(Second Book Complete!) Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG

It was a few hours past midnight, and Kaius lay awake in bed, staring up at the slatted ceiling of the Pegleg. Soft moonlight streamed in through the small armoured portholes that flanked two edges of the pyramidal suite he shared with Porkchop. It was just enough to banish the greyscale of his darksight, revealing the honey-rich brown woodgrain.

He followed the swooping lines, twisting into an umber-coloured knot right above his head.

Kaius bit back the urge to sigh, not wanting to wake Porkchop who was slumbering next to him. Big bastard had stolen four-fifths of their palatially-sized bed — though that admittedly left him more room than he got in most inns.

He couldn’t sleep.

There wasn’t any particular reason for it. He wasn’t anxious about an attack: the layered shimmers of a half dozen Warhavens wavered through the windows. It made the dense curtain of stinging threads that lay beyond dance, as if they were writhing tendrils. Even if a beast found them, it would take enough time for them to break through the defenses for him and his team to rally. He just didn’t feel tired.

It happened sometimes. It was probably his new skill. He’d tested it out, but he hadn’t really gotten the chance to use it. Not yet. As much as he wanted to put the Skill through its paces, it wasn’t wise. Now that they’d hit the edge of the crater, they had to avoid unnecessary fights. There was no telling exactly where Brokenlight’s camp would be, and if they were discovered they might well be putting Kanmost’s life in danger.

The element of surprise would be vital — they still knew too little about the Onyx operation. Manpower, layout, and resources were all things that would be much easier to discover if they could sneak up unseen. Seizing the sap had been worth it, for that was a resource they could trade for some potentially life-saving tonics — but simple experimentation? He was patient enough to wait.

Though, it was annoying that he might not unlock his next Drakthar spell before they hit the camp.

Kaius let out a low sigh and sat up, pushing his covers off slowly. If he was awake, he might as well head to the common room. He could study the map that was engraved into the table, or maybe work on puzzling out some of his inscriptions. Even if he missed a night’s sleep, he had enough Vitality that it would take several sleepless nights before it became a problem.

He slipped out of bed softly, feeling the give of the wool carpet underfoot. It softened his footfalls, but it was still difficult to stop his cuirass from jingling with every movement. A necessary discomfort: of all of them, his armour was the most time consuming to don — though he still only wore his gambison and cuirass. Only a madman slept in sabatons.

When Porkchop’s soft breathing didn’t so much as hitch, Kaius pulled open the door to their room. Two doors sat closed on either side of the short hallway that led to the common room at the rear of their craft: the washroom and the cabin that Kenva and Ianmus had split between them.

The hallway framed a slice of the Pegleg’s couch — and Ianmus. The mage was huddled in the middle of the seat. Resting his elbows on the ledge behind, he stared out at the moon. Cold white light gleamed on his silver hair, a long waterfall that poured over his shoulders and back.

Kaius could only see a thin sliver of Ianmus’s face, but the mage looked pensive. It seemed like the night air wasn’t just affecting him.

He crept over, doing his best to avoid waking the rest of their team. He made it a full ten strides before a floorboard flexed under his weight. There was no creak, but the soft sound was enough for Ianmus to look over. The man gave him a smile, before he went back to looking out the window.

Strange, that wasn’t much like him.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Ianmus asked through their communication rings.

“Alas, it has eluded me,” Kaius replied, sliding onto the couch to join the man. He looked out another one of the portholes, up at the endless swirls of stars in the sky above. Some of them were so densely packed they looked like hazy clouds of white with the odd twinkle of red or blue.

Ianmus cracked a smile at his comment. He rested his chin on his folded arms, his hair shifting to reveal the tips of his pointed ears.

“Something on your mind?” Kaius prompted, though it was obvious something was. He still gave his friend an out — Ianmus rarely talked his past, and it wasn’t a giant leap to guess that the rapidly approaching reunification with Kanmost might have dredged up old memories.

“I see Kenva is not the only one who picked up on my mood,” Ianmus replied, giving him a wry smile.

