Chapter 49: The Wind and the Earth
Brass Castle's battlements bristled with colorfully garbed fighting men and women from all over the Grasslands. Zexen soldiers stood abreast with Karayan warriors, Kinese archers, and Chishan crossbowmen. Below the parapet, hundreds more formed loose squares drawn up to defend the courtyard in the event of a breach. In their customary armor and attire of clashing styles and colors, Brass Castle's defenders reminded Hugo of revelers crowding the green at festival time, more so than a piecemeal army hellbent on defending their lands from invaders.
Things were quiet now, but the peace would not last. Every man and woman in the fortress knew that, and the crowd stirred as the fighters shifted in their mail and chest-plates, trying to fight off their worries. Hugo strode along the battlement, putting foot to stone to work off some of his tension. 'A leader should never be seen pacing or giving voice to doubt or worry,' his mother would chide him, but spirits damn it, there were plenty of others to draw inspiration from. And Hugo had more reason than most to pace. The True Fire Rune ached like an open wound on his hand, pulsing with desperation, yearning to erupt. He felt it like a second heartbeat, and it set his nerves on edge.
Two figures strolling along the square formations in the courtyard below caught Hugo's attention. The two women were gesturing at the assembled fighters and conversing, presumably about strategy and military preparations. The Captain of the Knights of Zexen, walking shoulder to shoulder with the Chieftain of the Karaya. No matter how long he lived, Hugo thought, he'd never grow accustomed to this sight. Grasslanders and Zexeners working side by side. What a bizarre thing. And all it took was the threat of complete annihilation.
Hugo had heard the stories. How Chris, Lily, Rina, and Nash had scaled the cliffs and walls of Brass Castle and taken the fortress from Alron. Scaled the cliffs! Spirits, it was like something out of the legends. A fierce pride blossomed in his chest as he stared down at the Zexener knight, her hair glinting silver in the sunlight. His Chris. Spirits, that, too, was something he'd never grow accustomed to. But he didn't mind trying.
So much had happened while he was gone. Alron, dead. An alliance between the clans and the Zexeners. And now time was running out. Beyond the walls, thirty thousand Harmonian soldiers waited for the command that would send them crashing against the walls of Brass Castle like waves upon the shore.
Hugo tore his eyes away from Chris. Nearby, where the parapet met the gatehouse, a troop of archers drilled with their bows to pass the time. Their commander, a Kinese woman wearing the blue-and-black feathers of a lieutenant-ranger in her chestnut brown hair, walked among them and corrected their stances.
Suddenly, a foul wind came whipping out of the canyon that surrounded the fortress and howled over the battlements. He might've thought it a natural thing, a coincidence, had it not been for the painful throbbing of the True Fire Rune in reply to that wind. He started towards the stairs leading down to the courtyard. He needed to speak with Chris.
The fury of the wind abated as suddenly as it had arisen. In the stillness, Hugo had enough time to doubt his hunch, even feel relief. He was about to turn back when the wind rose with renewed strength and exploded into a gale. It came crashing against the fortress, beating against its walls, rushing through every nook and cranny. It threw the defenders on the parapet back, knocking some to the ground. Others fell, their mouths ripping open in screams swallowed by the gale.
Hugo ran along the parapet, every step a struggle. The fitful winds slammed against him, shoving him aside, forcing him dangerously close to the edge overlooking the courtyard. A Zexen soldier came flying past him and tumbled over the edge with a wordless shriek. Hugo threw his arm out to grab the man's flailing limbs, but the soldier was gone before he could reach him. Cursing, Hugo threw himself against the wind, and like a bull pulling a cart, he staggered up to the crenelated wall and bent down against it.
After catching his breath, Hugo rose just enough to peer over the wall. There, the Harmonians advanced in tight formation, pouring in towards the fortress' eastern bridge. Further back, a solitary figure stood at the top of the hill. Hugo could not make out the bishop's robes at such a distance, but somehow, he knew it must be Luc. The swirl of magic in the air all traced back to that spot, and to the man standing in the center of the web of the spell.
The True Fire Rune seared his hand like burning coals. The rune responded to its sister rune, begging to be unleashed. A thousand visions of fiery destruction raced through Hugo's mind—memories of the True Rune's past owners. It took every ounce of his self-control not to yield to the immortal rune's wishes.
