Runeblade

Kaius kept his hand securely on the pommel of his sword, scanning the half-hidden shades of densely packed trees. Truesight might have let him pierce the gloom better than his friends, but even what he could see was wrapped in shadow. The very air had a weight to it, and the small stones that littered the dry riverbed crunched far too quietly beneath his feet.

They’d followed their winding path through the silent forest for just over an hour, making their way down the gentle but endless slope of the Crater. So far, their journey had been unmolested. No beasts surged out of the many trunks, trying to tear at them with fang and Skill. He hadn’t even spotted any shade spirits yet. That surprised him — the wisps of smoke and shadow had attacked them twice when they’d been circling the edge of this place.

The quiet was the worst. The entire Crater felt like it had been strangled into a forced silence. There was none of the pervasive and ever relentless life that had swamped the red boughs behind them. Where were the screaming birds as they fled and hunted in equal measure? Where were the screams of the dying, and the roars of the triumphant?

He stepped around a stunted briar that had taken root amongst the stones. The plants might still eek out an existence in absence of the light, but this place felt dead.

Maybe the denizens of Vainblood were simply wiser than the rest of them. They probably knew better than to intrude on the domain of a sovereign.

Following the winding river bed in an uneasy silence, Kaius watched his surroundings sharply — searching not just for threats, but for their waymarker.

Eventually, a blocky silhouette loomed in the most distant reaches of his sight. A tall column, half hidden by brush and withered by years of wind and water, but the weight of its history was unable to hide the ground-flat angles of its face.

“I see it,” Kaius murmured softly.

“Feels like we’ve been walking for about the right amount of time,” Kanmost confirmed. “Though this blasted dark is impossible for me to see through, so I was never able to memorise any proper landmarks when Brokenlight forced me through this place.”

Oddly, the Archivist seemed the least affected by the atmosphere of all of them. He wasn’t exactly chipper, but there was an edge of nervous excitement to them that the darkness hadn’t been able to smother. He wished to see the Wellspring, and no amount of unknown horrors seemed to be enough to deter him.

“Let’s get to it quickly,” Kenva said, fiddling with the fletching of the arrow she’d had knocked since they’d entered the Crater. “I don’t like how exposed we are on this river bed.”

Kaius wasn’t going to argue with that.

They picked up the pace, from a painful crawl to something approaching a cautious walk. With their vision impaired and sounds dampened, they had to be slow, especially since Kanmost could barely see his hands outstretched, and Ianmus wasn’t that much better off.

“Why don’t you tell us more about the Wellspring, Kanmost,” Porkchop said. “This silence is getting to me, and I'm curious about the prize that awaits us at the end of this.”

Kanmost let out a low chuckle. It sounded like it was thirty strides away, even though Kaius knew he could turn around and touch the man if he wanted.

“I think I can do that. This place has been my obsession for the better part of half a decade — though the real research only happened in the last year.”

“How’d you find out about it?” Kaius asked, patting his pommel as he did his best not to think about how everything sounded muffled.

“About eleven, maybe twelve years ago, I was doing some work on the Nesman ethnic group. They had a small kingdom here in the middle of the dark ages, but the people themselves have been living in the region of the Dukedoms and Franlen for a lot longer than that. Most of it was field work — collecting oral histories and myths from scattered villages. Given the time that had passed, there was a lot drift, so it took years to do a proper thematic analysis of it all.”

“And that led you to the Wellspring?” Kenva asked.

“Oh, heavens no — but it did help me confirm that a few old ruins were likely part of that old kingdom I mentioned! That led to chartered expeditions, which allowed me to gather a few record fragments and inspect a few dusty statues and half broken mosaics. That lead to a few more ruins, with some surprisingly well preserved pottery and a few record fragments. Motifs started to pop up a little too often, that was a hair too similar to now much-distorted myths of the Nesmen. It was all one gigantic tangled knot of clues and false leads — but eventually I suspected that it was promising enough to secure funding.”

That sounded…exhausting. Interesting, but exhausting. Kaius wasn’t sure he would have the stomach for work like that, spending years just scraping around the edges of something. It would drive him mad.

“So…what exactly is it?” Porkchop asked.

“As a Place of Power? No idea, other than access was seen as a grand prize for the most wise and honourable of the ancient Nesmen. But the Wellspring as a place of history? It had religious significance. Before the System came, Vainblood was always mana dense, and some ancient hero found a spring of rising waters rich with natural magic. They built a kind of monastery around it; it seems like every ruler and champion for centuries made pilgrimage to prove their bravery and righteousness by simply reaching its doors. It was crazy, there were nearly a dozen distinct myths that involved it in some way — it's the only reason I was ever able to nail down a potential location.”

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A mild welling of annoyance flowed to Kaius through his bond with his brother. He cracked an amused smile. Porkchop only had an idle interest in the long distant past of the place — he’d wanted specifics.

