A colossal ten-fingered hand swept toward Zoe. Spines of mirrored bone at each fingertip. Zoe dove behind a tree. Flash in the sun as they swiped like ten scythes through the air. Pink berried branches lopped off in her place.
Silent, and persistent, the monstrosity of bone grabbed the tree with two hands and hauled with tremendous strength. Roots tore free from the earth. A choking cloud of dust spilled out. Skull-tipped fingers reached into the dust and their eye sockets flared green. Cones of baleful fire swept like searchlights.
But Zoe was gone.
Panting, she ran as blood flowed from her reopened wound. Inhuman Vitality staved off the symptoms of blood loss, for now.
She crouched behind a gravestone. The mirrored surface bounced warm sunlight onto her brown skin. Pressed tight against her cover, she gazed at the headstones in front of her and watched the skeletal monstrosity through the reflections.
It swiped apart another tree in its search. Lilly-Pilly’s scattered and rolled across the dusty ground.
A hand brushed her shoulder as someone crouched beside her. Anton.
“This isn’t my fault.”
She glared at him.
“Didn’t you kill the puppeteer?”
He sighed.
“Ever tried holding a sword handle with two other people? It was an awkward stab. The puppeteer used Skein before it died.”
“It’s using Skein?”
He nodded.
“That’s how I found it, like walking through a spiderweb. Don’t worry, it’s still bleeding out. It can’t have long to live.”
“Long enough to kill us all?”
“Hmm… Yeah, that’s a good point,” he grinned. “So what’s the plan, boss?”
Booming thunder knocked them to the ground. Zoe felt the explosion in her stomach. Green fire splashed over the cracked headstone. Zoe looked up from a pile of masonry.
A skull screamed toward her. Jaw clacking as green flames shot from behind like a rocket’s trail. She dove to the side. Pain flared as fire washed over her and singed her clothes.
“Get distance,” she said. “We’ll wait for it to bleed out.”
Anton nodded and scrambled away.
The monstrosity reared up behind the headstones. Towering, mirror-bright in the sunlight, and swiped. Boney claws shattered marble. Anton ran one way, and Zoe another. It looked between them with silent calculation, head swiveling to scan the graveyard before it stomped away.
Toward Cassy.
“Damn,” Zoe clenched a fist. “Hey, over here!”
The monstrosity ignored her.
She looked about for a weapon. Nothing but rubble, and so she hefted a hunk of marble the size of a bowling ball. With her Might, it felt decent. She hurled the rock. It sailed through the air and struck the monstrosity’s back. Bones shattered like ceramic tile, but the creature kept stalking.
“No!”
Joel charged. His axe gripped tight, pulled back over his shoulder. He swept at the ankle of stacked bones like a maddened lumberjack. Blunt steel met mirrored bone. Sparks flew. Chips flashing in the light. The monstrosity swept down a massive claw.
Joel ducked the contemptuous strike. He chopped again.
Flaming skulls swiveled — grinding bone on bone — and stared at him. A tail lashed. Joel raised his axe to block, but the serpentine vertebra snapped through the wooden handle and struck his shoulders. He sagged to one knee. Another tail snaked out, cracked his ribs, and flicked him head over heels. He crashed through a crucifix and lay in a limp heap.
Skulls rotated to survey the graveyard with green flames and chrome grins.
Zoe ducked out from behind a headstone and launched a fastball marble chunk.
It struck a skull, and both exploded. For a moment, she saw the pulsing pink flesh. Blue blood flowed like a leaky faucet. But another skull slid up from the waist and into place. Protecting the puppeteer.
Zoe got an idea.
“To me!” she called.
A skull shot toward her like a rocket. She ducked behind a cruciform headstone. Flaming bone shrapnel exploded out. The headstone cracked in half and collapsed. Zoe kept moving.
“To me!”
She hoped the others understood. She hoped they came fast. If not, they would all die here.
###
Bella gripped her sword and crouched behind a fallen tree. Lily-pily’s crunched under her boots. The iron blade leaned against her shoulder. Runes she couldn’t decipher soaked in alien blood.
The monstrosity stalked out of sight. She heard Joel shout. Explosions. The sickening smack of meat hitting marble.
She needed to do something.
“To me!” Zoe called. “To me!”
Bella wanted to help.
But her limbs didn’t want to move. Something held her in place. Something unnatural. She gritted her teeth, strained, and tried to release the sword.
Nothing.
Blue blood flowed into the sharp runes. Each scratched cipher sucked down the azure nectar like a thirsty drain. A prickling pain blossomed in her palms. Grew like the scratching of thorns. Pierced her flesh.
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She screamed through gritted teeth as something wriggled into her hands. Tendrils scraped the bones in her palm, down her wrists, toward her elbows. She stared down, literally unable to look away. Thick growths bulged and writhed under her skin.
Tears blurred her eyes as the tendrils snaked up her arms. Another scream choked into burbles as her mouth filled with drool.
[Congratulations! You have bonded a Runeblade.]
The inhuman, impersonal cheer of the voice in her head made her sob. She didn’t want to bond; she wanted to throw this thing away.
[Runeblades cannot be discarded, only taken in combat... and how disrespectful, to throw away a gift before it unwraps you.]
Terror filled her. What did that message mean? It felt like someone whispered from behind her shoulder, as though someone reached through her skin, found the invading entity, and spurred them on.
Tendrils spread like brambles through her flesh. Across her chest, limbs, her muscles sliced open. Blood flowed from cracks in her skin. Glinting thorns emerged from the cuts like shark fins. The roots entered her neck and her panting breath became a wheeze as her throat constricted. Choking. Taste of iron as the tendrils climbed higher.
