“Damn it Caldor!” Her lengthy, braided, blonde mohawk calmly waved as she smashed her fist against the metal barrier, in stark contrast to her explosive mood. I swear it’s every other excursion that this dingleberry gets stuck in some stupid Larawe trap, she thought. A few moments ago, no more than 10 minutes, Fiannah’s excursion partner, the Lens Caldor, went investigating some oddity he had spotted ahead of them. Only for the passage to shut behind him, stranding them away from each other in the hostile ruins of the ancient laraweians; her opening runestone also didn’t work to unlock it. Ok, chill out for a second. I can probably go around the other way and intercept him, it’s fine, he’s fine, the Cleaver thought. Ushering her floating lightsource, Fiannah walked back to the only available path that led further into the ruins and took a deep breath.
“Caldor!’ She tried calling him again. Silence. That would be too convenient. Unbuckling a small pocket on her belt, the Lady Cleaver took a short metallic cylinder that had the steel rune carved upon it. It faintly reflected the light of the floating orb. Uttering an incantation she had uttered uncountable times before, almost as if repeating a prayer, “Stakalecere”. She stared at the metal rod and held it up in front of her. The molecules of various gasses in the air were transmuted into steel, until the tiny tool became a long metallic staff, with several blue-tinted runes etched on each end. Light sparks flew from both extremities. Ready to go, Seb?
Tapping ‘Seb’ against the floor in a rhythmic manner, letting more sparks fly more out of boredom than anything else, she marched forward; that is, until noticing an unfamiliar sound coming from the chamber right in front of her. Like a prowling dire wolf she repostured herself, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. She quietly touched one end of Seb to the corner of the corridor she stood upon and whispered: “Drebspranké”, and a shimmering blue sigil with lightning runes appeared slightly floating against the wall. The whole process barely made any sound but whatever was within the room before her had likely heard something. Shit, it’s coming this way. She heard the sound of what must have been several feet pattering through the orichalchum floor.
Her mind racing, she ran through the list of possible creatures these steps could belong to. Crawler hatchling, fire mantis, khalarkuul, crop pla- Her internal monologue was rudely interrupted by a leap and the clicking of a pair of sideways external mandibles exhibiting fearsome fangs, belonging to a chunky and slimy creature almost as long as Fiannah’s imponent 190 centimeters of height. It had four legs punctuated by single sharp claws along its pudgy body, and a long fleshy tail that ended on an offensively large stinger. “Yup! Crawler hatchling! Drebstrekken!” After shouting another incantation she slammed Seb’s other end on the ceiling above her, and a similar blue sigil was summoned floating just underneath it. A bright arc of blue lightning shot between the two runic markings, striking the hatchling square on its body. Please stay down will ya? Fiannah took a few steps back and started setting the string of her wrist mounted dart launcher. A transparent projectile was automatically loaded into the weapon’s chamber, was filled with an opaque brown fluid by the device, and an almost silent click indicated it was ready to be fired.
Before she could properly aim at the creature, it flipped rightside up, dead skin flaking off its burnt body. Faster than her reaction time, the crawler again pounced at Fiannah, this time using the weight of its stinger to propel itself at her. The tight space of the corridor didn’t allow her to dodge or block properly, and her left thigh was deeply perforated. “Asshole!” She exclaimed, knowing it didn’t understand nor care. Using the tail lodged to her leg as leverage, she stepped on it with her left foot, immobilizing the creature. Its writhing made the appendage deal even further damage to Fiannah’s leg, causing her to grunt wordlessly. Falling to her right knee, she let go of the lightning staff and grabbed a knife she kept in the inside of her boot, jamming it to the crawler’s side and sliding it back with one fluid motion.
