Rune Seeker

“As I mentioned before,” Tomorrow continued, walking along the edge of the stage with the spotlight following her. “On Genesis, the end is another beginning. And, a beginning just leads to another end. As far as we can tell, this cycle has continued endlessly for longer than an eternity. Even with how long we spent on this world, we only saw it roll-over once.

“And, after that, there weren’t many of us left…” she trailed off, sounding a little sad.

“The Enemy?” Seeyela asked.

“At first,” Tomorrow said. “When they appeared, we thought they were just another natural denizen of the world we hadn’t met before. A powerful one, but not one we couldn’t handle. There were only a few of them, and we even found the gates they came through. With a bit of effort, I sealed those gates away. Locked them up tight in what I believed to be an inescapable jail. Even put guards and backup measures in there, just in case.”

“Tomorrow’s Vigil,” Seena said. “That was one of the jail cells. One of the actual gates.”

“Oh, did you find the Ascender’s Tower?” Tomorrow asked.

Hiral’s eyes narrowed. That was a very specific question. But, before he could ask about it, Tomorrow continued.

“Yes, like the Vigil. That was one of the three gates I found and sealed. Thought I’d sealed. After the initial battles against them – that cost us precious energy to stay on Genesis – we opted to let our creations deal with them. The races we’d birthed. The constructs. Things like that. Against the squids, they were enough in the early days.

“The early days didn’t last. They never do. The jails I’d built didn’t hold what came through. At first it was more – and bigger – squids. If that had been all, we would’ve won. Amin Thett brought us together, convinced us we needed to stop hoping one of the others would take care of things. We were individually using too much energy by not taking the threat seriously enough.

“Under his leadership – this was when we began calling him the Emperor for how he led – we united. We crushed the forces arrayed against us. But, what we didn’t realize yet was that we weren’t the ones attracting the squids. Our theory had been they saw us as some kind of threat, and like a conqueror, they came to take what was ours.

“We were wrong,” Tomorrow said, continuing her pacing on the quiet stage. As she reached the side, she vanished behind the curtain, and the rest of the stage lit up. On one side, the ‘Progenitors’ stood together, Amin Thett in the lead. On the other side, dozens of ‘squids’, though much like the spider, Hiral could make out people in black outfits under the puppets.

Over-dramatically, the two sides ‘charged’ at each other, had a very fake battle, and the Progenitor side pushed back the Enemy. There was some celebrating, and the stage went dark again. When the light came back on, the Progenitors were back on their side, drinks and celebrations well under way.

Thump, the whole theatre shook, the Progenitors looking around like they were trying to figure out what was going on. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Footsteps, that’s what it was.

All the Progenitors’ heads turned to the left side of the stage, where a very, very large crystalline foot stepped out. Hiral couldn’t see above the thing’s knee, but it had three, clawed toes. A flex tore at the stage, wood cracking, and splinters flying into the air.

“Then, the first of the Raze arrived,” Tomorrow said. “We… underestimated it. Landbreaker, overconfident in our previous victories, he went out alone…”

The actor on stilts seemed to hear Tomorrow speak, but didn’t immediately step forward. There was some hushed whispering on the stage with the other cast, then two of the Progenitors shoved him out into the middle of the stage. Because of the stilts he walked on, the faux-Landbreaker stumbled to keep his balance, and by the time he did, he was standing in the middle of the stage.

“It didn’t go well for him,” Tomorrow said.

“It… didn’t?” Landbreaker mouthed.

A second later, a massive crystal hand with three, clawed fingers and a thumb swung around and down from the back of the stage. The actor flattened against the palm as big as he was before getting swatted off the stage and over the parties’ heads.

“He was the first of our kind to fall,” Tomorrow said. “But not the last.”

The actors on stage suddenly started looking at each other and pushing to stand in the back of the crowd.

Light throughout the theatre vanished, the stage going dark.

CRACK. WHAM. WHOMP.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Screams and the sound of breaking echoed out of the darkness, continuing for long seconds, until a single light – a candle – lit up in the middle of the stage.

Amin Thett stood there, covered in blood, one arm and wing missing. In his hand, he held… no, it wasn’t just a candle. It was clearly meant to represent a rune. Then, before Hiral even had a chance to guess what he was going to do, he brought the candle to his chest.

His body lit up like a bonfire, bathing the parties in flicking light that grew and grew. Amin Thett vanished within the flames, though the fire only got bigger.

It consumed the center of the stage, and then suddenly… shrunk back down to the size of a candle.

Out of the shadows, Tomorrow stepped, holding the candle now in her hand.

“The Enemy and the Raze were never here for us,” Tomorrow said. “They were here for the energy of this world. The runes. Not to steal it – for they already had it – but to extinguish it. We’re still not sure why, or what’s on the other side of the Black Gates, but Amin Thett realized what they were after.

