Rune Seeker

Just about two hours after parting from around the stew pot, Hiral sat in a makeshift tattoo-chair, his father and mother on either side of him. Each had their heads down and their full attention on the work they were doing on the palms of his hands.

Gauto and most of the Trust had already left, the conversation going surprisingly well, with the group of advisors – and Grandmother – agreeing the Academic’s theory had to much potential to ignore. If they acted – and let Hiral’s group focus on leveling – and Gauto was wrong, the ‘worst’ that could happen was they’d end up with a stronger A-Rank raid group. On the other hand, if they did nothing and Gauto turned out to be right, well, then they were facing extinction at the hands of the Raze when they forgot they were even fighting them.

Fyre had even suggested they skip waiting for the beast wave, and ‘just get out there already’. The others talked her down from that extreme, and that left Hiral there with his parents tattooing his palms. Seena sat nearby with his sisters – who were on a short break from trial running to recuperate – while the rest of their raid group likewise recovered.

“You know,” Sera started, and Hiral damn-near clamped his hand closed at the sound of her voice. He’d been dreading this moment the entire time. Knowing she could talk, and he couldn’t’ leave. Not with the tattoos half-done. “I think the last time we did this, you were five.”

“Daggers of En and Sath?” Elezad said without looking up from where he worked on Bond of the Hidden Prince. The man’s hand moved methodically and sure, the needle barely even biting as he worked. Then again, part of that may’ve been Hiral’s B-Rank body, and his growing familiarity with pain.

“Exactly,” Sera replied to her husband. “Those were the only ones we did simultaneously like this.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Elezad countered… carefully? “The Wings of Anella, we did those at the same time too. To improve their synchronicity.”

“Hiral was lying down on the table for those,” Sera said without missing a bit, though Hiral caught her eyebrow rising, even though she didn’t look up. It was a gesture he recognized all too well from dealing with Nat and Milly.

The I-dare-you-to-contradict-me eyebrow. The results of it never went well for Hiral, and he doubted his father would fare much better.

“That’s true,” his father said smoothly. “Hard to believe the daggers were our first joint project.”

“None of our other clients deserved both our attention,” Sera said. “Despite what they may’ve claimed. It requires a significant amount of extra energy to do two tattoos at the same time.”

“It does?” Hiral asked his mother before he could stop his mouth.

And, it wasn’t his imagination her quill stopped for a fraction of a second at him talking to her. Even Elezad’s had slowed, but the two were both far too professional for that to last more than a heartbeat.

“It does,” Sera said, her voice taking on a tone he only vaguely remembered from his toddler years. The one she used when she explained something to him, usually after he’d asked ‘why’ seventeen-thousand times.

Why is the sky blue? Why do clouds move? Why is the sun always above them? Why doesn’t the sun make the clouds or sky yellow? Why doesn’t the sun sleep? Why is up, up?

… why don’t you love me?

Hiral clenched his teeth at that last one. He’d asked that question more than any other, but never out loud. He couldn’t bring himself to face the truth he thought he’d known – that he was too broken to love.

That… didn’t turn out to be what it was, but the sting of growing up like that still hadn’t quite faded.

“You know that solar energy comes from both the Artist and the recipient of the new tattoo,” his mother continued in that voice she hadn’t used with him in over a decade. “That doesn’t changewhen two Artists are working on the same person. In fact, if we let it – we’re purposely not – the strain would likely make you pass out.”

“Maybe not Hiral with his stats,” Elezad said. “Most others would definitely be unconscious before we were halfway finished.”

“You could have a point,” Sera admitted. “It’s not worth risking.”

“Bad consequences?” Hiral asked. He’d already broken his unspoken rule not to talk to her, so he might as well get as much information as he could.

“Usually temporary ones,” Sera said, another brief pause of her quill. “Aside from unconsciousness, we see can see reduced solar energy control, slowdown of thought and reaction speed, sensitivity to light, and severe headaches.”

“A lot like a hangover after getting blackout drunk,” Elezad said with a chuckle. “Definitely don’t recommend it.”

“To prevent that in a normal client,” Sera picked up. “Your father and I use an additional amount of our own solar energy to bridge the gap. On the plus side, it better allows us to guide the process, since it’s our own energy instead of yours.”

“Downside is it takes longer for the tattoo to settle,” Elezad said.

“Then why are you doing it for me, now?” Hiral asked. “Wouldn’t it be faster to see if my body can handle the extra drain?”

