Beauty. Eye. Beholder. All that shit.
Problem was, as it often happens when put on the spot, I had no idea what to talk about.
Tell me a joke and watch me forget that I know how to laugh.
I’m actually not great with people. Never have been. I can’t make small talk. I can’t tell stories unless I’m familiar with the person I’m telling the story to. Reliably, I’ve only ever been able to talk about two things: my work, and my misadventures with friends, from way back in high school. The first one is for people I worked with, and the second is for friends.
Anyone outside those two categories would get a mute Klaus. I’ve gotten excited one too many times talking about a book I’ve enjoyed, or a game I’ve sunk hours into, or about a new photography technique I’d read about, only to be met with crickets and polite disinterest. I don’t like being ignored and I definitely don’t like feeling like I’m just tolerated.
All that to say that I gaped, lost for words, trying to find a story worth telling.
“Tell me of your home, little human,” Melenith said, noticing my sweating hesitation. “What place spawns one like you?”
One like me… an average Joe in over his head on a fantasy land that constantly wants to eat him? I doubted she meant it quite like that.
But, I tried to at least speak of home. It was the first time I really thought of it since arriving and I found the words pouring out almost unbidden.
“Well, I come from a place called Earth, from a country called Romania. Lovely place. Too bad it’s populated.” I tried to chuckle at the old cruelty, then felt it wither on my lips. “No, scratch that. My home country really was lovely and the people generally nice. That was just a cruel joke we liked to tell. It’s not really true.”
At first it was hard to figure what to focus on. Words came haltingly. Hills and meadows. Mountains and rivers. Bad roads. A lot to say about bad roads.
Then it got easier.
Romania is indeed nice, and I was quite attached to my country. I’d resisted all opportunity to leave, stayed and built a life, lost it, still stayed. It was comfortable and I understood it and, for all its blemishes and its ugliness, the country itself was blameless.
I spoke of the village where I was born, tucked away in the high hills of Moldavia, far removed to this day from the modern world. Spoke of my youth as a feral child of the 90s, always running around with scraped knees and mud-caked boots, of climbing trees and chasing rabbits to burrows, of leaving my grandparents’ house in the morning and only returning late in the evening to a scolding and a hot meal.
Maybe that was a universal thing about childhood. Melenith smiled.
The more I sat and talked, the lighter my chest felt. I needed this. At no point during the past few days had I sat down and processed everything going on, the titanic change in my life, or even the simple fact that I was never going back. Maybe it had been the brush with death, that teetering moment on the edge, with blood pooling beneath me, that had finally broken through. Maybe it had been Methol’s tough love moment. Or the support harness letting go. I don’t know. But in the moment, just talking nonsense really, I found that I cared for all I’d lost.
Maybe I’d never see Earth again. See Romania. See the graves and pray in the small church…
I shook my head. All of it was past now, a reality away, and out of my control.
I had nothing to go back to except memories. Those, I’d brought with me, as vivid now as ever, maybe even more so. Was it some effect of my stats that made them flare up so bright?
Now I had a chance to do something new, build a new me atop the old, explore and discover how far I could go in this new direction. The interface’s words slipped in between the pauses for breath, and they finally sunk in: life is limitless. And I found I wanted to embrace this meaning.
Melenith was a lovely listener. She never prompted. Never questioned. Just listened, and I could feel her interest washing over me, her attention drinking in every word. Even when I paused and choked on something, she just waited, elbow on knee, chin in her burning palm. The fire lit up her face in just such a way that I finally understood why humanity had been naming gods of the flame for millennia.
Without the anger and the pain marring her face, she was ferociously beautiful. Eyes twinkled and lips quirked up in a nearly beatific smile.
I may have tried to make my country sound a bit better than it was. Who wouldn’t? I longed for it, deep in the bone, but at the same time found I wasn’t unhappy to be away. It was a strange exhilaration that needed far more processing. Still, it helped that I talked and someone listened.
When I finally shut up, some unknown time later, my voice had grown raspy and my throat hurt, almost dry enough to crack. But damn did it feel good to have done it.
“Sorry.” I let out a chuckle, suddenly embarrassed by all the nonsense I’d poured out. “I don’t know if that was any help to you. I don’t usually talk about myself.”
Because all the talk had been about myself. Sure, I’d dressed it up in places and people and events, but it was about me. Funny how some things creep up on you.
“I wish I could see your world,” Melenith said after some consideration. “On Elles Ta Maarnum we never had the marvels you describe. We never saw the stars as anything to reach for and grasp between our fingers. We never harnessed the world beyond what we needed, always living in the now and here, never in the next. You humans… Fascinating creatures.”
“How do you even know of humans?” I asked, the thought clicking. “Even before, you knew what I was.”
