Zeen had steadied his musket’s long barrel against the rabbit god’s tail. The Grey-Fur’s shield edged into the open. A deafening crack shattered the calm before the storm. The weapon’s stock slammed into his shoulder. A torrent of incandescent embers erupted from the muzzle and streaked across the clearing, splattering against the shield.
Burning flecks sprayed from the collision, embedding themselves in the fur of the Wolf Kin’s neck. A plume of oily smoke rose from the blackening patches, carrying the acrid scent of burnt hair. A guttural bellow tore from the Grey-Fur’s throat. He haphazardly chucked his spear, sending his spear hurtling through the air.
A guttural bellow tore from the Grey-Fur’s throat. He hurled the spear, a convulsive, rushed motion born of a frantic need to bat the embers out of his fur. The throw was wild, the target was small and in cover. The shaft tore the air beside Zeen’s ear and plunged deep into the earth.
At the same time, the shielded Brown-Fur was circling on Trenn’s side.
His pistol muzzle swung into view and fired. A groan of bone and wood erupted from the left as the Scrapper slammed into Trenn. The bullet bounced off the machine’s plating as it drove Trenn back into the rabbit corpse's yielding mass.
Before the Brown-Fur could correct his aim, Mara’s hand flashed to her belt, snatching her only Giant Pill. “Put the bloom inside Almitad!” she screamed, before shoving the round, alchemical ball into her mouth.
She then dropped into a four-legged sprint and broke from cover. An audible crunch echoed from her jaw as her powerful limbs pushed her forward, tearing at the earth with jagged claws.
A series of sickening pops and snaps echoed from her body with each stride of her charge. Her muscles bulged and her bones thickened. Her frame expanded, adding a full foot to her height as she hurtled forward.
Her necrotic claws grew to five inches of honed mana that glowed with a venomous green-black light. She reached the Brown-Fur, her height matching his. Mara hissed, and a wave of pure, amplified rage flooded Trenn’s tethers. The Brown-Fur’s focus snapped from Trenn to the massive Fox Kin. His pistol lowered as he heaved his shield up to meet her charge.
She ignored his braced defense and slashed her claws downwards. A high-frequency screech of splintering wood and tearing metal erupted as her five-inch necrotic claws cleaved through the Brown-Fur’s shield and the wrist behind it. Half of the shield clattered to the ground, the severed brown hand still gripping it.
The wound did not bleed. The flesh around the stump blackened instantly, corrupted with gangrenous decay. The Wolf Kin’s shriek of pure agony ripped through the battlefield, a sound so visceral it made everyone flinch.
The Brown-Fur fired his hand cannon in a wild spasm of pain and confusion. The shot went wide as Mara flowed into his blind spot, untouched.
Pinned between the Scrapper and the putrid carcass, a surge of steely resolve from Almitad’s tether snapped Trenn's focus to her. The Beaver Kin’s trembling hand completed a tight, bloody spiral over the first glowing runeword of her robe. With the gruesome task finished, she exhaled and rolled onto her back. A wince tightened her features as she shifted her body, aligning her spine with the middle runeword inside the opened garment.
The bloody spiral covering the first runeword ignited with Mana Radiation. It began to spin, its rotation accelerating into a whirlpool that pulsed with a ravenous green-black light.
A powerful wail of pain erupted from her as her skin disintegrated into floating particles. Her flesh dissolved into a cloud of dust that streamed into the spinning vortex, her cry choking into a gurgle that abruptly ceased.
Her body went still as her remaining flesh and organs unraveled into motes of matter, all of it drawn into the devouring, spinning blood spiral. Within a second, Almitad’s clean, bone-white skeleton lay upon the spread, open robe that covered the ground.
The tether to Almitad snapped. The abrupt silence where her grim determination had been was a disorienting shock, and Trenn's knees buckled.
She's gone. The thought was a flat, final thing. The shock soured instantly into a hot, ragged indignation, and a surge of adrenaline burned through him.
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A frantic flutter sounded from above. Bomber, the pink and yellow Giant Moth, dove toward Almitad's corpse and released the bone lantern. It clattered to the ground, glowing with necrotic light, as the moth ascended back into the sky.
The second runeword, covered by Almitad's skeleton, was unraveling, one rune at a time. They unraveled from the fabric of the robe and immediately ignited onto the bare bones of her ribcage.
Trenn’s attention snapped back to his position as Silver Flash pierced the corpse, inches from his face. The blade ripped upward and then slammed back down through the gash it had created, bisecting the rabbit god's massive carcass.
Vavnaar pressed the flat of his blade against the one-pawed top half of the giant animal. He grunted in exertion as he heaved against the head and torso of the rabbit god, separating it from its legless bottom half.
His massive shadow fell through the gap and over Trenn. His eyes traveled up the Wolf Kin's leather-clad legs to the sneering, scarred snout towering above him. The sheer scale of the warrior caught Trenn’s breath. He swung his long club upward in a clumsy, panicked strike.
Vavnaar met the attack with a simple flick of his oversized straight blade. Steel intercepted the club mid-swing. A jarring clang numbed Trenn’s arm to the elbow and ripped the weapon from his grasp. The long club tumbled through the air and landed with a heavy thud amongst the thorny ferns several feet away.
Ezy’s Scrapper, which had shoved Trenn moments before, emerged from cover. It moved to Trenn's previous position and put Skate towards Trenn with its foot.
The Black-Fur immediately spotted the opening. “Left knee!” she commanded.
