Chapter 3 — Rune Seeker

Hiral checked up and down the hall—clear in both directions—then opened the door and slipped in before anybody noticed him. Quickly closing the door, he leaned back against it and gently banged his head. Once, twice, three times.

He’d only told a partial lie to Loan and his father—he

Why couldn’t he just

Hiral pushed off from the door and walked down the narrow hall, pounding the bottom of his fist against the stone wall every few steps. He’d worked so hard. Trained every day. Read all the books and done every exercise he and Loan could think of. And it

Twenty feet—and an endless stream of internal insults—later, Hiral exited the hallway into what looked like a small waiting room. A crystal sat on a pedestal in the middle of the room, a plain wall beyond it.

Looking at the pedestal, he almost turned around and left again. He’d planned to have a class the next time he came here, but… apparently, that wasn’t in the cards this year.

“Nothing for it, then,” he mumbled to himself with a sigh, then stepped forward and put his hand against the crystal. Luckily, it didn’t require an input of solar energy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to use the interface, even though the

Not even a second later, a blue screen similar to Hiral’s status window materialized in the air above the pedestal.

Hiral scratched at his cheek while he looked at his previous times. So close to breaking the one-minute mark, and he’d hoped having the stat boosts from his Meridian Lines after getting his class would make the difference. If any Shapers actually came down to the training room, one of them would’ve shattered his records without even really trying. It was only because they all preferred sparring up in the Amphitheatre that Hiral’s name was on there at all.

“Ah, whatever,” Hiral said, tapping the

Hiral tapped

The lack of a

Still, falling meant swimming, and there was no way he’d crack one minute if he got wet. Even with his higher

The moving disc would have three opponents to defeat, generated somehow by the

Hiral took a deep breath, blew it back out slowly, and repeated the process twice more. At least the familiarity of the

He slapped the

Left, right, left, right, left, right, he bounded back and forth between the triangular islands, his feet only touching them long enough for his leg to bend and then spring him off again. With his high

Nothing to do but keep going, Hiral bounded back and forth between the islands until he leapt from the final one to the spinning disc. Tucking into a roll to absorb some momentum as soon as he landed, Hiral popped to his feet at the same time three red humanoid constructs of solid light started appearing with shields as tall as they were. A couple good hits were enough to bring them down—they didn’t have much health, if he could get around the shields—but the shields themselves completely negated any damage they blocked.

Hiral moved in the second it took the opponents to fully solidify, darting toward the one on his left, then swept out and around the shield. Suddenly behind the red shield-bearer, he could

Far lighter than expected, Hiral’s opponent went up and over as he bridged his back, slamming the red head to the stone with an echoing crack. Knowing the other two would already be moving, Hiral gave a gentle push, and the momentum of the shield-bearer’s legs carried it over the edge of the disc to fall into the water.

One of the red icons above the disc vanished at the same time he kicked up to his feet.

Hiral spun to face the other two, who were already shield-rushing straight at him. He’d learned the hard way they could shove him right off the disc if they hit him, so he’d always fought them near the center of the spinning platform. But it was time for a new plan.

Bending his knees, Hiral set his feet and forced himself to be patient as the shield-bearers charged. They moved fast, but it still felt like it took them an eternity to corner him on the edge of the platform, and then they both twisted their shields so they held them horizontally instead of vertically. The move exposed their heads—it’d still take more than a single blow to put them down—but also completely cut off any escape routes along the disc.

Suddenly with nowhere to go, Hiral took a step back, the heel of his left foot hanging off the edge of the platform. The shield-bearers charged in, intent on pushing him over the side even if they went with him. When they came so close Hiral could touch the shields if he reached out, he bent his knees and then leapt straight up, hands extended for the shield-bearers’ shoulders.

Feet just

Both winked out.

