Yel scanned the street from high in the air. A [Bounty Hunter] specific spell, Pursuer allowed the caster to view an area for signs of the target. Her eyes twitched with mana, but her body remained in her office. She didn’t have much to go off of, but she knew the [Assassin]’s target. Her old teammate’s apprentices and possibly their friends. Highlighted in a deep blue, Yel could see the Human named Max, the Elf named Celenia, and the monster bond named Emi. She followed them using her spell in hopes of catching a glimpse of red, her target.

Tasitus, The God of Rules and Order, waned on her conscious. If she couldn’t handle Red Mask she would have to repent. Her favor with her God would drop and her life would be miserable for some time. But she wasn’t truly worried, at least not after Max had visited her a second time with a signed letter from Esmel. She had to hand it to him, he followed the rules exactly. But being able to teleport to and from Esmel told her that the boy was special. Hells, Veline took him as an apprentice, even after what happened to her last one. That alone was indication enough that the boy was different. But now? Now Yel had an idea just how important he was, and how a person might hold a grudge against him.

The [Lancer], Chivley. Yel had looked into his background and found some disturbing stuff. Originally starting out as a copper adventure, high test marks during a small recession caused him to rise through the ranks quickly placing him in gold only after three years. Relatively quick especially for someone with a basic [Warrior] class. But that was where the prospective young adventurer changed. One quest ruined everything for him and his surviving team members. Four out of seven members didn’t return from a routine quest in the Yepu plains. A decade later, the Guild would find out Vast Empire had a small fortress and base of operations in the area, and it wouldn’t take a genius to put together what happened.

It was just as the report from the time said. An unknown enemy humanoid appeared and caused widespread devastation for the team. In Chivley’s own report, he spoke about how he got separated from his team at one point and made the journey back to Lesterwood alone. His entire team was demoted and thus caused their disbanding. Eventually the disgraced [Lancer] found a new team, started volunteering for the winter guard, and mentoring two brothers. Two brothers with direct ties to Vast Empire. Two brothers that also had direct ties to each of Veline’s three apprentices.

Yel guessed that the [Lancer] didn’t get separated from his team on accident. Instead, he met with his team’s killer and worked out a deal for his life. Chivley would become a spy. But as the Empire fell, his position was slowly dissolved but not before being commanded to watch after the two brothers. It was a low gain high risk job at this point. He would gain nothing from helping the brothers but could lose everything if the Empire was only hibernating. And with the most recent attacks on Esmel, it was looks like he was right.

Now, after being embarrassed by Max and Reep in the guard barracks, he chose revenge. If his employer came back, he would explain that he assassinated the Humble Titans for their murder of the two brothers. He would regain his grace and, with some luck, join the Empire as a full member. The only issue with the [Lancers] plans was that the Empire already knew of the brother’s deaths. Nix was imitating the previous Guild Master at the time.

But since Nix ran and a new Master had to be appointed, Chivley’s plan would end just as quickly as it started. Major Silverjewl thought long and hard about the choices for the position. Yel didn’t know exactly why she was chosen but after meeting Max and Reep, she had a pretty good guess. The mayor wants the Humble Titans protected. He sees their value and knows the constraints Yel works under. He knew that if she became Master, she would have to abide by the Guilds rules and the Rules of Tasitus. She would be forced to protect every active Guild member to the best of her ability or Tasitus would strip her of her piety. Including.

As Yel sat in her office watching over the pair of students walking home, she had a thought. After Bishop arrives back in Lesterwood, then only one member of their team would be missing. Well, two, but Alexandria was dead and there was no bringing her back. How was it possible that one of the most powerful adventuring teams in the last century, a team that broke up in a hail of flame, would slowly be brought together in the very town it started. But before that avenue of thought got very far, a streak of red appeared. It was time to act.

Max, Emi, and Celenia got home with no trouble. They were oblivious of the man following them, and the Beastkin who was tracking him. Instead, Emi told Celenia about how the teacher actually called on her to answer! Gene was the first person other than her immediate friends and family that actually treated her like a person and not like a mindless creature. Well, Honeygreen and Seetrin did also, but they didn’t count in her mind.

“Bring GeNE fisH, next claSS!” Emi told Max, who laughed.

When they finally arrived back at the mansion, dinner was already ready and waiting. Max ate quickly as it was getting late and he had a lot to do. Tomorrow was his second lesson with Burk and the second meeting of the Healers. After creating a dozen or so memory globes, he finally was able to drift to sleep.

The next morning came and went. Up first for Celenia was a class called Natural Magic. It is a specialized block class where the primary purpose is to improve one’s nature affinity spells. Max could take the same sort of classes but for water if he wanted to, but had decided not to. Afterwards Celenia would meet with [Druid] Dreamstem and work with her. Today was the first meeting of Basics of Rune Crafting, arguably the class Max was most excited for, as well as the class Domic warned him about. The teacher was apparently an old crone who only accepts perfection, except when it comes to teaching. In that case she allows herself breathing room.