The monster let out a deafening screech as a reaction to being brutally gutted. For a few more seconds it struggled, until finally its limbs went limp to its side and warm wine-colored entrails spilled onto the floor. Fiannah sat down with the stinger still deeply embedded in her flesh. Ok, at least it didn’t come through the other side was her first thought, panting. She pulled down her scarf from over her mouth and spit on the crawler’s unreactive corpse. “If your meat didn’t taste like death I’d at least have gotten something from this interaction… Bitch.”
Biting down on the handle of her knife, Fiannah searched her bag for a device made from a white polymer. Inside it sloshed a dull gray liquid. It had an astoundly thick needle on its front and a trigger near its handle. Pressing harder into the knife with her teeth, she grabbed the tail with her left hand, and inserted the needle directly into the wound with her right. She squeezed the trigger and pulled the stinger simultaneously, grunting through clenched teeth. I’ll never get used to this. The grey liquid instantly hardened into a gel that filled the wound’s cavity, stopping the bleeding and accelerating her natural healing. With this she would still have to deal with the continuous ache but she wouldn’t die of blood loss and would recover much sooner. Also I was quick enough to let this disgusting goop absorb the venom, that was close.
She slowly and painfully pushed herself to her feet, bending to grab Seb again. She used it now as a walking stick, at least while the pain still burnt through her leg. Despite the cold air of the laraweian structure, a bead of sweat slid down her brow. If he’s not dead by now he will be once I get to him. She limped towards the room the crawler was in beforehand. It appeared to be some form of lab, or study room. Welded to the southeast corner was an opened cylindrical cage that stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling. Three meters, she took note. Also welded to a wall was a workbench, covered with all sorts of shattered glassware, doubtlessly used for chemical compounds. Like all ruins, this room was mostly covered by a thick layer of dust, except for the spots through which the crawler hatchling had likely moved. She knew that it was probably looking for food or its brood mates. "Wonderful, there's more of you." She said, her sarcasm wasted on the dead crawler.
She approached the table, and started looking for anything that could give her or Caldor, once he examined it, more information about this structure. Eventually she found a bundle of parchment, in messy handwriting. Unlike most doors and passageways, this didn’t use runes, but the Laraweian script, which thankfully was similar enough in root to Exgrunnish that she could guess at what most things meant; with the help of the dictionary in her tablet. Thank The Wrathful Eye for these nerds. Before she could start her word games though, she heard more movement to one of the two doors leading out of the lab. Immediately she put the notes back down and held Seb with both hands, lowering her center of gravity and trying to lean more of her weight on her right leg. She stood there silently, analyzing the sounds of footsteps. Soft. Two feet. Hooves, leather or both. She could think of one creature other than a human that could produce such sounds. What in the Torments is a satyr doing here? But a satyr did not walk through the door. Actually what did walk through it was the only thing she didn’t consider, because it would make no sense. “A man?”
This impossible man had two legs, two arms, a head and long, slick, straight black hair. Almost as long as Fiannah’s. His skin was dark gray and his sclerae were a deep indigo color, so were his irises, contrasted by a sharp white pupil, this all made his eyes look like small black holes. He wore no shirt but a waistband made of ocre fur and golden-brown leather. His pants were black fabric almost perfectly skintight; and he wore black leather boots. Along his wrists and up to the middle of his forearms were deeply scarred runic brandings. Cuts or red hot metal? Fiannah asked herself. He was also holding the severed heads of two crawler hatchlings in either hand. Before she could even finish examining him the man dropped the heads and spoke, in sounds she half understood. “... Magic… Ours… Say… Spells?” Were the words she could half discern.
Fiannah stood there, stunned, for much more time than would be deemed polite. Still, the man waited patiently for her response. "Excuse me?" No one else got a permit for this place, this guy shouldn't be here. She tried rationalizing how the figure before her could possibly be real, and so, during their mutual silence she kept wondering: Crawler venom doesn't cause hallucinations, even if it did I already got rid of that anyway.
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Finally the man spoke again, once more she could only parse a miniscule portion of what he said: "What… Here… Runes… Way?"