A scratching against her skull echoed in her ears. Pain, unlike anything she ever experienced. For the first time in her life, she wanted to die.
Just so it would stop.
[Finalizing bond. Please hold…]
A cold iron hand grabbed hold of her brain. So cold it froze any sensation of pain. Stilled any sensation of self. Of world.
Her vision shrank.
The blade… was everything…
An ancient iron axis around which the world spun. Combat, explosions, cries of pain, shouts for help, all faded, all unimportant.
The blade revolved, and the blood-drunk runes glowed with profound meaning. An iron gland bloomed inside her mind and she understood the eldritch pictographs.
[Please select a Rune to finalize bond:]
* Thunderclap
* Sunderer
* Endless Heaven
* Wildfire
* Drought
Each rune bulged in her mind. Pregnant with meaning. They weren’t individual symbols. Each told a chapter in the runeblade’s story of the blade. Echoes of a destroyed world. The ash of continents. An atmosphere in flames.
A wielder charred beyond identification. Blackened skin sloughed from cracked bones as they strode through the molten foundations of their world. The blade kept them going.
Each rune was a beginning, a sprout, and from it, destruction would grow.
Which to choose?
Anticipation grew within her. She thought she understood each symbol, except for Endless Heaven. It was the fulcrum of the blade’s story. She knew it was a barrier. Something about space. But she couldn’t see much clearer.
Would it be helpful in a situation like this?
And with that question, her mind drifted beyond the immediacy of the blade. Her consciousness oozed between the thorny iron grip and dripped into the present. The others were in trouble. They needed her.
What was she doing?
[Bond destabilized…]
[Bond connection terminated in 10 seconds.]
[10]
[9]
Bella stared at the numbers. The voice said she could only remove the sword by failing in combat. Yet now it was ending the connection? What did that mean for her?
Iron brambles ground against her bones.
A sense of reluctance oozed into her mind. It came not from her, but from the blade.
[7]
She directed her mind toward the system. Ideally, she would ponder this question over hours. Study and weigh up the choices. But she had mere seconds. Had to act on instinct.
And so her mind returned to her hometown. To her family packing their car and driving away from a devastated farm. Driving away from a way of life destroyed.
She chose Drought.
[Congratulations! Isabella Moore has successfully bonded with The Sword That Cut Down The Sun.]
[Congratulations! You are the first person on this world to bond with a Runeblade. Title awarded: Doomed (+5 to all attributes for each unlocked rune soaked in blood, -5 to all attributes each day the blade goes thirsty).]
Cold energy twisted through her, as though the brambles froze within her flesh. The blood oozing from the cuts in her skin congealed. Hardened. Flaked away. The blade whispered in her mind, and she could move.
Power inside her, like the first rush after the plane left the Safe Zone.
She stood and surveyed the graveyard. How much time passed while the sword invaded her? Seconds? Minutes?
Anton and Zoe fought the bone monstrosity with scavenged weapons. It swiped and thrashed. Anton dodged like the wind, and Zoe shouldered each blow she could not avoid. But despite her Might, they knocked her to the ground. Anton leaped from a swinging hand up towards the monstrosity’s head. A rocketing skull exploded, and he spun away in a cloud of green fire. Their blood spattered the dusty grass.
They needed help.
Her sword weighed nothing. An extra limb with veins connected to her brain and her heart. Blood pumped through the Rune of Drought and a nauseating wave of heat pulsed from the iron. The air shimmered. Warped. The blade grew hot, but it did not burn her. It could not burn her.
Not yet, came a haunting whisper. She ignored the threat.
She charged forward and screamed out the pain of the bonding, the rage at her situation, the terror of death.
The monstrosity’s tail lashed at her. She swept up the blade. Pulsing heat met mirrored bone, and the bone shattered.
She cut at the creature from behind. The blade devoured moisture. Grass and bone alike crumbled in an expanding sphere of heat. The monstrosity rotated on itself. Legs facing one way as its pelvis twisted about. Four clawed arms like combine harvesters fell from the sky.
She swung, she parried. Her rage would cut down the sun, but she was only one woman. She was only level one.
A skull-tipped finger pushed past her guard and bit into her stomach. Teeth chomped away at her flesh. The force of the blow knocked her away, but the skull detached and continued chewing. Green fire singed the wound. She screamed and struck with the pommel. The skull shattered, but it had bought the time it needed.
Bella looked up and saw a boney foot raised to stomp her.
###
Zoe watched with wide-eyed dread. The monstrosity raised its foot high. A barbed heel stomped down on Bella. The other woman rolled, but not fast enough. The heavy foot smashed her leg under its mammoth heel. Bone snapped. Jutted through flesh. Bella screamed like an animal.
The sound wrenched through Zoe’s guts.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to keep them alive. Blood flowed from her wound. She felt lightheaded, woozy, and tired. So goddamn tired. A dozen punctures in her shoulder from flaming shrapnel. The boney pieces dug deeper with each breath.
Anton limped up to her. One eye swollen shut. Left arm limp.
“Let’s run,” he said. “We can make it to the gate while it's distracted with her.”
Zoe stared him down. Did he think they would make it by themselves? If this was the beginning of the dungeon, what would the rest be like?
“We aren’t leaving anyone.”
“Fine,” he spat blood. “You said you had a plan?”
“Do you think you could reach its head? Run up its arms or something?
He looked at her like she was crazy. Even without the look, that’s how she felt.
Down to her last few Skein, she had to make something work, or she would pass out and never wake up. She beckoned him closer.
“How much do you weigh?”
“What? Why?”
Zoe grinned.
“I’m going to toss you.”
If she was crazy, then the universe was crazy. Best go out swinging, and swinging hard.