The idea that he should allow a corrupted rune to infect him seemed repugnant to Declan. “Absolutely not.” Declan The order to remove his protective gear was probably a test. “You just said it could corrupt my everything and you’d have to kill me.”

  Gladson smiled and backed away.

  The man put on his own protective gear, then retrieved a long pair of metal tongs from the wall and entering a code on a safe. From the safe he removed a red velvet bag, and with the tongs, drew out a piece of arcite ore. “This is the smallest rune engrave in history. We did it with a scope under a rune station. It’s Strike and we intentionally corrupted it. You need to know how decontamination procedures work. You need to be confident you can handle them. You need to practice it. So we start with this. Before I put it in your hand, we’ll go over the steps. The forging station is that desk. It’s where you’ll be working and where you’re most likely to slip up. It could happen in transport but it’s less likely. If you move nice and slow and check to make sure the rune is in place, transport is the easy part.”

  Next, he showed Declan what looked like a shower, except that a metal fence would extend out and around the stall when one stepped under it. “Before we do this, try it. Step in, put both hands on the wall and trigger it.”

  Declan did. It felt like his soul was on fire as something pulled at his mind. Like orbiting a mana stone, only in reverse. Then the burning, crackling sensation rose from his toes all the way to his hair and the room smelled of cooking meat. The stone in front glowed green and the cage retracted.

  “If you move quickly, even a major contamination can be contained, controlled and removed. We don’t talk about what happens if we don’t, because we always move quickly. You’ll wear a monitor bracelet while working and if it goes off, even if you don’t sense a contamination, it’s full decon.” Gladson walked him through it four times, having Declan sit at the desk, rise, move to the decon and activate it.

  “Now, remove the glove.”

  With trepidation, Declan pulled it back. He wanted to flinch as Gladson brought the tongs closer. His instinct was to recoil or Deflect. Instead he closed his eyes.

  The coldest burning in the world touched his palm, and Declan shouted. His monitor bracelet flashed red and began to shriek.

  “To the decon!” Gladson roared.

  The problem was, knowing what to do and doing it when his entire body screamed panic were two different things. He was frozen in place until something struck his back—then he rose and stumbled to the decon station, gripping the handles and praying as the cold slowly spread. This time, the soul-vaccum pulled at Declan until it took force of will to stand. This time, as the crackling rose, his palm burned and his mana channels ached.

  When the light turned green and the cage retracted, Declan dripped with sweat and his hands shook.

  “Get a drink,” Gladson said. “You did well.”

  That was yet another lie in an area where lies were deadly. “I did not. I knew to move but when it started spreading I couldn’t make myself move.”

  “I would have shoved you in myself.” Gladson waited until Declan’s breathing had steadied. “Let’s go again.”

  ###

  His shift ended with Supervisor Gladson pronouncing him proficient at decontamination, and next time they’d begin training on actual cursed runes. Declan wasn’t just tired, he was mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted. Adrenaline had left him weak and he sought a guard patrol to follow him all the way to the World Wound and House Ariloch.

  Rohan had built a fire in the fireplace and now sat on the couch, playing a lute and singing off key about a special rune arcanist men carried. He stopped as Declan entered. “I’m sorry about the damage. Eden told me. Do you want me to pay for a carpenter to repair things?”

  “You could help me hold doors when we’re ready to install them,” Declan said. “You’re on leave. Did Lake come back?”

  “She’s in her room with Tegan, testing how much one can drink before poisoning sets in,” Rohan said. “Have you been practicing mana channel alignment? You feel off to my arcsoul.”

  Declan described the process of decontamination in detail, then the training. “Turns out, contaminated runes are how a Defiler gets started. Did you know the Defiler was a man? Skinner told me it was the worst kind of monster.”

  “He wasn’t wrong,” Rohan said. “We shouldn’t talk in public about this.”

  Once they’d entered Declan’s apartment, Rohan began to explain. “‘Defiler’ is a title. A name we slap on someone so hungry for power they use cursed runes. Once they start using cursed runes, they’ll keep using them. Not so much because they couldn’t use anything else, but because they don’t want to.”

  “You’ve dealt with one?”

  “No.” Rohan’s answer was quick and certain. “We’ve had corrupted arcanists, but none that reached the levels of power needed to be called a ‘defiler.’ The Sun Queen herself is the one who makes that designation.”

  “I want to go to court,” Declan said. “One of my teachers thinks being exposed to her tier nine rune will help train Insight.”

  “That…is an excellent idea. Will you do it during the session for House Taylor?” Rohan asked. “We’re so close to the capital, it would make sense. You know about the Insight session, correct? Father is ecstatic. He acquired a certificate from the house arcanist for Perth and we have a number of puzzling runes we don’t want exposed and can’t risk testing.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Declan had momentarily panicked, but Roland had flat out said this was the plan. “Can you communicate a few rules that aren’t in the certificate? First, I don’t want another oath-stone. I won’t share the details of what I do but I’m not swearing anything. If you don’t want me to know don’t bring it. Second, I mean what I said. I’ll put in the effort every minute of every hour, but if I spend eight hours and don’t know, all I can do is tell you what I think.”

  “I’ll send the post myself,” Rohan said. “I heard you’re working on a third stone. It’s tricky. It feels impossible until you do it. Then the fourth feels impossible. I’m near my fifth and know enough to understand it’s not impossible. But it feels that way. And I’d have to complete an Emblem first.”

  “Any hints?” Learning from the ArCore had to be helpful.

  “Maybe. You try it, I’ll do what my instructors used to do, except I won’t actually make you bleed.” Rohan sat on the floor and leaned back against the door. “The clearest issue is working in quiet seclusion. Every rune past the first isn’t done by force of will. It’s learning to maintain the bond when your focus isn’t on the stone.”

