Runeblade
B3 Chapter 300: Cold Desert Night, pt. 1

B3 Chapter 300: Cold Desert Night, pt. 1

Two more ruinbringers died as they crossed the desert.

They were good fights — tough, and had proven that even with a viable strategy they could not treat the beasts lightly. One had gone as well as the last, their backline removing its tail while he disabled its pincers, resulting in a long beat down where the only injuries they had taken had been a handful of broken bones on his and Porkchop’s part.

Both his and his brother’s new abilities had only aided that.

Porkchop’s was brilliant to see in action, a towering spire of carved jade that looked almost like a hewn oak log with a dozen different beast’s engraved into its surface. As it had shot out of the sand, a warm comfort had spilled over him. His skin grew tough and leathery, his body light and swift, and energy had surged through him.

A moderate enhancement, but one that had made the process of defeating the ruinbringer all the easier — and it still had significant room to grow.

His own spell had been a little less significant. Even if it was the child of a Heroic skill, his new psionic spell was still low level, and the creatures he had used it on had been in the second tier.

Their movements had gotten a little less sure, and a little more clumsy, but nothing that would decide victory alone. He expected that to change as the skill grew — it was already backed by his rather monstrous mental stats, and the fact it worked at all against creatures more than a hundred levels higher than him was downright impressive.

Fighting the second scorpion? That had been a bit more dicey.

Even with all of their preparations and strength, the beasts were still fast — skittering bastards that could dance over the sand like it was made of solid stone.

When he’d baited the creature out of the sand with a thrown apple, it had blasted upwards far more alert than their previous foes — immediately rushing to the side. Ianmus and Kenva had still managed to remove its tails, but its sudden movement had cost them. In the fraction of a second they had taken to adjust their aim, the scorpion had fired — two spines, one from each tail.

He’d been the unfortunate recipient.

With his mental stats, he’d thought he’d be ready — would have the skill to at least get his blade up.

All he’d felt was a sudden double punch to the chest, followed by the crack of broken air. Then there had just been pain, and his blood spilling into the sand.

He might have had the regeneration and stats to survive, but even with his Constitution and a capped Lesser Regeneration, nothing worked quite right when you had multiple holes the size of your fist blown clean through you.

That didn’t mean his job had been finished, and even if he felt like he was drowning in his own blood, he’d pushed on — shuddering and weak. A Zone of Discombobulation had given Porkchop the edge he needed to avoid too many severe wounds from the beast’s pincers while he recovered, and a potion had kept his health high.

It hadn’t stopped everything from growing cold. His blood might have dripped like molasses, but holes like that would make anyone bleed like a stuck pig.

In the end it had been Ianmus dumping half of his pool into a hastily formed Supercharged flesh-rejuvenating spell that had helped him back into the action — regrowing his ribs, lungs and flesh anew. It had been costly, and taken far more time than a normal heal — rejuvenation was a lot more complicated, after all.

He’d been out of the fight long enough for Porkchop to be carved up like a prime haunch of beef. Good thing his brother was as tough as steel, and far harder to put down than him.

Good fights. The kind that got the blood hot and the heart racing.

They’d been brilliant for their growth too. He and Porkchop had hit one-thirty-one after the last ruinbringer, half way to their next skill, and had gotten skill levels by the handful besides.

Ianmus and Kenva had both managed to earn their seventh class skill as well, a moment they’d celebrated with an impromptu lunch of seared fowl and looted wine as they rested by the cooling carcass of their last kill.

Their mage had ended up settling on another Rare metamagic — Armour Shredding Spells. It was a safe pick, but one that was a welcome addition. For additional mana, all of his offensive magic would be far more damaging to any of his target’s defences — natural or created.

Should they come against a creature in heavy-plate — or gods forbid, a stone elemental — Kaius was much more confident about their mage’s chances of wounding them.

Kenva, on the other hand, had excitedly picked a skill that she’d been on the lookout for since she’d first received her class.

The Mother’s Shadow — an Unusual stealth-related skill. It would let her blend into natural environments. Not only by making her harder to spot, but by the surroundings themselves twisting to aid in her deception as bushes and branches bent to hide her form, soften her noise, and leave no trace of her passing.

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Obviously, she’d tested it out immediately. While she hadn’t exactly been hard to spot — especially not with Truesight

— her form had still taken on a speckled tan hue, breaking up her outline against the surrounding desert. The sand had toughened under her feet as well, leaving no footprints as she walked.

That little respite had been what had to have been six hours ago, when the twin suns were hanging low on the horizon. Unfortunately, it was hard to tell exactly, because he was now certain that the day cycle of the biome was vastly different to what he was used to in the world above.

Despite all that time trekking over the dunes, it was only just reaching sunset — amber and purple hues dominating the sky as the brightest of stars started to become visible.

