Rune Seeker

“Again, for sake of reference,” Tomorrow continued. “We didn’t call ourselves Progenitors at this point. That wouldn’t come for a long, long, long time, but it’s easier to use a name you recognize. One, I should add, people like you gave us.

“Before we get to that part of the story – Look at me, jumping all over the place again – we do need to talk about something important from this particular council.

“As we met and talked – some of us for the first time without threats, curses, or promises to rend each other limb from limb from limb – we determined this was the first time all of us had been to this strange world. All of us… but one.”

As Tomorrow said that, the Amin Thett actor stepped forward on the stage, and the room went dark. A moment later, a spotlight extended down from somewhere above, revealing the man standing with one hand daintily pressed to his chest, and the other extended in front of him as if beckoning something.

“Hither,” he spoke. “Listen unto me, I pray thee.”

The light went off with an echoing ka-thunk, followed by a sound that could only be described as a hand slapping the back of somebody’s head.

“How many times did we tell you? Speak like a normal person!” a voice quietly hissed.

“What are we even watching…?” Seena asked, and Hiral didn’t have an answer for her.

The spotlight returned, ‘Amin Thett’ leaning forward with one hand on his head. He seemed to suddenly realize everybody was looking at him, and he jerked up straighter. A hand to his mouth. A cough. A small shake of his head, and his face seemed to go neutral.

“Unlike the rest of you, this is not my first time here,” he said dramatically. Then he stepped back and joined the rest of the group.

“That’s… it?” Yanily asked.

“This was,” Tomorrow continued her narration. “Amin Thett’s third time to this world. And, because of this, he had some theories about it. Very, very interesting theories. Some we even came to prove to be – probably – true, by the fact that one who walked among us had long-since been killed.”

Again, the main lights went off, and the spotlight came on to illuminate a man standing awkwardly near the back. He wore robes of some kind, and had a symbol on his chest that gave Hiral the impression of something sacred. Holy.

“Ah…” the man said, face going blank like his nerves got the better of him. “I die? That’s… too bad. Really… too bad.”

The spotlight vanished as the rest of the stage came back into view.

“Amin Thett believed,” Tomorrow said. “That this world is the origin point. The origin point of what, you ask? Everything. Even itself. For some reason, time – in this place – is cyclical. The end is the beginning is the end. Over and over and over. Never quite the same, but continuous nonetheless.

“Through his power, Amin Thett determined that his last visit to Genesis was in the past of this world, but his previous one was the future. What stood out, though, was that he was able to find evidence of something he’d… planted in that future.”

The entire stage vanished, revealing the torn body of a massive plant in the middle of a battle-ravaged oasis.

“Now,” Tomorrow said, the stage and cast reappearing. “Before you begin to worry you’re caught in in endless loop, doing the same things over and over, let me assure you that’s not the case. At least, not exactly. The cycle of this world is measured in thousands of years before it seems to loop. More than ten-thousand is our best guess. Really, I say we – probably – proved all this true, but the concepts of time we’re dealing with are very complicated. There could be some… deviations… from the – probably – true theory.

“Now, where was I? Right! This is a bit of a spoiler, but we Progenitors only experienced one – let’s call it – roll-over. And, dramatic as it was, that’s for a bit later in the story. Before that, let’s recap! And retcon something I said earlier. Partial retcon.

“Previously, I said time in my universe went in a line in one direction – we’ll call it left to right. Then, I said time in your world went in a line in another direction, down to up. Where they intersected was where people crossed over to Genesis. I need to modify that a tiny bit. Your time isn’t a line – it’s a circle that not only goes from down to up, but also from far to near.

“Consider it like a wheel – or a hamster wheel, if you know what one of those is – constantly turning while waves wash over it at different points along its surface. That’s how our two realms, worlds, universes – whatever you want to call them – interact with each other.”

“That’s still really complicated,” Hiral mumbled while he tried to picture it. He almost, kind of, sort of, maybe understood. Then again, like Yanily, he felt like his head was stuffed full of… something stuffy.

