Rune Seeker

“That wasn’t so bad,” Right said as Hiral and his two doubles left his father’s studio.

“Wasn’t so bad?” Hiral said, face still hot, and sweat running down his back from his father grilling him on Seena. “That was not a conversation I was ready to have with him yet.”

“Stop complaining,” Right said. “He said she could come to dinner sometime. Besides, he’s already met her, so…”

“Hiral?” a voice called. “Is that you?”

“Gauto?” Hiral asked right back, surprised to see his friend in that part of the city. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to ask your dad if he knew where you were,” Gauto said. “Guess I don’t have to bother him. Hey Left. Right.”

“Gauto,” they both said at the same time with nods of their heads.

“You keeping him out of trouble?” Gauto asked the doubles.

“More like getting me in trouble.” Hiral scowled at Right. “Anyway, you were looking for me?”

“Yeah,” Gauto said, but instead of immediately getting into it like he usually would, the man looked around at the crowded street. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk about it.”

Hiral stepped in a little closer with his doubles. “Some kind of secret? Is it about the island and…?” He looked towards the nearest Fallen’s tower. He’d repaired all of them, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other potential risks to having them nearby.

“Maybe a secret, yeah,” Gauto said. “But not to do with… them. This is more about… you.”

“Me?” Hiral asked, wracking his brain for what Gauto could be talking about. “What did you…?”

“Really, not here,” Gauto stressed. “Let’s just find somewhere a little quieter, like my room back at the Academy.”

Hiral narrowed his eyes at his friend. “Is this just another attempt to get me to look at something there? I’ve actually got a class now…”

“No!” Gauto said. “I mean, unless you wanted to? Do you think he wants to?” he asked as he turned to Right.

“Despite what he says, he’s always up for a good puzzle,” Right said.

“I’m going to find a way to take away your speaking privileges,” Hiral hissed.

“How about you?” Gauto turned to Left. “You’re the analytical one aren’t you? Would you be interested in helping me with a few projects?”

“Do you pay better than Hiral?” Left asked.

“You get paid?” Gauto asked at the same time Hiral asked, “I pay you?”

Then Hiral held up his hands to stop both of them before they got started. “Never mind that. We can’t go back in here,” he thumbed over his shoulder, “or Yanna will kill me. Straight up murder. Dad’s already behind because somebody opened their mouth.”

Right gave his best innocent look, and suddenly Hiral understood why nobody believed him when he tried that.

“And the Academy isn’t exactly close,” Hiral continued with a shake of his head. “I’ve got to get back down and meet the rest of my party soon. Drake is pretty quick, so I have a bit of time. How about…?”

“There’s a café near here that has private rooms,” Left volunteered. “Given the time of day, I’m sure one would be free.”

“Oh yeah,” Right chimed in. “The one with the pudding.”

“Exactly,” Left said.

“I like the way you think.”

“Guys,” Hiral said, then looked at Gauto. “Am I really like this?”

“Even when there was just one of you,” Gauto said solemnly. “I think I know the one they’re talking about though. Shall we?”

“We shall,” Hiral said, starting down the street. “Hush-hush topic aside, how are things? You’ve got your own Medium I see.” Hiral looked over Gauto’s shoulder at the floating sphere. “Even got it inked a bit.”

Gauto looked at his sphere and nodded proudly. Then he looked at the Ring of Amin Thett. “I don’t know how you got used to that. I keep forgetting it’s there, then catch it out of the corner of my eye and think somebody is sneaking up on me. I’ve nearly given myself three heart attacks. Today.”

“You get used to it,” Hiral said. “What rank are you now?”

“Just barely into D-,” Gauto said.

“Planning on running any dungeons?”

“Are you kidding?” Gauto actually shouted, startling people on the street around them. Then he continued more quietly. “Of course I am! There’s so much to learn down there. I… just have to find a party. And maybe learn how to fight. Got any pointers?”

“Hit them harder than they hit you,” Right said.

Hiral looked his friend up and down. “I’d just encourage you not to get hit.”

“Yeah,” Gauto agreed. “Pain hurts.”

“It really does. What kind of tattoos did you pick?”

“Mostly perception and analytic types,” Gauto said. “Also one attack and defensive tattoo each.”

