Rune Seeker

Hiral’s whole body shuddered as he let out a sob, his knees dropping to the ground when not-Seena’s body vanished beneath him. Notification windows flashed in the corner of his eyes, which he promptly ignored. Dregs of health and solar energy streamed from the melting body and One-Man Army+ triggering, but he hardly cared. The pain of the hole through his gut and his mangled hands were a distant thing compared to the emotional damage of what he’d just done to Seena.

Or, what was likely about to happen to him as a new shadow washed over him with a bamf. Head heavy, he slowly lifted it from where not-Seena’s body had vanished beneath him to find Seeyela standing in front of him. Her broken armor showed her burns hadn’t been completely healed, and she wasn’t wearing her helmet anymore. Tears streaked her dirty face, while her fingers tightened around the Fangs of the Lady in her hands.

“What…” she started. “How could you?”

“I did what I needed to,” Hiral said weakly, the reasoning empty even to his own ears.

“I trusted you!” Seeyela shouted at him, stepping forward and lifting her daggers like she’d strike him. “She trusted you!”

“I know,” Hiral whispered.

“You killed her!” Seeyela’s voice rose and broke, her dagger going up right along with it. Poised there, her whole arm shook, like she was simultaneously trying to stab him and hold herself back at the same time. “You killed her,” she said again, both daggers dropping to the ground as Seeyela collapsed with a sob. “You killed her.”

“I got better,” a voice said over the party chat. Seena’s voice.

Hiral let out a breath as Seeyela’s eyes snapped open in front of him.

“Seena?” Seeyela asked, her voice barely a whisper as if she were dreaming.

“Yeah,” Seena said. “Please don’t kill Hiral. I could really use a hug right now. From both of you. Oof, yes, Yan, you too… but… I can’t… breathe…”

Bamf, and Seeyela was gone, leaving Hiral kneeling alone on the charred and broken ground. Sobs shook his shoulders, guilt and relief warring in his chest. Seena was alive. His gamble had paid off. Now, the only question was whether or not any of them could forgive him what he’d had to do to get there.

Would Seena forgive him?

A pair of soft footfalls landed beside him, and Hiral looked up to find his doubles walking over. Compared to him, they were practically in tip-top shape, though they both had a number of wounds leaking solar energy.

“You look like you could use a hand,” Right said.

“Yeah,” Hiral said. “I can’t feel my legs. And I wish I couldn’t feel my arms.”

“Let me help,” Left said, shaping the Banner of Courage and Waters of Frey in quick succession. The golden light took some of the edge off the pain, while the Waters worked their way into the hole through his gut – and apparently his spine. “These won’t be enough on their own. Should we get Gran?”

“High-Speed Regeneration+ knows what to do,” Hiral said, taking advantage of the pain diminishing to add his Rune of Restoration to the mix. He was careful not to try to direct it to do anything other than reinforce the other healing abilities.

“It can fix that?” Right asked, a little skeptically.

Hiral nodded. “As Yanily would say, overpowered. It’ll take a few hours, though, I think.”

“That’s insane.”

“Says the guy who can literally be completely annihilated and come back like nothing happened,” Hiral pointed out.

“So can you,” Right countered.

Hiral smiled. “Not anymore.”

“What?” Right asked, eyes narrowing.

“I’ll explain when we get back to the others,” Hiral said. “If they’re still talking to me, I’m sure they’re wondering what happened as well.”

“If it was two minutes ago,” Left said. “I would’ve suggested running for the hills and hoping Seeyela never found you. Now, though? You’re safe.”

“Hey, Hiral,” Seena said over the party chat, just for him – though the others around her could probably hear her voice. “You coming over here? I could really use seeing you right now.”

“You want to see me?” Hiral asked. “I saw what was happening in your PIM, I know you felt everything that happened to… that thing.”

“I did,” Seena said. “And you’ve got a nasty uppercut.” Her words came with a forced chuckle, for both their sakes. “I also know what you did to save me. Please?”

“I’m coming,” Hiral said, then looked at his doubles. “I say that, but I literally can’t walk. Can you two…?”

“And up we go,” Right said as he and Left pulled one of Hiral’s arms each over their shoulders and lifted him up.

“Ooouch,” he groaned, gravity pulling his legs – and his gut-wound – as he settled on his doubles. “Thanks guys.”

Like that, it took them a few minutes to reach the wall and climb up the rubble of the breach to where Seena sat with Yanily and Seeyela, while Drahn and Gran talked to the Bonders gathering around. While Hiral normally would’ve been fascinated to meet the new people – and their animal companions – his eyes never left Seena. She really was alive and back in the Party Interface.

When she saw the bloody wound in his stomach – at least it wasn’t a hole straight through anymore – and his legs dragging uselessly across the stone, her eyes went to her gauntlet and then back to him. The next second, she was on her feet, though she stumbled once, and ran over to him.

