Kal, Ikuno, Bea and one of Aradelle’s vines approached the spectral wolf’s remains in hopes of finding any kind of information. Two long black streaks of decayed plant matter starting just beyond the edge of Aradelle’s clearing led them to where it had met its end. It was easy to see, however, that any hope of evidence pertaining to who sent it and why it was looking for Ikuno had dissolved into a bubbling, smoking pool of sickly yellow blood laced with black streaks.
“Any ideas?” asked Kal
Ikuno stared at the bile-colored pool in front of them, “Unfortunately no, I never had any desire to get to know any necromancers. Most of them are a vile sort, unpleasant personalities and always reeking of death and decay, well most of them anyway.” She turned to Aradelle’s vine and the blue orb it was holding, “You said that it was able to speak?” the vine nodded, “To say that I didn’t like necromancers doesn’t mean I didn’t have dealings with them over the years. I’ve seen plenty of these and never ran across, or even heard of, one with the ability to talk. From what little I’ve read on necromancy giving a raised creature any more than basic functions requires an active connection to the caster.”
She waved at the puddle, “That would be foolish for one of these necro-wolves, they’re considered disposable. Set them on their target and walk away. If they are destroyed first in most cases, their death will kill the mark anyways. If they take enough damage, they are often designed to explode and cover their mark in acid. Aradelle got extremely lucky that one of her ancestors had experience with one.”
“Do you think it could have actually killed you?” asked Kal
“The acid is magically strong, I would have had only seconds to wash it off if it had cornered me in my cave,” she gave him a look of genuine concern. “No, I don’t think I would have, at least not with the spells I have now.”
Kal was feeling a bit shaken, though he didn’t show it for the sake of Aradelle and Bea. Since he met the oni, she had been this indomitable force in his life. Knowledgeable, powerful, strong, wise, and able to stare down three Knights of the Lion’s Shield with a grin, yet here she was admitting that one of these spectral wolves could have killed her. He was so accustomed to thinking of her as physically invulnerable that he was having a hard time accepting this small dose of reality.
“Quit looking so worried, Kal. That’s only a worst-case scenario. If I had any warning I’d just tap it with this,” she said summoning her iron club to her hand. “One touch is all it takes. After that, it’s just a corpse of a dire wolf.”
Bea took a step back from the large spiked weapon, “What on earth is that?”
“Something that creatures that are sustained by magic and wizards alike are wise to be scared of,” said Ikuno as she bent down and barely touched the puddle with one of the spikes near the end of the club. The yellow color of the puddle turned to a reddish brown and almost instantly stopped smoking. “It absorbs magic,” she told Bea standing back up and inspecting the spike for damage.
Aradelle’s vine popped up beside Ikuno, looking agitatedly between the club and Ikuno, the oni laughed when she figured out what the vine was getting at. “I never needed to summon it while you were around,” she said almost mimicking Aradelle’s own words from a few days earlier.
The vine managed to do a convincing representation of rolling its eye.
“Is there any way to track it back to who sent it?” asked Kal trying to steer the conversation back to the current issue.
Bea answered first, “Aradelle asked me to fly up to look around before you two got here and see if my eyes could pick anything up. There was a streak of coldness that ran north a ways but that faded and disappeared after a minute or so of following it.”
“Creatures like that absorb energy and magic from their environment to sustain them. The trail faded as the living creatures it stole energy from recovered,” explained Ikuno. “Directly north of here is one of the major trading roads in the area. Unfortunately, it’s trail running in that direction doesn’t tell us much.”
“What about using magic to track it back?” asked Kal.
Ikuno sent the iron club airborne with a flick of her wrist where it vanished with a small flash. She then looked down at the puddled remains of the wolf and shook her head, “Unless you think you can learn some divination spells in the next few minutes, we’re out of luck there.”
Kal thought for a moment, “What about something more physical? Like heightening your sense of smell?”
Ikuno gave him a questioning look and said, “I know that you think that I act like a bitch in heat all the time, but that’s a little harsh, Kal.”
“Wait! No! That’s not what I…,” Kal stopped and turned red as Bea and Ikuno started laughing at him, even Aradelle’s vine was doing a good pantomime of someone having fits of laughter.
They eventually concluded there were no solid solutions for discovering the identity of the person hunting Ikuno. Realizing this, the trio made their way back to Aradelle’s flower before saying goodbye to the alarune and going their separate ways.
About halfway back to meet Gerda at the base of the mountain, Kal suddenly stopped in the middle of the trail.