Kaius gave his friend a gentle shove. “Spend enough time around someone and you tend to pick up when they’re acting a little off.”

Iamus smiled a bit wider, before his attention drifted back out the window.

“True enough,” he said, pausing for a moment. “I worry for Kanmost’s safety, of course — but I find myself beset by a stranger mood than that. I initially jumped at the opportunity to work with him — it was a perfect way out of Mystral. Life has changed much, and yet the world is stubborn. I still find myself surrounded by the pageantry and schemes of petty lords.”

That was more than Ianmus had spoken about his time in Mystral in maybe ever.

“The academy must have been pretty bad to send you packing at the first opportunity,” Kaius said, twisting to face the man. Hells, why not give it a nudge? “Are nobles that much of a problem in the Spires? Most of the mages we met in Baanswell seemed alright.”

Ianmus snorted, meeting his eyes. Ice blue shone in the moonlight, standing out in the lightless gloom of the common room. “Not every mage is of high birth, but the academies themselves are expensive — most are either the children of Spire mages, the wealthy, or the well connected. Half chaffed at the fact I was a scholarship student, the other found it all too easy to ogle at the half-breed. Youthful braggadocio only made it worse.”

Kaius winced at that. It was not unsurprising. People could be cruel, and half elves were the subject of much scrutiny — both simple impolite curiosity, and overt ignorance. Even with plenty of other races being found all throughout the central plains, elves stood apart — even more than the dwarves. They almost never left the depths of the Sea, and those that did walked with one foot in another world. Ageless and powerful giants, they were a little…notorious for looking down on others. It left plenty of ammunition for the young and narrow minded.

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Ianmus turned away, looking back out to the night. “But no. Frustrating and annoying as they were, Mystral’s political sphere was only a small reason behind my departure, i got my share of retribution by being better than them anyway. The past’s just made me think of my family.”

Ah, that was a sentiment he could understand. How could he not, when the main reason they’d come to Baanswell in the first place was to investigate his own severed roots? Even now, he felt adrift sometimes when he thought of Father and all he had lost.

Kaius doubted that Ianmus had fared much better. Happy childhoods had a way of bleeding through conversations and shared memories — they weren’t locked away tight, never to be mentioned.

Plus, there was one other thing elves were rather famous for. Those that left the Sea never lingered, never settled. They might stay a year, or a decade — but what were years to a creature that might see a millenium. It wasn’t all of them, of course, but enough that the reputation stuck.

“Your father?”

“Certainly a large part.”

Ianmus didn’t elaborate, and Kaius didn’t press him. For a while, they simply sat in silence as Kaius watched the night breeze rustle though the ruby leaves that yawned above the pegleg like the ceiling of a vaunted hall.

“My mother was lovely,” Ianmus finally said, his voice soft.

Kaius stilled. Was. Another sentiment he could understand.

“I remember the warmth of her smile, and her hair — she kept it in tightly cropped brown ringlets, so it didn’t get in the way of her herbalism work. Father was… tall.”

“Gee, what a surprise.”

Ianmus laughed at his comment. “He was! Damn near a stride and a half taller than me — had to crouch to get through most doors.”

“Do you remember much of him?”

“Some. A gleaming plait that reached his thighs, violet eyes that practically glowed in the night, and the faint glimmer of silver that I sometimes caught out of the corner of my eye. His name. Laenias Ysilia. I thought it would be mine too, once. He was nice enough, but I never really remember him smiling, and he always seemed lost in thought. In hindsight, it was pretty clear he had one foot out the door the entire time. I must have been…nine? Eight? He just got on a ship and left, like the last decade had been a simple day in port — I still remember watching the sails grow small.”

Even suspecting it had happened, Kaius was surprised at the visceral bite of his anger. He couldn’t understand it. For all his flaws, Father had given him everything — even his very life. The senselessness of it all, to be so monstrous as to treat a family as a common drunken daliance.

“Mother was shattered,” Ianmus continued. “She was absolutely smitten. He left me a few Skills, and there was some coin, but that ran out eventually. Father had left us the apartment he’d bought, though, so we had that much. She returned to work, but well paying opportunities are slim for a Bronze herbalist who had been out of work for over a decade — but she tried as well as she could have.”

