When I stirred, eyes gummy, mouth caked with dirty, my entire body felt stiff and sore. My shoulder burned. Joints popped like a machine gun when I tried to move. I don’t know how much of that was actual noise from my bones, and how much was the ringing in my ears.
Agony lanced up and down my back, like being stabbed a hundred times per second with a rusty nail.
Morning had come, golden light bathing the village walls and—
No, that was entirely wrong! It wasn’t morning. The sun bore down from directly above, the day already uncomfortably hot and moist. It was noon. It was well past noon.
I spat the mud from my mouth and tried to blow blood from my nose. Pain everywhere. My sight remained blurry no matter how much I blinked to clear it.
In all honesty, I’ve had worse hangovers in my 20s. Waking up in a ditch had lost its novelty after the fifth time it happened in less than a month. Getting drunk in my little hometown, where rural life was at a five-minute brisk walk away, meant that I was well acquainted to this exact situation.
Minus the hand super-glued to the road. I’d done stupid dares, but never thought to stick my hand to anything irreversibly. This was new. And it bloody hurt.
Something pressed against my lips and water splashed into my mouth. I choked, sputtered, then drank greedily. The cobwebs in my head melted away. There was a hint of something in the drink, but I was too parched to even think about the taste.
Funny how thirsty you get while surrounded by puddles.
“Easy, Klaus. Take it easy. You can have it all. Don’t choke.”
It took some time for the warning to sink in, then some more for my throat to apply the brakes.
“Human sound sleeper.” Crystal’s voice spoke from somewhere behind me. “If Crystal no here, human food now.”
“What?” I asked, those particular words slotting in my head before I manage to take in the sight.
A wet cloth pressed to my forehead and shocked my system into full awareness. I snapped my head back, almost passed out as darkness crowded the edges of my vision, then yelled in pain as I wrenched my shoulder out of its socket. Almost out of its socket. The last thing I wanted was another repeat of that miserable adventure.
Finally, I took in Methol, kneeling next to me, face surprised, dripping cloth in hand. She wore her light gear again and her dark hair was tied in a ponytail spilling over her shoulder. Her eyes looked as tired as I felt.
“Fair,” she said without preamble. “After the kind of night you’ve had, I’d be jumpy too.”
I couldn’t answer, my heart still firmly lodged in my throat. It left no room for words.
A whole horde of furnar filled the road and the field behind the drake-born, many of them clustered around Harriet’s contorted shape. I finally gained enough of my wits to take in the whole tableau.
The furnars were awake and they were seeing to their queen. The noise that I thought was my head ringing—really, stupid notion since the noise was clicking and not ringing—seemed to be everyone talking over one another in some strange language.
“Eternity?” I asked, looking about.
The dragon took off from somewhere on the other side of Harriet and flew to me, landing on my shoulder.
“You slept approximately ten hours,” Eternity said the moment it landed on my shoulder. “The glitch artefacts have begun their attack ahead of schedule.”
“What?!”
I tried to rise, panic hitting me like a hammer, only to find myself face-planting almost immediately into the hardening mud. The rune had not let go at all.
“Maybe try and not drop news quite like that,” Methol said to the dragon. “Look behind you, Klaus. Don’t worry. Everyone is quite safe. We’re all safe for the time being.”
I worked myself up into an awkward sitting position and looked. Crystal and Tusk were several paces behind me, both of them looking small in front of the chaos that boiled out of the forest.
Maybe twenty paces away there was a horde equal to the furnar one, made up of deviants. The furnar drone deviants with shining metal mandibles, several spiders, and a lot of headcrabs. Like zombies in movies, they were all pressed tight against an invisible wall that seemed to be keeping them at bay. The headcrabs kept leaping and smacking into the wall.
I turned to Methol with a raised eyebrow. “Your doing?” Handy skill, if that’s what it was.
“Took a while to surround the whole village, but yes,” she said, still squatting next to me. “Figured you’d want to deal with them yourself. Maybe grab a couple levels and all that, this being your delve after all. I know I’d hate it if someone swooped in at a moment like this. I’d punch their heads off.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Honorable sentiment, I had to admit. Didn’t expect the courtesy but did appreciate it. After everything else, dealing with deviants here felt less
“Only problem is that I’m stuck,” I said. “I didn’t have time to set up a deactivation sequence.”
“Eternity told me.” She clicked her tongue. “Why didn’t you use flames to calm down Her Majesty?”
Something must’ve shown on my face because she immediately raised her gauntleted hands and lowered her head in a placating gesture. “Fine, fine. No criticism from me. This is certainly not the worst way I’ve seen a furnar queen get handled.”
The furnar queen in question rumbled a few paces away from me, surrounded by her children, each one carrying some item for her. Food. Water. Other bits and bobs I couldn’t identify. At least she wasn’t screaming anymore, what with the others fussing so much.
“I explained the situation to her,” Methol said. “She’s extremely embarrassed by her actions yesterday and feels she owes you an apology in blood. Don’t accept if it’s offered. It gets icky. Otherwise, there might be a feast prepared for you soon, soon as they take inventory of what food they still have unspoiled.”
“Am I on the menu?” I asked, finding it hard to relax with that sinister horde just there, paces away.
“Not this time. Though I wouldn’t linger here once you’re done.”
“Furnar queens are…” Eternity thought for a time, as if searching for a word. “Mercurial. Their anger takes very little to ignite. One that has shamed herself will often want to erase proof.”
