Vina sat across from Etana and Annalina at their dining table. Their faces were in shock. She had done her best to explain her entire adventure from the first day in Palitern. She omitted a few details such as her Blood Runes, but she had been honest in everything she had shared. In fact Vina wasn’t certain sharing her skills was actually necessary. Ebba had urged her to keep her abilities, all of her abilities, secret. She knew she had overshared about her mobility skill earlier, but she wanted to make a connection with Etana.

“So, you’re not from this world. You were brought here by our mother. You don’t know where she is, but she left you these notes to find us.” Etana said, breaking the silence.

Vina nodded emphatically. “Yes!”

“How do we know you aren’t lying?” Etana said in a serious tone.

Annalina rolled her eyes. “Stop messing with her, Etana.” Annalina slid a note out onto the table for Vina. When she opened it, she immediately recognized the handwriting.

Dear Etana and Annalina,

Oh my dear daughters, how I miss you already. My heart is pained as I write this at the sacrifice we have all made. I have left you two at an orphanage in the town of Termily. I do not do this lightly. It is the hardest choice I’ve made in my life. If I kept you two, we would live a life of fear as we hid from place to place until we were killed.

In Termily, you will be guaranteed an opportunity to grow stronger and wiser to the ways of this world. You will learn about the shadows, the creatures, and develop tools to defend yourselves. Please, I urge you to comfort and support each other during this difficult time of your lives. Be a beacon of light for each other in this otherwise dark place you will no doubt find yourselves in the coming years.

My daughters, I have secured away gifts for you when you turn eighteen. They are not far and will also remain safe until you are ready to claim them. Until then, do as Trina has instructed us. Learn as many skills as you can and keep each other safe. I do not know if someday I will be able to return, but be ready to leave at all times in case I am able to recover you.

Annalina, Etana, you have another sister. She has been taken away from this world, but I am told she will one day return. I am sorry I cannot share her name with you for her own safety. Please remain in Termily until she can find you. You will know without a doubt it is her when it is time. Please support each other through the challenges that exist in this world. Find your own way, but do it together.

I love you.

Love,

Priya

When Vina had finished reading, Annalina spoke, “When we turned ten years old, this letter showed up randomly. We don’t know who sent it to us. For a long time we thought Priya would come back and get us. After a few years, we decided to just follow her advice instead.”

Etana nodded, “We started training. Although we couldn’t gain levels yet, we put a plan together to learn skills. We were going to find you once The Watch let us leave. We were going to become adventurers just for you.”

Ann continued, “Unfortunately even though we were able to gain levels, The Watch considered us to be two months under the age of eighteen. We thought it was a clerical error, but clearly Priya did it on purpose. She didn’t want us to leave before you arrived.”

Vina absorbed all of this information, “Did you find the gifts Priya left for you?”

The girls shook their heads.

Vina slapped her hands together, “Well we’re together now. I am very happy to be reunited with you two. I know you barely know me. Will you give me a chance to be a good sister? I don’t have any experience in this.”

Etana laughed and Ann smiled warmly. “It’s quite a change, but we’ll find a way to make this work.” Ann reassured her.

“What do we do now? Our quest is to just survive for the next six months. That’s really ominous don’t you think?” Etana questioned.

Vina pressed her finger to her lip, “It is.”

Ann looked concerned, “What happened to you before you came to Termily? How were you so badly injured?”

Vina took a deep breath and shared what had happened outside of Termily. She gave them every detail she could of the man who had attacked her, but she withheld exactly how she had escaped. When she had finished, the two girls sat quietly. Vina tried to give them space to process the dangers outside of the city. After a long moment, Vina broke the silence first, “How do these quests get assigned? Is this coming from Priya or Trina or something?”

“Personal quests are coming from you. Whether you know it or not, you have defined goals for yourself. World quests come from Trina. Group quests… I don’t really know.” Etana said.

Ann raised a hand, “I think we all have the same mindset right now. We’ve just rediscovered each other. Do we all feel like protecting our family until we figure this out?”

Vina and Etana nodded.

“Well then that must be where it comes from. It’s coming from us.” Ann said.

“Then why 6 months?” Vina asked.

Etana shrugged, “The course we are taking at the institute is 6 months long. We just have to keep each other alive until the classes are done.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard. Things seem very safe here compared to outside.” Vina said, tapping her fingers on the table. “You said you had a plan put together to find me. What was your plan exactly?”