“What happened?” Kaius asked softly.

“Industrial accident. Wrong place at the wrong time,” Ianmus explained, sighing softly. The sound carried the pang of an old wound, long healed but aching in the cold night air. “I was thirteen. She’d been on reagent preparation under an alchemist, alongside two dozen others. Some idiot had stacked a box of powdered hearthfire blooms next to a barrel of solvent, and some other idiot overpressured a still at the next station over before it was noticed. Half the workshop died in the blast, the rest barely hung on long enough for healers to arrive.”

Hells, to lose them to simple, rotten luck. Kaius couldn’t even imagine. And so young, too. It felt strange to even think, but at least he’d had something to rage and rally against — something to work him to the bone, and give him direction. How well would he have held up, without the Great Depths forcing his hand?

It made it all the more impressive that Ianmus had made his way to the top of Sunspire’s academy.

“That’s terrible,” he said softly, keeping his thoughts to himself; it was clear that Ianmus had more to say, and he knew well that things like this had a tendency to just fall out in one big flood.

“It was,” Ianmus said softly. “She shouldn’t have even been there — she was working late to finish some leftover preparation. I was at the tea house down the road, waiting for her. Everything after that was a little crazy. I barely left the house for months, slowly chipping away at the coin she’d left me. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it a second longer — everything reminded me of her, so I needed a way out, and there was only one available.”

“Magic?”

Ianmus nodded. “Spire academies don’t accept admissions until the age of seventeen, and the Skills Father had left behind were all casting or solar aligned. I knew if I could merge all three of them I would have a certain shot at a scholarship. So I sold the apartment, and put every copper I had into tutors — both for the Skills I needed, including the deposit for Solar Manipulation, and for the kind of general education I’d need to ever have a hope of getting in. It was just a lifeline, at first.”

The mage twitched his finger, and a mote of solar mana drifted free to dance along the rim of the porthole in front of him. “Once I sank my teeth into it, and felt the searing heat of that golden light? It became something of an obsession. I didn’t really have anything else, so I just put everything into it.”

The mote of solar mana winked out, and silence stretched long. Kaius didn’t really know what to say — and knew how little it really mattered if he did say anything. It was a stroke of tragedy, familiar and cruel, so he sat with simple understanding in his heart.

He still found it atrocious that Ianmus’s father had just up and left. He was still out there somewhere — did he even know? Ever wonder what had happened to his son, or the woman who had borne his child? Hells, he could have at least left them with more than a few skills and lodging — he had been Silver! Even if he was young for an elf, a Silver could have easily gathered the wealth to support them. Definitely enough for Ianmus’s mother to get the training she would have needed to work a better job.

Kaius was honestly surprised at the lack of anger in his friend — half of that would have had him seriously considering patricide. Would he be so calm if they ever met the man?

It was something to consider. They would be visiting the Sea eventually. Porkchop had business with the dens, and they needed to investigate the house of Dynia. Kaius had no doubt that they would cause a stir — even if just because of his and Porkchop’s bond. What would happen, when the name of Ianmus, a powerful half-elf solar mage, spread through the conclaves?

“Ever thought about what you’ll do if you ever run into him again? Your father?” Kaius asked hesitantly. “We are planning on going to the Conclaves eventually.”

Ianmus shrugged. “Hard to say. I’ve thought about it of course. Hells, I spent years rehearsing the curses and condemnations I would throw at his feet. I hated him. Now, he’s just an old memory.”

A moment later, the mage yawned and stretched his arms high overhead. He got to his feet.

“I’m going to go to bed. Thanks for listening — it helped.”

Kaius nodded and watched his friend slip soundlessly into his room. When the door clicked shut, he looked back to the moon. For long minutes, thoughts of towering trees and the callousness of the ageless swirled through his head. His memories of loss were far more cut and dry than his friend’s. Sometime soon, in the coming days or weeks, he’d have some more Onyx bastards to kill.

He’d best get some sleep himself.