“Wait a second!” he said looking at Ikuno, “How was ‘Dell able to hear us?!”
------
Perra. Was. Frustrated.
Little more than a week had gone by, and Kal had been spending a large amount of time with Ikuno since the attack on Aradelle. When he was home, however, the sexual tension between them had reached a fever pitch. Perra had been taking almost cruel advantage of the side effect from his compatibility spell. Something that she would honestly feel bad about if it weren’t for Kal giving just as good as he got. Far too often she had gotten him all riled up only to have him turn it around on her and later end up off by herself taking care of her urges.
Today that all changed, she had seriously considered sneaking into Kal’s room and jumping his bones to start off her birthday on a good note. Kal’s mother had wanted to make breakfast as her gift to the birthday girl, but Perra insisted she take care of it. As the morning dragged on and she had breakfast cooking with no sign of him, she decided to chance peeking into his room.
It was empty.
Worse yet, his pack was gone meaning he was planning on being out most of the day. Perra raged internally at his absence, at least she thought it was internally, Kal’s mother did her best to hide her smile as the girl stomped back over to the kitchen area.
------
Kal had been less than honest with Perra about his time away from the farm. Yes, he had been at Ikuno’s, but the issue of the necro-wolf was largely dead at this point with no potential leads. Instead, Kal had been learning about geomancy with a very specific project in mind.
He had also been working on two new runes, specifically for the journey he was taking with Gerda. The first was placed on a roughly triangular hard leather mask that sealed tightly over his nose and mouth. The tanner in Telsin made it for him, and the poor man had been totally confused as to why he wanted a mask that he could breathe out of but not in. On the inside and outside of the mask were runes that when powered took air from around the outer rune, cleaned it, then expelled it from the inner rune where he could breathe it in. The straps around his head were annoying and uncomfortable but the apparatus was necessary for what he had planned.
Sadly, Kal couldn’t take credit for the runes or the facemask as they had been in his runesmithing tome, along with a different rune for the outside which was meant to take air from water. The author explained that he never figured out a way to get similar effects from using runes on his skin. However, Kal did manage to use his ability to see magic to make small improvements, when he was done even smells were filtered out leaving only pure air coming from the inner rune.
The second rune was for fire and flame resistance. Ikuno had been on him about learning and getting this one onto a bracer ever since she had mentioned visiting the salamander girl living off to the east. Similar to his haste rune, he took a particular interest in this one. Mostly because it introduced him to a new concept:
“‘The initial ring contains a limiting glyph for the power extended to the outer rings,’” Kal read from the book as he sat in Ikuno’s library. “‘It is set as such due to magical energy requirements increasing by an order of magnitude beyond this point. Theoretically, complete immunity to all types of thermal interaction would be achievable through the use of this particular rune. However, as currently set, the rune will afford protection to nearly any type of flame or thermal source, up to, but not including, draconic and magmatic.’”
Kal put the book on the table and ran his hands over his face. “Why must reading these descriptions be so dull,” he complained to the air around him.
Ikuno looked up from the book she was reading, “You haven’t met any other wizards yet, you’ll realize quickly that they can be a bunch of pompous asses. With the time and effort most of them have devoted to their craft, it’s difficult to blame them. I believe that they intentionally make their texts borderline incomprehensible. Partly as a means of demonstrating their knowledge of the subject and partly to keep people from ‘casually’ studying magic. I think you forget sometimes that you are decades younger than the author’s intended audience.”
“You’re right, I do,” Kal chuckled, “‘Other wizards’… It feels so strange when you or the townspeople call me a ‘wizard.’ Sure, I can use magic, but I don’t feel much like someone who has earned that title. Then again, I still feel strange when people I’ve known my whole life call me ‘Master Kal.’”
Ikuno returned to her book, “They’ve only been doing it for a few months. Give it time, and soon enough you’ll get all indignant when someone forgets to.”
“Ugh, I hope not,” he said looking back at his own book. “This limiting glyph on the innermost ring is interesting. I’m certain that I could use that in other things as well. Like that facemask I just made, right now it just pours out clean air. I wonder if I could make it pulse, so it only does it in time with my breathing.”
“What if you end up running or lifting with it on,” Ikuno said without looking up. “Also, if you are exerting yourself is it still going to produce enough air to keep you from passing out? Hopefully, I don’t need to remind you that your mask is a deathtrap if you lose consciousness.”
“Hmm… Good points all. I may need to come back to that later. When I was flipping through some of the later chapters, I think I saw something about a glyph that will lock a rune when it's activated and remain on until dispelled. I have some other things I need to learn in between before I get to that point.”
