Yesterday, I barely managed to find a cave before the heavy rain started to pour down. I collapsed to the ground, utterly exhausted, trying to catch some sleep, shivering in the cold, steaming dampness like a drenched kitten until I remembered I had a cloak in my backpack. The one I got in the castle.

It is an astonishing piece of equipment, enchanted to keep you warm and dry and something else impossible to make out. I have never seen some of the runes embroidered into it. There is nothing to do on this grey morning apart from watching the rain. The mana-laden fog rolls past.

Out of boredom, I am trying to decipher the note that came with the cloak. It says something about the cloak being a gift for some girl called Kelia, the niece of the mage, or something. To keep her warm once she starts her apprenticeship with some sage in some ridiculous named mountains. I think I read about them before somewhere. The note is nearly unreadable. How can a magician have such bad handwriting?

The suffocating, pungent, and musky stench of urine and wet hair drenching the cave in its sour tang reminds me that I am not alone. One of those pesky goats is standing at the cave entrance. Sheltering itself from the rain. A buck, watching me with beady eyes, blocking the way out with his body.

He watches me. I watch him. The walls around me start to groan. Something moves behind my back. We both freeze, rooted into place. A small bat flutters past us. It flies out into the rain but instantly turns around and darts past us to disappear into the darkness. The walls start to groan again. They shift, boxing me in, moving closer and closer like a wine press.

Enough of this nonsense! I search through my backpack until I feel the reassuring coldness of the steel of my dagger. I take a look at the glowing horns in front of me. My determination wanes. The walls rumble closer again. My heart spikes like a crazed drummer. I rummage through my backpack again until I get a hold of my crossbow. The walls shift again. With trembling fingers, I load one of my poisoned bolts and cock the string. The walls shift again, making me stumble, nearly making me pull the trigger by accident.

I finally point towards the buck and let the bolt fly.

It impacts with a wet thud, and the walls stop groaning. Echoes of the flightpath still linger in the air until they disperse into chilling silence. The buck watches me with forlorn eyes, seeming confused. A small trickle of blood paints his chest red, right below the throat. He wobbles drunkenly but does not fall asleep. Shit! I should have known the poison would not be strong enough. It is designed for tin-grade humans, not evolved magical beasts of whatever grade this buck may be. I watch him shake his head, trying to dispel the drowsiness he must be feeling, seemingly forgetting about me for the time being. Now or never.

I dart towards him and punch my dagger into his pulsing jugular. One of his horns crazes my forearm. Jarring vibrations pulse through my armbones and hammer into my shoulder joints. I jump back, cradling my numb arm, trying to dispel the lingering resonance that chaotically races through my chest. I need to get out of the way of the crazed buck. He wildly kicks and bucks and jumps around like a beheaded chicken, painting the walls in blood. His deep, anxious, bleating wails echo all over the place. Finally, he crushes his head one too many times against the rocks, and part of the ceiling comes down. He remains there, pinned in place until he slowly whimpers out.

I breathe out softly, massaging my numb arm. Horrified by the grotesque show. The blood trickles slowly into the ground. I should try to collect it. Magic beast blood is a substitute for imbued ink. Although, it is not supposed to last long before it goes bad. I rummage through my backpack to find my empty bottles before it is too late.

I fill both of my bottles to the brink. The blood still flows, even if the buck has ceased breathing an eternity ago. I should try to get everything I can from it. My supplies will not last long. Who knows where I can get more or if I will be able to hunt one of these buggers out in the open. I would love to cook a steak. The problem is that in this damp cave and the pouring rain outside, there will not be a single piece of dry wood to start a fire and cook or smoke the meat. The smoke from a fire would also reveal my position to those bastards who pursue me.

Can I eat some of it raw? I have heard that some mages consume the livers of mana beasts raw because it is supposed to maintain the potency, the mana, and the nutrients. Nausea assaults me only thinking about it, but I can not be too picky. I turn the goat over and reach down with my dagger to try to cut its belly open.

Instead of slicing smoothly, the blade drags, snags, and skips over the dense hairs and fibrous skin that refuse to yield cleanly to the inadequate edge, barely able to leave ragged cuts. I can feel the strain building up in my wrist with the irregular friction, demanding me to apply more force and push harder. Demanding to walk on the verge of slipping and losing control over the blade. I wish I had a dressing knife, not a dagger more designed for piercing than cutting. Maybe I do not have enough practice, or you need better steel to cut mana beasts. Finally, a whole section tears. My blade pushes through, accidentally piercing the stomach and drenching my hands and the goats inside in acid. Fuck! My fingers rummage through the warm intestines until I get hold of the slippery and gelatinous, palm-sized organ and cut it out. I run towards the cave mouth and hold it outside to let it wash clean in the pouring rain before it is too late.

