Runeblade-Chapter 296B3 : Rematch, pt. 1

Returning to their trek across the sand-buried city, Kaius passed over empty dunes with a new degree of focus — now aware that lethal threats may lay hidden under the sands at any point.

The suns slowly moved over the horizon, only further confirming in Kaius’s mind that it was no mere illusion that had recreated the open sky under the ground. Step by step they drew closer to the far off building. With Truesight, he could now see the building in a decent amount of detail.

Unlike some of the other ruins he had spotted, it was no manor sized protrusion — barely larger than the small spire that had housed the portal they had entered from. Considering that his Champion sense consistently pulled him towards the closest larger structures, it gave him hope that the league’s off building was what they were looking for — the entrance to the next biome.

The Temple-palace of Hyythenal wasn’t the worst as far as biomes went, but he was more than eager to get out of it. Beyond the discomfort of scorching heat and fine grained sand that seemed determined to worm itself into every unmentionable crevice he owned, it was simply poorly suited to their needs.

Sure, the ruinbringers were solitary monsters, but they were also rare. They’d been crossing the sand for hours now, and they’d only encountered one. Impossible to track and sense as they were, they had no way to consistently work on hunting the beasts for levels, and they would be almost forced to confront them on unequal terms.

Moreover, they were Elite, large, naturally armoured, and their tails were a lethal threat that were incredibly difficult to survive.

He’d much prefer more frequent, but comparatively fragile monsters, especially in a biome where his and Kenva’s tracking and ambushing experience could be brought to bear.

At the very least, the open sand and low concentration of enemies allowed them to make good time as they walked towards their target. Every league they put between them and the entrance way increased the difficulty that any followers would face if they wanted to track them.

Skills did much, especially in the second tier, but Kaius suspected that with a week-old trail and their tracks being erased by the constant low wind there would be more than a few headaches if they were followed. That went double if they were lucky enough for the biome to reset before the portal opened.

Huffing as his feet sunk into the ground, Kaius forced himself up another dune. Even with his scalemail repairing in his spatial storage — he didn’t see too much risk in going predominately unarmoured, what with the ruinbringer punching through his defences like they were made of paper — he still struggled to get more than a modicum of traction on the sand.

Reaching the peak of the rise, Kaius shaded his eyes with one hand — surveying the landscape for any unlikely changes.

He locked on immediately to a ruin nestled in a depression, only a few hundred long-strides to their left — it would have been hidden from view until they’d gotten close enough to see past the dunes that guarded it like silent sentinels.

It was as large as a manor, with wide stone verandas that swooped around its exteriors, covered by large curved awnings and a pyramidal roof that was a larger, more ornate cousin to the one that had capped their entrance room.

Kaius frowned — his Champion sense was still pulling him far off to the right. So it seemed that the larger buildings weren’t exclusively home to challenges he would much rather avoid.

A conundrum, one that he would have much preferred didn’t exist. On one hand, the building almost certainly contained depthsborn — likely the four-armed figures that Ianmus had identified. They might be a better and easier source of levels than the enigmatic ruinbringers.

On the other hand, the devil they knew was often the most preferable. They had no clue of the numbers, arrangement, or danger of whatever creatures would wait for them inside, and he was certain that they would be able to garner more levels on their way to the next biome.

He much preferred dealing with unknowns with another skill or two, and plenty more stats under his belt.

“Thoughts?” Kaius asked, nudging Kenva to grab her attention from her own scouting.

Following his nod, Kenva’s eyes roved over the structure, her head tilted.

“No Champion, I assume?”

He shook his head.

Running a hand through her hair, Kenva sighed. “I think we should probably leave it. As tough as the scorpions are, they are solo ambushers, and I doubt we have much chance if we’re forced to fight more than two things at once with our current levels.”

Kaius grunted in agreement. “That’s what I thought too — we push on, then.”

As much as his curiosity dragged at him to explore the strange spaces of the Depths to the fullest extent he could, Kaius knew it was the right decision. There would be plenty of opportunities to explore to their heart's content later. They just needed to get a little stronger first.

Continuing on, Kaius thoughts started to drift as he scanned their surroundings for threats.

Despite their confinement, they’d managed to grow far more than he would have expected in the last month — each of them earning new skills that they would have to develop and integrate into their kit. It presented a problem that would leave most delvers green with envy.

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Even with their meteoric rise, as a team they had regularly had down time where they could grow used to using their new abilities — both training with Rieker, and in their long stretches of relatively easy travel.

That option wasn’t available — not down here, where dealing with only a couple of deadly battles a day was light work. To make it all the more complicated, if their levels did rise as quickly as he expected — ‘Wall’ or no — they were only going to gain more skills. Hells, he and Porkchop were going to gain another after their next fight, and Kenva and Ianmus were likely to as well.

Leveraging those new abilities required active work, and would have to be carefully managed. A new Skill helped no one if they misunderstood its full capabilities and made a call that left one of them crippled or dead. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

He took a swing from his waterskin, making his way down the dune pace by pace.

It wasn’t all bad — power was power, and new Skills also meant they would have the levels to match. Rushing to the peak of the tier would simply mean they would have to spend some time consolidating their gains — a perfect chance to work on their teamwork, hunt for Honours, and more.

