Chapter 14 Failure

June’s sight and physical awareness returned, and she drew a deep, steadying breath. “I guess this is just going to be a thing now...” The haunting image of being buried alive rang within her mind, leaving a trail of anxiety and fear.

The chamber was just as she had left it. Right down to Kotor in the corner. The tiny ember was lounging against the wall, his orange eyelids closed. “Is he really sleeping?” June asked herself, wondering if he was planning some chaotic endeavor. The prospect, strangely, brought about a sense of normalcy. The shadows at the edges of the chamber danced against the soft light of the candle on her desk. Occasional hisses and pops from the Fire Imp lounging on the floor broke the silence of the chamber.

Thinking through what she had seen, June jolted into action. Searching through her pile of tomes, she found the history book she wanted. Opening it, she began to read after plopping down on her crude bed. A passage within the book’s middle section caught her eye. There were constant mentions of “Greens” and “Reds” spread all throughout. Instead of green armor and dragons, she learned the titles were the names of two factions. The book’s author spun a tale of heroic struggles between two noble factions of the hitherto unknown Kurano Empire. A picture formed in her head, one of epic fantasy wars and the titanic struggles of a dying empire. The Rainbow Dances, as they were called, characterized that period in Duneria’s history.

“Nothing like this was in the MMO. The lore was all about the current world.” She recalled the storyline of the MMO, telling of an ongoing conflict between the Kuul’zan Dynasty and the Viller Republic. Could there be some connection? There were plenty of magical trappings around dragon blood and other fantasy tropes, but this world had a lot more depth to it.

As she read further, she had her answer.

The Dynasty and its legacy of recklessness had pushed the Guilds and their noble allies too far. And so in 201 A.S. the High Kings decreed to take the Empire to war. We can trace the founding of the great modern empires back to this moment.[...]For in the great war that followed, fortunes rose, and the last of the great Emerald Emperors fell. Even then, centuries after the Schism, the magic of the land was a prime cause of strife and chaos.

—Chronicles of Duneria, a History of Empires and Kings

June sat in silence for a few minutes, pondering what she had just learned. She was still no closer to understanding her vision, but now she faced the quandary of her increasingly obvious ignorance of the world around her. Thinking of the undead mentors she had access to, June tried to form a plan. “Should I tell them anything?” June reasoned. “They’ll probably have nothing good to add,” she opined, reminded of the cryptic nonsense they had consistently fed her. So far, her intent to survive had served June well, despite the combination of compulsion and mystery surrounding her time here.

“I don’t really have a choice.” She said, talking to no one. “These weirdoes aren’t much help, but they’re all I have. They’re not just going to dump me out in the woods, at least I hope not.”

Patience and acceptance had been her friends until now, why stop, she decided. June paced the room, continuing to skim the text. It spoke more of this mysterious Schism and the resulting chaos that followed. Apparently, the Schism was a cataclysmic conflict that put an end to the preceding Age of Strife. This text itself had few details, focusing on dry retellings of the macro-socioeconomic decisions of kings and nobility during the era. Best June could tell, it was an era of upheaval defined by a complete lack of stability. Though the retelling in this text was lacking, her mind spun with possibility. June knew that she would be given more asinine tasks in the days to come. But at the very least, she would be able to learn more about the world.

Shaken out of her thoughts, June could hear a loud clatter from within the forge room. A shout from Bullin echoed off the dusty stones, calling her out of her room. June paused before leaving. She glanced down at the fire imp, “I guess I should take him with me so I can at least keep an eye on him,” she thought.

The living ember was still sitting on the floor, eyes closed, humming a hushed tune. Desperately, she hoped that their previous talk had stuck. “Could you go into the gem today?” June asked Kotor as he swayed back and forth cheerily.

“I guess, as long as you promise to let me come out later,” he said glumly.

June crept into the forge chamber, hoping to avoid notice, unsure if Bullin was still angry about the mess from yesterday.

Bullin looked up from his work on the enchanting bench, a lazy smile crossed his lips. She could see a glimpse of rotted teeth between dark blue lips.