Overhead, arrows sailed from the parapet, only to veer like hunting falcons into the canyon below the keep. The fortress' defenders fired volley after volley, but to no avail. The Kinese lieutenant-ranger fought against the wind to claw at the wall. Her hair streamed like a banner behind her. She shouted into the gale and waved her arm to command her archers to cease fire.
Raking his hair back from his face and squeezing his eyes open against the battering winds, Hugo tried to get a better look at Luc. He could sense the pulsing of the True Wind Rune's power as the false bishop channeled it into the building storm. When he peered closer, he could see that the false bishop had gathered his power into something immense. Something about to burst.
Hugo swore. He clapped his palm on the lieutenant-ranger's shoulder, and leaned in to scream in her ear. "Withdraw! Get off the wall, NOW!" The woman stared back with a confused frown on her face, as if trying to make up her mind about whether to ask him to repeat what he'd said. An instant later, the storm struck the castle's walls.
The force of the blow smashed through brick and mortar. The parapet exploded inward, hurling bricks in every direction. The storm lifted Hugo off his feet and sent him tumbling. His vision filled with pale blue sky alternating with gray walls as he tossed end over end through the air. A series of rapid blows struck his arms, his legs, and his stomach, sending pain lancing through his body. He struck the pavement hard on his back. The force of the fall knocked the wind from his lungs and sent fire coursing through his entire body.
Sarah stepped from the void between spaces and onto Brass Castle's battlements. Magical travel was always jarring. The air in her lungs had come from the Harmonian camp, and smelled of doused cookfires, horses, and men. When she breathed out, she stood upon the walls of the Grasslanders' greatest fortress, its vaunted defenses nullified with a single spell.
The sight that greeted her might have been taken from an illustrated account of some infernal underworld. Where the gatehouse of the eastern bridge had once stood, now there was only a gaping hole in the fortress' walls. In a cloud of smoke and dust, Harmonian soldiers poured through the breach. The fortress' defenders met them in the courtyard with spear and sword and axe. Steel clashed and blades snapped. Shields cracked and bone crunched. Men and women howled with rage and pain and fear, some falling, others shoving their way back through the ranks to nurse open wounds.
Illusion shrouding her body, Sarah wore the Zexen chest-plate and tabard like a second skin. She clutched her staff—glamoured to resemble a spear—to her chest. To any observer, she would have been the spitting image of a high-ranking Zexen officer. A small arsenal of runes hid beneath the illusion, carried on her person. The true gem, however—the True Earth Rune—she had left behind. She could not risk one of the True Rune bearers sensing her presence. Failure was not an option at this juncture. Very soon now, Lord Luc's plans would come to fruition. And hers would be the hand that lifted the final obstacle from her beloved's path.
The True Lightning Rune.
She started along the battlement towards the inner keep.
Chris watched in horror as the magical storm hurled Hugo from the parapet. The sound his body made as he hit the cobblestones froze her blood into ice. She ran towards him.
Suddenly the gates burst open, and a flood of Harmonian soldiers poured into the courtyard.
Chris drew to a halt. Goddess, Hugo! She had to act fast. She wanted to run to him, but the distance was too great. Instead, she reached out to the True Water Rune and surrendered to the fathomless depths of its power, allowing herself to be swept up in its torrential fury. The True Rune burned the bright azure of the noonday sky as she lifted her hand and made a sweeping gesture.
Ice raced along the cobblestones like a flash freeze. Great icy spines grew across the courtyard, forming a frozen wall where it travelled. The razor-sharp claws of ice struck the Harmonian soldiers and sliced through a dozen men before reaching the spot where Hugo had fallen. There, she twisted the rune's power, forming a six-foot-high wall of ice with jutting spikes surrounding and protecting Hugo.
It wasn't much, but it was all she could do. He had to be alive. He just had to.
Sweat poured from Chris's forehead when she let her arm drop to her side. Her body quivered with the effort of the spell, but there was no time to rest. The Harmonians were still pouring through the open gates, and there was no end to them. Drawing her sword, she held it up for all to see.
"Soldiers of Zexen!" she called out. "Warriors of the Grasslands! Fight for your freedom! Fight for your family, for your homes!"
Zexen soldiers and Grasslander warriors roared a wordless battlecry and ran to face the oncoming horde of Harmonians. They met in the middle of the courtyard, and the battle began with a crash of steel and a chorus of screams.
"Hold the line!" Chris hollered, then joined the fray.