It meant a day that was at least twice as long as he was used to, and that it was almost time for them to rest.

Thankfully, they had made good time, and it seemed that they wouldn’t have to camp out on the dunes for the evening. Even with their illusionary tent and a spell that would reinforce its defences, Kaius wanted to reach their destination before they stopped for the evening.

As they capped the next rise, the jutting stone of a terraced pagoda pierced through the sand ahead of them. Still easily an hour's walk away, he could see it in as much clarity as if he was standing right in front of it. A benefit of Truesight.

It had much the same architecture as their entrance to the biome, albeit far larger. Two full layers rose to the sky above, a square tower surrounded by wrap-around verandas. Exterior stairs led to the second story, where a closed door lay waiting for them.

A way in, judging by the subtle glow on the door frame that had to be a formation.

Hopefully, it would be their ticket out of the biome to a place where fodder for their growth was both more numerous and less heavily armoured.

At worst, it would be a spot to hole up for the night, and make use of the higher elevation to spot other structures over the dunes.

He trusted hard stone walls much more than a night on the open desert, especially after their last brush with a ruinbringer.

It had reacted too quickly — taken its shot at him with too much certainty. While it was only a hunch, he had learned that it was best to trust his gut in these situations. The desert felt more dangerous than it had at the height of the day, and he would bet all of his poached platinum that it would only get worse as darkness fell in truth.

“Thank the Matriarchs, we’re almost there — you’d think this desert was made of fleas by the way it’s infesting my fur.” Porkchop said, flinging a shower of sand around as he shook himself.

Kaius laughed when Kenva spluttered in outrage, shielding herself from the spray.

“I told

you not to slide down that dune — what did you think was going to happen?”

“Oh please, you saw how steep it was. There was no way I was making it down there without slipping. Besides, it was fun, and you’re just jealous.”

He rolled his eyes, though privately he could admit that it did look like a good time — his brother had picked up enough speed that he would have struggled to keep up at a dead sprint.

“Let’s just go people, I want to empty my boots.” Ianmus sighed, leaning on his staff.

As they closed the final league, Kaius started to chat to Ianmus as they walked, encouraging the mage to bring back up his diagram of the sigils he was working on.

The mage agreed enthusiastically, all but tripping over himself as he created a ring of geometry on his hand.

Pouring over it closely, Kaius honed in on the small errors he’d picked up on in their first discussion — of centre intersections of triangles and circles, geometric sigils that had been placed just wrong in the overall array, and lines just a hair too large and small.

Working through them one by one, he did his best to educate his friend on the theory of sacred geometry — the most basic foundation of all runic arts. How certain shapes and simplistic proto-runes encouraged stability and directed specific flows of mana, and the unintuitive ways in which they could be overlapped and joined to create a greater effect.

It was a fun exercise. Unlike the mind boggling complexity of his glyphs, sacred geometry was an art he knew like the back of his hand. It was, in many ways, an intersection of mathematics and magic. One where basic principles could be explored, defined, and then used to logically progress to higher complexity.

An iterative process that ended in modern runecraft — and, it seemed, somewhere else, judging by Ianmus’s own use.

The sun dipped low as they talked, golden hour giving way to a soft twilight that slowly gave way to the greyscale of his darkvision. Kaius paid the dimming light no mind, far more interested in the potential advancement in magic he could assist in developing.

The sigil that Ianmus had been working on was remarkable, all things considered. A use of basic principles that he’d never even considered before. Rather than constrain and cement mana into specific arrays as in runecraft, his creation was much more…lax, for lack of a better term.

It bent magic through three dimensions, gently encouraging it to follow Ianmus’s will while granting his spells an additional haste and strength that would otherwise strain the mage’s Will to the point of breaking.

He couldn’t wait to see what it would be like completed — already, they’d managed to correct a great number of simple mistakes, something that had resulted in the hovering ring-like sigil growing crisp and clear.

There was still plenty of work to be done — more involved finetuning, most of which would require experimentation, and a mastered understanding of freecasting that only Ianmus possessed. It was a start all the same, and Ianmus was committed to finishing the work before he ascended to the second tier.

After all, if it was a major development of free-casting, who knew what sort of influence it would have for his next class? He might even get offered something similar to what Kaius himself had — advanced sigils granted outright as class skills.

“Guys!” Kenva hissed desperately, cutting off their softened speech. “Problem!”

Kaius snapped his eyes up, hand dropping to the hilt of his sword as he searched for what had concerned their ranger.

At first, all he saw was the pagoda — a bare five minute walk from their position.

Then he saw them. All across the desert, puddles of sand shimmering as familiar forms pulled themselves out of the sand.

Ruinbringers, four of them scattered across a quarter league of sand.

Ah.

That’s why the last one reacted quicker. They were nocturnal.