Runeblade

B2 Chapter 191: Ignition

The ghosts of Kaius’s fingers spasmed.

Grunting at the discomfort, he scratched at the stump of his limb. It was a smooth nubbin, muscles and skin slowly distending as his flesh morphed and grew. Disgusting, in all honesty. Though, no matter how much his skin crawled at the sight of his morphing flesh, he knew it would bring back his hand—and his missing fingers with it.

What disturbed him more was the unblemished skin that came with the regrowth. His glyph was gone.

That galled. It also heightened his nerves, a tight little ball that had been building in his stomach. Rieker would have had no way of knowing, but he had never inscribed one of the Vesryn glyphs by himself.

They were convoluted, three dimensional, and ruinously complex. The prospect of weaving one around his mana flows without the system's assistance was terrifying—made him feel the icy breath of dread on the back of his neck.

Still, he knew it was for the best. The strong delvers? The kinds who rose to the peak of what people knew to be possible? They lost limbs. Not often, but it happened. Especially in those who held down the front line like he did.

Usually it wasn’t too much of a problem. Even if they didn’t have a healer capable of some form of regeneration on their team, they would have the wealth and connections to see one of the rare few healers who plied such a skill publicly.

To learn to weave a new glyph now, meant that he wouldn’t have to experiment if it happened in the field.

It still sucked. Losing his hand sucked. Losing sucked—more than he thought it would.

After Rieker had dressed them down, he’d ushered them back to the table, before leaving once more to fetch what he called ‘the good stuff’. Said he’d be back soon.

No doubt he was just giving them space to decompress after he’d smeared them across the floor in a minute flat. Thank the hells that Rieker had, because only the gods knew that he needed it.

With his mind drifting to their ‘spar’, Kaius was unable to stop himself from ruminating. Not even the sharp spiking pain of his tooth goring the inside of his cheek was enough to snap him out of it, not with his pain resistance and healing.

As much as it burned for them to get destroyed, to have his flaws so systematically revealed, it was worse that he knew that the guildmaster was right.

He’d been reckless. That might get them killed, and there was little he could do about it at this point.

Picking the spider as their first mission? Stupid. He could see it now—though he felt like punching the wall until his other hand was a smeared mess that it had taken it being rubbed in his face to realise.

They should have taken it slow—or at the very least planned a cover story and more circuitous route back.

Porkchop and Ianmus, they might have agreed with him, but it was his duty to be the voice of reason. He’d taken the mantle of party leader, and failed to respect it.

He’d failed his team.

Too drunk on freedom and the allure of power. The oldest sin—the one that killed more delvers than anything else. He’d thought himself immune, untouchable thanks to his strength.

Stupid.

Relative strength meant nothing when you were still helpless to those with power and experience both. The strongest chick in the henhouse was still helpless to the weakest fox.

His gaze turning back to the stump of his hand, Kaius watched the rhythm pulse in time with his hand—growing just a little bit more with each undulation. Supposedly it would take a few weeks, not that it made it any less miraculous.

It was a strange thing, to be beaten and broken. It made you realise things. Revealed truths.

Clawing his way up the mountain, step by bloody step? Advancing on all obstacles and beating on them with shattered fists? That wasn’t his truth.

It was a truth. But it wasn’t his.

Too incomplete, too…juvenile. There was something more there—he knew it, even as his aspect lay silent and still within him.

If victory at all costs had been his pillar, this experience would have shattered it. It was the truth of the fool, the deluded, and the egoistic. It was the dream of a boy.

He had too many responsibilities to be a boy.

Even if he would never let go of the thrill of the fight, or stop taking risks—for those things were as much immutable truths about himself as his stubbornness—he needed more. Enough tribulation had washed through his life that he was more.

That fight? Rieker’s total annihilation? It had been necessary—brutal and eye opening.

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Kaius sighed, letting his eyes feel closed as he felt the weight of consequence settle on his chest. He had a long way to go, and he’d just had to go and give them a deadline.

Hurling them at the closest deadly challenge and hoping for the best? Hoping they could use the pressure of the experience to grow? It would kill him and Porkchop eventually, and Ianmus would undoubtedly die far far sooner. All it would take is a single slip up for a beast or a man to get past them, and the mage would be dead.

He couldn’t allow that. Ianmus had made his choice, and they had made theirs, but that didn’t mean he needed to be stupid about it.

But if his truth wasn’t that of mindless determination, what was it?

What did he want? Truly want?

To find his father’s killer, and bring him his due? Of course.

To seek the lost histories of Unterstern, and justice for the destruction of a family he never met? Most certainly.

To rise victorious over the changing phases, securing his home and lands? Most definitely.