The Harmonian charge came to a stop against the press of the defenders, but the battle ran hot. A great groan rose from the soldiers, and the defenders inched back, step by step. Caught in the press, Chris stumbled back with the ranks of her fighters. Swords slammed against steel-rimmed shields. Blades clashed. Men screamed out their pain as steel pierced their flesh. Sergeants shouted for order, and the Zexen and Grasslands forces pushed back. The line held.
Chris jostled for position, desperately trying to get an overview of the battle. She should be there, on the front line, not protected behind two ranks of soldiers. But whenever she tried to push through to where her bladework was needed, she was shoved back by the press of bodies. Meanwhile, her men fought and died in front of her.
The call of the True Water Rune was deafening, its thirst unending. She yearned to unleash its power against the invaders, and turn the whole courtyard into a glacial abyss. But the rune's will could not be trusted. It was like a treacherous riptide, threatening to pull her under every time she used it. If she called upon the rune's power in this moment of chaos, surrounded by friend and foe alike, it would be a disaster.
Beside her, someone shouted in surprise. Then more voices cried out. "What's that?" "Goddess' mercy!" "A monster!" Their faces were lifted to the sky, and their mouths hung agape.
Chris tilted her head back to see what they were seeing. A huge gray thundercloud hung above the castle's maimed wall. No. Not a cloud, she decided. As the "cloud" cleared the wall, she began to make out features. Arms. Legs. The thing had a torso and a head! And it was all spun from a dense cloudy substance. In its head, twin orbs burned bright yellow, like awakened stars in the clear night sky. Chris felt the baleful stare of those eyes, as they glared down into the courtyard and upon the soldiers assembled there. She shivered. Anyone who felt those eyes would feel the hate in them.
She immediately knew the thing for what it was. An Incarnation of the True Wind Rune.
The Masked Bishop had made his first move.
The men around her shifted uneasily beneath the glare of the True Rune's incarnation. The front line sagged, and was pushed back. With each fallen defender, their ranks thinned. The defenders were moments from breaking and running. And the incarnation hadn't even launched its attack.
"Hold!" Chris shouted. She moved among the defenders, slapping their shoulders to awaken them from their stupor of staring up at the elemental creature hanging in the air. Some of them she had to shake to draw them back to the present.
The incarnation drifted low over the courtyard, and its eyes burned like bright furnaces. Blasts of air struck the soldiers in the courtyard like sledgehammers. Where the blows missed, cobblestones cracked. Where the blows struck home, men and women shrieked in pain as armor and bone crunched beneath the weight of the air. Screams of pain and anguish filled the air. Soldiers fell like toppled barrels. Someone shoved Chris in their haste to run, and another body knocked her down. She curled up to protect her head, and saw a man beside her flatten like an empty wineskin when a blast from the incarnation smashed him into the ground. She heard the cobblestones crunch beneath the mangled body.
The defenders' line crumpled before the Harmonian push.
Hugo's thoughts drifted through a thick fog, wrestling to make sense of the whirlwind of impressions all around him. People were shouting, but he couldn't figure out why. All around him, there was a terrible roar of hundreds of voices. And cold. Such terrible cold.
For what felt like a long time, he just lay there gasping for air, his vision swimming with blurry shapes. When his eyes focused, they fixed on his hand. The True Fire Rune pulsed angrily. He remembered falling from the parapet. He remembered striking the ground. As his mind returned to him, he dimly realized what must have happened. At the last moment, he'd awakened the rune's power instinctively, summoning a shield barely strong enough to turn a deadly fall into a savage blow. Strong enough to save his life, but not strong enough to spare him a splitting headache.
Not all had been so lucky. As he turned on his side, he stared into the eyes of the Kinese lieutenant-ranger he'd tried to warn. The woman lay beside him on her back, head tilted towards him. They might have been bedmates, the way they lay together, but the woman's chestnut brown hair pooled around her face, and the wind whipping the blue-and-black feathers woven into her hair was the only motion on her body. Her eyes stared back at Hugo without seeing.
Swallowing, Hugo closed the woman's eyes and said a quick prayer to the spirits, wondering if they could hear him through all of the worked stone dressing Brass Castle.
Brass Castle, he suddenly realized, as the confusion lifted from his mind. The Harmonians!
