Rune Seeker

With those words, everybody turned to Seeyela. Would she have any further objections to following the quest?

“Still not a fan of the PIMP,” she grumbled, then looked at Yanily. “I see where you’re coming from, though. The reward for completing this quest – finding survivors – is too much to pass up. I withdraw my objection. Happy?”

“It’s not like that,” Seena said. “It’s good you question the quests. We need to keep doing that – it keeps us all safer.”

“You’re just saying that because I eventually agreed with you.”

Seena quirked a smile at her sister. “I was always the smarter one.”

Then it was Seeyela’s turn to smile, though this one was far more sinister, and her eyes turned to Hiral. “So smart you wrote about a certain Islander in your diary – and then didn’t put it back into its hiding place. I wonder how interested said Islander would be in hearing what that entry stated?”

“I…” Hiral started, only to cut off as Seena lunged at her sister, who promptly vanished with a bamf.

“Now, the great thing about party chat,” Seeyela said without even being in the room. “Is how well words carry even when I’m already on my way to find one of those Mid-Bosses. Let’s see, where should I start? Perhaps with the bit about how his eyes remind you of…”

“AAAAAAH!” Seena shouted, drowning out her sister’s voice, before initiating her movement ability to go burning straight out of the room in a rush of flame.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” Yanily said. “Think we should go with them, or go find our own Mid-Boss?”

Hiral stared at the line of flame heading out of the room for another two seconds before he finally tore his eyes away to look at Yanily. Seena writes in her diary about me? A shake of his head to dispel the thought – and the questions about what she wrote – and he finally gathered his thoughts enough to answer.

“While they could probably handle a Mid-Boss on their own, it’s better to be safe,” Hiral said.

“Yeah,” Yanily agreed. “We should probably catch up. You okay over there Drahn?”

“I just… it really is always like this with your group, isn’t it?” the tracker asked.

Hiral and Yanily shared a look.

“This is pretty tame, actually,” Hiral said.

Yanily nodded his agreement – while Seena continued to shout threats into the party chat at her sister – then jogged out of the room.

“Let’s go,” Hiral said to Drahn and his doubles, then followed. By the trail of flame, it was pretty clear which direction the two women had gone, and Hiral quickly went that way with the others. Luckily, even without the flaming trail, the Party Interface would’ve helped guide him towards the still-bickering sisters.

He’d barely gone two blocks – RHCs back out in his hands – before Seeyela’s voice cut clearly through Seena’s threats.

“I’ve got something,” Seeyela said seriously. “Another large building. Bigger than the dome. Half of it seems collapsed, but… looking at it is making my hair stand on end. There’s something in there.”

“Another Dracolich?” Yanily asked, and Drahn stiffened even while running.

The man did not like flying.

“Not the same kind of dread,” Seeyela said as the others continued in her direction. “More a… look, you’ll understand when you get here.”

At that, the party chat went quiet as the others sped along until they finally found Seeyela standing at the end of a street, broken buildings on either side of her. Ahead, though, that was where things got a bit more interesting.

Instead of a collapsed cavern – well, it was still that, but on a larger scale – Hiral spotted the partially shattered building she’d mentioned. The building in the middle of a whole lot of… nothing. Sure, it looked like there was a wall off to either side of Hiral – one that had probably stood twenty feet tall – but beyond it? Other than the building in the middle, there was a field easily a half-mile in all directions. An empty field.

The whole section was slightly tilted, like it’d fallen out of the sky – which it had – before the ground above had caved in around it. In the center of all that, the building in question was half-buried where part of the ceiling had fallen on it. What remained, looked as much like a fortress as anything else, though something about that didn’t quite up.

It wasn’t like the Palace of Creeping Death or the Troblin’s ruined fortress. What’s different? Ah! While the previous two examples had obvious construction in place to clearly repel attackers, this one felt… reversed. It was big. Sturdy. Windowless.

It wasn’t meant to keep something out – it was built to keep something in.

Wonderful.

“You see what I’m talking about?” Seeyela asked.

“Yup,” Hiral said.

“Hey,” Yanily interrupted. “There’s something written on the wall over here. It says… oh. Oh, Hiral, you’re going to love this.”

“What’s it say, Yan?” Seena asked as the spearman began to chuckle.

“I won’t spoil it,” Yanily said, waving them over to the side of the road where he pointed at something on the outer wall.

Sharing a glance – and a shrug – with Seena, Hiral walked over with the others to read what Yanily had found.

Research and Testing Department – Authorized Personnel Only

“Ooooh,” Hiral said, looking again from the sign to the building in the distance. With the new information, he could easily imagine the building occupying an empty space on the flying island, nothing but grass and a sturdy wall all around in case… something went wrong.

Then his eyes narrowed. So, what’s going to go wrong?

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“It makes sense,” Seeyela said. “If this was the Builder island, of course they’d need a place to safely explode.”

“Do explosions come in the safe kind?” Yanily asked.

“We don’t even know if all Builders explode,” Hiral said absently.

“So, you’re admitting you explode now, huh?” Seena jabbed him in the arm as she asked the question.

“No comment,” he said smoothly, then pointed an RHC towards the building. “Good chance our Mid-Boss target is some kind of experiment.”

“Failed or successful?” Drahn asked.

“No idea. And I’m not sure what would be worse. Dr. Benza said A-Rank was the strongest they could make. If it was a failed experiment – maybe that makes it B-Rank? Then again, that could just mean it’s stronger and uncontrollable.”

“Either way, we won’t figure it out standing around here,” Seena said. “Remember what we’re here for – Solar Cores. Like Hiral said, assume it’s inside whatever Mid-Boss we’re going to fight.”

“Does that mean we have to go easy on it?” Yanily asked. “Don’t want to destroy the core.”

