Deyana opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, then repeated the process.

Finally, she shook her head, going back to her Rune learning, and deciding that it would be best if she just went straight through the expertise three breakpoint. It wasn’t as though level fifty was all that far away, anyways.

“I don’t really think you’d let me argue you down, would you?”

Geria made an uncertain sound. “Maybe. You might need to give up crafting or find me another crafter to do it.”

“Finding you another crafter wouldn’t be that hard…” Deyana started, then sighed. “Finding you an unattached crafter or one willing to put some of their best work outside of their own guild might be. Not that I don’t know who to go to for that, it’s just that I’d give away who I am if I use my old contacts.”

“I had forgotten that you would have people to talk to for that. It is not how I have ever done things.”

An arrow was one of the more annoying things to craft on, but luckily there were a few strategies and tutorials for getting the actually difficult part down. Ordering some pre-sized paper and a specialized knife with two blades set extremely close to each other, she began writing out the runes she would be transferring to the arrow.

“Most people don’t do things like I do or did, because, quite frankly, it’s a bad decision.” Alex said. “So, ‘cause you’re cute, you can be forgiven that tiny slip-up.”

Deyana was fairly certain that, while she had a bunch of different options available to her the best option for an arrow that benefitted from binding would still be annoyingly simple, if fairly expensive. To start with, she put [Impart Energy] and {Proximity} on two sides of a square-sectioned bodkin, {Proximity} set at contact and large enough to not incur negative mana multipliers, with the new {Accruing Electricity} bent over the other two sides, maximizing storage with the available space and dedicating more of its power to flat gain than interest.

“I was not aware that it needed to be forgiven,” Geria said. “So thank you?”

Alex blinked, putting down her work for a second. “You don’t need to be forgiven; you didn’t do anything wrong. It was a figure of speech, sorry.”

There was a momentary pause as neither of them spoke. Geria was the first to break the silence. “I… thought so. But it is still good to hear.”

“If you ever want me to clarify where I stand on something,” Alex said, “And I do mean anything, please tell me. And to be specific, I said and meant ‘want’, not ‘need’. You’ve been nothing but irrationally good to me, so I should return at least part of that in making you more comfortable or certain of where we are.”

“Okay.” Geria said, and let it hang long enough that Deyana went back to her rune work.

The very front of the shaft, still on the metal, would bear host to the {Type: Electricity} and {Storage: Bleeding Mana} runes required to have the arrow only discharge its electrical payload while still storing the mana to stay active when separated from the user’s hand. Still, it being on the round part meant that she wasn’t writing directly on it, but rather cutting the outlines into the paper transfer setup when Geria spoke again.

“Have you been flirting with me?”

The only reason that Deyana didn’t need to restart on the pattern was because she managed to let go of the knife before the jerk in her arm actually took effect. The clatter of the knife onto the worktable was a bit of an odd sound, wood against metal clacks clashing with the metal-on-metal tings, interspersed with muted versions of the same when they happened to come in contact with the paper.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know the answer, or even that she wasn’t willing to share the answer. It was more that she hadn’t really been intending it, exactly, and that being asked so directly put her on the spot.

It’s a good thing that it’s a question I might have needed to think about, she thought, taking a moment to straighten the tool on the workspace, folding her hands over it as she did and forcing the physical jitters out of her system.

“A little bit, yes,” Alex said, then considered her following statement for a moment. With some people, she would have phrased it as a challenging question, and some people as a statement, but with Geria she decided that a genuine question would be safest. “Would you like me to stop?”

There was another long pause in response, enough that Deyana felt comfortable enough in the subject matter to pick up the knife and go back to shaping the runes. Part of that was just the fact that she’d already planned them, but part of that was also due to surprise being the main factor in her earlier jumpiness.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Alex knew that she should probably have had some sort of physical and emotional reaction to that, but as controlled as she was currently, most of that feedback was lost and she needed to relax that stranglehold somewhat to find out what that actually was.

It seemed positive, so that was nice.

Still, it wasn’t something to push. It would either go somewhere or it wouldn’t, and while she was fairly recently single, her intuition was that Geria had enough less experience that her own role was going to be fairly passive.

The next steps of crafting were autopiloted through, two [Durability] runes of her calculated sizes, just barely avoiding containing the smaller, forward one in the range of the larger, backward one. Giving them a shared {Storage: Bleeding Mana} shrunk the initial investment required, and a {Displacement} only in range of the forward one covered the entire arrow.

With the runes complete, Deyana went through the binding process, remaining in contact with it for one minute and activating the appropriate menu options, before picking it up, charging the arrow with mana in the process.

Running her finger around the front of it without making contact with the front of the arrowhead and trigger, she confirmed that it wouldn’t randomly zap its user or the bow it was nocked to before tossing it into the test dummy.

