Aster Fall, Ch 8: A Thousand Runic Leaves (Patreon)

“So, that Barbarian knows you’re an Outsider,” Jeric frowned as he took in Sam’s words.

The fork towards Highfold was just ahead of them and the afternoon sun was bright in the western sky, radiating out a liquid gold energy across the horizon.

“What I don’t understand is why he had so little of a reaction to it.” Sam frowned. “The Visionary with him made it sound like they were familiar with Outsiders...and not just as enemies. It doesn’t make sense.”

The Visionary’s words echoed in his mind. “I don’t know why he’s working with humans, but don't push him. You know what they’re like.”

“That means they’ve talked to one before, or they work with them.” Aemilia spoke up, her voice calm, as she turned in the saddle to look toward her son. As always, her words were insightful.

“Even if it’s hard to believe, we have to consider that.”

It had taken his mother a couple of days to adjust to being a Seer on the road, but she was on top of it now. Krana had helped to show her what to do and she was constantly scanning the area around them, pushing the boundaries of her abilities.

His mother had gained a lot of general experience from the battle, taking her up to General Level 27. Her class hadn’t leveled from that, but it had already reached Level 8 from her efforts during the journey.

Most of her status points had gone into Wisdom and Intelligence, as well as a bit of Constitution, and her mind was sharper than ever. Sam had no doubt that leveling up to higher tiers would come naturally to her.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Sam grumbled. He understood the logic, but he still found it strange. “How could he know about other Outsiders, or have met them? Wouldn’t the World Law disapprove?”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” his father shook his head as he glanced over. “The World Law has troubles, which show up as Flaws and more, like our old class. It may not be able to keep track of everything. If some weaker Outsiders came in, or had a way to hide themselves, or the church didn’t find the Flaw in time....”

Jeric’s words led in the same direction as Sam’s thoughts.

“So, there might be more Outsiders around,” Sam concluded with a sigh. “Then the question...is what they’re doing here.”

“Whatever they want, most likely,” Aemilia said, shaking her head. “We can’t assume they have a concerted plan or that they’re even working together. Every myth says that Outsiders are chaotic and destructive.”

“And clever,” Sam agreed. “They may be hiding from the church or even working with mercenary bands or merchants from behind the scenes, which would explain Jesar’s group knowing about them. It would help them gather resources...or whatever else they want.”

“More importantly, what does that mean for us?” Jeric brought up the next point as he looked toward Sam, his gaze concerned. “Is it going to be easier for you or harder, if people are on the lookout?”

“Remember that city walls have wards against illusions,” Krana was riding nearby and looked over, shaking her head. “That’s one reason Sam never entered the major cities before this. His amulet isn’t good enough to block them yet. Highfold is a smaller city, but it will likely be the same.”

“So, this problem may be well known to the forces in power...” Aemilia concluded, as she gave Krana a long look. “There has to be a reason the cities have wards for that. It also suggests the Outsiders might have found a way around them.”

It was both good news and bad, and Sam was being forced to adjust his perspective of the world again. For a while now, he’d thought he was the only Outsider in the world.

Growing up, myths of Outsiders had always been of great monsters and demons that destroyed cities and terrorized the world, but perhaps those were only the most famous ones.

On the positive side, it meant that the higher forces of the world might ignore him more than he thought, as long as he didn’t cause trouble and tried to stay away from them.

On the other side, it meant that there might be organized efforts by the church or cities to find Outsiders that they knew were around, so they could eliminate them.

He didn’t feel like being caught up in some general purge.

“I’ll create a place outside of the city to stay until I can get around the wards,” he added, thinking about it. Staying in Highfold would be best for his family, but not for him.

There were probably some areas outside the city where he could find an inn. That was what he’d done near Osera and Ebonfar. Cities were usually surrounded by smaller villages and markets that wanted to avoid the taxes inside, as well as the city guard.

“Are you going to be in trouble?” Altey asked, joining in on the conversation from where she was riding in front of him.

“No, it will be fine,” Sam said immediately, shaking his head. “I’ll just stay out of the way of anyone looking for Outsiders.”

He didn’t say that it might be hard to do.

“I’ll protect you from anyone who wants to bother you,” Altey declared, tilting her head up to look back at him.

“I’m the big brother,” Sam laughed, ruffling her hair. “I’m supposed to take care of you instead.”

“I can help,” she insisted, giving him a determined look as she tried to be fierce. At that moment, she looked very protective. Her eyes were sharp and there was a serious frown on her face.

“One day, you will be Altey the Magnificent, Archmage of the Seven Winds.” Sam grinned as he ruffled her hair again. “Then, no one will dare to contradict you.”

“I will be,” Altey agreed immediately, nodding at him. The wand he’d given her was tucked into her belt within easy reach, and the defensive amulet was hanging around her neck.

To the side, Krana’s eyes suddenly flared with a bright silver gleam as she turned her attention to Altey.

