The Land: Catacombs (Chaos Seeds Book 4) (12 page)

Richter looked at him with surprise of his own.  Sion just happened to get a quest that coincided with his own?  It couldn’t be a coincidence.  The only thing he could think of was that their Companion status was coming into play again.  Being a Companion seemed to mean absolutely nothing most of the time.  When they had first been tied together, Sion hadn’t even liked him, so it didn’t necessarily mean that you’d have a best friend for life.  At other times, though, it seemed to be vital.  If the Universe would give them complementary quests, what else could their Companion bond mean?

“Should I accept it?” Sion asked hesitantly.  Richter realized that he hadn’t actually told `Sion what his own quest was.  He clapped his friend on the shoulder and filled him in on the complementary nature of their tasks.  Sion smiled in understanding and accepted his own quest.  Right afterward, Terrod walked up.  His group had returned while the two friends had been talking.  The guards that had followed the captain were good-naturedly making fun of the soiled appearance of Caulder’s group.  The responses were predictably vulgar.

“My lord,” Terrod said, “we found something.”

“What is it?” Richter asked.

“It would be easier just to show you.  It isn’t far.”

Richter nodded.  Wanting to be fair, he ordered the soldiers in Terrod’s group to carry the tentacles and aberration flesh outside and to collect more blood in vials.  He chuckled internally at their small groans of disgust.  He had learned long ago, though, that what truly divided a community wasn’t crappy treatment.  It was unequal treatment.  As long as everyone had to wade through the same shit together, they’d grumble, but they’d do it and laugh together as they cleaned off later.  The soldiers in Caulder’s group came along as escort to see what Terrod had found.

Richter’s group moved along, their way illuminated by the mist lights the captain and sergeant still held.  Alma continued to snuggle on his shoulders.  Terrod led him through a series of interlocking caves until they arrived at a particularly large one.  Water flowed down from the ceiling in a small waterfall in a corner.  It fell into a small pool on the floor that Richter realized must drain off somewhere in its bottom.  In Futen’s light, Richter could see that this cave was formed of marbled quartz, and not simple grey stone like the other caves.  The walls sparkled beautifully.  They got barely a glance from Richter, though, because what was in the floor was infinitely more interesting.

An intricate design had been carved a foot deep into the stone.  It appeared each groove had been filled with glass.  Not the fragile silicon substance that you would see in windows, but instead the impossibly hard material that certain weapons and armor were made from.  There were two main symbols with small dots and squiggles coming off of them, and surrounding them was a ring of much smaller symbols.  The first large symbol looked like a triangle with two circles above it.  It lay inside of a second symbol that looked like a square with concave sides.  Richter recognized the center symbol as the representation for “Dark Power” from his book of lore.  He could only imagine that this was the seal that the aberration had wanted him to unlock. 

The men with him spread out around the seal, wary of crossing over it.  He was about to walk closer to the seal when he heard one of the soldiers exclaim, “It’s a rune!”

Richter quickly looked over and saw that the speaker was a gnome.  A quick use of
Analyze
showed that the woman was an arcane gnome.  “What did you say, Biruya?”

The short woman looked around, clearly not having intended to draw her liege’s attention.  He nodded encouragingly at her, and she spoke up.

“I said it looks like a rune, my lord.”

“Why does that surprise you?”  he asked.  “I’ve seen plenty of signs and writing since coming to The Land.”

Biruya shook her head. “A rune is no mere form of writing, my lord.  It is a spell made solid.  It is magic given permanence by the spell form carved into the rock and powered by a soul stone.  Only a few in the River Peninsula know any rune magic these days.  I only recognized it because one of the focuses of my parents’ research was lost magic.  I remember my father lamenting the lack of information about runic magic.”

Richter’s face adopted a slightly confused expression. “This doesn’t seem complicated, though.  That symbol”—he pointed to the triangle—“represents Dark magic.  I recognize it from an introductory Lore book.  The other one looks like it’s there to contain the Dark magic symbol.  If I can discern that knowing almost nothing, how could rune magic be completely lost?”

