Kaius pushed open the door to the Guild, the heavy oak feeling closer to balsa with his ever-growing strength. As the well-oiled hinges slid open, the soft murmur of discussion that permeated the Guild’s common room fell dead silent. Within, teams of delvers from Copper to Steel stopped what they were doing to stare at them.

  Kaius froze for a moment, still unused to being the utter centre of attention.

  As far as they’d been able to figure out, word had gotten out that they were the ones the Guild had been looking for, and that they were far stronger than they should have been. With Rieker and Ro delaying an official announcement, the rumour mill had gone wild.

  Kaius hadn’t heard any of the rumours himself — delvers tended to be more aware and cautious of the senses of the higher-tiered — but he could see it in their eyes: curiosity, and a little wonder and confusion as well.

  Frankly, it was a little annoying: they were only there to use the training rooms. He didn’t want to deal with the thousandth person staring at the glyphs on his temples. It was obvious — they were looking at his face, not him. He could feel their eyes like a physical prod sliding over his skin.

  He knew it was reasonable. Skin markings were rare, usually only seen amongst Hiwiann from the coastal regions of the southern steppe and highlands. Throw in the fact that they were clearly some form of exotic body formation? Yeah, he could see why people looked.

  It didn’t mean he had to enjoy it.

  Judging by the awkward stiffness in the rest of his team, they felt similarly. Ianmus had spent his formative years in an academy, and Kenva had grown up nomadic. Hells, of all of them, Porkchop was probably the most used to attention — even though he’d been too young to meet the elves, he’d been schooled on how to manage their…adoration.

  As Kaius’s heart beat once more, he cleared his throat and crossed the common room, studiously ignoring the looks on his way to the front desk.

  “Can I help you?” the attendant asked. A young woman he didn’t recognise — which wasn’t uncommon these days. The Guild seemed rife with young unclassed who’d been scooped up to aid with the influx of work in return for board and training. Hells, it was where he’d gotten the idea of nudging Niles towards the guild.

  Kaius smiled, reaching into his hide jacket to pull out the letter he had penned in response to Yan Mi’s missive. “I need to get this to the new settlement at the edge of the Sea — Dawntown. It’s a response to a letter I received from them earlier.”

  The attendant nodded. “Ah, the letter Ro was looking after. I can take care of that for you. We’ll deduct the cost from the stores you’ve banked with us,” she said.

  Kaius nodded, pleased. “That’s fine.”

  “Anything else I can help you with?”

  He shook his head. “No. We’re just here to use the training room. The deep one.”

  While there were plenty of training spaces built beneath the guild, the ones warded and reinforced enough for people like them to use were on the deepest level — a measure to help dampen any noise of shocks that might disturb the peace of the city above.

  The attendant only nodded, not even questioning that they would be using training halls usually reserved for the most elite of the Guild. He supposed they counted as that now. Perhaps the girl had been briefed more than the average delver.

  Departing the common room quickly, they fled down the warren of hallways and stairs toward their training hall.

  “Gods, I can’t wait for some sort of announcement,” Kenva said with a shudder as they started down yet another flight. “Everyone knows something is up, and the stares are getting ridiculous. Plus, keeping our auras constrained is growing old.”

  Kaius couldn’t help but agree. They had taken to using their authority to constrain its natural projection close to their skin. It wasn’t perfect at hiding their Silver status, but it granted them some leeway. Still, it was uncomfortable. While it wasn’t particularly strenuous, keeping it up day after day created a constant tension — almost like a headache. At least it was good training.

  They reached their hall deep beneath the earth, where the surrounding stones were thick and inscribed to protect against damage. The only one that Deadacre had rated for Golds.

  Still, Kaius didn’t trust it enough to throw around Starfalls willy-nilly — who knew if his Honours and Heroic rated spell were enough to overwhelm the enchantments baked into the walls. It would, however, be good enough for some general practice.

  Filing in, they found training equipment ranging from target dummies to blunted weapons lining one wall. The rest was simple open space, wide and brightly lit by ward lights above.

  “What’s everyone going to work on?” he asked.

  “I’m going to try some sprinting drills,” Porkchop said. “I need to work on Primal Swiftness with how bulky my armour is getting. I’m hoping to push the skill through to the second tier.”

  It made sense. While the common misconception was that frontline heavies were cumbersome and slow in thick armour, that was often far from the case. Such classes tended to invest heavily in strength, and specialised mobility Skills to allow the bursts of speed that were necessary to intercept attacks as a team’s defender.

  “Do you want any help practicing dodging?” Kenva asked.

  Porkchop nodded enthusiastically. “That would be great! As long as you don’t aim for the head or my vitals, I should survive just fine even if you punch through my armour.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Kenva nodded. “Good. I was hoping to get more of a feel for Howl of the North Wind. I’ve got more faith in you than these stone walls.” She twirled a hand, gesturing at the hall.

  Kaius chuckled, understanding the feeling completely. Now that they were Silver, almost everything felt a bit fragile. Even if this place was rated for Gold, they weren’t any old Silvers — not with their wealth of stats.

  “Well, if you two are doing that, I’ll take the far corner and work on my keyseal — see if I can piece together a little more about how it works. A few of my spellcasting general Skills should help a little, now that they help me to pick apart spell construction.” Ianmus said.

