Ash woke. She felt better, stronger. Ama’s tincture, has it worked already? Ash checked her stats and yes, there it was. Her withered status had reduced to ‘Withered(advanced)’ and it seemed she had gained a point back in both strength and reflex. She looked forlornly at her constitution, which remained at a meagre 2. Clearly that stat would be the slowest to recover. That meant her endurance training was all the more important.

  “Time to get up and get started then” Ash muttered to herself, stretching and getting dressed for the day. Her body felt a little more recovered too. She checked out her arms in the dim light. She was still unhealthily skinny, but now a layer of tight muscle ran over that. Her strength had recovered to base human levels at last. In fact, her whole stat total was now at just over base human levels. Her withering giving her -5, but her education and strength training adding 6. Effectively, she was finally starting at 0, if a very skewed 0 with all her Constitution shoved into Wit instead.

  Ash unlocked her door branch and moved to wriggle back through the crawlspace. She immediately encountered a problem. Her shoulder, now slightly broader than before, no longer fit easily through the opening. She pushed a little, scraping her skin against the rough stone.

  I’m going to get myself stuck! she thought, starting to panic and instinctively jerking herself back and free.

  She stared at the narrow passage, the light outside shining in, almost blindingly bright compared to the dim levels within. She hurriedly picked up her club and cast glow, the wood lighting up in response.

  You have reached glow level 2.

  Ash dismissed the notification, but appreciated the slight improvement to the light levels produced. She held the club closer to the opening, trying to see if there was a wider section she could move through more easily. She felt like she identified a way, if she lifted up her left side, moving at a diagonal, it was a little wider.

  She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what was likely to be an uncomfortable and painful extraction from her home.

  That was when she noticed it. The walls. What she had interpreted as mottled stone was now shown to be anything but. In the light of her glowing club, the patterns revealed themselves. In the middle, over what she was using for a bed, there was a carving of what Ash thought must be a scene. The characters were abstract and faded by time, making it difficult to discern, but she thought she could make out a cluster of maybe human figures, what looked to be a temple, and a sun in the top left.

  Next to the picture was an elaborate patterned border, carved vertically in two columns. The other walls were mostly bare, save another four stylised lines on her right and a set carved into the sides of her stone table on the left.

  “What strange decoration” She mused to herself. “Especially for a room with no official entrance.”

  She brought her club closer to the sides of the picture, examining the patterned lines. They weren’t continuous lines, gaps present between each individual carved shape. Were these perhaps letters, or characters arranged vertically - like in some Asian languages? Ash scanned up and down the lines of strange symbols, stopping when she saw one that she distinctly recognised. There. It is the match of one of the runes I inscribed on my club.

  “Does that mean, all of these are runes?” Ash gasped “Like some kind of magic infused into the picture, or maybe even mundane Runic writing!”

  You have reached Rune Lore level 3.

  The notification confirmed it to her, these were all runes, or runes interspersed with some ancient language. Ash was transfixed, she needed to figure out what they were and did.

  She scanned over them, noticing a couple more that matched the ones Hestia had taught her. She looked over the ones bordering the picture of a good while, but nothing clicked. She had to recast glow several times while she studied, eventually gaining another level in the skill and a point of light affinity.

  Some of the symbols seemed almost pictographic, like hieroglyphs, but slightly more abstract. Still, without additional context, she could not parse any meaning from them.

  Eventually she decided to move onto the smaller sections on the wall and stone table. The first column on the wall also seemed indecipherable. In the second she noticed the move rune, matching one of the symbols Hestia had described on her enhanced movement inscription. There was also the transfer and will rune from the inscription of improved channelling. So, the second column read: something, transfer, will, move, something, something. Then the third column was basically the enhanced durability inscription.

  How did I not notice that earlier? She thought, though it did seem to have one addition to the one she used when inscribing. A single rune at the end, matching the final rune in the second column. A circle with a pentagon inside it. Why would it be different here? Perhaps it’s because this is a wall not a tool. This symbol is for wall then?

  Her theory was quickly shattered when she examined the stone half-column in the corner, which also contained the same symbol, as well as the will and transfer runes, but in the opposite order from the door. It read: something, will, transfer, something and then the circle pentagon rune. On the other face, it also had the same enhanced durability variation that was on the door.

