(TPOR) Chapter 190: Power Runes

“What do you mean you’re not coming with us?” Zed asked.

Festus looked at him like an old man arguing with a petulant child.

“I don’t know what part of those words are confusing you,” he said. “I will meet you there, but I will not be following you,”

Daniel walked up to them.

It was bright and early in the morning. The sun was out and the sky was still the simple blue that was known in the mornings. The heat of the sun had not begun to bear down on the world as it tends to during the afternoons.

They were in the parking lot of the motel. The two cars they’ve been driving waited for them to reach a conclusion.

Ash, Chris, Oliver and Shanine stood next to one car while Ronda, Kid and Jennifer stood next to the other. Eitri sat casually on the hood of the car the Olympians were standing next to.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked.

Zed thumbed at Festus. “My loving grandfather is making me wish I had put him in a retirement home when I had the—Ow! Ow! Ow! That hurts.”

“What were you about to say?” Festus asked, gripping Zed in the side with a strong pinch.

“The pain rune didn’t hurt this much,” Zed gasped.

Daniel looked between both of them. “With all due respect, I still don’t know what’s wrong.”

Festus released Zed and Zed hobbled away from him with a chaotic shrug.

“I’m not coming with you guys,” Festus explained.

Daniel looked confused yet suspicious at the same time. “It’s a four hour ride from here, sir. Or do you have no intentions of coming to California?”

“Oh, California is good,” Festus said. “And you guys will definitely see me there. I’m still teaching this one how to use runes, and Eitri hasn’t figured out how to discover runes. So I’ll be there.”

“I’m sensing a but.”

“And you’re right,” Festus nodded. “But I’m a Knight rank mage. California only has a handful of those. The moment I walk through that mana signature scanner thingy Zed told me about, I’m sure alarms will start going off like the third of August.”

Daniel gave him a confused look and Zed grinned.

“Third of August?” Daniel asked, confused.

Zed leaned in. “It may or may not be an independence day somewhere out there.”

Festus sighed. “Now the kid’s got me saying nonsense, too. My point is I get scanned and the entire town is aware of my existence.”

“It is only normal,” Daniel said. “The arrival of someone with your level of power should be something the VHF should be aware of.”

Festus sucked in a deep breath. “Not everybody with power wants to be treated as powerful, Daniel. Some people just want to be left alone to live their life. If the VHF is aware of me, the next thing I’ll notice is that I’m being watched.”

“So you want to be in the city but not have the city be aware of you?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t sound very ethical.”

“It’s not about ethics. It’s about humanity. I simply want to be left alone.”

Zed looked between the both of them.

“Not to be the one to cut through the tension,” he said. “But isn’t that illegal?”

Festus shot him a glare and he backed away with raised hands.

“I’m just saying,” he continued. “Sounds like illegal immigration and all that.”

“Not really,” Kid called out from where he was. “It’s still kind of the united states at the moment. It’s not like he’s crossing borders or anything like that.”

Zed turned and snapped a finger at him. “Exactly! Which means he can enter whenever he wants however he wants.”

He paused, then turned to Daniel.

“What are you looking at?” he caressed his face gently, slowly. “Got something on my face?”

Daniel ran a frustrated hand down his face.

“Face it,” Zed smiled at him. “You aren’t winning this one.”

Festus met Daniel’s eyes, fixed him in place. “I know I cannot stop you unless I intend on killing you, so I have to ask before we live here. Will I have a peaceful stay in California, interim captain Daniel Okaza? Or will I be left looking over my shoulders?”

Zed watched Daniel visibly gulp.

“I will make no reports of your presence to the VHF headquarters.”

A moment of silence stretched between them after Daniel’s response. It lasted barely three seconds but it was heavy, almost ominous.

Then Festus broke it.

“That’s good. I was worried because it would be impossible to convince this one not to go to California.”

He turned and snapped his finger at Eitri.

“Also,” he added, “I’m taking Eitri with me.”

Eitri threw his arms up in frustration. “Why? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Festus answered easily.

“Then what do you need me for? It’s not like there’s anything I can do that you can’t do.”

“I need you for companionship,” Festus replied easily. “I’m an old man and I enjoy the company.”

Eitri grumbled about something incoherent and Zed clapped to get everyone’s attention.

“That settles it.” He turned to Daniel. “You and your crew take that car, while we’ll take this one. Festus, how do we get in touch with you once we’re inside?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find you.”

