Rune Seeker

After Drahn showed the party the rest of his most relevant ‘tricks’ – as Seena liked to put it – the party made very short work of the dungeon. Neither the Mid-Bosses nor the Boss was even remotely a threat, with the group simply brute-forcing their way through. Loot was non-existent for anybody other than Drahn, who got his third Solar Refinement Solution, and the only achievements were the ones he got for clearing the zone and unlocking the Asylum. Then again, that was the whole reason they’d been there, and they’d quickly moved on.

With the rain remaining light, they’d zipped over to where the Disc of Passage waited, returned to the broken Asylum for a short rest, then continued until they returned to the undead city.

“Do you think Nivian and Wule are still here?” Yanily asked as the group disembarked from the Disc in the basement of what had been Ur’Thul’s castle.

“Nivian needed to kill undead to feed the hunger until he reached B-Rank,” Seeyela said.

“The… hunger?” Drahn asked, bow in one hand and eyes scanning left and right at the unwelcoming environment. “And what is wrong with the roots here?”

“They’re dead,” Hiral said. “Or, maybe undead? Most of them were corrupted to carry death-infused solar energy.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It very much was,” Seena said. “Until we stopped it. Most of them don’t look like they’re carrying anything at this point. Even the guide-roots seem dimmer than I remember.”

“You are correct, Mistress,” Li’l Ur said. “Death energy no longer flows through this place. In fact, I sense very little of it at all.”

“With the number of undead that fill the city, I expected it to be thick in the air. As it is, if I wasn’t particularly attuned, I wouldn’t even notice it.”

“Guess we should find out why that is,” Seena said. “Before that, though, I want to check on the urn. Do you remember the way, Hiral?”

“How could I ever forget?” he responded.

“Good. Lead the way,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder.

His RHCs came out in a practiced motion, and he immediately activated Piercing Shot+ on both of them. The runic circles sprang to life in front of the barrels – following his movements – and he infused the first rings with his Rune of Breaking to give the shots upgraded damage. The ability activation was instantaneous, but despite the wording of the ability, he couldn’t quite get an Edict to connect. Instead, a rune was the closest he could manage, like there was still a gap between him and the Edicts. It was something he’d have to figure out, but later, and he started ahead. Still, the first undead he spotted was in for a very bad time.

Behind him, the soft footfalls of the rest of the party sounded quietly to his high Atn, and they moved through the silent halls. Like before, the air hung heavy and stale, but each breath didn’t feel like he was breathing corrosion into his lungs. Li’l Ur was right – the aura of death hanging over the castle had noticeably lessened.

Was that because they’d killed Ur’Thul, or because Nivian had gone to work sating his hunger?

After they’d climbed a second set of stairs to find another empty hall, Drahn spoke quietly into the party chat. “You mentioned a hunger and Nivian. What did that mean? Did something happen to him?”

Hiral glanced back at Seena’s reaction – she obviously hadn’t explained the full extent of what had happened to the twins.

“The tanky one evolved into something greater,” Li’l Ur said before Seena could speak. “An immortal, advanced class that knows only one peer. I’m the peer, in case you were wondering, but he’s a close second.”

“Can somebody explain that in words I understand?” Drahn asked dryly.

“The Boss of this dungeon,” Seena said, waving her gauntleted hand around to indicate the castle. “It was powerful. Definitely the most challenging battle we had up until that point, and… it almost killed us all. Would have, if Nivian didn’t stop it. He paid a price for it though – he became like the enemies we were fighting here. Undead.”

“A Death Knight Blight Warden,” Li’l Ur said in a low, awed voice. As he spoke, he turned on Seena’s shoulder and tossed out small blue flares from his hands to emphasize just how impressive the advanced class was.

Honestly, the display wasn’t particularly awe-inspiring, but it was kind of cute.

“Nivian died?” Drahn asked, actually stopping in the hall.

“No, he became undead,” Seena clarified. “It’s not quite the same. It did come with a kind of hunger.”

“For the life force of other creatures,” Li’l Ur explained. “More than solar energy, undead crave that pure spark that brings sentience. Life force in the living, and a corrupted version in my undead. The hunger is uncontrollable. Irresistible. All consuming, no pun intended – but it wasn’t a bad one. As a new undead, Nivian would not be able to resist killing everything in his path to feed on that spark.”

“That’s why he didn’t come with us,” Seeyela said. “He was worried he’d attack us. None of us agreed… but we couldn’t change his mind.”

“He did the right thing,” Li’l Ur said. “The drive to feed the hunger is not something that can be controlled by logic or emotion. It has no leash, other than the power of a greater undead – such as a lich. Without that, he would have eventually attacked you.”

“If he can’t control this hunger, why are we here?” Drahn asked. “And what about his brother? Is Wule one of these undead too?”

“According to some information we got,” Hiral said. “Nivian should be able to control the hunger after reaching B-Rank. If he’s not there yet, we’ll help him get it. We’re strong enough now he won’t be as much of a threat if he does attack us.”

