Tale of Four

Sitting on the back of the horse, using the large man’s back as support, Alice held one of the mimic’s bones in one hand and the eyes in the other. Twirling the eyes in her left hand, she tapped the other one against her forehead, lost in thought about what she could do. ’There is still residue of its arcane powder inside them, but what do I even make with it? I don’t see how a bone could be used to make an artefact for reading memories. The eye is better, but they are terrible to work with.’

Staring at the tiny eyes as she rotated them through her fingers, she wondered if they were even big enough to be effectively used for an artefact. ’I should have kept it alive; I’m such an idiot. That way I could have had soemthing to practise that Dead Guys Runes on.’ Pulling the bones away from her head, he looked down at her other hand, past the bones into her palm. ’ It’s still far too early to try soemthing so dangerous on myself. Especially here, where I don’t have ingredients for potions.’

Despite the warning to herself, Alice could help but switch the bone out for her quill and place the tip on her palm. Circling the arcane power, its pure black tip easily pierced through her skin, and just as it did, she pulled her hand back in pain, shaking it, being careful not to drop the eyes.

’How did that mad man draw on his cheekbones? It hurts just to cut yourself with this thing, let alone peeling your skin to draw on your bone.’ Shaking her head to snap her back into reality, she carefully put the eyes back and took out a bone. Placing the quill on it, she ran the arcane power through it, lighting up the runes across the quill. Its faint blue glow grew, and placing the tip on top of the bone, it cut through it like butter.

’I may as well get used to drawing the runes he made, at least the ones he left for me.’ Getting to work, she started with the simple one, the collection rune, drawn on the man’s ribcage. Slowly, she carefully drew the rune; every modified detail he had added to it burned into her mind. For such a simple rune, one every Magi learnt, the Dead Magi had made it far more complex, almost to the point where it didn’t make much sense why he had done so much, yet Alice knew there had to be a reason.

Drawing the final line, she drew a conduit and drew the agther rune, before creating a final conduit towards the end of the bone. With how it was, it would blow in her hand once too much arcane power was gathered and collected, so she created a funnel for it to release through. The process took twenty minutes; not wanting to make any mistakes, she held it out from her, then activated the gather rune. Almost instantly, the rune split open with a faint blue glow as the air changed. Power funnelled into the bones from the air itself, centralising on the collection rune, vastly more power than a normal one could hold gathering in it.

Along the bone, even with the funnel to expel the power, it began to tremble under the influx of power until it cracked, breaking the rune. As the rune broke, all the stored power in it rushed out, blowing up in her hand, sending splinters flying in every direction, a few digging into her hand.

”Ow.” Dropping the bone, she looked at her hand and dug the quill into the splinter stuck inside, prying it free, before drinking a potion that would accelerate her body’s natural healing. ”I see.” Even if it was a failure by all marks, she learnt soemthing. It wasn’t just that the runes were made differently so they could be drawn on a living person, but they were far more effective.

”But why?” Asking herself, she looked at the quill, analysing the numerous runes across its entire body; a few she could barely understand and the rest she had no idea what they meant. ”It’s a combination of old and new runes, creating an entirely new language, but it is still runecraft at the end of the day, so why is it so different to the ones I know? Did I mistranslate them... maybe.”

”Girl.” The large man spoke, looking behind him. ”If you’re going to experiment, give me some warning first. You startled the horse.” Alice ignored him and focused on the quill before looking down at her side at the man’s sword, strapped to the horse’s side. She had been fascinated with it the first time she saw it, able to tell they were much like the Dead Magis, different, neither old nor new. Whilst they had properties she recognised from old runes, there was a subtle difference in the ones she knew, so she knew it wasn’t entirely correct. But they didn’t have any of the new aspects that the ones she was taught had.

”If runecraft is everything, how can runecraft be written in different ways? Why did his work on the body but ours don’t? After all, someone would have already discovered that if it was the case.” Biting the tip of the quill, the cold metallic taste filled her mouth as she nibbled on it. ”Runecraft is everything, but at their core they are a means to attach attributes to something and can only be activated by the arcane, be it a person’s own or the power in the world.”

”Language. It’s all language at the end of the day. The old language, the new and the modified. The new is the weakest, the modified should be the middle ground, and the old is the strongest.” Her nibbling on the tip of the quill stopped as a new problem dawned on her. ”That dead man obviously learnt old Runecraft, so why did he not use it to write on his body? Was it because it was incompatible, or for another reason?” Nibbling her mind again went into overdrive, thinking and discarding theories. ”They were incompatible, no, there must have been some compatibility after all; why blend the two to do it? Then he didn’t know them fully... no, I don’t believe that. How he learnt, I don’t know, but he must have found them some way. After all, it would have been impossible to do what he did.”

The fingers on her left hand twitched as she narrowed and un-narrowed her eyes. ”They were compatible, but something didn’t allow them to be used?” Both her hand and nibbling stopped. ”Old runes were said to be far stronger than what we have now. Maybe old runes were too strong to be used on the body. They, much like with the bone and his runes, would have destroyed it, and in turn killed him.”

”If that is the case. Why? What is different about old runecraft? Everything is runecraft. The Arcane is also runecraft.” Her talking got quicker as her hand moved closer to her mouth to cover it, her other hand’s fingers twitching madly as she ran through her mind, ”Take it to the most fundamental level. If everything is it, those being said to be Gods, humans, the immaterial, myself. All of it is created using the same source, but the source has been broken and rewritten, weakened. I could not possibly make a human being with the runes we have now, but...” Her eyes widened as her body relaxed, a possibility dawning on her. ”Old Runecraft might. To create life, to create impossibilities.” Pulling the quill from her mouth, she looked at it. ”It’s not the runes themselves but the meaning within them.”

”If that is the case, old runes are different because of how they are written; old runecraft is different because it is closer to the fundamental laws of the world.” A mad smile grew on her face whilst her body shook in excitement. ”To use old runecraft, could it be possible to rewrite the laws of the world? If so, it makes sense why he had to modify the language so he could install runes across his body. The collection rune in the old language would overload; the world would likely be unable to tell the difference between him and itself.”

The quill nearly fell from her fingers as she realised the possibility, and she quickly had to collect herself to avoid dropping it. ”Magnificent. If this is true, how did he die? He could have completely rewritten his entire existence. Made it perfect, immortal.” Her mind paused. ”The material and immaterial. If he knew all this, he must have perfected the material world. So it was the immaterial, the soul.” Covering her mouth to suppress her twitching lip, a giggle escaped her lips.

From behind, she felt the large man uncomfortably shuffle and heard the scarred woman do the same. ”The source of life, the soul. He couldn’t figure it out. It’s the only way. He knew the material perfectly but not the other half of existence.” Her giggles grew louder as she thought of the means to finally win. ”I’m going to do it.”