After a few minutes, once the blood stops dripping, I give it a dubious look, not sure if I want to try it or not. My stomach rumbles. Yeah, I do not have a lot of options. The adventures of yesterday have left me ravenous. Well, it can not be any fresher. I close my eyes and bite down.

It is… It is not that bad. Much better than the rat skewers we roasted by the dozens in my childhood during harsh winters. A bit chewy and gamey, musky and sweet, leaving a metallic aftertaste with a hint of sourness once you swallow it down. I can feel the mana buzzing inside me, slowly absorbing into my stomach before flooding my core with a rush. I feel the earth and the stone, hard and ageless, warm but without care, a quiet observer. A bit of drowsiness muddles my senses, but the last remaining sleeping poison is too diluted. Or maybe there was not enough time for the liver to absorb a high enough dose to affect me much. I blink, a bit overwhelmed, just standing there until a gust of wind blows the rain into my face and makes me step back. Lightning crashes somewhere close, followed by roaring thunder.

I look back into the cave, over my attempt at butchering resembling a crime scene, and shudder. Life is hard. You need stubbornness to survive.

At least in this weather, those bastards chasing me will not be able to advance much either. What can I do to prepare myself for when it stops? I should check out that book about body runes I got. Maybe I can find something useful.

Even after just glancing through the introduction of the book, I feel like all my previous knowledge about runes has been thrown out of the window.

It speaks of the different components each rune can have; I need to take notes:

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

1- Gathering components: the swirly, round, mostly spiral-like parts. They collect ambient mana to make the rune function.

I always thought that it was the mana in the imbued ink that made a rune work, but no. The mana in the ink just carves a way, a guidance for other mana to follow.

2- Connecting components: mostly straight lines of uniform or variable thickness. They are used to connect every other runic component together.

3- Regulators: A lot of different forms, sizes, and shapes. They adjust the flow of mana to something steady and continuous that the rest of the rune can handle. This is important when designing runes that you want to be able to work under different ambient mana density conditions. To avoid mana overload and explosions.

4- Storage components: Like a cheap inbuild mana-crystal. They accumulate mana to be released later or altogether when you do not need a continuous effect but something to toggle on and off or designed for a single use. They are a bit fragile and may burn out after use.

5- Switches: Components that turn the rune on or off by feeding them a signal (a small trickle of mana).

6- Transformers: Tons of different shapes. The part of the rune that creates the magic effect from the mana it receives. They can create discrete or channeled effects depending on the type. They can be of fixed or variable intensity. It depends on the mana flow. Some discrete ones can be single-use if the effect they create is very intense. It depends on the material you engrave them in and the quality of your ink.

What I formerly thought a rune was. Trying to dissect my basic seal rune, I can even make out a lot of the parts the book speaks of. It has a very similar gathering component to one of the ones shown in the book, a regulator and a transformer, and not much else. Well, apart from the connectors.

I even understand now why the seal sound rune The Crow showed me is unstable. The problem is that the normal seal rune has a regulator tuned to the consumption of its transforming component. When you add another transformer to the mix, the regulator can not keep up, and the rune starts to consume the mana from the imbued ink until it is sucked dry and it sputters out. Well, at least that is my conclusion. The transformation between both runes works because if you follow each step in the order The Crow taught me to do it, there is not a single instant in which the rune stops working, risking it to overload and explode. You draw the new transformer right after the other transformer. Then, you finally connect them both, and with the last stroke of your brush, everything clicks into place. Well, for a while, at least. When you connect them like that, the second transformer is called a modifier. I wonder how The Crow learned how to do it.

It shouldn´t be that hard for me to create a real silence rune just by changing out the regulator from the seal sound rune.

I take a piece of paper and draw my idea out in goat blood. You need to end with the gathering component because you don´t want your rune to activate too soon when you are still drawing. I take a few steps back and try to hide behind a boulder, a bit anxious to see if it will burn up or explode.

Not even a second later, the blood fizzles. The rune starts to glow softly. I remain crouched behind the rock, brazing my knees, listening to my heartbeat. Still nothing, the paper remains there, emitting an ethereal blue hue. I slowly step closer, with tensed muscles, ready to dart away, but nothing happens. It seems stable. I hammer a stone onto the ground next to the paper. No sound reaches my ears.

