Rune Seeker

The party moved quickly, leaving behind the web-covered territory of the Ghost-Web Spiders and instead passing quiet and apparently empty buildings. Hollow, lifeless windows stared down on the party from both sides like dead eyes, the open doorways’ wide maws leading into the abyss. With even the distant hooting of the monkeys now quiet, the whole atmosphere had taken on new weight, every step forward one towards some inescapable inevitability.

“It’s too quiet,” Nivian said.

“THEN WE SHOULD TALK LOUDER!” Yanily shouted, his voice rebounding off the stone buildings to echo like a chorus of Yanilys yelling at the party.

Two steps—that was all it took Seena to reach the spearman and slap him on the back of the head. “Do that again, and it’ll be Seeyela coming up behind you with one of her new daggers.”

“She doesn’t know how to use them yet…” Yanily protested, rubbing the back of his head.

“I know how to use them well enough to insert one somewhere very uncomfortable,” Seeyela promised, her glare strengthening her resemblance to Seena.

Hiral, meanwhile, watched the roofs. The empty windows and doors. The alleys between buildings. Despite the outburst, nothing moved. Even the air across his skin felt still, like the whole cavern was holding its breath. Back the way they’d come, rain still poured through the hole in the rock ceiling, the deluge of water encompassing a solid half-mile or so around the center of the city.

And the flashes of movement within the rain probably weren’t his imagination. The dropping monkeys and spiders he’d seen before were gone—nothing like that fell anymore—and instead, something bigger moved within the rain. Something invisible, and only its passage through the downpour marked its presence.

The Enemy.

He watched them from the distance, the cylindrical shapes darting around in almost lazy loops. For him to see them from this far away, they had to be as big as a building, and they approached but never passed through the outer curtain of rain. Sometimes they dropped almost all the way to the ground and out of his sight, while others darted up and back out of the cavern. And yet, they always stayed within the rain.

“Dr. Benza, can the Enemy leave the rain?” he asked.

“Hrm?” Dr. Benza asked, seemingly lost in thought, before shaking his head and offhandedly saying, “No, of course not. That’s what makes the Infested such a threat to a place like this.”

“Them and the Fallen,” Fenil said.

“Well, of course,” Dr. Benza.

“The ones that are left, you mean,” Laseen said. “The ones we managed to capture aren’t going to be causing too many problems.” Then her eyes widened, and she looked at Hiral. “Uh, that… that was part of the need-to-know information you knew, ri—uh… correct?” She’d changed what she was going to say with a glance at Yanily.

Hiral opened his mouth to say something, but he opted not to, and simply nodded. If he just let the researchers talk, without asking questions, would that bypass the safeguards put in place by the Tutorial limitations? No way it could be that easy…

“Doesn’t matter if they know or not,” Dr. Benza interrupted. “You shouldn’t be talking about it. It’s better if the Infested doesn’t think you know anything about it.”

“Why?” Fenil said.

“So it kills you quickly if it gets through Hiral and his party,” Dr. Benza said. “Otherwise, you can look forward to a lot of torture, and the possible downfall of the rest of our civilization when you break.”

“I wouldn’t break,” Fenil said, though his face paled.

“You’d break faster than a stale cracker,” Laseen said. “Which is about two seconds longer than me. Let’s… just change the subject.”

Fenil looked from Laseen to Dr. Benza, then to Hiral, and finally just nodded. “Weather is kind of cold this time of year, isn’t it?”

“That’s the giant hole in ceiling,” Yanily said, then shivered. “But you’re right—it is kind of cold. Colder than back home; that’s for sure. Hey, Hiral, how cold is it up on Fallen Reach?”

“Always warm,” Hiral said. “Environmental magic control.”

“Ah, no wonder you seem to know so much,” Dr. Benza interrupted. “You’re part of the satellite’s construction? Still, I’m disappointed that nickname for the place has stuck.”

“Nickname?” Hiral asked, part of his brain parsing through the other things the doctor had just said. Satellite? Construction? Is this around when Fallen Reach was being created?

“Well, yes,” Dr. Benza said, “but I guess the full name of ‘shit-to-keep-out-of-the-Fallen’s-reach’ doesn’t just roll off the tongue, does it?”

