Rune Seeker

Hiral led the party down into the pit that looked to be close to two-hundred-feet deep, turbulent elemental energies roiling around them. As soon as he’d crossed the lip between tunnel and crevasse, he’d felt the air change. It was charged, and not just with the lightning zipping back and forth across the building – no, there was something else in there too. Whatever had caused the elements to run rampant was a much deeper problem.

Even just considering them as elements didn’t do the problem justice. The poison or acid bubbling in the pools clearly wasn’t an element – it was just dangerous. Then there were the pockets of twisted gravity practically glowing to Hiral’s senses. Thankfully, his rune seemed to be giving him insight on where they were – Or, maybe it’s the Edict? Either way, they let him avoid what felt like possibly the most dangerous – and invisible – peril in the pit.

“Make sure you follow me exactly,” Hiral told the group. “There are hidden gravity wells all over the place, and you really don’t want to step in one by accident.”

“They are… nasty,” Seeyela agreed as the party deftly skirted another one. “I feel like it’s pulling in three different directions, all at the same time.”

“Same here,” Hiral said, steering to pass between another pair. “Anything that walks into one of those would get pulled apart. In a very messy way.”

“Uh… and you’re sure you can see all of them?” Yanily asked, head turning left and right.

“We all better hope so,” Hiral said, only to feel something forming directly behind him. And directly in front of Seena! “Look out!” he shouted as he spun, spotting Seeyela already moving as well. Except she wouldn’t be faster than the gravity disturbance materializing practically right on top of the party leader.

No! Hiral commanded in his mind, while simultaneously reaching out with his own Rune and Edictof Gravity, like he was grabbing the space in his hands. Whatever it was – like some kind of breach leaking different levels of gravity in a small space – it fought against his control. Fought against his rune, with a direct competition having no easy winner.

But it wasn’t direct. It wasn’t even fair. Hiral pressed down with his Edict, commanding the gravity of the area to bend to his will. His concept of normal gravity overlayed the tear in reality, containing it long enough for Seeyela to arrive and pull her sister away. It wasn’t over just yet, though, even with the two women clear, Hiral could feel the tears spreading. He was containing the gravity – for the moment – but not the damage being done.

He needed to repair the… the what? The membrane of reality? No, that didn’t feel right. It wasn’t really reality that was broken; it was more like when he’d shattered the boundary in the dungeon. These tears connected to somewhere outside the dungeon they were in, maybe even somewhere like where the Enemy had come from.

All the more reason to… seal them!

Hiral almost shook his head at himself for not seeing the answer immediately, and began threading solar energy into his Rune of Sealing. Luckily, that was one of the other five runes he’d unlocked the Edict to, and he threw its weight at the problem.

Hand in hand with the Edict of Gravity, Hiral pushed to contain the volatile energies, and seal the tears letting them in. Something thrummed against his control, like a will of its own trying to resist his work. One tear, two, three tears opened in quick succession, spilling their gravity out in different directions to overpower him.

It didn’t work.

Armed with two Edicts, Hiral forced his concept of what the space should look like – what it should be - over the area. The tears that had appeared sealed with a thought, their gravity vanishing with them. That only let Hiral turn more of his attention from maintaining the gravity to repairing the remaining breaches, and they vanished one after the other.

Within the second that felt like minutes, the will resisting him seemed to give up – knowing it had lost this round – and Hiral finished the work. Releasing his control over the runes and Edicts in that area, he quickly turned his attention to the space around the party.

Would there be more…?

No, it was clear. For the moment.

“What was that?” Seeyela asked, looking right at Hiral. “Not the gravity. I felt… something behind it. Something that was trying to kill my sister,” she said, voice dropping dangerously.

“I felt it too,” Hiral said. “The gravity wells – at least – aren’t natural.”

“Pretty sure none of this is natural,” Yanily said, while a ball of fire as big as a house erupted forty feet above them. Heat and light washed over the party, though it wasn’t enough to bother any of them with Hiral’s protection.

“You have a point,” Hiral agreed. “That gravity well, in particular, felt targeted. We should keep moving.”

“Maybe it will be safer inside,” Drahn offered, though even he didn’t seem to believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Never mind, it’s probably more dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Good chance it’s connected to the Mid-Boss,” Seena said as the party moved from a jog to a run towards the door. With their B-Rank bodies, they covered the distance quickly.

