Rissa’s vision did indeed let her find a book that held the style used in the runic formation on the underside of the biplane. While that meant that Serenity didn’t have to sort the books by whether they’d looked at them or not, it didn’t get him out of shelving them.

Old Man Rinsetti was smart about it, too. He made Serenity reshelve the books before he got a good look at the book with the information on that particular runeset, beyond agreeing that it looked like a match. By the time Serenity was done, Rissa was asleep in her chair and the old Master of Runes had determined that the full symbol used wasn’t anywhere else in that book. He’d also identified four other books in his collection that had information on that particular runeset.

It took a day to go through the books, then another two days to agree on what they meant. The outer portion of the formation was all about energy intake and management. It was vastly over-engineered for an individual mage or monster core under approximately Tier Ten, which limited the possible expected energy sources to someone over that Tier, a ritual, or some kind of natural phenomenon.

At that point, Old Man Rinsetti wanted to conclude that it was a symbol of some sort instead of something useful. A Tier Ten wouldn’t need to send out harassing flyers to Takinat; he could just take what he wanted. A ritual couldn’t work while the plane was flying unless the plane was in it, and they would know if there was such a ritual active. The power would be unmissable.

Serenity was far more willing to consider that they were harnessing some sort of natural power source; he didn’t know what without knowing more about the rune, but he wasn’t willing to just abandon the project. That argument wasn’t convincing for Old Man Risetti, and neither was the thought that they might learn something from even an unused ruins formation.

Serenity finally pointed out that it had to be there for a reason; if it wasn’t used on the plane, it had to mean something to the attackers or it wouldn’t be there. Perhaps it came from something else that was used?

That argument made sense to the old mage.He’d seen things in his past and knew that no one would spend effort for no reason. Not on a weapon of war, and these were clearly weapons of war, not playthings.

With that settled, they continued investigating the rune array. Unfortunately, the first thing that became obvious was that Serenity hadn’t seen it well enough to get all of the necessary detail; the power management system was simple to figure out, because it was large, but there were still parts of it that were lost in the poor resolution.

The rest was worse, but they were able to find some things out. There were three major components fed by the power system, along with a number of smaller items. One seemed to be controls of some sort; the only one that was clear was little more than an on/off switch for the rune, but even that was helpful. They couldn’t decipher how it was turned off and on, since that was lost, but its presence told them that the rest of that section had to be controlling details of the rune’s operation.

The second section was some sort of shield. Shields were complex, but this one was designed to take quite a bit of the power input, so the details were relatively large. It was primarily intended for some sort of physical protection, but even more than that, it had an odd shape; it seemed to follow the outline of the biplane’s wings.

That portion of the rune excited Old Man Rinsetti. Not only was this evidence that it was indeed a rune intended to be used on the flyer, it was a method of shaping a shield he’d never seen.

Serenity was far less impressed. Yes, it took advantage of some of the oddities of the runeset, but that was all that it seemed to do. Serenity had built oddly-shaped shields in the past; they weren’t worth it unless you had a very good reason. On the other hand, the fact that they’d bothered with shields at all was interesting.

For the biplane, the only reason had to be ‘the plane still needs to fly’, which meant that the shield had to stop air, even though that level of detail wasn’t possible to see. That, combined with the rune not being active during the attack, told Serenity that the plane was expected to see conditions the wings might not tolerate outside of combat. It didn’t tell him why, but it was still an interesting starting point.

The last section of the rune was both clearly delineated and impossible to decipher. Not only were many of the details too small, part of it was obscured by an open hatch on the bottom of the plane. Serenity hadn’t even noticed it until he saw where it blocked the rune; it was small and seemed to be deliberately situated in a blank spot on the runescript.

The runescript was clearly designed based on the available space on the plane, not the other way around. That didn’t seem particularly important to Old Man Rinsetti, but Serenity heartily disagreed. While it was possible that this was an old design, Serenity didn’t think it was. There were too many issues and design compromises; that was the mark of a new design.

Somewhere on the other side, there was a runeworker skilled enough to design the runescripts Serenity saw on the airplanes. Serenity hoped he wasn’t on Asihanya; there was a good chance that he was back home, wherever that was. Someone had to build the biplanes, after all, and Serenity knew that wasn’t an easy task. It was probably a group of people, and the runescripts were probably added at the same time.

“I think we’ve learned as much from this image as we can,” Serenity admitted. “What do you know about the runeset itself? Do you know its origin?”

