The sun climbed higher, relentless and unforgiving, baking the dust into a dull orange crust around the incapacitated Enforcers. The unnatural stillness in the ravine was broken only by the panting of the horses and Kaelin's heavy, measured breaths. She had dragged the three surviving mercenaries and their leader into a tight knot, using their own belts and Elias's reins.
Kaelin knelt beside Elias's horse, calmly cleaning her short-sword on the captured leader's tunic. Her eyes, however, were fixed entirely on Elias, who was still fighting the nausea and vertigo of his Aetheric depletion.
"Start talking, Scribe," Kaelin said, the gravel in her voice having turned to flint. "If you just saved my life by rewriting the laws of physics, I deserve to know what I'm escorting. And don't give me any more nonsense about Aetheric fever."
Elias pushed off his horse, stabilizing himself with effort. He knew his only path to survival now was radical honesty—or at least, radical honesty mixed with self-interest. Kaelin was his protector, but also the most immediate threat to his secrecy.
"My name is Elias Thorne," he began, his voice raspy. "And I am not a normal Scribe. Where others read the Runes on parchment, I see the Cosmic Runes as they exist in reality, the raw scripts that hold existence together."
Kaelin paused her cleaning, her brow furrowed. "The defect-sight? That's heresy, Thorne. If the Archivists knew, they'd burn you down to a pile of ash and claim the Runes misfired."
"They will if they find me at the Central Repository for the Audit," Elias confirmed, forcing himself to meet her gaze. "Curator Varrick sent me because he found the impossible—I fixed the corrupted water Rune in Veridia. He couldn't hide that miracle, so he made me the bait for the Audit, hoping to prove his own loyalty by delivering the heretic Scribe."
He gestured to the unconscious mercenaries. "Varrick was hedging. These men were sent to kill me and recover my transcribed Runes if he decided the Audit was too risky for him. They were never meant to take me alive."
Kaelin finally stood, sheathing the sword. The sheer force of her personality, layered with the kinetic Runes on her armor, felt like a physical pressure. "So, you're not a package. You're a time bomb. And you used the Rune of Inverse Inertia to stop them. That's Rank Six Archivist knowledge. Where did you learn that?"
"I saw the script Varrick's mercenaries were using—a crude, repeating Rune of Force—and I simply inserted a contradictory line into the local area's governing Rune of Force. The script fractured, and their power reversed for three seconds. It nearly cost me all my Aether." Elias patted his inner thigh where the scroll lay. "And the rest of my knowledge comes from here: the partial transcription of the Rune of Displacement."
Kaelin took a step closer, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. "Displacement? The law that warps space itself? That's reserved for the Librarians who manage the Archways between Realms. You copy that, and you risk ripping this Realm apart."
"Only if I use the full script," Elias argued, matching her low tone. "I have copied the first four foundational strokes—the concept of Relative Location Transfer. It allows me to move a small object instantly from point A to point B, as I demonstrated with the stone earlier. But if I can master the next six strokes—the foundation of Volume Exchange—I can manipulate my own mass and escape the Audit entirely."
He laid out his plan quickly. "I need a few days of safety, Kaelin. A place where I can transcribe the rest of the rune I have and replenish my Aether. If I can master the Volume Exchange, I can make myself temporarily lighter than air, or transfer my volume to a nearby shadow, allowing me to slip past any Watcher or Archivist sent after me."
Kaelin walked a tight circle around the horses, assessing the risks. "You're asking me to shelter a law-breaker who toys with Rank Six Runes, and whose goal is to steal the power of a Librarian. This is not the price of passage, Thorne. This is a life sentence if we're caught."
"The price is survival, Kaelin," Elias countered. "And protection from the people who will pursue me next. Varrick will know exactly what I did here when he finds these men. His next wave of Enforcers will be far stronger. You are kinetic, governed by simple rules. I am conceptual, governed by complexity. We need each other to reach the Central Repository alive—you to fight the immediate threats, and me to rewrite the rules they live by."
Kaelin stopped circling. She looked at the leader pinned to the wall, then back at Elias, her eyes flashing with a mix of terror and avarice. She was a woman who lived by breaking the written law, but Elias was attempting to break the natural law.
"My contract was to deliver the package to the Archway," she finally said. "I'll stick to the contract, but the terms have changed. You use your magic to make our journey faster and safer. No more 'fevers.' If we run into an obstacle—a landslide, a broken bridge, a Guard post—you fix it with your rewriting, and you keep us moving. In exchange, I teach you how to fight, and I give you two hours every night to practice your blasphemous Displacement scripts. Do you understand? No free rides, Scribe. Every piece of knowledge costs Aether, and every piece of my protection costs progress."
Elias nodded, the deal struck. It was dangerous—using his Aether meant risking exposure—but it was his only chance.