“Oh no,” she said, her hand hovering in front of the wound like she both wanted to comfort him and felt like she was responsible. “How bad is it?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Already healing. Just need a little while for my regeneration to patch things up. Left is helping too.”

“I’m sorry,” she started, but Hiral took his hand off Left’s shoulder – leaving all his weight on Right – and reached up to cup her cheek. His fingers were mostly, kind of, sort of working again, and he left a trail of sticky, half-dried blood where he touched, but she still leaned into it.

“It’s nothing,” he tried to reassure her. “I’ll be up and running around again in no time. How about you though?”

“Her head vanished,” Yanily said. “Then it came back. Is that a thing with this party I should be worried about?”

“Yeah, you want to explain that?” Seeyela said, up beside her sister protectively. An arm around Seena’s waist told everybody Seeyela was not going to let her little sister out of her sight for the foreseeable future.

“That All You Got?” Hiral said like that explained it all.

“The ability that saved you from Vorinal up on the island?” Seeyela asked, and Hiral nodded. “How did you get it?” she asked Seena.

“I have no idea,” Seena said. “I didn’t have it before that thing took me.”

“The Unnamed,” Yanily filled in. “We got the quest-complete notification.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Doesn’t explain how I’m alive,” Seena said, then looked at Hiral. “Or how I’m me.”

“I gave you my ability,” Hiral said.

“That’s what you meant before?” Right asked. “You don’t have That All You Got? anymore?”

“Correct,” Hiral said. “Though, technically, I gave it to the Unnamed before I swapped your PIM back.”

“Whoa, slow down,” Seeyela said. “I understand your words just fine, but I have no idea what you’re saying. Mind starting again in a way we’ll all get?”

Hiral looked around at the crowed of Bonders who obviously had a thousand questions of their own, but, frankly, he didn’t care about them at that moment.

“The Unnamed was stealing Seena’s skills, memories, magic – her PIM – and everything else. Little by little, the more we pushed it, the more it took.”

“The more we pushed?” Yanily asked.

“Yeaaaah,” Hiral said, looking again at Seena. “Sorry. I had to hurt it to force it to take your abilities. Too fast or slow, and one of us would’ve died before it had taken everything. It’s why I needed you all over here. I couldn’t control how much you would hurt it – or it would hurt you, but I had to push it enough to force its hand. The more damage it took, the more abilities it took.

“I’ll have to thank Gran for healing you. I don’t know if we would’ve made it without her buying time – even if she didn’t know she was doing that.”

“Why did you even need that thing to take everything?” Seeyela asked. “You said you swapped the PIM. Couldn’t you have done that from the beginning?”

“Because I couldn’t put it back a piece at a time,” Hiral said. “The Unnamed left corruption in place of everything it took, but it itself was full of the same tumorous magic. No matter what, Seena would’ve had some of that foulness in her if I’d done it too soon.

“And, I’ll be honest here, I don’t know what would’ve happened if any of that got left behind in her. Would the Unnamed just have regrown out of her skin? Maybe? Probably? I’m glad we didn’t have to find out.”

“You still haven’t explained what you did,” Yanily pointed out.

“In a way, I got lucky,” Hiral said, then held up a hand before anybody could question that. “Seeyela, do you remember earlier in the fight when we swapped places?”

Seeyela stopped to think about it for a second, then finally nodded. “Now that you mention it, yes. That was you?”

“I figured out a new rune. I think I’ve got a notification or achievement for it, but I’ll check later. Anyway, it’s the Rune of Exchange, but I didn’t let myself understand it right then and there.”

“Would’ve been a bad time to explode,” Yanily agreed.

“True,” Hiral said. “But I did understand enough to know how it would work. Like the name implies, it exchanges one thing for another. Equally. Probably whole things, but I’ll need to test. Anyway, I figured I could exchange Seena’s stolen PIM for the Unnamed’s corruption – as long as I did it all at once. Basically, I just put everything back the way it was… with one small addition.”

“The lose-your-head-and-get-it-back ability,” Yanily said.

“Yup,” Hiral said. “I used what I learned from modifying my Resonance of Heroes and tore the ability out of my PIM and forced it into the Unnamed’s. I couldn’t copy it like I did before, because I didn’t have a connection to an interface through a notification window to act as a power source for the process. I had to sacrifice Shared Strength to make it work – both for the power and the method. Even then, it was probably only possible because of I was in the middle of a runic epiphany, so don’t ask me to repeat it.”

“Then you swapped it back,” Seeyela said. “And made Seena’s head explode.”

“I…” Hiral started, seeing the dangerous glint in the woman’s eyes. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But, I had to end the Unnamed then and there, while it was weakened enough I could break the connection between it and Seena.”

“Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?” Seeyela asked.