It works! I created a rune! I created a runic talisman all alone.

Can I inscribe the rune on my body? Well, it seems that you can not, judging from the book. I´m not sure why exactly. The funny thing is that, after a lengthy introduction speaking about different rune components, the book says that the basic body rune doesn´t use nearly any of them. I am not sure why it listed them all, but I will not complain.

The typical basic body rune is very simple and can be very small. It has just two components. A variable intensity transformer, specific to the effect you want, and something called a feeder to replace the gatherer. Instead of gathering ambient mana, the rune works by feeding it a trickle from the mana you gather in your core. The faster you let your mana flow, the more intense the desired effect. And to stop, you just cut off the flow. There are much more complicated combinations you can use, but well, that is the base. In any case, any of them uses a feeder too.

Does this mean that it is dangerous to engrave a rune using a gatherer on your skin? Probably yes. Why else would you design a rune that uses up your internal mana if you could use ambient mana instead? There must be some risk involved.

Designing a new silence body-rune shouldn´t be that hard. Just attach a feeder to the first transformer and throw the gatherer and regulator out of the window. Simple, it´s only a 3-part rune, and connectors are not counted. I even know where all the connectors go on the seal and sound components of the rune.

The only problem is that I can´t make them work right now. To feed a body rune, you need to be able to expel mana externally, and that is something you can´t do until your core reaches Copper grade. And I´m still at Tin.

Maybe the best use of my time until the stormy rain outside relaxes would be to try to increase my cultivation. It can´t take that long in this mana-density. I´m eager to try those runes out.

I sit down in the back of the cave, cross-legged, straightening my spine. I try to tune out the splattering sound of the rain, the howling wind, and the acrid stench that remains in here. Breathe out. Let your thoughts go. There is no noise, no darkness, no carcass of a goat, only my pulsing core. It doesn´t work. I´m shivering. I pull the cloak over, bathe in its warm embrace, and close it before shifting away from the entrance to face the darkness. Better. I close my eyes. Slowly, all the distractions are washed away. My breath is like waves kissing the shore, bringing in mana, melting away everything else. The knot of anxiety in my chest I wasn´t aware of until now loosens up and unravels, to be washed away too. There is only the dense mana left, flowing through my being, sucked in by the vortex, by the spiral I started building into my core.

I take a deep breath and hold the mana-laden air in, letting it trickle into my core until it´s filled to the brim. Slowly, I take hold of the mana inside and shove it towards the end of my vortex, with a circular motion, increasing the pressure more and more until it snaps into place, making the spiral grow by a little bit. It´s almost like painting a rune. Focus! It´s not the time for distractions. I breathe out, and with the next breath I take, my core is full to the brim again. What in the seven hells? I can continue building my spiral without stopping for a moment. In my home city, I needed to wait more than a day for my core to fill up again between each try.

Entranced, I watch my vortex grow and grow. In what feels like less than one hour, I have advanced nearly the same as in all my 16 previous years of existence. The mana continues flowing into me without stopping. The new sections of my spiral are so smooth, so uniform. Compared to them, the rest seems like the work of an amateur, of a toddler, ragged and uneven, full of inefficiencies. It may as well be. I was a child when I started cultivating years ago. My first attempts were way too clumsy.

I´m going about this the wrong way. There is no sense in building up on my inefficient spiral. Before I can start doubting myself, I tear it down.

A stab of pain lances through my chest. I feel like somewhere below my navel is a raw open wound, throbbing, slowly closing with each ragged breath I take. The pain dissolves and fades with the waves until there is only a clean slate left, waiting to be built upon with each breath, each cycle. Slowly, my new vortex starts taking form, smooth and powerful, seamless, way denser than my first. I smile. The cave is suddenly cast in shadows. Is it getting dark already?

I feel something move at my back and turn around, coming face to face with a black panther. I freeze. The big cat hisses. Where is my dagger? Right beside me. But I don´t want to get close to that thing. Why didn´t I think of getting something larger, a weapon to keep beasts far away? A dagger may seem nice in a city, easy to conceal, and there is no problem in getting close and personal. But that beast is massive and has fangs and claws, and… He watches me tense and alert. No. She watches me. Her mammary glands are swollen. Does she have kitties? She watches me again, muscles rippling, like judging if it is worth it to get into a fight. She hisses again, then she catches the goat carcass by the neck and drags it out into the open. Disappearing into the soft drizzle.

“Fuck.” I mutter. I suck in the breath I forgot about with a whining gasp. “Fuck, I can´t stay here.”