That, I could believe. I was, however, still stuck to the fucking ground with no way to free myself.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a solution for this thing?” I gestured to my numb hand. “How long until a shard wears out?”
Methol rose to her feet and looked at my handy work. Ever materialised on her shoulder, ears twitching.
“He really did this in one go?” Methol asked.
“While running, yes,” the rabbit thing confirmed.
“Never had any training with runes prior to last night?” This question was aimed at me.
“Learned from the goddess in the dungeon, after you jumped in the hole. It’s not hard. I copied this from the sword.”
“Hmm.”
Methol had a far away look on her eyes. I was coming to recognise it as the checking-the-interface look. While she stared out into nothing, one of the furnars approached. It held out a bundle.
“If it pleases the far-dweller,” the funar said, voice clipped and oddly soft. “This daughter brings food.” It flashed a look towards Eternity on my shoulder. “While most of our stores are rotted through, we still have our ember’s sinew. It is good quality and finely aged, from Our Lady’s own stores.”
When she unrolled the bundle on the ground, a good way away from the edge of the rune, it revealed a long strip of heavily seasoned dried meat. More jerky! And the smell hit me in the nose with the power of a cannonball. Peppery. Garlicky. Lemony. Zesty. Hot, sour and sweet. A pure cacophony of scents that, somehow, worked together.
I drooled. Literally. Had to wipe my mouth on my shoulder, one of the few bits of fabric left of my shirt.
“If it pleases the far-dweller,” the furnar said, those large black eyes looking as if to spear my soul, “this daughter can mend your cloth.”
Was there anything left to mend of my shirt? I looked down at myself and stuck my whole arm through the rents in the fabric.
“You can mend this?” I asked, incredulous.
The furnar inclined her head sideways. “Reconstruct would be a far better description,” she said. “This daughter can reconstruct.” It reached out a claw and touched the mangled text. “This daughter does not know this language and script. If you write it down, it can be added back.”
I nodded. For now, food. “Later, thank you. I would really appreciate it. But let me get free of this first.”
The furnar daughter inclined her head again, then began ripping the meat into strips. “Please, eat. It will return your strength.”
That first bite taught me that you can turn meat into plutonium with the right mix of spices and smoke. Speaking pure energy in jerky form!
I only tasted it for a moment before it overloaded my sense of taste altogether. My tongue went numb like leather, but the food going down was like getting an electroshock with a cow taser. I would’ve jumped on my feet there and then, and run to face the glitch artefacts with my bare fists.
The furnar offered the meat to Methol and she took a strip too, chewing thoughtfully. If she felt the same euphoria as me, she gave no sign. I had to remind myself of Eternity’s words, that higher constitution meant different reactions to the food.
“I can break this,” Methol said after some time, still chewing. “I’m afraid you’re going to feel it. You’ve got your hand on the power source. If I shatter the rune you’re going to get your head rocked. For the future, consider building safe-disengagement sequences in your runes. They’ll save you a world of hurt.”
Melenith hadn’t explained anything about that. Though, I supposed, she didn’t seem the sort that would worry over safety. Fire is intrinsically unsafe.
And I understood the importance of a system—albeit a magical, weird one with a thousand kinds of shapes—that could fail beautifully, as we used to call it at work.
“And if I want for the mana shard to be spent?” I asked, not eager for more pain. I had enough of that ahead of me when I’d go after that mob of artefacts.
“Unless we all get on the rune and try to claw our way free, the current stress is minimal. You can be stuck here until winter.”
Lovely.
“Okay.” I swallowed the last strip of meat and drank some water, rolled my shoulders and stretched my legs. No time like now. “Do your thing, lady. Rock my world.”
Eternity let out a chortle and took off from my shoulder. It called to the furnars, “Please stand back. Yes, several steps are sufficient. Please wait.”
I laid on my stomach with my hand outstretched. At least I could try and minimise how much of myself I’d leave exposed. If Methol’s method ended up taking my arm or something, at least I’d only be out of five fingers.
Methol did not move for a while. She watched the rune with the same intensity as when she scanned her interface. Maybe some kind of analysis skill? I’d need something of the sort too at some point. Made a note of asking her.
Then she began writing. Words floated in the air where she drew them. Not a simple incantation at all, given how she began walking while drawing, the text turning into a whole story.
“I need this shattering to be clean,” she said as she walked around the whole affected area. “You chose a very good rune for what you needed, but did too good of a job. If I don’t constrain it, there’s enough power in the construction to blow us apart.”
Lucky me. Even Harriet shuddered at that, letting out a low grumble. I hoped her mood remained sanguine.
It took almost an hour for Methol to finish writing her spell. At the end, she stood with fists on hips, re-reading everything. She nodded when done.
“Right. Hold on. This will hurt a little.”
She pulled back and threw a spectacularly fast punch forward, straight into the text. It shattered into motes of light that blasted down through the rune. The earth trembled.
All that light poured into the space connecting the two rune elements. Something pushed back through the mana shard in my hand. Initially as pressure, then heat, then pain.
The whole idea of laying down had been a good one. Having my hand on the mana shard had been a terrible one. The shard got ejected form its spot with the acceleration and power of a ballistic missile. It yanked me off the ground and threw me spinning through the air.
I learned a new lesson that moment.
Mainly that Methol could make barriers that also didn’t allow for transfer from either side. I learned this as I got plastered to the invisible wall, back popping, stars blasting through my sight.
That did not hurt just a little.