“I want to forget my nightmares a microsecond after they happen,” Rusty said, and willed the spell to take hold.
Selective near-instantaneous memory editing upon self!
Committed chakra: 32/198
Nightmare Remover Granted!
Cost 1
Remaining free chakra: 33/198
“Neat trick if you can swing it,” Ken said, as he and Alice and Beth followed Rusty into the armory. “Are you sure you can spare the chakra?”
“Do not give numbers,” the Lion said, as he kept pace near the grach who were escorting them. “You are lower than you should be, and I can not guarantee word of your conversation will not return to someone who has a translation spell to understand it.”
Rusty shrugged. Don’t have to answer specifically to fill my friends in, he thought at the Lion. “I’m doing all right,” he told Ken. “Uh, I mean WE are doing all right,” he said when the Lion sighed. “That Speed rune was a pretty big chakra commitment. He— we, we said it’s a Legendary rune. Most wizards have to survive a major battle or build their potential for years to absorb it. But with the boost from the Lion, I’ve got plenty to spare for small enchantments.”
“Within reason,” the Lion cautioned. “It goes quickly. One most always balance committed chakra against free chakra. Too many passive enchantments, and you have too little to cast spells of any significance, or push through magical resistance, or deal with things like a Duskwraith’s touch.”
“I thought they were on our side?” Rusty frowned.
“What?” Beth asked.
“Sorry, still getting used to stuff.” Rusty said. He rubbed his temples. He was forgetting to say ‘we,’ his body was tired from hours of pain all up and down his nerves, and his stomach was reminding him he hadn’t eaten in a long, long time. He needed a break, and he wasn’t going to get one until they’d gotten through one last thing.
The Grach halted next to a doorway that, unlike many others inside the fortress, had actual doors. They looked new, made of bronze, and looked heavy.
“Nod at the Grach,” the Lion told him, and Rusty complied.
The two turtle-like humanoids took hold of each handle and pulled. It wasn’t easy; Rusty marked how they braced themselves, and the play of muscles in their ludicrously thick arms. And indeed, when the doors opened up, he saw they were inches thick of solid metal.
But all that ceased to matter, as the satyr who was busy sorting out various items in the middle of the room looked up, did a double-take, and leaped to her hooves.
“You!” shouted Ran Tan the Meril Jannesiva Dok, as she put her hands on her fuzzy hips and shot him a glare. “Does your cogitation organ comprehend the hullabaloo that you have inflicted upon my posterior?”
“Ran—” Rusty shouted as he moved forward spreading his arms, ignoring the throb of his overstretched nerves.
“Finish her name! Quickly!” the Lion advised.
Fortunately, he’d restored his total recall, and flawless memory moments ago. “—Tan the Merill Jannesiva Dok! I… we. We could hug you!”
She threw up one hand in the universal symbol of stay the hell back, growled and started to pull her knife with the other, but both were interrupted by the squealing form of Rusty’s sister charging past him, and practically tackling the satyr into a hug.
Ran shot him look that said this was nowhere near done, and embraced Beth right back. Then she let go, pointedly turned her back on Rusty, and walked across the chamber, arm around Beth’s shoulders, as Beth filled her in on everything that she’d evidently missed that day.
“She, uh, she doesn’t act like the other satyrs do. Toward me, I mean,” Rusty said. “Doesn’t she think I’m half you?”
“Her bandelo’s motto translates roughly to ‘none command us,’” the Lion said. “It is a severe transgression to show deference to others in public.”
“Really give me freedom or give me death folks, huh?” Roz butted in, sauntering over to the rows of stuff sitting on plinths in the middle of the chamber. “So, what have we got to play with, here?”
This room was the armory of the fort. Weapons, armor, and magical things were kept here. And since the Lion was needed on the Western front, Rusty would get his pick of any equipment he pleased to help him on his journey. As would his friends and sister, who absolutely refused to let him go alone.
The room looked rather more barren than he’d imagined in his mind’s eye, really. Fairly empty stone shelves and opened chests and crates held a few items here and there, breaking up the bare stretches of space. Some bundles of arrows, a few unstrung bows. Long spears hanging next to empty brackets, a few salvaged swords that had the mark of the Unicorn filed off. There was armor on stands, but most of it was tattered, patched, bloodstained, or all of the above.