To see the world, and explore its secrets like he had always dreamed of? Of course!

Yet…those were desires—not truths—and they were all big problems. The kind that needed strength to be solved.

Power. It always came back to power in the end. Everyone wanted it, and few had it. He’d thought he’d been on a sure fire path, after all, he’d seized far more than most already. Yet…he’d still been going about it all the wrong way.

Kaius needed to grow. In the deftness of his mind. In the way he approached challenges. The ability to throw himself at death was good, but it needed to be tempered by wisdom. By the will to do whatever was necessary to see him and his team to the next dawn.

If he wanted to see the peak, it was necessary. He needed experience, and today had shown him he had precious little of it.

Challenges would come, and he would face them staunchly. He would batter at them until his bones broke and the ground was stained red with his blood—but only if he had to. Afterall, even loss was valuable. It was experience. The knowledge and understanding he could glean from such things would help him to avoid or surpass any similar challenge in the future.

Fighting wasn’t everything, no matter how strange it felt to say that. He wanted life. A good life.

Battle—the thrill of the challenge, the scent of blood in the air, the sweet sting of exertion, and the wild screams of mayhem—was a part of that. But it wasn’t everything. The smell of fresh grass or a seared steak, the sweet taste of wine and the laughter of good company, the warmth of the fire and the restful caress of a spring night’s breeze. Those were important too. He would lose them if all he sought was mindless fury.

And yet, even as his mind went round and round and round Kaius knew that they were hollow truths. They were part of something, but they were details and shades, not the full painting.

What. Did. He. Want.

Kaius sat with the thought, allowing the darkness behind his closed eyelids to wash over him. Memories shifted through his mind. Nights with Porkchop, Ianmus, and Father. Spent around fires, with full bellies and happy smiles. The scenery changed, the background changed, but the feeling he got didn’t.

He wanted…a place to call his own. Somewhere that was just for him, and for those he called his own.

But he couldn’t have it. It was stolen from him once, and then again, by those who would still hound him. It was out of reach until the damn integration finished. And it would always be fragile unless he had the strength to defend it from those who would covet it.

He didn’t even think it was a place. After all, he could never see himself settling down in one place—he’d grown up even more uprooted than the damn Hiwiann, they at least had their ancestral clan grounds and temple cities.

But the belonging? The kind he had found with Porkchop and Ianmus? That he would kill for, hone himself for, hunt, and grow for. But to defend that sacred space, he needed more than strength. He needed ability. Strength, tempered by the wisdom of a thousand campaigns—victories and defeat alike. If it took reaching the very pinnacle to secure it—if it took singlehandedly besting the integration, shattering the Onyx Temple, and destroying the mysterious threats behind them that had razed his dynasty, he would do it.

Life was no battle, it was a war—and he would campaign for his desires.

Kaius gasped as Mentis, the very pillar he had been brushing up against for weeks, started to howl in visceral joy and satisfaction.

Lightning arced up his spine, forcing him bolt upright in moments and drawing the curious and concerned eyes of his companions. He saw nothing, wide eyes too enraptured by the sights in his soul-space.

Once silent, still, and desolate, a single pillar of his triumvirate exploded into activity. Shudders echoed down its monolithic form as his soul pulsed with ever growing burning intensity.

A keening want reverberated from the pillar, desperately reaching for his soulfire as the golden flames began to bulge, reaching for the Mentis.

Far below, circling his soul, his legacy skills heard the call and joined the chorus with pure platinum voices of their own.

Cringing for a moment, Kaius’s stomach dropped as he braced himself for the avarice he thought long behind him.

Only for it to never come.

The song of his legacy skills softened, falling into harmony with the want of Mentis. They bolstered its call, eagerly supporting the pillar as his soul roiled with renewed energy and might.

His heart thumped in his chest as he realised with finality that this might be happening now. Now. With Rieker planning to return at any moment.

He could feel the weight in his soul building to a crescendo—the shell of his class pulsing in tune with his soul and aspects, serenaded by his legacy.

Why, of all the gods were good, did it have to be now. He might have planned to share with the guild, but he didn’t want to lose out until he had discovered if his team would be able to follow his lead. Secure honours.

Then his soul flared, and without his aid a solid rope of soulfire connected to the waiting sconce atop Mentis.

It ignited, gold flickering to a blinding white flame that nestled itself upon the pillar. The strange stone-like exterior shook as a blast wave rocketed out—shaking the formless space within.

It held firm, and everything stabilised.

Yet somehow, Kaius knew the transformation was incomplete. Waiting.

**Ding! Pillar of Self Discovered, Mentis Ignited. Would you like to initiate Aspect Formation?**