“Why does Tomorrow remind me of Dr. Benza with how they both talk in circles?” Seeyela asked.

“It’s also where I’ll leave that explanation,” Tomorrow said. “It’s important – so very important – but it is hard to wrap your head around. Believe me, I spent a solid thousand years trying to understand it. But, when I returned to my home after that time, it was the same minute I’d left. My lunch was even still warm.

“Instead, let’s get back to the story. During this council, not only did we talk and share information for the first time, we also decided on something I’d never even considered could happen – to work together. This world presented a unique opportunity. We couldn’t fight here. Not without dire consequences.

“The raw creativity and growth suffusing the air wasn’t something any of us were willing to risk. Instead, we turned our formidable powers and knowledge to creating. This was another thing Amin Thett had learned from his previous visits to this world. He had grown stronger by what the plant had accomplished in his name.

“That’s right, the things we built would – for some reason we still don’t understand – grant a small portion of their growth and power back to us. What we’d sought through destruction could be harvested instead through creation. Through sponsorship. It was revolutionary. A path forward where many of us had hit a wall.”

“And so you became Progenitors,” Hiral said.

“And so we became… Progenitors,” Tomorrow said at the same time, though her last word trailed off a bit as Hiral stole her thunder. “We began birthing – figuratively, not technically – races in our images. Dragons were one of my – our – favorite creations, though they had their own weaknesses. Mainly in numbers and ability to reproduce.

“Different races, on the other hand, were weak, but proliferated like rabbits. Troblins are a good example of that. Horny little bastards.”

“BANG!” Bash shouted, then seemed to blush.

“This,” Tomorrow continued after a pause, “was where we began to learn some of the rules of Genesis – as we came to call it around this time, for its role as an origin point – and about balance.

“Unlike my universe, Genesis puts an unreasonable emphasis on the concept of balance. To a fault, really. Amin Thett theorized it was due to the natural energy of something native to this world. Something else that originated here, and only here. Runes.”

With the last word spoken, the entire stage went dark again, and Hiral felt the Progenitor’s attention turn on him, even though she didn’t appear to be anywhere physically present in the room. His head turned side to side a little, uncomfortable under the pressing attention, only to notice none of the others were feeling it. In fact, none of them were even moving.

“You,” Tomorrow said, and it was clearly directed at Hiral. “You have more of a connection to these runes than any I’ve met since Amin Thett himself, and he took thousands of years to study them. To learn how to use them. To even see them, or so he said. Tell me, why is that?”

“I don’t know?” Hiral answered honestly. “The PIMP? It seemed to want something of me. Of my runes.”

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“Want?” Tomorrow asked. “It’s reached the stage where it can want?”

“I guess so,” Hiral said. “Why doesn’t it sound like that surprises you?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, no jumping ahead in the story,” Tomorrow chastised gently. “But, that means the PIMP may have figured something out. A way to survive the next loop, and you could be the answer to that.”

“Are… you saying I should listen to it?” Hiral asked, some of that anger at being told what to do igniting in his chest. “That I should follow its plan?”

“Oh, boy, no,” Tomorrow said with a laugh. “Not if you want you and your friends to survive. The PIMP has a hard-coded goal, and your life – or the lives of the people you know – doesn’t matter to it as long as it accomplishes that goal. You want my advice? Use it as much as it’s using you. If it’s putting a plan into motion, that’s because it believes it has a very high chance of succeeding. Especially if you see it taking risks.

“Use that. Then figure out a way to make it to your advantage. Or, shoot for The Archwizard’s sixth rule. Overwhelming power is a good answer to most problems.”

“Can’t we do both?” Hiral asked, a small smirk crossing his face. Tomorrow was odd – a lot like Dr. Benza was – but that somehow made her likable. Far more likable – and trustworthy – than the PIMP.

“Hah!” Tomorrow barked out a laugh. “I like you. Now, we should probably get back to the others. Wouldn’t want them to get jealous.”

“Will they know we were even talking like this?”