“Hey bud...” June asked shakily. He didn’t respond.

Bullin was busily grinding something within a mortar and pestle. On the table in front of him sat a mix of fresh pieces of parchment. Yellowed vellum and other materials were arranged in small piles. As June got closer, she saw he was grinding some kind of black substance within the bowl.

“What’s all this for?” June asked as she looked at the various sheets. All of them were blank.

Bullin kept grinding for a beat, before speaking, “I’m going to teach you how to make spell scrolls,” he said, inspecting the thick black substance inside the stone mortar. “This is the most difficult part of all this. All that fiddlin’ with mana and spells, it was for this.” His beady black eyes bored into the skeleton, his features were stone-like. “This is the last thing I’m able to teach you until you get sent out of here.”

“Wait, really?” June nearly shouted as she responded to Bullin’s revelation. “I’m finally going to get to leave this dump?” she asked.

“Hold on there, fella,” Bullin spoke in a more animated tone, setting the mortar aside. “We still have a few things to teach you, then I’m going to escort you to your first proper mission.”

“Well, a chaperone won’t be all bad, I’ll be able to get some chances to learn about this world first-hand, at least.” June realized. June pictured finally being able to see the world around her and outside this musky hole in the swamp. Despite her fantasy, the sour mood of the surrounding forge returned with a forced cough from Bullin.

In the moments that June had been pondering, Bullin completed the item he had been working on. “Catch, you’re going to need that,” the dwarf said as he tossed a small black lump to June. She missed the prompting, and as bumbling hands failed to grab the item, a new status window popped up in June’s face.

Quest Completed!

Obtain at least one Mana-Rich Wood for Bullin.

Reward: Teleportation Rune Key

Between chuckles, Bullin spoke up, “that’s going to let you move around certain areas of the tombs. Channel some energy into it,” he said with a smile.

When June did as ordered, a translucent map of the Tombs appeared before her. The image glittered with twinkling blue light, forming a discernable map of each level. Details were absent, so the look itself was basically a mix of connected boxes. Twisting within the various ethereal were bright blue lines connecting each level. Experimenting, she cut off the flow of mana, and the map disappeared. “Good to know,” she thought as she brought the map back up to examine it closer. Stunned, June surveyed the size of the map. “Jeez, there are...sixteen levels to this place.” Looking closer, she saw that most of the levels on the map had a deep red tinge. Areas without the red tinge corresponded to the first four floors, as well as the level she was currently on—and the one above it. “Wait, don’t you have one of these too?” June asked while examining the map.

“Mine’s a bit more complicated, given that I have access to more areas than these,” Bullin responded, holding up one of the other three carved items sitting on the table. “But yeah, same idea. You just trigger it, and it takes you through those new-fangled teleportation circles. Just keep that on you, and it should work.”

“So, what are those other levels? I’m kind of curious,” asked June while closing the map and dropping the carved Key into her pouch.

The dwarf stared at June for a moment, through narrowed eyes. When he spoke, it was in a much more composed tone than June had ever heard him use. “I can’t give you any details, other than the levels you have access to.” Bullin reached into a pouch on his bulbous form and extracted his own Rune Key. He fired up his own map as he rounded the table. “You’ve been to that first level, and other three levels are just like that. It’s where all the basic defenses around the tomb are, ya know. You also have full access to most rooms on this level, and the storage level above.” As Bullin pointed to each zone on his map, they lit up to further highlight their location. “And today, we’re goin’ here,” he said with a smile, as he pointed to the largest room on this level.

June recalled the sounds of metal and heat of the forge she had experienced just a few days prior. As she inspected the map, she realized that was the same chamber the dwarf was now pointing to.

“I want you to create a spell scroll,” Bullin said. “And that’s where you’re going to do it.”

“I have no idea how to even start doing that,” June admitted.

“Think about the craftin’ you’ve done so far. It’s mostly just like that.” The dwarf sighed deeply before continuing. “The trick is, ya not allowed to invest skills in Magic Crafting. This here is a test.” Bullin said with a careful gaze boring into the skeleton’s features. “You’re going to have to figure this all out on your own.”