Hiral still had to lead them around four existing gravity wells, and then seal another as it formed maliciously. That just left them with two more obstacles before they got to the main door, the chaotic elements getting even stronger as they got closer.

The first was the tornado of fire and ice whirling randomly across the ground, the power of it shredding, freezing, and scorching the stone floor wherever it passed.

“See, not natural,” Yanily reiterated, but the party was already turning their attention to the second problem as they moved.

Roots had grown across the door, sealing it shut.

“Okay, kind of natural?” Yanily amended.

“Is the Mid-Boss a Grower of some kind?” Seeyela wondered out loud.

“How are we getting through the door?” Drahn asked, his head moving as he followed the path of the tornado.

“Hiral’s key?” Yanily asked. “It worked on the door in the other building. Had to be made out of the same stuff, didn’t it?”

“Actually,” Seeyela said. “All of this gravity nonsense has kind of given me some inspiration. Mind if I try something? If it doesn’t work, Hiral can open it up.”

Seena looked at her sister and raised an eyebrow. “Now you want to test things? Next, you’ll be winking.”

“Never!” Seeyela said, clearly scandalized.

The party leader chuckled. “Get us inside, Sis.”

“We need to be beside the door,” Seeyela said. “Don’t think I can do it from here.”

“No problem,” Seena said. “Who’s dealing with the tornado.”

Yanily put his hand up. “What?” he asked when everybody looked at him. “It’s a storm. I got this.”

“That’s the plan, then,” Seena said with a nod. “Hiral, keep the weird gravity off us. Yan, keep the storm of death off us. Seeyela, get us inside.”

“And us?” Drahn asked.

“Look good,” Seena said far too confidently.

“Guess we’re in camp-Seena,” Right said to Left.

“Where else would we be?” Left responded.

“I’ll go first,” Yanily said. “Hiral, any of those invisible-rip-me-apart-bad-touches between here and the tornado?”

“None,” Hiral said. “I’ll keep an eye on you when you go, just in case.”

“Don’t think you’ll be able to keep up,” Yanily said, the solar energy in him suddenly spiking.

Hiral’s eyes weren’t the only ones widening as Yanily’s energy continued to grow, but he was the only one who felt how familiar it was. Yanily was working towards the same thing Hiral had with the pseudo-aspect.

Is he already figuring out how to summon a full Aspect? Then again, if it was anybody, it’d be him.

Up and up the power went, circulating through the spearman’s body so fast it almost reached the state of being a single, constant stream. Lightning arced in the air – nothing new for the spearman – but then it started to take on a shape. Over and over the lightning did something lightning wasn’t supposed to do – it struck the same spots and followed the same lines, again and again. Faster, faster, faster, the electricity went, leaving a burning afterimage in Hiral’s eyes.

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The image of a roaring dragon with Yanily standing in the center of its wide mouth.

At the same time, a glow outlined the lightning-roots of the PIM spread through his body, the whole light show continuing to rise like it was reaching a crescendo… but then something within Yanily sort of sputtered. He couldn’t maintain the flow – not yet. Instead of completely giving up, there was another pulse, directing the energy towards Yanily’s shoulders, the dragon-outline vanishing in a flash.

The storm-cloud-cloak on his back instantly went rigid as it expanded, the wings of thunder and lightning taking shape and spreading wide. Across his shoulders, down to about the middle of his back, and even stretching partially around his ribs to his chest, small bolts of lightning flickered between scales of solid cloud.

“Not quite there,” Yanily said. Still, the power coming off the man was well above anything Hiral had felt from him before. It wasn’t quite to the stage of Eloquently Enraged+, but it was a significant boost.

“Your own pseudo-aspect?” Hiral asked.

“Almost, though I’m getting some help from my sponsor. I’ll get it soon,” the spearman said. “But, before that…”

BOOOOOOM, and Yanily was gone, a thick bolt of lightning connecting where he had been to the center of the elemental tornado. The moment he struck, the whirling fire and ice ballooned out, then seemed to solidify like the whole thing was actually one living creature, before suddenly condensing again.

Raging stronger than ever before, flames burst within the swirling winds, while shards of razor-sharp ice visibly grew to cut apart the intruder. Almost immediately, stark forks of lightning crackled from within, beating back the assaulting elements, thick clouds weaving their way between the visible winds.

