The audiobooks had filled the empty hours of driving, but she hadn’t exactly paid much attention to the nitty-gritty details of cultivation systems.
‘Channels’ was a good enough term to work with for now. She had to be careful about falling into the habit of comparing what was going on to fictional stories. Any similarities were probably just coincidences, and just because some things were similar, it didn’t mean all of it was. Still, there were enough similarities to make her wonder which had come first.
Shaking away the distraction, she pulled her mind back to the Rune mana. Its touch made her want to wander down mental paths, pulling together facts and clues and trying to unravel them, but she needed to focus. The pattern for Rune Scribe was complex, far more so than the other spells she’d learned so far. It was going to take more work to get it right.
It had variables. Her first spell, Mend Flesh, had been very straightforward. She created the pattern, filled it with mana, and it did what it was designed to do: going to the worst damage and fixing it until the mana ran out. Mend Other and Arc were a little more complex. They had to be given a target. Rune Scribe let her see something she’d missed with her other targeted spells: intent.
Mana reacted to Willpower. The pattern relieved her of the need to manually define every nuance of what she wanted to accomplish, but her Will, her intention, shaped the final outcome within the parameters of the pattern’s ‘programming’.
She’d used those other spells without really thinking about the mechanism of how they accepted a target, but now, with the knowledge she’d been given for using this new spell, she could see how important intent was. The specific rune she used would determine what sort of mana was used to create an effect, but it was her intent that would shape the outcome.
The pattern itself would need to be subtly altered depending on which rune she was inscribing, the object she was inscribing it on, and whether or not the effect would be contained in the item being inscribed or projected out from it.
Where the Flesh Domain spells were smooth and organic, and the Lightning Domain was all jagged motion, the Rune Domain pattern was neat and logical, like writing a research paper. And, as with writing a paper, she had to have all of her research done and her thoughts laid out in logical order.
She dug through her inventory looking for something she could afford to lose if something went wrong. One of her red shop rags would do the trick; she had plenty, and scrap cloth was easy enough to find. Next, she had to decide which rune she wanted to play with first. Fire would be too easy to lose control of, so she ruled it out right away. She went down the list until she got to Light. That would work. She’d try to make the rag glow.
OK. She had her target, her rune, and her effect picked out. Now she just had to put them together. She reached out a hand and scratched Lulu’s head, “I’m about to try something, Lu. Things might get weird in a minute. Wish me luck, sweet girl.”
Lulu chuffed, and Char felt encouragement and curiosity from her.
Holding the image of the rune, the rag, and her desired outcome in her mind, Char pulled Rune mana into her hands and started to shape the pattern. The first part of it went smoothly. Each bend and fold built on the one before, snapping together like the words of an axiom, but then she came to one of the variables, and the whole thing crumbled like a bad argument.
She went over the pattern again in her mind, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. When she thought she knew where she’d messed up, she tried again. Again, it crumbled. But, Char was nothing if not stubborn. She kept trying. She built the pattern again and again, altering her approach slightly with each attempt. Eventually, she made it past the first variable, finally hitting on the correct variation in the pattern to fit the Light rune. Then it crumbled when she got to the second variable.
Pushing until her mana ran out, she slumped against the wall with a blinding mana headache. It seemed like the bigger her mana pool got, the worse the headaches got when she bottomed it out. There was something important about that, but her brain was too sore to chase down the implications. It was something she’d have to keep an eye on, though. A blinding headache like this in the middle of a fight could get her killed. She slipped into a light meditation trance, not quite going all the way into her inner world, but calming herself and her mind enough to let her mana refill faster.
The headache receded as her mana refilled. When her pool was full, she tried again. And again. And again. Each time she got to the second variable, the one that would shape the rune to fit on the object she wanted to inscribe, and each time the pattern failed. When she got close to the bottom of her mana pool again, she stopped. She looked at the rag crumpled in her lap and wondered if she should try a different object. Maybe that was the problem. Rags weren’t supposed to glow. Maybe it was the material, or maybe some mental block that wouldn’t let her push past the idea of glowing fabric. Maybe if she used something like a light bulb?
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Worrying at the cloth between her fingers, she started folding it, and that’s when it hit her. She’d been picturing the rag as a flat surface, but it hadn’t been flat. It had been crumpled up, lying on her leg. With new hope for success, she spread the rag flat on the top step and tried again.
This time, it worked. When the real rag and her mental image of the rag matched, the right variation of the pattern slotted into place. The final variable was even easier. There were only a few options to choose from, and she chose the one that would let the light radiate in all directions.
As the last bend and flourish snapped into place, mana flooded from her center through the pattern and into the rag. Purple luminance etched itself onto the cloth in a complex symbol, sinking into the fabric and becoming part of it. The rune flashed, and then the rag started glowing.
It let off a pure white light that filled the hallway like a halogen lamp. She had to squint her eyes and look away. With a whoop, she jumped to her feet and pumped her fist in the air, waving the shining rag around in a victory dance. Lulu sprang to her feet along with Char and barked once, her paws tapping and tail wagging, sharing in the joy of the moment. Char couldn’t stop the grin that threatened to split her face.
The enchantment was temporary, and she’d need to experiment with it to see how long it would last, but it had worked. She had a new set of tools in her arsenal, now. She just needed to see what she could do with them.