Kal returned to his book again, A few moments later he let out a small whoop and started streaming ink from the inkwell into the air in front of him.
“Found something interesting I take it?” asked Ikuno.
“Very,” Kal responded as the ink flowed into the sigils and glyphs he wanted. “The author also added a resistance glyph. Assuming I’m understanding his jargon correctly, if I make the fire resistance rune while replacing the limiting glyph with the one for resistance I will be able to push the rune further if I need to.”
He looked up at Ikuno, “Compared to dragon’s breath, how hot is that Fire Wall spell of yours?” he asked with a grin.
Ikuno hung her head and groaned, “You’re going to be the death of me, boy.”
------
Gerda and Kal phased through a wall into a tiny cavern, Kal immediately summoned a small light source.
Gerda sniffed about for a moment, “The air is bad in here, keep the mask on.”
When contacting her sisters, the eldest one, named Marble, had known of a device that allowed humans to understand golems easier. Creating one had been surprisingly simple since all it turned out to be was a small pebble with a hole through it attached to a large hook. The pebble rested just inside the ear canal while the hook looped around the back of the ear and held it in place. Though the golem still spoke slowly, it was still a vast improvement from the translation spell. When Kal asked Ikuno if she was going to remove the pearl in his mouth now, she laughed and told him that the spell was not specifically for golems and that he could speak and understand almost any living language. Kal was decidedly shocked by this news, as was Perra when he informed her later.
Kal nodded at Gerda’s assessment; the air was already making his eyes sting slightly. He had a hard time holding back a smile at the role reversal from when they first met. With the mask, his speech was too muffled for Gerda to understand and now she was the one able to speak clearly.
“The stones you want are there,” she said pointing at an angle towards the ceiling. “I’ll go get some and be back, then take you somewhere else. Yellow gas in here, it burns human’s eyes. Can’t stay here long.”
Kal didn’t know what ‘yellow gas’ was, but he nodded vigorously as the golem girl walked back into the wall.
She came back in just a few minutes holding two large white crystals in one arm. With the other, she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the wall as they made their way to somewhere more suitable for the next part. Kal really didn’t get to see exactly what she was holding; the stinging had gotten worse to the point he had to close his eyes and keep them shut.
Minutes later, and far enough down that the earth was starting to warm up, they came out into another cavern roughly the size of the one they first met in. Kal again summoned a light as Gerda set the crystals down and began making a familiar swirling motion over a small area of the floor. Acting like she was grasping something large on both sides, she pulled upwards, and a column of stone rose up to about waist level from the floor. She then passed a hand back and forth just above the surface, leaving the stone table perfectly smooth in its wake. Finally, Gerda picked up the two large white crystals, each about the size of one of Kal’s small stew pots, inspected each one carefully with her ruby eye, then placed one of them on the table.
She turned and looked at Kal, “You can take the mask off, the air is good here. It comes in over there,” she pointed at a crack in one wall, “and leaves there,” she said pointing at a similar small crack in the ceiling. Patting the top of the table, she said, “Good place to work on gems. I’m going to eat.” She held up the other crystal then walked a few steps away and began making the swirling motion that tied her actions to the rock in front of her. Looking at her other hand with the crystal in it she stopped, placed the crystal down, then repeated the process of making the table but smaller and only high enough to make a stool to sit on. Picking the crystal up she took a large bite out of one side and crunched away at the mineral noisily, a dreamy look of contentment on her face.
Kal slowly took off his breathing mask, getting a strong whiff of sulfur, and watched all of this with a mix of curiosity and amusement. Comparing the flows of magic between Gerda and the stone to when he moved a bunch of dirt to plant Eludora was night and day. He had to make multiple rounds over the top of a rune in order to attach it to a plot of soft dirt that had been prepared beforehand with a magic circle, all prior to moving. Gerda could have likely done one circular motion with her hand before ‘lifting’ and had the same effect on the much tougher stone. It amazed him how easy she made it look.
Kal had been worried when he saw that she had chosen such large deposits. He didn’t want to insult her, but he only needed a small piece to make the gem he wanted. When he saw how much she was enjoying eating the white mineral he didn’t think leftover rocks would be an issue. For a moment curiosity got the better of him and he lifted up the crystal, taking a small lick. It tasted like dirt.
Shaking his head and wondering what he had been expecting he dug through his pack and pulled out the parchment that had the instructions for shaping the mineral into a moonstone.
