When Declan opened his eyes, it was to a clear blue sky and a gentle rocking motion he didn’t recognize. The most shocking thing was that he didn’t hurt. Not at all. Not his lip, not even in his mana channels. He was laying in a wagon, the back of a wagon, on rolls of brightly colored cloth. The air smelled like woodsmoke and the air was crisp. He sat up and pulled his cloak tighter. The wagon was one of a long line that stretched south, dozens trailing away with tenders walking beside them. His pack lay beside him, the mana bearing’s familiar bulge comforting.

  One of them called in a language Declan didn’t understand, a call that ran up from one wagon to next. A horseback rider peeled off and cantered along the wagon line to pull up beside Declan’s wagon. The man riding it was no arcanist, he wore soldier’s leather armors and carried a short bow off the saddle. “Afternoon. Skinner said you’d sleep but he didn’t say it would be all day. We left yesterday afternoon.”

  “Where’s Keel Skinner?” Declan asked.

  “Crown business. He said you were heading to the Taylor Keep and my father was expecting you. Also he said ‘We’ll talk about it.’ Don’t ask me more. The Warband does what he does, I’m just a guard. ‘The’ guard, but ‘a’ guard.”

  Declan dropped to the ground and began to walk, then run toward the head of the wagon train. It felt more than good to run again, it felt great. The smell of smoke was harvested grain fields burning. Silos stood in the distance, and farmhouses dotted the fields. At the front of the line rode four more guards.

  “You’re supposed to be riding,” the head guard said. “You going to use a rune and fly ahead? Taylor Keep is only five miles that way, where the river turns, cross at the bridge and head to the keep. We don’t get blazed beasts by day but the night is just terrible.”

  “Thanks for the ride.” Declan set out again, an easy stride. His height let him pull away from the slow train. The crisp air let him run faster and faster. He hadn’t felt this good since straining his mana channels. “Keep” was a euphemism for a pillar of sandstone a mile across and probably twenty high, a towering block of rock with windows and doors carved in it, and an arch that the Sun Queen’s hall would envy with metal gates. The keep rose into the sky for what seemed like an eternity, distant lights showing there were windows higher up than the tallest tree.

  A guard post stood near the gate, and Declan approached. “Declan Thorn, I’m here to serve Lord Taylor. Can you contact Rohan Taylor? He’ll know where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Yes, Sir Arcanist!” The guards dispatched a messenger while Declan drank in the crowd. This was Teralona stacked in a pile, a market on the ground floor that roared with conversation, trade, the cries of animals and the sounds of metalwork. Vendors hawked wooden bowls with meat baked in them, a thick cornbread covering serving as the cap. The scent made Declan’s stomach rumble. He approached one and took out a five rin coin, offering it.

  The response was in the same language the tenders used, a soft, lilting tongue with heavy vowels. The vendor took the coin, looking at it and then holding it up as though it was a curiosity. Then he shrugged and handed Declan two, and a pair of spoons.

  The cornbread was bland but the sauce so spicy it made his eyes water. Chunks of meat lay buried at the bottom. Declan quickly finished the first.

  The vendor who had sold him the bowl made no attempt to hide his laughter as Declan fanned himself. He tossed a water skin to him, letting him drink and gasp.

  “Tsabi is an acquired taste,” Rohan Taylor called as he approached. “If you’re not used to the spice, it’s a bit much. You going to eat that?”

  “Help yourself.” Declan shared the second bowl. “I don’t speak the language, I didn’t know how many rin it should be.”

  Rohan pivoted and spoke to the vendor in the same language, then produced a set of silver beads with symbols on them and handed two over. “The Huto don’t deal in rin. Also, while it’s legal to keep the wooden bowl, culture says you return it and thank him.”

  “Thank you.” Declan offered the bowl back and really hoped the response was kind. “This place is breathtaking. How far up does it go?”

  “Top levels have mana barriers because it’s cold and hard to breathe. I used to train by repelling down before I was old enough to go to the Academy.” Rohan motioned for him to walk. “Father’s got everything set up, I’ll show you your room, we can relax tonight. Tomorrow you’ll be set to work. There’s a mana storm over the academy right now. Lucky bastards.”

  Worry stabbed his gut, then Declan calmed and reminded himself he’d need to trust his housemates to shelter in place. He couldn’t and wouldn’t always be there, and if Skinner’s tales were to believed, the later years were spent as much away from the Academy as at it. “Tegan’s with them. They’ll be fine.”

  “You have others you can rely on. Hayden is a leader if only by their stomachs. Chen has potential if the man makes the decision. I really enjoy Urik’s company, when he’s not ranting about rune formulas.” Rohan guided him to a door. “This is a quick-lift. Running the stairs is good and I do it several times a day but right now we’ll take the easy way.”

