A hundred strides under the Collective, Kaius stared down a stone target dummy covered in dense lines of glowing runework. The space was overbuilt to the extreme, the walls, floor and ceiling built from solid panels of inscribed steel. At the edge of the room where he stood, a raised platform separated the ‘safe’ section of the room from the actual testing bay, protected by a runic force shield that shimmered in the clinical white lighting that drenched the space.

He’d stripped off his shirt, and taken off his boots, revealing every one of his glyphs.

That shield was right behind him, protecting his audience — Runemaster Casso, a dozen or so other high ranking runewrights that had been allowed in, and a similar number of mages from the Spire next door. It hadn’t taken them long to turn up, trailing behind Ianmus while they begged favours from the Collective to come and watch — and give his teammate an opportunity to show off.

Most of the mages and runewrights were politely clustered at the back wall, happy to bear witness to their magic at all, but two stood prominently at the edge of the safety shield, next to Ianmus — Runemaster Casso, and Magister Alistair, the head of the Spire that had come with his teammate.

“Ready!” he called, turning back to see Casso watching him through a stacked array of glass lenses, encircled by glowing runes. Each was the size of a plate, and they were attached to a lever-swing arm that anchored to the pulpit he stood in front of. Some sort of detector that would help him sense minor fluctuations of mana. Apparently his spells activated too damn fast for the man to make much sense of without them.

A fact that filled him with more than a little satisfaction. It would have been shameful if they hadn’t.

The runemaster grinned maniacly, giving him two thumbs up. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

The blatant enthusiasm made Kaius laugh. All of the mages and runewrights were having the time of their lives, watching him with rapt attention and bright eyes. Kaius was sure he could have thrown a fist full of platinum in their direction and not one of them would have moved.

“I’ll finish with Drakthar,” he called out, still focused on the targeting dummy.

He’d given them a good look at each of his glyphs, just so they could see them in action. While he was keeping the full diagrams of them to himself — in case someone managed to identify a vulnerability in their construction that could be used against him — he was curious if their instruments would be able to detect any differences.

Taking a breath, he hurled a Stormlash across the testing bay. Lightning arced over his target, the runes of the dummy flaring bright as they both analysed the spells output, and reinforced the dummy’s structure.

The light faded, leaving only the acrid tang of ozone behind.

Kaius turned to the soft mutters behind him, sharing a quick grin of amusement with Ianmus. He’d already gone through his abilities, showing the runewrights the geometric disks that were his keyseals.

Runemaster Casso looked up from where he was furiously writing in his notebook.

“This is fascinating,” the man said. “It’s almost hard to believe they’re all written in one script — the differences between each glyph in how mana propagates through the whole working turns more than one theory completely on its head.”

Kaius was impressed that the man had caught that. The activation of his glyphs happened almost instantly — he only knew because the damn things used his own mana. That said, it had only ever been a minor oddity to him. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised by the difference the man could make — Casso had likely forgotten more about runecraft than he had ever learnt.

“It’s a shame you’re keeping these private for now, though I understand, of course,” Casso said, shaking his head a little. “Can’t do all that much with only the output to work with — though even the knowledge that three dimensional runes exist is ground breaking. You’ve opened up a new frontier of research with that alone.”

One that would be far easier to reach once he gave the man his notes on Imperial stacked formations, no doubt. That would be a fun one to drop in the man's lap on the way out.

Magister Alistair smiled ruefully, crossing his arms. The motion made the silver trim of his black robes shimmer as it caught the light.

“It’s almost impossible to believe — so many mages have spent decades working on the relationship between magic, intent, and spell forms. Glyphbinding and keyseals explain so much. Runecraft had always made it clear that the shape of mana alone could create effects, even in the absence of Will to guide it, but that was always completely at odds with known spellcasting principles.”

The mage clicked his fingers, an amorphous blob of aspected mana bursting into glass dust that glittered in the light. He waved at the motes that drifted to the floor as if they emphasised his point.

