The end of all things turned the last page and closed the book. Tears whelled up in the young man's eyes, and Runihara clutched the story to his heart. "Oh, Sophie. He doesn't deserve you."

A small, red blowfish swam down from the hollowed-out dome and came to a stop in front of Rune. "Argeius Callios As'shmere the Eighth, you've come to me in my hour of need." Rune pressed his hands to his cheeks, and his eyelashes fluttered delicately. "Alas! But I'm ashamed to show such a disgraceful sight to your, um-"

The blowfish eyed him judgementally as he quoted from memory.

"…enchanting and glowing seventeen eyes. You are of the great puffer constellations of legend. You are too soft for the world, too gentle. From your mouth, I only wish for my name. From your-"

Pfffffffffftt-

A jet of steaming air hit him in the face. And Argeius decided now was the time to expel all the debris piled up for half a year. Dust, rotten herbs, rocks, and various things that were no longer recognizable, pelted Rune directly in the face. It knocked him over and spiraling out of the armchair. Rune hit the ground with a quiet oomph. But, he still proudly held his book out of the blast.

He coughed and spit some gravel at the smug blowfish, "You don't appreciate me. Everything I do for this family is-Oh."

Maybe it was the almost imperceptible tremor that he noticed first, or perhaps it was the potent scent of goofberries soaking his clothes or the rapidly increasing heat and wetness of his backside. Or, last but not least, the shrill screaming that came from a letter that had been hovering above his head for some time now.

The cauldron placed in the center of the spacious cavern had an oddly-scented mixture bubbling over in waves, and he sat in the middle of the growing puddle.

Runihara had always been a person of circumstances. Some would use the word unfortunate. While not necessarily wrong, it implied there wasn't a choice actively being made. Really, in that way, he was quite amazing. A young man who inspired irritation at first glance. If one were to question as to why, they might find themselves at a loss but at a surety as well. Therefore, while this might have bothered a lesser person, for Runihara, this meant his day had started. He sighed and stood up, bedraggled and inconvenienced.

But.

The sequel to his precious darling layed discarded on the side table. Maybe he should find a clean cloth to mop up the potion or, for that matter, see what his father wanted.

His fingers itched towards the book.

Ding!

The letter floating above Rune's head shrieked one last time before errupting into flames and setting the young man's bad haircut on fire. He froze. His black hair frizzed, and he felt heat closing in on all sides. So he followed his first instinct, and stuck his head into the boiling cauldron's waterfall.

In a quite unrelated matter, that morning, Rune's father found it in himself to prepare the high-grade hair growth potion for a pair of ladies that had an accident with twelves apples and an understandably angry rat.

There is a fascinating thing about the rare ingredient in hair growth potions, beetlebugs. When over-boiled, the beetlebug's shell cracks rather than grows soft and unpenetrable, releasing small amounts of ignition fluid stored in their shell from their many crimes. It's harmless under all circumstances except one, unless flame is directly applied to the ignition fluid mixture while it is in a state of having reached its boiling point. It was an incredible discovery that won't be recreated for another era. Because, as the half-dead alchemist will point out, who tries to set boiling water on fire?

Back to his regularly scheduled meltdown, Runihara thanked his fire-resistance as glowing orange flames shot out of the cauldron into a mushroom cloud billowing across the ceiling of his cave. The enormous black dragon painted there looked completely unharmed. Runihara hoped, dazedly, that the paint was fireproof. Otherwise, he didn't know what he had just created, if not fire.

The young man calmly placed the book in his hands back on the side table on top of the others. Then, Rune preceded to scream, running back and forth until the sizzling stopped

A startled bat screeched back and dropped down from the stalagmites into a large, blue voidfish swimming upside down. Roberta responded instantly, puffing up to her full bulk moments before she's punted to the ground.

"And thus…thus begins Roberta's death match with a bat twice the size as she. A harrowing crisis that...will put everything she loves on the line." Rune narrated, panting.

Ding!

Another flaming letter appeared above Runihara's head, and this time, the young man punched it. He hissed and rubbed his hand, the burning pain reminding him how this whole mess started in the first place. So he grabbed the letter out of the air, fanning it to put out the flames before it could fully turn to ash.

You didn't pack the bone marrow.

The note crumbled in his hand.

"'Don’t forget the bone marrow', I say."

The sardonic tone in the young man’s voice made even the hiding Argeius Callios As'shmere the Eighth roll his eyes at the familiar argument. Rune went to find everything he needed for the trek while dodging the bloody battle, muttering to himself the whole way.

