Rune Seeker

Hiral screamed as the monster tore him apart, his two halves going in opposite directions, only to get tossed to the side while the crystal face gazed down at him.

Wait—if he’d just been torn in half, why was he still looking straight up at the monster in front of him. The pain…? It was still there… but not as bad.

What in the Fallen’s names is going on?

Hiral’s gaze dropped down to where the monster’s hand was pressed against him, his coat and shirt simply gone to reveal his bare chest. His… completely bare chest. No Meridian Lines stretched up to pass over his shoulders. No tattoos.

What… what… what!?

Shoulders aching, he lifted his arms, which were likewise bereft of any line or tattoo. No, that wasn’t completely true. There was something on his forearms, where the Daggers of EnSath had been—where the monster’s hands had grabbed him. Runes, like they’d been etched directly into his skin and infused with a yellow, liquid light.

“Welcome… home… Brother…” the monster in front of him said, the voice raspy and weak, and it pulled its hand away from his chest. More of that yellow light trailed from its palm, sticky and viscous, like glowing snot, connecting to where Hiral’s central Meridian Node had been. Had been.

The black circle was still there, but instead of being solidly filled, there was instead another yellow rune glowing within it.

“What did you…?” Hiral started to ask, but then his status window appeared in front of his eyes, shivering and crackling.

Is it broken…? The crackling got worse, the words and numbers in it twisting and changing with every beat of his pounding heart. The edges frayed, and everything faded away until only one line was left.

Race: Maker

The screen flickered, and Maker vanished from the line while the window snapped from blue to yellow. Another flicker, and Hiral couldn’t turn away from the new word that spelled out letter by letter.

Race: B

Race: Bu

Race: Bui

Race: Buil

Race: Build

Race: Builde

Race: Builder

As soon as the word Builder finished, the screen flashed yellow, and more streamers of light burst out of Hiral’s chest. Spiraling out of the strange rune, they twisted around his chest, ran down his legs, and out across his arms in a double-helix pattern just an inch above his skin. Around and around they went, until they stretched from the tips of his toes, to the ends of his fingers, to the top of his head. And, Hiral noted as he studied the strange light, they weren’t just lines of yellow light, but an entire script

, written so small and densely it looked like a solid line from a distance.

“Artificer…” the crystal monster said, and clenched its hand closed, cutting off the snot-like light connected to Hiral’s chest, which snapped the hovering sentences of light tight against his skin.

New pain flooded through Hiral’s body as the light burned itself into his skin, and he dropped straight down to his knees. He tried to look at his new, yellow status window, where words and numbers appeared on the page at random, but the pain was just too much, and he squeezed his eyes closed.

It went on and on, digging deeper past his skin and searing him through his muscle and all the way down to his bones. Inside his bones, even, like it was hollowing them out and filling them back up again with something new. It flowed out along all the same paths as his solar energy, and even with his eyelids closed, more and more of the strange runic script flitted past his eyes.

And then the light seared the runes into his eyes as well.

Hiral clawed at his own face as he toppled sideways to the ground, his voice little more than raw, primal sounds of pain. The light found his tongue, his teeth, the roof of his mouth, and then there was silence. Darkness. Peace.

He lay twitching on the ground, his body weak and used, small branches and rocks digging into his skin, leaves sticking to his face from his own tears.

“Ooooh, he’s not looking so good,” a voice said from in front of him—one Hiral almost recognized.

“Yes, the process does not seem to have occurred without certain… consequences,” another voice said, this one similar in tone, but different in cadence.

“What… happened…?” Hiral asked, forcing his eyes open. He found two silhouettes standing over him.

“Can’t say we have a good answer for you,” the silhouette on the left said, its features resolving as Hiral stared at it. A bald man with Meridian Lines and tattoos—so, a Shaper—but wait… Only on his right side?

“It will be up to you to determine the cause and ultimate ramifications of what has transpired,” the silhouette on the right said. This one looked almost identical to the first, except he only had tattoos and Meridian Lines on his left side.

And… and they looked familiar. Which also explained why he knew the voices.

They looked just like Hiral.

“Ah, he’s figuring something out!” the ones with the tattoos on his right said.

“He is,” Left agreed.

“Hiral! Hiral, are you okay?” Seena’s voice called from somewhere off to the side, and more shapes rushed along the nearby path. “What are…?” She trailed off, and the approaching footsteps slowed.

“It doesn’t look like it’s moving,” Yanily said, and Hiral turned his attention past his strange doubles to the hulking shape of the monster beyond. “What did you do to it, Hiral?”

“And why are there three of you?” Seena added, carefully sidestepping the tattooed twins standing in front of Hiral.

“And, the most important question,” Vix said. “What happened to your hair?”