But the plinths held the magical items. Charms in cases, and right in the center…
Runes. Familiar looking ones. These were the crystals that had been growing out of the Lion’s corpse, back in the main hall. He recalled the satyr, Omen, taking his leave and directing a few Grach to haul the Lion’s corpse away. He guessed they must have separated the runes from the dead flesh somehow. Or did they? Each crystal was growing out of a small clay pot now, and morbidly he wondered if some remnant of the Lion’s body had been carved out to feed the crystals.
The Lion opened his mouth.
Rusty shook his head at it. I’d rather not know, he thought.
The Lion shut his mouth.
“All directional!” Ran Tan the Merill Janesiva Dok said, heading back over to the plinths. “Convey forthwith the portioning of yonder runes, then.”
“Excuse me?” Rusty asked.
“I think she means to sort out who’s getting what,” Alice said.
“You’re kinda hard to understand,” Ken said.
The satyr girl stuck a hand in Rusty’s face. “Lay guilt upon this juvenile, then! He’s the individual who hexed my thinking engine in the interests of expedient linguistical shenaniganry!” She lifted her finger, and stuck her tongue out at Rusty. “Then I found my posterior in an exceptional mountain of trouble for NOT archerering him when I was afforded the opportunity. But THEN it turned out to be acceptable because he is the host to the Lion. So you can see the conundrums of complication that he has vexed upon mine horns.”
Rusty had tuned out, realized he was fading a bit. But thanks to total recall, he could sort of stay on track. “I’m supposed to decide who gets what runes?” he asked.
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“Affirmative! He acquires it!”
“Acqui… oh. I get it. yes.”
Ran squinted at him. “Absent is the royal ‘we’? Curious.”
“Careful…” said the Lion.
“It’s probably the uh, the language,” Rusty said. “We are ready. Just let me, uhm, let us talk it over.”
“We should,” the Lion said. “You do not have the time to absorb another rune today. And the strain on your system might very well kill us even if you did. Some you should take for yourself, for later absorption. Others will go to your friends, here. Not the satyr, of course.”
“Why can’t the satyr have any?” Rusty asked, and realized too late he’d spoken aloud.”
“What, charms?” Ran asked. “Of those I can obtain in abundance from your inventory of affluence.” She pointed to the string of charms dangling from his belt. “But runes? No. Ours is a different magic.”
“She’s not wrong,” the Lion said. “There are a few other species which can use runes throughout the worlds, but here, humans are the only wielders.”
“Oh,” Rusty said. “All right. Um… Ken has two. Alice has one.”
“I don’t have any,” Beth said.
“What?” That chased away some of the brain fog that was clouding him. “No, Beth, it hurts like hell!”
Beth glared at him. “Rusty Carl Colfax! I didn’t come here to NOT save you! You need all the help you can get, and if you get killed here I’m not going to go back and tell Mom and Dad AND Cyrus that I could have saved you with magic but you wouldn’t LET ME HAVE ANY!” By now she was shaking her finger in his face.
Rusty looked to the others, helpless.
Ran was grinning. Ken was stepping back, his hands held up. Alice was grinning.
“All right, but just one,” Rusty said. “One’s not too bad,” he lied.
“I’ve got two, but another one would only put me out a few hours,” Ken said. “I can sleep it off overnight.”
Rusty wondered. He’d done what he could to mitigate the pain of the third.
“If he cannot, in veritas slumber the agony hence, then I can craft bouquets to carry him,” said Ran.
“Bouquets?”
She frowned. “Arrangements?”
“Ah.”
“I only got one,” Alice said. “Gravel’s good, but I wouldn’t mind ‘nother trick up my sleeve.”
“Well, let’s see what we have.” Rusty switched to thinking, focusing as best he could. “Lion? These were yours. What’s good, here?”
The Lion moved around the runes, pointing with the muzzle-like part of his face. “That dull brown one is ‘apathy.’ This sparkling, translucent rune is ‘viable.’ The multicolored rune is ‘butterfly.’ The steel-colored one here, is ‘obstacle.’ The white one is ‘circle.’ And the bright glowing golden rune is ‘flash.’
“Butterfly?” Rusty said, incredulously.
“That and apathy were the runes that Ringaldr had, prior to our bargain,” the Lion said. “It is the custom of his house to train apprentices with the least of minor runes first, before trusting them with real power.”
The other penny dropped. “You had six runes?” Rusty said, amazed. Given how the pain had ramped up with each successive one…
“It was not healthy,” the Lion said. “We took on as many as we could, too quickly, due to necessity. You saw what it did to our body.”
Rusty had wondered why the Lion’s humanoid body had been so misshapen, so large. The guy was practically an ogre out of the old myths and legends. “Okay. I don’t think we’ll be giving anyone butterfly,” Rusty said, moving the pot with that rune out of the way.
