Chapter 8 - Experiments

We are camped out in a rocky alcove, deep in the mountains. It has been a month since we came up here, and I can’t see the rotten forest anymore, just mountains and more mountains.

I’ve gotten a lot stronger. I can use my lightning rune to shoot thunderbolts at things, and I can draw upon a lot more magic than before. All the monster fighting and mountain climbing has made my arms and legs nice and strong. We’ve encountered some more of those bird things, and there are some really enormous spiders hiding in the caves, but we’ve managed. There are wyverns up here too, colossal winged lizards big enough to eat the bird things. Fortunately they don’t seem to care very much about my existence, and they usually leave me alone.

The biggest problem isn’t the monsters, it’s the cold. I can feel it deep in my bones, an icy chill that seeps deep and sucks the life out of me. It would have definitely killed me.

Ruby saved me. Somehow she seems to never get cold, no matter how frigid it is. She’s like a warm little bundle of love, and I cuddle her constantly to keep from freezing to death.

I feel like I’m leeching off her, sucking away her warmth, but I can’t help it. There isn’t enough wood out here to make a fire that lasts the night. My lightning is really hot, but it only lasts for an instant. Sometimes I repeatedly conjure lightning bolts to heat stones red hot, and then I can huddle close to them for a while, but that drains my energy too much.

In the end, I have to rely on Ruby. At least she doesn’t seem to mind. She loves cuddling me almost as much as she loves drinking my blood.

I am experimenting with my magic while Ruby is happily chomping down on my juicy neck.

Now that I have two runes, the obvious thing is to try to combine them. I have been trying for a while now to draw the runes next to the other in the air, in a way that forms a single concept.

What does moonlight have to do with lightning? They’re both types of light, I suppose. I can imagine mixing them together.

Suddenly, it clicks. I fit the runes together somehow, and there is a flash of silvery blue light.

Lunar Lightning

The silver lightning bolt hits a boulder in the distance, and blows it apart into rubble.

My tail flicks. It seems to be more powerful than ordinary lightning, an upgrade for sure, but I’m still unsatisfied. It feels a little clumsy. I bet Luna would be teasing me right now. I’m sure there must be a better way to combine the two runes.

I think the problem is that I don’t understand the runes well enough. There are still so many parts of my moonlight rune that remain a mystery to me. It’s so complex and intricate, a work of art drawn from many intertwining concepts, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Comparatively, the lightning rune feels much simpler. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a larger rune of which lightning was just one small part. What that rune may be, I couldn’t guess. The lightning rune feels complete to me, not at all like the flawed purification rune that Charles tried to teach me.

Maybe the key to improving my magic is to understand the moonlight rune better. I can tell it’s something special, a gift from Luna. I have to treasure it and make sure I learn it properly.

I take a chalky little rock and use it to draw the full moonlight rune on a boulder, in as much detail as I can manage. It takes a while. The complete pattern is a vast swirling maze of branching lines and circles, with big cycles made of smaller cycles, intertwined and flowing through each other.

Once I’m done drawing the rune, the boulder glows softly.

Overall, there are three main swirls in the moonlight rune, each like the craters on the moon.

One of the three main swirls, I feel like I already understand. It’s the rune for love. The love rune has the rune for purification inside of it, made complete by something very different, a broken piece that is meant to be just the way it is, a flaw that cannot be healed.

The two remaining swirls of the moonlight rune, I think should correspond to time and fate.

The fate rune is quite mysterious to me. Its inner workings are twisted lines that don’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason. Somehow it reminds me of sewing, threads weaving under and through each other, tightly intertwined. Some sections of it remind me of the lightning rune, branching and random motions, searching for a purpose.

The time rune has a thin section that spreads outward along the edges of the moon, forming a big circle that goes all the way around. In its center, it is an orderly spiral. However, when I look more closely, there are ripples, places where the line moves faster or slower, twists or turns for just a moment before its inevitable march forward.

Just understanding the love rune made my moonlight so much more powerful. If I can understand the time and fate runes, who knows what I would be able to do?

Maybe I could even go back in time and save Mom!

I look more closely at the time rune. There are places where it goes backwards. That must mean it really is possible to turn back time! This is such great news!

I have to study the rune more closely. I have to learn how to turn back time. There must be more details in the rune that will help me figure it out.

The overall pattern of the time rune feels stable somehow. The ripples in the line never go back more than a single cycle of the spiral. I get the feeling that means something crucial.

Oh, it’s obvious! The motion of the moon itself is what makes time permanent! How amazing!

Oh no.

That means it’s impossible to bend time for more than one month. Most of the ripples are much smaller than that though, maybe just a single moment. One month is just the absolute limit.

It’s been a few months since Mom died. I can’t save her. It’s useless.

No. What am I thinking? If I can bend time even a little, that will be so useful!