With the thoughts of their growing abilities on his mind, Ianmus’s new sigils wormed their way to the forefront. He still hadn’t asked the man about that development, and the strangely runic principles it seemed to operate off.

Slowing his pace, he fell in next to the mage — Porkchop and Kenva giving him questioning looks.

“Kaius,” Ianmus said, his staff sinking into the sand ahead of him to give the mage better footing on the slope.

Kaius gave him a nod.

“Just wanted to check in — I’ve been thinking about how we’re going to manage our upcoming influx of skills, which made me think about the change in your magic — the circles of sacred geometry, I don’t think I've seen anything like it.”

As soon as he brought up the topic of his spells, Ianmus brightened, his back straightening despite the sapping heat of the sun above. The rest of their team sighed and returned their attention to the front — neither their bastion nor their ranger having even a passing interest in the vagaries of spellcraft.

“Oh! Yes, it was something I've had my mind on for a long while, after all of our discussions about your glyphs and runic principles in general. Free casting has always been a bit of an odd art — like there’s been something missing from it.”

Kaius raised a brow in surprise. He’d known that free casting was far less common than sorcery — not only was it far slower, its fundamental requirements on a thorough understanding of theory made it far less accessible to most. But to call it incomplete?

Ianmus chuckled at his disbelief. “It feels odd, does it not? But think, it is an entire foundation of magic built almost entirely off of the back of a single manipulation skill. Doesn’t that seem a little odd?”

“What about meta-magic? They’re the bread and butter of a free caster, and nearly half of your skill list,” he replied, struggling to see the mage’s point.

Ianmus shook his head. “Meta-magic applies equally to all branches — even you have been offered them. Sure, there are some that are unique to free casting, but that is not exactly a point of difference either. It’s not exactly a universal belief, but it being incomplete was always a strong undercurrent at the spires in Mystral.”

Kaius nodded slowly, though he struggled to see how that fit with Ianmus’s new hazy sigils, and their discussions of runes. He could understand if it was some paradigm shifting discovery, based on obscure fundamentals and innovation, like Father’s work with his first glyph — but sacred geometry? Knowledge of that had been around since the first simplistic runic scripts had been devised from studying the depths, and that was supposed to have been thousands of years ago.

“And in all that time, no one thought to have a conversation with a runewright?” Kaius asked quizzically.

Ianmus smiled, before letting out a chuckle as they reached the bottom of the dune.

“Oh, of course they have — people have been researching any odd angle they can to see if they can discover something. Hells, one of my professors warned us off getting too obsessed — he had a story about an old colleague who became enamoured with channeling spellforms inside his body.” Ianmus shuddered, shaking his head at the memory. Presumably the experiments hadn’t gone well for the mage — not at all surprising considering how…volatile unstable mana formations could be.

“No, it was your glyphs that were the main thing that prompted me. Both the adjusted uses of sacred geometry, and the diagrams you showed me of how they are formed in three dimensions. When we were imprisoned, I had an awful lot of free time to consider it further — at least in abstracted theory.”

Ianmus raised his hand, a soft glow of solar mana condensing into a thin band of overlapping geometric shapes. Clenching his fist, the band expanded, revealing an interior of geometric alignments that wove through each other in a detailed chain. It was simple, in comparison to his glyphs at least, and was lacking in runes entirely, but he could immediately see some of the structures that he’d managed to identify in his own magic.

“Previous attempts at incorporating sacred geometry had been unstable — it required direct mental effort and channeling to maintain in place, and it sapped control, power, and lengthened the cast time for the spells it was hopefully going to assist.”

Focusing with his Truesight, Kaius poured over his friend’s geometric work. He was by no means an expert on Vesryn, but he was also undoubtedly the most familiar with glyphs in the world.

More than a few spots jumped out to him — angles that were a little off, or lines that intersected suboptimally. Before he could delve even deeper, Ianmus opened his hand once more, and the sigil ring collapsed back down into a hazy, continuous whole.

Unaware that he had cut off Kaius’s view, Ianmus stared at the ring with a small but satisfied smile on his face.

“This though…” Ianmus sent the ring floating up to his eye level with a flicker of his intent, staring at it intensely.

“What’s it do?”

“Well for one, it’s stable—” Ianmus turned to him and grinned. “—ish. I’m not quite there yet, but it's leagues upon leagues farther than anyone else has gotten, and I'm already certain it's the right path forward. Already, it’s been stabilising my spells — reducing mana costs and channel times. Once I've figured out how to finish off this central ring I’ll have a better idea of further avenues of research.”

Ianmus’s enthusiasm was infectious, though he couldn’t deny that more than a small portion of his excitement was due to his own love of magic, and the prospect of delving into yet another new discovery.

Plus, he was almost certain that he would be able to help Ianmus with his goal after his brief inspection of the sigil — there were plenty of minor errors and mistakes to correct in his use of sacred geometry. With a little luck, that alone might be enough to aid Ianmus in crossing the last hurdle.

Before he could voice his offer of assistance, Kenva’s urgent call cut him off.

“Scorpion!”

Kaius halted dead in his tracks.

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