The Final Strife

“Absolutely.”

Anoor’s eyes gleamed with the hunger for adventure.

Sylah laughed. “You read too many zines.”

Anoor flashed her teeth at her.

They sat down and recapped yesterday’s teachings. This time Anoor demonstrated with her own bloodwerk on a pair of shoes. The blood that came out of her stylus was definitely red.

She drew the rune for Ru, and it pushed away from the opposite shoe. Sylah couldn’t help but gasp. The other foundational runes followed.

“So as I just demonstrated, those are the four basic runes in practice. Every other type of bloodwerk, such as runelamps, just manipulates these. The basic principle is Gi and Ba coupled with the supplementary rune repeating until the friction between them creates a glow.”

“Everything that can bloodwerk is based on those four runes?”

“Exactly.”

“How did the booby trap work? The one that knocked me out?”

“Well, that was based on those zines that you so casually dismissed.” She smiled smugly, and Sylah scowled remembering the pain at the base of her skull.

And the side of her temple.

“I used a supplementary rune based on weight and manipulated Ba to create a pressure sensor.”

“Why didn’t it trigger every time you went to the window? Or Gorn when she cleaned?”

“Because blood recognizes blood.”

But that didn’t make sense; if it wasn’t her blood, then how…Sylah’s head started to pound. Was she using Gorn’s blood?

“Right.” Sylah rubbed her brow. “What in the name of the warden are you talking about?”

Anoor’s smile dropped.

“Look, let’s just practice the basics first, we can come back to the other runes later.”

Sylah’s palms started to sweat. “Can you show me how to use it?” Sylah held out the inkwell to Anoor.

Her hazel eyes twinkled as she strapped the inkwell to Sylah’s wrist with soft, nimble fingers.

“Brace yourself, they say it hurts the first time. After a while the vein will swell, and the nerves will deaden.” The stylus threaded between her finger and thumb through the carefully positioned hole in the inkwell. The needle at the top of the stylus was so fine Sylah barely felt it when it pierced her skin.

Then the blood began to flow, slowly, sluggishly finding its way down the stylus to the tip where it pooled into a tiny bead of blood. Like a ruby on a ring.

“Try it! Draw on the shoe.” Anoor passed her the shoe. “Try Ru.” It took Sylah three tries to get the rune right. Okay, twenty tries. But when she did, the other shoe pushed away with much more force than Anoor’s demonstration.

“By Anyme, you have a lot of power in your veins! Look how far it went.” Anoor was beaming, her eyes crinkling as she praised Sylah over and over again.

“I can’t believe I just did that.” Sylah laughed, a soft, happy sort of laugh that made her feel lighter than she had in mooncycles.

Papa would be so proud of me. Doing what none of the others could.She imagined his smile as she showed him her bloodwerk. His eyes would have gleamed with glory as the path to the five hundred steps grew ever clearer. Finally, one of the Stolen would become a warden.

Jond would reach the top, Sylah would make sure of it.

“Let’s try it again.” And so they did, over and over again. It took Sylah a long time to master Ru, and she still had to refer to her paper copy in order to replicate the shape.

“No, no. You’re not elongating the top left flick enough. Here, let me show you.” Anoor drew out Ru for her once again, but this time the shoes trembled but didn’t budge.