The Girl from the Rune Yard

by Eric Guindon

  “I am not infallible,” Haylem told Kyria. “Perhaps she is breathing too faintly for me to hear.”

  Kyria didn’t believe that the rune-mind would fail to hear a faintly breathing woman from a metre away but hear a conversation happening in a city a few kilometres distant.

  I have to face this, she told herself. If this was one of the stories I used to read, my mother would still be alive. I have to stop thinking I live in a rosy storybook.

  Kyria reached out and grasped the edge of the blankets. She stood there for a moment, unmoving, before pulling the covers from the bed in one smooth motion.

  There was no body under the sheets.

  Kyria stared at the empty bed, stunned.

  “But, the compass,” she said her voice filled with confusion.

  “Oh no,” she heard Haylem say. “Look at the bed, Kyria.”

  The girl took a closer look and saw the dirty mattress was covered in dried blood. “What does it mean, Haylem? What does it mean?” Kyria was growing frantic in her confusion.

  “I think that is your mother’s blood. I’m sorry, Kyria. The blood must have been nearer than your mother was and the compass latched onto that.”

  “Does this mean that she might be alive?” The girl almost did not dare to hope again.

  “Yes. It’s possible. It’s not so much blood; she may have survived whatever caused this loss,” Haylem said slowly, his tone full of caution. “But we have to be prepared for the possibility that she has died, Kyria.”

  The girl was too happy her mother might be alive to dwell on any other possibility. She shook her head. “She’s still alive. I have to believe that or I might as well curl up and die right here.”

  Haylem was silent for a moment before agreeing with the girl. “You’re right. It’s for the best to assume that your mother still lives.”

  “But how do we find her now?” she asked, indicating the compass.

  “Touch the compass to the blood. That will dismiss this result. It will then seek the next match to your blood.”

  Kyria followed the rune-mind’s directions and soon the compass’ needle was spinning wildly as it had the first time. When it stopped, it was pointing to the south.

  Excited, Kyria went out of the nearest window, exiting the building in plain sight of a group of men approaching it.

  One of them was a survivor from the attack on the Rune Yard. Not the leader, but one of the underlings.

  As the men pointed and yelled, Kyria drew her weapons and started firing.

  Chapter Nine:

  Monster is Too Mild

  Kyria’s first few shots went wide. She was not used to aiming the small cylinders and her accuracy reflected this. She was also thrown off by the form of the projectiles the weapons fired: they were blue bolts of light that made a zat noise.

  Immediately, the men below scattered and ran for cover

  Kyria heard one of them yell: “Rune-mage!”

  It was only when some of the men used it as cover that Kyria noticed the group had been pulling a cart behind them. It was laden with more rune-contaminated metal objects like the ones she had found in the ground floor room of the building.

  Kyria kept shooting at the bandits, managing to hit one in the arm as he raised a crossbow to fire at her. It did not seem to matter that the bolt only hit the man in a limb, he started shaking spastically and, within a second, was out and lying flat on the ground.

  Others with crossbows managed to take shots at Kyria, hitting her twice. Both times her cloak hardened where the bolts impacted, causing them to bounce off harmlessly. Each hit drained more vitality from Kyria than she had expected; the cloak was wonderful protection, but quite draining.

  The girl decided it was wisest for her to seek some cover. She headed for the nearby top of the huge granite city-wall, wanting to use it as a firing position. Kyria had almost made it there when a large ball of energy barely missed her.

  “Rune-magic!” Haylem screamed inside Kyria’s mind.

  The ball continued on to hit the wall, disintegrating a circular portion of the granite. Kyria did not feel her cloak was likely to protect her very much from such an attack.

  “Haylem! Who would be using a runic weapon?!” she demanded as she landed on the wall, moving away from the edge to deny the bandits a target.

  “Bandits, it seems,” the rune-mind replied unhelpfully.

  As they discussed this, the bandit with the runic weapon destroyed more of the wall near Kyria, taking guesses as to where she was hiding atop it.