Seena seemed to think about it for a few seconds, then shook her head. “No. I’d rather fail the quest than have somebody get hurt because we were pulling our punches.”

“Survivors…” Seeyela reminded her sister.

“Possible survivors,” Seena corrected. “Which means the only guaranteed survivors I’m worried about are us. Hold off on using Eloquently Enraged+ unless you need it – save it for the Boss – but any short cooldowns are fair game. If it gets bad, then don’t hold anything back. We can wait the thirty minutes if we need to.”

“Got it, Boss,” the others said in unison.

Seena quirked her lips at the chorus, then responded by giving Hiral the shoulder tap.

A quick shared look with his doubles, and Hiral took the first step off the street and into the field surrounding the research compound. Huh, there wasn’t a gate? Not a question that really mattered, Hiral turned his focus to his sensory domain, spreading it ahead of him for anything out of the ordinary.

Just a normal field, as far as he could tell. Then again, the dome had looked normal until it had started spitting out cannons. Still, even with his eyes peeled and his senses scouring as far as they’d go with his domain, he couldn’t find anything that’d be a threat to the party. That peace continued all the way up to the front door of the research facility, where he definitely expected something to make trouble for them.

“This quiet is just making it worse,” Seeyela said.

“Seriously. Something needs to hurry up and jump us,” Yanily added.

“Probably once we try to open the door,” Hiral said, sheathing one of his RHCs, and putting his hand against the door. “Ready?”

The party behind him turned to keep watch in all directions, and he pushed on the door – adding a small wave of Rejection to open it. Didn’t budge. Not even an inch. Why…? Hiral almost facepalmed before casually swiping his hand past the activation crystal beside the door. So smooth, I’m sure nobody noticed that.

Right chuckled beside him.

Hiral didn’t have a chance to glare at his double before the door simply vanished from where it’d been. Like with the dome, Hiral felt the pull of solar energy and gravity depositing the door in the wall above where it’d been a second before.

As soon as the way was clear, Hiral hefted his other weapon to point down the newly exposed hall, half-expecting something to come charging at him. Nothing did. Odd.

“Anything?” he asked cautiously.

“All clear here,” Yanily said.

“Here too,” Seeyela added.

“Did the PIMP forget to add the Mid-Boss?” Seena asked.

“As long as it didn’t forget to include the loot and achievements at the end,” Yanily said.

“The true achievements were the friends we made along the way,” Left said so evenly, everybody turned to look at him. “What? Would you put it past the PIMP?”

Yanily just groaned.

“I’m heading in,” Hiral said, doing his best to ignore his double. Ahead, his sensory domain spread down the tunnel, finding several doors on each side as it went. He couldn’t quite move the domain past the doors – yet – but it gave him a pretty good idea what lay ahead in the thirty-foot hall. “Two doors on each side, then one more at the end.”

“Right side of us is collapsed,” Seena pointed out. “Probably not much in there, but we should check anyway. Let’s take it one door at a time.”

Another shoulder tap, and Hiral moved to the first door, this one on his right. This time, instead of trying to push the door open, he went straight to the crystal embedded beside it. A swipe of his hand over the crystal and… nothing. No reaction. He tried a second time, his solar senses primed, and there wasn’t even a spark of energy.

Just like most of the crystals were up on Fallen Reach until recently.

“This one isn’t working,” Hiral said.

“Can you fix it?” Seena asked.

“Does he need to?” Seeyela asked. “Why don’t we try the other ones first.”

“Good idea,” Seena said. “We can always come back to this one if we need to.”

Another shoulder tap, and Hiral moved to the next door, this one on his left. And, like the first, the crystal didn’t work. Neither did the next two in the hall, as it turned out, and the party worked its way towards the far end.

“Just this one door left,” Hiral said. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll see what I can do about getting them open.”

A swipe of his hand over the crystal and the door… didn’t move an inch. No solar energy there, either.

“No good?” Seena asked.

“No…” Hiral said, thinking. “Hey, Left, can you go back and close the first door? If this is a research facility, maybe they put some kind of restriction in where the inside doors wouldn’t open if the outside one wasn’t closed. To try and prevent something… dangerous… from getting out.”

“Oh, so you’d rather trap us in here with it?” Seeyela asked while Left jogged back to the entrance.

“No,” Right said before Hiral could. “We’d be trapping it in here with us.” Then he winked. Again.

“Stop that,” Seeyela said, flinching away, before Right chuckled.

“The Unseen Fang’s one weakness, casual winks,” Right said.

“Door won’t close again,” Left said over the party chat, ending Seeyela’s suffering. Or, perhaps saving Right’s life. “If I had to guess, I’d say opening it used the last of the power in the building.”

“Probably a good guess,” Hiral said, turning his mind to getting the door in front of him open.

“You powered the interface back in the Asylum, can you do it here?” Seena asked him.

“Possibly,” Hiral said slowly, mind on another option. “You mind if I test something else first?”

“Oh boy,” Seena said. “Should we stand back?”

Hiral thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, you probably should.”

“Whoa, okay, now I’m a bit nervous,” Seena said, but she and the others backed up. “You doing something risky?”

“Nah,” Hiral said, tuning out the party and putting his left hand against the door in front of him. White energy glowed along his sleeve from his pseudo-aspect, but that wasn’t the power he’d use to “open” the door. No, for this, he was going back to basics… and something he’d seen the crystal construct do.

If it could do it at B-Rank, can’t I?

With that – and his mind firmly on a single image – Hiral activated his Rune of Separation. Solar energy flooded into the center of his chest before the power burst out of his fingertips. A slight pulse of Rejection blew the hundreds of tiny, perfect cubes to the floor in front of him in a shower of clicking stone on stone.

“Well, that’s one way to… make an entrance,” Yanily said.