The second sentence made even less sense than the first, but Fiannah tried communicating again. "Look buddy, alright, I'm Lady Cleaver Fiannah of Yastra or whatever and I got a permit for these ruins yeah?" She flashed the official piece of paper that meant she had a right to be there. "Where's yours? You from any guild?" The man cocked his head in confusion, Fiannah imagined that he understands me as much as I do him, he isn't just saying gibberish. Suddenly a realization dawned on her, she glanced at the parchment on the workbench. "Hold on, how… Are you speaking Laraweian?"
The grey being's indigo eyes lit up in recognition, and also making a realization he concocted a shorter sentence, trying to convey information more directly: "Larawe, yes, name Durkhann, you… Surface?"
Again she was stunned. No fucking way. This can't be happening, but if it is, Caldor would be losing his shit even more than me if he were here. "I don't understand, aren't your people extinct? How have you been living down here for so long without us knowing about it?" Durkhann didn't respond, he just kept staring at her with his black hole eyes. Slowly he started walking towards her.
She didn't move, even with all her thoughts in a whirlwind she was trying to keep her guard up. Now about two meters away from her he talked again: "Vocalization, spell, rune, how?"
"Vocalization? What? You mean my magic?" Fiannah was trying to make sense of the man's scattered meanings.
He nodded "Yes, you speak magic, runes work." His sentences are getting a little more coherent. This guy's a fast learner.
The lady shrugged "I mean, yeah, we got incantations. The runes you guys made are really strong, but they're super cranky and unpredictable, so we supplement them with our formulas."
Durkhann struggled to interpret what she said, after a moment of silent contemplation he spoke again: "Surface people, thieves."
Fiannah couldn't help but laugh: "Ha! Thieves? Buddy, as far as we knew, you had all been dead for millennia. We didn't 'steal' shit, we just found it." The man's eyes shone subtly, and Fiannah noticed the runes carved to the flesh on his arms glow red. Before she could lift Seb to defend herself, Durkhann's left fist was thrusting towards her torso, and the runes sent a wave of energy pummeling through Fiannah's body.
She was thrown barreling through the lab, her body tumbling backwards while she tried to recover. She reached for her bags, only to notice that they weren't on her anymore as the stranger had clutched them with his free hand. Of her possessions, only Seb, her dart launcher, her knife, and her light orb were still within reach. She tried to grab Seb and shoot a bolt of lightning at Durkhann, but whatever he had done to her left her completely devoid of any strength whatsoever. Damn, are all the other laraweians this dramatic?
As the ancient man left the room, Fiannah stared intently and tried commiting as many of the man's runes as she could to memory (the ones she had never seen). There were a lot of runes, and she failed to grasp most of them in any capacity. The ones she could memorize were only vague shapes mixed with some of the elemental and energy based runes she used as well. She couldn't spot more details from how far she was and with her vision fading. Before passing out on the hard and cold Orichalcum floor, she noticed he had a large and painful looking cut scar that ran across his entire back.
– – – –
"You… bitch…" Lady Fiannah woke up, more sweat dripping onto the cold floor. She painfully got up, grabbing Seb and using it for support like a crutch. Her leg was still killing her; and now, so was essentially her entire body. Everything from the neck down felt burnt and numb at the same time. Two rooms, I made it two rooms and I'm already in this state? Torments… She used her arms to pull herself up on top of the workbench, sitting down next to the parchment notes.
She placed her staff on top of the notes and reached for her little tablet, then remembering that it had been stolen. She sighed deeply and thought: I wonder how many turns ago Durkhann knocked me out. He's probably way too far for me to sprint after him. This meant all her rations and other weapons were unavailable at the moment, and having been here for most of the afternoon, she was starting to feel the hunger and thirst.