  “I guess they found more than beds in Argantel,” Kyria said as she scurried to a new hiding place. She was running out of wall-top, so Kyria just stepped off and backed up above the city, still keeping some of the wall between herself and the bandits.

  “They are using up a lot of vitality,” Haylem pointed out. “I would guess they are passing the weapon around, giving it a fresh user when the previous one gets tired.”

  This gave Kyria an idea. She waited until there was a pause between shots and ran up and above the wall, shooting as she caught sight of bandits. As Haylem had guessed, the runic weapon was being passed between two of the men and was unavailable to fire at her. The girl shot at the two with the weapon, downing one.

  But she stayed visible too long. The man left holding the runic weapon got a bearing on Kyria and fired at her. Noticing the incoming ball of energy, she rolled back from it just as it hit her cloak. The energy of the projectile disintegrated the front of her cloak, but missed the girl herself. Unfortunately, rolling backward in midair meant she was no longer standing on air. Kyria found herself falling down into the city. When she hit the ground, the cloak did its best to protect her, but she had the wind knocked out of her by the impact, her sight filling with stars and sparks. She may have blacked out for a few seconds, but Kyria could not be sure.

  She was surprised she had survived and amazed nothing was broken. When she stood up, she found herself unsteady on her feet, but was otherwise all right, if drained — the cloak had absorbed a lot of the impact, but it had done so at a steep cost to the girl’s vitality.

  “Is the cloak okay?” Kyria tried to ask Haylem, but her mouth didn’t cooperate with her brain. The words came out as a mumbled incomprehensible mess. Haylem understood her anyway.

  “Yes, it’s missing coverage with about sixteen percent of it disintegrated, but the runes weren’t located there. I’m more worried about you, Kyria. You might have a concussion.”

  “I’m fine.” She managed to make that mostly intelligible.

  “Let us agree to disagree,” Haylem said.

  Both Kyria and Haylem could hear the bandits approaching. They had entered the city too, it seemed, and were looking for her.

  “Split up!” One of them ordered the others.

  “No way! I’m going with the rune staff,” another objected.

  There could be no more arguing. Haylem suggested it might be a good time to move and find a hiding place, and Kyria had to agree. She walked on the ground as she made her way from the place where she’d fallen. She felt she needed to save every bit of vitality she had left in order to protect herself, and potentially to fight back.

  Stumbling as she went, using nearby structures for support, Kyria went deeper into the ruined city of Argantel.

  She saw it was in greater ruins than could be explained only by the passage of time. It looked like it had been through a war. Rubble blocked many of the streets and alleyways. Kyria was stopped outright from going north by a collapsed spire. The thing had been gigantic when standing, and even on its side, it was tall enough to be too much trouble to climb over — especially given how she was feeling.

  If it had been just the girl trying to lose herself in the city and to hide from the bandits, she would probably have been found. She was in no mental shape to be clever; her head pounded and she was seeing double. But thankfully, she was not alone. Haylem guided her, thought for her and, eventually, led her to a building that was s
till semi-standing.

  “This used to be a public house, a tavern of sorts,” he explained. ‘I knew the owner. His basement would do nicely as a place to hide.”

  It was surreal to Kyria that Haylem had known this place in its living days, and that he had been a part of the society that had thrived there. She pushed at the door and found it jammed. Although the building still stood, it had collapsed enough to wedge the door. Kyria did not give up though. She rammed her shoulder into the door three times before Haylem got her to stop.

  “That’s not working, Kyria. Let’s look for another way in,” he suggested. The girl took a look around.

  “There. A window,” Haylem pointed out.

  Kyria headed for it. When she raised an arm to break it, the rune-mind shouted, “Stop! The windows are diamond here, Kyria.”

  The girl blinked in surprise a few times. “Really? Um. Wow. The windows?”

  “Yes. It had no value to us like it does to the people of your age. We were able to fabricate it. It’s clearer than glass and much sturdier, so we used it for windows.”

