Rune Seeker

Less than the promised ten minutes later, Drake landed with restrained gusto in front of the gathered crowd at the prison. Hiral slipped off the Dracolich’s back—activating Foundational Split as he went, since his solar energy was back to full—then jogged over to Seena. With her flaming mantle, she wasn’t difficult to pick out, even surrounded by a forest of seven-foot-tall Shapers.

As soon as she spotted Hiral, she squeezed through the crowd, then came over to meet him. Even before he had a chance to say something, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him into a tight hug. He hesitated only a heartbeat before he returned the gesture, and she squeezed him even closer.

Then she pulled away, and the scowl almost made him get right back on Drake and fly away as fast and far as possible.

“Now, you want to explain exactly what happened?” she asked.

“What… happened?”

“Your health bar zeroed out. Zero! Then back to one percent so fast I thought I’d imagined it. Even if I had… one percent! What did you do?”

“Uh, so, well… I had to take a chance and use my ability, That All You Got? The one that prevents me from taking a lethal blow as long as it’s more than twenty-five percent of my health. That let me trigger the damage bonus from my High-Speed Regeneration+. Interesting note on it, by the way: Its damage is multiplicative instead of additive, depending on how much health I’m missing. So, at one percent, it multiplied all my damage—and damage bonuses—by five times. It was pretty…” He trailed off when the scowl on Seena’s face didn’t lessen. If anything, it got worse.

“You’re telling me you purposely died to get a damage bonus?”

“I didn’t die. Just…”

“Totally gone,” Left said.

“It came back,” Hiral said. “How many times do I have to point that out?”

“Did it hurt?” Seena asked quietly, and when Hiral looked at her, most of the scowl had been replaced with concern.

Hiral shook his head. “I made sure to make Vule angry enough he’d do everything he could to kill me in one shot. I didn’t feel a thing. Not even a headache after.”

“Some kind of resurrection?” Seeyela asked, appearing with a bamf beside them.

“I don’t think so. More like a… rewind? I felt something like my time runes activating. Something much more powerful. Probably a connection to the true Rune of Time.”

“Kind of OP, but not unprecedented, I guess,” Seeyela said. “That Roc resurrected itself.”

“And I have an ability that has a chance of resurrecting me,” Seena said. “Only a small chance, and you’re not going to see me purposely getting killed to trigger it!”

“I’m sorry,” Hiral said. “I didn’t see another way to get through all of Vule’s health. Even then, if I hadn’t tricked him into letting me hit him, I wouldn’t have won.”

“You were lucky he was stupid,” Left said.

Seena looked from Left to Hiral, back to Left, then slowly to Hiral again, her eyes narrowing the entire time. “You were lucky? The way he said that makes it sound like you fought a B-Rank Shaper all by yourself.”

“Uhhhhh…” Hiral started.

“He didn’t,” Right said, and Hiral almost let out a sigh of relief. “He took on both of them and two C-Rank Shapers all at once.”

Hiral face-palmed. “If she kills me, I’m pretty sure you die too,” he told his double.

“Think I should go use my Banner of Courage to help everybody absorb more solar energy,” Left suddenly said before vanishing within the crowd. A second later, a golden dome grew to envelop the crowd.

Coward.

“Hiral!” a new voice called, mercifully saving Hiral from Seena’s wrath. By the look on her face as she stepped aside, though, the conversation wasn’t over. “Is that you! Or… you? Or… huh… you?”

“It’s me, Dad,” Hiral said, his father pushing out from between the Shapers to run over. Loan wasn’t far behind, but by that point, Elezad’s arms were around Hiral, and his father pulled him in tight.

“You’re… You’re really alive? I’m not dreaming?” Elezad asked, his voice cracking.

“Not dreaming, Dad,” Hiral replied as he hugged his father back. Relief melted off his shoulders at seeing the man okay. As soon as Gauto had mentioned his parents, well, it had been hard not to imagine the worst. But it hadn’t happened. His whole family was okay, like some kind of miracle.

“You’re sure?” Elezad asked without letting go. “Cause the Nomad girls are kind of pretty—pretty like I only see in dreams, you know?—and one of them is on fire. Does she know she’s on fire? Then there’s the fact I’m seeing three of you. Pretty sure you weren’t a triplet when you left. Not to mention the giant… Is that a dragon? A skeletal dragon? Why does it look like it’s going to try to eat me?”

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“Drake’s not going to eat you. He just wants you to scratch him behind the horns. The women prefer to be called Growers, not Nomads, and yes, she knows she’s on fire. As for Left and Right, that’s a longer story.”

Elezad took a step back from Hiral—though he left his hands on Hiral’s arms—and looked at him. “You really made it back from the surface. When Arty told us… well, your mother almost killed him. After we got him to the hospital, we thought we’d never see you again.”

“Arty went to the hospital?”

“A few bruises. Maybe a concussion, nothing too serious.” Elezad made this sound like it wasn’t important.

“Wait, Mom did that?”

“Of course she did. She’s been… taking it hard since you left.”

Seena came around to elbow Hiral gently in the side. “See?” she whispered.

“She didn’t show it at all,” Hiral said to his father.

