Rune Seeker

Hiral kicked up off the moving bar, a subtle touch from his Rune of Rejection giving him more lift and carrying him over another bar coming in his direction. His toes touched down on the next beam, his Rune of Attraction securing his foothold, and he pulled himself on to stand up rigidly straight. Like perfectly fitted gears, two vertical bars swept down in front and behind him, the space between just barely wide enough for him to fit.

The instant the one in front of him was past, he leapt forward again, hands reaching for another rising windmill arm. He’d already fallen twice before at this part—no running start to give him the necessary momentum—but a pull of Attraction made up the difference this time. Fingers snagging the top edge, he swung his feet underneath and allowed the arm to lift him further into the air. A flex of his abdomen pulled his legs above another rotating obstacle, and then he kicked his legs forward, sending himself into a swinging motion.

With Attraction keeping his fingers firmly on the bar as it rose and started to angle, Hiral gave one more swinging kick and then let go, just as another bar swung in from behind him. Like Right had suggested, Hiral let Rejection push against the rotating beam and shoot him forward along with his own leap.

Arms and legs churning in the air for more distance, he reached his foot out, again pulling with Attraction, and touched down just on the tip of a rotating windmill arm as it moved past. More use of the same rune basically glued his foot to the surface as it moved past, and Rejection off another nearby bar restored his balance. Then he was running again. No, not just running, sprinting down the long bar even as it turned.

Ahead of him was the last major obstacle, and one that’d only just fully manifested itself as he’d gotten close. An almost solid wall of spinning bars, dozens of them stretching above and below, with only a small corridor between. Actually, small was an understatement. Barely a foot fall, and two feet wide, the only way he’d be able to pass it would be to dive through. But, with the way the windmill arms rotated, the passageway through the constantly moving wall had to be almost twenty feet long!

Even a Rejection-powered leap wouldn’t be enough to get him through it.

How was he going to…?

Hiral activated his Rune of Time Dilation, slowing everything around him to a crawl. Pressure immediately began to build in the back of his skull as reality shoved against his magic, but it was bearable for the moment, and his eyes scoured the obstacle in front of him.

Only one way through. No doubt about that. Arms rotating in opposite directions, so I can’t simply power through using Rejection or Attraction. And the tunnel between those arms is way too long. I’ll get a couple of feet, and then gravity will…

Hiral let the Rune of Time Dilation fade, then finished his sprint along the narrow beam just as the edge of it lined perfectly up with the space between the gearworks of spinning bars.

This is going to bruise if I mess it up.

Powering his leap with a burst of Rejection, Hiral dove for the opening, activating his Rune of Gravity. Still moving at full-sprint speeds, he launched like a released arrow, but he was already too low. Even with the reduced weight—barely any at all, really—he’d still collide face-first with the churning bars. Oh, Right would love that.

Instead of giving his double a good laugh, he latched on to one of the higher bars moving away from him and used his Rune of Attraction. The pull snapped him up just in time to clear the lip of the tunnel, but he cut it off immediately, replacing it with a gentle wall of Rejection. The last-second switch just barely saved him from slamming into the top of the tunnel, but now he was within the belly of the beast.

Bars rotated and spun all around him, promising a painful response if his concentration faltered for even a second, and he was already dropping towards the grinding teeth below. Worse, he’d Rejected against a bar that had been spinning towards him, stealing some of his forward momentum.

One thing at a time.

Changing his Rejection from above to below, Hiral spotted a bar moving in the same direction he wanted to go and focused on that. He pushed along with his reduced weight, but it again sent him careening towards the top and slightly off to the side. Every touch of his runes had him bouncing like a pinball, the angle at which he hit the moving windmill arms deciding where he was going to go.

Another quick use of Rejection saved him, but the bounce back again threw him to the side. Even though he was about halfway through already, each rebound was just getting worse and worse. He couldn’t keep up…

Hiral pushed energy into his Rune of Time Dilation again, then immediately combined the effect with his Rune of Time Contraction. Though the beams slowed and eventually stopped, echoes of where they would go seemed to crawl ahead like blurs of solar energy. In the paused time, he spotted the bars he needed to move forward—Huh, there are only seven that are actually moving the right direction—then reached out with his Runes of Rejection and Attraction.

Small tethers of solar energy from his runes quickly connected him to the bars he needed, even though they didn’t take effect in the paused time, and then he cancelled his time runes. His carefully laid web of runic connections snapped into action at the same time, pulling him sharply into the center of the narrow tunnel and then launching him forward. If he’d been an arrow before, now he was a crossbow bolt, shooting out of the tunnel with so much force the air pulled his lips back across his face.

And then, just like that, there was a platform below him.

One he was going to soar right past if he didn’t do something soon!

Focusing on the platform, Hiral lashed out with tethers of Attraction and Gravity, and the new connections dragged him rocketing down towards the end of the platform. Even with the new ties, he’d go sliding right off—or wrench his joints apart if he tried to stick to the platform itself.

So, twisting in the air, he hit the platform feet-first but still slid backwards, his toes skidding along the stone while he leaned forward. As soon as his fingers also touched down, he fired Rejection out of the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

Like he was in the starter position for a race, Hiral slid backwards, force jetting out behind him against natural momentum. Off went his back foot, the stone slipping out from under his toes to give way to nothingness beneath.

Come on!

More power into his Rune of Rejection, the jettison of force roaring like a tornado behind him, and his lead foot reached the edge… where it stopped. Fingertips switching to Attraction without conscious thought, Hiral took a deep breath, then carefully pulled himself completely onto the platform.

“Yes!” Right cheered from the distant trial starting point. “Yes,” he said again with a fist pump.