She let out a thoughtful hmm as she rubbed at her chin, giving the girl a long, meditative look. She didn’t say what she’d seen.

Sam just grinned down at his sister.

---

One day rolled into the next as they encountered the fork in the road that led toward Highfold. Other travelers were rare, but two or three appeared in a day now, usually a merchant wagon or a small party of adventurers.

Most kept to themselves, nearly as wary as other travelers as they were of monsters. Bandits were always a problem on the road. Adventurers and small mercenary groups could also cause unwanted trouble.

Since the encounter with Jesar’s group, Sam had been thinking through what he could do to improve himself and gain more strength. That event had raised several key issues in his mind.

The first was that he needed to figure out a way to upgrade his amulet, to see if he could make it block Analyze. The original model from Krana had that capability, so even without the complete pattern, there had to be something he could do.

There were quite a few runes on the original amulet that he wasn’t familiar with. Dozens of them, in fact. There were also more patterns connecting them that he needed to figure out.

He was an Advanced Enchanter, but he still felt like his understanding of the basics was a bit haphazard.

In terms of upgrading the amulet, he didn’t have the ability yet, but he could plan for the future. He had plenty of Earth mana, but he would need some rare materials, ones that could augment the enchantment.

Embradium, perhaps.... It was a well-known metal that augmented magical effects. He’d have to talk to Krana about what could work. Her knowledge of materials was much larger than his still.

The second thing he needed to do was to improve his spells, especially his understanding of Crystal Flame. He needed to study it at a deeper level and create more spell versions that he could use for Flame Strike and Essence Shield.

As for whether or not there were Outsiders around in the world, he set that thought to work at the back of his mind as he focused on the training that he could accomplish now.

The pattern of the illusion amulet appeared in his mind, outlined in crystal blue flames as it spun in three dimensions. The gaps on the interior where he didn’t have the pattern were more clear to him than ever.

He kept just a thread of attention on the world around him, enough to keep Altey balanced and the reins in his hands, as he turned his attention inward.

One by one, he began to isolate the runes that he didn’t know, sorting them out as he copied them into columns to the side. He had quite a few python hides and other assorted skins in his dimensional bags that could be used as a base material.

To experiment with these, he didn’t need to create a full spell scroll. Instead, he would inscribe each one onto a small piece of hide, perhaps on a rectangle that was a few inches high and an inch or two wide.

The hide would absorb his essence better than regular wood or stone. The wood or leaves from the elemental trees on the plains might also work, since they were infused with mana. He could gather some leaves from the trees when they stopped.

All he needed to do was inscribe a rune and a simple activation pattern, and maybe a storage rune for extra power if the rune was complex. The result would be something like a talisman, but a reduced version.

Then he could practice activating them and see what they did. With each new rune he learned, he would add more to his capabilities.

With the outline of an idea in place, he continued sorting through the field of crystalline runes, organizing them into columns by how simple or complex they were.

Then he further arranged the columns by difficulty, dividing them into ones that seemed related to runes he already knew and ones that were completely unfamiliar.

By the time he was done, there were 48 runes in the simple column, 32 in the advanced column, 71 in the expert column, and 178 that were completely unknown and even more difficult.

He had his work cut out for him.

---

That night, they stopped near a grove of nimbus willows. It was a type of Wind elemental tree that had long, swaying branches that dropped in elegant arcs until they brushed across the top of the grass below.

Misty clouds spiraled along the branches and wound between the long, spear-shaped leaves, leaving silver streamers in the air.

As he walked through the grove, he gathered hundreds of leaves and even some pieces of stray wood, taking a bit from each branch that he walked past. He added it all to a swiftly accumulating collection of materials in his dimensional bags.

He’d gathered some along the road from other elements as well, and he would continue to do so. They were free crafting materials now.

He’d also given a large python hide to Lesat and had him cut it into perfectly rectangular slips. Each of them was three inches long by one and a half inch wide.

The guard’s subclass as a Leatherworker meant he had some abilities to manipulate skins quickly, including Model Pattern, Mend, Fuse Material, and Prepare Leather.

His main focus was on mending materials, which let him repair things more easily, and he’d upgraded that ability to Advanced when he hit twenty.

It hadn’t taken him long to reduce the python hide to a pile of slips for Sam to use.

With all of his materials gathered, Sam returned to the clearing where his family was and set up his worktable.

Of the options on the Storm Plains, Wind leaves were probably the best elemental material to use for unknown runes. Wind had the habit of augmenting other elements, rather than conflicting with it.

Wind and Water turned into rain...Wind and Fire into an inferno, and so on for the other elements. The Storm Plains themselves were proof enough of that.

Wind was behind all of the storms here.

Not every rune would have a primary element, since some of them were far more abstract, but it was a good place to start.

As he got comfortable, his mind turned to the first column of runes, the simple ones that were probably Basic or Advanced. Runes didn’t perfectly follow the tiers, so he’d been guessing when he sorted them.