He sat up sharply, and almost lost consciousness as the world lurched with the motion. His head throbbed where he'd struck the pavement. Sitting up was an effort, and he had to shrug out of a cover of bricks and plaster to free himself from the debris that had fallen with him. Rising on shaky legs, he looked around.
A wall of ice surrounded him, separating him from the chaos of battle that filled the courtyard. Chris, he thought. She did this. To protect me. With a shiver, he thought about what would have happened if she hadn't. The cacophony of combat reached him over the wall, and through the semi-opaque blue-white wall of frozen crystal, he saw shadows darting back and forth across the courtyard. Outside of his protective circle, a battle raged.
A massive shadow passed overhead, darkening the courtyard. Heart sinking, Hugo turned to stare up at the sky. An enormous shape sailed in over the broken parapet. It was a creature spun from elemental air, a thundercloud given form and substance. The True Fire Rune on Hugo's hand cried out in recognition, giving the true nature of the elemental creature: an incarnation of the True Wind Rune. Blinding orbs of light shone where the elemental's eyes should have been, like lightning flashing above storm clouds. Gale-force winds swept the castle grounds, flinging men and horses into the air. Invisible fists rained down on the courtyard, crushing cobblestones in sprays of rock and crushing armor and bone where they struck soldiers.
You've done enough, Masked Bishop. This ends now!
Furious, Hugo raised his hand into a fist and awakened the True Fire Rune. Flame leaped into his hand. Smoldering orange turned to white-hot incandescence as Hugo concentrated. The True Fire Rune fed off his fury, raging and spitting, hammering against the inside of his skull.
No, he thought, trying to recall the training Chief Rina had given him. Not like this. If he surrendered to rage, the True Fire Rune would be his master. Brass Castle would vanish in a conflagration hot enough to burn stone. Slowly, methodically, Hugo mastered his fury and channeled the power into something he could control.
An orb of fire formed between Hugo's fingers and grew until it was the size of a water barrel. When he had fed it as much of the True Rune's power as he dared, he launched it into the sky.
The white-hot ball of fire slammed into the incarnation of the True Wind Rune like a lance striking a steel shield. Sparks showered the courtyard. Flames raced across the surface of the cloud creature's body, and the fire thinned as it went, losing heat, like dying embers. The air elemental glided on, unperturbed.
Hugo stared up in disbelief. Every bit of power he could muster, and it had done nothing? Anger surged inside him. The True Fire Rune's anger and his own, mixing and mingling. He gritted his teeth and drew from the rune again. Power surged back through his body, building in strength. Fire leaped and danced in his hands. So much power. So much potential. And all he had to do was to surrender to the rage. Then he would have the strength to destroy the incarnation, and anyone who opposed him! The Harmonians. The Zexens. Even the Grasslanders. They were all kindling for the flame.
No! A wave of disgust washed over Hugo. This is NOT me! I will NOT submit to your will! It took every ounce of strength in his bones to wrench himself free from the True Fire Rune's destructive rage, but somehow he did it. Disgusted, he let the flame in his hand wink out. There had to be another way. There had to be.
He focused his mind, and tried to form a flame again. This time the power slipped through his fingers, the rune eluding him. Again and again he tried to call upon the True Fire Rune, a trickle at first, then slowly adding more power. And each time the rune's hatred boiled over in his mind, and the power slipped away from him.
I'm afraid, he thought. Afraid of losing control.
Hugo stared up at the cloudy monstrosity, and felt despair's claws gripping his heart. The incarnation sent blasts of thunderous air to shake the courtyard and topple the keep's defenders. Hugo couldn't see his comrades-in-arms through the wall of ice, but he could hear their screams of fear and pain. He could hear them die.
He sank to his knees, his breath coming in ragged bursts. Hiding in his icy cradle, sitting beside the body of the Kinese lieutenant-ranger, he hugged his knees, and felt a wave of self-loathing wash over him. He was the Flame Champion. The protector of the Grasslands. He should be able to save them. He thought of the speech he'd given at Alma-Kinan, his people gathered around him, their eyes filled with the fire of hope and triumph. He thought of the look on his mother's face when she saw him walk into the courtyard of Brass Castle. Hope, no matter how small, seemed to always survive. Spirits, he'd been dead once, lost to the void, and he'd been brought back. If that-
The void, he thought, and a sudden realization came over him. He felt a surge of determination. Shakily he rose onto his feet. The void. The place between places. When he had resided with Pesmerga in the realm of Dharma, the essence of pure order had poisoned his flesh and bones. He had lost himself. He had been emotionless, pristine – and broken. When Chris had dragged him back from the void, she had burned the poison from his body. She had saved him.