Another breath, and Hiral stood up and waved at his double, trying not to show his nerves at just how close he’d been to shooting right off the edge. The other party members turned at Right’s exclamations and spotted Hiral on his platform.

Oddly enough, the Party Interface didn’t let them communicate while they were in the trials, but he got the gist of their congratulations before they went back to their own challenges. Even at a distance, he could see his success had just reignited their motivation. As difficult as the trials were, they were doable.

Well, at least getting to the actual trial was, and Hiral tuned his attention to the sphere sitting in the center of the platform. Like Odi had said, it was about the size of a watermelon, black, smooth, and seemingly full of whirling, luminescent smoke. Hiral could already feel it pulling on his solar energy. A quick check confirmed he was losing a full percentage point every thirty seconds.

I’m at seventy percent, so that gives me ten minutes to work on this before I drop below fifty. Since the others are still working on getting to their trials, I’ll go back and tackle the course again until I can do it smoothly.

“Okay, so how are you going to teach me to cycle energy?” Hiral asked the orb, stepping over to it. Just getting closer, he could sense a kind of void within it—the space he’d need to fill with solar energy to pass the trial. All around him, the ambient solar energy hung heavy, almost tangible to his senses, but it didn’t go near the sphere itself.

Even where the energy brushed across his skin, hardly any of it got pulled into his system. Not nearly enough to offset the loss he was experiencing just by being near the crystal. No, that wasn’t entirely accurate, he realized as he concentrated on the feeling. He was simply losing that much solar energy despite naturally absorbing some.

Circling the sphere, Hiral stared at it from all angles before risking touching it. Was the sphere made out of some kind of black material? With the way it looked like solar smoke was twisting within, that seemed unlikely. So, clear but filled with something else pitch black? And the pedestal it stood on? A plain, perfectly smooth pillar of stone. No ornamentation—or hints at what he was supposed to do.

Hiral tapped his lip in thought, already down three percent of his solar energy just from inspecting the sphere. Still, anything he figured out here would save the others time and effort. But what was he supposed to figure out? There weren’t any hints!

He tilted his head as he looked at the swirling smoke again.

Or are there?

The streamer of smoke moving within the sphere wasn’t random. Even as he walked around the black orb, one end of the streamer always connected to the same place at the limit of the sphere. That must be where the solar energy was entering the sphere.

But, why did it have to be there? Why not the other side? Why not all over? Wasn’t this cycling technique supposed to be more efficient?

Leaning closer to the sphere, he carefully inspected the entry point for the solar energy. No hole. No crack. No coloration. There wasn’t anything special to show…

Hiral licked his lips as he took a breath. Then he did it again. What was that…? Like… crisp lemons? Why was he tasting lemons? His eyes widened as he stared at the sphere and the spot meant to represent a human’s mouth. Just like Seena and Yanily had said, there was a taste to the solar energy.

“Which means this cycling method must have something to do with our breathing,” he said, speaking the words aloud allowing him to order his thoughts. “It’s not about pulling more solar energy into our bodies. It’s pulling something else in that mixes with the solar energy and improves the absorption rate… or the quality of it. And that means this heavy energy around me that tastes like lemons isn’t just solar energy.

“Still doesn’t help explain what I’m supposed to do,” he finished with a glare at the sphere. Breathing wasn’t something he was unfamiliar with, but how was he supposed to make a hunk of glossy, black stone breathe?

Rubbing the tips of his fingers together, there wasn’t much left for him to do but touch the sphere itself, and he reached out one hand to each side of it. One more breath to prepare for… whatever was going to happen… and he pressed his palms against the cool stone.

All at once, the whole room vanished, blanketing Hiral in darkness, like he stood inside a vast, limitless pit. The air was cool against his skin, that hint of lemon lingering, and he looked down to find more nothingness beneath him—though he could clearly see his own body. There was also still the sensation of the sphere between his hands, even though he couldn’t see it, so he didn’t let go.

Tilting his head back, Hiral spotted glowing smoke lingering distantly at the top of the space. This wasn’t a streamer, but instead a loosely hanging cloud, and it sparkled to his eyes, like little bolts of lightning sparked within. But it was so far away, and part of him yearned for it to come down and join him. At the same time, he knew the smoke was too thin to make the journey. It would dissipate and escape long before it reached him.

The cloud shifted as he pawed at it with his senses—even though it was hundreds of feet away—and he found he could gently pull or push the substance if he concentrated on it. But, where? Where was he supposed to move it?

Fumbling like a child in the sand, Hiral pushed left, only for the cloud to shift right. He pulled, and it slipped through his “fingers.” It was too loose. He couldn’t do anything with it like that. Like a million individual strands of string…

Hiral stopped trying to move the cloud from one place to another, and instead twisted. Around and around and around he pulled the smoke, like he was feeding it into a whirlpool. With each pass, the cloud tightened, growing darker, denser, until he had a rope of cloud-stuff in his grip. It felt firm, strong, and he tentatively gave it a pull in his direction.

It resisted.

Like there was a wall between him and the cloud, the rope of spiraled clouds wouldn’t move.

Another pull, this time harder, but it didn’t change the result, and Hiral glanced at his own solar energy capacity.

Forty-eight percent and dropping.

Part of him wanted to stay and keep testing, but maybe one of the others would be able to offer some insight. He’d talk to them, rerun the course until he could do it with his eyes closed, and keep practicing with the strange smoke. Managing to get it into a rope was already an accomplishment, probably, so he’d take that learning as a success.

With that thought, Hiral released the sphere and once again found himself on the platform. One more quick look at the strange smoke within the black space—was it his imagination, or did it look tighter?—and he walked over to the side of the platform.

I wonder how the others are doing?

BAMF!

“Aaaaaaagh!”

Splash.

“Pretty well, I guess,” he said with a chuckle, then dove into the water himself.