  The quick lift was disconcerting, an artifice of stone that rocketed upward so fast Declan’s stomach dropped and he clung to his backpack. When it slowed, he quickly stepped off and hugged the wall. “That was either amazing or terrifying.”

  “Stay up and I’ll disable the safeties to show you how fast it can go down. It’s like falling. Because you’re falling.” They’d arrived at a floor that seemed to be mostly bedroooms with not much else. “Eight of these cluster arround common bathrooms, kitchens are on any floor that’s a multiple of ten except the hundredth. We’ve had your room prepped for you.”

  Each room had a different rune pattern, not an actual rune but the drawing of one, an easy way to know which was his. “That wouldn’t actually function.”

  “What?” Rohan asked.

  It was just a gut feel. “That sequence. It doesn’t make anything. You can’t start with a base of Combine and follow it up with Gather and what would it do with the mana?” The words just spilled out as he stopped. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t an actual sequence. And he could barely soul-cast one rune, let alone four.

  “I’ll tell the hall organizers. Formulas are not drawn on walls. I get that’s something else you don’t know, but they aren’t. Some are well known and documented but more are protected, hoarded and hidden.” Rohan opened the door. “It should be keyed to you, now.”

  “Show me where to work.”

  “Of course. You’re only one floor from our main armory, it’s easier to use the stairs or the ladders.” Rohan pointed out carved ladders in the sandstone. “Red ladders are for up, green ladders are for down, if you’re fast enough, either is for either.”

  Declan climbed up and emerged in a hallway devoid of doors, just narrow spaces with tight turns. “You could widen this a bit.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “This is intentional. It makes it harder to attack should a House War ever reach the keep.” Rohan led the way through five tight turns to a sealed mana barrier, which faded away at his touch. “You’ll need a bloodline member to let you in if you leave but you need to understand, this isn’t like House Domine. You’re not a slave, if you need a break, take it.”

  “I don’t.” Declan was eager to see what the Taylors had kept hidden.

  The Taylor Armory was comprised of thousands of slots, shelves in the stone with labels, and teams moved between them. On one side, a man sat before a slab of white marble with brass pillars at the corners that held a metal frame. On each side, metallic arms with three digit graspers held rune stones, and he controlled them using handles on the ends, moving the runes at a distance. Both began to blur, making the arms hum, but the man turned a crank on the arm base, raising the marble plate and lowering the arms down until the stones overlapped. Mana flashed, and only one rune-stone remained.

  Declan was entranced.

  Also apalled because that was possibly the worst tier-up he’d seen and that included Lake’s manual combination of her Pierce runes. “What is that? We have them in the Armory at the Academy?”

  “Joshi, could you please tell Declan what you’re doing?” Rohan asked. “He’s the one here to try and analyze the runes.”

  Joshi had no facial hair what-so-ever, and his skin was red and burned, meaning it hadn’t always been that way, but he smiled. “Rune station, also just called a work station. You can’t just mash complex runes together. These dials measure mana conflict. This is for mana reverberation. The more there is, the worse the match.”

  He set aside the rune he’d just modified and fetched another set. In the center of the marble, a shallow oval had three blunt metal fingers reaching up. Those held the lower rune. Then he turned the upper rune, squeezing the handles so the grippers closed and rotating both grips together. “Watch the mana conflict meter.”

  He began to lower the two.

  The dial jumped, spiking and then sinking, then spiking again and straining upward. Joshi slowly rotated the uper rune by hand, bringthing the two closer every few degrees. After sixteen tries, the dial didn’t leap, though it definitely rose. “So, less conflict. Watch the reverb indicator. If it flashes, it’s far too high. Ideal would be zero.” Instead of adjusting the upper rune, he twisted the bottom one, slowly turning it over. “There’s two axis and we don’t know what direction the rune’s imprint is in the arcite. It might be the same as what we see, but it doesn’t have to be and the more complex, the less likely it is.”

  At last, Joshi began to crank down the arms. “In theory we don’t need to do this with force. Theory rarely lines up with reality.”

  The jittery, blurry stones overlapped and merged with barely a flash. Joshi removed the stone and tossed it to him. “And that’s how it’s done.”

  Storm Tentacle: Control a bolt of lightning that will stretch to bridge you and your target. Apply instant damage or slow the target while applying a constant shock. Mana Cost: high, continuous or fixed. Tier Three Rune.

  “Tier three Storm Tentacle, give you control of a bolt of lightning for slow shocking, dragging, or you can cancel the rune to deliver a shock like Storm Strike,” Declan said, more to himself than anyone. Then he picked up the other. “And this one’s better. They might both be the same tier but this one has better definition and strokes. It’ll have longer range, hurt more and last longer.”

  Only when he was done did Declan grasp what he’d said. Or how solid the opinion was. It wasn’t quite reading a description but it was a certainty. “That rune almost failed when you combined it.”

