The Runesmith Chronicles Ch. 16

The oni walked over to Kal's unconscious form lying in the grass and brought up her healing spells to fix what appeared to be a dislocated jaw. Ikuno looked over her shoulder in surprise when she heard the soft thumping of heavy feet coming towards her.

"Is he okay?" asked Gerda with a worried expression.

Ikuno turned back to Kal, "He will be in just a minute, he just did something that caught us both off guard."

"What happened to his eyes?"

"I don't know, and something tells me he probably doesn't either. We'll have to wait until he comes to."

A moment later Kal's eyes opened and he groaned in pain, though that was fading fast thanks to Ikuno.

"Welcome back, sleepyhead," said Ikuno.

Kal worked his jaw for a moment, "Feels like I got kicked by a horse."

"Worse, you got knocked out by an oni. Your eyes are back to normal, any ideas what happened there?"

Kal looked confused, "What about my eyes?" Then saw the golem standing behind Ikuno and not next to the rock wall "Gerda?" he asked.

"Your eyes were glowing blue. I came over to see if you were okay," said the golem then immediately started glancing around nervously.

Kal smiled at the rock girl, "I'm fine Gerda you don't have to stay if it makes you uncomfortable."

The golem nodded and quickly made her way back to the rock face next to the cave as Kal got to his feet. "Any ideas about the eyes?" Kal asked Ikuno.

"Not a clue, can you tell me what was going on in your head before that last bout?"

Kal thought for a few moments then explained what he had been thinking while his eyes had been closed.

Ikuno gave him a thoughtful look, "You said that you filled yourself with magic. Can you do it again?"

"I think so?" said Kal with a hint of uncertainty.

"Try, it's the only thing that makes sense out of what you told me."

Kal shrugged and looked inward where he saw the sphere of magic within him. For the second time, he let that power fill his entire body before looking up at Ikuno. The oni's raised eyebrow and Gerda's gasp from over by the cave told him all he needed to know.

Kal was beginning to feel a bit uneasy with this latest development. "Any idea what it means?"

"Sorry, no."

"Do you think it could hurt me?"

Ikuno thought for a moment, "No I don't think it will. I've told you before that monster girls carry large amounts of magic with them. If I'm not mistaken, Gerda still has you beaten by far in raw power at your disposal. If it doesn't affect them negatively I don't think it will for you either. It's just a guess but I'm fairly confident in my reasoning.

"Doesn't seem like there's much reason to do it then," said Kal as he stopped concentrating and his eyes returned to normal.

"I'm not sure I would go that far, Kal," said the oni.

"Eh?"

"Your reaction time was far better than the last match. Also, your runes were working as an extension of your will, making sure that you were quick enough to block me along with keeping you from getting tired."

Kal looked down at his vambraces. He didn't remember using his runes in the fight until his shield popped up. In his mind, he replayed those last moments of the fight. He had frozen in surprise when the shield flashed into being since he had made no effort to summon it.

Kal's eyes glowed again as he filled his body with magic once more. The shield flickered in and out of existence a half dozen times before he spoke. "I think I see what's happening," he said, "I'm just barely connected to all of the runes right now." He made an impromptu light show as the runes lit up in rapid succession from one side to the other and back before all of them flashed at once a few times. "By maintaining that connection all I have to do is give them enough power to activate them."

"Sounds like you are wasting magic," said Ikuno

"I am," said Kal as he used his ability to watch energy trickle out of the unlit runes. "It's not enough to matter though. I think the trade-off is worth it."

"Let's see about that," said Ikuno moving back far enough so they could square off. "I've been attacking this whole time. It's your turn now. Use whatever runes you want. Just don't hold back."

Kal groaned inwardly, this usually didn't end well for him. Ikuno was a far better fighter and new counters to everything he threw at her. He also wasn't encouraged by the new stance she was using. Her back foot was turned to the side, her hands open and arms slightly extended but down by her waist instead of up protecting her face as she taught him.

Strength, stamina and haste runes all glowed. Kal waited a moment for the haste rune to spin up before launching an attack and promptly finding himself flat on his back. Despite his speed, Ikuno had grabbed his arm and pulled downward throwing him off balance, with little more than a light pat on his hip he toppled over onto the grass beside her.

