The Runesmith Chronicles Ch. 10

Ikuno stood quietly as Kal talked things out, her tiny gasp and smile when he said he would be happy to spend the rest of his life with her went unnoticed. She sat down next to Kal and put an arm around his shoulders pulling him close as he tried to make sense of his troubled thoughts.

"I don't have any answers for you Kal," she said quietly, "But there are some things I can tell you that might help, though you may not agree with me. First, farming is what you do not who you are, that may have been different if you had never come back to my cave, but you are a mage now and will eventually become a runesmith, by my estimation a very powerful one. Second, you didn't realize it at the time, but you were lying when you told me you would give up magic for me," Kal's head snapped up with a hurt look on his face, "settle down, what I mean is that magic is... addictive, for lack of a better word. You begin with chopping firewood faster, then you wonder if you can get the logs to position themselves on the block, pretty soon you have developed a spell that takes a tree splits it into fire logs then dries it and stacks it next to the house all in one spell. With magic, there is always something else to learn, to improve upon, or to achieve. That brings me to the last thing; you also lied about not wanting power."

"Now, wait a second..." Ikuno held up her hand stopping him.

"I don't mean that you want power like the King or the lords and ladies beneath him. With you it's knowledge, as you have gotten better at reading and able understand more of what's in these books," she waved a hand towards her library, "your thirst for knowledge has gotten bigger. In the world of magic-users, knowledge is power. Keep these things in mind as you look for your answers."

Kal laid back on the bed, holding the leather cuff above him he ran his fingers over the intricately detailed rune that he had yet to draw well enough to add to his bracers. "I have to agree with you Ikuno, the more I learn the more I want to know," Kal took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, "I don't want to admit this, but you are right; I could never go back to being just a farmer with what I know now. I just wish I could see the purpose behind doing all of this."

Ikuno smiled down at him, "Give it time Kal. Keep learning and improving and a purpose will reveal itself." Her smile turned playful and she reached down to run her fingers over the bulge in his trousers, "maybe you'll find that your only purpose is to make a bunch of monster girls deliriously happy by putting this inside them. You've certainly done it for me and 'Dell."

Kal laughed and shooed her hand away, "Stop it, that tickles." He relaxed back on the bed, "So much for a serious moment," he said but there was no heat in his voice.

"Things were getting kind of heavy there," she said apologetically. "Why don't you go study some while I make us something to eat."

"Good idea, I'm still really curious about how protection is layered into the strength rune. I would like to do that with speed as well, and avoid any more broken arms, hopefully." Kal said rubbing the arm he injured in the fight with Emrick. "Thanks for listening to me ramble, you may not have had any answers for me but at least I feel a bit better," he said standing up and giving Ikuno a kiss on the cheek making the oni blush purple. Kal stared at her for a moment, "I don't get you sometimes, we spend hours in bed, you talk like a wanton whore when you're horny, yet you blush when I kiss your cheek."

Ikuno managed to turn a deeper shade of purple. Standing up, she herded him towards the library, "It's a woman thing! Go study!"

---

Kal carefully painted in the last of his latest attempt at the strength rune, Ikuno had made him the cuff for sparring practice but refused to put it on his vambraces until he could draw it himself flawlessly. Kal had done the same with the other four runes he currently had, he put down the ink then Ikuno, with her better knowledge of magic came behind and set them into the leather. The strength rune continued to elude him, unlike the other runes the strength rune was a combination of a basic strength rune and a more advanced protection rune. Ikuno mentioned that it had many of the same characteristics as another protection spell called stoneskin but had been modified to protect the user from shattering bones or turning their hands into pulp with their enhanced strength.

Kal drew another small rune on the table next to the books he was studying from, taking three fingers and making a motion like he was lifting the rune and setting it over on the other side of the tomes, a transparent magical sheet flickered into existence and fell over the books to protect them. Having a rune explode next to one of Ikuno's precious tomes almost qualified as a near-death experience for the boy, Kal never wanted to see her that mad again.

