Rune Seeker

Looking again at the empty streets, Hiral quickly ruled out – or at least, really lowered – the likelihood of any of those survivors being there. While the buildings themselves were mostly intact, there was absolutely no sign they were lived in.

Or, ever really had been.

They were too… perfect. Well, perfect for a section of city that had literally been ripped out of the sky and then buried under thousands of tons of rock. They just looked too much like what he’d helped build before anybody moved in. Worn, sure, from what had happened to them, but none of the signs of use from people living in them. No curtains on windows, no doormats, no… personality.

“Anybody see anybody?” Seena asked.

“Nobody,” Yanily said.

“Not even any monsters,” Drahn added. “This is a very strange dungeon.”

“It kind of reminds me of the Necropolis of Ur’Thul,” Seeyela said. “And, like there, I bet we need to head to the middle.” As she spoke, she pointed at a dome-like building occupying the center of the cavern. Though it was no taller than the other buildings around it – four stories – it’s shape definitely stood out.

“As good a place as any to start,” Seena said. “Now to find a way down…”

Between the party and the town they looked down on was a sheer fifty-foot drop, though Hiral could’ve likely skipped from rooftop to rooftop.

“I could open a portal,” Seeyela said. “Little costly for all of us…”

“There looks to be a way down further over there,” Left said, gesturing about a quarter of the way around the cavern to what appeared to be a sloped path.

“I’ve got a faster and less costly way,” Hiral said. A thought threaded more solar energy into his scarves, and they reached out to once again wrap the others in thick ropes of light – though he was very careful to be less… gropey. “Everybody okay with this?”

“Are we there yet?” Yanily just asked.

“Ignore him,” Seena said, and gave Hiral the shoulder tap.

A nod to the party leader, and he leapt off the cliff, weaving his runes to haul the party along and slow their fall. It barely took a few seconds for them to land comfortably on the roadway at the base of the cliff, and he released the ropes from around the others.

“I could’ve taken us further,” he said. “Or across the roofs. But…”

“No, this is better,” Seena said. “There might be clues down here we need.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said. Another shoulder tap, and he moved forward, Right at his side. Left hung near the back to watch for anything coming at them from behind, but the party moved quickly down the street.

“Remember The Buried City,” Seena said. “Monsters may come out of the shadows.”

“Oh, I won’t make that mistake again,” Hiral said while he guided his sensory domain into doorways and windows, feeling for any sort of solar energy surges. Nothing came, though that didn’t mean his efforts were a waste. “The buildings are all furnished with the same things, from what I can tell. Most of it was ruined, but it feels the same in every place. I don’t think anybody even had a chance to move into these homes.”

“Makes sense,” Yanily said. “The attack on the islands happened when most people were porting in.”

“True, but… do any of you remember seeing a building like that?” Seena asked, pointing ahead to their destination. With no monsters jumping out of the buildings to try and kill them, the party was making good time.

“No, we definitely didn’t build anything like that,” Hiral said.

“You all keep talking like this place is familiar,” Drahn interrupted, his bow already with an arrow knocked, but not pulled. “You were in a dungeon like this before? What’s all this about building?”

“Kind of a long story,” Seeyela said. “Time magic shenanigans, lost dungeons, and secret love affairs. The usual. I’ll tell you about it when we make camp.”

“If that’s the usual, somebody needs to rewrite the guide,” Drahn mumbled, but nodded at the conversation getting put off for later.

Hiral smiled to himself as he kept his eyes – and sensory domain – peeled for any changes around them. To say their adventures had been anything other than wild – and not just because of the dungeons – would be an understatement. Would other parties see the same things they had?

Would they need to?

So many of the wild dungeons they’d run had been for specific purposes. Stopping the Urn of Ur’Thul or saving Fallen Reach. For the others, they were just leveling. Then again, here they were in another wild dungeon.

With their destination right in front of them.

“In?” Hiral asked, though he suspected the answer. Another shoulder tap confirmed it, and he headed for the door he’d spotted straight ahead. Unlike the other buildings they’d passed, this dome didn’t have any windows along its curved walls, and only the single door as far as he could see. Creeping his sensory domain over and around the dome as he got closer, he confirmed this was in fact the only way in or out of the building.

“Right, you ready?” he asked his double.

“Ready,” Right said, purple flames wreathing his right fist, and his left arm glowing with a black line in white light.

“You know,” Yanily said as the others got closer and Hiral reached for the door. “I’m kind of surprised nothing has jumped out to…”

Hiral didn’t even bother listening to the rest of the spearman’s words, his sensory domain flaring warnings as sections of the domed wall simply vanished. All around the circumference of the building, blocks about two-and-a-half-feet square disappeared in a blink.

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Then something crawled out of them.

“Yaaaan…” Seena scolded, obviously having spotted something.

With eight of, well, whatever they were making their way quickly around the building in the party’s direction, Hiral turned his attention from his domain to his sight. Off to the right, the nearest of the surprise guests had just appeared. Little more than – if those words could really be used to describe the thing – a cannon housed on four crab-like legs, the arm-length barrel lowered to point in their direction.