“'I won’t forget, Runihara,' he says. 'If you don’t do it now, you won’t remember.' I say. ‘I won’t forget the damn bone marrow, Runihara,’ he says. "Are you sure you won't forget the bone marrow?’ I say. ‘Shut it, I’m not dead yet, Runihara. You can stop reminding me.’ he says.”

"But I'm the one who forgot to pack it. Even though. I offered, like the good, dutiful son I am, to go over everything when I actually -" Rune pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. Instantly regretting it, he coughed as the haze tried to suffocate him.

"Well," He muttered darkly, breathing in slowly, "It's not his fault he's more wrinkles than half-elf, I should be more forgiving with the feeble."

Ping!

A slip of paper popped into existence and stared him down a breath's length away from his face.

And my staff.

That wasn’t even worthy of a response. Wordlessly, Rune takes stock of the situation. The hair-growth potion had seeped into some nearby paper alongside some seed packets. They were hissing. The mushroom cloud didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon, so Rune just stamped out the spell circuit under the pot and called it good.

Roberta let out a despairing noise as she was tossed by the bat into the long, worn table pushed up against a wall. Glass vials fell one by one as the fighting grew even more savage. She left a streak of blood wherever she moved. Whether it was hers or the bats, was uncertain.

"Don't die on me, Roberta." There had to be a healing potion somewhere in the mess Rune and his father called home. Or, rather, Rune called it home. His father called it, “grow up quickly and leave.”

They meant the same thing.

After five minutes of nonconclusive searching, he finally reaches into a puddle of an experimental dimensional salve, name-still-pending, seeing if his dad hid it in there. Plenty, apparently. Many things of different shapes and textures brush against his hand. Something touched him back. Rune's hair rose visibly. He shivered, face twisting up. He shooed it away and kept searching until he was shoulder-deep in the dimensional hole.

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"Come on, come on, come on." The tips of his fingers finally touched smooth glass, and he tightened his hold on it, pulling it out carefully. When the glow of the oil lamp hit the liquid inside, it sent fractures of light everywhere, in ranges of color usually only seen natively from the canvas lands. Pinks, blues, gold, ruby red, emerald green, a shimmering opalescent formula.

It was…

Pretty.

Wonderfully

Inescapablely

Pretty,

pretty,

prettyprettypretty p r e t t y.

Another sound of shattering glass pulled Runihara from his reverie. Roberta cried in fury, and the bat was yeeted across the main cave. But her energy was flagging and Rune could see a deep gash running along her flank. With more and more urgency it became clear she could win but just barely, she would need…but…it was so pretty.

“Mine.”

Rune slapped himself with his free hand and winced, rubbing his stinging cheek. "And this is why shiny things stay in the pocket."

He only had a moment of shifting air before the brawling pair barrel-rolled right where his face had once been.

He didn't hate bats. Really, he didn't. There was just something about the tentacles that made him uncomfortable.

The destruction that followed the two was quickly gaining momentum, so Runihara stuck to the edges of the cavern. His bag of holding layed where he had left it earlier this morning. It was open, countless loose-leaf papers and writing journals overflowed from the opening. Each book of notes had the same words across the front. He slung his bag onto his back and slipped on his climbing gloves. Runihara grabbed the staff resting on his father’s chair and binded onto his back with its wrappings. The enchantments on it would most likely destroy his bag of holding and everything within a ten foot radius.

Roberta slammed her head straight into the bats back, between its wings, and it drops like a brick.

But quick thinking helped it twist and use the momentum to launch itself back into the air. It looked at Roberta, who was swimming around warningly.

They were both a mess. Blood was running into Roberta’s eyes, messing with her field of vision. The bat's wings had been torn, but the twelve-limbed beast didn't need wings to fly. Roberta slowed. She would pant if voidfishes could pant, bobbing wearily in the air.

Rune wasn't the only one to see it. The bat took advantage of the momentary weakness and launched at her, razor sharp talons raised to make a martyr out of Runihara's prized puffer. He grinned, already knowing how this was going to play out.

Roberta stared to the side with a hazy cast to her eyes, seemingly distracted by her wounds. When the bat was a foot from her, she flashed blue and released her inner air balloon. It shot her into a glide backward, graciously moving out of the way for the bat to meet its fate. The bat dived headfirst into the nice and soft wall, you know, like all mountains. And knocked itself out cold.

He smiled up at his puffer. Roberta blinked each of her seventeen eyes one after another and headbutted him. Hard.

"What? I wouldn’t have been able to do anything."

Roberta turned around, refusing to look at Rune.