I can already see into the future somehow. I figured that it was just something cats could do, but maybe I’m already using the time and fate runes without realizing it, the same way I was using the love rune during the plague.

I am already connected to the moonlight. I already have the power within me.

I just have to reach deep and draw it forth.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath.

“Time reversal, huzzah!” I shout.

Nope, nothing.

Darn. I guess reversing time is kinda difficult. That’s disappointing.

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I keep trying to reverse time all night long, but to no avail. Morning comes, and Ruby and I continue our journey north.

I have been testing the limits of my magic in other ways as well, like seeing how long I can keep shooting lightning before I get tired. I get better and better with practice. It seems like there is no limit to how much moonlight and lightning I can let out of the gates, it’s just a matter of how wide I can open them, and how long I can keep them open. It’s physically tiring, like I’m opening the gate with a special muscle deep inside me. When I draw the rune in the air, or even better if I physically draw it on something, it makes channeling magic easier. Once I realize this, I find a sharp rock and carefully scratch both my runes onto the blade of my sword. It’s a bit messy looking, and not even close to perfect, but it makes it noticeably easier to channel lightning and moonlight using the blade.

I haven’t figured out any more secrets just by looking at the details of the moonlight rune, so I decide to try looking at the actual moon instead. One night, when it’s a nice full moon, I sit on top of a rocky outcrop with Ruby, and stare up at the sky.

“Isn’t it beautiful Ruby? When the moon is full like this, you can use the light to harvest wheat all night long. It has to be a clear night though, you can’t harvest when it rains. Uncle once said it’s bad luck when it rains during a harvest moon. Have I told you about Uncle? He and his kids died fighting the soldiers, trying their best to protect us. He had five sons, and he liked to boss them around while he relaxed in the shade.”

“Ba,” Ruby says.

“I wonder where Dad is. Maybe he’s still fighting. I hope I can see him again one day.”

I see a shooting star. For only a moment, its light illuminates something else, a thin and delicate slivery fiber coming from by chest.

I blink.

“I just saw something! Ruby, it was like a thread. It was beautiful.”

I focus again, trying to see the thread, but I see a different one instead. This one looks much less delicate, a glittering braided cable, coming from my heart, and going up to the moon.

“I’m connected to the moon, Ruby! Do you see?”

“Pu,” Ruby says.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It must have to do with my magic, or the eyes Luna gave me.”

I can’t help myself. I reach out and grab the thread.

Wow, if I channel moonlight through my hand, then I can actually touch it!

I feel it in my hand, soft yet weighty. I can see fate runes swirling in every braid.

I give it a tug. A nice firm pull, just to see if I can.

I get the feeling Luna would have scolded me for that.

A pinprick of light in the sky begins to brighten. It gets brighter and brighter, and I watch, entranced by the light, until my hair stands on end, and icy panic bubbles up in my belly.

Lightning!

I grab onto Ruby and dash away from the rocky outcropping, moving in a bolt of lightning.

Sure enough, the pinprick of light comes down as a shooting star. It hits the rocky outcropping where we were just sitting, and blows it to smithereens. Big chunks of stone rain down all around me, and I have to look into the future to dodge them.

I catch my breath. Looking back up at the moon, I get the feeling I did something really bad.

“Sorry, moon. I’ll try not to pull on the thread, okay?”

I remember the first time I met Luna. She said she was placed on this earth by the Moon Sister. Maybe the moon can hear me. Maybe she’s mad at me now.

“Please forgive me?” Asking nicely couldn’t hurt.

Or maybe it’s just a force of nature. Maybe that thread just makes shooting stars come down whenever I pull on it. Though I feel like it’s best not to test that, unless I really have to.

Something feels off now though, a deep and inexplicable sense of loss. It feels like something important is now gone forever.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Ruby. I think messing with fate might be really dangerous. Maybe I should just focus on the time rune for a while.”

“Bu!” Ruby says.

A few more months pass, and we keep traveling deeper into the mountains. Each mountain pass is higher and colder than the last, each valley rockier and more treacherous, and the monsters just keep getting bigger.

This morning it’s foggy. An icy mist fills the air, coating everything in a thin layer of frost. I can’t see more than a few paces in front of me. I’m carrying Ruby up a steep rocky slope. The scree is unstable under my feet. I have to be careful not to slip.

Then I freeze. I thought I heard voices. Are there people up here after all?

I sneak towards the sound, the cackling laughter, the shrill chatter.

I peek around a rocky cliff to see three figures upon the rotting corpse of a small wyvern.

They look like bird people. They have human faces, but their skin is covered in boils. They have feathery wings instead of arms with gnarled clawed fingers on the ends. Their legs are long and spindly with sharp taloned feet. They are ripping chunks of meat off the corpse with their feet, bringing the flesh up to their mouths with their flexible legs, chewing gleefully.