  Joshi no longer looked happy, collecting both and muttering about how amazing Declan was and how much he looked up to the man. That was Declan’s interpretation.

  “Can we get some of the selection Father chose?” Rohan asked. “I like the confidence. It’s new.”

  Before Declan could answer, Joshi returned with a cart full of rune-stones. “We expect service. We are owed it, and we—”

  “Ease up and let him work.” Rohan pointed to an open work station with notes and identification paperwork.

  First, Declan sorted the runes by complexity. He wanted to ensure the Taylors remembered this as something they’d want to repeat and that meant a balance. The higher tier runes would be worth more but take longer. He selected an easy one, studying it for ten minutes before jotting down his impressions. “First off, this is cool. It’s technically a tier three rune but it’s pulling off an effect I’d expect from something much higher. I think I’d call it Frozen Storm Blade but if there’s a better name in the rune atlas, that’s fine. The blade is ice, the effect is a bit different. It slows monsters in its area and cuts will multiply the effect. The blade will be really fragile, the best way to use it would be when you’re sure you can get a cut in. If it’s blocked, you’ll need to re-orbit, and the rune will remain locked the whole time you’re using the blade. Releasing it..I don’t know. I don’t know what happens.”

  He quickly dashed off his analysis. “Higher tiers would have longer slowing effect, bigger area of effect, and the other way to use it would be to summon it but just use it as a slow.”

  Someting was still bothering him. He turned the rune stone over again and again. Several of the modifiers didn’t make sense. The runes functioned but they either weren’t optimal or they were trying something extremely subtle. “Let me get my mana stamp.”

  Rohan held his hand up. “This is our private armory. We won’t be officially entering any of these.”

  He picked something more difficult, one that he had to focus on just to see the distinct lines. “What the hell is this? There’s too many competing shapes. It’s like…it was crushed together.” The instinct let him select one set of symbols he called the dominant set, another the sub set. “The Gather root here says this is an enhancer, but Gather can form a weapon, too. But what it’s gathering is a Protect, that’s not an inverted heal, it means it’s going to build up power. The dominant set isn’t even a storm affinity rune set,” he mused, jotting notes as he went. “I think this would have been a really simple rune at one point, before it got mangled. Yeah, this was a shield that grew stronger over time but then you take this other set, that was definitely a storm rune set. This shouldn’t work. I don’t know what it does but it’s going to be shitty armor that looks great and wastes a lot of mana on a rune sequence that can’t possibly deliver. If it’s natural, I pity the beast that produced it. If it was made, all I can say is I’d be ashamed if I made this.”

  What Declan had made was an enemy. Joshi didn’t answer he just stomped out of the room, sealing the barrier behind him.

  “So, you plan to do everything tonight?” Rohan asked casually. “You can’t go back until the storm dissipates but I love the dedication to duty.”

  “Not everything.” He’d already chosen the next rune, drawn to the most complex one. “This one would take longer than eight hours. This might take days. Where do you get these things?”

  Rohan hesitated. “Swarms at the academy are regular but typically weaker. The worst spawns aren’t swarms, they’re single monsters that can ravage an area without us detecting the mana signature, so we call them signature monsters. These signature monsters are often far more powerful than a simple tier designation would tell you. They yield runes that are similarly complex and powerful.”

  “Rune tiers. I was told having runes that match my tier make me grow faster.”

  Rohan nodded. “I wouldn’t say that. Faster is always using higher tier runes, the most high tier runes you can manage. You know Lake Domine. I suspect her growth as an arcanist is stunted by choosing low tier base runes.”

  Interesting. And if he wanted to underestimate the duelist, Declan wouldn’t correct it. “I want to grow. I have to grow. I will grow.” The Sun Queen’s command remained bright in his memory. I command you, rise. He’d thought it a saying. A way to indicate when to stand and sit but the expectation in the words was more, so much more.

  He ran his fingers across rune-stones. Instead of looking, using mana to choose one. “This is dangerous.” He couldn’t say why he was certain, just that he was. It was only tier four, but the feeling was like holding a red-hot pan. “You really, really should not activate this rune. It’s not going to explode, it’s going to work. And that’s what bugs me.”

  He set the runestone down on the workstation and smiled. “Rohan, you can go. Or you can watch me, but all you’re going to be watching is me staring.”

  “I actually can’t. You need a bloodline member to be in this room. I’ll be patient.”

  Declan broke his concentration. “There has to be some seventeenth cousin who could take your place. You’re ArCore, for ash’s sake. You should be out killing blazed beasts.”

  “That’s after dark. Until then I was supposed to be entertaining you. Is this entertaining?”

  “Totally,” Declan said. Then he stood up and stretched. Asking Rohan to sit and study a rune-stone for hours was like asking Roland to work. It was forcing a round mana bearing into a square stone recess. It could absolutely be done but it would destroy the rock. “How many times will I come to the keep? Show me something fun.”