“See? Shaped spell geometry helps, but I don’t need it. With Will alone, the mana responds.”

He knew what the man meant. Glyphbinding was almost the complete opposite. He could use his Will and intent to shape the outcome of his spells, but it took far more effort, and he didn’t need it. The influence of his glyphs did all the actual work of spellcasting. Ianmus’s Keyseals lay somewhere in the middle: they required intent, but without sacred geometry the thing would be too unstable to gather mana, let alone for Ianmus to shape the spells he cast through them.

The magister shook his head, looking from Kaius to Ianmus. “And for two discoveries of this magnitude to be revealed at once? Astounding.”

Ianmus smiled awkwardly, waving off the compliment. “What Kaius achieved is far more notable. With my knowledge of sorcery and ready access to his glyphs, it was much easier for me to experiment and iterate

— especially given that the System confirmed that there were three main pillars of magic. Once I started considering that what we knew as free-casting and Sorcery were more intertwined than we previously thought, there was a rather obvious space between glyphbinding and sorcery for me to explore. Despite that, I still damn near killed myself crafting my first keyseal.”

Casso snorted at him, pushing aside the runic lenses he’d been using to evaluate Kaius’s glyphs. “Bah, don’t downplay your achievement. Focusing your efforts on sacred geometry, and stabilising them through your soul is still a mark of insight few would have. That said, before the two of you run off, I have one more thing I’m curious about.”

The runemaster reached to the pulpit in front of him, tapping on a notebook. Kaius had given it to him on their way to the testing room — a record of his notes and detailed diagrams of his original glyph. The one Father had designed.

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“You didn’t make this, did you?” Casso asked. He looked… a little tense? That was odd.

“No,” Kaius replied, shaking his head. “My father — how could you tell?”

Casso slumped in relief. “Thank the bloody gods — if this was your work, I'd have to retire. It’s the work of a damn genius.”

Bloody right it was. Kaius let out a small smile.

“The amount of familiarity you’d have to have with runework to even conceive of something like this… I don’t know even a quarter enough to follow along with the differences that would be needed to design this. I can follow along, sorta, but it’s pulling principles from

half a dozen different specialities and then meaningfully applying them at a level of simplicity that even a bloody unclassed could scribe this. This looks like the work of a team of grand runemasters working together, not a single man.” Casso said, before he looked up from the book to meet Kaius’s eyes. “He okay with you sharing this?”

Kaius winced. “He’s dead.”

He didn’t mention the Onyx. The only reason he felt confident sharing glyphbinding was because there was no possible way of his Dynasty’s enemies tying it to the name of Unterstern. Father had invented the glyph long after they had gone into hiding. But if it got out that the hot new discovery in the runic arts was tied to a young delver with his name, and invented by a mysterious grandmaster of the art who had died only a few years prior in an Onyx attack? People might start putting things together.

Casso paused at the revelation, before giving him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry for putting my boot in my mouth — that’s a crying shame. He was a rare talent — leagues better than me at enchanting, and that’s just one of the trades I can see elements of. Do you know what he focused on? Might help figure out why this damn thing works.”

Kaius paused, crossing his arms, a motion that made him remember he was still standing there shirtless. Hurriedly pulling a tunic, he walked to the stone observation platform. He didn’t actually know Father’s specialty, but he could make a good guess.

“Runesmithing, as far as i’m aware.” Kaius replied, taking Ianmus’s offered hand as he stepped onto the platform.

“Makes sense, this makes a mockery of some hellishly advanced enchanting principles — and casually melds them with body formations, ward work, spellform design, and a few other things besides. Think you could inscribe it for me? It’d be good to see an example before we go tinkering with it — I think it might only be stable when attached to someone, and I don’t want to go blowing off some poor sods hand.”

Kaius laughed, remembering the interesting time he had with his first attempts at inscribing it in the Depths. “That is a bit of a concern — but sure, I don’t mind. I won’t be able to cast through it, since it’s designed for the hand, and that real estate is spoken for.”

He held up Drakthar.

