Rune Seeker

“What took you so long?” Arty yelled at Hiral. “We were just about to leave!” He dramatically pointed at the pier.

The empty pier.

Hiral raised an eyebrow at the excitable merchant, and Arty squinted his eyes.

“Glasses… glasses… glasses…” the man muttered as he rifled through the pockets of his knee-length jacket. “There,” he said, finally pulling the pair of glasses out and putting them on. A second look at the pier, a few blinks, then he turned his attention to a large pile of boxes near the end of the dock.

“Why aren’t we ready to leave?” he shouted at the three hulking Shapers.

“You told us to wait for…” the one in the front, Shaper Fual, started.

“Told you that ages ago,” Arty shouted. “Get the platform out and loaded up.”

“Sure, sure,” Fual said, strolling out along the pier and then stopping at the end.

Large tattoos covered his body from head to toe, though his Meridian Lines weren’t naturally luminescent from long use, and one tattoo in particular on his upper-right chest began to gently glow as he reached up and touched it. From a distance, it looked like little more than a large square filling with the light flowing out of Fual’s fingertips.

The Platform of Movement, a lesser C-Rank version of the Disc of Passage Hiral had on his left calf. Had he been able to shape, he’d have been the one carrying them down to the Nomads under the city.

While Hiral watched, one second stretched into two. Three. Four. Five. Fual had never been the fastest Shaper. C-Rank Output Rate at the highest. More and more light worked its way through the intricate details that made up the tattoo until, finally, something snapped into place and the color went from a bright white to a warm glow.

Nodding to himself, Fual pulled his hand away from the tattoo, a streamer of liquid light like a plasma flare trailing behind and connecting to the tattoo. He looked over at Arty. “Right here?”

“Of course right there,” Arty snapped back. “Same place as always!”

Fual nodded again, then jerked his arm out, the tether of light growing taut in an instant and pulling the glowing tattoo off his chest. In less than a heartbeat, the hand-sized block of light grew into a floating platform of heavy stone bricks, forty feet by forty feet, perfectly level except for the small pillar in the center he would use to direct its movement.

“Ready to be loaded up,” Fual said, stepping off the wooden dock and onto the platform.

“I can see that! So, what are you all waiting for?” He gestured at the other two Shapers leaning against the pile of boxes.

Without a word, the towering man and woman effortlessly began moving crates as big as Hiral, and likely twice as heavy.

“Just about to leave?” Hiral asked with an effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“Just is relative. Obviously,” Arty snapped. “Are you going to help or stand there?”

“Let me get my stuff from my locker?”

“Pah, you’re fine the way you are. We’re just going down to make an exchange with Caaven for quills. You won’t need your weapons.”

“I’m supposed to be a guard,” Hiral said. “What good is a guard without weapons?”

The skin around Arty’s eyes tightened, and he stepped in closer to Hiral. “Didn’t go well today, then?” he asked quietly.

Hiral forced the smile back onto his face. “Almost had it this time. Next year for sure,” he said, repeating his mantra.

“Do you need the day? Those lugs can manage. Not much use when it comes to thinking, but they can lift a box like nobody’s business.”

“They can also hear a pin drop from forty feet away,” Shaper Jenno shouted in her deep voice.

“Should be lifting instead of listening,” Arty said without turning.

“Nah, I’m fine,” Hiral said, only stealing a glance at the Shapers.

If they hadn’t heard about his test, well, they knew the result now. If he took Arty up on the offer, as appealing as it was, that’d just make it look like he was running away. Shapers respected facing things head on. He’d do that here.

“Well, we won’t be there long anyway. Should just be a quick down and back. Few hours, tops. Assuming the crates ever get loaded,” he added, turning back to the working Shapers.

For their part, the towering trio ignored the mouthy merchant and his usual behavior. Really, Arty wasn’t a bad guy, and he paid well for people to put up with him. While his class was technically an Artist, he’d branched out into the merchant field to acquire some of the highest-quality quills in the city from the Nomads below. Without those quills, it would be impossible for Artists like Hiral’s father to do their best work. Or any work at all, really.

“Last time we went down, Caaven only had a half-order, and not his usual quality,” Hiral said. “You think he’ll have what we need this time?”

“He’d better,” Arty said while glaring at the three Shapers. “I’ve got customers practically beating down my door looking for new quills. You know, if we could find a way to use a quill more than once, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“Or if we could harvest them anywhere but from the backs of some very particular animals only found in specific dungeons on the surface,” Hiral added. “Hasn’t anybody tried breeding them?”