Old Man Rinsetti frowned and picked up one of the books that mentioned the runeset. “It’s a bit of an oddball; back in the day, I didn’t know anyone actually lived on Dhellen, but that’s where the reference material for this came from, the Runeworker’s Guild on Dhellen. There’s a dedication on the inside front cover. I picked it up from a traveling merchant. I’d introduce you, but he settled down years ago. Not too long after I finished my Masterwork. Heh.” A fond smile crossed the old man’s face. “I didn’t even end up using these books for it. I thought I would, or I wouldn’t have bought them. Money was tight back then.”

Serenity smiled and nodded slightly. He could remember times when money was tight, and when he was in school was definitely one of them. Moreso for Thomas than Vengeance, as he recalled; Vengeance easily earned his spending money with his delving habit.

“Can’t say they were a waste of money, though. Dhellen.” Rinsetti tapped the book, then shook his head and grinned. “They got me interested in other worlds for a while. I even did some traveling. Those were good times. Visited most of the places my books came from. Can’t say that I enjoyed Dhellen, I’m not built for a world of fire, ash, and scorched earth. Gets cold at night, though; cold enough to kill if you’re not prepared, especially after the heat of the day.”

Serenity frowned. Had he ever been to Dhellen? That description seemed familiar, but he knew that it was a pretty basic description of almost any battleground; fire magic was very, very common. It was easy to understand and even easier to weaponize, after all.

The name “Dhellen” didn’t ring a bell, but it didn’t escape his notice that it was a world of fire and cold and “hell” was right in the middle of the word. “Are you sure you weren’t in a desert?”

Old Man Rinsetti shook his head. “Nah, a settlement. Oddest thing, though; day or night took months. Don’t think it would have swung so much if they didn’t. I didn’t stay that long, but one of the inhabitants got me good. Gave me the name of a settlement where I’d be more comfortable if I thought his was too warm. Turned out the place was frozen over, wouldn’t thaw for another month. I got out of there right quickly after that!”

That was different. Month-long days sounded like an almost tidally locked world; those could indeed have tremendously different “days” and “nights”. They were very rarely settled; it just wasn’t worth it. Serenity wondered what was so special about Dhellen. The planet might no longer have whatever once made it special; while leaving a planet was easier and cheaper than the initial settlement, it still wasn’t free and many people would choose to stay home even if home wasn’t that great.

“That’s quite a prank,” Serenity agreed. “I don’t think I’d have been very happy about it.”

“Well, let’s just say that my time on Dhellen ended a bit earlier than expected and I didn’t leave in the direction I planned, either.” The old man grinned. “Those were definitely the days. I swear, kids these days don’t travel the same way I did.”

If Rinsetti did his traveling after he completed his masterwork, he was definitely not a “kid” at the time. Serenity was certain it was quite a while in the past, but he was also certain that Rinsetti’s age was measured using three digits at the time. Serenity wasn’t about to call anyone over a century old a “kid”. At least, not if they were human; there were some slow-growing species where it might be reasonable.

The day after finishing the consultation with Old Man Rinsetti, Serenity decided to check out the local Mercenary Guild. It wasn’t his first goal, but the others seemed less urgent. Legion still didn’t have an origin for the biplanes, though she’d tracked them several miles into the wilderness by now.

He wanted to get a better look at the symbol on the underside of the biplane, but he didn’t really want to get any closer during an attack and binoculars were something he hadn’t thought of when he packed. There was no sign of anything equivalent in the city, either, not even as a magical device.

Serenity was probably going to end up building a spell to magnify the image, but before he did that he was giving Aide a chance to figure it out. Optically zoomable vision would be extremely useful when digital zoom was insufficient because the detail simply wasn’t there. The other option was simply higher resolution in new images, but Aide didn’t seem too hopeful about that option.

Unlike the grand building in the Shining Caverns on Tzintkra, Takina’s Mercenary Guild Headquarters was run out of a run-down shop front in an area that looked more like a strip mall than anything else Serenity could think of. Sure, it was a strip mall in an area that everyone walked to, but it was still a strip mall next to a relatively busy street.

Serenity heard a bell jingle as he opened the door. He glanced up just in time to see magic reset the bell that was triggered when the door opened. It was still a little odd to see enchantments used so casually instead of physical devices, but Serenity knew that it was both considered “easier” and a sign of wealth. Enchantments weren’t cheap, even if you could charge them yourself. Most used monster cores.