“You’ll probably need to expand on your attacks a bit,” Hiral suggested. “You’re aiming for a scout-type?”

“Something like that,” Gauto said as they reached the café and went in. The place was almost entirely empty, and bored-looking waitress quickly came over to seat them. She only did a triple-take as she looked at Hiral and his doubles.

“Uh… table for… four?” she asked, head still swiveling.

“Private room, if you have one,” Hiral asked.

“Sure we do, let me… wait,” she said, squinting at Hiral’s bald scalp like it held the secrets of the universe. “Are you the… uh… one of the ones who was at the tower?”

“Something like that,” Hiral said, gesturing towards where he knew the private rooms were.

The woman took the hint and quietly led them back to the room, though her face was scrunched up like she was thinking about something. When they got to the room, they each sat down at the table and ordered something quick – including four servings of pudding – but the woman stopped again as she got ready to close the door.

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“You probably don’t remember me,” she said to Hiral. “But… I wasn’t very nice to you before. Even watered down your coffee,” she grimaced at the sin. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for that. I heard what you did for us. This…” she waved at the table, “is all no charge. It’s the least I can do. I’m so sorry,” she repeated with a nod of her head, then closed the door.

“Look at you,” Gauto said, raising an eyebrow across the table from Hiral. “Suddenly all popular with the ladies.”

“Not exactly what I’d call it,” Hiral said, though he had to admit – watered-down coffee aside – the gesture was nice to hear. “Anyway, we’re here, what’s all this about?”

Gauto took a deep breath. “Okay,” he started. “After everything with the tower, you mentioned your mom had the glyph of fertility, right?”

“Yeah, so?” Hiral asked, though his stomach clenched just at the topic. He hadn’t exactly faced any of that yet.

“Well, given your situation – your previous situation – it gave me an idea, so I started doing some digging.”

Hiral’s hand stopped halfway to scratch his face – the itch forgotten – at where Gauto could be going with this line of conversation. “What did you find?”

“Not much,” Gauto admitted. “I went through records dating back a hundred rotations. Then a hundred more. Then… there weren’t many beyond that. Turns out the Academy – and most of the libraries – do a general purge every hundred rotations or so to remove books that aren’t needed anymore. Stuff they think isn’t important. It’s honestly really odd. Every book is important!”

“Yeah,” Hiral said. “I think I read about that. Throw them over the side of the island or something.”

“Exactly,” Gauto said. “But! They aren’t always that thorough with it. It took me a while, but I finally found some sources that date back a lot further. The ‘where’ and ‘how’ I found them aren’t really important, but what was in them… that’s another story entirely.”

“Stop dancing around it Gauto,” Hiral said. “What did you…” he cut off at a knock at the door. “Come in.”

“Your drinks and pudding,” the same woman said, dropping off the order, then vanishing quickly again.

As soon as the door closed, Hiral’s eyes snapped to his friend. “Out with it.”

Another deep breath from his friend. “I’ll just cut to the chase then,” Gauto said. “And, pardon the term, but I don’t think you were the first… Everfail.”

“What?” Hiral asked, taken aback by that.

“The reason the glyph of fertility was outlawed – a long time ago – is because it was birthing children without the ability to use their solar energy,” Gauto said quietly. “It wasn’t every time, but it was often enough they traced the source to women getting the glyph while they were pregnant. Once they figured that out, they passed the law we have now.”

“Why haven’t we ever heard of that?” Hiral asked. “If I wasn’t the first… where are the others?”

Gauto’s tongue ran over his lips before he answered. “Like I said, this was a long time ago. So long I actually didn’t recognize the dating format on the documents I found. Look, Hiral, these records were lost and forgotten at the bottom of a very large pile, and it was practically a miracle I found them.”

“Okay, but still, if people were born like me… did their kids end up being… normal?”

“They never had kids,” Gauto said.

“They weren’t allowed to?”

“Kind of,” Gauto said, again cryptically. “The children – as soon it was realized what they were – were tossed off the island. So they couldn’t spread their sickness to the rest of the population.”

“They were what?” Hiral asked, and everybody at the table paused. “They killed kids like me?”

Gauto nodded. “I think so. It’s not like I found a long list, but I found references to it. I don’t think any lived past their sixth birthday.”