  “Why haven’t we raided these cities for this stuff?” Kyria was puzzled. She would gladly have risked her life for the fortune this window alone was worth.

  “Some of you have. It’s probably where all the diamond your culture currently has comes from; I doubt you’re up to mining for it, even if it occurred nearby. But mostly, I think superstition kept people away and then forgetting these things were here as time wore on.”

  “But how do we get in, then?” Kyria was finding it hard to think and just wanted to rest now. She’d had enough of talking.

  “Try opening it. Push the frame up, if you can,” Haylem suggested.

  The girl did as the rune-mind asked and managed to shove the window up a few centimetres. From there, they used a loose plank as a lever to pry the window open enough for Kyria to slip into the building.

  The inside was just as damaged as one would imagine, tables were overturned and all glassware was shattered. Half the building had collapsed, laying beams across most of the main room.

  “The basement entrance should be behind the bar,” Haylem indicated.

  Kyria was careful to avoid the broken glass as she made her way to the door leading to the basement. Thankfully, it opened with no difficulty. The stairway down into the basement was shattered, but this proved no problem for Kyria, who used the Skyrunners briefly to make her way down. The place was full of rot and scum, but Kyria didn’t even notice. She found a dry spot on a still intact barrel — inscribed with runes, Haylem noted — and curled up to sleep.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t sleep,” Haylem warned the girl. “If you have a concussion . . ?” But it was useless, she was not listening and was already far gone into a deep sleep. Haylem was no expert on medicine, he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad for the girl to sleep in her condition. He decided to let it go for the moment and to keep listening for any sign of trouble.

  Haylem heard the bandits only once through the rest of the day. He heard footsteps outside the building and some muttering from one of the men, but then they left and headed away from the public house. They never even tried to open the door.

  The rune-mind had decided to let Kyria sleep for as long as she wanted and would have let her sleep past sundown, but at approximately that time she was woken by a high-pitched keening sound so loud that it resounded throughout the abandoned city. Haylem recognized it immediately. Only one thing he knew of had such a howl.

  “What is it?”

  “I did not think any had remained behind,” Haylem said. Kyria felt fear emanating from the rune-mind through their bond. “I did not think any could survive here for so long.”

  “What, Haylem? What is it? Is it . . . a monster?”

  “To call it a monster is too mild, Kyria. It is a Terror, one of the beasts that ended the Golden Age.”

  “What!” It was not a question; Kyria had heard the rune-mind perfectly well. “Aren’t they all gone?”

  “Current evidence suggests at least one remains,” Haylem hedged. “It has to be weak. During the fall, we believed the Nightmares used vitality to remain in our world.”

  “Well, it can’t have any vitality left now, surely,” the girl agreed, though she had no real basis for her conclusions.

  “We have to hope it is but a shadow of itself, or we will surely die.”

  “Is it really that dangerous? It’s only one of the creatures. It doesn’t even know where to find us, or even that we’re here,” Kyria said.

  “It knows. It can sense your vitality. This must be why I haven’t heard any of the bandits in the last hour. They must leave the city well before sundown.”

  “But why doesn’t it leave the city?” Kyria demanded. “The bandits are staying right on its doorstep!”

  “I think it needs to stay near the runic gateways of the transportation hub. They must deform our world enough there for it to survive.”

  “Okay, let’s get out of here, then,” Kyria decided. She stood and found she felt much better. Sleeping had cleared her head and her vision. Now she only felt tired and bruised. She could work with that.

  Using the Skyrunners, Kyria returned to the ground floor of the public house, finding it dark now that the sun had set. She stumbled out, heading toward the slightly less dark square she assumed to be the window she had entered through, and was pleased to find that it was. She was halfway through it when she heard a second keening howl.

  “Closer!” Haylem warned. He sounded panicked. Kyria was happy she did not know enough about the creature to be more than terrified. One of them had to keep their wits.