After a few minutes of walking in silence, they arrived at the giant forge chamber across from Varren’s office. June rushed past the inert stone golems and the giant wooden door and into the forges. Around them, the noises of constant crafting were a flurry of chaos. Skeletons adorned in haggard leather robes rushed all over, grabbing materials and taking them to their own workstations. Some moved to small forges to pound out metal pieces. Others grabbed handfuls of wood, glass and other items to finish weapons and armor. On the far end of the chamber, several skeletons were busily grinding away materials, dumping the finished contents into waiting receptacles. Every so often, another undead would rush by and grab one bowl before returning to their own work. The more June watched, the more the chaos turned into a certain sense of order.

“Beautiful, ain’t it?” said the dwarf next to her, speaking in a louder tone to overcome the noise.

The dwarven smith motioned for June to follow him, and the pair walked to a corner of the room. Around a set of stone tables glittering with Runes, undead traded partially finished items and materials back and forth. Bullin directed her to take over one of the stations. As June saddled up to one of the empty stone tables, she recognized piles of parchment and rune engraving tools they had used previously. The station also had components for preparing certain materials, as well as a ready supply of Infusion Oil. MAny other little tools sat on the plinth of dark stone. Bullin spoke as she continued to glance over the items on the black stone work surface.

“The making of scrolls is a bit more complicated than basic runes. Ya gotta be precise, focused.” The dwarf shrugged, “I can’t really say more than that, like I said, you need to figure this out on your own.”

“What a wonderful help you are,” June thought bitterly.

He fished out a rolled-up piece of parchment from within a pocket on his apron. “This is what you’re going to be making a copy of.”

Bullin laid the scroll in front of her. The parchment glowed when unfurled, and whatever the ink was on the page, it shimmered slightly. The actual runework itself was intricate and delicate. Carefully, she surveyed the materials laid out on the station before her.

“I have one question,” asked June, as she considered the items arrayed before her. “Why?”

Bullin glared at her for a moment before responding in a tired tone.

Without speaking, Bullin fished another scroll from within his apron and unfurled it. A flash of mana snaked its way around his hands before engulfing the parchment. As a golden hue spread across it, the parchment burned to ash, and fire formed in Bullin’s hands. And with a simple flick of his wrist, a ball of fire launched toward a nearby wall. A resounding boom filled the chamber, overwhelming the surrounding din, as the fireball engulfed the ash-covered stones. Chunks fell from the freshly blasted wall. None of the undead around the pair reacted to the spell or the impact, though another robed undead rushed in to scoop up the bits of loose rock.

“That’s a scroll that took one of our newer crafters more than a week to make. Varren wants to test how well you can do without the specific skill.“ He held his finger up, affecting a warning pose. “It’s more complicated than just runes, though we’re trying to figure out what impact skills actually have here. And since you're the first Elite we've had in a while, now's our chance.”

The realization of skills impacting crafting progress explained an unspoken question to June. She had wondered how skill choices actually impacted her ability to do things. It seemed that the hard limit on tier magic spells had some impact on crafting. “So I get to be your testing bed again?“ June thought in a bitter mood.

The first thing that June realized is how different this all was. Making scrolls was going to be a lot harder than she remembered from the MMO version of this reality. The crafting system in Duneria Online had been simple. By using the Sculpting tool in the UI, you could actually carve unique designs into the material you were working with. The basic spell scrolls were often just a few symbols etched into a paper scroll. The developers made the system driven by a big in-game event. They had issued a new quest, prompting players to rush the crafting stations and try out the new system. When the first scrolls dropped onto the in-game market, crafters and traders went nuts.

And as June learned how it worked, she too joined the fray. Simplicity was the easiest thing to master in June’s mind. Her first spell was just that, simple. By layering a Fire mana spiral multiple times, June had made a modest Fireball scroll. But this was so very different. The options arrayed before her were much more complex, too complex. With a mountain of runes to choose from, there were a lot of issues with just jumping in. She no longer had the UI to guide her actions, so copying the runes from the source scroll seemed to be the best option. Looking closer at the scroll she was meant to copy, she noted just how many different runes made up the web of symbols on the parchment.