The heavy CARACK-CARACK of her repeater rifle was answered by the rapid, overlapping CRACKS of Janaree’s pistols. Four lead slugs hammered into the Scrapper’s knee, splintering wood and ripping the plating off its bony joint.
A final shot from Janaree’s dual-wielding semi-automatic pistols shattered the Scrapper’s unprotected knee and severed the limb. Its entire chassis lurched and crashed to the ground, ejecting Ezy from the cockpit. She tumbled across the ferns, cutting her face on their thorns. She came to a stop between Almitad’s remains and the bone lantern.
Vavnaar was mid-step, his blade poised for the killing blow, when Skate altered its mass, shifting its direction to intercept him. It rolled directly under his descending boot. The instant his foot made contact, the sphere’s obsidian mass transformed into a pliable purple slime.
A flash of shock registered on Vavnaar’s face as his boot slid across the slick surface. He fought to regain his footing, a violent lurch that turned his precise, deadly strike into a telegraphed, clumsy swing.
Trenn’s body moved on instinct. He read the altered angle of the attack, his dodgeball reflexes taking over as he twisted clear of the blade.
The dodge left him poised. He saw the opening created by Vavnaar’s wide, unbalanced gait. He stepped up and kicked Skate. The pliable sphere shot through the gap between Vavnaar’s legs, its glossy black shell reforming as it flew toward the red-furred Wolf Kin behind him.
Janaree never saw it coming. The rock sphere smashed into her chest plating, cracking her ribs and knocking the wind out of her lungs. Skate’s mass altered, flattening against the red fur’s armor before it abruptly reformed. The violent expansion launched it backward, sending it slamming into the back of Vavnaar’s head.
A section of Skate's obsidian shell detonated with a brittle CRASH. Sharp fragments slashed and pierced the exposed fur at the base of Vavnaar's skull. Blood seeped from the wounds. A surprised whine escaped the leader’s lips as Skate, its shell visibly thinned by the blast, bounced from the impact and fell to the ground between him and Janaree; out of Trenn’s reach.
A pulse of raw, necrotic power snapped Trenn’s attention back to Almitad’s remains.
The final glowing symbol of the second runeword faded from the robe, reappearing as a mote of light that seared itself onto the skeleton's solar plexus. With the pattern across the ribs now complete, the third runeword on the robe blazed, then vanished.
The instant it disappeared, a new connection erupted in Trenn’s mind. It was a rigid, unnatural cord originating from Almitad's remains. A powerful tether that bound the bones to an unseen, unknown presence. He recognized the frequency instantly—the same unnatural bond that linked Gil's soul to Zeen’s musket.
Put the bloom inside Almitad, Mara had said. Her command echoed in Trenn’s mind. “Ezy! Get the Mana Bloom from its bone lantern, and put it in Almitad’s thoracic cage!” he ordered through a Message spell.
Ezy pushed herself up, her heavy gloves digging into the thorny ferns. She grabbed the bone cage and smashed it against the ground repeatedly until it splintered apart.
As Ezy retrieved the Mana Bloom, its overwhelming hum faltered into a weaker, dying pulse. She carried the undead flower to the still skeleton. She slipped it up from under its ribs, positioning it behind the runescribed bones of Almitad's thoracic cage.
The Mana Bloom’s necrotic light flashed, its hum regaining its full strength.
A low scrape of bone on earth echoed across the battlefield. A skeletal hand pressed into the ground. With a slow, deliberate motion, the skeleton pushed itself to a standing position.
Stunned silence swept the battlefield as all eyes, momentarily lost to the battle, watched Almitad’s glowing remains lift off the ground. The undead bloom pulsed behind the shining runes of her ribcage, a baleful heart of black-green fire.
Runes and Runewords
Runewords, which are complex arcane constructs. A runeword is dormant until activated by a specific catalyst. It must specify its target with the proper runes. The power and stability of a runeword are determined by the number of runes it contains and the skill of the runesmith.
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Four-Rune Words (Expert Tier): This is the level of a skilled runecrafter, such as Almitad. These runewords are stable and powerful.
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Five-Rune Words (Master Tier): The practical limit for master artisans. A five-rune word is the most complex arcana that can be used without suffering from instability or power loss (diminishing returns).
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Six and Seven-Rune Words (Archmage Tier): This level of arcane architecture has only ever been successfully demonstrated by Grimoire Mages who used ichor ink instead of pure mana for their runescribing.
Rune Arcanas
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Blood Scribed: A technique where blood (or ichor) is used as the medium for scribing runes instead of pure mana.
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Effect: The resulting runes are highly resistant to being dispelled or altered.
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Circular Runeword: An advanced scribing technique focusing on a precise style rather than the simplest form. Often likened to the visual arts.
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Effect: The resulting runeword is exceptionally stable. It will not decay or fade over time.
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Compressed Runeword: A technique for scribing runes in a smaller, more condensed form.
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Primary Benefit: Allows a runecrafter to add one additional rune to a runeword beyond their normal skill limit (e.g., an expert with this Arcana could create a five-rune word).
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Primary Drawback: The compression introduces a fundamental instability to the arcane structure, making the resulting runeword volatile or prone to failure.
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Tattooed Runeword: A specialized Arcana that allows a runecrafter to scribe runewords directly onto the living tissue of a creature (skin, hide, scales, or even bone).
Almitad's Runeword-Lined Robe:
- Runeword 1: absorb + (the) target: flesh + (and) target: organ(s) + (of) target: caster.
- Runeword 2: absorb + (the) target: rune(s) + (and) release (what you've absorbed) + (on the) target: caster.
- Runeword 3: bind + (the) target: soul + (to the) target: caster
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