“Ooh, mystic. I like it.”

With that, Zed turned and made his way to their car. The others went for their respective doors. Away from them, the Olympians watched with mix expressions.

Then Jennifer broke away from her group and headed towards them.

“Mind if I ride with you guys?” she asked.

Chris scowled at her but she wasn’t paying her any attention. Her eyes were on Zed.

“Those guys can get boring sometimes,” she said in way of explanation. “And between you and me, I’d rather my last four hours of freedom be spent having fun and hearing interesting stories before I return back to a soldier’s life of rigid commands and boring food.”

“We heard that!” Kid hollered.

Jennifer flipped him the middle finger without looking back. “You were supposed to.”

Zed took a moment to think about it.

“Nope,” he said, then turned and walked around the car. “I call shotgun!”

…

It had been close to an hour since the cars left. The Olympians gone along with Zed and his friends. Eitri stood waiting outside, watching the sun rise higher in the sky.

He still couldn’t believe Festus had kept him behind.

Inside Festus’ room there was a bit of rummaging around and some scattering. It had been going on for over ten minutes now. The old man was thrashing the place. The problem was that Eitri didn’t know why.

Festus had just told him to stand outside and walked inside. The chaos came a few minutes after.

While he waited, Eitri’s mind went back to hillview. He was a long way from what he had been there. There he’d had power, people that answered to his every whim. His name was feared and nobody questioned him except four other people.

Given time to himself and his mind, he found himself—to his surprise—missing Hillview. The place had been chaotic and there had always been one instance or the other where one fool wanted to encroach into another’s territory. God knew he’d been stealing from Big Man Desolate all the time. He couldn’t help himself, the man’s territory was quite literally the beggars on the street.

The thought reminded him of his last moment with the desiccated mage and he shivered.

If I’d known he was a death mage I’d probably never have stolen.

But above being a death mage it was the man’s fearlessness in front of Festus that surprised him. Everyone heard a rumor or two about death mages and blood mages but no one ever really saw them. Out in Hillview, mages like that were like stories of the paranormal, of miracles and deliveries in church. They happened to someone else.

The closest such things ever got were to friends of friends of friends.

So were the Olympians, he thought as another crash sounded inside the room.

He looked behind him, dreading the idea of traveling four hours with a grumpy Knight rank mage. But it wasn’t going to be four hours, though. The four hours’ time frame the Olympians had given was by car.

What would four hours by car interpret to by foot?

Eitri sighed.

Madam Shaggy wouldn’t be going through this kind of problem right now. She’d be home in her room counting the proceeds from her next business endeavor. The attack by the anti-mages may have cost her a handful of her girls but he was fairly certain she would’ve gotten back a fair share to restart her business.

Eitri had made it a personal decision not to indulge. He had also spread the command amongst his friends.

It wasn’t from one moral high ground or the other. He’d had his fair share of paid love over the years, even before the second awakening. But his problem had been with the heart of Madam Shaggy’s business.

No one in her line of work had their star employee being an underaged girl. No. No one in her line of work used minors.

But he had been unable to do anything about it. His moral compass wasn’t so high that he would’ve gone to war with Madam Shaggy over something like that.

So he had done the best he could, deprived her business of his and his employees’ money. In the beginning it had worked well enough. His men had been obedient. Then some of them had started stepping out.

Of all the girls in hillview, Madam Shaggy somehow had the finest working under her employ. The mathematics of how that was possible wasn’t lost to Eitri. No matter how mediocre her treatment of them was, compared to most of the people in the town, they were treated better.

Madam Shaggy only punished those who did not know to bend when the queen walked in.

So Eitri had taken up a different strategy. He’d allowed his men employ the services of her girls, but there was a condition. If he learnt that any of them touched the minors, they would be punished.

And there hadn’t been anyone that didn’t know the little king. Justice was never tempered with mercy. Not on such topics, at least.

There was another crash followed by the sound of breaking window.

Eitri looked back glad to find whatever had been broken was not the window behind him. One thing continued to worry him though.

Abed’s death.

He had come to terms with Abed’s killer. It wasn’t something of wanting to take revenge on the man. Eitri had never been able to stand the mage’s obsession with Shanine. What he was curious about was related to his death.

The axe they’d found in Zed’s hand when they’d returned that day. Coupled with the mage’s crafting skill, he was wondering why none of the others had asked if the axe was what was left of Abed.