Ikuno gave him pointers on his form and how to make the most of each strike as she repeatedly, threw, flipped, and pushed Kal to the ground with frustrating ease.

"This new style of yours, is it purely defensive?" Kal asked the oni.

Ikuno just raised an eyebrow and gestured for him to come at her again.

Kal swore under his breath thinking he should have kept his mouth shut. Sure enough, when he went to attack she stepped into him with an arm coming across his upper chest and neck. She pushed him up and back just slightly but enough to make him lose his balance yet again. Her hand hooked around his neck and she pulled sideways and down, introducing his head to the dirt at high velocity while her other hand came around with a punch to the gut that left him feeling like he had been kicked by a horse. No small feat with two protection runes active.

Ikuno hissed in pain and immediately brought up her healing spell to fix her hand which she figured was badly sprained at the very least. Meanwhile, Kal curled up into a ball, holding his stomach as his own healing magic went to work. A minute or so later Ikuno wiggled her fingers, verifying that nothing had been broken. At the same time Kal rolled over onto his back, his healing rune dark after completing its own task.

"That may have gone a bit too far, call it a day?" asked Ikuno.

Kal wiped the perspiration from his forehead, getting a whiff of his sweaty armpit. "Sure thing," he said, "right after a bath."

Ikuno smiled and helped him to his feet, "That sounds like a wonderful idea."

------

As usual, there had been just as much groping going on as cleaning. Having to choose between two pairs of water slickened breasts for his hands to run over was something Kal wasn't going to complain about. Gerda especially seemed to be intrigued by the whole concept of bathing. Kal had never noticed any odd smells from the golem so he knew she must do something along those lines. Although, he did remember that even down deep where the mana cave had been, and his fire resistance rune had been nudging its lower limit, not once did he ever see her sweat. When he finally asked her how she kept clean, she just smiled and stepped out of the waterfall. A moment later Gerda sunk down into the rock of the mountain, leaving a puddle behind her. She then appeared again a few paces away, sparkling clean and completely dry. Kal couldn't even smell the soaps he had been using on her minutes ago.

Kal also washed his dusty, sweaty clothes. He had small mending and cleaning runes on leather tags sewed into his clothing, but he never felt that the magic did quite as good of a job as a hand washing. Then again, the runes on the tags were straight from the book, Kal hadn't bothered to improve them.

As he laid his clothes on the sun-warmed rocks, Kal was somewhat surprised at how comfortable he had become being nude around the women. However, the hungry looks Ikuno kept giving his crotch almost made him wish his pants were dry.

The only major problem with Ikuno's pool was that it was filled by the runoff from the waterfall. This meant that if you washed under the waterfall the water in the pool would get dirty. As they waited for the pool to clear Gerda and Kal were working on his geomancy as Ikuno looked on.

"We will start with the table," Kal watched as Gerda waved her hand over where she wanted the table. Ghostly ropes of magic that only Kal could see stretched out from the golem's hands and tied themselves to the stone in a circle in front of her. She then made the same motion as in the cavern where Kal had made Perra's necklace, like she was lifting a large heavy cauldron, and a round section of stone raised up until waist high.

Kal repeated the same process, trying to match the thick tendrils of magic that Gerda had used and nearly succeeding. Copying the golem, he gathered the ropes and lifted, only to have his arms stopped dead.

Kal looked down in confusion as Gerda walked over to his belongings and grabbed his vambrace then brought it back and put it in his hand, "Rock is heavy, use that." Kal did as asked and as the strength rune came to life he dragged the column of rock up to waist height like the one next to it.

Ikuno suddenly burst into laughter from off to the side, "The mountain has nipples!"

Ignoring the laughing oni, Kal worked to disengage the magic cables when Gerda said, "Very good, do it again." She lifted her right leg and Kal saw tendrils of energy race from her raised foot to the tops of the two small pillars.

"Wait! Ger...!" Kal was cut off as her foot came down and neatly flattened both tables back into the rock, dragging him along with. Kal found himself staring at the stone that a moment ago had been just in front of his feet. He finished releasing the magic cables and slowly got up checking to be sure he was okay. Other than a small scrape on the end of his nose where it brushed the rock he seemed to be fine. Ikuno was now wheezing from laughing so hard Kal threw her an annoyed look that only set her off worse.