“Seven more coming!” Hiral said, dashing in the construct’s direction at the same time it lined up its weapon. A flash of light, then a bolt of energy – similar to Hiral’s RHCs – shot in his direction. Reflexes taking over, the Rune of Rejection surrounded his left hand, and he casually swatted the attack out of the air to slap into the wall beside him.

In Hiral’s other hand, his RHC came smoothly off his thigh, took aim, then spat its own blast back at the opponent. Without a Rune of Rejection – or its own hands – the crab-cannon didn’t have any defense against the shot besides its own crystal body. And against the Piercing Shot, that didn’t turn out to be enough.

Chunks of crystal burst off in a shower as the bolt of searing Impact punched through the top of the cannon’s housing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to drop the opponent, and Hiral picked out the sounds of other cannons firing behind him. With seven more of these things taking potshots at the group, he didn’t have time to play around.

Energy surged through his pseudo-aspect just in time to slap the second blast away, and then he was practically on top of the construct. Up close, it had a similar make-up to the four-armed golem that’d given him his class, but the actual material it was built from didn’t glow with the same kind of strength. It was fragile, almost like g… No, analysis can wait for later, he scolded himself, whipping his Piercing-Shot-infused barrel to press up against the side of the cannon.

Another pull of the trigger – Loving this reduced cooldown between shots – blasted the cannon in half. Before the front even had a chance to hit the ground, Hiral’s Impact-laced kick slammed into its housing, shattering it like an eggshell. The small legs continued to scrabble across the ground despite the horrific damage while a second cannon-construct rounded the edge of the building further to Hiral’s right.

Out came the second RHCin his left hand at the same time he lined up his right with the new enemy. A simultaneous pull of both triggers ended one threat right in front of him, and blew two legs off another.

Suddenly unbalanced, the construct’s own cannon fired off wildly into the nearby city, the force of it shredding stone walls in a line fifty feet long. Hiral’s eyes trailed the path of destruction before turning briefly to the building beside him. This dome must be made of stronger stuff. Then he was moving again, the barrel of the cannon pivoting like it would try to take a shot at him even from that position. Not that he’d give it a chance.

Within a heartbeat it was right in front of it. The next, he was above it, flipping in a handless cartwheel while aiming both his weapons directly below. Vertically upside-down, he pulled the triggers, dual bolts of Impact shattering the cannon below him like fragile ceramic. The clinking of the shattered shards echoed behind him as he finished his acrobatics and sprinted towards the next opponent rounding the bend.

Pseudo-aspect and Rejection powering his movement, he – unbelievably – reached the next cannon before his RHCs came off cooldown. Releasing the weapons from his grasp – Ring of Amin Thett picking them up for him to float nearby – Hiral forged Separation in front of him without slowing. Sching was the only sound the cannon made as it split cleanly in two while he vaulted the falling halves. That just left one more target directly ahead, cannon already glowing as it released its payload.

Rejection gathered around Hiral’s hands as he prepared to deflect the blast, but in that split-second before the shot reached him, his instincts screamed warning. More a glob than a concentrated bolt – like the last two he’d batted aside – this attack felt unstable within his sensory domain. No, not unstable.

Volatile.

If he tried to parry that… his mind went back to the shredded buildings. Yeah, not good. Except, his hand was already moving. Time to try something… reckless.

Threading solar energy as he went, Hiral snapped his right hand out to join his left. Sure, he probably could’ve just aborted his parry – he was fast enough – but that would’ve left the explosive glob to sail back towards where his party had been. That, and, really, it wouldn’t have been as fun as this.

Attraction, Sealing, Time Dilation, and Connection all weaved together just as the glob reached his hands. Well, almost reached. With the utmost care, Hiral grasped the unstable energy in a closed field of forces that never quite touched it, while he sidestepped. For once, he didn’t explode, and instead spun in a twist like he held the world’s most dangerous shotput.

Following his hands, the energy thrummed with potential until he completed his three-hundred-and-sixty spin, then launched directly back at where it’d come from. If crystalline, mobile artillery could look surprised, the wide stubby barrel between two small lamps above it sure made it look that way.

Then the glob arrived, and Hiral didn’t even have time to wonder what it would do before it erupted into a fifteen-foot sphere of chaotic energy. Nope, that wouldn’t have been good for me at all. Still, looking from the flash that faded almost as fast as it appeared – and still did no damage to the dome beside it – Hiral skidded to a stop and glanced at his hands.

The weaving of runes to almost instantly form the containment for the attack had been… so easy. The benefits of B-Rank and the Edicts? And, really, it wasn’t just this time. He’d been leaning pretty heavily on his literal arsenal within the Ring of Amin Thett, but had he been ignoring an even greater weapon right there on his own body? Should he…?

Hiral’s thoughts cut off as his tattoos and Meridian Lines emerged from his right arm, the pseudo-aspect popping out of existence.

Right was killed?

Without his sensory domain to rely on, Hiral’s eyes snapped to his party interface. Were the others okay?

No. No they weren’t.

Seena was at half-health.