Included in the column were also symbols that might be part of binding, support, or storage patterns. He wasn’t sure what everything was yet.

48 simple runes.... He’d have to try out each one in a few different ways. The python hide would be his default material and then he’d test each one out on the nimbus willow and other leaves after that, to see if it had a different effect.

He would also only use his own mana and aura for this, to minimize unintended effects.

His stylus and a slip of python hide appeared in his hand as he started to draw the first rune in the column.

At the same time, he was examining it from every side as he turned a model of it around in his mind, working to understand it more deeply.

This one looked a lot like the rune for “sight,” but it was a version he wasn’t familiar with. It might be something else entirely.

It didn’t take long for him to draw out the rune. It was just a few curves of his stylus and a small infusion of essence, about a point.

He kept the expenditure low so the rune wouldn’t be too dangerous. It was from an illusion amulet and not a weapon, but that didn’t mean it was harmless.

A rune for darkness or light could turn into a nice explosion if there was enough mana behind it.

When he was done, the leather slip had the single unknown rune at the center and an activation rune connected to it that was charged with a single point of essence.

He walked a little bit away from the clearing and surrounded himself with an Essence Shield. Then he touched the activation point as he tossed the slip away from him.

A moment later, the hide slip exploded into a flare of energy. A small twist of white-blue energy appeared, twining around itself. Then the mana in it burned out, the energy dissipating into the air.

As it did, the resonating hum of a concept in the air, and Sam’s ears tilted toward it as he concentrated on the fading energy. It was a song particular to this rune. Flickers of meaning flowed away from the explosion, but they were too quick to grasp.

When the energy was gone, he studied where it had been, his gaze considering. It was as if he’d heard one note in a song, just a fraction of the whole.

“Well, let’s do it again,” he muttered as he headed back to make another slip. Perhaps if he heard it enough, more of the song would become clear to him.

For the rest of the evening, one small, brilliant explosion after the other flared through the clearing. Sam’s shield blocked the sound from traveling, and as everyone started to go to sleep, he strengthened it so it blocked the light as well.

Each time a slip exploded, a strange, ethereal note rippled through the air.

---

As they stayed on the main road to Highfold, travel became easier and the quality of the road continued to improve. It wasn’t up to the standards of the central kingdom yet, but it had turned from a barren track to a more established road made from large paving stones.

Hundreds of years of carts and travelers passing over it had left wide ruts, which made him glad they were riding horses and not on a cart. It would have been a bumpy trip.

Altey was riding with Krana today as he continued to practice with runes. His stylus was in his hand as he pulled a nimbus willow leaf out of his pouch. A quick sketch of a rune and an activation symbol turned it into a hasty talisman, and he tossed it to the side of the road as he activated it.

A moment later, there was a flare of bright green light as a wind surged away from the twist of mana, leaving the haunting sound of a harp in the air.

“Hmm, something to do with voice, maybe,” Sam muttered, as he listened to the sound of it. “Perhaps to enhance it?”

Or it could have been related to music. Maybe the real illusion amulet could hide sounds as well, or create them?

The first rune was related to color, as it turned out. He’d had to combine it with a different rune for vision, and then it had worked to change the color of things. After a bit of practice, he’d shown it to Altey, who had thought it was an excellent game.

Now, her clothes looked like a rainbow.

He’d just given his mother a grin when she asked him what he was doing, and told her it would wear off in a few days. It was the most harmless version of magic he’d ever used, and it had been fun.

With more of a combat focus, the rune could be used to make a camouflage spell, if he worked with a few other things to enhance it, but it was nice to have something to play around with that wasn’t so serious.

A couple of minutes later, another hasty talisman exploded off to the side of the road, releasing the same sound of a harp. It was a bit lower in pitch and had less force than before.

He’d used the python hide for this one, so the Wind element wasn’t augmenting it.

He moved the rune over to a new “sound” category in his mind as he started to make a new slip.

Even if a rune didn’t have an immediate use, it was still important. Great things couldn’t be built without smaller parts. The illusion amulet had all of these runes for a reason.

Perhaps if he understood enough of them, he could figure out how to walk invisible through a crowd, conceal his voice behind a barrier, or completely change his appearance.

All of those would be a step in the right direction.

In order not to bother the others with the explosions, he continued to surround them in an Essence Shield, which gave him the advantage of practicing with that ability too.

He was working to block out the exact qualities of the light and sound generated by each explosion, which forced him to focus his attention and sped up his comprehension of the rune.

Slowly, as hour after hour passed and one day flowed into the next, the number of leaves and hide slips that he went through grew. One turned into a dozen, and a dozen into a hundred.

Each rune gave off a unique note as its energies flared to life.

From a hundred, it became more, until a thousand runic leaves swirled through the world around him in a river of enchantment. The current carried away the ones that had sung their song, and more continued to replace them in an endless stream.

The echoes built into a melody in his mind, one that advanced slowly toward greater understanding.