Hugo had thought Dharma's influence, and the power he had commanded as its servant, had been completely seared from his body. But as he reached out once more to awaken the power of the True Fire Rune, he realized two things. First, that some small part of Dharma yet remained within him, waiting to be released. And second, that the True Fire Rune fought him because he'd tried to master its rage with his own anger. But the rune's anger was endless. It could not be mastered. Not with anger.
Reaching into himself, Hugo grasped the fragment of Dharma still slumbering within his body. He took a deep breath and let the cold of the void fill him. He did so anxiously at first, but as the familiar numbness spread through his limbs and into his mind, he found a surprising conviction well up inside him. In the World of Emptiness, the void had mastered him. Here, in the world of his ancestors, the world of the spirits, he could master the void. He could control it, bend its icy grip into an advantage – and use it to master the True Fire Rune.
As his calm built, Hugo felt his mind shedding the true rune's fury. Little by little, the anger bled from his thoughts like oil poured from a jug. Hugo squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the two warring forces besieging his mind – the fury of the true rune, and the apathy of the void. He rejected both. Instead, he gathered into his mind the strength to find a middle road. He sought, and found: Serenity. Control.
As his mind cleared, he felt the True Fire Rune responding to his grasp. He opened his eyes, and the sounds of the courtyard that he'd pushed to the back of his mind in his struggle with the True Fire Rune came rushing back. He craned his neck to regard the cloud monster hanging in the sky. The incarnation drifted leisurely overhead, at odds with the storm force winds surrounding it. Hugo raised his arms and concentrated, calling elemental fire to gather in his hand. Unlike his previous attempts, this time the orb that formed in the palm of his hand was a perfect sphere that glowed a bright and steady orange.
He could still feel the rune's lust for destruction throbbing through his head. But this time, he had control. He didn't try to overpower or ignore it. Instead, he harnessed it. A torrent of power flowed from the True Fire Rune into the flame in his hand, gathering strength and size, until the entire courtyard was awash in the warm orange glow.
With a roar, he hurled the giant flame at the incarnation whose form shaded the courtyard. The fireball shot up like some enormous sling stone. It hammered into the air elemental, and a massive concussive blast rocked the sky. A wave of heat exploded out, sucking the breath from Hugo's lungs. Fire rained down into the courtyard.
Luc shielded his eyes against the explosion in the sky above Brass Castle. He flinched as the backlash from the annihilation of the Incarnation of the True Wind Rune lashed his mind. He stumbled to his knees, mind reeling, head swimming. Nearby soldiers rushed to his side to help him to his feet, but he waved them off.
Pushing to his feet, Luc waited for his vision to clear before studying the sky above the keep. Where the incarnation had sailed on the wind moments before, now there were only dancing cinders drifting on the dying winds.
Not bad, Flame Champion, he thought. I am impressed.
He drew upon the True Wind Rune, more to feel its familiar pulse than anything else. The rune's power leapt easily into his body, strong as ever. Unexpected as this setback was, it would not change the outcome of the conflict. With a thought, Luc siphoned some of its power to soothe his pounding headache. Then he settled down, watching the keep.
Waiting.
Chris's ears rang with the explosion above the courtyard. Squinting against the after-glare, Chris opened her eyes to take in the sight. The incarnation was gone. No trace of it remained in the sky, and the winds had died down. In the wake of the storm, the courtyard was filled with groans and gasps. A brief lull in the action had gripped the scene before her, with both allies and enemies stumbling to a halt in the fight as they regained their balance. She turned her head, and saw a sight that gripped her heart tight, as conflicting feelings flooded her.
The wall of ice had melted. Her heart wanted to leap – Hugo was alive. Only he could have done this. But with the icy barrier gone, nothing separated Hugo from hundreds of Harmonian soldiers crowding into the courtyard. For the moment, confusion still reigned, and thick mist shrouded the spot where Hugo had fallen, ice turned to vapor by the intense heat, but once the mist cleared…
As the ringing in her ears died down, Chris started hearing shouting around her. Officers called for order. Fighters steadied their weapons and resumed their formations. The Harmonians again surged forward against the wall of Zexeners and Grasslanders. Though it had felt like a long while, the lull had only lasted for a few brief moments.
