They arrived at the Norbuik portal station an hour later, and after taking a detour to lavishly spend their money in the Norbuik mall, they flew back home on a storm platform. It was already late afternoon when they arrived home. Synové was still preparing dinner, while Unrid was busy in the garden, so after dropping off his things in his room, Aodhán released Varéc from his spirit and urged him to stay close before heading down to join Unrid in the garden.
Rather than fly off, Varéc settled on their roof, his tail dangling from the edge of the roof as he bathed in the light of the evening sun. Varéc’s presence would definitely call the attention of their neighbors and several reporters, but at this point, Aodhán was past caring.
Not long after Varéc settled on the roof, Aodhán heard the familiar click of a camera, and he turned to find the reporter he’d almost killed a few days ago staring at him with his camera half raised. The man paled and stumbled back when his gaze met Aodhán’s, but Aodhán just sighed and ignored him.
He made his way to the garden, and his eyes widened when he found a lush garden filled with color and life. Flowers waved gently in the air, their open petals shimmering with liquid as Unrid moved from mound to mound, watering each flower delicately.
The flowers were doing even better than he’d expected, despite the fact that he hadn’t watered or infused them with his vitality lightning in the last two days. He turned to the prime suspect, the hoe of growth that lay on the ground beside Unrid, and said, “I see someone else has taken over my job.”
Unrid looked up and snorted. “If anything, it’s more of a watered-down version of your skill, but I guess it gets the job done, and that’s all that really matters.” He wiped a few beads of sweat from his brow and grinned. “Welcome back. How was the party?”
“Chaotic.” Aodhán groaned as he walked towards the hoe and picked it up to scrutinize it.
“I bet. The papers have been wild.” Unrid chuckled, but his expression soured, and he collected the hoe from Aodhán. “I believe they now know about your artifact.”
Aodhán grimaced. It had only been a matter of time; in fact, he didn’t think they even believed him in the first place. He had no idea why he’d allowed that lie to get so out of hand.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Aodhán replied with a shrug. “The truth was bound to come out anyway.”
Unrid nodded and continued watering the mound of flowers beside him. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” Aodhán sighed. “The artifact has been safely tucked away, and I’m somewhat protected by the principal. I should be fine.”
Unrid shook his head, not liking the situation of things, but rather than dwell on something they couldn’t solve, Unrid changed the topic. “You should see the most recent paper of The Arcane Times. They think you’re aiming for the Blackwell’s heiress.” Unrid raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re doing?”
Aodhán grimaced as the memory of his dalliance with Imani and Meredith flashed across his mind. He shook his head. “No, absolutely not. We just danced.”
“Right.” Unrid grinned, and with that they both turned their attention to the flowers. Unrid handed him the shears, and Aodhán began trimming the garden. They worked in companionable silence for almost an hour, only speaking to comment on the amazing growth of the flowers at irregular intervals, and by the time they were done trimming, Aodhán willed a storm cloud into existence and called down rain. It was only a light shower, but when it was over, the flowers looked brighter and healthier. Varéc had taken off at some point, but Aodhán could still feel him in the sky, although he wasn’t visible in the clouds.
When they finished in the garden, they returned to the house and settled down for lunch, where Aodhán found a copy of the arcane observer, folded on the dining table. He picked it up and shook his head as he read through the very exaggerated tale of his relationship with Imani on the dance floor yesterday. He was a little worried about Lupin’s possible reaction to these news and would have loved to hear her opinion had they been speaking, but alas, he still hadn’t gotten any response from her.
Thoughts of Lupin led to lustful thoughts of Meredith, and Aodhán jerked as he forcefully dispelled the images from his mind. They refused to go through the feel of her hands, the softness of her lips, the sound of her—
"My, oh my, that is an intense wave of lust.” Aldric’s voice was like a bucket of cold water that snapped his mind back in order and sent the lustful thoughts scurrying. Aldric took the seat opposite Aodhán and grinned. “In all the time I’ve known you, this is the first time I’ve sensed lust so strong from you.”
Unrid raised an interested eyebrow and leaned forward to ask Aldric. “Tell me quick, is it the Blackwell girl? Are we going to be rich?”
“No!” Aodhán blurted out hurriedly and turned to glare at Aldric. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“This is exactly the place!” Unrid insisted excitedly as he urged Aldric to speak up. Aldric narrowed his eyes and grinned. “Mhm. There’s a lot of guilt jumbled with all that lust. Such a fascinating mesh of emotions.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Aodhán glared at Aldric. He didn’t understand his emotions concerning Meredith, and frankly, he didn’t want to. He already had Lupin despite their current situation, and he didn’t need the added headache. Perhaps if he ignored the emotion enough, it would fizzle out and die.
Aldric, though, didn’t get the memo, and as his grin widened, Aodhán decided that it was time to go. He rushed out of the dining room and up the stairs just as Aldric spoke. “What a nice little pickle you’ve gotten yourself into Aodhán. Your emotions—”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Aodhán slammed his door shut before Aldric completed his statement. He focused on his hearing and pulled his focus away, effectively limiting his range to his room. Aodhán sighed and scrunched his face in embarrassment. He wasn’t just embarrassed because Aldric had sensed his messy emotions, but because he had hoped to not even address the feelings in the first place. He had hoped for it to simply die and wither, but now he realized how foolish that was. He should have known that it would be impossible to keep his emotions a secret with Aldric around.
With nothing else to do, Aodhán took out his note on runic theory and began practicing the sixth rune, RAIDHO, the rune of space and distance. He practiced for hours until he finally perfected it. The runes came easily to him now, barely requiring more than a few hours for him to perfect, and Aodhán couldn’t wait to perfect them all. Done with the sixth rune, Aodhán moved on to the seventh, LUMUS, the rune of light.
