The Abyssal Key: A Harem Fantasy (Master Of Runes Book 2), page 1
The Abyssal Key
A Harem Fantasy
Master Of Runes
Isaac Keyes
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Author’s Note
Check This Out!
Chapter One
Rilahn smiled.
“Put down your weapons, please.”
I glanced over at Vsara and Leena, who both immediately complied. When I hesitated, Leena, who was still wearing her firstsong plate mail, gave me a look that said Now. There’s nothing we can do.
I took my sword out and laid it slowly on the ground, my gaze locked onto Rilahn’s.
The right half of her body seemed to be made of stone, although she moved fluidly, the marbled lines on her “skin” flexed naturally. Her right eye was a jet-black pit with a glowing white light in the middle, and it was, as it always had, sending chills down my spine.
Of course, all this somehow paled in the face of her massive sword, a gigantic affair of black metal protruding out from a golden, bejeweled hilt, and despite its ludicrous size, Rilahn held it casually at Tivani’s throat.
Tivani’s eyes were on the weapon, and she was on her knees with her red hair in Rilahn’s fist, completely frozen.
“How did you find us?” I asked, my eyes glued to Tivani.
Rilahn raised an eyebrow. “There was a contingent in this fort, which you well know. When they stopped signaling a scout was sent, who returned with news that the fort…was no longer there. It wasn’t a massive leap in logic to assume what had happened, given recent events. This place leaves footprints,” she added flatly.
“Ah.”
“I arrived in time to witness the excitement with the bridge and its subsequent collapse. It was secondary, so I didn’t bother intervening.”
“What do you want, precisely?” Vsara said. Her voice was level, and her eyes were narrowed. There was an unnatural stiffness to her body that belied the fear she was feeling, probably as much as I was.
I’d met Rilahn face to face twice since being summoned to Cerenis, and she’d tried her damndest to kill me both times. It was only luck and newfound magic that had saved me. They’d been intensely close calls both times.
“I will admit,” Rilahn said conversationally, “that you fooled me in Highreach. I bought your little story completely. Don’t, however, go patting yourselves on the back too hard, though. It’s hardly beyond the scope of what my compatriots have attempted many times before. I don’t even mind telling you that the Lord Commander was hardly the first with such a title that I’ve cleaved in half. The others all deserved it.” She shrugged a shoulder and added, “Although this one arguably did as well, just perhaps not for the reasons I had thought at the time.”
“You just,” I said, the firmness in my voice masking the terror I felt at addressing her, “cut down your own and feel nothing?” I wanted nothing more than to rush her, pound her face in, throw her off the edge of the Melodia, and save Tivani. But I couldn’t, and I knew it, and the helplessness that washed over me was agonizing.
Her eyes lazily met mine again and she said, “Do you feel for an irritating bug that you swat? For a tiny little pest you set a trap for?” She shook her head, her long, blond hair swaying with the movement. “But I digress. I’m here for answers. Answers you will give without further delay. First: What are you?”
I glanced over to Vsara, completely unsure of what to do in this situation.
She looked back, but before she could react, Tivani whimpered as Rilahn’s grip tightened in her hair, the massive sword drawing slightly closer to her neck, a hair’s breadth away from her skin.
“I’m from another world,” I heard myself say.
For a horrifying moment, Rilahn didn’t react in the slightest, just looked coolly back into my eyes. The corners of her mouth turned up in the slightest little smile, and she said, “Well, I have long wondered if this day would ever come.”
“You know of the gemstones, then?” Vsara asked, referencing the deadtech artifact that had brought me to Cerenis.
“I knew they were rumored to exist, although I never saw one myself. That they would summon someone who could easily pass as Sudrel is…surprising. Still, it makes this situation much easier. I think we can dispense with the theatrics for now.” She moved her sword away and released her grip on Tivani. She fell forward onto her hands, and with a terrified backwards glance, scrambled away from Rilahn, rushing to our side of the room and into my arms.
I hugged her tight, my eyes never leaving Rilahn, who lifted her huge sword and laid it casually over her shoulder.
“Quaint. Now, I’ll extend a rather uncommon courtesy to most of you.” She looked at the others in turn, but not me. “Cooperate fully, and I’ll let you all live. It’s not my usual style, but there’s only one thing that needs to happen here.” She looked at me and said, “This one needs to die. But I’ll spare the rest of you should you not resist.”
“I—” I started.
“Enough,” Rilahn said, waving a hand.
Enough!? I’d only said a single word!
“Don’t bother begging or bargaining for your life. You’re much too dangerous to let live, especially after awakening to the highsong. I know what it is you want,” she said with a curled lip. “What the others have no doubt convinced you to want. I will not allow it. No one will reopen Abyss,” she snarled.
