Grym eyed the pool. “How will this help?”

  “Water conducts electricity. It’s possible this will only make it more dangerous, but the electricity looks to run only on its outer carapace and skin. We would just need to be extra careful to stay far away enough.”

  The monster bellowed on the other side of the cave. It seemed practically blind, stumbling around without aim or direction. Grym’s ridiculous attempt at moving quietly, tip-toeing around the rubble, would have been doomed to failure in any other situation, but it didn’t matter here.

  “If I’m right and its skin forms an insulating layer, we could pierce it, conduct the electricity inside it. Water would help, lead the lightning in, letting it boil its own internal organs.”

  “I don’t know the words you use, elf.” Grym flicked her arms down, the bundles of muscles in her shoulders moving under her skin. “But I understand the idea. How do you propose we do it?”

  “I’ll stab my sword into it, leaving it there. It will work like a lightning rod. Maybe it will be enough. If not, we lead it to the pool.”

  “Won’t you get zapped?”

  “Maybe. Do you have a better idea? Or a long metal spear?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there we are.”

  Grym flung a rock the size of my head at the monster. Her strength was marvellous. We had tried stomping and shouting at it, but she got tired of waiting, I guess. She had a temper, as I had already seen.

  The rock sailed across the cave and smacked right into the shoulder of the monster. The armor cracked and sparks shot up in a cloud of blue and white. The beast bellowed, the horse head jerking from side to side, lips and tongue flapping from the force of the air pushed out by the roar. It turned around, falling again on all four legs to gallop at us. Its gait was a thunderous, muscles pumping to shoot the heavy body over the rocky floor toward us.

  I spun my sword in a circle, testing my arm. Facing the beast straight on would be suicide. The situation would have been optimal for a long spear. The way it was charging at us, all of its weight behind it, it would have skewered itself on anything sturdy and pointy enough. Too late for that consideration. Notwithstanding that no spear could have endured such a bulk. Maybe if this didn’t work, and we survived, we could try crafting some sort of stake barrier.

  That idea had to be left for later, as the rune-beast reached us. We both leapt aside. Grym to the right, me to the left. It passed between us, skidding sideways on the stone as it tried to correct its direction. The blue sparks of the electricity contrasted against the yellow sparks its hooves kicked off the ground. I was surprised to see it had metal horseshoes.

  “It must have fused with a real horse! Teratomes do that. It’s the worst,” I say.

  It was, as you say, the worst. It splashed into the pool, not being able to stop its momentum before dipping in. As it hit the water, the electricity flashed bright white. It was painful in the near total darkness of the cave. Water shot up in spouts, arcs of white electricity running over it, steam rising, billowing out of the pool.

  The beast flailed around, splashing water everywhere. The plan had failed exactly in a way to make everything as dangerous as possible to us. The beast seemed mostly unaffected by getting wet and the boiling water and the steam, but it did falter, confused or hurt, who knows.

  I gritted my teeth and leapt forward. Grym shouted something behind me, but I ignored it. If I was correct with what I remembered of electricity, the water should be conducting most of it and less might be left for striking me. If I could thrust the sword in hard and fast enough and get away immediately, without falling into the water myself, this might just work.

  I put all my strength behind the strike. The monster itself posed no danger. It was slow and had both its hands holding on to the edge of the pool, the rest of the body flailing in the water. The narrow blade pierced the skin easily enough, slipping in between the cracks in armor. Immediately, my body started spasming, fingers cramping around the hilt of the sword. Electricity running up the blade and the metal crossguard of the sword and into me. My teeth bit together so hard I cracked one molar. I tried to force my hand to let go, but couldn’t. My muscles were all hard as rock, fingers, arms, legs, everything.

  “Aa! Maybe it was like what Corum did to… wait, that didn’t actually happen for real. Don’t mind me,” I say, before Finna smacks me on the head.

  ”Don’t interrupt him now!”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  ”Shh!” Rworg hisses.

  Thank you. At that moment, Grym tackled me from the side. She bowled into me, wrenching my hand off the hilt of the blade. I broke two fingers, even if I noticed it only later. Once I hit the ground, I realized I could move again. I felt like I had run for half a day or been ground through a mill. And an orc the size of a horse was lying on top of me. Her face was close to mine, the tusks touching my cheek, her breath husky on my face.

  She blinked, her eyelashes nearly touching mine. I could feel their flutter. Behind her, the beast spasmed and screamed and sizzled. Sparks, blue and orange and white, rained down on her, silhouetting her head and painting the ceiling of the in the color of fireworks. She leaned in—

  ”Wait, what is going on with this story?” Finna asks.

  Ahem, I mean, hours later, once the beast stopped moving, we inspected the carcass. The electricity still rippled along the body, but its strength had diminished greatly. Dead eyeless fish rose up to the surface of the pool.

