Runeblade-Chapter 168B2 : Commute pt. 3

Blinking rapidly to clear the blinding afterimage that cut across his vision like a streak of white paint, Kaius looked back to where the corpse of the bramble ball had fallen. No longer hidden by the overwhelming brilliance of Ianmus’s working, he got a good look at the destruction his friend’s skill had wrought.

It had been burnt out utterly, scorched black and burned from the searing power of the sun. The hole in its centre was as large as his head, and growing larger as flickering flames slowly consumed the green growth of the bundle of vines.

Shaking his head in amazement, Kaius slid from his saddle and sheathed his sword.

Astounding. He’d heard tales of how mages, especially those with free casting abilities, were at their most dangerous with ample companions to give them the time they needed to prepare. It was common knowledge, with enough focus and time it was possible to leverage immense quantities of mana into a single cataclysmic work.

Still, seeing that devastation meted out by a single man? Who had yet to secure his third class skill? It sent chills of awe down his spine.

It was almost enough to make him reconsider his path. Almost.

With Porkchop at his side he strolled his way to the cluster of guards, who celebrated with cheers and shoulder claps. His eyes found his way to Ianmus, leaning heavily on his staff and as pale as a sheet. Sweat dripped from his every pore, the mage’s chest labouring to draw in vital air as he recovered from his exertion.

No, while it was frightening and impressive, he still preferred his path. He didn’t miss that the spell had taken everything from his companion. A powerful boon for their party, certainly, but one that left the half-elf defenseless and totally reliant on the capabilities of his allies.

Kaius could never; he much preferred the rush of blood and the singing of blades scything through the air, his body pushed to the limit as he dealt arcane death and steely ruin with equal measure.

Noticing his approach, Ianmus gave him a weak smile. The motion proved too much for the man, his chest heaving as he buckled over and retched. Frowning at the sight, Kaius hurried forwards.

“Ianmus! Are you alright?” he asked, worry gripping him by the neck.

“He’ll be alright, lad.” the voice of the guard leader came from the pack near the caravan. “Just a bit of mana-burn, too much arcane too fast, ain't that right mageling?”

“Correct,” Ianmus gasped. “You’re rather learned for a guard.” he grumbled, getting his stomach under control before he heaved himself upwards.

Kaius still watched him closely, frowning in concern. Quivering with most of his weight on his staff, his ally looked ready to just about keel over dead. He sidled closer, ready to catch his friend if he truly did pass out.

The leader of the guards only laughed. “Work the caravan routes for a living and you see enough mages; ain’t the first time I've seen mana-burn—and it won’t be the last. Though, I will say that most lose their breakfast, yer got some iron in ya.” the guardsman tilted his head in respect, before he switched his focus to Kaius.

“And ye, that was some fierce fighting, lad. Name’s Umesh. You and yer beast really tore that thing a new one, I hope it didn’t get you bad?” The man asked, his eyes drifting over Kaius’s armour, taking in the streaks of blood that cut through the trickles of sap that coated him.

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“Kaius.” he said, sharing his own name. While they had nominally been travelling next to the caravan, they’d kept a respectful distance, and this was the first that he’d had the opportunity to introduce himself. “Nothing more than scratches. It would have been a different story if we stood in place for long enough to get properly entangled.” he responded, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably at the thought of being bound by the bramble balls macerating tendrils.

“But ye weren’t, and ye didn’t.” Unesh replied, giving him a knowing nod. “Can’t get caught up on pasts that never happened. Listen, my job ain’t over just cause we had one good scrap, but ye two should stop by my spot when we stop for the evening. Happy to share a little o’ my stash of grog for the stars of the show.”

Kaius grinned. A drink would be nice, and—even if they never saw the men from this caravan again—it was always pleasant to talk and swap stories. There was something sacred about sharing a fire with a stranger, friends for a night before parting ways forever more. He and Father had done it more than once in the Sea, something of an unspoken culture for the loner types who hunted its reaches.

He gave the man a nod, before he threw his hand under Ianmus’s shoulder. “Alright, let's get back to our spot.” he said, helping his friend steady himself.

“I can walk myself, you know.” Ianmus mumbled.

Kaius let out a snort, and didn’t budge. “I just watched you struggle to keep your lunch down for the better part of a minute, I think you’re lying.”

Ianmus grumbled, but didn’t protest again.

Walking away from the front of the caravan, Kaius heard Umesh giving his men a debrief on the fight, telling them more about the creature they had faced, and its various weaknesses. Interestingly, it seemed that most spirit creatures had some sort of nexus within their body that was far harder for them to heal.