“There is an additional benefit,” Sera said. “By using my own solar energy as the primary source, I’m better able to connect with your father’s energy – which I am very familiar with – to make sure the two tattoos have near one-hundred-percent compatibility. Additionally, as I have inked a number of your other tattoos, I can also connect them.

“Your father tells me Left has managed to combine both Heralds into one – the Herald of the Unending Cycle, I believe he called it – as well as the Way of Shadow and the Touch of the Primal. Tell me, has Left been able to merge the two Daggers of En and Sath into its staff form?”

“More of a two-bladed sword, really,” Hiral said.

“Ah, so I take it he did!” Sera said. At that, his parents paused, looked up to meet eyes with each other, then smiled. “It worked.”

“It did,” Elezad said. “Told you it would.”

“What worked?” Hiral asked.

“The two dagger tattoos are S-Rank,” Sera said, the parents resuming their tattooing while she spoke. “So, the number of people who get even one of them is quite small. As for those who have both, well, there aren’t any that came after you that we inked.”

“And,” Elezad picked up. “Even if they have both the Dagger of En and the Dagger of Sath, none of them have been able to combine them into its staff... uh… two-bladed-sword form. The two tattoos didn’t have enough compatibility.”

“It was your father’s idea for us to do both tattoos at the same time,” Sera continued. “To try and increase the likelihood you’d be able to combine the daggers. He believed that by doing them together – and linking our solar energy while we did them – it would build a natural connection into the pair. It seems it worked.”

“Could be his natural talent,” Elezad said.

“Left’s natural talent, you mean,” Hiral replied. “Still not me using the tattoos.”

“Left is you,” Sera said. “At least part of you. Don’t sell yourself short.”

Instead of arguing the point – despite modesty damn-near demanding it – Hiral instead thought more about what his parents were saying about his tattoos. And, it probably wasn’t his imagination Nat and Milly seemed to be listening closer again. Both were still Artists, and Nat especially had a real skill for it. Milly, on the other hand, had begun researching ways to use tattoos to create permanent solutions for otherwise untreatable conditions.

High-Rank magic could cure a lot of things, but there weren’t that many high-Rank healers. Instead, what could a permanent, lower-Rank tattoo achieve? Like a buff, in a lot of ways. That had been Milly’s goal – and it still was.

“When you were doing all my tattoos,” Hiral started. “Were you linking them up?”

“As we added them,” Elezad said. “Yes. It ended up taking a little longer for each, but we had a theory…”

“You had a theory,” Sera corrected. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short either.”

“Fine, I had a theory,” Elezad started. “And we refined it.”

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“What was the theory?” Nat asked, the two sisters actually coming over to watch what their parents were doing.

As if that were the cue for a short break, both Sera and Elezad straightened up from where they’d been leaning intently over Hiral’s hands.

Then, before Elezad responded to his daughter, he instead gently turned Hiral’s arm over and pointed at the Meridian Line running up his outer forearm.

“How many parts are there in the Meridian Lines?” he asked Nat instead of answering her question.

“That’s a trick,” Nat said. “And you know it. The Meridian Lines – despite the name – are all one system. There are no parts to it. Even if you do it a little at a time, it all connects to itself. We start with the central sun where the Measure implants us, then branch out from there as people get older. It doesn’t matter if it takes a week – which is basically impossible – or five years, the Meridian Line system just keeps growing until it’s complete. There are no parts.” She repeated that last bit to make sure he didn’t miss how important it was.

“Correct,” Elezad said, unsurprisingly beaming pride at his daughter. “We call them lines – plural – but they’re really all just one large, complicated, single entity. As we ink the system – each line or node – we connect them to whatever was inked before.

“For more than ninety percent of the population, this isn’t even done by the same Artist through the life of the work. Most Shapers, for example, have anywhere from three to five Artists work on their Meridian Lines until they have the complete set. See, we even call it a set, though, like Nat explained, it’s just one system.”

“Really?” Hiral asked, thinking back. “But…”

“We did your complete Meridian Lines and tattoos,” Sera said, intuiting what Hiral was going to ask. “This was part of your father’s theory.”

“Which nobody has explained yet,” Milly pointed out.

“Haven’t I?” Elezad asked.

“No, all you talked about was how Meridian Lines are one…” she trailed off, eyes slowly widening. “Oh.”

“There’s my girl,” Elezad said. A glance in Nat’s direction showed she’d reached the same conclusion, her eyes darting left and right like she was considering the implications.