“It is not completely lost, Lord Richter.  It is known that royal builders know some of the minor runes for durability.  That is why the walls of the royal palace have such impossibly high hit points.  I also agree that the basic function of this particular rune is fairly easy to surmise, but that doesn’t mean we could recreate it.  All of those flourishes and marks are not for show, my lord, they are integral to the workings of the rune.  I also have no idea what the outer ring of symbols mean.  If there is one thing I remember from listening to my parents, it is that runic magic is exact.  Everything you see here has a purpose, and removing any one would have a consequence.  The material the runes are made or carved from, the size of the rune, even the depth of the etching in the floor would affect the final spell.  For this specific rune, the exact curvature of the square around the triangle would be important as would all of the flourishes that we can see.  Many factors would alter the potency of the rune and countless more would render it completely useless.”

Richter nodded in understanding.  If rune magic required that level of detail, he could see why it might be hard to learn how to use it.  “Is there anything else you can tell me about it?

“I remember that every rune is powered by a soul stone.  I can also tell you that the fact that this rune is made of two different types of material is beyond anything I ever heard my mother and father discuss.”

“If you studied it, could you figure out more?” he asked excitedly.

She looked uncertain. “My parents were the real scholars, my lord.  I don’t think I could understand it.”  His ardor waned a bit, but then she added, “Maybe if you found someone who understood basic spell theory, then we could learn more.”

You have unlocked a new field of study:
Basic Spell Theory
.

You have become aware of a new field of study:
Runic Magic
, but have not yet discovered the prerequisites for this branch of study. 

So an insanely powerful magic rune made with knowledge that was now lost to time…  Richter was glad that he had been able to slay the dark aberration.  Seeing what lengths had been taken to contain it, he would never have let it out.  Which meant he would have most likely been tortured and worse.  Richter shuddered remembering the tentacle that had wormed its way inside of his pant leg. 

Shaking himself loose from such horrible thoughts, he thanked the gnome guard for her help.  He also asked her to speak with Randolphus later about the rat problem.  She clapped her fist to her heart and told him that she would seek out the chamberlain soon.  Richter thanked her again and then stepped forward onto the rune.  The glass tracery began to glow as if it recognized him.  In the center was a glass circle like on the treasury door.  He bent down and aligned the circle with his Master of the Mist Village Mark.  A prompt appeared.

Welcome, Master of the Mist Village.  You have accessed the Rune of Dark Holding.  It serves to keep any being of Dark magic within the confines of the spell.  Do you wish to deactivate the runic magic?

Richter stepped back and dismissed the prompt.  He didn’t want to turn it off until he was absolutely sure that there wasn’t anything else hiding in these caves.  If there was another aberration hiding, he wouldn’t risk letting it loose on his people.  He looked at Terrod. “Have you searched the rest of the caves?”

“Yes, my lord.  This cavern seems to be the center of the cave system.  There are no other open entrances that I could see.  I did find two other interesting things.  One is a cave in the back filled with various items, packs, and bones.  I surmised that it must be the remains of whatever poor souls were killed by the monster you vanquished through the years.  The other thing was a small metal door set into one of the rock walls.  It was made of steel with black swirls set into the metal.  It had a clear disc like that one set into it.”  He pointed at the activation disc in the center of the rune.

Titan steel, Richter thought excitedly.  The only other time he had seen it, or even heard it mentioned before now, was in his own treasury door.  If the old Masters of the village had used the powerful material as a door here too, there must be something valuable inside.  “Show me the door!”

He had Caulder throw his Mist Light at the ceiling.  It stayed where it struck the roof, providing easy light in at least that cavern.  After that, everyone followed after Terrod.  Only a short time later they arrived in another cavern.  Just as the captain had said, a door was set into the rock wall.  It was only three feet tall and was set three feet off of the ground, so it looked more like a safe than an exit.  Nonetheless, Richter was almost trembling with anticipation when he raised his wrist to the clear circle.  A voice spoke in his head.