“As for Wule,” Seena picked up the explanation. “He got an advanced class as well. He seemed to be able to help control Nivian’s hunger to an extent, or at least direct it away from him.”

“I saw advanced classes mentioned in the Guide to Dungeoneering,” Drahn said. “There was very little information, but it sounded like they were powerful?”

“They seem so,” Hiral said. “You can only get them at D-Rank, B-Rank, and S-Rank though. And if you miss your chance at one of those ranks, you won’t ever get it back. Ah, and to get one, it seems like you either need to do or be part of something the PIMP considers special.”

“And both Nivian and Wule got these advanced classes?” Drahn asked.

“We’ve all got advanced classes,” Yanily said.

“You…” Drahn started, but cut off as Hiral brought them to a stop.

“Urn should be in the next room,” he said. “Ready?”

“Stupid urn better still be there,” Seena grumbled, then tapped him on the shoulder.

With Left and Right at his sides, Hiral quick-stepped into the room, RHCs leveled and ready to obliterate anything that even looked at him funny. Nothing did. In fact, the room was like the rest of the castle up to that point – utterly still.

Desiccated corpses littered the floor – the undead that’d rained from the ceiling to attack them during the Boss fight. Against one, cratered wall, the brutalized corpse of the lich Ur’Thul still rested. Its bones lay broken and powdered, and if Hiral didn’t specifically know what he was looking at, it’d take a lot of work to piece together the remains.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Most importantly, the urn stayed suspended above the throne in a thick shell of familiar crystal. Solar energy circled within the crystal from the endless source that was the Urn of Ur’Thul, into the runed plates the lizardman Geckodiana – Odi – had forged and sealed with the urn inside that crystal, powering them. The urn itself was fueling its own indestructible prison.

Not quite so indestructible, Hiral amended to himself, remembering how Fitch the Infested had broken a similar crystal that’d housed the Fallen, Vorinal.

“Should we try to move this? Hide it?” Seena asked, clearly remembering the same scene.

“Can we?” Yanily asked, pointing with his spear to where the crystal anchored itself to the throne. None of them seemed very keen to move too close considering their last experience with the urn and the literal black cloud of death it’d spewed.

“I wouldn’t risk it, even if we could,” Hiral said. “The way the energy is moving through the crystal – through its channels – we could break the cycle and release the urn. Leaving it there and hoping nobody ever finds it is the… safest option.”

“Doesn’t sound particularly safe,” Yanily pointed out.

“Once we know more about the state of the city,” Seena said. “And we have more B-Rank – or above – people, we should set up a regular patrol to check on his place. It’s close to the Disc of Passage, so it’s not hard to get to from an Asylum.”

“You have to know somebody is eventually going to make the very bad choice to think they can control the urn’s power,” Hiral said.

“Yeah, but, like you said, we can’t hide it,” Seena said. “Somebody is going to find it with how close it is to the Disc. We’ll just have to make sure enough people know how bad an idea that would be to try and prevent that. A problem for later, though.

“Drahn, this is probably the last place we know Nivian and Wule were. Since they changed with their advanced classes, I don’t know if you can pick up their energy anymore, but here is the best place to start. Hiral, give your rune a go too?”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Hiral said, sheathing his RHCs on his thighs. As soon as the weapons were out of his hands, the runic circles from Piercing Shot vanished, and he immediately started for Ur’Thul’s corpse. Nivian and Wule had been the ones to put the Boss in that state, so if there was a connection anywhere in the room, that’d be the place. “Left, while we’re starting here, can you do some scouting? The castle has been too quiet, and we might as well get an idea what the surrounding city is like. Unless you have any objections, Seena?”

“None,” the party leader said. “Sis, you game to go too?”

“Definitely,” Seeyela said.

“Just don’t…” Yanily started.

“I won’t bring a Mid-Boss back with me!” the woman growled at him, then Bamf’d to a nearby doorway. A second Bamf+ and she was gone.

“You’re never going to let her live that down, are you?” Right said while Left activated his Way of Shadow and slipped out another door.

“Probably not,” Yanily admitted.

Hiral chuckled, but turned his attention to his Rune of Connection as he activated it. Dozens of threads of solar energy immediately appeared before his eyes, floating in the air like gossamer spider-silk. While several of them connected to the wall and floor, the vast majority were tied to the corpse.

Even in death – again – Ur’Thul has connections to a lot of things. Makes sense if he was the Progenitor for the undead race, I guess.

Now, though, the question was how Hiral was going to sort through all those threads to find the one he was looking for. The one connecting the lich’s corpse to its killer – Nivian. At first glance, they all looked identical, threads of solar energy barely big enough to see. They were like spider-webs caught in the wind, with only the right angle of sunlight making them visible. Except, of course, these ones glowed.