As soon as she heard the crackle, she dismissed the item, waiting out the ten seconds it was phased out of reality before summoning it back to her hand.

The arrow appeared there, and she tossed it again without charging it with any mana.

The crackle was weaker this time, definitely. That was expected, really; the way she’d built the accruing rune, it took twenty seconds to build up to full strength. That said, when she summoned it this time…

The runes were out of mana.

Deyana didn’t even try to keep the smirk off of her face as she started unbinding it.

“You are much faster at this than the others I have watched.”

Deyana shook her head. “Maybe in some ways? I’m not really coming up with anything that clever here, so don’t give me too much credit. The people you’re used to watching were probably working on new projects and runes all the time, where I’m just throwing together things I already know about.”

The tap on her left arm first made her tilt her head in confusion, then cringe slightly.

“Okay, mostly.”

“What is your progress on that quest?”

“I’ve got a general idea on what it does, but it’s not something that’s exactly easy to define.”

“Try.” Geria paused for a second, then shook her head so slightly that if she hadn’t been as close as she was, Deyana wasn’t sure that she would have caught it. “Please.”

“I think, and this is only from a few tests…” Deyana lifted her arm out, pointing it at the dummy, and pushed against it in a similar way to what she’d done with Don. It was the same spot, but instead of just forcing it “up” this time, she pushed “in” and “left”.

The spike formed as before, but instead of its typical straight path or the end-over-end it had done before, it spun violently but parallel to the ground, like a helicopter rotor where the Jesus nut came off mid-flight.

“It essentially… how to say… it sorta works like Mental Direction does, but like… instead of changing the rune’s settings, it applies other runes’ settings to other primaries?”

Rune Quest |Merge|

Phase 4/20: Growing Understanding

Complete!

Phase 5/20: Further Testing

With your increased understanding, create at least two more groupings using |Merge| and see them used both inside and outside of combat.

“Oh, fuck you too, game.” Deyana said, slapping her hand onto the workshop table and following that with a sigh. When she noticed that Geria had jumped slightly and moved a half-step back, she was surprised at how guilty that made her feel when it was warring so strongly with pique.

“That was apparently enough demonstration of knowledge for it to give me the completion. I’m sorry about that.”

“It… isn’t a large issue. And is understandable.”

“It may be understandable, but it made you uncomfortable.”

“Ah… yes. Many things do. It isn’t something I expect you to care about.”

Alex debated addressing that directly for a few moments, vacillating between a particular form of annoyance and an empathetic response, but she eventually settled on the simplest path forward.

“I do care, at least some. If there’s places where I can reduce your discomfort without needing to work very hard at it, I prefer to do so.”

Geria visibly looked her over, then nodded. “Thank you. It was the volume and tone, not the motion.”

“Good to know.”

Using |Merge| twice. Unlike before, the phrasing was at least, which meant she could actually do more…

She had an idea.

It wasn’t a good idea, but…

“Have you heard of Runic Tattoos?”

That got her a raised eyebrow nearly instantly, but Geria didn’t actually reply for a few seconds. “I have heard of them, but have not heard much positive about them.”

“Think I could convince you?”

There wasn’t even a pause this time. “You could. It wouldn’t be hard. I would like to hear the reasons.”

“I’m thinking of something that we both get, maybe slight variants. Teleportation, essentially. Putting it in tattoo form means that while it’ll add a health cost, but the mana’ll be cheaper and quicker, and we won’t need to bother with making sure it sticks around in any upgrades.”

“If you want to change it later?”

“Not too hard to do, if not comfortable, exactly. Numbing runes plus a cut and a heal. There are NPCs who’ll do it even.”

“And you are aware that losing health is painful, yes?”

Deyana sort of shrugged, ending up laying her hands on the table. “Kind of? It’s not that painful, and unless it’s something you’re going to spam it isn’t an issue. The fact that it sticks through everything but intentional removal is just a neat bonus.”

“I am surprised you can manage that with what you have now.”

Deyana laughed, nervously. “So, if I was actually specialized in |Merge| I think I could. But, um. I think I need a {Control: Mental Positional}.”

“Oh. That isn’t that expensive. Let me get that while you prototype.”

Deyana rubbed her face with her hands, hiding her eyes in the process for a bit. “Yeah. I still don’t like asking for more from you.”

“The rune will cost about as much as an object that does the teleportation would.”

Deyana coughed indignantly. “You already gave me [Transport]!”

“Hmm. Did I?”

“Yes!”

“That is true.”

“When in the world are you ever going to be able to collect on all this debt you’re building up? There’s only so many items you’re ever going to need.”

“They’re gifts. And I may stop when your reactions are not worth every bit of the price to me.”

Deyana didn’t really have a response to that prepared, so instead she just watched as Geria walked out of the room, then turned back to the worktable.