Etana sighed heavily, “We didn’t have a destination in mind. You can see Priya withheld that from us. We simply planned to get out of town after we had trained to a satisfactory level. We decided to divide our focus. I’m doing mostly combat skills with the hope of getting a good combat class when I next level up. Ann…”

Ann interrupted, “I’m going to get a non combat class. I’ve been developing support based skills. I’m hoping to get some kind of healer or enhancement based class. Can I ask what your class is?”

Vina cringed at that question. “I’m a combat class that focuses on evasion.”

Vina saw Etana’s eyes on her and felt relief when she switched the topic, “You can really write runes? Can you show us? I’d love to learn that skill.”

Vina winced again, “It is one of the restrictions I have. Ebba will not allow me to do runes without her being present. Vina suddenly gasped, “Oh no! I’m late for my appointment with Ebba. She’s going to kill me. Can we meet up tomorrow and talk more?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Etana and Ann laughed at her reaction and reassured her there would be time for more tomorrow. Vina couldn't help herself, and although Etana seemed awkward about it, Vina hugged them both before leaving.

~~~

Vina ran as quickly as her agility would allow her back to her house. When she arrived, Ebba was waiting outside. She had opened a book and was reading with her back against Vina’s front door. Vina ran up to her and apologized, “I’m sorry Ebba. I…” she hesitated for a moment. She suddenly remembered she couldn’t share that she had family here. Priya had hid her sisters from The Watch. “I found some new friends and lost track of time.”

Ebba gently closed her book and smiled as looked up at Vina, “I’m glad you hear you are making relationships here. I saw your performance at the Institute today. You did very well. Is your new friend the girl you had a draw with?

Vina nodded. Her excited energy was slightly draining from her. Vina felt Ebba had been very important to helping her personal growth, but a part of her was suspicious of her motivations. The other students did not have someone they had to check in with each night. They also didn’t get the individual tutoring that Vina was receiving. Maybe Priya’s warning of hiding from The Watch was informing her paranoia, but Vina felt Ebba may not be a completely safe person.

“That’s great. These friendships will serve you well when you become an adventurer.” Ebba gestured toward the door, “Let’s go inside and get started.”

For the last few days, Ebba had been tutoring Vina on runes. Ebba herself didn’t know anything about blood runes, but seemed to be a quite skilled rune crafter. Together they had pushed Vina’s Blood Runes skill up to level 9 now. Both of them were anticipating Vina reaching level 10 tonight and obtaining a new skill point option.

As they sat down at the table, Ebba pulled out two large pieces of leather, one for her and one for Vina. “Today, we’ll be making a runic store. This rune design allows us to store extra energy for later use. The store size is normally pretty limited, but through practice, you may be able to increase it. Some skill point options will even enhance this storage further. The store on your runic lantern for instance is much larger than I’ve seen in the past.”

“That makes sense for the lantern; it burns blood to generate the light. How does the backpack work?” Vina considered.

“The backpack you have is of much greater complexity requiring many more words and configurations than you have learned yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Ebba warned. She took a knife from her pocket and began drawing runes on her piece of leather. Vina watched carefully. She knew she would soon need to recreate this piece of work. When she noticed something she didn’t understand, Vina would interject and seek out an answer. Ebba moved quickly though, her runic skills clearly higher than Vina’s. She followed along as she came to understand what Ebba was trying to make.

Through this collaborative work, Vina had learned dozens of new rune words and three runic phrases. She had come to learn that the runic phrases are where the real impact of this skill could be seen. She could write a rune that would repair itself if it was damaged, one that would harden whatever it was written on, and one that created a basic illumination effect like a candle. Although Vina was unsure of Ebba’s motivations, she had rocketed Vina’s understanding of runes upward.

Vina hesitated when she saw the word Ebba had written on her leather. The word was something like Store or Storage. She looked at it in moderate confusion. Her logic said it was the correct word, but something in her skill or maybe her mastery was telling her differently. Ebba saw her furrowed brows, “If the word is wrong for you, you know what to do.”