“I’ve met humans, when She Who Hungers came. They were her agents. Powerful creatures. Curious. Guarded. Always moving, always prodding, always exploring and questioning. Fascinating nuisances.”
Oh. So I wasn’t the first human Eternity had grabbed, if I were to assume I was anything as the people in Melenith’s story. Wonder if it was a specific preference, given that Methol was a blue half-elf thing.
Melenith raised her arms above her head and stretched languorously. I averted my eyes and felt a furious blush coming on.
“You upheld your end admirably.” She drew in a deep breath, then blew out a fine black smoke that half-hid the room in gloom. It hid her and drifted lazily through the air, spinning in swirls and eddies around me. “I will endeavour to match your zeal.”
With her good hand, she drew in the smoke. Strands of it darkened like coal dust and coalesced into lines that formed some kind of characters. My [CRAFT: RUNE] skill tree flared at the sight and I felt again that twinge of anticipation and curiosity, the precipice of understanding dawning on me.
“Rune crafting was our science,” Melenith began while still drawing.
I opened a fresh file, named it Melenith’s explanation, and eagerly began transcribing her words into it.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“It was not given to us by She Who Hungers. We built it on our own. Imperfect, maybe. Powerful, if wielded with care. Catastrophic, when powered by the mind-net.”
And she was going to entrust it to me, of all people? Not that I really understood the implication of her words in that moment.
“Someone described it to me as formulae,” I said, not tearing my eyes away from the symbols hanging in midair. “Not words of power, but something more structured.”
“Yes, and no. Structure is important, but so are the words within it. And for my variety, the blood.”
That sent a shiver up my back, the way she said it, like a craving. Methol’s words came back to me, of how Melenith was, after all, an aspect of War.
She touched the first symbol and it spun gently in the air. “This one is the basis, upon which you will build almost everything. It is the power siphon that you will need for generating and controlling the rest of the rune’s effect. I prefer to build upon my own power, but the symbol can be adapted for more.”
“Same as when you powered it for me?”
“Precisely.”
I looked at the sword and found that, indeed, the symbol lay at the base of the rune she’d carved into the blade. From there, a line connected it to the hilt, and was likely the source of the hunger I felt when holding the weapon.
[Congratulations]
[You have trained: Rune smith: Understanding - Initiate
Huh. I finally got a skill related to the rune, just for understanding the basic gist. But, from here, I was reasonably certain I could understand what the next symbols were and why they mattered. Where there was a power source, there would need to be a transformer and a consumer, else why have it? I let Melenith continue her explanation, my heart thumping with excitement for what I was learning.
The symbol in the smoke moved to one side and the next one in the line drifted in its place.
“This is the element you mean to convert your energy into. This one is of fire, my nature. It is not the only one that can conjure a flame, but it is the only one that can use my flame.”
Noted down, of course. If I focused a little on what I saw, the whole sigil was copied in my file, exactly as she’d drawn it. I would’ve been more shocked by this new function, but was instead enthralled by her explanation.
“How can I learn more?” I asked, imagination furiously working for what else I could use the power, my greed taking over from whatever my good sense dictated.
“All elements are patterns found in nature. I cannot teach you to see them, but She Who Hungers knows of many skills that can separate the correct symbol from the pattern.”
I instantly thought of [ENERGY DETECTION] and wrote it down, circling it even. Now I really needed to pick at Crystal’s brain to help me train. This was huge.
Source followed by converter. Next would be shaping and limitation, because that made sense. How stupid I’d been back in Crystal’s burrow! She had mentioned formulas and I immediately thought of complexity. But this was almost electrical design of a sort.
And yes, the next symbol was a limit imposed on the effect. You generated power, gave it a shape, then limited said shape to something usable. In Melenith’s rune, that meant the effect was localised to the item on which the rune was engraved. Then the next one was a limit on heat conversion, a breaker of sorts. The difference between a useful flame and ending up with thermite.
“Fantastic.”
I watched slack-jawed as she combined the four individual symbols into an elegant form. They didn’t need to be drawn exactly. Hers flowed and distorted, but retained their overall shape enough that they were recognisable. So, exact shape wasn’t necessary, but the flow was.
“One true limitation is overlap,” she went on as the symbol floated and spun in the air. With a flick of her fingers, she set two of the shapes going one over the other and the whole thing puffed to smoke. “If you do not practice care in how you arrange your design, it will rupture.” Her predatory smile was back as her eyes glittered through the smoke. “I have seen nations wiped off the face of Elles Ta Maarnum for carelessness. Do not let yourself become a victim of your own ingenuity.”
All right, that was becoming a token warning today. Everyone seemed hellbent on telling me how much of a fuck up I was. I swallowed down the obligatory cuss and just nodded.