“I was going to ask if he’s going to be okay,” Seena said. “Shouldn’t have bothered. Sis, you’re up.”

“Let’s go!” Seeyela said, sprinting down to the door instead of her usual Bamf+. “You’ll need to be ready Yan.”

“Sure thing,” the spearman said, voice even like he wasn’t battling within the heart of a supernatural disaster. “Just got to get this unruly guy under control.”

“Unruly guy?” Hiral asked Seena quietly as the rest of the party sprinted down behind Seeyela.

The party leader shrugged at him as they reached the door, and Hiral spread his senses through his domain for any dangers. A single gravity tear threatened to form, then subsequently vanished under Hiral’s suppression. Another elemental burst came – this one fire – but before it could really explode, Seena simply backhanded the blooming ball of fire out of the doorway.

“What?” she asked, looking like she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.

“Almost ready here,” Seeyela said before Hiral could say anything else, and he turned his attention to the massive gravity fluctuation occurring at the end of Seeyela’s outstretched hands. Leaning with her palms pressed against the door, solar energy was spinning around and around, spreading out until it was…

The same size as a dungeon portal! But, she can already make portals… to places she can see.

Even as Hiral let his eyes linger for one second, two, on the flow of solar energy, he spotted something else familiar. This portal she was creating looked like a dungeon portal, but the way the energy moved, it was the same as the tears forming that were trying to kill them. One of them must’ve given her the inspiration for… whatever she was trying.

“Yan?” Seeyela asked. “You’ve got about three seconds, then I don’t know how long I can hold this.”

“Oh?” Yanily said. “I guess playtime’s over. It was fun.” KAAA-THOOOM, lightning shot down from the ceiling of the cavern to slam into the center of the tornado while thunder shook the dungeon. In a flash, the fire and ice vanished with a pop, while the wind dispersed to leave Yanily standing on the ground with his spear driven into the floor.

Into the floor, but through some kind of thin, vaguely humanoid creature with wispy limbs and shocks of blue and red flashing through its body. Another pulse – this one from Yanily’s Splinter of the Storm – and the corpse got sucked into the spear. More blue and red ran the length of the weapon before it completely disappeared.

“Ready,” Yanily said, ripping the spear free, then leapt towards the party. With the aid of the thundering wings at his back, he closed the distance at an impressive speed.

“Open up,” Seeyela said in response, her own solar energy peeking, and Hiral turned just in time to see a portal spiral open at her hands. A portal leading to… a hallway?

She opened a portal through the door, without being able to see what was on the other side.

“In… you all go…” the woman wheezed. “This is… harder than it… looks.”

“In, in, in,” Seena said with a tap on Hiral’s shoulder, and he darted through. Yanily was a heartbeat behind him, along with his doubles, while Seena and Drahn followed. That just left Seeyela, and she stepped inside before releasing her hold on the solar energy.

The portal-door rotated closed in the blink of an eye, and Seeyela leaned forward on her knees. Then she chuckled.

“Spontaneous ability evolution,” she said, clearly grinning under her eight-eyed helm. “Now I’ve got a key too. An expensive one, apparently.”

“You can tell us all about it when we clear the dungeon,” Seena said. “Though, I assume it lets you open passages through solid objects?”

“Exactly,” Seeyela said. “Those gravity tears Hiral was erasing gave me the idea. They aren’t through a solid object, but the way they’re ripping apart whatever separates here from there is very similar.”

“Any idea where there is?” Hiral asked.

“No idea,” Seeyela said. “You?”

“None.”

“Maybe the Mid-Boss can tell us?” Yanily said.

“Let’s go ask him,” Seena said, though she turned to look at the spearman. “After this dungeon, you’ll also be telling us about whatever you did back there. If you’ve been hiding something because you thought it would be fun…”

Seena didn’t need to finish the sentence, the spearman was already nodding enthusiastically. “Nothing hidden here. Just figured it out, though, maybe, I’ve been practicing a little on the side.”

The party leader left her glare to linger on him a second longer, but let it go for the moment. “Moving on, everybody good on solar energy?”

“That was a little more draining than I expected,” Seeyela said.

“Left, mini-banner?” Hiral asked, and the double shaped his Banner of Courage. As soon as it appeared, Left kept the golden dome to less than a ten-foot radius – the size of the hall they were in. “Thanks. Everybody ready to move at the same time?”