“Not until you tell them about it later,” Tomorrow said, and there was a shift. “You heard me right,” the Progenitor continued, clearly talking to the whole crowd again. “The runes some of your people use are the secret to Genesis. To the inspiration we felt as we arrived. Even to our arrival and ability to stay here.

“That energy I talked about that I saw on myself and The Archwizard? A manifestation of the runes finding a way to bring us here. But, to us, it was an energy on loan. It was finite and faded with time or when we used our own energy. Interestingly, anything we built or created here on Genesis did not seem to attract this energy. It possessed it naturally, meaning it could stay here indefinitely. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t jealous.”

“Are the runes alive?” Politet asked. “Can they think? Protect themselves?”

“An interesting question,” Tomorrow mused. “No, no, and kind of. As far as we were able to tell, they don’t possess an intelligence or sentience. At least no more than a river does. They are like a force of nature constantly moving forward, bucking at being contained. At times they flow smoothly, quietly. At other times, they rage against anything getting in their way.

“But, they are contained here on Genesis. Not by their own design, but by another’s.”

“The Enemy,” Seena said.

“Close.”

“The Raze,” Hiral corrected.

“There you go,” Tomorrow said. “The Raze are… bad. Very, very bad. Even to us Progenitors who thought there were no equals to us besides each other.

“Before we talk about them, though, we should talk a bit about you.” A new spotlight lit up the stage, illuminating a man and woman standing side by side. “Humans, mainly. You were Amin Thett’s brainchild. While the rest of us looked for ways to create the strongest race we could now, so as to garner the biggest gains now, Amin Thett wanted to make… an investment. Using the idea of balance enforced by the runes, he proposed creating a weak race. Possibly the weakest race at their inception. But, with an endless potential.

“With enough opportunities and growth, a race that could even reach our levels. It was an interesting proposal, and one not everybody agreed with. Some of us did, though, and so you were ‘born’. Though, at that point, you weren’t yet perfected. Something was missing. The how to open up all that potential. You still had limits there.

“This was… hrm, thousands of years after I’d first arrived in Genesis. And, interestingly, on my second visit to the world. After my battle with The Archwizard, much of the energy keeping me here had been lost. Luckily, after a short eight centuries in my own universe, I found my way back here. Admittedly, I spent almost the whole time searching, and I arrived back almost the same day I’d left. Heaven’s Punishment, who vanished around the same time I did the first time, didn’t show back up again until thirty-five hundred years later, but he’d only been back in his time for a decade.”

Hiral felt a proverbial head shake in disbelief even though Tomorrow didn’t say anything.

“Not that any of that matters to you,” Tomorrow picked back up. “I’m sure you’re far more interested in your race’s birth. It was an interesting thing, with dozens of Progenitors getting involved. What was even more fascinating was those who took the seeds of you back to their own universes with them.

“Did you know humans exist in my home universe as well? Have for… well, almost forever. On a thousand worlds, in a thousand different time periods. With a thousand different magics. You all start off looking the same – with your small, little bodies, and funny-looking noses – but evolve and adapt with your environment.

“I’d always considered your species’ proliferation fascinating. Weak, but somehow everywhere.And… uh… let’s say I studied more than a few of you to try and figure out the secrets to how you did it. So, imagine my surprise when one day in the laboratory here on Genesis, you were what we created. Imagine our surprise when we realized – collectively – we were the origin of the species we’d been encountering most of our long lives.

“You want to break your mind even more?” Tomorrow asked, and before anybody could respond, she continued. “There were even Progenitors who started human. Because of the way time works here on Genesis, they helped birth the race they in turn were born from. How’s that for a chicken and egg riddle?

“To be fair, the same could even be said for me. I’m a dragon, but I helped create the first dragon. Around and around we go. Don’t spend too much time thinking on it; it’ll make your head hurt. Time stuff is tough. It’s also far more complicated than I’ve explained, so expect there to be parts that don’t make sense at first glance.

