Arthur placed his inscriber on the blackboard. The tool was made from some kind of metal and incredibly cold to touch, well below freezing if he wasn’t mistaken. Temperatures were hard to judge these days. It was also incredibly light, weighing about as much as an ordinary ballpoint pen. Arthur looked at Cyprus and then the rune he’d drawn. The old elf smiled at him, seemingly content to watch him work.

  Arthur glared suspiciously at the rune and then the apparently innocent elf. He’d recognise that look anywhere, someone up to no good. The rune looked simple enough and with his stats as high as they were, he didn’t need any artistic ability to perfectly replicate it. So what was the catch? Arthur sincerely doubted Cyprus wanted to check if he could copy a swirly line so what was it the old elf was trying to teach him here?

  Staring at the rune wasn’t going to give him any answers so Arthur put his finger on it and traced it from beginning to end. The rune had been carved into the astral rock, so lightly that simply looking at it wouldn’t reveal anything—at least with his relatively low perception. The starting point of the rune was carved a fifth of a centimetre deep, rising to a fourth near the middle, before gradually dropping to a single millimetre near the end of the rune. Cyprus nodded appreciatively at his investigations.

  Arthur still felt like there was something more to this, but nothing came to mind. Taking a deep breath, he placed his inscriber against the astral rock. Control was the name of the game here, he needed to carefully regulate his strength. Lightly as he could, Arthur applied pressure onto the astral rock.

  Two things happened at once. The inscriber sank a millimetre into the board before the mother of all rejections struck him. It was like he’d just tried to get the opposite ends of the world's strongest magnet to touch. His inscriber was pushed away with the force of a hundred kicking mules, but because of how carefully he’d gripped it, the tool hardly budged. The laws of physics meant there was only one possible course of action now. With a resounding crack, Arthur’s inscriber snapped in two, the fragmented end shooting off at subsonic speeds.

  Cyprus waved his hand and the impromptu bullet faded into nothingness a half foot into its flight. “Now that right there, young Arthur, is exactly why rune scribers are more than mere artisans. What you just experienced right now, is the Principle of Permanence, the proclivity of an essence to maintain its shape and reject change of any kind. Now, while this astral rock isn’t exactly an essence, it nearly perfectly replicates one and is why training with it is so valuable.”

  “Could you not have told me all this first before you had me try my first rune,” Arthur groused.

  “I could have, couldn’t I,” Cyprus replied calmly, “but with you completely unaware, you were able to experience the principle in its entirety. It may seem trivial now, but that's an experience the vast majority of rune scribers will never feel. Trust me when I say it serves a purpose.”

  Arthur frowned. “And this being funny to you had nothing to do with it.”

  Cyprus grinned. “Don’t deny an old elf the little pleasure he gets.”

  In the last thousand years, you're only the second student I’ve managed to do this to. Most new users don’t pick up this lesson cube without at least having an inkling about what rune scribing is.” Cyprus summoned another inscriber into his hand, this one even thicker than the one he’d just broken. “Astral rock is far more stubborn than ordinary essence. In fact, a piece this large would be impossible to work with unless you use a few advanced inscription tricks.”

  “So what… I was never supposed to succeed,” Arthur said, accepting the new inscription tool from Cyprus.

  “Quite the opposite, in fact, young Originator,” Cyprus replied, “learning about the Principle of Permanence, experiencing it in full, is the most important part of becoming a rune scriber. The more familiar you become with the sensation, the easier it will be to interact with the true essence of an object. You have just experienced the greatest rejection you probably ever will. Now if I were a superstitious fool, I’d probably think it was somehow linked to your upper potential as a rune scriber, though experience has taught me the two aren’t linked. What I have learned, however, is that your first interaction with the Principle of Permanence will affect how easy you find it to deal with in the future."

  “So like throwing someone into the deep end to teach them how to swim?” Arthur asked.

  “What an apt analogy,” Cyprus exclaimed, “it seems I’m not the only one learning new things today. I did the equivalent of throwing you into the harshest ocean on my homeworld. I don’t know how or why it works like this, but you’ll find it around 20% easier to inscribe on stubborn essences. For comparison, my teacher only managed to give me a third of the advantage."

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Turning around, Cyprus patted the blackboard. “In the real world, pieces of astral rock this large aren't just lying around. Try again, only this time on something a little smaller.”

  Cyprus summoned a new slab of Astral rock, only this time it was the size of a small laptop. Taking it, Arthur placed his fresh inscriber against the hard surface. This time, he knew what to expect, the memory of his previous experience fresh in his mind. Arthur didn’t waste time analysing the channelling rune again, his memory had been good enough to remember such details even before he’d levelled for the first time. Exhaling slowly, Arthur pushed the inscriber into the Astral rock.