But Max wasn’t worried, instead he was oddly excited. Rune were a deep interest of his, and maybe, just maybe, he would be able to create something that left the perfectionist speechless. As he waited in the runic lab, he looked around. Tools and instruments were hung on walls, boxes of materials were neatly packed behind counters and cabinets, vials of strange colored liquids sat in perfect rows on shelves, and the entire room was heavily warded. The Mage Guild was under no pretext that aspiring [Rune Crafters] were proficient in their medium. Explosions were common and honestly expected. The room was smaller than Intro to Magic but much larger than Mana Systems. Twelve paired desks allowed for twenty-four students.

I guess we’re going to have a lab partner, Emi. Max said.

Yay! New friends! She responded.

But as seats began to fill, it was apparent that Max and Emi were being avoided. Either they were intimidated by the small bond wagging her tail and staring at every passerby, or the fact that Max had one arm. Both of which left were unusual in a runic class. Especially Max’s missing arm. Everyone knew how important two sets of hands were in the processing and efficient creating of runes. They simply didn’t want to be held down by something that was out of their control.

But eventually students stopped walking in, and the teacher entered. She was exactly as Max pictured her. Small, skinny, sagging skin and greying beaty eyes. She wore tight fitting robes and carried a heavy looking rough tome, one that looked oddly familiar… She went straight to the chalk board and wrote her name. [Rune Master] Esther.

“I am your master for the duration of this class. Call me-“

Just as she was about to finish her sentence, the door swung open with a heavy kick causing every head to turn. A young boy stood hunched over and out of breath.

“Sorry! Sorry! My uncle arrived late, and I couldn’t leave the shop alone!” He hastily said finding a seat, which happened to be next to Max and Emi.

“I understand. Do not let it happen again.” The old lady chastised. “As I was saying. I am [Rune Master] Esther. Call me master Esther. I will respond to nothing else while within this room. Is that understood?” A collective nod followed.

“Good. Now, if you would please, remove your Guild required runic book catalog. Let me see what we all have so I can dictate assignments. Before you ask, yes, not every catalog is created equal and knowing the financial stability of my usual students, some of my later assignments can have… Issues.” Master Esther began walking around the room, inspecting the books brought by each and every student.

Max’s copy of Every Rune laid neatly in the center of his desk. Next to him, the young boy was actively fishing through his bag. He found a thin and crippled book, and finally turned to introduce himself.

“Hello, I’m-“ The young boy started before cutting himself off.

“I didn’t think we’d meet so soon.” Max said. “It feels like just a few days ago I entered your uncle’s shop and saw you actively crafting away.”

“I- Uh- L-Lord Fowler!” The boy said in a loud yip.

“Shhh.” Max looked around, everyone in too engrossed in conversation with their new partners. “I’m trying to keep the who Lord thing quiet, understand?”

“I- Uhh- Yes, yes, sorry…”

“I’m Max, and it looks like we are going to be lab partners. What’s your name?”

“Elliot.”

“Well Elliot, last time we spoke you didn’t seem like you had any plans to take classes. Did something change?”

“I- Uhh, yes. You, actually.” Elliot blushed. “You said that my class hardly mattered and that I should focus on creating my best. I couldn’t get anyone to accept me as an apprentice and well, I saved up enough for a few of the basic classes with the Guild. Maybe I can get the [Artificer] certificate, then go on from there.”

“Huh, that’s actually pretty smart.” Max smiled. “But I don’t think that your book is going to be very help full.”

“I couldn’t afford a proper one…”

“Don’t worry, I have us both covered with this thing.” Max slapped his massive behemoth of a tome.

“And what a thing it is.” A voice said from the side. Master Esther moved in front of their desk. “I thought that there were only two copies of this catalog in the city. I have one, and if I remember correctly the other is in that wretched old man’s store for an exuberant amount.”

“I had a coupon.” Max said triumphantly.

“How much?”

“Like three fifty or something.”

“You were scammed. Why do you think I hadn’t bought it? Because that fool of a [Bookkeeper] thinks its remarkably rare. Which it is, mind you, but its barely more than a paper weight for someone not within the ranks of master.” Esther said.

“Why is that?” Max asked.

“Have you even looked through it?” She watched as Max dumbly thumbed through a few pages. “Evidently not. Yes, that tome has every rune, but it has nothing more than an explanation of how it was used by the author. It makes no effort to help the reader understand what the rune actually does, and instead he explains his brilliance in creating something with every rune. Quite self-centered if you ask me.”

Max thought for a moment. “But can’t you reverse engineer his work and try and figure out what the rune actually does?”