“Why?” Vsara asked, taking a few hesitant steps forward. “You should understand that—”
“Oh, spare me, Counselor,” Rilahn said, rolling her mismatched eyes. “I know what you want, what hundreds just like you have wanted: to delve back into things that should be left well enough alone. You believe that the cure for the Contagion lies in the depths. You, like all the rest I’ve cut down, are nothing more than idiot children, fumbling in the dark with things you couldn’t understand. Abyss will remain sealed. You have no idea,” she yelled, slamming her stone fist down on the console in front of her, “what horrors lie buried down there!”
“But…” I said, her words hinting at the truth. “You do.”
Her gaze flicked back to mine, but Leena spoke next, her eyes wide.
“Bloody shit…you’ve been there. You’ve actually been to Abyss.”
Rilahn’s grip on her sword tightened, but she didn’t move.
“Then you must know where the Abyssal Keys are,” Vsara said, her eyes narrowed.
The smile that slowly and inexorably formed on Rilahn’s face was nearly more frightening than anything else she’d done. It was followed by a tiny giggle that grew and grew until she was almost doubled over, her body shaking as she laughed.
We all stood there, dumbfounded.
“What?” I finally said. “What’s so funny?”
After she got control of herself, Rilahn said, still smiling widely, “You don’t know where they are, Counselor? The vaunted Vsara Z’Nesh knows nothing of the keys? Oh, what an unexpected surprise this is!” She started pacing the room, her sword still on her shoulder, but her demeanor had completely and immediately changed. She kept talking, a brightness in her voice that I had trouble reconciling with the monster that she was. “I had made it a personal goal of mine to erase all the knowledge of them that I could. But I don’t need to tell you how difficult such a thing is. I destroyed countless books and journals over the years, never truly believing I’d be successful, even though the attempt was still worth making.
“But now, here we stand, and even you know nothing of them. And that, necessarily, means that even the Diarchy at Serenity-on-the-Water knows nothing. Because if they knew, you would know too, wouldn’t you, Counselor?”
Vsara said nothing, her red lips pressed into a thin line.
“There is one thing, however, that I will tell you.” Her smile turned vicious as she said, “There’s only one key left. The others are buried beyond the gates of Abyss itself, locked inside where they can never be used again.” She lifted her sword and pointed it straight at Vsara, and with an almost crazed look of elation on her face, she said, “Only one key left, and you will never have it.”
Suddenly, I felt someone singing the firstsong from outside the room, and it was followed by an intense harmony of firstrunes, more than I’d ever heard together at once. Reflexively, I looked towards the door.
Leena looked.
Tivani looked.
Rilahn looked.
With an ear-wrecking BOOM, the door was blown straight off its hinges and a massive cannonball of all things, half as tall as a person, sailed into the room, headed straight towards Rilahn.
In the split-second
The projectile slammed directly into the blade, forcing her off her feet, through the shattering glass of the control room’s window, and off over the trees, sailing high into the night. She didn’t make a single sound.
“Suck shit, bitch!” Suli yelled from outside the room before bounding in and leaping into Leena’s arms, wrapping her own around the older woman’s armored neck.
Tivani and I shared a rather confused look before she shakily said, “Suli…what did you do!? Was that…was that one of the fort’s exterior cannons!?”
Leena let Suli back down to the ground, and the younger woman beamed. “It is! It took a lot of grease to get that stupid thing to roll down here! But I did it! I saved the day!”
Tivani chuckled and said, with unfocused eyes, “You really did, Suli.”
I peeked out into the hallway, and sure enough, there was a massive gun…thing…sitting there. I could feel the firstsong emanating strongly from it. Even though it was on wheels, one person getting it moved seemed like a task that Suli shouldn’t have been able to do alone, despite the fact that she obviously had.
It was a complex amalgamation of wrought stone, a mess of runes, and a metal coil running down the middle. “Is this…is this a fucking gauss rifle!?” I asked.
Everyone followed me out into the hall, but before any conversation could start, Vsara said, “We had best get moving, Alex. I have our next destination in mind, and it’s in everyone’s best interests if we get the Melodia moving now. We can all pat Suli on the back in a moment.”
“I dunno what the hurry is,” Suli said, “I shot that bitch past the horizon, three times over!”
“Yes, but still,” Vsara said.
We, along with Tivani, went back into the control room, and I sang the highsong to the Caer Melodia, which was what I had named our roving fort. We all looked at the map. Vsara pointed out where we were going, which made no sense to me, of course. I did what she said, also wanting to put as much distance between us and Rilahn as possible.
No one said a word about how unsurvivable what had happened to her was. She wasn’t dead, and we all knew it. She probably wasn’t even injured. Just pissed, I imagined. Vsara was right; we needed to get whatever distance we could between us.
Chapter Two
After the Melodia was well underway again, the trees moving swiftly underneath us, we all gathered out in the hallway again. We ogled the cannon and heaped praise upon Suli, who was more than happy about it, her blue ears and tail twitching with joy.
“So, what even happened?” I asked.