“Uh…” Seena held up a hand. “For those of us here who aren’t Artists – or who didn’t grow up in a family of them – what’s the theory?”

“Nat, why don’t you start?” Elezad directed the question to his oldest daughter.

“Sure,” the girl said, though her mind was still obviously working a mile a minute. “Like Dad said, Meridian Lines, when complete, are just one large ‘whole’. If it’s done right – and it usually is – there’s no breaks or sections. It just… flows. Like the energy through it. With me so far?”

“Yeah,” Seena said. “Like our PIMs too, though they grow inside us. They’re just one plant from one seed.”

“Exactly,” Nat said. “Except, because most Makers have three-plus different Artists working on their Meridian Lines, we sometimes see some fluctuations in how well they work. Part of the job of the later Artists – especially near the completion of the Meridian Lines – is to smooth out these imperfections. Make it so everything flows evenly throughout the body.”

“Can I ask a question?” Seena stopped Nat. “Why do you need so many Artists to work on the Meridian Lines? Why doesn’t one Artist just do the whole thing?”

“One, it’s a lot of work,” Nat said. “Second, it’s usually done over the course of anywhere from five to fifteen years, depending on the class of the person getting inked, and their natural solar energy attributes. Asking one Artist to keep their schedule clear for fifteen years is a pretty big ask. It tends to be more convenient for everybody to work with multiple Artists.”

“I’ll add here,” Sera said. “Because you likely aren’t familiar with some of the things we take for granted. Inking is such a common part of our lives – especially Meridian Lines – we have a system in places where most people get inked by established groups of Artists who work together. These Artists become so familiar with each other’s energy signatures, it makes it much easier to smooth out those imperfections Nat mentioned.

“For example, if a young Shaper came to me for their Meridian Line inking, they’d actually be coming to me, Elezad, and three others we work closely with. That way, during the lifecycle of the Meridian Line inking, it could be any of us five doing the work, depending on our schedules.”

“The better the Artists know each other’s energy,” Elezad picked up. “The less imperfections you see when somebody new picks up the work, also. Sera and I, for example – and pardon my lack of modesty for the moment – are nearly flawless when we work with each other. There’s a little more effort needed when the other three are involved, though they are each excellent at their jobs. We just don’t work with them as much as we have with each other.”

“And this is where you got your idea from, isn’t it?” Nat asked her father. Then she tilted her head like something had just occurred to her. “Two ideas, I guess, if I’m right.”

“Sounds like you are,” Elezad said.

“And those theories are…?” Seena prompted.

“Sorry,” Nat said. “The first is probably that if the two of them – and only the two of them – did Hiral’s Meridian Lines themselves, there would be less imperfections. They’re so familiar with each other’s energy, it’s almost like one person doing the entire thing.”

“It’s more than that,” Milly interrupted. “Because they were doing it at the same time, they were increasing the synergy of the lines. Making the expansion of the lines symmetrical, easier for the body to handle.”

The younger girl looked at Seena before she continued. “If somebody gets their line on just one arm, then doesn’t get the other arm for a long time – over a year – we see their solar energy movement become sluggish later on. Like it doesn’t know it should be traveling into the paths in the other arm. There are treatments and practices to improve on it, but it can be really time consuming to correct.

“For Hiral, by doing both sides at the same time, his body didn’t get any of that… confusion. If our parents did it right, his solar energy would move naturally from the very beginning. It’s genius!”

“Then…” Seena started slowly. “Why didn’t you two know about it? Why isn’t everybody doing it?”

“Because,” Hiral spoke up, having already figured it out. And, nobody else would be willing to say it. “Because they didn’t think it worked. In fact, they thought it might be why I couldn’t use my solar energy. They worried they broke me by doing things differently. Or, at least that had been part of it.”

Elezad’s hand wrapped gently around Hiral’s wrist – the man was avoiding his in-process palm – and squeezed.

“It’s true,” his father said. “We suspected it was… you know,” he glanced toward his wife’s stomach where the glyph of fertility lay hidden beneath her clothes. “But, on the off chance it was how we inked you…? We didn’t want to risk anybody else.”

Seena gave them a moment of quiet before speaking again. “What’s the second theory, then? None of this explains how it connects to Left and the Daggers.”

“Milly?” Elezad prompted, hand still around Hiral’s wrist.

“It’s both simple and complicated,” Milly started. “But, look at it this way. While the Meridian Lines are all one ‘thing’, each of the tattoos is an individual entity. They’re loosely connected to the Meridian Lines, but that’s all it is – connected. They aren’t part of the Meridian Lines.”

