“Good Morning, Elise.”
“Good morning, Jona. How are you doing today?”
“I’m doing well, thanks for asking. Are you ready for your lesson?”
“Of course!”
Jona had been the first one aside from maybe Hallbjorn that Elise managed to fully turn to her side. She didn’t know exactly how it happened, but on the fifth day after arriving in Dokkalfheimr, Jona had decided that she was going to be friendly now. She stopped barging into Elise’s room after a single knock, and now that Elise could hold conversations in Dwarvish, she was happy to oblige. She hadn’t gone quite so far as to start gossipping with Elise yet, but from what Elise had overheard her saying around the castle, that would be the next step in their friendship.
She ate a quick breakfast of mushroom and other mushroom before following Jona down to the library for her lesson with Greta. When she reached the familiar doorway, her two guards, Jonas and Baldur smiled in greeting.
“Elise!” called Baldur. “Sleep well?”
“As well as usual,” said Elise. “How are you?”
“I’m doin’ pretty well. Just chillin’, y’know?”
As Elise had learned in the past few days, Baldur was a fairly young dwarf, and had a habit of speaking overly casually and using some slang. It made it hard for Elise to understand him sometimes, with her limited experience with the language, but she thought it was a net positive, and a good stress test for her practical ability.
“Good morning, Elise,” said Jonas.
Jonas wasn’t much older than Baldur, but he acted much more mature. While Baldur was cheerful and a bit lazy, Jonas was all business, and always serious. Or at least, he tried to be. With Baldur as his partner, she had noticed he often got distracted, and roped into his compatriot’s antics, and Elise had discovered recently that he had a humorous side of his own.
“Good morning, Jonas,” Elise replied. “How is your wife?”
“Not well, actually,” he said, frowning.
“Oh no!” said Elise. “What happened?”
“She’s still feeling ill,” said Jonas. “It’s not too bad, but we thought she was getting better. Then last night, she suddenly got a high fever. I wonder…”
Elise waited for him to finish his thought, but he never completed it. She glanced over at Baldur, but he just shrugged.
“Well, I hope she feels better soon. And you have the afternoon off today, so you can take better care of her.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She and Jona walked past them and into the library, where Anna and Greta were in their usual spots. Anna glanced up and made eye contact for a brief moment before turning back to the book she was reading. Elise hadn’t managed to break through her shell yet, but she had at least stopped the glares, so she was making steady progress.
Greta was asleep in her chair, which Elise found was becoming more and more of a common event as their lessons went on. At first, she was worried, but by now, she just knew that Greta had gotten more comfortable around her. The loremaster was old, and with how long Elise’s lessons were every day, she was pushing herself quite a bit, and her body wasn’t quite up to the task anymore.
“Teacher,” said Elise when she landed on the table. “Wake up. It’s time to begin.”
“Hmm?” said Greta, her eyes still closed. “I’m awake, you… brat… nosy…”
She trailed off into incomprehensible mumbling.
“Teacher!” said Elise, this time much louder.
“What?” said Greta, her eyes snapping open. “Oh, you’re finally here. Took you long enough. Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Good. What do you want to learn today?”
In the past week, Elise had gotten the hang of basic grammar and sentence structure in Dwarvish, so for the past two days, Greta had changed the structure of the lessons from pure language to general studies. She told Elise to pick a topic, and while teaching Elise about whatever topic she chose, she would also teach all relevant grammar.
The first day, she had just chosen dwarves as her subject. She wanted to learn more about them, and hoped that whatever words she learned during the lesson would help her talk to other dwarves. It wasn’t quite as useful in that respect, but she did learn quite a bit that she didn’t expect.
For example, she learned that dwarves were the only species that could see and work with runes inherently. It was possible for other species to do it if they took the right {Runesmith} class options, but even then, no non-dwarf runesmith could ever measure up to a properly trained dwarven one. All dwarves had a skill called {Runic Affinity} which let them work more easily with runes. Elise had tried to ask if it was in any way related to her own {Nature Magic Affinity} skill, but Greta didn’t know enough about that to give her a clear answer.
On the second day, she asked about how the dwarves had ended up in the cave, if they didn’t want to be there, but Greta said that she had a plan to explain all that later, and to pick something else, so instead, Elise picked mushrooms. It wasn’t her actual second choice, and probably wouldn’t have even made the top 10, but she was flustered at having her first request rejected, and her mind turned to the breakfast she had just eaten. She learned more about fungus than she ever wanted to know that day.
This time though, she wasn’t going to accept “later” as an answer. She had been working toward being able to ask about this topic since her conversation with Hallbjorn, and now she finally felt like she was ready.
“I want to learn about the Rune of Fate.”
“Hmmm,” said Greta. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Elise.
“Well, I don’t know much myself, but I will do my best. The Rune of Fate is the rarest of all runes. It is impossible for even dwarves to craft anything using this rune. We can’t even draw it. It has a qcwxivmsyw power that makes it impossible to transcribe.”
“A what power?”