Kal checked and double checked the rune to the one in the book, making absolutely sure that it was an exact copy. Placing his finger on the leather next to the rune, another precaution borne of experience, he began pushing energy into the ink. This was high-quality ink but not magical like that made with Aradelle's nectar, it was good for testing but would burn out after only a few uses. As the magic filled the rune a small spot in the upper left corner caught Kal's attention, it looked like the fanned-out lightning just before Sir Balthus's crystal had cracked, instead of making a smooth transition to the next glyph. Kal only had a fraction of a second to see this before there was a popping noise and Kal was suddenly covered in black freckles as the rune failed and sent the ink flying into the air.

Kal groaned and leaned back in the chair closing his eyes, he didn't even flinch as something cold and wet landed on his face.

"Thanks," he mumbled from under the linen before he reached up and wiped the ink off with the washcloth.

"Remember what I said earlier, Kal. Right now, you are thinking like a farmer, try to approach this the way a mage would," said Ikuno.

Kal thought hard for a moment, "I'm not following, Ikuno. How do you mean think like a mage?"

"How could you use magic to draw the runes?"

Kal looked at the table, drawing a small rune in the air Kal's paintbrush floated upward. Looking at Ikuno he asked, "Is this what you mean?"

"Close, that would likely help your accuracy since the brush is moved by your will instead of your hand. What if you take away the brush?"

Kal looked down at the brush then at the inkwell, "oh... Oh! I see now!" The paintbrush floated back to where it was resting and a small ball of ink floated out of the inkwell.

"Too much, Kal, a little ink goes a long way," said Ikuno watching from off to the side.

"Got it," a streamer of ink made its way back into the well until he had only a handful of drops in the ball. Looking carefully at the diagram in the book he began to shape the ink to match the drawing. Once he had made a perfect replica of the rune he took a closer look at the glyph that failed on his last attempt, with the rune still in the air he reached out with a tiny tendril of magic and touched it. As he had seen before his last failure the magical energy did not flow freely to the next symbol, getting bound up within the ink. Kal double checked and made sure that his floating rune was an exact replica before going back to examining the errant glyph. Kal switched to a couple of other symbols that were roughly similar but ended up coming back to the original when none of them were doing better.

"What are you doing Kal?" asked Ikuno watching intently.

"Modifying some of the symbols on this outer ring that holds most of the protection-based glyphs, something isn't working right," he answered without taking his eyes off the rune.

"Still a novice and trying to make improvements?" she teased.

"I may not need to worry about broken fingers anymore, but I am getting sick of being peppered with ink every time I attempt this rune. Besides, there is something wrong here, I'm just trying to fix it. Ikuno can you tell me what this symbol stands for? I can't maintain this and read the book at the same time."

Ikuno studied Kal for a moment then looked carefully at the floating ink, "That represents skin, it keeps your skin from tearing when you are super strong. Wait a minute..." Ikuno held out her hand and the cuff with the strength rune she had made lifted off the bed and floated into it, "Looks like I made the correction without thinking, I used a skin character from another spell when I copied it."

Kal looked at the symbol she had used and shifted the rune in front of him to match, feeding power to it showed that it would work, but the glyph was meant for magic like Ikuno used and the transfer was leaking energy badly without the user's direct will to contain it. Kal switched back to the original once again.

"If I do this here," the symbol changed shape slightly, "that's better but still not good enough..."

Over the next hour, Kal made dozens of tiny changes to the symbols on the outer ring of the rune, occasionally asking Ikuno for clarification on a glyph's particular purpose. At one point she stopped him.

"I understand that you can see the magic flowing through the characters but are you sure you should be making all of these changes?" she asked, "You could end up with a totally different spell or one that blows up in your face. I don't think I need to remind you how new you are to this."

Kal thought for a moment, "Yes I'm absolutely sure, I think the best way to describe what I'm doing is like when I was learning how to write. This is a group of words here: skin, bone, sinew, muscle, organs, heart," he said pointing to their symbols in turn, "the base glyphs stay the same in the ones I change but now it reads more like: skin and bone then muscle and sinew then heart and organs. I'm just making it easier for the power to flow into the next symbol. Now that I say that, runesmith magic works from the inside out, it should be: heart and organs then bone then sinew and muscle then skin," The characters gently glided into their new positions on the rune.

Ikuno's brow furrowed, looking away she summoned one of her magic circles in front of her hand, the same type of strength spell that Kal was currently working on. Studying it closely for a moment she looked at the strength rune on the cuff and whispered, "I'll be damned."