“You saw her?” Elezad asked. “Of course, at the Amphitheatre. Is she okay? Your sisters?”

“They’re fine, Dad,” Hiral said. Then he lowered his voice. “Dad, why does Mom have a glyph of fertility?”

Elezad’s eyes widened at the question, and he looked to the side before facing Hiral again. “Did she talk to you?”

“Just asked me about the only thing that’s ever mattered to her: my tattoos,” Hiral said.

Elezad opened his mouth, but a big hand fell on Hiral’s shoulder.

“I knew something simple like the surface wouldn’t be enough to stop you,” Loan said, adding a gentle squeeze for support. The big man’s eyes were wet, and it was obvious he was holding back his emotions. “Still, it’s good to see you.”

“You too, Loan,” Hiral said. “I hear you’re going to come help us deal with some uppity Shapers?”

The man’s face clouded as anger temporarily replaced his relief at seeing Hiral. “It seems that way. They have something to do with the storm?”

“The man with them does, yeah,” Hiral said. “We need all your help to get to him. If we can, there’s a way to stop the storm. Speaking of which, we should hurry. We’re short on time.”

“Hiral,” Elezad said, drawing his attention, “we need to talk about your mother before you go.”

“No, we don’t. Whatever it is, it can wait. I shouldn’t have asked you about the… the you-know.”

Elezad held onto Hiral’s arms. “It can’t wait. Not anymore.”

“No time,” Hiral said, going to pull away, but Seena’s hand at his back kept him in place.

“Actually, we have a few minutes while the Banner of Courage does its work,” she said, giving him a wink.

“I don’t care what…” Hiral started.

“For me, then,” Elezad said, and that stopped Hiral in his tracks. What could his father possibly have to say about his mother that Hiral would want to hear? She’d barely talked to him in almost a decade. Hell, she’d basically pretended he didn’t exist, spending all her time at work or any other place where he wasn’t. Once she had her genius daughters, she didn’t need him anymore. But…

But…

The look on Elezad’s face. The fact that he was asking. Hiral’s father had always been there for him, even if his mother hadn’t. For him… For him, he’d listen.

“Just until everybody is ready to go,” Hiral said quietly.

“Thank you,” Elezad said. “We should talk somewhere with a bit more privacy.”

“Seena, the timer,” Hiral said to the woman beside him.

“Just go with your father,” Seena said. “We’ll make sure everybody is ready to go in a few minutes.”

“I don’t know what he has to say…”

“Doesn’t matter. Just listen to him. Who knows the next chance you’ll have.” Seena looked back at the storm.

“Thank you,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

She returned the squeeze, then turned around and looped her arm through Loan’s. “So, I hear you helped train Hiral? I bet you have some wonderfully embarrassing stories you can tell me about him.”

Loan winked mischievously at Hiral, then let Seena lead him away. “Did he ever tell you about the first time he had to fight in the Amphitheatre of the Sun because his sister challenged a full-fledged Shaper on his behalf? Or what he wore to the fight?”

“Oh, no, I need to stop him…” Hiral started after Loan, but Elezad’s hand hooked his elbow.

“You said we don’t have time,” Elezad pointed out, his voice back to its usual calming tone. “We can talk over here. Come on.”

Hiral looked at Right, then pointed after Loan and Seena. “Damage control!” he hissed at his double before letting his father guide him out of earshot of the others.

When they finally rounded a corner where it wasn’t likely they’d be overheard—unless somebody was actively using a tattoo to spy on them—Hiral crossed his arms and looked at his dad. “So, what’s this all about?”

Elezad rubbed his hands together in front of himself like he always did when he was getting ready for inking a difficult tattoo. He worked each finger, one at a time, until he’d done both hands, then met Hiral’s eyes. “You mentioned the glyph. Did your mother say anything about it?”

“No. She hid it when she saw me looking at it. Then asked about my tattoos. Like I said, that’s all she cares about.”

“That’s not all she cares about, Hiral. She loves you more than you know.”

“Really? Has a funny way of showing it,” Hiral spat. “Most mothers I’ve seen who want to show their sons how much they love them actually talk to them. Maybe spend some time with them now and then. Go to their Shaper tests. That kind of thing.

“Pretty sure ‘pretending they don’t exist’ for ten years isn’t in the how-to guide for showing how much you care about somebody.”

Elezad sighed, but he also nodded. “I told her the same thing.”

“If she didn’t listen to you, it just proves how ashamed of me she was.”

“She wasn’t ashamed… of you,” Elezad said.

“What does that even mean?”

Elezad took a deep breath before speaking again. “She’s ashamed of herself.”

“For what? Not talking to me? I find that hard to believe. If it bothered her so much, it’s not like I didn’t live in the same house as her. When she was around, which wasn’t often…” Long years of frustration and anger were suddenly pouring out. His father didn’t deserve to be the target of all his pent-up hurt, but this was the first time he didn’t try to dodge the questions.

“Not for not talking to you… Well, that’s not the original reason.”

“What is, then? What did I do wrong that made her so ashamed she didn’t want me anymore?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong…”

“Then what is it!?” he practically shouted.

“She blames herself for you not being able to Shape.”