Reaching out with his hand, Hiral’s fingers passed right through the strand like it didn’t exist. Well, in a way that had to be true. The strand didn’t physically exist. If it did, he’d be getting constantly tangled up in complicated connections. And yet, with the help of his rune, he could see them. He’d even influenced one when he’d helped bridge the connection between the two versions of the Spear of Clouds to enable Yanily’s return.

That one had been… simple… in a way. The connection had stood out. Called to him, and he’d empowered it with his other runes. Here, nothing stood out. They all looked the same.

But they aren’t the same, are they?

The strands before him were all tiny, tiny, tiny runic equations. Equations that helped shape how reality worked, in a lot of ways. Or, maybe in some cases, recorded how it did? He was still trying to sort out the cause and effect – the chicken or the egg – of some of the equations and the whole ‘laws of the universe’ thing. And the PIMs themselves. Were the runic equations in them responsible for how they worked, or just how he interpreted it? So many questions. For now, though, that wasn’t important. He just needed to find the one connection that recorded Ur’Thul’s death and who killed it. For that, he needed a baseline.

“Li’l Ur,” Hiral said. “Can you come over here?”

“What do you need the little guy for?” Seena asked as she walked over with the lich on her shoulder.

“Just need to see if… there we are,” Hiral said, eyes tracing the different connections until he found the strand connecting the dead lich to the little one. Careful to not empower the thread – and somehow accidently resurrect Ur’Thul inside Li’l Ur – if that were even possible – he gently nudged it with his Rune of Expansion. Just enough so he could see the runes within.

He almost immediately got a headache from the bombardment of information, even though he didn’t understand most of it. Conveniently, he had somebody very close who just might – if he could see it. Trying something that’d worked before, Hiral combined his Rune of Expansion with his Rune of Energyto create a sphere above his open hand, then lifted it so the gossamer strand ran within.

“Whoa, what’s that?” Seena asked, leaning in close. From the looks of things, she had no trouble staring at the runic script. No headache from the influx of information.

“A connection, like what I’m looking for to bring us to Nivian,” Hiral explained. “This one connects to L’il Ur, though. But, I can’t read most of what it says. And, honestly, I can understand just enough that I feel like I should be able to figure out more if I stare longer. Or my brain will explode, one of the two. I’m hoping Li’l Ur can help me figure out the important parts so I can find Nivian’s thread.”

“As it is my would-be apprentice asking, I, as the master, shall assist,” the little lich said sagely. “If what you’re looking for is a way to find an individual, I believe this section will be the most useful.” As Li’l Ur spoke, he floated up to part of the enlarged equation and pointed at a grouping of runes.

Hiral’s eyes crossed just looking at them – they fully existed in three dimensions at the same time – written over and over each other in a tangled mess. But, as he forced himself to trace his way through them, a feeling of familiarity washed over him. Not quite understanding – there wouldn’t be any exploding in his immediate future – though he nodded.

“This is your name, isn’t it?” he asked Li’l Ur.

“As expected of my would-be apprentice,” the lich said smugly. “What you’re looking at is the equivalent of my runic name. A representation of all that I am, written in four dimensions and invisible to most. Using this, I was able to change myself into the first undead, and from it, forged my armies.”

“Really…?” Hiral said, reaching out with one finger.

“Don’t poke it!” Li’l Ur shouted. “While you shouldn’t have the power – yet – to influence this, I have seen you do unbelievable things in the past. And, it’s not just for myself I worry. Attempting to rewrite this equation could change you as well. Be very, very wary if you ever try to do it. Actually, since it could turn you into undead, maybe if I were to guide you along…”

“Just don’t poke it,” Seena interrupted. “I like you alive.”

“No poking happening,” Hiral said, his hand already withdrawn, and his mind moving on. He wasn’t looking to alter the name-equation anyway. “Excuse me.” With that, he turned his attention back to the corpse, filtering through the connections that didn’t possess a name.

It was, in a way, surprisingly easy when he knew what he was looking for. After the first few, it became apparent the names were always in the same general area of the connected equation. He purposely ignored how each runic connection seemed to repeat itself and simultaneously provide new information along every inch of its length. There was far too much to unpack there. No, now, names!

One by one, he went through the named connections, taking the time to get a sense of what they connected to. Some made his skin crawl, or the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Others filled him with a kind of instinctual fear. None of these were Nivian. Hopefully.

After ten threads, nothing. Twenty, and he was still coming up empty. Was he going about this the wrong way? Wasting everybody’s time? There were only a few more. If he didn’t find the one he was looking for…

Hiral stopped on one name, a sense of solidness filling him from top to bottom. Like he was suddenly wrapped in a warm blanket, he felt comforted. No, that wasn’t right. Not comforted, protected.

He dismissed his vision of every other strand but the one he held, savoring the sensation he hadn’t felt since they’d first left this castle. Since they’d left their friends behind.

“I found it,” he said, looking up at Seena. “I found Nivian.”