  “Help me drag it out of the water,” I said.

  Grym eyes the carcass. “Of course. We need to get it off our water supply, but are you planning something else as well? Your eyes have a look, elf.”

  I winked at her.

  We both had burns on our hands from the sparking electricity, but the crackling was dying down the longer the thing had been dead. Rune beasts are monsters that have either formed or ingested a rune somehow. This thing had eaten a medallion. The fingers of the arms held rings with runes as well. Maybe some mage had lost control of an experiment. Maybe they had just gotten unlucky.

  The medallion had been half ingested, the metal and runes melding, leaking into the flesh of the monster. I didn’t understand it then, but now it makes sense. Its physiology had adapted to the runes, propagating them. Its blood was full of mana, which activated and fed the runes.

  I cut them off. Every rune that had etched itself into its carapace. I had no idea of how to draw runes. I didn’t know a single one, but I could channel. Even elves in non-magical professions are taught the skill. It allows you to activate magical items, use rune scrolls, light the lamps of your own home. As the mana runs through runes, it slowly burns them away, breaks their form. This rune beast had been arcing electricity for months, and the runes were still pristine. Maybe they wouldn’t hold long now that it was dead, but they worked for now. I tested them each, channeling mana into one rune at a time. One zapped my finger, one created a dim blue light. One caused a mild gust of wind to sweep the ground near me.

  It was interesting. I waited in the cave while Grym fetched the goblins, experimenting and nursing my head, that was still somewhat sore. The rest of my body was definitely sore and felt like I had been mangled.

  Because of the electricity! Get your mind out of the gutter, Rworg.

  To pass the time, I memorized the shapes, practiced drawing the runes that I had pulled off the beast. Casting a spell works by drawing the runes while channeling a smattering of mana to hold the shape of the rune, then supplying the rest of the needed mana to activate the effect. I had never memorized any spells, but I tried to copy the runes on the plates and make them work. I manage to create my very own spell, combining the light and electricity runes I found to cause an intense flash. I actually still use it sometimes.

  When Grym returned with the goblins, I had memorized the runes, practiced drawing them quickly. I made the goblins squeal in joy by shooting sparks in the air, blowing a cool breeze on their faces. They were a rewarding audience, I’ll give them that.

  Only later I learned that what I had done was extremely dangerous. The order in which the runes are drawn is important, as is the direction the mana is channeled into them. The spell can fizzle, the effect can be reversed, or even be sent back in time before the spell was cast. Yes, I’m serious. Some of the worst magical misadventures have happened because someone intended to try casting a spell and the effect happened before the spell was cast.

  I obviously didn’t know any of the inherent risks, or I wouldn’t have tried any of what I did. I had always held the opinion that magic didn’t interest me, so I hadn’t bothered learning anything about it properly. I could have killed myself many times over, but I was lucky.

  ”Should have known better before smattering mana off your finger,” Finna says. “I would never do that.”

  Rworg nods. ”As would not I.”

  Anyway, that was how I ended up drawing runes for the first time and what sparked my interest in magic originally. Turns out, I had some innate talent for it. Not a complete surprise, in hindsight. After I left the cave, I returned to my home for a long while to learn and practice. My father was elated. He thought I returned to follow in his footsteps, that old fool. Well, young, already at that point, and still, but that’s beside the point.

  Finna harrumphs. “That wasn’t actually as bad as I feared. I liked the part where you got hit with a rock.”

  Mandollel chuckles. He has a far-away look in his eyes as he rests his back on his backpack, half lying down. “I haven’t thought about those times in a long while. Ah, to be young again.”

  The lid on the pot clatters and a bit of steam escapes from under it. The simple smell of rabbit mixes with Rworg’s herbs. The effect is mouth-watering. Everything tastes better out in the field to begin with, but getting to taste Kertharian spices is exciting.

  Mandollel takes a sniff as well. “The stew should be ready. Heating up a pot like that would be very easy to do, actually. You need to draw just a couple of simple runes and it wouldn’t take much mana. I could show you.”

  “Could you do that with any kind of pot?” I ask. I can just imagine their faces back home, if I did that. Durn would sulk for a week, muttering something about the kitchen not being a playground and magic being unnatural.

  “Not really, unfortunately. This one is specially made for this. It’s thin and conducts heat well. If you’d try this with a ceramic pot, it would just crack. Cast iron cookware would need to have the mana forced into it and the weight alone would make it more taxing to heat it up. You’d need an actual mage to do that, and it would be easier to just light a fire.”

  “Iron doesn’t like magic,” Rworg says.

  Mandollel lifts the lid off the pot and stirs the stew. The meat pulls apart from the bone as he does. The smell makes my stomach grumble and my head feel light. “It does not. Let’s eat.”