Her whoop of joy and the light filling the previously dark space had gotten everyone’s attention, and they were all pouring out of the doorway into the hall, full of questions and wonder.
“What in the…?” Irina’s question trailed off as she took in the scene of Char dancing like a loon.
Declan was putting away his daggers as he realized there was no danger. “Is that your new spell?”
Jabat rattled off something in Malay, but his wide eyes and awed tone were enough to make a translation unnecessary. Lina was next to him, and she nodded in agreement with whatever he’d said.
Char stopped dancing, but the grin stayed in place. She held up the rag and showed it off. “Rune Scribe! It lets me make temporary enchantments.”
Lina had been inching closer, her body language making it clear she wanted a closer look, so Char balled up the rag and tossed it to her. She caught it and spread it out, trying to look at it, but the light it was shedding was too bright.
“What else can it do?” Irina asked.
“I don’t know yet. Lots of possibilities, though. There’s one rune that might make it easier to get up that cliff, if it works the way I think it will.” Her eyes darted from side to side as she considered all of the possibilities: clean drinking water, weapons on fire, light, self-cleaning, repairs, strengthening walls, and those were just skimming the surface. The nine runes she knew were just the most basic runes. There had to be more out there that she could learn. Rune Scribe only let her make temporary enchantments, but one of the upgrades would have to be permanent enchantments. The possibilities were endless. “Lina, I’m going to be enchanting more of those. You want to help me time how long they last? I need to get an idea of the limits and how much control I have over the outcome.”
Lina smiled and nodded, “Yes! What Domain is this? This is real magic, like in the books. I want to learn this!”
“Rune. We’ll see what we can do about getting you the right Affinity Core.” Char was relieved to hear that. It would be better for the girl to be safely inside the city enchanting things than out fighting monsters. Char hoped she could steer her in that direction, at least until she was a little older.
The group filed back into Irina’s apartment, passing around the shining rag so everyone could get a look at it. Jalong seemed to be as entranced by it as Lina had been.
When the glow faded around ten minutes later, Char examined the rag. The fabric in the center of the rag, where the rune had been inscribed, was thin and brittle, as if the cloth was a decade older and ready to fall apart. Her finger went through it like wet tissue paper.
Lina and Jalong spent the next few hours finding things for Char to inscribe and counting time to see how long the glow would last. She tried some of the other runes as well. Connect did what she’d hoped, and let her stick any two objects together. It was tricky because she had to inscribe two objects, then press the runes together, essentially casting one spell, but holding it just short of activating while she cast it again, then pressing the surfaces inscribed by the spell together and releasing both at the same time.
The connection lasted about as long as the light spell if it wasn’t under strain, but pulling against the join, or supporting weight with it, made the mana run out faster. There was also the degradation problem. Whatever object Char enchanted would be damaged by the rune when it faded.
The damage wasn’t always as devastating to the material as it had been to the rag. When she used a Connect rune to stick a brick to the wall, the shape of the rune was shallowly etched into the surface of the brick, and the paint on the wall bubbled in the same shape. It was as though the magic made the material containing it unstable, or maybe it just aged it. It was something she was going to have to keep in mind.
She wished there was more time. She wanted to try using pairs of runes, but she wasn’t sure the spell would allow for it. One last cast with a Cleanse rune cleaned away the bloody footprints from the hall floor. The magic spread out about four feet from the rune in all directions, whisking away dirt and grime, and leaving the hall floor looking freshly scrubbed. It left only a faint scar in the linoleum where the rune had been etched.
The day had been a long one, and her brain felt like it was tied in knots. It didn’t matter how excited she was; she needed sleep. Lina and Jalong were already sleeping, leaning against one another on Irina’s couch. Sergei was keeping watch out the window, and he held a finger to his lips as Char came into the room from the hall. He pointed to the sleeping teens, and Char nodded. Her bedroll was already spread out against the wall, and she tiptoed over to it.
Lulu was also on the couch, stretched out with her head in Lina’s lap. Char was glad to see that the girl had lost her reservations around the big dog. Lulu was a very social creature, and it had confused and hurt her a little when everyone had kept their distance from her the last time they were here. It just took a little time to get used to her as she was now.
They’d be heading back to the mercado in the morning, and Char planned to check the buildings along the base of the cliff as they went. They’d be sending more people back here, hopefully. Once they had everyone settled at the Sanctuary, she planned to do some serious scouting around the area, so there would be even more people joining the community. She was going to have to get used to being around people again. That wasn’t going to be easy.
She had a problem with crowds since her mother’s funeral, when she’d been nearly mobbed by well-meaning people wanting to offer condolences. She’d been ten, grieving, confused, and scared, and the crowd had turned a bad day into a nightmare. Her discomfort had only gotten worse as she’d gotten older. She wasn’t sure if it was the funeral that had caused her problem, or if it had only revealed a problem that had already been brewing.
Either way, she was going to have to get a grip on it. If she was going to try to bring people together, she couldn’t exactly go running away from them. But that was a problem for another day, and, as long as it wasn’t a crowd all pressed together, she could deal. She kind of wished she had Declan’s bloodline gift. Being able to sidestep out of an uncomfortable situation would be amazing.
Under a thin carpet, the floor was concrete, so her spot wasn’t exactly comfortable, but, for once, she fell asleep quickly, lost in pleasantly imagining all the possibilities of her new spell.