Chris turned her thoughts from Hugo. As much as it pained her to admit it, there was nothing more she could do for him. She had her own fight, and she was losing. The invaders kept streaming into the fort. For every man cut down, two seemed to leap to take his place. No matter how many fell, more kept filling the gaps. She saw it in her enemies' eyes when she met them blade to blade; the desperate conviction. The third-class Harmonian soldiers fought with a desperate vigor, knowing death would be kinder than to return to Harmonia without the distinction earned in battle.
The defenders retreated step by step. They had been pushed back almost to the inner keep. So many of them had already fallen. Some had been struck down by sword or spear. Chris had seen Galayd fall beside her, taken by a spear wound through his stomach, bleeding out faster than the True Water Rune could close the wound. She had not had even the time to grieve for the young knight. Many more had been crushed by the incarnation's thunderous blasts. The incarnation was gone, but so few remained.
Chris stood in the front line now, a Chishan woman on one side, a Zexen soldier on the other. She had lost track of Lucia's position, but she knew the Karayan woman was somewhere nearby – she had heard her voice shouting orders not long ago.
She felt as if she had been fighting for ages. Her sword arm burned with exhaustion each time she hacked at the press of the Harmonians. Her body quivered with the fatigue of a constant trickle of power from the True Water Rune, as she healed the wounds of her allies, raised barriers where the Harmonian press got too strong, or blasted the invaders with sprays of jagged crystal. The rune's power was nearly exhausted, too. All that remained was hope. In her mind, she offered up prayers to the Goddess as well as to the spirits. Still, she fought.
What choice did she have?
No one questioned Chris Lightfellow's presence as the captain of the knights strode purposefully through the corridors of Brass Castle's inner keep. Even when she paused in apparent confusion at what should have been familiar intersections or surveyed chambers whose contents she should have known, no one scrutinized her behavior. Wherever the Silver Maiden went, soldiers saluted and stepped aside.
No time to question anything, Sarah mused. The inner keep was in chaos. Infirmaries were overstuffed with groaning soldiers. Storerooms burst with supplies and servants carrying a hundred things back and forth. Soldiers and servants swarmed the halls, carrying stretchers of the wounded, bringing swords, spears, and quivers of crossbow bolts to the walls, and cracking open crates filled with supplies. No one had time to stop and wonder why the captain of the knight would be strolling around in the inner keep rather than pressing into the thick of the battle that raged in the courtyard. Sarah had only to ask her questions with sufficient authority and urgency, and soldiers and officers alike stopped to rattle off answers.
In the end, they led her exactly where she needed to go.
Sarah navigated a maze of twisting corridors, climbing stairs as she went. When she cracked open the final door, she stepped out onto the battlements atop the tower of the main keep. An ominous wind howled over the exposed pinnacle. The rising sun turned the crenels of the low wall surrounding the space into molten gold.
There he waited. He stood facing the east, his back turned to Sarah. He wore the same black leather cuirass she had seen during their brief encounter in the Sindar ruins, and earlier at Alma-Kinan. He was tall, his black hair waving in the wind, revealing the telltale leather thong of an eye-patch slung through his locks.
Besides Geddoe, there were only two other people on the tower's pinnacle. Both were Zexen soldiers in their distinctive conical helmets and orange tabards. One of them was rather short for a soldier, she observed idly.
Geddoe spun around at the sound of Sarah's boots on the stone. She flashed an icy smile, and raised her staff – for the moment glamoured to resemble a sword. To those regarding her, she would have vanished in the blink of an eye. To her, it seemed the world had shifted around her. She stood on a hillside overlooking Brass Castle.
Luc had been seated on the grass when she appeared, his legs crossed. When she appeared, he tensed, and bolted to his feet. She knew he had been mentally preparing himself for this very moment.
"Tell me you got him," he said, his voice hoarse. He held his hand out expectantly. The glowing emblem of the True Earth Rune lit up his palm.
Sarah took the rune from his hand. "We've got him," she breathed, her voice husky with anticipation. So close, now. She reached out to touch his arm, even as she awakened the Blinking Rune's power. The world flashed again. In the blink of an eye, the two of them stood side by side on the battlements atop Brass Castle's tallest keep. Two True Rune bearers.
Eye to eye with the bearer of the True Lightning Rune.