“So, you’re saying…” Seena started slowly. “You two,” she spoke to Hiral’s parents, “did more than connect them to the Meridian Lines? You made them part of the larger system?”

“That was our goal, yes,” Elezad said.

“Which we succeeded at,” Sera pointed out.

“And that’s… better?” Seena asked.

“Think about it this way,” Elezad said. “If a Shaper had their Meridian Lines and two tattoos, they would basically have three separate entities in their body. Each would operate independently of each other. While it might not sound like much, this would create delays and detours for moving solar energy around the body. More than that, the tattoos would never truly interface with each other. Yes, they could be used at the same time, but they couldn’t be used together.”

“Like Left’s two Herald tattoos,” Seena reasoned out.

“Correct,” Elezad said. “Add in twenty more tattoos, and you’ll see even more delays and detours in energy movement – though, really, they’re rarely considered. It’s just part of the process.”

“But, what you did for Hiral,” Seena said. “Was create a single system to make it easier for him to move energy around his body.”

“Again, that had been our goal,” Elezad said. “Truth be told, we’re not exactly sure how well it worked, aside from Left being able to combine tattoos.”

“Which, alone, is still very impressive,” Sera said.

“It might be more impressive than either of you realize,” Hiral said. “The work you did – even though I couldn’t use the tattoos – I think it kind of primed my body. From what we’ve heard, Builders need to use constructs or devices to manipulate the runes.

“Me? They’re on my body, like tattoos. I’ve been trying to figure out why I was different. Why I could use runes directly. Now? After you explained all this, I think part of it might be because of what you did. You set up this closed, perfect system in me. When I got exposed to runes the first time, they flowed right into that system you’d built.

“Like Amin Thett had set up the framework for the PIMP to follow, the reverse held true inside me. I… don’t know if we could replicate it, since I had my full set of S-Rank tattoos and Meridian Lines since I was a kid, but, yeah, I think that’s what happened. Which means, maybe we can make more of me to…”

“No,” Li’l Ur interrupted from Seena’s shoulder.

“Ur?” Seena asked. “Is this an apprentice thing?”

“Not at all,” Li’l Ur said. “Though, my would-be apprentice is doing just the thing his mother told him not to.”

“Which is?” Hiral asked.

“Underestimating yourself,” Li’l Ur said. “Even if you had this advantage from what your parents did, your understanding of the runes – and the Edicts – is not something that can be gifted. Even Amin Thett did not have your grasp on these concepts. That is saying more than you can understand.

“Yes, if you are correct, what your parents did gave you an advantage. It, however, did not guarantee the result. Your natural curiosity, stubbornness, and choice to pursue the depths of the runes made full use of the advantages at your disposal, and allowed you to reach the heights you have. The further you go down this road, the more it is because of what you do, not what anybody else did for you.”

“Huh,” was all Hiral could say. Part of him was a little disappointed they couldn’t ‘create’ more people like him, using the glyph of fertility and the closed-system of runes and tattoos his parents talked about. Then, the other part of him he wouldn’t talk about publicly was also kind of… happy. That little voice in the back of his head that wanted him to be special.

And, maybe he was?

He couldn’t lie to himself or anybody else about the advantages he had. S-Rank solar attributes. Parents that’d inked this – apparently – amazing system of Meridian Lines and tattoos on his body. His ‘meeting’ with the crystal golem, and the opportunities the PIMP had provided along the way.

Likewise, though, he couldn’t argue he hadn’t put in his own work to make those most of those things.

All of it put together had resulted in him becoming as strong as he had.

And I’m not finished yet. A-Rank? S-Rank? Who says those have to be the limit for me?

He tilted his head back to look up at the false sky of the Cradle of Tomorrow, his mind going to the ‘space’ Tomorrow had taken them within The Playhouse. There were dozens, hundreds, thousands more worlds out there. Yes, his first priority was – of course – kicking the Enemy off Genesis, but, after that? Where would the next challenge take him?

“He’s got that look,” Seena said, standing directly in front of Hiral. “You’d better finish those tattoos before he runs off to do something reckless.”

Hiral lowered his head to look at his party leader. “And takes you with me,” he said.

“Well, of course,” she said. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere without me.”

Sitting on either side of him, his parents shared ‘a look’, then chuckled and got back to work. They had new tattoos too finish, and Hiral had places to be.