*
Do you wish the door to open, Master?
*

He thought back, *
Yes
.*

A heavy thunk sounded, heralding the moving of a bar, and the door swung open.  The inside was not overly large, only about two feet deep, but the entire vault was covered in titan steel.  Even if something had burrowed through the rock, it still wouldn’t have been able to get inside.  There were several shelves that held a number of items.   

You have found:
Magic Book
.  Durability: 12/12.  Item Class: Common.  Quality: Above Average. Weight: 0.5 kg.

You have found:
Magic Book
.  Durability: 14/14. Item Class: Uncommon.  Quality: Above Average. Weight: 0.7 kg. 

You have found:
Magic Book
.  Durability 20/20.  Item Class: Uncommon.  Quality: Superb.  Weight: 0.4 kg. 

You have found:
Small Chest
.  Durability: 168/204. Item Class: Common.  Quality: Above Average. Weight: 3.4 kg. 

You have found:
Pouch
.

You have found:
Magic Bottle
.  Durability 19/54.  Item Class: Uncommon.  Quality: Superb.  Weight: 0.03 kg. 

You have found:
Magic Blueprint
.  Durability: 4/20. Item Class: Uncommon.  Quality: Well Crafted. Weight: 0.2 kg. 

You have found:
Soul Stone
.  Level: Resplendent.  Status: Filled.

You have found:
Soul Stone
.  Level: Special.  Status: Filled.

You have found:
Soul Stone
.  Level: Special.  Status: Filled.

You have found:
Soul Stone
.  Level: Brilliant.  Status: Filled.

Richter sent out a mental call to Futen.  He would probably need his help to identify these items.  Sure enough, looking at the books, blueprint, and bottle revealed nothing more.  While he was waiting he opened the pouch.  A smile found its way onto his face.  The heavy pouch was filled to the brim with finger-length gold bars.  They were the first he had seen since he had bartered with Hafiz and each was worth one hundred gold.  A quick count showed there were twenty-one bars in the pouch.  That equaled 2,100 gold coins!  He had just gotten 200,000 grand richer!

He dumped the gold bars into his bag before anyone could really see what he had found.  He didn’t think his men would attack him, but no reason to wave meat in front of the bear as his mother used to say.  He scanned the bread-loaf-sized chest for the telltale red of traps.  Nothing concerning appeared, so he decided to open it.  Richter quickly closed it again and hid it in his Bag along with the pouch.  The chest was full of multicolored jewels.  He would have to count them later, but as far as he was concerned, the same meat waving rule applied. 

Richter stared at the rest of the treasure while he waited for Futen to appear.  The gold and gems alone were amazing, but the soul stones could potentially be invaluable.  The highest level stone he had had before was special.  That had come from slaying the crypt mistress.  He had never seen a resplendent stone before.  It was noticeably larger than the special stone.  He couldn’t wait to see what Krom could make out of it.  The stones went into his Bag as well.  Futen floated up. 

Richter indicated the magic items still in the small vault with a motion of his head.  Futen flared white, and Richter could see what the rest of his haul was.

You have found:
Book of Lightning Bolt I
.  Fire a bolt of lightning from your hand.  Chance to stun your enemy.  Durability: 12/12. Item Class: Common.  Quality: Above Average. Weight: 0.5 kg.  This is a spell of Air, level 12.

You have found:
Book of Explosive Lightning Ball I
.  Shoot a weak ball of lightning forward.  It explodes on contact and will strike everyone within five feet.  Chance to stun your enemy.  Durability: 14/14. Item Class: Uncommon.  Quality: Above Average. Weight: 0.7 kg.  This is a spell of Air. 
Must have Air magic skill level 19
.