  Ash thought about what that could mean, then decided to try a little experiment. She picked up her old torch, taking her knife and carefully carving in an inscription of durability, but this time adding the additional rune to the end of the sequence. She felt the usual drain of Will from carving in the rune, but this time, it lingered, continuing to drain for twice then three times as long as normal. She panicked, hurriedly dropping the torch. Instantly the drain ceased, but the torch itself started to rattle on the floor, a faint smell of burning wood rose to her nostrils and then the sound of splintering. She worried the thing was about to explode but, by the time she thought to move back, the torch had already stilled.

  Cautiously, she stepped forward to pick it up, holding it gingerly as she brought it closer to her light source. The torch was warped, the haft bent away from where she had inscribed the runes. The runes themselves had blackened and splintered until they no longer resembled their original forms, especially around the final rune that had sapped her will.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Seems like it took more Will than it could hold. Perhaps this final rune is some sort of capacity modifier for the sequence?

  You have reached Rune Lore level 4.

  Damn, it’s very convenient to have these notifications to validate my hunches.

  Ash moved back to the wall. If this is a capacity rune, then what does that tell me? Also, could I just add this to all my inscriptions to make them do more? Or will they all just break like the torch? Perhaps there is a safe threshold, and I just exceeded it. Ash decided she would need to experiment more with this new rune.

  “Ash?” came a voice from outside “Ash, are you okay?” It was Hestia.

  What is she doing- Oh, I’ve not come to breakfast as usual. And I’m still kind of stuck in here, aren’t I?

  “Hestia, yes, I’m in here!” Ash responded. “I’m fine but I recovered a little strength and now my shoulders are too big to get out easily.”

  “What?" Hestia’s face appeared at the entrance to the crawlspace “Oh no! I had thought you were just hungover or something and came to bring you breakfast. Can I help pull you through?”

  “Probably, but more importantly I’ve discovered something. Runes, there are runes in here! I lit up my club and they’re all over the walls! Do you think you could identify any more of them?”

  “Really? Oh, I’m not sure. Perhaps Lance could? He was better at that subject than me. Hang on, I’ll go find him and a chisel or something, maybe we can smooth out a few of those rough edges and help you get out.”

  Ash agreed with her plan. While waiting she ate the breakfast Hestia brought and several minutes later the mage returned, followed by a bemused Lance.

  Hestia started trying to discuss how they should get Ash out, while Ash was more focused on telling him about the runes she wanted identifying.

  “Are we really trying to communicate through this little tunnel while you’re stuck in there?” He asked after a while of them trying to explain the situation to him.

  “Yeah, I guess. Hang on, I’ll describe one of the new runes to you.”

  Hestia sighed “I brought the slate, just write a few down and pass it though.” She said, sliding the chalk and slate along the crawlspace.

  “This is so weird.” Lance commented idly while they waited.

  Strangely, neither of them had encountered the capacity rune before but, after a few passes back and forth, a few more of the runes had been identified. The first in the second door sequence was simply ‘when or upon’ and the penultimate one was apparently a direction rune, pointing either up or downwards.

  It was very similar to the penultimate one inscribed on the stone table and Hestia explained that anything with the same outline, a circle with four curved points added on the outside, was a direction rune. The direction itself was determined by the direction of the line drawn in the middle, or how a thin indent was embedded if the direction was to point outwards, away from the plane of the inscription. “If it was an arrow,” she explained, “it would point in the direction where the line was started when carving.”

  That meant that the full secondary sequence on the door was: upon, transfer, will, move, up/down, capacity. Ash was rewarded with another point in Rune Lore and a realisation.

  “Do you think this wall will move if I give it some of my Will?” She asked excitedly “Let’s see!”

  “Ash, wait!” Hestia cried hurriedly “Don’t just try to trigger random things while you’re stuck in there!”

  “Huh.” Ash replied, her hand already on the wall. “I tried it and nothing seems to happen. I’m not sure if there anywhere to push my Will into.”

  “Well, thank goodness. You could have been crushed in there if something went wrong!”

  After that, Hestia insisted on helping her come out, while Ash insisted on translating more of the runes first, in case she couldn’t fit back in.