Her first attempt to simply replicate the runes onto a blank piece of parchment had been a failure. Despite her best efforts to mimic the brush strokes of the enchantments, right down to the minute differences in line thickness, a tiny shower of red sparks combined with a simple status window, confirming her defeat.

Item Gained

Name

Spell Scroll

This spell scroll is partially finished, containing basic rune work to form a scroll. Some critical element of the infusion and creation process has failed, leaving a useless scrap of parchment behind.

Rarity

Magical

Grade

Broken

Affinity

—

Effect

—

Trying again, a new nervousness set in. Her bones shook as they dipped her brush into the inky black oil and scrawled careful lines onto the parchment. More than once, June just couldn’t focus with all the surrounding noise, and in a jittery moment, the brush dropped from her boney fingers. Each time she failed, one of the skeletons around her dutifully grabbed the failed parchment and whisked it off to a growing pile elsewhere in the room.

Several more attempts in this manner ended similarly. After hours of mucking about with the process, she gave up for the day. Resigned, she returned to her chambers and sat cultivating while Kotor played with a small ball of summoned fire. The next day was almost exactly the same as the former.

At this point, her nerves were frazzled to the point of failure, and in a fit, she stormed from the forge chamber. To clear her mind, she tried using the teleport system to get back to the surface. It took her a few attempts to realize that she had to picture the destination alongside calling out the name for the Rune Key to function. She felt like a crazy person the first few times she had failed to figure that one out. Her surface excursions amounted to wandering around the fetid pools with Kotor latched to her shoulder, inspecting the local area. But even those trips to the surface got boring fast. No new players showed up for her to ambush either, and that’s no fun.

After repeated failures, her sense of patience and acceptance of her circumstances gave way to frustration. A shower of dull sparks marked yet another infuriating mixup on her part. The last week had been more and more of the same failures. June had even stopped bringing her sword or armor with her anymore, as she just ended up lugging them around for no reason. As she trudged from her bedroom to the scroll-making table each day, her steps dragged, her shoulders sagged.

“Goddammit!” she shouted, as she threw the remnants of another burned scroll off the station. Several skeletons around her barely registered her outburst, they just continued steadily hammering or grinding away.

Dejected, June decided to just give up for the day. “There has to be something I’m missing,” she thought, recalling Bullin’s words. Despite all her insights into rune crafting and forging from the last couple of weeks, things hadn’t progressed as fast as June had hoped. Practically crawling out of the forges, June decided a change in routine was needed. As her feet clacked against the stone floor, June listlessly wandered the level. Pacing up and down the hallway, June was entirely lost in thought for several minutes. She ignored the presence of undead around her, weaving past her sulking form.

“There has to be something that I haven’t figured out yet.” She knew there was some critical element of the process she was missing, some arcane knowledge she lacked. And she happened to be right next door to the best source of knowledge she knew of. Hopeful, she entered the library and casually strode through the space. June strolled through the wooden shelves, reading spine after spine as she passed. Each shelf of dark wood flexed under the weight of dozens of books and scrolls, all meticulously organized and maintained. June headed deeper into the library, perusing the seemingly endless rows. As she walked, a subtle noise came to her senses. No other undead had been around when she entered, but she heard some kind of tapping around her. Glancing around, she couldn't find the source of the noise. Figuring it was some rodent scurrying about, June went back to perusing.

Plain leather-bound tomes sat beside heavily accented covers on dark wood shelves. Many topics were covered. Signs on the ends of some shelves pointed to Alchemy, Runes or some other magical topic. But just as many books were dedicated to the history and geography of this world. There was even an entire section dedicated to cooking. What use undead had for cooking, she didn’t know. After all, she hadn’t eaten or slept since coming here. But she couldn't be dragged down by such curiosities, she had a mission. Hoping to find insights to guide her away from abject failure, June grabbed tomes she thought looked interesting. Magical texts across every discipline sat in her arms as she waddled her way back to an empty table.