  Declan began to count.

  Rohan began to chat, distracting him. “Try to be engaged in the conversation and the effort at the same time. You’re applying all your focus to each in order. That might work for three but probably won’t at four and never at five or beyond.”

  Right now, three would have to do.

  ###

  Declan had developed a pattern of days that began with exercise and mana channel practice, followed by kicking Chen out of the house just after breakfast. He wanted the man to take the night shifts since he loved sleeping during the day, but would have to see constant effort before taking his boot off Chen’s neck. The armory was undergoing emergency repairs due to a corrupted rune accident, so his shifts were spent performing insight and then waiting for the hours to tick away.

  He wasn’t prepared to come back and find five freshly built, freshly stained and sealed doors on the delivery bay at the back of House Ariloch. Declan quickly moved them inside, but installing them would have to wait. He had Etiquette, followed by his unrequested (but demanded) lesson with Eesa Sherman. Etiquette continued to be the bane of his existence, as even the slightest variation in wording could indicate they’d shifted from theoretical threats to ‘kill them all and take their runes.’

  When he was done with that, he had just enough time to snag a plate of glop and run across the field, trailed by a host of guards who’d figured out he had no arcsoul and thus was a magnet for blazed beasts.

  Eesa Sherman was exercising when he arrived, the way a defense instructor would. She had six runes in orbit and strolled past lines of artifices that fired everything from globs of molten rock to bolts of lightning at her. The woman wasn’t even watching. She side-stepped the chunk of stone from one launcher, put a shield around another launcher, batted away a miniature hurricane and even tossed in a Deflect near the end. She was showing off. The last projectile struck—and flame errupted from Sherman, striking the launcher. “Declan Thorn, this part lesson and part interrogation. I suspect you modifed Burning Flame Shield. But every attempt I’ve commissioned fails. Why wouldn’t you have claimed the credit? Why not announce it?”

  “Simple. I have friends in the ArCore. One friend. One mostly friend. One natural disaster and then there’s that asshat Alister Rush. She asked me to take a long time using insight and I didn’t think Burning Flame Shield was worth a long time.” He took her place, staying in front of exactly one launcher, and tossed a mana stone into orbit. Then he began to focus on the thinest Deflect he could imprint, a shell, barely a wisp of the idea of a rune. It was hardly perfect, but it accepted mana greedily, wanting to fill the main stroke rather than the modifer, but he choked that back as best he could, then gently nudged the rune into existence. It hung in the air, barely moving.

  Declan stepped forward. The launcher triggered and a egg-sized stone flew through the air. There wasn’t a point in dodging, this rock wouldn’t kill, not at that speed. Deflect incandesced and knocked the rock aside. “I’m getting better with this.”

  “Almost any rune can be used for defense, but you’re not changing the subject. Why does your Punishing Flame Shield work and ours fail?” Eesa sounded deeply frustrated.

  “Because I had an inscriptionist modify it, and he was smart about how he did it. Harris Harding is in training. He’s successfully done that one. You could ask him to do more. He probably won’t do it for free.”

  “I want to see you soul-cast Protect,” she said.

  “I did it once by accident, but I’m working on Gather. Can that be used as defense?” He mentally began the arc of gather, and the line felt right this time. It rose steadily, deepening and wider as it curved. This time, he reached the top of the circle and tried to drag the imprint down and close it. The circle burst like a soap bubble. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  “Soul-cast runes can’t be felt. They shouldn’t be felt. You are still doing something wrong, because I knew exactly when that rune failed. It’s tier zero, but tricky.”

  Declan knew what he wanted to ask. Every instructor gave him a slightly different answer, and through them, he was beginning to see a pattern. “What makes a tier zero rune versus a tier one versus two, three, four, or five? Why is it better to have higher tier?”

  “Is it better?” Eesa sorted through her workbench. “This is a tier nine Protect, property of the academy. Literally hundreds of thousands of tier zero runes combined into this. And yet, Spear of Light will puncture it and continue on.”

  Declan had twisted away, because the Protect was like looking at the sun. “Ok. Please hide that.”

  “Water Wall is a tier two spell that can defeat the most powerful flame attacks, and yet a tier zero Pierce might wound or kill the arcanist. Intent and use matter greatly, as does matching the right runes for the monster or man.” Eesa seemed conflicted before continuing. “But tier matters. If you raise a tier zero rune to nine and a tier one rune to nine, the naturally higher rune will always be more powerful. And there is a deeply unfair truth you need to understand.”

  “Whcih is?”

  “There is a virtuous cycle between the tier of the arcanist and the tier of their runes. Skinner has you practicing with a third mana stone but even if you do, and technically have the same number of weapons as any other tier three, they would crush you. Define why, Declan. You know.” She waited while he thought, not pressuring.

  “Arcsoul? I don’t have one.”

  “You do. It’s suprisingly heavy, but it’s not open. So access to the arcsoul, and the growth process. A tier one arcanist using tier one runes is pressed and molded, hardened and strengthened. Eventually they are strong enough to use a tier two rune and bind it. That rune will force them to grow as well. Eventually they can use a pair of tier two runes, and when the arcsoul can store them, we call that a proper tier two arcanist. Arcsoul, Runes, and Rune Tier combine to create what is accepted as the tier of the arcanist.”

  This was worth the questioning. “What happens if I tried to bind a tier nine rune?”

  “You wouldn’t have the willpower for it. If you did you wouldn’t have the mana. If you did, your mana channels wouldn’t be strengthened enough to cast it. There’s a reason growth takes time.” Instructor Sherman produced a paper and pen. “Write me a letter of introduction to your friend so he understands what to do and then I want to see you use Deflect more creatively. You always position it straight in front of you. There are good reasons to adjust the angle.”

  It was totally worth it.