"What is it Ikuno?"

"The order you put those in seemed familiar, look here," like Kal she pointed to each symbol in turn, "Heart, organs, bone, sinew, muscle, skin. The same order as you just put them in." Releasing the spell Ikuno put up her hands in surrender, "you just fixed two problems with this rune that I never even saw," she tossed the cuff back out onto the bed, "so I'll just sit over here and trust you know what you are doing. Just make sure I don't have to reattach any limbs."

Kal cringed, "I'll be sure of that," and dug back into his work.

---

Hours later he leaned back after laying his 'improved,' but yet untested, strength rune onto a piece of leather, after Ikuno set the ink he grabbed another strip that was set aside for cuffs like the one Ikuno made. Quickly copying the rune onto the strip, he again placed his finger next to the rune. Feeding power into it the strength rune flashed bright red then popped in a shower of leather, leaving Kal sitting there stunned as small bits of ink-stained hide rained down on his head. Ikuno stepped over to console the poor boy after wasting so many hours of work, she was caught up short when he looked at her.

Beaming with pride he proclaimed, "It worked!"

Glancing at the shredded piece of leather she gave Kal a wary look, "Are you okay Kal? That's not what it's supposed to look like when things 'work,'"

"It did Ikuno! The ink failed, not the rune! The rune worked exactly as it was supposed to!" jumping out of the chair Kal stepped over to one of the bookshelves and picked up Aradelle's ink.

Ikuno put a hand on his shoulder, "Are you sure about this? We can't make any more of that until spring."

Kal nodded, "My biggest worry is that we may need a stronger ink, if so then I may need to see if there is some way to throttle back how much power the rune can take and how fast it activates."

Ikuno looked incredulous, "You think you can do that?"

"Not sure," he said as he sat down, "but after today I'm willing to give it a try."

Kal quickly copied his version of the strength rune but this time with the ink made from Aradelle's nectar, placing his finger next to the rune once again he began to feed power into it.

The strength rune lit up smoothly and evenly without the normal flare as it activated, pushing more energy into the magical ink the rune became gradually brighter and brighter until the entire library was bathed in a red tint despite the magical lantern on the table. Kal cut off the flow of magic and leaned back.

Throwing his hands up in the air he shouted, "Yessss!" Kal jumped out of the chair and wrapped his arms around Ikuno, momentarily forgetting that he couldn't pick the large woman up. Reaching back, he grabbed the new strength rune and activated it, going back to Ikuno he picked her up and spun her around the middle of the cavern yelling, "It works! It works!"

"Dammit Kal! Put me down!" she laughed.

Kal set Ikuno down as the rune winked out, he walked over to the bed and flopped down on his back, "That feels amazing, part of me can't believe I actually did it."

"So, my young runesmith, you have a new strength rune that works," with a small magic circle Ikuno summoned the cuff with her strength rune on it and Kal watched as it wrapped around her wrist and tied itself, "now let's see how well it works."

Kal sat up and gave her a confused look, "Ikuno, your normal strength spell should be far more powerful than that," he said nodding at the cuff.

"True, but my strength spell just 'is,' I can't feed more and more power into it like I can with this," he said indicating the rune, "if your new strength rune is as amazing as you say then we should be able to burn this one out," she said smiling.

"Didn't you mention something earlier about NOT reattaching limbs?" said Kal getting up, "this seems like a good way to end up doing just that."

"You worry too much," said Ikuno then gave Kal a sly grin, "How about a little wager? If I win then I get to lay on the bed and you do everything to me that I want for the next hour."

"Okay, and if I win?"

"You get to lay on the bed and for the next hour I do everything to you that I want."

Kal nodded, "I'm game... hey! Wait a second!"

"Too late! You agreed!" said Ikuno laughing at the flustered young man.

"Fine," Kal grumbled, "How do you want to do this?"

Ikuno held out a hand with her fingers splayed, "Uncle."

Kal shrugged and put his hand in hers interlocking their fingers. Uncle seemed like a good choice as there was a lot of leeway if or when one of the runes failed. Even so, he was thankful they both had access to healing spells.