“That is a bit of a mouthful,” Hiral said. “But what are you trying to keep away from the Fallen?” He immediately cursed at himself as the researchers’ faces all paused. Obviously that question is too directly related to what the Tutorial is hiding for now. What else can I…?

“Something ahead,” Left said, interrupting Hiral’s thoughts, and he looked forward past Nivian.

More bodies. And, beyond them—hundreds of them—was what had to be the eastern gate. The large tunnel was simple in its construction, like the rest of the city, with no ornamentation and big, blocky supports. The whole thing looked to be about sixty feet wide, thirty tall, and stretched off into darkness beyond the cavern wall. In front of it was the “empty” space Dr. Benza had mentioned—empty except for the bodies and the lone person standing with their hands clasped patiently in front of them.

“That’s not a Feral Infested,” Fenil said quietly.

“A Feral?” Hiral asked, his voice barely above a whisper as he kept his eyes locked on the Infested. There was no way it hadn’t seen them, but it still hadn’t moved.

“Infested come in two varieties,” Dr. Benza explained, his words clipping as he spoke quickly. “Ferals don’t welcome the Enemy into their body. The Enemy takes it by force, overwhelming the host’s sense of self. They become, like the names suggests, little more than feral animals reacting to their urges. They’re dangerous, of course, but mainly because of their raw power.

“The invading Enemy can guide the Infested, but it can’t outright control them or use complex thought. They hunt and kill for the enjoyment of it, but they can also be tricked or outmaneuvered.”

“And the other kind?” Hiral asked.

“We call them Refined Infested,” Dr. Benza answered. “They’re not as common as Ferals. Those fools welcome the Enemy into their body, forming something akin to a pact. It’s like symbiosis, where the Ferals have parasites in them instead. The Refined aren’t as physically powerful as Ferals, but their capacity for complex thought, planning, and all the things their original host body was capable of makes them incredibly dangerous.

“Both kinds can use the runes we talked about earlier, but Refined tend to carry other weapons as well, or use any magic to which the host had access.”

“I thought all magic had been wiped out in the creation of your new system?” Hiral asked, partially expecting the doctor to freeze up at the question.

“Most of it will be,” Dr. Benza said. “Nobody else will be born with the magic of our past. Those who already have it, however, will continue to be able to use it until they die. It’s one of the few reasons we’ve been able to survive as long as we have, though it’s not nearly enough. Our only true hope lies with those who’ve begun to utilize our PIM system, but it’s in its infancy.”

“And everybody with any real power is long-since dead,” Fenil said sadly.

“So, this guy ahead of us should be a pushover?” Yanily asked hopefully.

“Unlikely,” Dr. Benza said gravely.

“Okay, enough,” Seena said. “Thank you for the information, Doctor, but it doesn’t sound like this really changes anything for us. We still need to get you past that thing. Without it killing you.”

“Preferably,” Dr. Benza said flatly.

“It does change one thing,” Hiral interjected. “Since this Infested is a—what did you call it?—a Refined, and it thinks, we have to worry it’ll ignore us to go after the researchers. If it was a Feral, we could’ve probably just kept it busy while they made a run for it.”

“He’s correct,” Dr. Benza said. “If it’s really waiting for us to make sure it destroys our work, we’ll be its focus.”

“Good thing we have an expert on keeping an enemy’s attention,” Seena said, thumbing towards Nivian. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll feed Yanily to it.”

“Yeah!” the spearman said… then his eyebrows scrunched up. “Wait, feed?”

“Don’t think too much about it,” Hiral said. “Plan, boss?”

“Even though we haven’t seen anything other than this Infested ahead of us since we left the research building, I’m hesitant to leave the researchers unguarded,” Seena said. “Hiral, I want you to stay back with them and support us from a range. Use your Distracting Shots or whatever you can. Hopefully the researchers won’t count as allies, so you can get your One-Man Army bonus. Wule, buffs.”

A few quick pulses of solar energy from the healer rebuffed the group with Nature’s Bulwark and Nature’s Blade.

“And since we’re out of the webs,” Seena mumbled, adding Lashing Vines to the mix, “I’ll do Target as well when we get close enough.” Thorny vines sprouted from the group’s shoulders. “Consider this a practice run for dealing with Picoli if we run into her again.”