“Crack the bones! Crack the bones!” One of them cheers as another repeatedly kicks the wyvern’s exposed femur.

“The queen will praise us if we bring her the eyes, but I want to eat them! I want to feel them pop open on my tongue!”

That one is promptly kicked in the head by its companion. “Treason! Treason! We must not deny the queen her eyes! She will tear out our entrails and hang them on the castle! She will hang them on the castle!”

“But I want to eat them! I want to eat them!”

“Silence. I smell something. A devil?” the third one says.

The other sniffs the air. “No, a beastkin!”

I freeze. Oh no. I’m upwind of them.

“A child of filthy spirits dares to steal our meat?!”

Suddenly, one of the bird women takes to the air. She quickly flies above the cliff. There is nowhere to hide.

“I see her! I see her!”

The bird woman perches atop the cliff, glaring at me through the fog with big yellow eyes.

“I’m a friend! I’m not here to steal your meat!” I shout.

“A child of filthy spirits claims to be a friend of the harpies? Heretic! Heretic!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m a human!”

“Do you think my eyes are popped? Do you think I have no nose?” The bird woman, the harpy, glares at me suspiciously. “What is that you’re carrying? Show us! Show us!”

I hold Ruby close. “She’s my sister! I won’t let you hurt her!”

“You lie! She smells like a devil. You have kidnapped a devil child! Kidnapper! Kidnapper!”

The other two harpies are flying around me now. “Kidnapper! Heretic! Liar!” They scream.

“I’m not a liar! She’s my sister!”

“Liar! Liar! Liar! A beastkin and a devil cannot be sisters!”

“We’re the same! We look like this because of what we ate!”

One of the harpies perches on a nearby boulder and leans forward, her eyes piercing into me. “Fool! Heretic! Do not compare the blood of the Old Gods to the blood of filthy spirits!”

“Our gods are more powerful than yours! You lose! You lose!” Another harpy screams.

“Give us the devil child, and we will let you keep your eyes,” the third harpy says.

“No! You can’t have her!” I draw my sword and imbue it with moonlight, holding Ruby close.

“Put out that disgusting light, or we’ll rip open your throat and crunch your spine!”

“Just leave us alone!” I scream.

“Save the devil child! Save her from the kidnapper!” They all swarm towards me.

I look into the future, predicting where one of the harpies will be, and then I slash. My sword cleaves through her wing and torso, and she screams in agony, bleeding out on the ground.

But there are three of them. One of them kicks me in the back, slashing through my clothes with her talons. I swing my sword at her, but she dodges in a whorl of fog.

“Murderer! Curse you!” The other harpy shrieks. She flaps her wings hard, and dozens of inky black feathers rain down on me. I look to see where they will go, but I see them homing towards me no matter where I dodge.

Lightning!

I outrun the feathers in a bolt of lightning, but the feather darts chase me through the air, following in my crackling wake. I leap into the sky, carried by lightning, and I cut off the head of the harpy that shot the feathers at me.

I hoped killing her would make the darts stop, but they don’t. As my lightning fades, and I start falling through the air, I have no way to dodge. Dozens of the oily black feathers stab into me. All I can do is use my body to shield Ruby from them.

I hit the ground with a heavy thud, rolling down the slope of scree before I hit a boulder and come to a stop. I’m bruised all over. Ruby is crying. Is she hurt?

Oh no. I can’t move.

From every feather that stabbed into me, black veins are spreading through my skin, twisting into warped, gnarled runes that I cannot understand.

My body feels so weak. I can barely breathe, let alone move. My vision is blurring. It hurts.

The last remaining harpy rips Ruby out of my arms, and I am helpless to stop her.

She kicks me in the face, smashing my head into the boulder. I desperately surge my love for Ruby throughout my body, in the hopes that it will let me move again. It works. The veiny runes all over my body are purged by the light, but I still feel sluggish. I climb up to my feet.

“You’ll never have her again! Never again!” The last harpy screams, already flying away.

She vanishes into the mist, clutching a crying Ruby in her talons.

Lightning!

I move in a lighting bolt, following the sound of Ruby’s cries through the mist. I find the harpy, and I slash at her throat.

My blade swishes through nothing but mist as the harpy twists out of the way. With a sudden beat of its wings, a powerful gust of wind blows me back down towards the ground.

I smash into the rocky slope, and I feel something break as I roll. My sword tumbles away.

I don’t hear Ruby’s cries anymore, just the sound of wind blowing through the rocks. The mist is too thick. I can’t see where the harpy went.

I still have feathers stabbed into my body all over, and my arm really hurts.

I try to get up, but I just flop over and puke on the rocks.

“Ruby! Ruby!” I cry.

But she’s gone.