He groaned as he heard that. Spirits were rare enough that unless you wandered the frontier endlessly you were liable to never see one in your life. Evidently, Father had slacked on explaining more esoteric threats in favour of likely ones, as that was a nugget of information that would have been drastically helpful to know before he fought one.

Ianmus must have known though, given the man had eviscerated the core of the creature with pinpoint precision.

By the time they were a couple of carriage lengths from the front, Kaius heard Umesh give a sharp whistle.

“We’re good to go, boss!” he yelled loudly to the unseen merchant, who had remained hidden away in his mobile fortress.

Moments later the lizard beasts that drove the wagons gave a hiss, and heaved forwards, their train moving across the frontier once more.

As they walked back to their position flanking the middle of the caravan, Kaius switched his attention back to Ianmus. He was steadier on his feet, though he still looked far more pallid and clammy than Kaius was comfortable with.

“You sure you’re fine? I haven’t heard much about mana-burn, or whatever has got you this twisted up.” he murmured, keeping his voice low enough that the various attendants of the caravan wouldn’t overhear him.

Ianmus looked at him in shock. “You don’t know? You’re a bloody caster.” he hissed.

Kaius shook his head. He truly didn’t, not even once in his conversations with his father on the potential effects of their experimental glyph had it come up. Though, perhaps due to Father’s background, that wasn’t too much of a surprise.

“Is it a thing for runewrights?” Kaius asked.

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Ianmus shook his head, before he winced at the sudden movement and clutched his scalp. “No, they work over far too long of a time frame. It’s a consequence of channelling too much of your mana pool at once. Stresses the soul, and abrades your mana circuits. It's not really dangerous, not unless you’re a complete idiot, but it leaves you fatigued, ill, and nauseous in a way that health cannot solve.”

That sounded…bad, especially considering the fact his own mana consumption was instantaneous.

“Well, this whole thing came from a runewright, so maybe it slipped my mother’s mind.” Kaius said, still leaning on the small bits of secrecy he had. Ianmus knew he was keeping them, so he wasn’t over worried about lying to his friend.

Ianmus frowned, a low harumph escaping. “Still reckless, though it’s odd you’ve never felt it before. I would have thought it would be an issue, given…everything.”

Nodding at the man's words, Kaius continued to support them while they walked. In the end, figuring out why would have to wait. They were leaving the caravan the next day, and a discussion on his magic could wait until then. Too much chance of keen ears listening to their talks to do it in the current moment.

“Let’s talk more about it later, when we have more privacy. How long will you be incapacitated for? It better not be days.” Kaius said, eying his friend.

“No, nothing like that. Perhaps an hour, it eases as my pool naturally refills. Just don’t try to alleviate it with restoration tonics, they just end up stressing your circuits more.” Ianmus explained with a weak chuckle, the kind that belied personal experience.

Kaius shook his head. In the end, regardless of the temporary cost, Ianmus had shown that he had a devastating ace up his sleeves. If he could do this now, with a bare ten minutes of preparation, what would he be able to do in the second tier, or the third?

Deciding to offer the half-elf a slot on their team was feeling like a smarter decision by the day.

….

After their encounter with the bramble ball, Kaius found the guards had become far more friendly and willing to chat with their group. By the time their evening with Umesh had rolled around, they’d been inundated with a dozen well meaning questions on their histories and upcoming mission.

It was nice…for the first hour. While he liked people, and didn’t mind crowds overmuch in a general sense, Kaius was still distinctly unused to having so many people so interested in making conversation. It quickly became fatiguing, and by afternoon the next day when they left the road to cut more directly overland towards their destination he was sighing in relief.

That said, he still said his goodbyes. Individually the guards had all been fine people, and had good stories to boot, there had just been a few too many of them at once for his temperament.

As soon as they were out of earshot and eyesight, Porkchop let out a groan and shook himself vigorously. “By the matriarchs, pretending to be stupid is fucking exhausting.” he grumbled.

Kaius laughed, and even Ianmus, for all of his differences to the meles, cracked a wide smile.

“You did great, buddy, seriously.” he replied, scratching his brother behind the ear.

He got a snort in response. “Thanks for your faith in my ability to be a moron.”

Setting off at a brisk pace, they cut their way across the countryside. At first, it was little more than the familiar lush grasses broken up by the occasional tree or bush, but as they pushed further and further east the trees started to get thicker, small copses and clusters appearing every league or two.