“I’d rather just avoid that thing all together,” Yanily said.

“Yan, you heard what Dr. Benza said,” Wule said quietly. “It takes over the host. Overwhelms their sense of self.”

“So?” Yanily asked.

“So… Picoli might still be alive in there. Knowing what she did to… to Balyo. Hurting from what we did to her. Even if we can’t get that thing out of her…” Wule trailed off, unable to say the words.

“We need to put her out of her misery,” Seeyela said, steel in her voice. “If we can get the thing out, we will… but either way, we can’t simply ignore her. One way or another, we’re going to need to track her down.”

Yanily’s knuckles whitened as he twisted his hands on the charred-wood haft of his spear, but he nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t think of it like that. She must be suffering so much. She and Balyo… they were close. Best friends. If she knows what she did… I… we… can’t let her shoulder that alone.”

“Yeah,” Seena said. “Learn what you can from this fight, so when we find Picoli, one way or another, it’s as painless as possible.”

The party moved into a line in front of the researchers, and the whole group started moving forward.

Hiral hung back with the NPCs for thirty seconds to give the rest of the party a bit of a lead, then started following, bringing the others with him. He had to make sure there was enough space so he could react if the Infested made a move on Dr. Benza, but not so far the others wouldn’t be able to support him if he got in trouble.

Five hundred feet away, and the Infested still hadn’t moved a muscle. Standing almost statue-still, it continued to watch the party as they approached, its hands clasped in front of itself. The same kind of tentacles that had torn their way out of Picoli after she’d been taken wrapped around the Infested, running down from its shoulders and around its arms, across its torso, down its legs, and up the back of the head. They looked unnervingly like an external PIM. And, now a bit closer, Hiral could see what looked like the hilt of a sword poking up over its shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be carrying any other weapons.

Not that it needed them, if it was anything like Picoli.

At four hundred feet, Seena and her sister spread out more to the side, getting a better angle to throw their magic around. Left and Right stayed close to Nivian—Hiral could call them back in an instant if needed—while Yanily slowly began to rotate his spear around himself, a few paces back. Behind the spearman, Wule lifted and lowered his frozen-ice rod, almost like he was making practice throws, but no orbs of concentrated cold sailed towards the Infested.

Three hundred feet, and the Infested finally moved for the first time, smoothly reaching over its shoulder and drawing the sword to point at the party. Three feet of jagged crystal sat atop the hilt, shaped almost like a lightning bolt, and Fenil gasped beside Hiral.

“That… that can’t be,” he said.

“Can’t be what?” Hiral quickly prompted.

“That sword. If it’s what I think it is, it was carried by one of our generals. He went missing over a year ago. We all assumed he was dead…”

“Is the sword dangerous?” Hiral asked. “What Rank?”

“A-Rank equivalent,” Dr. Benza said. “But, like all the weapons we came up with, it’s limited by the strength of its wielder. We’ve been able to create B and A-Rank weapons for years, but since the people using them are only E and D-Rank, it doesn’t matter. Still, even restricted to D-Rank, the weapon has some peculiar abilities.”

“Such as?” Hiral prompted. “Less background information and more actual facts that could save my friends’ lives, please.”

“Ah, sorry,” Dr. Benza said. “It controls lightning to an extent and allows for a particularly quick movement ability.”

“Sword shoots lightning and has a movement ability,” Hiral said quickly into the party chat.

“Wonderful,” Nivian muttered.

“Anything else?” Hiral said.

“That depends if the person carrying the weapon is Dal Fillian or not,” Laseen said. “Dal was the original owner.”

“Let’s assume it is,” Hiral said. “What can he do?”

At the question, Nivian and the others reached the two-hundred-foot mark from the Infested. It threw its head back, letting out a powerful howl that seemed to vibrate the air.

Hiral’s weapons instantly came up in preparation for the Infested’s attack, but nothing came. At least, not from that direction.

Instead, behind Hiral, dozens of monkey howls echoed out of the quiet streets, along with the clacking of carapace-covered appendages on stone.

“He commands animals,” Fenil said, turning to look back the way they’d come at the same time Hiral did—just in time to see Bladed Frenzy Monkeys and Ghost-Web Spidersstalking out of the houses on both sides of the street.