Rune mage

Chapter 18: laying low

The next day, the first thing I did was I move all my belongings into Steph's spare room.

I hadn't really trusted most people at the school to begin with, but I couldn't feel safe there.

I wasn't sure I was going to ever feel safe there again. Then I used a good bit of my power to travel unseen and listen to gossip.

According to the gossip, Petre had been so furious at Lutsel that the school had sent Petre on an extended vacation. It seemed that on the three man interview board, Petre had been in favor of a fine of twenty silver along with a promise to provide other healers something similar. But Lutsel had argued that allowing any student freedom to do magic unsanctioned would put the kingdom at risk. Tulimire had simply gone along with Lutsel. Outvoted, Petre had little choice to sit and watch me be beaten. To find later that permission had been granted, though I knew it had not been legally granted, caused Petre to threaten Lutsel with fifty lashes in the same manner that had been given to me.
The whole school had heard about this. Some seemed to be appalled. Others, those like Evan and Henry, shrugged it off as me getting my dues.

And the healers? They were suspiciously quiet when it was learned that an order of no healing had been given. When no one knew where I was, the healers had been reprimanded roundly.

How could healers lose their barely mobile patient after all?

Once I got myself knowledgeable on the situation, I sat with Steph late into the night telling her what I had learned.

"What's your plan? Everyone seems to know you can do unexpected things, but it sounds like they don't know what, because the teachers and staff are keeping that mostly quiet. The students will treat you differently and the staff," she shrugged. "They'll likely treat you worse because if they don't know they'll be guessing and if they do know they'll be thinking they need to make sure you know they're in authority."

I sighed heavily. "That's how I read it too. I was hoping to just... this will sound..." I rubbed my face. "Be a rock. It doesn't move. Water goes around it." I paused a long moment, lost in thought and trying to find words for how I felt.

"I was staring up at that damn rock. It was held over my head as a secondary threat: it would take just a flick of power to bring it down on me. And for a few moments at the end I was thinking I would expand the dampening to include that rock and end it. I had pissed myself, Steph. The one set of pants I own that are considered expensive, that don't have any runes in them because I didn't make them myself. And I don't even know what happened to them. I don't know if I could ever wear it again. When I close my eyes and I see that damn rock, I'm not angry at the rock. It just was there. So I was wishing I could just be a rock. Here. Doing what I am supposed to be doing. Unbreakable."

Steph gave me a sad smile. "We'll think of something. In the mean time let's put a proper door on this room."

It helped to have a door.

She apologized for not having a locking door and I reminded her I was a rune mage by etching in a lock right then.

Then I locked myself in and pulled open my book.

The school was trying to kill me. Maybe not everyone there, but someone. I sketched out a design. A rock. It could break into pieces. But not easily. It wasn't particularly smooth. Unlike a circle with a center dot, the rune I used for wellness, this would be ragged. Uneven and rough.

And the only way I would know if it worked would be to test it on myself.

I pulled all power away from the well-being rune. I needed to be able to break flesh, and I was mostly healed besides. Then I used a sharp knife to cut the design into my skin. It was a shallow cut, it barely bled. While I cut I pushed power into the design. Usually I would wait until it was done but this one would be different. I closed the rune and felt the power wash over me.
I waited a heartbeat and then stabbed at my hand with the knife.
The blade did not break skin again. I smiled to myself and then powered down the rock rune. Now to make it permanent.

I took off my boot and sock and looked at my foot. I figured the design would fit on the heel nicely. Then I mixed the tattoo paints and prepared the needle.

I don't particularly enjoy tattooing myself. But at least now I know how to heal enough to speed the process along. When the ink was dry and the blood stopped, I cleaned up and laid in bed.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But ideas were insistent, popping up one after another until I finally rose and started writing them down.

And that led to me making some more stamps that would speed rune creation. It wouldn't work for intricate runes or runes in tight places, but it would work- had worked - for larger designs.

A clap of thunder startled me into wakefulness. I was still at my table, tools in hand.

A second clap seemed to shake the house. And suddenly I knew how -sort of- to make my power a weapon.

After all. Wasn't lightening energy let lose? If I released all of my stored power into a person, what would happen? Could I even do that? I flipped to a new page in my book and sketched a lightening bolt, complete with branches.

The branches reminded me of trees and I quickly sketched that too, just in case another idea came with the image later. My mind felt like it was overloaded.

If the school was going to try to kill me, I wasn't going to sit there like a rock, placidly accepting the abuse.

I was going to learn to hit back.