“They die quickly outside of their natural habitat. Something about the dungeons… I can’t believe we call them that—they’re caves!—is important to their lifecycle. Maybe you should bring some of your friends from the Academy, see if they can’t figure it out.”

“Ah, the Nomads wouldn’t let us go on a dungeon run with them,” Hiral said. “What did they say, proprietary information?”

“Proprietary price-gouging, if you ask me,” Arty seethed. “If we don’t know where the dungeons are ourselves, we can’t send some of our own muscle-heads down to clean the place out.”

“Muscle-heads that can still hear you,” Shaper Jenno called, a massive crate on each shoulder.

“Bah,” Arty said with a wave, and pointed at the rest of the crates. “Seriously, Hiral, I’d pay good chips to get a look at one of these dungeons where the Quillbacks live. There must be a reason the Nomads call them dungeons instead of caves, and what’s so special about them that the Quillbacks can only live there? The surface is such a mysterious place.”

“Mysterious and dangerous,” Hiral amended, walking over to the edge of the pier with Arty as his eyes scanned the horizon for the distant, ever-present storm-wall. Just over one hundred miles away, surrounding the city in a perfect circle, the churning gray clouds poured torrential rain on the ground that slowly scrolled past nine miles below the city. “What do you think it’s like down there? I mean, really like.”

“Our ancestors left for a reason, Hiral,” Arty said, but he also looked down at the distant landscape. “Built an entire floating island that circles the world to follow the sun for a reason. It must’ve been a good one to go to all that trouble. I’m more than happy to stay up here where it’s safe.”

“And where you can make enough chips to feed your hoarding hobby,” Shaper Jenno said as she walked past with two more huge crates.

“It’s not hoarding. It’s collecting, and you wouldn’t understand,” Arty said. “They’re works of art,” he added, only loud enough for Hiral to hear.

Hiral nodded, but wasn’t really paying attention to the exchange. The ground below them was so green, with a valley over that way, wide forests blanketing the rest until the terrain changed drastically to towering mountains ahead. The highest peak still didn’t reach even close to the main island, but the Nomads’ trailing islands would flow right between them as the city moved in that direction along the EnSath River.

“Do the Nomads ever talk about the river?” Hiral asked Arty. “About why the city always follows its path around and around the world?”

“Some stories that are little more than superstition, if you ask me,” Arty said. “I think the Academy’s theory is more likely.”

Hiral nodded again. “Path of least resistance. It’s the only passage through the mountains ahead, and others.”

“A few more minutes and we’ll be ready to go,” Shaper Jenno said on another pass. “Anything else in the warehouse?”

“No, everything was already out here and waiting to go,” Arty said.

“Got it. We’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“I’m going to go grab the weapons,” Hiral said. “I know we’re just going down to Caaven’s island, not the surface or anything, but at least let me look like I’m doing my job.”

“You’re there as much for your eye for quills as anything else,” Arty said.

“Multitasking so you keep me around,” Hiral said, backing away from the edge of the pier, then spinning on his heel and jogging back to the warehouse.

He nodded at a few of the workers inside—they knew him from his years working for Arty and generally kept the gossip to a minimum when he was around—but didn’t slow until he got to his locker.

A quick wave of his hand past the crystal sensor, and the door popped open to reveal the few belongings he left there—his weapons among them.

The sigh escaped his lips before he could stop it, and Hiral shook his head. Last time he’d hung these up, it had been with the hopes he’d never need them again. That he’d pass the test today.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me a little longer,” he whispered to the sheathed swords before slipping them over his shoulders and securing the belt across his chest. A quick check to make sure nothing rubbed the wrong way, then he stepped back and closed the locker door.

“You’ll get it next time,” a voice said from where the door had just been, and Hiral nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Fallen’s knickers in a knot,” Hiral cursed. “You scared me, Nanilly.”

“Sorry,” the older woman said quietly. “I wanted to catch you before you went down with Arty. You can do it; I know you can.”

“Thanks, Nanilly,” Hiral said, his breathing back under control after the startle. “Yeah, I’ve got it next year for sure. Just you watch.”

Nanilly nodded but didn’t say anything else, and Hiral gave her a small wave before he jogged back out of the building.

Sure, he talked a good game, but what was he going to do differently next time? Maybe it was time to pay the Academy another visit. He’d checked before about anybody with his… condition, but maybe he’d missed it? Or maybe he could find something else to help him along. That was how he’d figured out that training without using the Meridian Lines improved experience and attribute gains.

“We’re ready to go, Hiral—get over here,” Arty called from where he stood beside Shaper Fual on the platform.

“Sorry, coming,” Hiral called back, putting the Academy out of his mind until he got back.