“Back to the history, though, where was I? Ah, of course. For you Makers, your tattoos. The stories they’re based on? They’re all real. Just not all from this world. The magics or items they reference? They’re out there somewhere.” The stage completely vanished as Tomorrow spoke, space once again appearing around the three parties. Like before, it was truly beautiful, with suns, stars, and worlds glowing around them.

“Probably on a world from my universe, during different times spanning from the beginning to the end. Some of them are heroes of their worlds, such as Anella.”

Space in front of Hiral and the others suddenly zoomed into one planet, piercing the clouds and rocketing towards the ground. As they neared the surface, their angle changed from diving to soaring. And, at their side, a woman in a black, leather uniform, wings of blue flame bursting from her shoulders – Left’s tattoo! – streaked across the sky at speeds even Hiral considered impressive. A sword of the same blue flames roared in her hand, while more flame-winged soldiers – these with red wings – trailed in a V-formation behind her. A smile stretched across her face as she flew, and then her wings flared with power, and she raced ahead.

“A nice girl,” Tomorrow said. “A real terror in a fight, but the sandwich fetish was a bit much. Moving on, others weren’t so lucky to have their names remembered. Instead, their identities were lost, and their mark was left only through the stories told of their exploits. The Path of Butterflies is a good example of that.”

One last look at Anella disappearing in the distance, and the parties’ view shot back up through the clouds, leaving the world behind. From there, space seemed to stretch around them, like they moved at unbelievable speeds until another world arrive below them.

This one looked like it had been the site of a tremendous war, with huge, ruined cities spanning entire continents. Still, amidst the old destruction, new life – new towns – had flourished. It was to one of these towns the party zipped down to, hovering above a street filled with people. With humans. Glowing signs hung from the building walls, images of all kinds suggesting what was within, though Hiral didn’t see any writing. And, actually, as he looked more closely, everything was a… little crooked. Like it hadn’t been measured right.

Before he had a chance to linger on that, his eyes went to an open window where a woman with a tightly-wound ponytail stepped out. Four floors up – and with another two up to the roof – Hiral expected her to climb in one of the two directions. Instead, she simply stepped into the air, pink butterflies appearing under her feet to support her weight. Just like that – without anybody even looking up to spot her – she jogged around the edge of the building and down into the alley. There she met two more people, men this time. One in a tuxedo… and a top hat? The other had a hood pulled over his head, but Hiral spotted a glint of a silver skull before they shot back off the world.

“Others still,” Tomorrow said as they raced to one more world. “Played such a pivotal role in their stories, their power manifested on Genesis, even adhering to some of the same rules as the originals.”

This time, the party flashed across a barren landscape, jets of some kind of energy that made Hiral’s skin itch jetting up from the ground. Past it in a few seconds, they arrived at a jaw-dropping city. While he’d always considered Fallen Reach impressive, this place was… something else entirely. Ships flew through the sky around the city, with smaller boats seemingly ferrying people within the city itself.

Before Hiral even had a chance to gawk, they arrived at… a bakery? Floating down, they hovered above a back yard, a table set in the middle with food piled high all across it. Humans – and was that a bull beastman? – spoke and laughed together like close friends. Something about it made Hiral feel warm inside, until his attention was drawn to a muscular man standing near the end of the table, with what looked like a sapling in his hand. Beside him, an impressive, four-armed stone construct stood, though it was handing a plate of food to a young girl.

However, as Hiral’s gaze landed on the young man, the man looked right at Hiral. Their eyes locked for an instant – the construct’s head snapping up at the same time – and Hiral was sure the other man saw him.

“Whoops,” Tomorrow said, the group bolting back into the sky and away from the world at an impressive speed. “It seems the two universes chose that exact moment to intersect. Or, perhaps there was something more there…? Ah well, no time to dig into it.”

The stage reappeared back in front of the party, Tomorrow’s hooded and human form standing in the center with a spotlight on her.

“So, I’ve told you about the beginning. About the legends your people tell. Now, unfortunately, it’s time to explain the end.”