"What happened?" asked the very confused golem.

"I was still tied to the table when you pushed it down," he said slipping the bracer over his forearm and tying it.

"Oh... Work quicker next time. Do it again. I'll give you a time limit to 'untie.'"

The next two times Kal managed to make the small stone table fairly quickly but was dragged to the ground as Gerda reset the stone with a stomp of her foot.

By the fourth time, Kal was beginning to feel a good amount of heat coming off the table from being raised and lowered. This was also when Gerda stopped him and asked why it took so long to disengage from the rock.

"The magic for these 'ropes' isn't really coming from me anymore, so I can't just cut the flow and they'll disappear. Even if I try to drop them they are still attached to me somehow, that's what happened the last time," Kal said with no small amount of confusion. He was starting to long for the familiarity of his runesmithing book.

"Cut it," said the golem matter-of-factly.

"I just said I can't. It's like I'm creating a physical thing made out of magic. Cutting the flow won't work."

"Not the magic, the rope."

Kal had been standing there with his arms out from raising the table. He mentally formed a thin blade of magic and sliced through the tendrils he was holding to no avail, they reformed as quickly as the blade passed through. Next, he tried coming from the inside. He sent a pulse along the rope that went just past his hands then severed the connection in all directions at once, the magic cables quickly dissipated afterward. As his hands finally fell to his sides he admitted that it worked, but he wasn't very happy with it.

"Gerda, could you show me how you do it? I've come up with a way to cut them, but it seems terribly slow compared to yours."

Gerda shrugged and pulled the column up once again, this time with Kal looking closely at her hands. A moment before she released the spell the tendril shrank like it was being pinched off just in front of her hands. A second later the same thing happened next to her foot as she stomped it down. After watching, Kal felt he had a good idea of how the golem did it.

Kal got a small blast of heat and looked over to see a glowing ring in the stone marking the edges of the column they kept raising and lowering. Smiling, he again pulled the small pillar of stone up, its sides glowing dull red from the friction. Instead of cutting the tendrils he drew the energy back into his hands, like Gerda's they seemed to pinch off and separate almost instantly.

Having never tried to do magic with his feet Kal failed comically trying to do Gerda's stomp method to push it back down. Instead, he overlapped his hands high up on his chest and pushed down which had the very unexpected result of pushing him up into the air. Ikuno nearly fell over laughing as a surprised Kal kicked his legs futilely in the air before severing the magic ties and dropping.

"Anchor feet, then try," said Gerda, lifting a leg then leaning in all directions while the foot on the ground never budged.

"Magic with feet," Kal grumbled but concentrated on binding his heels to the rock below him then repeated the motion. This time the column slid back into the stone it came from making the ring glow just a bit brighter.

"If you two are done making the mountain's nipples hard," called Ikuno from over by the pool, "the water is clear, but it's still cold." Looking at Kal she smiled and said, "I think you should warm it up for us this time." Kal glanced over at the glowing ring then started walking towards the pool with a sigh.

------

After he had gotten the water up to a tolerable temperature, Kal and Gerda had spent some time making stone seats and benches to sit and relax on in the shallower end. Bubbles of boiling water still ran off the column that sat just below where the pool was filled, once heated, rock seemed to maintain its temperature for a very long time. Gerda was now down at the deeper end, casually smoothing the rock of the sides and bottom of the pool as if she hadn't been underwater for the last half hour.

Kal leaned back putting his head in between Ikuno's breasts and letting the warm water loosen tight muscles from the day's activities. Ikuno's hand, with magically dulled claws, was also helping him release some tension as it languidly ran up and down his oni-sized cock.

Kal turned his head to the side so he could hear, "I'm curious Ikuno, why do you think my dick didn't shrink the other day when Bea wanted to try sucking it while it was like this?"