“Reverse engineer? I like that term. But yes, that is entirely what rune crafting is. Build something and try and figure out how it works. That is the basis of rune crafting and something that will be explicitly beat into you today.”

Elliot shuddered, but Max smiled. “I’m Max by the way, and this is Emi.”

“Yes. I know who you are. Guild Master Domic told me. He said, ‘He has one arm, you can’t miss him!’”

“Heh, Domic can be right on the nose sometimes.”

“Indeed. But you are correct in offering your tome to our late-comer.” Esther regarded Elliot’s small book. “Looks like you have just the basics. It will be fine for the beginning portion of the class, but useless in the later. I suggest you either find an upgrade or become best friends with your desk mate.”

He nodded shyly and Esther sauntered off to the next table.

“She’s not that bad.” Max muttered quietly.

“I’ve heard that she almost switches personalities when she is scrutinizing student runes. And then there’s the whole thing about not being able to teach.” Elliot said.

“She’s passionate, and not everyone can teach.” Max opened his massive tome and began to read through some pages.

This Unknown rune I have named Tuhlen, after a very nice pork dish I one time had in the port city of Heren. I do not know what the rune fully does, but when implemented using Rylaens Rule (Page 41), into a Boll Formation (page 19), then the effect is rather substantial. Instead of the normal circle effect of the formation, a rounded hourglass appears. This, of course, does not create other hourglass shapes in other circular formations. But I digress. The usage is rather obvious to someone of my caliber. It modifies existing formations and patterns in a unique, non-repeatable way. But such is runecraft.

The passage was neat and tidy under a large diagram of the rune. It was a squared symbol reflecting a chair with three legs and a short and thick back. Max had no idea what the rules and formations listed were, but it was pretty obvious what the author was trying to say. He found a way to use an unknown rune in a very niche and convoluted way. Unless you wanted to make an hourglass shape out of a Boll Formation, the rune served no purpose. He sighed and closed the tome. Maybe he did get scammed. Master Esther took front stage again, and the word ‘Basics’ on the chalk board. The turned to the class and began to speak.

“What I expect you all to know by the end of this class is the rudimentary basics. I do not expect any real rune crafting or vast knowledge of formations, or the necessary skills required to solve runic problems. I do, however, require you all to know the basics well and to an almost perfect degree. As you will soon find out, rune crafting needs a precise and steady mind behind it. If the crafter makes a flaw, the whole formation is ruined.” Esther eyed the room.

“Alright, let’s start. What is rune crafting? Well, obviously it’s the use of runes to create formations that achieve some goal. Easy, right? Well, yes. On paper at least. But there is much more that goes into formation making, which I will try to prepare you with. Anyone could recreate a popular or important rune, but that is not my job. I am a [Rune Master], meaning I am above recreating someone else’s work. If that sounds like you, great! Stay in this class and work hard. If not, please leave now, I do not wish to teach you.” No one moved.

“Good. What makes rune crafters sought after is their ability to create. As you will find runes are fickle and exact. Most of your time will be pulling your hairs out because the formation should work but doesn’t. When that happens, I expect you to come to me for help. But for the sake of argument, let’s say you are successful in crafting a commissioned formation. What do you do with it? Simply give it to the buyer and forget about it? No. Build on it and create more! But how? How do you create. Everyone open your catalogs to the section about the six basics. It should be in the front somewhere.”

Max did as she told and found the ‘Six Basics’ on page two. He briefly scanned over the page while others flipped through their books. The Basics looked to be the runes needed to power or control formations. He was going to continue reading but figured he’d only confuse himself, so he waited for master Esther to continue.

“The Six Basics are the only runes that we know of that work by themselves. All other runes need one of the Six to function. Remember this and memorizes the Six. They are too important not to. The first one we will discuss is the most common. Power. The Power rune does exactly as the name suggests. It Powers the formation and connects runes allowing mana and magic to flow. By itself the Power rune doesn’t do much, but that is not the case for all of the Six. Now, the cabinet below your desks has wooden tiles along with sticks of chalk. Carefully copy what I am about to show you down exactly.”

Esther began to draw a runic formation. Max copied it as he closely as he could, but one armed seemed to hinder him as the tile kept slipping. In the end Emi held it still while he worked. The outcome was crude but correct. There were no blatant errors or stray lines from what he could tell.

“Everyone done? Alright, place your hand on this rune here.” Esther gestured to the largest centralized rune. “This is the Power rune. Push a bit of mana into the rune to activate it.”

Max did so, and the rune emitted a bright white light. Elliot’s did also, and a few others in the class. But many did not. Some flickered and stuttered, while others simply did nothing. The owners of such tiles looked to Esther for an explanation.

