Rune Seeker - Chapter 88: Fitch

“Get ready,” Ilrolik shouted as the Disc of Passage slowed to a stop a few hundred feet away from the Fallen’s tower.

There, between the tower and the disc, more than a hundred Shapers stood glowing in the heavy rain. Solar energy flared as they shaped weapons and abilities in preparation for the coming fight.

On the disc around Hiral, Loan and the others did likewise, energy roiling just as violently as the storm outside. Neither side particularly rushed, knowing the disc’s barrier would blunt—if not outright stop—any attack before it was lowered.

“Perhaps we should move to the back of the line, mistress,” Li’l Ur suggested. “If our goal is to reach this Fitch fellow, we may be better served sneaking around the edge of the battle once it’s joined.”

Seena looked at Hiral like she was wondering if he’d object.

“The unusual little ferret is correct,” Loan said. “If you get caught up in our conflict, it will only make it more difficult for you to do what you need to.”

“I’m not a ferret!” Li’l Ur squeaked. “I’m a lich! A legendary reformed evil!”

“Perhaps you should scratch that, then?” Loan asked, but his big arms gently pushed the group behind him, though his hand lingered on Hiral’s shoulder. “As much as I want to see the Spear of Clouds, more than anything, I want to see what you can do now. Show me.” He lifted his eyes to indicate the other Shapers on the disc. “Show us all.”

“Try not to get distracted,” Hiral said. “And, in the wise words of our illustrious party leader… don’t die.”

“Always good advice,” Loan said with a laugh. Another push had the party winding their way through the pack of Shapers.

“No matter what happens here,” Ilrolik said as they passed her, “thank you for freeing our families and getting us out of that prison.”

Hiral just nodded at the woman and continued on his way. Part of him had expected the Shapers to balk at helping them. At helping Growers. That their prejudices would get in the way. But here they all were, fighting to save their home.

Funny how the threat of complete and utter annihilation can make you put aside your differences. Now we just need to…

KAAAA-THOOOOOM! Thunder unlike anything they’d heard before sounded overhead, so deep and powerful it shook them to their cores. A second echoing thunderclap, and Hiral spun around just in time to see a wide bolt of lightning crash down from the sky to a point beyond the crowded Shapers. Not a second later, everything went black and white, as if color had fled the area.

SCHIIIING! An arc of Separation cut through the air to collide with the crystal at the top of the Fallen’s tower.

We’re too late!

Dynamic Quest

One of the Infested seeks to free the Fallen trapped within the nearby crystal.

Don’t let that happen!

Infested Defeated: 0/1

Fallen Contained: 0/1

Hiral’s eyes went to the crystal as color returned to the world. A deep scar ran along the faceted face, but it couldn’t be more than a few inches deep. Extending in a line from the crystal down to the crowd of Shapers, the air itself had the familiar slant, like it’d been cut in two and didn’t fit together quite right anymore. Rain hit it and ran sideways before continuing to fall, like a plane of glass two feet wide. However, within a few blinks, the cut was gone—Fitch hadn’t managed to use as much power as Yanily had. There was still a chance.

“Ilrolik,” Hiral shouted, “we’re out of time. Go!”

The older woman nodded. Even she must’ve felt something in the attack against the crystal. Then, suddenly, the rain hit them as the disc’s barrier vanished.

The battle began immediately, solar energy climaxing as abilities and tattoos exploded to life.

“Go, go!” Seena said, rushing in the opposite direction of the press of Shaper bodies while unprecedented violence exploded in that small corner of Fallen Reach.

Never in recorded history had two sides fought with the intent to destroy the other. Never before had tattoos been brought to bear for anything but a duel.

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

And it was terrible.

Hiral and his party leapt from the back of the Disc of Passage as the B-Rank heavyweights threw themselves at each other, and explosions seemed to rock the entire island. The elements roared to life, fire and earth rising and falling like the tides to meet one another. Pouring rain provided ample ammunition for those using tattoos such as the Way of Water or Way of Ice. Unnatural lightning crackled and spread horizontally—far from the clouds overhead—and weapons truly meant for reaping lives tasted the air for the first time.