“I think Porkchop was trying to ask how we are getting inside,” Kaius said.

“Oh!” Kanmost chuckled softly. “Sorry, I can get a little carried away with these things. It was on a tablet.”

“A tablet,” Kenva said slowly.

“Engraved stone, in the tomb of one of those ancient heroes, south of here in what is now untamed wilds. It held his epic. Essentially, the Wellspring monastery was carved into the side of the crater, with a large open-air courtyard at its centre. There are a series of plinths that need to be rotated into the correct position, but the way to the Wellspring will only unlock on the eve of winter — old magic. Supposedly there was some sort of guardian at some point, but the stories were quite clear it was outside of the Wellspring, and Brokenlight wasn’t able to find a trace of it.”

“So that’s what was in your journal? The pattern?” Kaius asked, confused. The man was a Silver scholar — how in the hells was he unable to memorise it?

“Yes, it is quite complex — there are seventy-two of the damned things.”

“Wait a minute, what about the original tablet?” Kenva asked. “Why didn’t Brokenlight just send someone to get a recording of that.”

Kanmost paused for a long moment, before he let out a sigh. “It was cursed. After I'd copied its contents down in my journal, I touched it, the fool that I am. I know better than that, but I was so excited! Damn thing dissolved into sand — as did the structural supports of the tomb. Nearly buried me and my escort alive.”

Looking back at the Archivist in surprise, Kaius caught Ianmus staring at his old teacher in disbelief.

“You’ve lived a far more adventurous life than I would have thought,” Ianmus said.

“Things have to get into the archive somehow. I will admit that this whole endeavour has been quite a bit more exciting than most, though.”

Their conversation lulled as they reached the road marker. Now that they were closer, its details were far less obscured. A warrior stood tall on its face, wrapped in the skin of a bear with their hands clasped on top of the head of a massive double-headed axe. It was big, too. Eight strides, at least — and wide enough that Kaius would have struggled to wrap his hands half way around the weathered rectangular stone. No wonder it had survived the test of time.

Worn stone lay hidden beneath it — small cobbles that had been pounded and cracked until they looked scarcely different from the riverstones. The undergrowth along the bank choked them, overgrowing the path entirely. With how dark it was, Kaius was damned sure he would have missed them if he wasn’t already looking for them.

Some of the brush was trampled, too. Branches had been broken, and one broad-leafed plant had been squashed entirely. Julian had passed through here.

They moved on without preamble, the trees swallowing them whole. Despite the dense canopy above, it grew no darker, though the trunks left plenty more places to hide. Kaius twitched as the wind blew, filling his surroundings with rustling motion.

At this point, he almost wished they were attacked. At least that would give him something to work out his nerves on.

After a quarter hour of tense advance, Kanmost broke the silence once more.

“Now it is my time to ask — what are you planning?” he whispered even softer than before — not even the undying curiosity of an Archivist was enough to beat back the oppressive dark that surrounded them. “You mentioned my sponsor suspects a traitor, but what is our part in that?”

“We strike as soon as his man turns on him, and mop up that problem as quickly as we can. Then we focus on Brokenlight.” Kaius explained. There was that much to it, really.

“Isn’t that a little…light?” Kanmost replied.

Ianmus clapped him on the shoulder. “If there is one thing I have learned, overcomplicating battle is often more dangerous than not. Trust in our capability, we’ll see it through.”

Kaius nodded — you could plan a thousand feints, but it was hard to remember them all when a blade was stabbing at your eyes.

“There is a little more to it, of course,” he said. “Julian knows that we’re coming. He’ll keep his advance slow enough to avoid tipping off Brokenlight and let us catch up. As long as we can avoid announcing our existence, a moment of chaos and surprise is all we need.”

Kanmost nodded hesitantly. “I suppose I best leave the warfare to the warriors.”

“There is one thing you could help with,” Kenva interjected. “Is there anything you can tell us about the capabilities of Brokenlight and his men? The more prepared we are, the better off we’ll be.”

“A little. Our first foray into the Crater went off smoothly, so there’s only the glimpses I caught from beast attacks. Gregor, the big one with the axe, is a straight-forward physical fighter — I suspect a plain martial affinity. One of the archers is wind-based, and the other had a metal affinity. Brokenlight is a worse problem. He is supremely skilled. I have met many strong men in my time, but he is a spectacular specimen for his level. He has a void affinity.”

Kaius tensed as the phantom of dozens of bronze needles punched into his body. He remembered their sting, and the cold agony of his body being slowly consumed from within. Void. Of all of the skills he’d used to merge Rapid Adaptation, that one had been the worst. He remembered the way it had consumed the tips of those heirloom artefacts in a bottomless black, like they had been punched out of existence. Father had held each one up to the sun to check the coverage, and the light had bent and warped around them — splitting into iridescence before being consumed.

Brokenlight. A fitting name indeed.

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