“Qcwxivmsyw,” Greta repeated. “Strange. Not understood. Raises questions.”
So mysterious, thought Elise. Or something like that.
“I understand,” said Elise.
“Good. As I was saying, it has a mysterious power that makes it impossible to transcribe. I can see it on your chest right now, but if I tried to draw it, I would forget how before my pen touched the paper. It is not known exactly where the Rune of Fate comes from. Some say it appears naturally. Others say it is hand-drawn by the kshw.”
“By the what?”
“By the kshw,” said Greta. “Very powerful beings who watch over the world from a higher viepq, rarely interacting with our own realm.”
Is she talking about gods? And is “viepq” supposed to be realm? Or plane?
“I think I understand,” said Elise. “So the does that mean that my rune was given by the- the gods?”
“I don’t know,” said Greta, shrugging. “You would know better than me. Has a god ever granted you that rune?”
Elise didn’t respond. It was entirely possible that the answer to that question was “yes”. She had no idea how she had ended up in the world. There was clearly something supernatural happening, and something supernatural beyond the magic and monsters that she had come to know in this new world. How did she get here? The System said she was the only one, so why her?
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“I don’t know.”
“Well, then I guess it will remain a mystery,” said Greta. “In the past the Rune of Fate has only appeared a few times, and always brought with them great change. Many of the dwarves believe that your Rune of Fate signifies the jypjmppqirx of the tvstligc that we will emerge from the cave, and become greater than before, but I’m not so sure. Compared to the rest of the world, we are a small jvegxmsr of the population, and the Rune of Fate usually comes with something… bigger.”
While some of the words were unfamiliar, Elise understood the gist of what she said. The dwarves had a prophecy about the Rune of Fate, but the Rune was rare enough that it would not appear to fulfill a prophecy so small. That either meant that the prophecy was more significant than it seemed, or that it was not the only reason for her rune.
“What kind of events have past Runes of Fate brought?
“All kinds,” said Greta. “Some were good, some were bad. Most had little to do with the dwarves. Not any more than they had to do with the humans or elves or giants or gnomes at least. They all changed the world irreversibly. The further back you look, the less reliable the records become, but if even a quarter of what they say are true, your Rune is far more important than our little refugee colony.”
“But what specifically has happened because of the Rune of Fate?” asked Elise.
Greta stroked her chin for a moment. “Have you heard of the Zsmh Glewq before?”
“The… Zsmh Glewq? I don’t know those words.”
“Zsmh is like…” Greta waved her hand in the air vaguely. “It is nothing. The absence of something. And Glewq is a deep line in the ground.”
A canyon? So, the Nothing Canyon?
“I have not heard of that.”
“A thousand years ago, when the dwarves were nearing the height of their power…”
Greta launched into a tale of epic proportions full of words Elise didn’t know as she told of the origins of the Nothing Canyon. Apparently, one day, a human mage was arrested for performing illegal experiments. When he was taken in for trial, a dwarf noticed that the mage bore the Rune of Fate. In the time that the court deliberated about what to do with him, he escaped, and fled halfway across the continent.
He was finally caught in a small town. However, when they tried to arrest him, he fought back desperately, and in the end, gave his life to cast a spell. It didn’t seem like much at first, but soon, those in power found that they could not cancel the spell. It grew and grew until it stretched across the entire continent creating an impassable barrier. Anything that touched it vanished, never to be seen again.
As time went on, it grew larger and larger, and wider and wider. Few lost their lives, but many lost their livelihoods and their homes as the spell expanded and destroyed everything in its path. A century later, the method to stop it was finally discovered, and it was discovered by yet another human mage bearing the Rune of Fate. When the spell finally disappeared, what was left behind was a canyon miles deep that split the continent in two.
The power involved in not only creating such a spell, but later stopping it left Elise in awe. Was she going to be involved in something like that? She didn’t want to be. If she had to, she’d rather be the one stopping the disaster than creating it. More than that, she’d rather just get a human form and live a pleasant, peaceful, unremarkable life.
It could be pretty cool to be a hero though, she thought.
After the Nothing Canyon, Greta talked about a few more phenomena supposedly created by Runes of Fate, though they were much more ancient than the Nothing Canyon. There was a huge mountain range that was supposedly created by a single swing of a sword, and an old island that was said to be all that remained of an entire continent that sunk into the ocean. Each tale seemed more ridiculous than the last, and in the end, Elise wasn’t sure what to think. Was she really destined to have such legends told about her? Did she have a choice in the matter?
After the lesson, when she was on her way down to the training grounds, she found her mind returning back to the tales she had heard, and surprisingly, there was a bit of excitement involved. Was she really going to be powerful and important enough to do things like that? She never had any serious desire for fame, but like anyone, she had fantasized about it, and she was doing it again now.
I need to at least look human before I do any of that though, she thought.
“So, I hear you can speak pretty well now,” said Sindri when she arrived.
“Almost,” she replied.