“For those of you who successfully maintained constant light, congratulations. You have just made your first, albeit primal, mana light. New ones are much more complicated, but this is a good starting point. For those of you who did not, well, I’m not sure why yours didn’t work. But the most likely of answers is that you didn’t copy my rune exactly. Try again.”

The next several minutes was filled with the failing portion of the class trying again. Eventually, however, everyone was able to light their rune. It seemed that the reason why they failed was exactly as Esther guessed. A line wasn’t connected or was incomplete, too short, or too long, mirrored incorrectly, or plain wrong.

“Now then, lets break down this rune. Besides the main Power rune, there is a light rune as well as a modifier, limiter, and pipe. Let’s start with the pipe. This rune,” Ester gestured to a small seemingly inconsequential singular line “is the pipe. It connects the Power rune to the others. See how there are three? The limiter limits the amount of light produced while the modifier causes the light to shine through the rune itself.

“I can see that you are all confused so I’ll go back. Rune formations are typically made up of one of the Six, multiple modifiers, limiters, pipes, and a single elemental rune. In this case it was the light rune. Somewhere in your catalogs will be the elemental rune list. These dictate how the rune is used. A flame rune will cause heat and fire. Water can bring forth ice and liquid. Light, obviously channels light. More specialized runes can be made, for example a glass rune, but a [Glass Mage], or someone with glass affinity, will be needed to fuel the rune.

“Modifiers tell the rune to do something while limiters, also called constrictors, stop the rune from doing something. In our case, the modifier tells the rune to only light the chalk lines while the limiter stops the chalk from becoming too bright. And lastly, the pipes simply connect everything together. Any questions?”

Over half the class raised their hands.

The rest of the lesson came and went. As students filled out, Max explained to Elliot that had wanted to ask master Esther a question and that he’d see him next week. The boy nodded shyly and left. It was obvious to Max that Elliot seemed to understand what was being taught while many others were seemingly struggling. But it made a bit of sense. Runes were all logic, and on Nava logic wasn’t something that was widely used. The learning curve was steep and maybe that was why Max felt drawn to them. They just made sense to him. A world of magic and spells, monsters, and death, who would have thought that runes had such a connection to Earth.

Max, Emi, and Esther were the last ones in the room. He had to wait a bit while others talked with her, but eventually they all left. She eyed him cautiously. Domic had obviously made special note of him for a reason, and that was enough to cause the old woman to pause.

“What is it, boy?” Esther said, causing Max to smile.

Always boy this boy that with old people, huh? Max said to Emi before speaking aloud to Esther. “I was going to see if you could identify this old rune I found.”

“Oh? Well, I was not expecting that. But let me forewarn you, I may be a master but there is a certain level of skill involved with identifying runes, especially old ones.”

“I understand.” Max held out his hand and the crystal he found in the hydra’s den materialized. Esther’s eyes instantly widened in wonder. She snatched the item from him and began casting multiple spells. Mana pulsed from the woman’s eyes and fingers as she slowly searched all over the delicate treasure.

“Wh-where did you get this?” She asked, her eyes still glued to it.

Max thought about lying. He really did, but he needed to know. If his inner beach had intelligent life, that would increase the danger drastically. “I found it in the nest of a hydra, very deep into the ocean. I’m a [Water Mage] and can breathe underwater.”

“That explains almost nothing.” She said, raising one eyebrow at him. “Besides the hydra and deep ocean, there aren’t many clues in what you just said. How many heads?”

“What?” Max asked in surprise.

“How many heads did the hydra have?”

“Two. How does that-“

“I take it you won’t tell me where this hydra was located?” She waited for Max’s nod. “Fine then. I can tell you it is old. Really old. I can recognize a few of the easy ones. Here is one of the Six, Absorb. It powers the crystal by absorbing energy from its surroundings. Here is an anti-pressure rune. Rare, almost useless. And this one, it makes the crystal work in the cold. Besides that, there is the obvious light rune, but I don’t recognize any others.”

Max thought for a moment. “How old are we talking?”

“Before the Age of Magic, maybe? I’m not sure. You could take it to an [Appraiser], but I doubt they will be able to much more accurate.”

“Do… Would you want to keep it for now and research the runes?”

Esther began to laugh. “Are you paying me?”

“Well, ah, umm. No?”

“Then no. I like runes, but not enough to spend all of my free time on them without some sort of compensation.”

“I understand. Thank you for your time. I’ll see you next week. Bye.” Max said.

“Bye!” Emi said cheerfully.

“Yes… Goodbye…” Esther watched the young man and his bond walk out. She idly wondered just who made that crystal. The person and lack of wear after so many years, not to mention that it was submerged all that time. Could she make something of similar quality? No, certainly not. The mystery of just who Max is fluttered to her thoughts. First Domic, now this? She groaned. He’s going to be a lot of work, huh…