  In all honesty, Kaius was a little jealous. With the massive jump in their class rarities — two for Kenva and three for Ianmus — the disparity had been enough that every one of their general skills evolved, excluding Kenva’s Farseer — which was already Heroic. It meant a lack of bottlenecks — they could comfortably work on actually leveling their skills as they got used to the sudden changes in their capabilities. He, on the other hand, had several.

  “What’s your plan, Kaius?” Ianmus asked.

  “I figure I can pull triple duty,” Kaius replied. “Work on breaking through Tonal Weaving, and start delving a bit more into the intricacies of Vesryn runework — which will likely give my healing skill a bit of a work out.”

  “A little dangerous, don’t you think?” Ianmus cocked an eyebrow.

  Kaius shrugged. With his evolved Greater Regeneration providing slow limb regrowth, there were few reasons left to not experiment — still, he’d try to avoid blowing an entire arm off. “I’ll start small,” he said. “Work out if I can find the smallest increments of stability among the runes.”

  “If you’re sure,” Ianmus said.

  With that, they split off to their projects.

  Kaius sequestered himself in the corner of the room opposite Ianmus — he didn’t want to disturb the mage’s focus if a hiccup in his experiments led to runes destabilising. Already the mage was channelling, slowly weaving his keyseal with a focused expression.

  Across the hall, Porkchop was draped in the heavy orichalcum plate of his Beastknight’s Hide. Every few seconds there was a cracking snap as Kenva fired off a shot, as Porkchop used all his skills to dash away. Not every shot was backed by the ranger’s Howl; Kenva staggered them with normal arrows, keeping Porkchop on his toes. They seemed to be having fun, and Kaius could feel the thrill seeping across his bond with Porkchop.

  It only rose as an enhanced shot landed — deflecting off his armour with an earsplitting crack.

  Smiling at their antics, Kaius closed his eyes and centred himself.

  This practice had been a long time coming. At first, he lacked a large enough repertoire of Vesryn glyphs and spells to pick out commonalities in their construction. Then it had been too dangerous to risk, given his lack of control and limited regeneration.

  With Drakthar gaining a second node on his forearm — and a second-tier spell — Kaius had more to work with now. He looked down at the looping black lines on his skin. Much of the construction used the same elements as his lesser spells, just ordered in increasingly complicated, lengthy ways — but there were additional elements too: angular, jagged runes he hadn’t seen in earlier examples.

  He focused on the familiar ones. Based on his understanding of Vesryn runecraft, there were ever-present segments of runes in just about every array spread across all of his glyphs and spells. Some structures repeated as well — small arrays interwoven together, that were hidden in the core parts of every glyph.

  It was ruinously complex; Kaius had no doubt it could be be divided into even smaller parts, and that he was missing a lot. But it was a place to start. Anything used so universally was likely a basal requirement of the script and the most likely to be a stable component he could inscribe alone.

  Unfortunately, even the small sections he had identified were complex. There was enough power packed into those structures to blow off his hand if they destabilised. He needed to start smaller — experiment with the individual rune groupings that made up the smallest arrays. It would be a process of trial and error, but with Tonal Weaving he should get a sense for how his mana interacted with the runes and sacred geometry.

  With time, he hoped he might get a feel of what they might be used for — once he identified which were stable, at least.

  There was one problem: the only way to do that was by inscribing them in his flesh. Tonal Weaving was poorly suited to controlling mana outside his body, and Kaius was almost certain the three-dimensional runes of the Vesryn script were specialised for use inside bodies. He had no idea what confounding instability might arise from forming them outside their natural environment.

  Kaius sighed — at least he had Rapid Adaptation and the Pain Resistance that came with it.

  Focusing on the tip of his finger, Kaius called to mind one of the smallest segments of runes he had seen in every example of Vesryn glyphs and spell-hymns.

  Taking a deep breath, he reached for his mana and felt that burgeoning potential of raw energy fizz in his grip. Threading the barest scrap to the tip of his finger, he started to weave.

  The array came together almost instantly — a linked collection of small whirls only a few hairsbreadths in diameter at the tip of his nail. It barely covered a quarter of his fingertip.

  Holding the runes forcibly stable with his Skill, Kaius pushed up against the limits of his mana control as he did everything he could to make the weave as tight, fine, and stable as possible.

  In his glyph, the runes were a little larger — a little more densely packed with energy. Replicating that would have been a fool's move. The fundamentals of runework depended on geometry, form, and syntax. More power wouldn’t make the runes more stable — he wanted to use as little mana as he could to reduce the damage of inevitable backlash.

  Eventually, though, he had to withdraw his control. The array was so small and his grip on his mana so great that, even if it was unstable, nothing would happen until he left it to its own devices.

  He held his breath, feeling his heart thump in his chest as he stared at the black runes and retracted his grasp. For a moment, a grin started to spread across his face — the runes stayed stable, fluctuating.

  By the time his heart had beat twice, there was a surge. He felt the natural mana inside his conduits rip through the working. It buckled, a boiling whine of failure that sought to escape his flesh.

  A spike of pain lanced through his hand as the rune detonated. A gout of blood jetted out from the ruined remnant of his finger tip — hitting him right in the eyes.

  Kaius sighed, wiping his face.

  “Gods-fucking-dammit.”

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