Rune Wars

“What do you want from me?”

My voice shivered through sounds of feint winds gliding over my palm.

The girl in front of me was no older than I. Maybe ten, eleven? Long, brown hair and round, black eyes.

The way she stared at me was glazed with fear. Though she stood as if she anticipated something more would come of this.

After taking a weary step forward.

“I want answers. Who, what are you?” Some of her hair parts into her face as she throws both arms into the air from disbelief. “What are you even doing here?”

The forest we spoke in is a long-standing monument of my past. There used to be many of us. Now there’s only me, from a tribe of spirit welders.

It’s been years since I’ve had company, especially that of someone who seems to have been brought here solely due to instinct. Like she was drawn to this place for a reason.

“My name is Isaac. For your other question, I should be asking you. So, what are you doing here?”

Closing my hand into a fist, the winds quail before dispersing around us, as well as blowing her hair back from in front of her face.

Every word I breathed, every action I took gave her chills. Like I was some unconquered land. Some undocumented specimen.

I watch her press a hand to her chest and straighten her posture before speaking.

“My name is Rhea. I’ve come to seek new ways of bringing the world together.”

The words that came from her mouth dragged from her lips and crawled into my ears like tainted wisps. There was no doubt that her intentions were misguided. But even she hadn’t been aware of how misconstrued it all could be.

A simple chore to dismiss her and continue my days without batting an eye.

“Bringing the world together?”

As if reiterating her philosophies would change her seeming demands into requests.

“Precisely!” She steps forward and I take a step back. “Isaac, aren’t you tired of surviving here all alone?”

I smiled, weakly.

“No,” my eyes had trailed down toward the ground. “But I’m terribly bored.”

“Me too.”

Rhea stretched an arm out in my direction.

“I’ve heard a lot about you before I arrived. A boy who can tether souls. Weld them into the trees, the cloths of shirts.” Her eyes now tailed down to my hand. “The wind.”

“You want a weapon?”

It was something I’d heard a thousand times. Many have come and all have been rejected for it. It’s simple to do but too dangerous to give. The amount of power could potentially shift the events of time and space if given to the wrong hand.

It almost gave me shivers when I thought about all the catastrophes that could occur. But it also sent pulses of shrewd exhilaration up my spine when I thought about what breakthroughs I may have that no one else could ever reach. The opportunities I passed for the greater good of mankind. For the world to stay in one piece. My pride staked on my ancestors as the last guardian.

“Not a weapon, a vessel.”

That… was new to me.

By the widening of my eyes, I’m sure she could tell the same.

“We’re trying to create a world of more individuality. More accountability. Something unique.”

She reached in a bag hidden at her side under her coat and pulled out a small, wooden box. It’s tattered and crudely constructed with no pronounced details aside from a key hole at the center of the front side. She presented it with one palm under and one on top for support.

“A lock box?”

“A Rune Box,” she corrected me.

It must’ve meant a lot to her. And the more that I stared at the box, the more it stared back at me.

“Why?”

“Accountability.”

“Why?”

I repeated, not convinced.

Her impatience started to perk an eyebrow as well as pinch a nerve.

It’s what I had waited for. Something more than the face she saved.

But her composure only wavered slightly before she gathered herself with a deep breath and later exhale.

“My father is dead because of senseless action. Yet the soldiers taxing our village are living lavish when they should be buried.”

I paused a moment, then snuck a glance at the sky.

“Revenge?”

“No. I don’t want him to die just to die. I want him to die because of how he lived.”

I felt like I was starting to get the gist of it. It’s not about the end result to her, but the journey traveled to get to the final destination. A grey area that does not think of the past nor the future. One that counts every trial as it’s own and penalizes based on how you neglect your self.

“Accountability then.”

The smirk on her face was wicked with a hint of innocence.

“Precisely. Are you not interested?”

Was I not interested? I had thought to myself. I’d be lying if I had said no, but was this right?

I bit my lip because I’d be lying if I said it was. So what do you tell her, Isaac? Be accountable with it.

“I am interested. Quite, actually.”

I thought I saw her hair stand on end for a moment when I said that. The box clasped between her hands had flung, from her excitement, into the air above us momentarily before her grand catch of the century.

Then her composure rewound.

“Ahem. Good to hear. Shall we begin?”

The worst decision I may have ever made. I’m sure I had known fully what I was stepping into. Recklessness. Naivety. Chaotic energy. Deceit. Excuses turn vengeance.

But all of this was new to me as I stepped up to the box. And none of it surpassed my curiosity.

“What soul am I to use for your box? Do you want to test the use of the plant life around us on this first?”

She frowned at my proposition and held the box with one hand while pointing to her heart with the other.

“No, we’ll use me. If anyone is going to change this new era, it’ll begin with me.”

Greed. Blind. Temptations. Whatever ideal gripped her mind was worthy enough for me to respect her decision. Yet one that I couldn’t reason with even if I wanted to.

“Fine, you’ll be the pioneer of these lock boxes-“

“Rune Boxes.” She corrected me again.

Stubbornness. Her ideal has to be stubbornness.

Placing two fingers on her chest, I swiped down and away from her until a white thread started to unravel from the center point. Pulling that towards me, I twirled it around my hand until the end of string shows an orb that I grab as swiftly as I could. No more than a few seconds pass and Rhea looked like she couldn’t breathe the way she gasped, clutching the box desperately as if the air would come from whatever was inside.

I slipped the orb through the lock hole and unraveled the thread from my hand to place back into her chest. There was a bit of squirming from Rhea. While I tried to reattach the thread of her soul, she panicked internally. I imagine everything around her suddenly lost their purpose. Belonging and feelings toward her. Their sense of ‘what is’ may have vanished from her eyes.

I’m sure the everlasting moments she succumbed to were excruciatingly painless. And for the first time since my people were at my side, I pitied someone.

Nonetheless it was a success as far as I could tell. Connecting the thread to the chest, everything sprung forward once again. Her first breath was taken as if she had just been born. Almost like rebirth into the world. The only difference I noticed is a strange engraving on the Rune Box where the key hole used to be.

But suddenly tipping over, she shoved the box into me for safekeeping and landing on all fours, she took as many breaths as she could, as if they’d be her last.

“You feel alright, Rhea?”

Lifting her head did not look assuring, watching her vomit on the shrubbery to her left.

“Good enough,” I shrug before holding my hand out and pulling Rhea up to her feet. She wiped her mouth and took her box back, messily, graciously.

There was something strangely different about her…

Anyways.

“Thank you, Isaac.” Her eyes locked onto mine.

Those words would soon echo through the mountains I had yet to climb. The pillars built for the gods I had yet to challenge. The last memory I’d have before the world began its own rebirth.

“This is the start of something beautiful, I just know it-“

“HELP… Isaac?”

“Isaac please, do something.”

“Rhea! What did you do to him?!”

“I can’t take this anymore.. I have to stop this war.”

“Where are you…? Isaac? Rhea? It’s so dark here.”

But before I could blink, our beautiful beginning had turned into full on Rune Wars.