Not anywhere near enough to be a forest, but certainly far closer to Kaius’s preferred environment than bloody empty fields.

They even had a moment of excitement when a troupe of mole-things burst from the earth and set upon them in a swarm of excited chitters, each swipe of their long claws spraying them with shards of hardened stone.

Not enough to truly blood them, not with their growing strength, but it was enough to push him over the edge of level twenty-three, and net him a level of Drakthar and Uncanny Dodge both.

As the sun dipped over the horizon, they made camp beneath a drooping willow tree, finding some shelter from the low wind by its draping canopy.

Sitting by a flickering fire of scavenged deadwood and leaning bodily into his brother's dozing side, Kaius looked over to Ianmus. “So, now that we’re alone. This mana-burn thing. Any idea why it hasn’t affected me?”

Ianmus sighed, tapping his hand against his knee. “Honestly? Not a clue, I don’t have the barest theoretical understanding of how your magic works. You willing to share?”

Staring into the fire, Kaius thought about it. While there was some risk, it was minimal when you considered everything else Ianmus already knew. Hells, no doubt the simple fact that runic spellcasting was possible and somehow tied to body formations would probably be enough for a master to tinker with, even if it would take them months to make any real headway. Still, he already had his class, and with its requirements he didn’t see anyone catching up to him any time soon.

“We started with a complex binding formation that networked itself closely to the body's mana flows. That's the backbone. The spells are separate, each similar to the spell-forms inscribed on artefacts with active effects.” Kaius explained, casually sketching out diagrams in the dirt.

Ianmus leaned in to get a better look.

“Spellforms are inherently unstable without a stabilising structure, in this case the glyph. But, there's a problem.”

“If they’re stably linked, you need to channel to use them?” Ianmus interjected animatedly.

“Got it in one. Instead, if you tweak them a little, you can effectively pre-channel the spell, forcing the spell-form to hold its potential and lock away a section of your pool. Though, the trade off is it takes far longer.” he continued, weaving tight little whorls of mana inside a vague approximation of a Lothian array.

“But that… surely that would make it even less stable?” Ianmus asked incredulously, staring at his drawings with fascination plain on his face.

He nodded. It did, and his father had gotten stuck on that part for months. Drawing in the ground, Kaius sketched a little channel between his fake glyph and him, before drawing a bunch of lines tying them together. “Extra stabilising arrays, and a ruinously complex control mechanism to hold onto the mana with an iron grip helps with that part. It's surprisingly stable. Until, that is, you nudge the working with a little will.”

He cut though the edge of the spell array, fully connecting it to the glyph through the channel.

“-and all of that unstable mana is forced through the working in an instant, purely due to its own directed collapse and the natural nature of mana.” Ianmus finished for him, dawning understanding glowing like a fire in his eyes. “That’s…that’s brilliant.”

“I’m glad someone else understands, because I swear that every time he talks about it, it's as understandable to me as watching a boar try to fly.” Porkchop snorted, watching on with interest.

Kaius grinned, it was true. He’d tried to tell Porkchop about it at first, but his brother had no patience for the finer intricacies of runecraft and magic.

Ianmus looked back to the sketch, tapping his fingers on his chin. “Well, if this holds true for your newer, more complex glyphs, I don’t actually think you can get mana-burn. Or, at the very least, you are far more resistant to it than most.”

“Oh?” Kaius replied, tilting his head at the mage. “Why not?”

“Well, it's pretty simple isn't it? You’re not actually carrying the load of that spell on your circuits, it's all done ahead of time. That much unstable mana would give you mild mana-burn every single time you cast if it did, so at the very least your glyphs acting like conduits must be bearing a significant portion of the load.” Ianmus explained.

Kaius sighed in relief, slumping back into the warm wall of fur behind him. “Thank the gods, I was worried I would have to steer clear of any high cost spells in the future.”

“We both know you wouldn’t even if you did get mana-burn.” Ianmus laughed, followed quickly by Porkchop’s own rumbling chuckles.

“He’s got you there.”

Kaius rolled his eyes, but took the teasing on the chin. Afterall, they weren’t really wrong.

With his worries answered, their conversation moved to more light hearted topics, and Kaius busied himself with cooking their evening meal.

In all likelihood, they would reach the expected range of their target by noon the day after tomorrow, and would likely run into more beasts as they entered Hanset Woods even earlier than that. For now though, Kaius simply enjoyed a little easy conversation amongst even easier company.