When they first started, Vina began to notice there were actual meaningful differences between Rune Carving and Blood Runes. Of course they were different skills, but there was enough of an overlap that you could reuse a rune word. Sometimes though there was another word that fit better for Vina. She often had this confusing feeling when she followed along with Ebba. It was like Ebba was speaking another language, and Vina could understand her, but she couldn’t respond back. Vina looked now into the depths of her heart and wrote down what she found there. The word she wrote was Lake. She found this happened often enough. The word Ebba would choose would be rigid, and the word Vina would choose would be fluid, changing. “Alive.” Vina thought to herself.

“Which word did you choose?” Ebba prodded.

“I wrote Pond.” Vina lied. Early on when Vina was confused by the word she selected, she discovered Ebba didn’t actually know the words either and Vina would have to explain them to her. Vina chose to lie in these moments because of what Ebba would do next.

Ebba wrote down the runeword in her notebook. “Very good. Soon we will have all of your blood rune words documented for future people who get the Blood Runes skill. You’re the first in a long line of people. You’ll be admired for the work you’re doing today.”

Vina finished the rest of her writing and pushed the leather to Ebba for comparison. There were a few word differences, but all of them had already been documented by Ebba. Vina watched in fascination as Ebba touched her leather and a golden light entered it. The runes lit up blue however. She could feel the clean and fresh power radiating off of the leather. Ebba must have pushed a lot of divinity into it, because Vina had never felt runes pulsating with energy like this before.

“You see how much can be pressed into a single item?” Ebba said.“It’s your turn Vina.”

As her skill continued to grow, Vina found she could use less and less blood to generate the same desired effects. Now that Vina’s skill was raised so high, she could give her lantern a normal amount of blood and it would act like it had received 30% more. Once Vina had explained this to Ebba, she was willing to allow Vina to use her own blood in the evenings.

Vina pricked her finger and began to feed the blood runes on the leather. Although Vina knew what she was making, she was surprised how large the storage was in the item she just made. She fed more and more blood into it until she had reached the limit Ebba would allow her to do. Although the item could store lots of blood, to Vina it felt different than the lantern. The lantern had an actual hunger, but the leather was no different than an empty waterskin that could be filled. It had no wants or needs. It was simply a tool to be used.

Nonetheless, by the time Vina was done, the leather felt warm to the touch and Vina swore she could feel a pulse. The sensation Vina received from her blood runes was one of joy, life, and freedom. The feeling was quite different than the leather item Ebba had made.

“Well done Vina.” Ebba reached out and picked up the blood leather and placed it into her bag. Vina was used to this. Ebba would take anything Vina made for further examination later. Ebba claimed it was to review Vina’s work. “Did you receive your tenth level for Blood Runes?”

Vina had been so focused, she had not noticed the popup window.

Skill Level Up: Blood Runes has reached level 10. Blood runes can be drawn 45% faster and take 45% less blood to activate or maintain You have one skill point. You have earned 150 experience points for leveling a skill.

Where would you like to spend your Blood Runes skill point? Option 1: Active Skill: Blood Call. You may call your own blood back into your body. Option 2: Your bleeding duration is reduced by 50%. Option 3: The effect of blood runed items is increased by 5%.

Vina read through her options and spoke to Ebba, “Yes. I have three new options this time. The first one…”

Ebba interrupted her, “Actually Vina. Your skill choices are very personal. As your sister in Trina, I want you to know she would want me to stop you from revealing what your options are. Please review and choose on your own.”

Vina considered the options before her. The second option seemed good at first glance. Vina had often been in a near death situation from bleeding. Most of those situations were actually her fault though. The first option seemed more attractive if she wanted to keep all that blood inside of her. The last option was tempting to Vina as well. She had just started to figure out how to enhance objects and items with blood runes. “Would that enhance my lantern as well?” She thought to herself excitedly. On second thought it probably wouldn’t. The item was made with classic runes by Priya.

Ebba watched Vina consider her options silently and patiently. Vina finally selected Blood Call. She felt if she could recall her blood, there was a chance she could prevent herself from bleeding out both in combat and in her blood runes work. Additionally Ebba had already proved to her that she could kinda control the movement of blood. Maybe this would enhance the effect?

Ebba nodded her approval when she saw Vina had chosen, “We’ll continue again, tomorrow. I am proud of your work today, Vina.”

Vina showed her appreciation and walked Ebba to the door. They said their goodbyes and Vina returned back to the table. She pulled out her runed lantern from her backpack, “We’re not done yet.”