  The rejection hit instantly. This time, however, it was far weaker and Arthur was ready for it. The tool tried to eject itself, but Arthur held on firmly and didn’t allow it to move a single millimetre. That was manageable enough, but the real challenge began when he tried to inscribe the actual rune. Holding something in place and keeping it stable in the face of terrible forces while moving were two very different things, it turned out.

  A high strength stat didn’t exactly lead itself well to rune inscription. While it was helpful, dealing with the Principle of Permanence required a kind of mental resilience that had nothing to do with how high your stats were. Okay, maybe it does, Arthur reconsidered, but it wasn’t as stat-dependent as other crafts were. Being as careful as possible, Arthur's inscriber began to move.

  Millimetre by millimetre, he carved the rune into the astral rock. At certain points, it was easier than others, but it was never easy. The rune that had taken Cyprus seconds to draw, took Arthur two and a half minutes and left him drenched in sweat. Exhaling deeply, Arthur took in his work.

  At first glance, it looked like an almost perfect replica of Cyprus' rune, but when he scrutinised it, flaws were revealed. His swirl wasn’t perfectly uniform, he’d pressed too hard in certain places and had over-extended thrice. For a first attempt, Arthur didn’t think he’d done too bad. Cyprus took the slate of astral rock from him and ran his fingers over it.

  “An excellent first attempt,” Cyprus said, nodding appreciatively, “you have incredibly steady hands, Arthur. Were you an artisan before you picked up the spear?”

  Arthur grinned. “Not exactly no, but I did spend a year and a half practising surgery exercises when I was fifteen. I guess the steady hands I worked for didn’t disappear.”

  Cyprus looked at him consideringly. “Something tells me there's a story in there, but I won't pry. Having steady hands is one of the most important things when it comes to rune scribing, so you’re ahead of the curve there. Now all that's left is experience and repetition.”

  “You have another thirty-two minutes left in this lesson cube before it runs out of juice. In that time, I want you to get this rune down to fifty seconds. By that point, I’m hoping you’ll start becoming more familiar with how inscription feels and next lesson, you can start working on drawing out the essence of an object.”

  “That fast. I was thinking it would take much longer.”

  “Normally it does. Fresh students usually take three lessons to produce a usable rune. You managed it on your first attempt, and to a much higher standard too, I have a feeling you’ll be going very far as a rune scriber, colour-blindness be damned.”

  Following Cyprus’ encouragement, Arthur spent the next twenty minutes repeatedly carving the channelling rune. It was slow going, but he saw a definitive improvement between his eleventh work and his first. When he also noticed that Cyprus had been giving him slightly larger pieces of astral rock every time, he realised he’d improved even more than he’d initially thought.

  Arthur was itching to summon his Armament of the Soul and try recreating this rune with it, but he held off for now. He’d only just picked up rune scribing. There was no need to rush. Arthur was just about to move onto his twelfth rock when the classroom around him suddenly shook. He dropped the stone and turned to look at Cyprus. The old elf had become blurry and was rapidly fading away.

  "It seems duty calls, Mr Ward. Until our next lesson then.”

  Leaving the lesson cube felt like waking up from a lucid dream, almost as if he were rapidly rising to the surface after lying down at the bottom of a pool. He’d told Wovan to bring him back if she came across a threat she couldn’t deal with. In retrospect, hoping to have fifty minutes of uninterrupted peace on the tier 2 fallen planet may have been a little optimistic on his part.

  Before he’d even opened his eyes, Arthur had his soul spear summoned and ready in his hands. His domain shot out in the next second followed by a cast of Water Shell. Perhaps it was overkill, but he wouldn’t be taking any chances on Haadran. The first thing Arthur noticed was his Soul Splinter. Wovan’s twelve bodies were surrounding him, five of them on the ground, four hovering at his chest height from his seated position and three above his head.

  She'd formed a protective barrier around him, 96 beady eyes focused on the threat that had infringed on her territory. Arthur finally got a good look at it—him, and tensed his muscles, preparing to explode into motion. Standing before him, was the very thing Iris had warned him of most, a native of planet Haadran untainted by the corruption that had taken the world. The man was human, or at least he looked human enough and towered over Arthur's seated form. At seven and a half feet tall, he was a bonafide goliath and had the muscle mass to match it.

  "Greetings traveller," the man said, his voice like rumbling earth. "I think you should prepare yourself. You're going to need that spear of yours soon."

  Links to the audiobooks.

  Etherious: Originator

  -

  Here

  Here

  Here

  ?Goodreads

  Here and read 8 chapters ahead.

  Patreon