This one barely even took an hour, and with a wide grin, Aodhán dove into the next. He was on a winning streak, and despite the already late hour, he wasn’t feeling sleepy yet.
The eighth rune, KENAZTH, was the rune of air and wind. It was much more complex than the rune of light.
Aodhán spent the next few hours practicing, skipping dinner in his bid to perfect the rune before midnight. Daruk and Aldric dropped by at intervals, but Aodhán barely paid them any mind. The rune of wind was very important to him because it was a major aspect of his element. What was a storm without wind? The main reason why he wanted to perfect the wind rune though was so he could link it with LAGUZ, the rune of water. Obviously, linking runes was still above his current ability, but Aodhán was just so curious as to what such a combination would produce. He doubted it was enough to create a storm cloud, but what if it was?
He frowned as he made a mistake and restarted the rune for the umpteenth time. As he drew, his mind drifted again, and he wondered what rank a storm rune was anyway. It wasn’t among the initiate runes, so perhaps it was an advanced or grand rune.
By nature, the storm was extremely complex, made of several aspects and elements, such as lightning, which was an advanced rune, water, darkness, wind, sound, and several other elements or concepts that he couldn’t bother listing. In fact, now that he thought of it, it was extremely doubtful that the linking or merging of the runes of wind and water would produce a storm rune, but Aodhán was still excited to see what he might come up with.
It was an hour past midnight when Aodhán finally perfected the wind rune, and he slumped in his chair with relief. His fingers ached from the constant drawing, and his head pounded painfully, yet Aodhán grinned widely. He had done it and was finally close to experimenting, but as much as he wanted to dive into that immediately, he was tired. He hadn’t slept the night before, and his eyes were heavy.
He closed his book and sighed before taking time to reply to all the messages Andrew, Imani, and even Meredith had sent to him. Andrew’s message was easy—just a quick question on a skill he was creating—but Imani’s was more complex, despite the fact that it was only a single sentence.
We need to talk.
Aodhán didn’t want to talk, but he knew he at least owed her some sort of explanation for his actions yesterday. Not truthful ones obviously, but at least he needed to give her something. Aodhán sighed again, feeling even more weary than he did five seconds ago. It was annoying that despite his best efforts, he always found himself lying again and again.
He left the text pending for now and moved on to Meredith's, which was much simpler: “Can’t wait to see you at the academy so we can pick off where we left off.”
Aodhán grimaced. Perhaps he had been hasty to think this message was much simpler. He stared at the message for a few minutes before simply dismissing the screen. He would respond to the messages tomorrow after his brain cells have returned to peak capacity.
Varéc returned a moment later with a golden core held between his fangs. Aodhán grinned and accepted his usual bribe. It was a Tier 22 evolved solar core that he couldn’t absorb, but that didn’t matter as he could easily exchange it for money. Varéc returned to his spirit after that, and Aodhán went to sleep.
The next morning after breakfast, Aodhán tended to the garden and even infused the earth with another torrent of {Elemental Lightning—Green}, just for good measure. When he was done, the garden practically oozed with vitality and a beauty far above the ordinary.
It was Saturday, but Unrid and Synové had gone to work, so they had the whole house to themselves. Aldric had sequestered himself away to meditate while Daruk was busy working on a new skill in his room.
Aodhán had a hundred things he needed to do, but the runes came first, and with barely restrained excitement, he took out his practice note and prepared to link his first set of runes. Professor Caldwell was yet to teach them how to link runes, but ever since she’d mentioned it, Aodhán had begun reading up on the topic.
Basically, there were two ways of joining runes. One was through the use of links to create a step-by-step activating script, while the other was a merge, which involved the complete combination of two or more runes to create another more complex rune. It was in this manner that advanced and grand runes were created.
For example, the complete combination of two initiate fire runes produced a single advanced fire rune. The same applied to the complete combination of two different runes. For instance, the merge of an initiate fire and earth rune should produce a single advanced Lava rune.
However, Aodhán was still too inexperienced to begin merging runes. The process was extremely dangerous, and all the books he’d read on the topic warned against attempting it without supervision. For this reason, Aodhán decided to hold off on a merge for now and tackle the linking first.
The linking of runes was a much simpler process compared to a merge, as it simply involved joining two or more runes together. That meant that if he linked a light rune to a darkness rune, it would activate in a step-by-step manner rather than as a whole. The light rune would activate first, filling the room with light, and then the darkness rune would activate, plunging the room into darkness.
The linking process was used in the formation of scripts and was extremely useful in runic engineering circles. Due to his progress with scripting runes, learning to draw the links and activation circles was a walk in the park. It only took him a few hours to learn, and with that, Aodhán was finally ready to experiment.
First, he drew KENAZTH, the wind rune on the left side of his note, left a bit of space for the runic link, and then drew LAGUZ, the water rune on the right. After perfecting both runes, he consulted his textbook and meticulously began drawing the link. The link was a simple line made complex by a series of twirls and curves that acted as a sort of leash that attached itself to several points on both runes. It only took Aodhán two trials to get it right, and with growing excitement, he linked the entire script to an activation circle.
The activation circle was the single, most uncomplicated rune he’d ever seen, and with a simple infusion of willpower, he jump-started the script. Immediately, the air trembled as the essence of wind and water began swirling above the note. They funneled into the runic script, which began glowing with a cloudish blue hue. Aodhán watched the process with fascination; his earlier reluctance to activate any runes without supervision is now forgotten.
The script charged slowly, glowing brighter as it neared its maximum energy capacity, and then it exploded, ripping his practice note to pieces and showering him with a torrent of ice cold water.