“And… he figured out the only way to stop them without them destroying us. Yes, they were that powerful. Perhaps we could have defeated them… except to wield the power we’d need, we’d quickly be banished from this world. Any who remained would become outnumbered. Forced to use more of their power. Banished themselves. Or killed, like Landbreaker.

“Doing what only he could – for only he had been able to command the runes – Amin Thett took all their power into himself. From all over the world, he consumed it. Used it up. Destroyed what had drawn the Raze here by feeding all that energy into a powerful working. A framework that finally unlocked the unlimited potential or your race. Part of me still wonders – to this day – if it had been his plan all along.

“Regardless, he funneled all the power of the runes that existed at that time into his framework. Into the future. As if he knew our creations would someday need to overcome the same trial we’d been unable to complete.”

“The energy you talked about rising in the world,” Hiral said, putting together what Tomorrow had said, with what they’d seen in Tomorrow’s Vigil. “It’s rising again. The Raze will be coming back.”

“Soon,” Tomorrow admitted. “I believe in some past cycles, the squids were enough to end a cycle and initiate a roll-over of this world’s timeline. When they don’t succeed, the Raze come themselves. Like they did while we were here last time. They don’t fail.”

“We have to fight them?” Ilrolik asked. “Something powerful enough to challenge you?”

“Yes,” Tomorrow said. “Or, find another way I couldn’t see.”

“Can we hide?” Yully asked. “Run?”

Tomorrow’s hooded head tilted back like she was looking at something, though Hiral still couldn’t see into the depths of her hood. “The squids have been here for a long time, but the passage of time for them doesn’t seem to be the same as for us. They aren’t in a hurry, even as the natural energy of the world rises. Almost as if they enjoy the way the energy grows. Once it reaches the tipping point, that’s when the Raze will come and make things happen.

“As for hiding? From the squids, that would work. Has worked. Fallen Reach was successful partially because the squids didn’t care enough to remove it. The Raze won’t be so complacent. They will destroy your islands if they believe it’s necessary.

“Running? Perhaps. The Black Gates aren’t the only way off Genesis. The intersection of times is… not quite random, though it is very difficult to predict. If you were to find one of those, you may be able to send some people off-world. It is one of the reasons the different races of Genesis have seeded other worlds in my timeline. Yes, we took some, but others fell through completely by accident.”

“This rising energy you keep talking about,” Hiral said. “It’s the runes trying to be… found?”

“And to escape,” Tomorrow said. “To leave Genesis. Here, they form the backbone of the laws of reality, seeping out to weakly influence my timeline and universe. But, Amin Thett believed there was more to them. Meant to be more to them? He got a little manic when he talked about them sometimes. And, with the way your time and my time interact, it gets even more complicated.

“They have a purpose, and they aren’t fulfilling it here, while the cycle of Gensis consists of their power building to the point where they can almost break free. As that tipping point finally arrives, so to do the Raze to prevent it from happening. They extinguish the runes’ power, and reset everything. Sort of. Again, it’s not a complete reset, but more of a soft restart.

“It’s like playing a game, reaching the end, then starting over again at the beginning with everything you had when you finished the game the first time. I guess that analogy doesn’t really apply to card games, but you get the idea.”

“That means we can survive it,” Loan said.

“You can,” Tomorrow emphasized. “Not that you will. And, anybody with a connection to the runes – or anything that uses them – will be found by the Raze. Destroyed by the Raze.”

“Then we get rid of anything that uses them,” Devison, glancing at Hiral. “Sorry.”

“It’s not that simple,” Hiral said, looking at Tomorrow. “Our PIMs don’t directly use runes, do they? The PIMP can’t control them. But, they’re based on runes.”

“Correct on all counts,” Tomorrow said. “The PIMP does not have the power to control the runes, but it can… piggyback on them, so to speak. How the PIM system was realized was in a big part due to the framework Amin Thett set up. I won’t go into the details of it, but the PIM and PIMP wouldn’t work without what he did.”

“You’re saying the Raze will come after anybody with a PIM?” Seena asked.

“I believe so,” Tomorrow said. “And Fallen Reach, as your Builders – who can use runes – did so to keep the islands in the sky. The Raze won’t allow that to continue.”

“So we have to fight,” Seeyela said.

“It’s your best chance, unless you find another way.”

“The PIMP has a plan, doesn’t it?” Yanily said.

“Yes, but it may not be considering our survival as part of it,” Hiral said. “We need to look out for ourselves.”

“How do you know so much about our PIMs? About everything that’s happened since the last rollover?” Sera spoke up for the first time.

“And how do you know me?” Gran asked.

“The answer to all of those questions,” Tomorrow said. “Is the same. I helped build the PIMP.”