“Of course!” Casso replied, almost giddy as he lowered the runic lenses once more.

Both Ianmus and Magister Alistair stepped closer as Kaius bared his upper arm.

“I forgot you haven’t seen my first glyph in person,” Kaius said, smiling at his friend.

“I haven’t! Been rather curious how it shapes up to what you’ve got now.” Ianmus replied.

Seeing no reason to wait, Kaius gripped his mana, calling to mind the arrays of his father’s work. The last time he’d inscribed it, he’d been an unclassed with a pittance of Stats, and had had to refer to his notes every few minutes. Now, he had a mind like a vice, and could remember every rune as clear as day.

Mana lept to his command, guided by a Unique skill in the second tier, and backed by the vicegrip of more than sixteen hundred Willpower.

It was so easy. Like he was tying his damn boots. He practically stamped the entire thing into existence, shaping a single strand of mana into the runes and lines of his earliest glyph.

For a single moment, Kaius felt the sting of inscription — like he’d been pricked by thousands of needles at once. Then it was over, a layered black formation branded into his skin.

Casso coughed. “Err, maybe a little slower, son? I didn’t catch much of that.”

Kaius blinked — right. Whoops. He was so used to inscribing as fast as he physically could, that he hadn’t really considered what it would look like from the outside.

“Show off,” Ianmus said, elbowing him with a grin.

Rolling his eyes, Kaius was about to wholesale banish the weave of mana — he had enough control there was no worry of destabilisation — before he realised that the runemaster standing next to him would probably be able to glean something from that process as well.

Over the next ten minutes, he worked backwards — moving with what felt like agonising slowness. Rather than using his stats and raw ability to skip important steps, he took his time — breaking arrays and segments of runework in an order that would reduce the chances of destabilisation as much as possible.

Once he was done, he started again — taking his time to follow the process exactly in order.

When he was done, Casso stood from his crouch and ran his hands through his hair.

“That was fascinating. I can think of dozens of things I want to poke at — see how it breaks, then put it back together again. Makes me want to grab half of these nitwits and lock us all in a workshop till the end of the week.” Casso said, jabbing his thumb at the runewrights who watched in silence.

Judging by the eager grins on some of their faces, they were not opposed to the idea in the slightest.

“I’m of half a mind to join you — I have a sneaking suspicion there will be a lot more collaboration between us in the coming days.” Alistair muttered.

Before Kaius could respond, he felt a nudge through his bond.

“We’re outside! Found a place to stay, but it's on the other side of the borough — we’ll have to rush to beat the parade!”

Kaius sat up straight, and hurriedly started pulling on his boots. He did not want to deal with a parade that honoured Lord Bloody Kel — not after today.

“You might get your wish — my team’s outside,” he said, before he turned to Ianmus. “Ready to go?”

When Ianmus nodded, and used his staff to push himself to his feet, Kaius followed — pulling another note book from his ring. He had, very intentionally, left it till the last moment. He had practically no insights into Imperial Runework, and he hadn’t wanted to draw time away from discussing keyseals and glyphs.

“I’ve got one more thing to share,” Kaius said, thrusting the thick leatherbound volume into Casso’s hand. “Spread under the same licence as the rest — open access, my name anonymised, and discoveries have to be spread similarly.”

The runemaster looked at him in surprise. “Another — what’s it this time? A bloody treatise on the Imperial script?”

Kaius laughed. “Sort of! It’s a transcription of the core of an Imperial worker drone’s core. I can’t make heads or tails of it, but everything's there! I also detailed how their obfuscation and destruction methods work, and a few bits I figured out on how to destabilise some of their runework.”

“The fuck?” Casso swore, staring at the book in disbelief as the entire gathered crowd of mages and runewrights went dead silent.

Kaius was already moving for the stairs to the exit, Ianmus down right laughing in front of him.

“Have fun!” he yelled, waving over his shoulder as he all but ran away. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he gave them much longer to recover, he’d find himself tied to a chair and forced to answer their questions.