“I’ll be ready, as long as we aren’t running again,” Seeyela said, the energy moving around her like she was using Cycling+. With all the strange gravity portals, it was bound to be a prime spot for her to absorb solar energy.

Another shoulder tap, and Hiral started down the hall, senses on the look out. Unlike the other research facility, this hallway was a short one, and Hiral almost didn’t move due to what he sensed within his domain in the next room. The floor dropped, quickly leveling off at least thirty feet lower than the hallway. And, there in the center of the room… that… wasn’t what he expected.

“Hiral?” Seena asked.

“Something odd ahead of us,” he said.

“The Mid-Boss?”

“A tree.”

“A tree?” Yanily repeated.

“That’s what it feels like,” Hiral said, but then started forward. The Mid-Boss had to be in a room beyond the tree he felt. “Maybe a garden of some kind?”

“We’ve got a Mid-Boss protecting a garden?” Seena said, then shrugged. “I guess we’ve seen stranger things.”

“I don’t actually sense a Mid-Boss though. Or anything at all. Be careful.”

“You do see the irony of you being the one saying that, don’t you?”

“Shush,” Hiral said, readying energy to thread into his runes, then moved ahead. Soft footsteps trailed behind him – barely audible on the Path of Butterflies – as the group left the hallway, and entered the room. It wasn’t much larger, maybe only three-hundred feet from end to end, with the lower floor ringed by a walkway around the edge.

At first glance, it did somewhat resemble a garden – though a mostly dead one. Plant beds around the edges stood empty or filled with rotting, organic goop. The pathways that had led between them were stained brown from where the plants had fallen over and decayed. Vines so dry they’d likely break at the first touch hung from rafters that looks specially designed for them.

At second glance, however, Hiral spotted broken glass around those same plant beds, like whatever had been growing in had been contained. The vines wrapping the rafters wound so tightly around them, the metal had bent and broken in some places. On the outer ring of the room, more devices similar to what they’d seen in the other research building stood connected to areas in the floor below. Some kind of way to monitor what was growing?

Not just monitor. Here, in the room, Hiral could feel it more strongly – the chaotic energy that had led to elemental bursts outside. Even as he watched, one of the devices along the far wall sputtered to life, a ball of flame whooshing from the plant bed on the floor beneath it. A second sputter, a second whoosh.

Then the device was dead again, though one on the far side activated. This time, instead of flaming death, a deep crevice of a flower bed immediately filled with bubbling poison. The stuff was so potent, the whole party reflexively took a step back as the stone sizzled at the touch. One second, two, three, and the green liquid vanished with a pulse from the device, replaced quickly by gallons of pure water.

All around the room, more of the devices activated, summoning in their respective element to kill whatever had long ago died in their chambers. These are what was creating the elemental bursts outside? I bet every time the fire appears in here… it appears out there too. Same with the others. And it killed everything.

No, not everything.

Through it all, one thing remained standing. Remained alive. The crooked tree in the center of the room. Though the trunk grew at almost a forty-five-degree angle, and twisted like a corkscrew, the tree itself stood almost thirty feet tall. At the top, the crown of the tree spread far, easily twice as wide as it was tall, with several small fruit – Almost look like apples – dangling from the branches.

Even from the distance, Hiral could feel those weren’t normal fruit. Densely packed solar energy practically screamed to his senses, and it wasn’t just him. Seena took a step forward, hand lifting before she seemed to realize what she was doing. And… was she drooling?

A quick look in Hiral’s direction – and the bulky back of her gauntlet across her mouth – and she got control of herself again.

“I want one of those,” she said.

“Lost loot?” Yanily asked, eyes dilated as he stared at the tree. “Dibs on the yellow one.”

“Slow down,” Hiral said to the others, all four of them with their gazes locked on the tree. “We don’t even know where the Mid-Boss is. This tree must be what it’s here to protect.”

“You might want to re-evaluate that,” Left said, even as the door to the hallway behind them slammed shut. “Look more closely at the… tree.”

“At the…?” Hiral started, but focused on the defining feature of the room. Then View kicked in.

(Mid-Boss) Fiendish Tree – Unknown Rank

“Oh,” he said as an aura of what could only be called bloodlust erupted from the tree and spread across the room.