“I didn’t… I don’t… my hair?” Hiral pushed himself up to a seated position, then ran his hand across his head. His bald head.

When he looked up at his two twins, they simultaneously pointed at their own bald heads and nodded.

“We look better like this,” Right said.

“It was getting into mullet territory, honestly,” Left said. “This is for the best. I see Seena agrees with the assessment.”

Hiral looked at Seena, who blushed a little and looked away from him. “I wasn’t going to say anything. Thought maybe it was Island fashion, but it was…”

“Not a flattering look,” Yanily finished.

“Gee, thanks,” Hiral said, but his attention was back on his doubles. They really did look exactly like him, other than each having half of his tattoos. Like they’d split right down the middle. No, that wasn’t entirely true—neither of them had the central Meridian Node he had in the center of his chest.

But, besides that, there were the Daggers of EnSath on their wrists, the Way of Light on Right’s chest, and the Way of Shadow on Left’s. As he went through his memorized inventory of tattoos, he quickly found them exactly where they should be on Left and Right.

Why?

“Help me up?” he asked, and extended his hands to Left and Right, who immediately took them and went to pull him up. However, instead of lifting him to his feet, they instead dissolved into streamers of solar energy that bled into Hiral’s hands.

Within seconds, the strange double-helix script faded from Hiral’s skin, and the black of his Meridian Lines and tattoos rose to the surface, like bruises forming in high speed.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Seena said, and all the assembled Growers took a collective step back, as if he’d absorb them as well with a touch. “Maybe you should stay where you are until we figure out what is going on?”

“Yeah…” Hiral agreed, looking down at his familiarly tattooed hands.

“What class did you say you had?” Yanily asked evenly.

“That’s just it, I… I don’t have a class,” Hiral said, the pain of the words somehow muted by the strangeness of whatever was going on. “But, when that crystal thing touched me, something happened to my status window, like it was broken.”

At the mention of the touch from the monster possibly causing the strangeness, the Growers put an extra step between themselves and the frozen, crystal creature. All the nervousness left them oddly spread out on the road, but their eyes were on Hiral.

“Maybe you should check your status window again now?” Seena suggested, taking a breath and then stepping in closer to Hiral again. “And,” she added, looking back at the others before turning to Hiral again, “maybe it would all make us feel better if you shared it with us.”

Hiral blinked at the forwardness of the request. On Fallen Reach, asking to see somebody’s status window was like asking them to take off their clothes. Then again, given everything that had happened in the last three minutes, it was pretty fair.

“Sure,” Hiral said, pushing aside his natural resistance to the request.

He pulled up his status window for all to see. The first thing that stood out was that it was blue again, but Hiral’s eyes quickly went to where his Race was listed.

Race: MakerBuilder

“Not sure what you’re talking about; you have a class listed on your status window,” Yanily said. “Looks funny, though. Why is it so…faint?”

What!? A class!?

Hiral’s eyes dropped from his strange race notation to the line below.

Class: Runic Artificer

“His Race is the same way, and why is Maker crossed out?” Seeyela asked, coming closer so she could see the Window as well.

“Same with… Wow, that’s a long list of—what are those? Abilities?” Wule asked while he tapped his own chin in thought.

“Tattoos, I think. Look there,” Nivian said.

But Hiral was only half-listening, his eyes completely glued to that class line.

I’ve done it! I have a class. Finally!

…somehow.

But why is it grayed out?

“…al. Hey, Hiral, you listening to us?” Seena was saying, and there was a hand waving in front of his face.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m listening now.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.

“I have no idea. The monster did something to me when it touched my central Meridian Node, I think. My tattoos have always been listed as unavailable like this—because I couldn’t use them—so I guess my race and class have to be the same way.”

Typical. I have a class, but I can’t use it?

“Looks like you’ve got one ability that isn’t unavailable. Down here.” Wule pointed beneath the list of tattoos. “Foundational Split.”

“What does that do, Hiral?” Seena asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t have that before.” Hiral gestured for Seena to back up a bit, and he got to his feet. Considering how weak he’d felt a few minutes before, he was feeling pretty good now. “Let’s find out.”

“Wait, are you sure that’s a good…?” she started, but it was already too late.

Hiral instinctively pushed his solar energy into activating the ability.

The strange rune etched into his Meridian Node glowed a blinding yellow, and then it was like all his skin peeled off in opposite directions. Meridian Lines and tattoos both lifted off his flesh, glowing solar energy coalescing beneath into the shape of his arms, then expanding further to create the sides of his chest, his legs… all of him… until two virtual copies of him stepped out of his own body.

The nearby Growers understandably leapt back in alarm as Left and Right solidified, their own blue status windows hovering in front of them.