As she plopped the tomes down, June eagerly dropped into her chair. And so began a cycle of spending days pouring over old tomes, hunting secrets, and spending downtime cultivating mana and trying to make more scrolls.

Days and days went by with little progress on June’s part. Every time she tried a new technique, something else went wrong. No matter how perfect her recreations of the source scroll were, she kept failing. She tried different amounts of Infusion Oil and Arcane Ink, as she had come to know the thick black substance as. No matter how often she tried to channel different amounts or types of mana, the result was the same. June even tried performing a crude focusing ritual on the parchment, but she just ended up with a burned hunk of material.

June had settled into a listless routine. Each day, after bathing in the failure of another shower of dim sparks, she trundled off to the library, grumbling about how she must have missed something. An ever-increasing mountain of parchment and bound tomes formed around her. June had completely taken over her own small corner of the chamber. And as the shrine of leather and parchment stood as a monument to her failure, June grew increasingly discontent. That infernal tapping sound didn't help matters. And after days of solitude amongst the writings, despite gaining insights into more complicated runes, June felt no closer to finding what she needed.

Suddenly, a fresh addition to her collective mess appeared, the giant skeletal steward of the library, Mukkrag. June peered over her latest reading material at the behemoth.

“Ah, our young prodigy. Mayhap I offer a bit of guidance?” The large skeletal figure loomed over the table, casting a shadow across the dimly lit space. “I see you’ve been eager to learn more about the inner workings of scroll manufacturing. Maybe I could shed some light on the topic.” From within their gilded robe, stretched an arm of yellowed bones.

Within his grasp was another book, a simple red-leather tome.

“These walls hold many secrets, but be warned, not all of them want to be found,” said the undead in a hushed tone. “Emotions are a guiding light in death, more so even than in life. But it's never so simple as to just feel the path forward. The path to true enlightenment is unique to each individual,” droned the giant robed skeleton. “Often, you must pursue those secrets with every aspect of oneself, working in accordance with the principles you feel most strongly.” The larger undead finished its sermon and simply peered at June. Sensing her unease, Mukkrag broke the silence between them. “Careful, child, your emotions can sometimes lull you into a situation you can’t easily escape from. Don’t overthink, just feel what comes naturally. Undeath is a magnificent gift, a chance to start over.”

The question of what that gift actually was intrigued, but also frightened, June. But to her, that fright was more driven by her repeated failures as of late. After all, since Bullin had revealed that she was almost entirely immortal, concerns about danger felt less potent. The sting of failure spurned her on, pushing her to explore every viable option before her to escape her current circumstances.

She picked up the tome Mukkrag had laid on the table. The title: “Spellcraft: A Treatise on Emotion and Power” was emblazoned in black lettering on the spine and cover. The opening chapters were full of the same high-minded language as many other books she had read. “These authors must be really full of themselves,” she thought. Though it was mildly annoying to decipher their obtuse phrasing, June plowed on.

There was something deeper at work here, beyond just the concept of mana. She knew that much, even if the revelation of a deeper emotional connection to magic made her feel deeply unsettled. That gnawing insecurity that had snipped at the edge of her awareness since her arrival here was a constant force, one she desperately wanted to overcome. June thought through what emotions she had felt since arriving, feeling unsure about what path to take. The storm of negative emotions and optimistic plans in her head battled for dominance. Her emotions had always been high-strung, and they constantly bubbled to the surface during her casting.

It was in the third chapter, titled “The Insight of Intent,” that June happened upon an intriguing tidbit.

The passage described magic as a living thing, something said to be wondrous to behold in its purest form. It described the Age of Myth as the true gilded age of the world, something worthy of worship. But the text spared no time in insulting other forms of magic that the author viewed as lesser. Even going so far as describing the runes and other mechanisms mages of the modern ages as crude impersonations of true magic; far removed from the artistry of The Weave, even as it was practiced in The Age of Gold and Kings.