"Oh, come on. You’re probably stronger than I am." He dumped the healing potion on the steaming puffer and hurried towards the mouth of the cave before she could bite. He took one last glace around at the overturned chair, the cauldron filling his home with smog, at the pooling water soaking into their belongings both important and not, a batch of seeds rapidly growing into something he didn't recognize, blood smeared across many surfaces.

“I’m sure this won’t have any consequences.” As that was completely obvious, he left.

Vines flowering with deep purple buds hung in the entrance like a loose wind breaker. They used to have a door until a much younger Runihara burned it down one too many times. So now, Rune just trims the wild life and idly hopes it doesn't come to life and strangle him in his sleep someday. Only one in many possibilities in which Runihara can't rule out.

Stepping through the purple vines and matching flowers, a small clearing opened up. It was a warm and bright morning, gofferhawks cawed from their nests in time with the hollow trees that reverberated the quiet laments of the wind. Its roots scattered across the mountain ledges, squeezing into every small crack it could find. If it were a person, it was like watching them hang from a cliff using only their fingertips. Impressive, really. Desperate, Rune thought. The trees sang, and Rune suddenly wondered what he was thinking about. There weren't any trees, Aizlyn would have burned them alive from the very first week of living there. Rune pretended the trees weren’t there. That happened sometimes.

Flowers of all shapes and sizes bloom brilliantly from their sun-drenched field. Grass blew with the wind, like a rippling mirage across everything before Runihara. It might have been a lovely place for children to play if it wasn't for the straight drop.

This was the sight Runihara has woken up and seen for the past ninteen years of his life. The place he learned to walk, then run, then fall thousands of feet off the cliff's edge that marked the end of that clearing. Rune shuddered at the memory. At least, that was also the day he learned to glide. A broken wing and a couple of bruised bones weren't a bad price to pay for the feeling of the first gust of wind hitting your wings. The way they pulled and stretched in a way he never felt before, then the way he suddenly understood how everything mattered. It was weightless, with all the weight of the world. Every fractional movement changed the world around him.

Runihara will forget many things but not that. He will remember that feeling until the person he was closes his eyes for the last time.

He blinked hard and tore his eyes away from the drop to the view. Rune and his father lived a little less than five thousand paces up the side of a mountain. A clearing wrapped itself around a sharp corner of the mountain.

One half of the view was just stone as far as the eye can see, and the other showed a valley, a small town just beneath. A poor spot for a town. The townsfolk themselves would say that before anyone else had the chance to. While the town's main export was limestone and negentropic stone, and there were plenty of it, making the town well off and surprisingly profitable.

But that's about where the positives of living in Dragon's Path end. The town's been here longer than Rune's half-elven father had been alive, which said something. Anyone could tell the people here were survivors. They held out against the dragons beyond all odds. Everyone called them arrogant fools, stupid humans, ignorant idiots. But the dragons were long dead, and there the town stood.

Who was laughing now?

Maybe it was the unpopulated rural feel of little to no trade outside of bigger towns and cities, maybe it was the inhospitable way of the very nature telling them to get lost, or the random murderous urges the local flora showed. Or the way you knew you walked into a graveyard the moment you took a step into this region.

But the answer was no one. No one was laughing.

"Win stupid games, get stupid prizes." Rune said, repeating an ancient elven saying, but then decidedly decided to unsay it. Runihara loved his town. Maybe it was silly; but some of his favorite memories were sitting next to his mother, legs swinging off the edge, his small hand next to her transparent one, watching the tiny people live their lives.

"Wouldn't it be nice..." Rune said suddenly. Whether it was supposed to be a question or a comment got lost halfway when the low rumbling started. Rune paused and strained to listen, spreading his hearing out.

Thud. A strike of thunder from impacting earth.

He winced, regretting that and pulling his sense of sound back in. It sounded like the falling of a large rock formation. "Not an avalanche. It would have made more noise if it was the inevitable wear of time unleashing its hold."

The young man had a habit of talking out loud. To himself? To the dead gods? To the tower in the sky? To the thing ever listening?

Well, now, some answers are found only in the end.

"I couldn’t hear the boulder scatter into pieces, but it was almost completely silent until it fell, which indicates an outside force or just my natural paranoia. Something cut through it? No, that's stupid. Unless it was a spell…"

Rune whole body jerked to attention, "Dad."

He took off in a sprint.