The contest was brief, with Kal then Ikuno stepping up the power going into their respective strength runes, after only a couple of minutes Kal's rune was casting red shadows about the room when a sizzling noise came from Ikuno's cuff, she hissed in pain from the burning rune as Kal pushed her hand back and touched her shoulder. Kal dropped his strength rune to the floor and looked over his shoulder, with a quick motion of his fingers his bracers floated over and into his hand, he turned and took hold of Ikuno's arm as she removed the piece of charred leather. Holding the vambrace, Kal's healing rune glowed bright white and within a minute the burnt skin on Ikuno's wrist looked like it was brand new.

"Thank you, dear," she said kissing him, "It's so cute when you are so worried about me you forget I can heal myself," Kal blushed a bit in embarrassment. "You won, so strip and get into bed, I'll be with you in a moment."

Kal picked up the piece of leather with his strength rune on it, "You don't seem very upset about losing."

"I'm not, as long as 'Dell's ink could handle it I figured you would win with how much magic you were able to pour into your rune," she said walking towards the library. Stepping inside she turned and made a motion over the library entrance, a shimmering curtain cascaded to the floor right behind her hand turning jet black as she completed the spell.

Kal began stripping down, from the sounds buckles being undone coming from the library so was Ikuno.

"You've been holding out on me, I've never seen you use that spell before," he called into the darkness once he had climbed into bed and covered up.

Shuffling he couldn't identify came from the library before she answered, "It's not intentional, I'm better with physical and natural magics, I've always struggled with mind magics like illusions or divination, and I've never been able to grasp astral magic. You will have to search out masters of those schools if you want to learn them. The curtain is an illusion and isn't much harder than the minor telekinesis cantrip we always use."

"I'm not sure why but as long as you've been on this earth, I think I assumed that you knew every kind of magic."

Ikuno barked a laugh followed by a strange jingling noise and a whispered, "Oops, dammit." She answered a moment later, "Sorry to disappoint you but I learned the magics that were easy and that would help keep me safe, one of the drawbacks of being immortal I suppose, there's always time to learn things later. Back when I was young, I used to have the same drive and thirst for knowledge you do, it faded away long ago without the specter of having only so many years on this earth driving it."

"I'm not disappointed, just surprised I guess. I never really thought about having to learn from someone else."

There was a faint tinkling noise then Ikuno spoke from behind the curtain, "I've been planning this for a while, just waiting for the right moment. I think your breakthrough today qualifies as a good reason to celebrate. Are you ready?" there was a faint tremor in her voice as she finished.

"I am," answered Kal, "Are you okay back there?"

"I learned what I'm about to show you from some desert nomads a very long time ago and it's been more than a century since the last time I've done anything like this, I'm a little nervous." There was another faint noise like many tiny bells ringing as she moved around. Ikuno's hand passed through the curtain of darkness off to one side holding a small very ornate box, she set it on the floor and her hand disappeared behind the illusion once again. Something had been odd about her hand but Kal couldn't quite put his finger on it.

The torches suddenly went out and one of Ikuno's light orbs floated out from the magical darkness into the middle of the cavern, instead of giving off light in all directions like normal, this one was only shining straight down leaving the rest of the cavern in shadow. Kal peered about the room making out the various shapes of things he was familiar with, until Ikuno walked out into the light. If there had been a giant in the cave it wouldn't have gotten a second glance once Kal saw the cobalt skinned oni.

A small blue pendant hung from Ikuno's horns held in the middle of her forehead by a delicate golden chain, as Kal looked closer it appeared that most of her body was draped in gold. Her necklace was made up of concentric rings of a type of flat interlocking pattern he had never seen before. The bottom ring was attached to another delicate chain that ran above and below her breasts, between these was a piece of gossamer cloth that left nothing to the imagination. Another jewel set in gold that matched the pendant on her forehead covered her belly button. The slightly larger gold chain around her waist had strings of coins hanging from it, the longest hanging partway down her right thigh and getting shorter as they came across to her left hip, behind those was another piece of gossamer fabric like the one over her breasts that followed the edge of the strings of golden coins. Ikuno lifted her arms and crossed her wrists above her head and Kal saw what was different about her hands, she had painted her claws to match the gold adorning the rest of her body.