Later sections talked of dark magics practiced by evil men and women, perverting the beauty of magic. The passage described terms like ‘flesh weavers’ and ‘blood sorcery’ and other evils that lived bathed in shadow.

Confused, June questioned just how much she knew about the magic of this world. She couldn’t help but pay rapt attention to the descriptions of magic within these pages, though. This author had a love for their own interpretation of magic, that much was evident. Every word on the page spoke to how much they wanted to create that same sense of passion in their reader.

No song is more alluring or heartbreaking than the depths of the greater mysteries. Mages prowl the chasms of emotion and feeling, hunting secrets. They work tirelessly, weaving their very souls into their works. The marks they leave behind on our pitiful little world echo throughout time and are etched into the fabric of this plane. And so you too must follow in the footprints of these giants.

—Spellcraft: A Treatise on Emotion and Power

As she pondered the information she had learned and what she had been told, she tried to find some sense amid various distinct possibilities. At the center of her mind lay the simple question: what did she want, really?

“There has to be something more to magic than this. It’s fucking magic,” she thought in desperation.

Trawling back through her memories of casting, June focused on the emotions each experience brought up. The rush of power was crystal clear, but something more elusive lay deeper. Beneath the dust and the aging bones of this decrepit hole, whispers of the past lay waiting to be found. Their lessons would cut through the haze in her mind like a knife. June had been pretty bad about reading others’ emotions, so had that impacted her ability to see something so obvious here as well?

Each time she had cast a spell, a pulling sensation sapped energy from her body. But beneath her notice, it had taken something more from her. Every time she channeled fire magic, her mind was ablaze with hope and possibility. A feeling that she could burn a path towards a new life. The feeling had been so alien to her previously reserved temperament; she hadn’t fully given herself to it. But coming here had done wonders for her curiosity, why wouldn’t it help break her out of her shell in other ways?

Recalling her use of death mana, something darker simmered within. In the bleakest moments of her previous life, she had felt despair, that subtle longing for the sweet release of death. The strangely compelling threat of everlasting peace amid the chaos. Most times, she staved off surrender out of a sense of obligation. Like an automaton, she had accepted her stagnant life for no good reason. And as June struggled against this latest task, she felt herself slipping back into that mindset.

Now, an opportunity had presented itself. She couldn’t hide from that life or these feelings anymore. Magic had unlocked something primal within her. Though she couldn’t grasp it yet, she leapt at the tantalizing knowledge like a starving beast to prey. She was happy to seize it with the full force of her will.

An ember of destructive intent lit in her mind. With an eerie sense of calm, June dove deeper into her memories. She prowled, carefully exploring other aspects of her magical experiences. Focusing on more than just the Core and her internal void, she fell into another familiar sight. As she was greeted with familiar the orgy of elemental energy, a rush of senses embraced her. The crash of stone and water the boiling and sizzle of fire meeting them both; an unending assault on the ears. Smells that reminded her of cooking meat wafted up from the yawning chasm. The screams of these primal forces of nature spiced the alluring wind.

Happiness, anger, sadness and so many other barely caged beasts broke out, breaching her mind. All these feelings that had bubbled beneath the surface of her awareness since coming here clawed for dominance. They strained against an invisible barrier that had previously kept them in check. Like terrible beasts smashing down a castle wall to consume the meat huddled inside, intense emotions threatened to overcome her hardened mental defenses. Whatever was suppressing them at that moment, was losing the battle against the encroaching madness. Each time the beasts of her mind rammed their cage, the bindings heaved. And in a single glorious instant, the walls shattered.

Cries of elemental anguish and dark intent called to her, less an alluring whisper and more a baleful scream.

The carnage of nature’s raw power unleashed its fury upon June’s mind and body at that moment. As a wave of heat boiled out of the arena, covering June in its shock wave, she felt strangely at peace. The roil of noise gave way to a creepy silence as more of her focus turned inward. Fully lost in her daydream of death and chaos, June gave herself over. That familiar pulling sensation responded in kind. Standing above the elemental arena, June lept off. Pillars of fire and water rushed to greet her. Like giant serpents, they opened their mouths to swallow her whole.