It was Yanily who answered. “You never would’ve let him. You were ready to go skewer him as soon as you saw him hurting Seena.”

“And you stopped me,” Seeyela said. “Still not sure how you did that.”

“Lightning Tether,” Yanily said. “Stops movement or escape skills.”

“When did you even get anything like that?” she asked.

“Spontaneous ability evolution,” Yanily said.

“Only you,” Seeyela said with a shake of her head.

“What would you have done if you didn’t get that rune?” Seena asked Hiral.

He ran his thumb down her cheek. “I had a few other ideas, even if I had to rebuild your PIM with pieces from my own. Don’t know if it would’ve worked, so I’m glad this did.”

“Me too,” Seena said, then stepped in and wrapped him in a tight hug. “Oh, sorry,” she added as he winced from the pressure against his stomach.

His arm over her shoulders kept her close though, and he felt some of the tension slide out of her. They were both alive. Somehow.

A few seconds of that, which nobody around even tried to interrupt, and finally she stepped back. “I’ve got more questions – and thanks – for later. First, though, we need to finish this dungeon.”

With that, Hiral looked to the battered and exhausted Bonders staring on. There had to be hundreds of them stretched down the length of the wall separating the battlefield from the city on the other side. There, even more people peeked out from doors and behind curtains. Above, much like the valley where the battle had taken place, glowing roots hung by the hundreds, lighting up the entire cavern-like city in a warm glow.

Hanging Garden indeed. Despite the carnage he’d just been part of, there was a surprising sense of peace coming from the squat city. Some of the architecture reminded him of Fallen Reach, but there were also plenty of differences – namely the field-like areas for hundreds of animals. And, now that he was thinking about it, there was a musk in the air, though it wasn’t unpleasant.

Most importantly, it was all real. They were ‘in a dungeon’, yes, but it was like the Fall of Fallen Reach. Real people with real consequences.

Hiral’s eyes fell on the bodies along the wall, and more on the other side that had been taken away from the battle. Hundreds of them. They’d completed the dungeon, but not without a steep cost. Or, had they completed it?

“The interface?” he asked.

“It’s over here,” Drahn said, drawing Hiral’s attention to where a circle of Bonders ringed the familiar interface. “And, before you ask, yes, we’ve explained what’s going on to them. I don’t think most of them believe it, but…”

“But,” a huge man said. Thick hair ran the length of his forearms, leather armor barely covering his torso and shoulders. He wore no helmet – just a yellow bandana – but his beard and the thick mop on his head looked like they could probably deflect a sword on their own. In a way, it almost looked like a bear was talking to them, then Hiral did a double-take when he spotted an actual bear beside the man. “We’re thankful you came to help. You can call me Burs.”

“Seena,” the party leader said, stepping away from Hiral to offer her hand. Comically smaller than the massive man, her usually bulky gauntlet vanished within his thick fingers. “These are Hiral, Left, Right, Yanily, and Seeyela. You’ve met Drahn and Gran, I take it?”

“We have,” Burs said, standing like he was shaking hands with a child because of the size difference. “And I don’t know if we would’ve held the wall without their help. Without all of your help. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

“We’re glad we could make it in time,” Seena said.

“And Drahn mentioned this is all a dungeon for you?” Burs said, gesturing around the Hanging Garden. “I wasn’t aware they could do that.”

“You’ve been in dungeons?” Seena asked. “But you’re all Bonders?”

“Just the some dungeons,” Burs said, then seemed to realize what Seena was getting at. “Ah, you’re wondering how we would be able to get into one.” The man stepped back and nodded, pointing along the line of Bonders who’d moved to helping with the fallen and wounded. Gran moved along with them, and Left excused himself to do the same after checking with Hiral.

“Since I’ve seen how strong you are, and you know to call us Bonders,” Burs said. “I’ll make some assumptions about your knowledge of dungeons and their requirements for entry. We have both Bonders and Growers living here in the Hanging Garden.”

“Growers?” Seena asked. “How?”

“It’s a long story,” Burs said. “One of many I think we’ll need to share with each other. Now, though, is not the time.” He turned to look at the blood-covered wall. “We have friends to mourn and family to break the news to.”

“Agreed,” Seena said, but reached out to catch the man’s huge forearm as he moved to turn away. “After that’s done, though – or maybe sooner – we will need to talk about a new threat that’s shown up on your doorstep. One we will need your help with.”

Burs scanned his eyes across the battlefield. “Is it worse than this?”

Seena shuddered as she looked at her arm where the Unnamed had grabbed her. “I’m afraid it might be.”

“Can it wait a few hours?” Burs asked.

“It can,” Seena said. “See to your people.”

Burs thumbed at the dungeon interface in the middle of his wall. “You do the same. I’ll have rooms made available for you and yours, and we’ll talk soon. Thank you, again, for what you did here today.

“You saved us.”