With no time to waste, Hiral pushed himself to his feet and spun to orient himself, eyes peeled for the path that would open…

He was on the wrong side of the disc, but that gave him a chance to build up speed as a wall on one side of the hall lifted to reveal a narrow balance beam. Fifty feet long, and only as wide as the palm of Hiral’s hand, it was still no match for his

As soon as he landed, however, he paused to peer down into what would be best described as a moving, jigsaw-puzzle pit. Blocks all along the twenty-foot depths of the pit moved back and forth, sliding along one wall, and then hovering across the opening to sink into the opposite. Originally designed for racers to leap down block by block, Hiral instead waited for the familiar pattern, and then simply jumped into the middle of the pit.

Arms tight at his side, and through a space not much wider than his shoulders, Hiral dropped straight between the shifting blocks to land on the next platform below, crouching down to absorb some of the impact, then launching forward like a sprinter. The long hallway, bare by all appearances, stretched a good two hundred feet ahead of him, but he immediately went over to run along the right wall.

No sooner than he’d covered fifteen feet, arm-thick poles rotated out of the wall on his left, reaching just past the middle of the hall—but not quite far enough to whack Hiral. One, two, three, four poles swung out at varying heights, and then Hiral dove forward over another bar that rose out of the floor and went from wall to wall at shin height.

Easily clearing the tripping bar, Hiral tucked his shoulder and rolled under another bar that dropped from the ceiling. Up and to his feet again, he only lost half a step, then ran against the left wall as more bars swung out from the right toward the center of the hall.

Part of him would’ve felt guilty at the way he almost

Two more shifts from side to side, a quick jaunt of hopping, and one final tuck-and-roll got him to the end of the tunnel. Sliding under the last bar, Hiral popped to his feet as three blue icons appeared in the center of the walled room.

Not even waiting for the three thin constructs to form, he dashed at where he

Because of his 18

Turning as he grabbed the leg, a shoulder-bump to the blue fighter stole its balance, and then Hiral hauled in the other direction. With a solid grip on the leg, his

Lacking even the time to take a deep breath, Hiral was back on his feet and sprinting toward a wall just now raising. Before it reached the ceiling, he was already in the air, leaping for the two bars attached to the wall above another water-filled hallway. His lead foot touched down perfectly on the lower of the bars, about the same level as the floor he’d just left, while his hand reached out to barely touch the bar at shoulder height.

Just inches from the wall, and no wider than the balance beam had been, Hiral quick-stepped along the lower bar, using his hand as a guide and nothing more. When he reached the end of the fifteen-foot path, he leapt across the eight-foot hall to more bars on the other wall.

Hiral devoured the fifteen feet on this bar and sprang across the hall to the next set, bare feet slapping with each step. Five feet before the end, he eased up on his mad sprint and focused on the coming trial. The horizonal bars coming weren’t a challenge by themselves, but he’d learned the hard way that if he jumped to them with too much momentum, it’d mess up his rhythm and slow him down in the long run.

Step, step, leap, and Hiral caught the first horizonal bar with his right hand, his forward momentum swinging his legs well above the water below. Still, he’d hit them with a bit too much speed, and his only chance was to…

Hiral extended his left arm past the next bar and instead reached for the bar after that, just barely snagging it with his fingers. Without a full grip on it, it’d be a risk to let go with his right hand, but to have any hope of breaking one minute, he’d need to take a chance and trust his

Fifteen bars in total, barely a few seconds to get across them all, and Hiral reached for the last one while snapping his legs forward. Up and outward he sailed across the three feet of empty air to catch the rope hanging down through the last vertical part of the course. By the time he’d gotten here during the first hundred runs or so of the

Hiral pulled himself up in what felt like record time, a small swing and jump getting him back onto solid ground before he lunged out and tapped on the floating blue

Hiral’s breath caught at the mention of a new record, but then he blew out the air in his lungs with an annoyed sigh.

Well, he

Hiral ran his hands through his hair while he breathed out. He’d made progress, but it still felt like he’d failed again, and the child’s mocking voice flitted through his mind over and over.

He slapped his hand on the

“I