Melenith drew more symbols in the smoke and named each.
One existed for drawing energy from the environment. Another was for sensing. Another for giving a target to the previous. The more she explained, the more things clicked into place for me. I’d needed a key and the basic road to follow, and now the knowledge was rooting well. I felt the affinity tree start to give up more instinctual information, such as how it would feel to draw the right form.
I didn’t instinctively know any symbols to use in crafting a coherent effect—aside from those Melenith was teaching me—but it was easy to see how they came together in a single shape.
Melenith yawned, black fangs glittering wetly with the light of her fire. “And this, little human, is the most important lesson you need to remember.”
All the symbols swirling around her came together into a single shape, each distorting to fit neatly together into a design that was incredibly elegant, the lines of smoke as fine as spider silk.
Then the final one slotted into shape and the smoke exploded with a burst of power that sent it all scattering.
I flinched back and Melenith laughed. “Demand too much of a rune, and it will bite you. Insist, and there won’t be anything left of you to scrape off a wall.”
Warning received. I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. Like with all my skills, this was also far more powerful than on immediate consideration.
“Where does the blood come in?” She’d mentioned it, but it wasn’t in her explanation. And the sword rune had needed mine to work.
“Blood isn’t needed in the drawing of the rune. You can use it, if you’d like, or you can use it on activation. Blood gives will to the effect, gives it hunger and strength. It makes the rune yours in the moment, much more than if you only hand it your energy.”
She leaned forward. Again, that glittering smile and a gaze that seemed to look into the depth of my soul. I wanted to look away but couldn’t, feeling trapped in those red eyes. Suddenly, there was no room there and there was no Melenith, just the eyes, pinning me to the universe. When she spoke again, the voice came from somewhere far and deep, and carried with it a hatred so complete that my blood chilled.
“I give you this weapon, Klaus. I give it freely. I gift of myself to you, a fire to kindle your own.” She chuckled, low and dangerous. “May She Who Hungers and her accursed sister despair at what I unleash. May they burn together upon the pyre I set here for them.”
What do you even answer to something like that?! I heard the words, tried to note them, find my own to answer. But as they came, they disappeared, lost like sand through a sieve. She drew her gaze away and I realised I’d been staring into her eyes. A blush crept up my face.
I blinked. Then the next coherent question struck me.
“Can I just draw these?” I asked, aware that I’d wanted to say something different but couldn’t remember exactly what.
This question seemed relevant, though. If anyone could just draw runes, any idiot with a paintbrush could, somehow, scribble himself into a nuclear explosion. Monkeys and typewriters and all that.
Melenith shook her head. “You need be able and imbue the will of what you wish to achieve into your drawing. I will teach you how if you do not yet know.”
“I think I already have that,” I said and opened my skill list, skipping all the notifications just to find the one I’d checked out back in the forest.
[Rune smith: Basic element]
[A rune smith’s basic ability block]
[Imbues the user’s will into a building block used to create a rune sigil]
[Allows for the combining of several building blocks to form a coherent, stable effect]
[Each activation declares one sigil as a building block]
[Buffer time for sigil combining: 3 seconds]
[Once two or more sigils have been declared and combined, no other may be added into the formula after the buffer time expires]
[Skill rank: Basic]
[COST: 30 MP / activation]
The exact words had changed from the last time I’d checked out the skill, and it brought up new data that was interesting. This explanation had proper information about the uses and limits. It explained why my whole interface was trying to grab my attention by the eyeballs. The insight level had likely brought me extra info for everything.
I’d check later. I had too much right now to focus on, and decided my attention was better spent here, on Melenith and her teaching. The rest wasn’t going anywhere.
And, happy coincidence, this was also the skill I’d dropped a point into during the fight. Sometimes luck does wonderful things in your favour. Too bad it happens so rarely, and with so little fanfare.
“Mind if I try and activate your rune?” I asked, holding the sword up. I wanted to see how it felt to actually power the flame, then try and replicate it somehow.
“I insist.” Again, she yawned, her whole being shuddering as if in anticipation.
I held the sword up and focused on its hunger. Before pressing my finger to the blade, I noticed there were two paths of power within the blade. One demanded a whole lot of energy from me and promised to send me to my knees. The other was more subdued, almost passive, demanding nothing. Without knowing what I was questing out for, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
I turned the blade away from Melenith, towards one of the walls, and allowed a trickle of MP into that second channel. May as well see what that did before anything.
The blade of my sword popped clean off the handle and clattered to the floor. I was left just the hilt and the sword’s black spine in my hands.
“What the fuck?” My jaw dropped and my eyes boggled.
Melenith dropped on her back, roaring with laughter.