  Eventually they settled on a compromise where Hestia and Lance chiselled out more of the passage while Ash wrote down as many of the new symbols as possible. Yet more of the runes were slowly identified, Ash building up a dictionary of the new terms in her head, her Rune law slowly advancing every few new additions. By the time the passage seemed large enough, she had reached level 7 and was eager to try something new.

  “Okay, I’m going to try something and then exit quickly, okay? You help pull me through!”

  One of the runes identified was ‘detect’, the first on her stone table. That meant it read: detect, will, transfer, direction, capacity. Ash needed to see if it worked like she thought it would.

  “Ash, I don’t think you should…”

  But Ash ignored Hestia’s warning, walking over to the table and pressing her hand to the detect rune. Carefully she pushed out with her Will. This time she felt the well in the rune, a place to direct her power. It took. There was a sudden grinding sound from behind her. Ash rushed to look. The central section of the wall was starting to descend, a crack of darkness forming at the top.

  I did it! She rejoiced. Then the smell hit her. Think and cloying. She coughed, then rushed for the crawlspace. She squeezed though, arms reaching in, hands hurriedly dragging her through the cramped space as she coughed again, her lungs burning.

  Ash checked her combat logs, noticing something worrying.

  You have taken 3 damage from cloying fumes

  You have resisted necrotic disease.

  She hurriedly held her breath, waiting until she was jerked free of the passage before panting and gasping on the floor.

  “Get away from the entrance!” She coughed. “There’s a poisonous gas or something in there!”

  “What do you do!” Hestia yelled, helping Lance drag her further from the ruin. Ash felt like she could almost see the thick vapours, spilling free of the gap. Green lichen all around darkening to black as the noxious cloud spread.

  Lance noticed it too “Hells, it’s spreading! Let’s get out of here!” They helped Ash to her feet and then all three ran, not stopping until they reached the edge of the village.

  “What did you even do?” Lance gasped, trying to get his breath back.

  I pushed some Will into the detect rune on the stone pillar. Then the wall with the other inscriptions opened up.” Ash panted “There must have been something trapped inside.”

  “Like something attacked you?” Hestia asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe.” Ash replied “Maybe just the bad air that was in there. ‘Cloying fumes’ that carried ‘necrotic disease’ apparently.”

  “Disease? Wait, Ash, you haven’t been afflicted, have you?” Lance queried worriedly.

  “No, I’m fine.” She sighed “I resisted it. The cloying fumes burned my lungs up a bit though.”

  “Damn. Well, let’s not go back there!” Lance sighed.

  “For sure.” Hestia agreed “You should move into the village properly. I’ll get Stavos to prioritise getting us all better places to sleep.”

  “You’ll get me to what?” Came a sharp voice from behind them. “This is where you two were? Skiving off with the newbie?” Stavos sniffed derisively at them “I was trying to make an announcement, but you two didn’t bother showing up.” He sighed “I’ve set Vidar and Kara to scout out the dire ant’s nest. It’s past time for us to be proactive about ridding ourselves of these pests. First the Ants, then we’ll deal with the Lizards. We’ll make this jungle into our home or fall trying.” He paused dramatically.

  “We’re seriously going to try and take them out?” Hestia asked, “I didn’t expect you to be so bold.”

  “It’s better than having all the fighting happen around the non-specialists, that we’re meant to be protecting, in any case.” He sniffed haughtily, “Hestia, you are to work with Ama to bolster our antivenom stores, as well as any other useful brews you two can come up with. Lance, I want you on guard duty with Jori while the others are out. As for you…” Stavos stared at Ash, “Go make yourself useful and gather some more fruit or something. You are part of the village now and I expect you to contribute.”

  With that he tuned and stalked away, leaving the three to look at each other.

  “Guess I’m stuck on guard duty then.” Lance sighed, heading in through the gate. "See you two around!”

  “I was going to work on my gardening anyway.” Hestia shrugged, turning and smiling at Ash “You inspired me. You’re looking at a gardening specialist now! That, along with my specialisation in herb lore for my auxiliary, means I’m getting majorly boosted right now!” She waggled her fingers and followed after him. “Come see my garden some time!”

  “Sure, of course!” Ash waved her off and turned back to the jungle. ‘Go gather fruit’. So patronising. I’m a combat specialist too, you know!