Sure, many Shapers had received tattoos with deadly uses, but they’d never been used in the arena. They’d never been used against friends and allies. Here, now, they met flesh and tore it apart. Even B-Rank Shapers weren’t indestructible, and buckets of blood quickly joined the falling rain to soak the land.

“We can’t get caught up in that,” Seena said over the party chat. The magic of it let her words reach their ears despite the cacophonous battle going on not fifty feet away.

“It’s a charnel house,” Seeyela said, and she wasn’t wrong.

Meridian Lines flared as Shapers crashed into each other. Punches that could powder stone landed one after another, the impacts echoing like the thunder overhead. Energy sizzled within the rain, evaporating it in places and spreading a thick, fog-like mist across the ground. Within the haze, colors and sounds burst and warped. Silhouettes moved like gods within the clouds, the battle somehow only increasing in fervor.

“I don’t think this is what you expected, Gauto,” Hiral whispered to himself, but he pushed his friend from his mind. He had other things he needed to focus on. In the brief thirty seconds since they’d left the disc, they’d moved wide out to the edge of the conflict to try to get around, but it was quickly spreading.

“A portal?” Left suggested. “The battle is expanding as quickly as we’re moving. Going around is going to delay us too much.”

“That’s a lot of solar energy to throw away before we even get to Fitch,” Seeyela said. “But I don’t see another way.”

“I’ll use Flight of the Phoenix,” Seena said. “My movement ability. I can take two others with me now, so you’ll need to absorb Left and Right.”

“What’s the cooldown on it?” Hiral asked, but he touched his doubles and brought them into himself without complaint.

“Thanks to my crown, short enough,” Seena said. “It’s a little flashy, though, so we might attract some attention.”

“Let them come,” Seeyela said, her hand-crossbows drawn.

“I agree with your sister,” Hiral said, drawing his own RHCs. “Fitch should be straight that way.”

Seena followed Hiral’s pointing RHC, and solar energy built within her. “Hold on.”

Hiral didn’t have a chance to ask, To what? Before Seena’s mantle flared out into wide wings and enveloped him. Then… Then it was like he was floating within a sea of flame, his body both gone and part of some greater entity. Equations like the double helix written across his skin twisted within the fire, and then he shot forward.

Brief sensations and figures flashed beneath him—the Shapers they passed over—before they suddenly reformed. Solidity snapped back into place, Hiral’s normal senses screaming to life, and he spun to bring his RHCs up. Pulling both triggers, he slammed two bolts of Impact into a Shaper charging their way. The man staggered back, his chest partially collapsed from the shots—He must be C-Rank—then took two small arrows in the gut.

Dark green flashed from one, spreading color through the veins just under his skin like wildfire. From the other, a neon-green flash simply turned a fist-sized chunk of flesh to goop. The Shaper dropped to his knees as his insides began to leak out, a scream of pain forming on his lips, only for it to be cut off by another bolt of Impact to the side of the head.

The critical hit dropped the man sideways into the rain’s pooling water. Hiral’s notification told him the man was dead before he hit the ground, and a spike of guilt flashed through him.

He’d killed another person. What if they’d been pressured or forced into this against their will? Could they have been innocent? Or at least innocent enough to deserve a second chance?

No. Even if they were pressured into it, they made a choice. They would’ve been put with Loan and the others if they were better people.

Even if that wasn’t completely true, Hiral forced himself to think that way. It was what he needed to believe—at least for now—or he’d hesitate.

“I think I see Fitch!” Seena said at the same time her flames chased back another Shaper coming their way.

“Then let’s get this over with.” Seeyela put two more bolts into a third Shaper, then stowed her crossbows and drew her daggers. If they didn’t move, more and more opponents would keep coming.

“Let’s,” Hiral agreed, activating Foundational Spilt.

Left and Right peeled off him to cover his flanks while he looked towards where Seena had indicated. Just like she’d said, a cloaked man far too small to be a Shaper stood with a spear glowing like caged lightning in his hand.

Even as Hiral’s stare locked on him, the hood seemed to turn and meet his gaze. Hate and familiarity mixed with the energy billowing off him, giving it shape, condensing it into tentacles to Hiral’s Cycling-trained eyes.

“Fitch.”