“Aw, butterfly?” Alice said. “We weren’t in a war, I’d be tempted. Always liked butterflies.”
“Rusty, what exactly do runes do?” Beth asked.
“They let you use magic. But the spells have to be something related to the rune. So all the butterfly rune would do is let you use magic that did butterfly stuff.”
“Like fly and turn into a butterfly?” Beth asked.
“I… guess so?”
“Verily!” Ran confirmed. “Though the Lion best left that for charmstock, when he could afford the sanguine cost. There should still be some of those charms on yonder bracelet.”
“Good to know,” Rusty said, eyeing the charms. “Wait. Blood?”
“I’ll explain later,” the Lion said.
“Right. Never mind,” Rusty said, wiping his forehead. “We need to sort this out. Um… each of you pick one. We’ll save the rest for later.”
“You should take one,” the Lion said. “In case we find the time to implant another. It is important that you fill out your other leg’s chakra point, to provide balance. We could not do so properly with Ringaldr, and that hurt his growth as well.”
The children looked over the runes. Rusty named each one, and Alice was the first to speak up. “I’m thinkin’ ‘obstacle’ would go well with ‘gravel.’”
“Yeah, but that makes you double down on dealing with ground type stuff,” Ken said. “Which isn’t bad, since aside from that carpet thing, those wizards don’t seem to have any fliers. And we do? Sort of?”
“Don’t enumerate the Duskwraiths externally!” said Ran. “They are subtle but invaluable at their metier.”
“Okay, I didn’t get that one. Yeah, Obstacle’s mine,” Alice said, and took the rune. “Gonna wait ‘till I’m in private to stab myself with it.”
“Make sure to put it on the other side of your body from your first rune,” Rusty said. “The Li— uh, I say that if you stay balanced, it makes a lot of stuff easier.”
“Viable. What’s viable mean again?” Ken asked, studying the glittering gem. “Because this looks like a gamechanger to me.”
“Alas, this is the lesser meaning,” the Lion said, and delivered the slightly less good news.
Rusty passed it on. “This is the viable that means capable of life and growth.”
“Oh…” Ken said. “See, I like that even more! I’ve got the only healing rune, right? So this should work well with it.”
“You don’t want any kind of offense?” Rusty asked. “Got flash right here. It could blind people.”
“I don’t WANT offense. I want to be ignored while you guys get people going after you, so I can put you together safely afterwards,” Ken replied. “That’s the plan, anyways.”
“You have a plan?” Alice asked. “See, this is why we like you.”
“Here I thought it was for my stunning good looks.” Ken grinned.
Beth kicked him, Ken yelped, and Ran laughed. But he took the crystal, regardless.
“That leaves you,” Rusty said to Beth. “Unless you’re having second thoughts…”
He hoped she did. That hope died as she shook her head, and leaned down to squint at the remaining runes.
“Circle,” she decided.
“Circle?” Rusty asked. “That one seems kind of… I don’t know, what are you going to do with it?”
“Anything I want, so long as it’s in a circle,” Beth said.
The Lion stirred, and gave a warning that Rusty passed on in his own words. “You can do that, but it gets real expensive without another rune involved. REAL expensive. So be careful, and get some practice on the trip to the west. Also he says you should probably get this one in your chest, not in your heart but close to it. Because you might only get one rune, so it’s good to put it centrally. It’s easier on your body that way.”
“I might get two, or more,” Beth squinted at him, set her jaw.
“Get through the one first and then decide that,” Rusty told her. “We’re not joking. It REALLY hurts.”
She squinted harder, then nodded, and looked away. Not before he saw worry in her eyes, though. Rusty hugged her close, and after a second she patted his lower back until he let go.
“Three runes left,” Ran said. “Unless you extravagant one for your own personage?”
“One for later,” Rusty decided. He closed his eyes and moved the pots around, doing his best NOT to access the memories that would have told him which pot was where. And finally he rested his hand on one and opened his eyes.
It was the ‘butterfly’ pot.
“You have to be kidding… fine.”
The others laughed, as he picked it up. He was practically falling asleep on his feet, and hungry beyond reason.
One quick farewell to Ran, and a nod to the waiting Grach later, and he was on his way back up into the lodging part of the fortress.
They all had a long trip coming, but that would be tomorrow.
Time enough tonight for his friends to suffer for power.
And all he could do was hope he was sound asleep by the time they mustered the courage to absorb the runes so he wouldn’t hear them screaming.