Turning her head back to the corridor she came from, Fiannah saw the crawler hatchling's corpse, still in the same pathetic state she had left it in. I should have been a runic weaponsmith or something, this gig blows. She limped towards the dead monstrosity, and with her knife carved a big chunk from its flesh. It had a deep purple-ish color, and even in its relative freshness, already smelled sweet and rotten; she couldn't help but remember the words she spoke to the corpse after killing the creature. Damn, did I have this coming?
Slowly she made her way back to the work bench, and holding the piece of meat on her left hand, used her right to open the clasp on her dart launcher, grabbing five empty darts and placing them on the work surface. They rested on top of the bundle of parchment while her attention turned back to the meat.
Alright now, how am I supposed to clean this? The lady, when she was younger, learned how to properly butcher and prepare the meat of cattle and monsters hunted near her family's estate. But she'd never had the opportunity, or desire to butcher crawlers, nothing about them seemed remotely appetizing. Oh well. How bad can it be?
Fiannah clutched her knife and tried her best to remove any excessive fat or conjunctive tissue she could spot. She felt this was a mostly futile ritual, but also thought that she couldn't in her right mind eat this fucking garbage without at least some preparation. Finally the crawler flesh resembled something possibly edible. Fiannah sighed and skewered it with two of her darts, then used the remaining projectiles to set up a makeshift structure to suspend the other two, like a spit roast. She looked at her contraption and laughed.
"Sorry to use you for this, dude. I hate it as much as you do." She told the staff Seb, while holding it with both hands. "... Drebbspranké", she said, tapping the tip of the weapon underneath the sustained meat. The blue sigil formed itself again. Then, looking up at the wall, she tapped the other end to it, repeating the other incantation as well: "drebbstrekken." She quickly stepped back and watched as the lightning passed through and scorched the meat, to the point of being way beyond well-done. Better safe than sorry.
The Lady Cleaver ate the disgusting lump of protein with surprising voracity. Her recent injuries and use of runes made her awfully hungry. By the end of her meal, she didn't feel satisfied, but at least had replenished some of her energy. She rested her weight on the workbench letting out a deep sigh and closing her eyes, meditating. She tried to listen. Listen to the ruins, to Caldor, to Durkhann the impossible man. To anything.
She could hear her heart beating and her leg throbbing in synchrony. She could hear the very slight breeze that ran through the ruins. She could hear a few of her ribs uncomfortably grinding against themselves, likely cracked. One blow and he cracked my ribs, nice. Finally she could hear more sounds from far deeper in the ruins, echoing into the next room, so probably not too far from her current position.
Again, like a dire wolf, she assumed a low stance with Seb, and slowly but firmly made her way out of the lab, after gathering her tools and another lump of crawler meat. She slid into the next hallway and turned left to check her corner. Fiannah wasn't easily startled, but this had been, as she would later put it, "the mother of all shitty evenings", so she was a bit on edge. As her light orb illuminated the semblance of a humanoid statue, Fiannah jumped and cursed "TORMENTS!"
The statue didn't reply, it just stood there, as most (not all) statues ought to do. But this statue did look… odd. What is this doing here?
She dropped her guard and started examining the piece of art, taking note of every detail in her mind.
The figure represented in the stone seemed to be a diminutive woman, in her late twenties to early thirties, with a bob cut. Her clothes seemed to match Durkhann's in style, but seemed more ragged, maybe older. They really nailed the old leather texture on this shirt, huh.
As she walked around to the back of the woman, she realized that her top only covered the front of her body, not her back. And across her back, an enormous rune Fiannah didn't recognize was carved. It seemed however to be a combination of several other runes the lady did know. She scratched her chin, emulating Caldor whenever deep in thought, and shrugged. No harm in trying, right? Seeing that one of the constituent runes of the carving on the woman's back was similar to her opening runestone, Fiannah moved it over the statue's back, which, much to her surprise, seemed to work. Small pieces of the statue started spontaneously crumbling, then slightly bigger ones, then chunks. The whole thing seemed to be disintegrating before Fiannah, turning to dust something she could have taken back to the surface. All she could muster in response was: Fuck.