"To be honest I'm not sure, magic can be strange. At times it's obedient and does exactly what you want, like any good tool. Other times like with Bea that day and with your bonds with the other girls it seems to have a mind of its own. My best guess is that the compatibility spell determined Bea's intention and decided to let it happen since she wouldn't be hurt by it. It's a very old magic I learned from Kithana back when the Tower of Prentas was still standing. It was also developed by Prentas himself and the man by all rights was a magical genius. It's hard to understand exactly how his mind, or his magic, worked. Kith just taught me the spell and gave me a quick rundown of how it functioned."

"You did mention that he had access to magics like teleportation that no one else has been able to conquer. What other kinds of things did he do? That were unique, I mean."

"First thing that comes to mind was magnetism. I told you he destroyed an entire army in a minute did I tell you how?"

Kal shook his head.

"He turned the metal in their own armor against them. Iron is widely known for absorbing magic and steel is largely made from iron, Prentas bypassed all that using magnetism. He created foci in the middle of every person associated with the army then created an insanely strong magnetic force at that focus. Full suits of armor were crushed into something only a bit larger than both of your fists put together without even a slight care as to the armor's occupant. Knights and Paladins in armor, squires in chainmail, soldiers in studded leather, even the supply personnel weren't spared, if there was a piece of metal nearby it ended up inside them. In a bit of misfortune, the cleric's battle gear had steel pauldrons, the rest of their adornment was mostly gold which isn't magnetic. If not for those they might have survived."

Kal cringed but remembered that this army had killed the man's city and a good portion of the original monster girls, "What else was there?"

"He managed to do something special with lightning, Kith was cagey about that so I'm not sure exactly what it was. He learned how to fly using magic..."

Kal piped up, "I've actually been looking into that as well."

Ikuno looked down, "Really? How's that coming?"

"Nothing too deep just yet," Kal drew the rune for the telekinesis cantrip in the air but didn't activate it. "Levitas and Motus," he pointed to each glyph in turn while Ikuno looked on nodding. "It can make small, light objects fly but I don't see anything in the rune that limits the power, weight, or speed. It makes me think that the spell is inherently flawed. But then, it does leak magic like water through a sieve, so I think I already knew that."

"Ever think about jotting it down and tightening it up as you did with the rest of your runes?"

"I already did that, this is the final product."

Ikuno peered intently at it but since she never used the drawn version of the spell she couldn't make out the changes Kal had made.

"It's as though the rune is missing something, another primary glyph or some added dimension that I don't know or understand yet," said Kal.

"I wish you had mentioned this earlier, I may be of some help," said Ikuno. She stopped lightly running her fingers along his cock and held out a hand to summon one of her magic circles. "This is a greater telekinesis spell. With it, I can launch rocks and such about the size of your head at a good speed. It hardly ever gets used with such a small weight range."

Kal sat up and studied Ikuno's spell intently. Most of the outer two rings' purpose was to direct the magic back into the center, which seemed very odd to Kal. In the middle were the same two sigils only slightly different for Ikuno's style of magic.

Kal's eyes glowed blue as he looked up at the oni, "Activate it, please?"

Ikuno chose a rock nearby that was just a bit too big for the lesser cantrip and activated the spell, lifting it into the air.

"Ugh," said Kal in distaste.

"That bad?"

"Worse, if the small one is like water through a sieve, this is like a waterfall through a fishing net." As Kal looked on the outer rings were doing as he expected and directed some of the escaping magic back into the middle of the spell increasing its power. He was surprised to see that the leakage was mostly coming from the center which was unusual with far more coming from Levitas then from Motus. However, this was the only spell he knew that used two primary glyphs, he had a feeling that was the issue. As he stared at the spell he began to get feeling far off in the corner of his mind that there was a glyph that combined these two. For a moment he managed to grab onto the idea and in his mind began getting tiny impressions of a very complex glyph that should go into the center. A moment later the feeling was gone before he could commit anything to memory.

Kal sat back, his eyes going back to their natural color, "Dammit."

"Something wrong?" asked Ikuno, lowering the rock and releasing the spell.

"It felt like I almost had it, like a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't remember."

"You're being a bit vague, Kal," she said with a hint of annoyance.

"Sorry, there's another glyph that should go in the middle, one that is a combination of those two and does the same thing without pissing magic away into the air," Kal explained. "I could almost see it but then it vanished. It seemed so intricate I almost wonder if it's a combination of more than these two, perhaps a composite of three or four instead."