“Well enough that we don’t need that old jevx anymore at least. Anyway, I was thinking last night about your training. You’ve learned most of what I can teach you. The way we’re doing lessons right now is kind of a waste of time. You know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing. So, whaddya say we change things around and do some teveppip training instead?”
“Teveppip training?”
“We both train at the same time, but we do our own thing. I swing my axes, you shoot your missiles, and if you have any questions, you just ask me. How’s that sound?”
Elise thought that just sounded like another way for him to get out of doing work he didn’t want to do, but she also realized that what he was saying was mostly true. She even found herself getting bored during her training. It must have been ten times worse for Sindri. As long as he actually answered any questions she had, it should have been fine.
“Sounds good,” she said.
“Great!” he said, unsheathing his axes. “Well, I’ll be over there. Have fun.”
He jogged over to the damaged wall on the far side of the room, and immediately started swinging his axes. His flippant attitude aside, Elise could see why Hallbjorn regarded him so highly. He was incredibly strong, and as far as she could tell, he spent every waking moment either training, or thinking about training. When he left their dinners early to “go home”, more often than not, he was actually returning to the training grounds to earn back the time he had lost working with her.
She watched him whale on the wall for a minute or so before turning to the dummies and starting work on her own. Her progress had slowed greatly after that first day. It hadn’t hit a wall yet, but while making the first step toward improving her control and mana efficiency had been easy, each step beyond that took longer and longer. She could only do about quarter power on her {Magic Missile} without significant loss of excess mana, and she had only managed to hold 3 of her acupoints open at once while recovering. Still, progress was progress, so she fired away at the dummy, then meditated to recharge on repeat.
After she ran out of mana for the second time, she looked over at Sindri to see that he seemed to have run out of mana as well. He had switched from swinging with as much power as possible to swinging in slow motion to work on technique. It was fascinating, and almost would have been cool, if she couldn’t hear him making soft sound effects with his mouth as he cut down what she assumed to be imaginary ghouls.
As she watched, he finished with his routine, and stood still with both axes raised to the air triumphantly. Then, he suddenly fell backwards onto his rear and set his axes on his lap as he closed his eyes. A moment later, the mana in the room changed. It was a subtle change from where she was standing, but she could still feel that the mana had a steady current now, and it all seemed to be flowing toward Sindri.
She watched for a few seconds in awe, then slowly approached. Was that what happened if she was able to open up the empty spaces in her body? Would she become a mana vacuum like him? Or was this some kind of skill?
She only got within 20 feet of him when he suddenly stopped and his eyes snapped open.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“What are you doing?” she replied.
“Recharging my mana.”
“How?”
“Runes.”
“You can do that with runes?”
“You can do anything with runes.” He lifted his axes and struck the heads together, creating a sharp ring that echoed throughout the rune. “These axes are forged with mana absorption runes. It makes it easier for me to put my own mana into them, and it means that when I run out, I can use them to draw in the ambient mana to help me recharge.”
“Wow,” said Elise. “Do you have any other runes?”
“Of course!” He pounded his chest with the head of one of his axes. “My armor? Mana and impact resistance runes. My undershirt has cooling runes. My boots have self-repair runes. Almost all dwarven equipment is made with runes. Especially the equipment for the Royal Guards.”
Elise had noticed that most of the items she had seen the dwarves using seemed to be enchanted in some way, and she knew that the dwarves worked with runes, but she hadn’t realized quite how pervasive they were. It made her wonder why, if the dwarves knew so much about runes, that they were so in the dark about the Rune of Fate. Even if it was rare, surely at least some dwarf must have seen it in use.
“Do you know anything about the Rune of Fate?” she blurted.
“No more than anyone else,” he said. “It looks pretty though.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah. Like a flower. I can’t remember what the flower’s called, but I saw a drawing of it once when I was young.”
“Oh.”
Elise had kind of wondered what the rune looked like.
“Do you have any guesses what it might do?”
“Channel a spell?” he said. “I dunno. All runes channel mana, so it probably does it somehow.”
“All runes?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
“You got any more questions, or can I get back to my training?”
“Uhhh, I think that’s it.”
“Alright.”
He closed his eyes, and the suction effect returned. Elise stayed for a moment, intercepting some of the incoming mana to fill her own stores before returning to the dummies to continue her training. She ate dinner in the cafeteria as usual, went back to her room as usual, did her extra training as usual, and then when it was time for bed, her mind kept returning to the Rune of Fate.
If all runes channeled mana, did that mean that the Rune of Fate did too? It was listed as a skill, after all. Didn’t that mean that she should be able to use it somehow? She focused on the rune, trying to activate it the same way that she did any of her other skills, but of course, nothing happened.
Maybe there were some specific conditions she had to meet to activate it. Or maybe she needed to reach a certain level. Or maybe it activated on its own at certain times. Whatever the case, she couldn’t activate it then. She couldn’t think of any better ideas either. She was tired, and she was laying in a comfortable bed, and soon, she was drifting off into a calm, dreamless sleep.