Everybody just walked around as if it was normal. As if they weren’t bothered by the fact that they traveled with a man who was more than capable of turning them into nothing but weaponry or jewelry. A man who could potentially turn them to dust.

“Alright…”

Eitri turned at the sound of Festus’ voice. The old man was disheveled but alright.

“Get it out of your system?” he asked.

“What?” Festus asked, confused. Then he shook his head in realization. “Did you think I was angry?”

“Someone goes into a room and starts thrashing the place?” Eitri shrugged. “Angry is the justified deduction.”

Festus shook his head. “You have nothing to fear, little king. I wasn’t angry. Zed’s discovery of pain rune all by himself and that extremely complex rune he showed me gave me an idea. By the way, we should start going.”

Festus walked past him and Eitri followed after him. They walked out of the motel’s environment and started down a grassy path, the same path the others had driven down.

“So what idea did it give you?” Eitri asked after a while.

“Well,” Festus said with a small frown. “He says he discovered the pain rune during his fight with the anti-mages.”

“That one where they pumped him full of holes?”

“Yes, that one. So I figured, maybe I can recreate something similar. A friend of mine once used a very powerful rune. He called it the destruction rune.”

Eitri shivered at the name.

Festus looked down at him. “You know it?”

“I’d be ashamed of anyone who’s been looking for runes for as long as I have that doesn’t know of it. I call them power runes. Destruction. Illusion. Creation. Assimilation.”

Festus nodded. “I’m impressed. But there’s no creation rune. It’s a reconstruction rune. No one knows it, but the take is that it can reconstruct almost anything.”

“People say it’s the epitome of healing and life runes.”

“It’s debatable. People believe a rune as powerful as it should be able to reconstruct a person. But it’s a working theory. If the runes work on the same wave length as the destruction rune, then they probably just do things on a large scale and at a large cost.”

Eitri took a moment to think about it.

“Agreeable,” he said in the end. “So what rune were you trying to get?”

“The destruction rune,” Festus answered.

“That why you were thrashing the place?”

Festus grumbled but nodded. “There are three known ways to learn runes. The first is to be taught. Someone guides you and shows you a rune. The second one is to witness the rune. Some monsters have been known to evoke a few runes in special places and ways while using skills.”

Festus paused and frowned.

“And the third?” Eitri pressed.

“To experience a rune,” Festus said. “If you are in the presence of some rune effects, if you can experience it, you can gain an understanding of it.”

Eitri nodded in understanding. “Like the kid did with the pain rune. It’s no wonder you had no luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said you have to experience the effects of the rune, be in the presence of it to learn it. Your boy got pumped full of holes. I don’t know any better way to experience it than to have the effects happen to you on a significant scale.”

“That means…”

“That to get your destruction rune…”

“I have to be the subject of its effect.” Festus ran a hand down his face. “That sends everything into a huge mess. The very essence of being destroyed is something you can’t come back from. You’d quite literally be destroyed.”

Eitri found it interesting to see Festus accept defeat.

“Bummer,” he said, hoping his amusement did not reflect in his voice. “Why don’t you just have your friend teach you?”

“He can’t. Besides, I have no idea where he is. It was so long ago.”

“Well, I guess that’s a bust. Anyway, why exactly did you bring me with you. And don’t give me that sappy lie about loneliness and companionship… respectfully of course.”

Festus snorted in the way old people do when they think a conversation is unimportant. “Zed said he wanted none of the cars to be choked up and I didn’t want the mana signature scanning me. You are neither an Olympian or really their friend so I figured they can have the cars. I’m sure the kids are up to something they don’t want the Olympians to know.”

“So I’m walking a journey that takes four hours to drive because some kid wanted some alone time?” Eitri asked, flabbergasted.

Festus chuckled. “Yep.”

“That’s just unfair.”

They continued their walk in silence, Eitri wishing he had a teleportation power that could just send him to a chosen location. The best he could do was his portal power and that just sent him to a room buried under so much rubble it might as well be the bottom of the earth.

And if he so much as made the mistake of closing the portal he created to get to it, he was doomed to be stuck in it.

And that was a mistake he could not risk.

As they walked, Eitri had another question on his mind, one he wasn’t ready to or willing to aske Festus.

He didn’t remember any Olympians giving out much in the way of their names.

So how did Festus know Daniel’s full name?

Did the Olympian tell him?