“Well,” Tivani said, “after the battle at Longspan was done and the bridge collapsed, we assumed it was over. Suli wandered off to do something…”
“Celebratory drink!”
“Uh huh,” Tivani said with a raised eyebrow. “Despite the fact that you hadn’t actually done anything.”
“Whatever.”
“Speaking of that, Tivani,” I said, remembering her saving my life with a completely mind-boggling shot from her sharpcaster, this world’s version of a sniper rifle, “I can’t tell you how grateful and extremely impressed I am with you after taking out that Breaker soldier that was about to skewer me. That shot was insane, truly.”
Her cheeks turned nearly as red as her hair, and she sheepishly said, “Thanks. You can’t imagine how scared I was, watching you through the weapon’s sights. I was sure I knew exactly how to use it, but when I pulled the trigger, I nearly passed out from stress.”
“Your aim was flawless. I could barely even see the Melodia from the tower on the bridge, and you nailed that headshot.”
“And, um,” she said, getting a little more red, “a second one too, when another Breaker was outside the door.”
I laughed and said, “Oh yeah. I noticed on the way out. That weapon, and you, are amazing.”
“It was nice to be useful.”
“And speaking of useful,” Suli said, dragging the conversation back to her. It was half a joke and half not, but we all just humored her and continued gawking at the cannon sitting in the hallway.
“This thing is practically covered in grease,” I noted. “Where’d you get it all?”
She looked at me like I’d asked the stupidest question she’d ever heard, but it was still attention, so she answered me without too much disdain. “We’re standing in an engineering marvel from like a century ago! All this shit needs to be greased up at all times! Well, okay, some wrought stone things are refined to high enough tolerances to produce so little friction as to not need so much, any at all in some cases…”
This was the most educated thing I’d ever heard her say. I was reminded that she was an engineer like Tivani, even though you would never know it to speak to the two of them.
“...but bigass things like this place,” she continued, “need assloads of grease to function. Did you not…see the grease room!?”
“Grease…room?”
“Yeah! There’s an entire storeroom with extra casks of grease. I can’t believe you missed it. One of the best parts of the place!”
I looked over to Tivani for some support in this conversation, but she just shrugged and said, “What? We like grease. You know that.”
Vsara snorted.
I nodded and sighed. “Well, yes, I do know that.”
“Anyway,” Suli said, “we were talking about how great I am for avoiding that stupid Sudrel General’s notice, having the awesome idea of shooting her with a cannon, and then, you know, doing so!”
Leena had taken off her helm and laid it aside somewhere, exposing her white hair and fur. “Well done, Suli, well done. That’s some quick thinking and impressive overkill. Although perhaps overkill isn’t possible with Rilahn.”
Leena wasn’t Tivani and Suli’s actual grandmother, but she was everything but, and Suli beamed extra hard at her praise. As much as Leena was a brutal teacher, which I knew firsthand, she didn’t have any troubles doling out kind words when they were warranted.
Vsara was off to the side, leaning against the wall, but there was a permanent smile on her face. Perhaps she was as relieved as I was that this situation had turned out as well as it had. While Leena and Tivani were more than happy to keep bolstering Suli’s ego, I made my way over and leaned against the wall as well.
“Abyssal keys, huh?
Vsara just nodded. “Yes.”
“Were you going to tell me about them at some point?”
“At some point, yes.”
“Sounds like getting to Abyss is going to be a little more complicated than advertised.”
With a breathy little laugh, she said, “Of course it is. Did you think we were going to walk up to a door somewhere, and you were going to sing it right open?”
I didn’t reply for a moment, but after some thought, I answered, “Honestly, yes. I kinda did.”
“Oh my no. Not only is finding a key — the last key, apparently — one of the hurdles, but even getting to one of Abyss’s gates will be a monumental undertaking.”
“Sounds like yet another half-baked plan, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I don’t mind, no. Before you go getting ideas about our competence, keep in mind that this plan wasn’t even possible before you showed up. Without a Runic Lord, it’s not like we’ve been actively attempting this. What we’ve been doing — all of it — has been outrageously last minute.”
“Ah, I see. Good point.”
“Mhmm. Still, though. It’s been working out swimmingly so far.”
I nodded. “I can’t really disagree with that. So what’s next on the list, then?”
She sighed and said, “Go to bed. But to give you an actual answer: We leave the Cloudlands behind. While the ultimate next goal is to get to Seren and awaken you to the ruinsong, there’s something else we should do first: obtain the services of a stonewright.”
“That sounds pretty cool.”
She smirked and said, “It is ‘pretty cool,’ yes. I have an idea on how we can do such a thing, although it’s not without its complications.”
“I’d have been shocked if it had been easy.”
She closed her eyes and smiled wider. “Then you’re learning. I’ll fill you in in the morning. In the meantime, Tivani has wandered off. I should think she’ll need some consolation after what happened.”