  Thinking to escape by simply running up and away, Kyria started doing just that using her Skyrunners. She headed in the direction of the closest wall — south.

  As soon as she rose over the buildings though, she heard a third howl from the Terror hunting her. This time, it was much closer. She turned to look and saw its red glowing eyes only a few hundred metres behind her. It was running across rooftops in her direction, moving incredibly fast, especially for a creature its size! Using the nearby buildings for comparison, she guessed the Terror to be almost ten meters long, five meters at its shoulders. It was a quadruped, long and sleek like a hunting dog with a musculature to match its shape and size. Its leathery hide was reddish brown, covered with red pimply protuberances and rough patches. The Terror’s head was long and snouted, bearing a mouthful of swords for teeth. It did not seem to have any ears.

  “The red patches and bumps,” Haylem pointed out. “They didn’t have those during the fall. Maybe it is weak!” Kyria was glad the rune-mind was thinking enough to provide useful comments.

  At the speed the creature was running along the rooftops, Kyria was certain she had no chance to outrun it. She ran down as fast as she could back to street level, though she continued to stay off the ground so she could skate on the air.

  Above, Kyria heard the crashing sounds of the creature changing directions. Stone chunks of building flew into the sky where its claws dug for purchase on the rooftops. She slid as fast as she could, away from the monster. Now heading for the area of the wall where the bandits had their building. She reasoned that, if Haylem was right, the area the Terror could roam would end soonest in that direction.

  The earth around the girl shook when the creature landed on the street some hundred metres behind her. If she had been running on the ground, she likely would have stumbled and fallen.

  “You can’t outrun it!” Haylem blurted unhelpfully. “I’m so sorry, Kyria!”

  “Shut up and look for a building I can enter!” She commanded the rune-mind.

  “There,” he said a quarter-second later. Kyria headed for the hole in the wall Haylem had seen. She was grateful to have the rune-mind’s help once more. Inside, the girl looked frantically around for what she needed. “Find some fabric, stuff that’ll take runes,” she said.

  Just then the Terror hit the wall. The whole edifice
shook and parts of the interior started to crumble; wooden supports were falling around Kyria. She exited the building through one of the newly-crumbled walls and ran down a narrow alleyway for a hundred metres until Haylem found another house for her to enter.

  “The curtains!” Haylem said the moment they were through the window and into the partial building. “They’ll take runes.”

  “Read my mind, take over my body!” She commanded the rune-mind. “Quickly!” Kyria could hear the creature coming. It was incapable of travelling quietly. Haylem had been right, it could definitely sense them. She felt herself reduced as Haylem burst through the door between her consciousness and his, taking her body over. She saw her hands work inhumanly quickly, first taking down the curtains, then cutting her wrist open with her eating knife, and then using the blood to work runes onto the fabric.

  Hurry! She sent to the rune-mind, though she knew Haylem was working faster than safety dictated already. The girl could hear the Terror coming. It howled when it was immediately outside the building.

  She filled her body when Haylem vanished from it, the void he left sucking her in. Careful not to smudge the fresh blood, she gathered the curtain, bunched in one hand, and headed out of the building, emerging on the other side of it. The creature howled again and followed after her, crossing the distance with ease.

  Just a few more seconds, she asked the universe. Please!

  Kyria put every bit of vitality she could spare into the storage runes Haylem had included in the runic structure he had drawn on the curtain. She was teetering on the verge of unconsciousness as the creature approached her, wary of a trick. It was not stupid, apparently. It guessed she was up to something. Her sudden stop had aroused its suspicions; it expected an attack, at the very least.

  “Come on!” Kyria shouted at the towering head as it looked at her. She shot it with one of her weapons, right on the muzzle. It was ineffective, as she had expected, but it did irritate the creature. Opening wide, it moved to bite her. Waiting until the last possible moment, Kyria dodged aside, barely evading its closing jaws, and tossed the curtains into the thing’s mouth. It swallowed the lump involuntarily, barely aware of the small piece of cloth in its huge mouth.