“I can’t believe we did that,” Hiral said slowly. Throwing kids off the island because they couldn’t use their solar energy? That was… beyond horrible.

Then again, considering the way he’d been treated, maybe it wasn’t so farfetched.

“Me neither,” Gauto said. “And there’s always the chance I was reading into it wrong, but I’m pretty confident my take on it is correct.”

“Why didn’t they do that to me?” Hiral asked. “Or was it just so long ago, everybody forgot about that part of it? The child-murder.”

Gauto gestured with his coffee at Hiral. “I think it’s exactly that. These records were so buried, and nobody has been born like you for generations. Even the memory of how to deal with it has faded. I guess you could say you got… lucky?”

“First time I’d ever call my early years lucky,” Hiral said. “But you might be right. Jeez.”

“There is another implication to this,” Left said. “Beyond the child-murder.”

“Yeah,” Hiral said with a nod.

“What’s that?” Gauto asked.

“They might’ve been born Builders, like me,” Hiral said. “When I was born – and my parents took me to the measure – it said all my solar abilities were S-Rank. All of them. Including output. But, after that one time where we get our crystal,” Hiral tapped the center of his chest, “we don’t have access to our status window again until we’re older.

“By the time I was old enough, I had more tattoos than most full Shapers. It was also when I first saw my solar output had changed to unavailable. None of us imagined it was the tattoos and Meridian Lines blocking me, but apparently they were.”

“And even a normal kid,” Gauto took over, “would have at least one tattoo or the beginning of their Meridian Lines by the time they can access their status window. The Measure would say they were normal…”

“Normal… but Builders,” Hiral said. “I don’t know if the Measure can even tell us that. Actually, probably not. My crystal thought I was a Maker until I met that golem down on the surface.”

“That was lucky,” Gauto said. “Almost as lucky as me finding those books.”

“I… don’t think they’re really on the same scale,” Hiral said slowly.

“You're right,” Gauto nodded. “Books are far more important.”

Hiral didn’t bother mentioning Fallen Reach might not still be in the air if he hadn’t run into that golem. It really was lucky.

Wasn’t it?

“So, you think the kids tossed off were all Builders?” Gauto drew Hiral’s attention back to the present.

“I guess?” Hiral said. “Or maybe Growers or Bonders, even. We still don’t know how the glyph of fertility affected things, other than making me something other than a Maker.”

“Do you think we should tell somebody?” Gauto asked.

“You haven’t already?”

“Just you. I thought you should be the first to know.”

“Thanks… I think,” Hiral said. “Hey, did the records you found say anything about those kids’ solar abilities? Did they have all S-Rank as well?”

“I only found one mentioned,” Gauto said. “She wasn’t S-Rank in anything. And I only saw it because somebody entered the note as ‘not much of a loss, at D-Rank’.” Gauto used air quotes as he explained it.

“Not much of a loss?” Hiral hissed. “Bastard.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Ah, just wondering if it was a way to give kids a better start,” Hiral said. “Even if they aren’t born as Makers, if they had S-Rank solar abilities, that’d be a big advantage.”

“No, sounds like you’re still unique in that regard.”

“Yeah,” Hiral said, taking a deep breath. “I think you should tell people. Start with my father.”

“Me?” Gauto asked. “What about we?”

“Can’t,” Hiral said. “I’ve already got to be somewhere, and I’m going to be late. Don’t worry, though, Dad will listen to you.”

“I know he will. I just wanted you there for moral support.”

“Rah rah,” Right said, tipping his cup in Gauto’s direction.

“Look at it this way,” Hiral said while rolling his eyes. “Now you get all the credit for the discovery.”

“I would’ve gotten it anyway!”

“True,” Hiral chuckled. “Anyway, I’ve really got to get going. I’m sorry I can’t stay for this next part, but thank you for telling me.”

“Of course,” Gauto said. “Are you… okay? I know your childhood wasn’t easy, and here I am bringing that all up again.”

“Yeah, Gauto, I’m good now. Thanks for asking,” Hiral said, putting the revelation aside for the moment. It was big news, but did it change anything right now? Not really, other than potentially saving other kids going through what he did. Or getting thrown off the island.

Then again, he’d thrown himself off the island.

And it was time to go do that again.