—

It used to be a city of dragons, carved into the sides of the mountain ranges. A peak was sculpted into a twisting tower, crumbling halfway. The steps to the top were precarious to Rune's eyes. He remembered having wings, he remembered perching up there for hours whenever he got into a fight with his father. Rune thought he would never forget that breathtaking view, but years passed, and a human-shaped man stared up at the outpost.

It was an old watch tower, the highest in the city proper. There were four watch towers carved into the summits of the much smaller mountains. Two had been worn down, the wide steps barely intact, cracked and weathered. Where one watch should have been, the entire peak was missing. The debris of the missing tower had long been destroyed and scattered. The last tower was the most intact, a rusted bell still hung and occasionally on windy days you’ll hear the ring of it echo back from unfathomable distances. Rune turned the bend, just a little farther, then we'll get to the…

“Huh?” Rune gaped, where the main tunnel leading to the city square had once woven its way through, the overhead structure had collapsed.

"That doesn't make sense. How do you crash half of a mountain without a sound?” Rune screwed his eyes shut and desperately searched for his father’s essence. Behind his eyelids was a void with dark purple web-like structures that were almost inperceptable unless he truly looked. He focused on the smell of preserved herbs that constantly followed his father and the look at his face when his was absorbed in making a new tome of spells, the sound of flipping pages and scratching when Aizlyn thought he was asleep. There his father was. The green, swirling pattern showed as clear as always. He focused on the color and saw the dark red lining of irritation. His heartbeat stopped beating as rapidly in his chest. Slowly starting to calm down, Rune rolled his eyes in a try for light-hearted.

"Yeah, yeah." He got closer to the ruined bridge uneasingly. What was he supposed to do? The only other path to his father led him on a two hour detour. He thought of the sequel waiting at home and sighed before trudging his way down the much, much longer path. The stone almost brushed his hair, and he kept wincing at the phantom sensation of almost hitting his head. Fumbling with his pack, he drew out an oil lamp. A shriek sounded from further down the narrow passage way, making him jump, and the case of matches in his hand scattered across the floor.

"That has to be a bat, r-right?" Rune gulped and started edging back where he came from, trying to step as carefully as possible

Thanks to his heritage, he could see pretty well in the lowlight. But down the tunnel, his line of vision abruptly ended at the sharp turn in the distance. This is why he hated this path.

He paused, straining his ears to pick something up.

There was a quiet dripping about fifty paces, and he felt a slight change in the air. Rune held his breath.

Ping!

A flaming letter appeared. A warmth quickly grew to a roaring heat next to his face, and his hair started to singe.

"No, no, no. That damn old man." The hairs on the back of his neck stood even higher.

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Then it went silent. I despise you. He mouthed at the letter but didn't move. There were some monsters that only chased if you ran in this area.

Time passed and nothing happened. Rune finally released his breath.

"It's fine. Everything's fine. Don't you see how fine everything is?" He felt his face heat up in embarrassment and quickly stooped to pick up the scattered matches. "Yup, all fine." He hummed to fill the utter silence.

Rune froze. Silence? The dripping.

It had stopped.

He didn't even think about it. He ran.

But his footsteps were the only sound chasing after himself. A cavern opened up ahead. It looked really similar to the main room of his and his father's cave.

He slowed.

It was much, much larger. Maybe it had been a courtyard because where his cave was enclosed, this one had an opening to the sky with a perfectly maintained garden. The statues were crumbling, and he couldn't make out what they were, but the garden was well taken care of. Three large trees were planted in a ring in the middle. The magnolia tree and cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the hole overhead had the perfect spot for sun. Shattered sunlight fell in between the branches dappling the ground in a shadow-ridden pattern. Rune didn't know what the third tree was, but it was breathtaking. The leaves were wildly colored, like the tree had been stuck in a bright and eternal autumn.

He carefully stepped over any plants, terrified on what would happen if he destroyed one. He had a strange suspicion that if he did, that would be the end of him. So he carefully stepped around them, wincing every time something snapped or the dirt shifted under his weight. Rune stood in the middle of the garden where a bench waited and sat. Face tilted to the sun like a pathetic plant.

Ksshhhht-

The earth shifted around him. His heartbeat rang alarm bells in his head. The rapid increase of his heart rate made him light-headed.

The trees tore themselves from the ground and rose. Higher. And higher. And higher. Rune gulped.

He didn't know where to look. He didn't know what to do. Danger, his senses screamed. He didn't want his back turned to whatever that was coming, but he was surrounded on all sides.

"Rune, you idiot." He says under his breath, almost pleadingly. His widened eyes followed the figures as it rose from the earth until he was enveloped in a massive shadow. Runihara looked up into the eyes of his childhood bullies.