The 17th Rune

Prologue: The Descent

The Dream always came to her when she was the most exhausted, the most vulnerable. Last night, the very last in a world where the sun shone and the starlight still touched her skin, she dreamed:

The crystal forests were burning in the darkness, flames of silver rolling through the shards like a tide of killing starlight, consuming the shards of azure and amethyst until the ground became a sea of molten, seething quagmire.

Again, she thought, as she fell through the air, through the void, watching her destiny rise up before her as she plummeted – and again, she was screwing her eyes shut, even though she knew she'd touch the ground light as a feather, knew that the flames would not burn her when they turned everything else to molten waste.

Standing knee-deep in the chaos, shielding her eyes from the brightness, she would then walk. Why, where, to what end, she never knew how she knew – but her feet were moving through the wreckage of the forest that had once stood for a thousand years, where giant trunks of sapphire and leaves of quartz had quietly grown, watching over the land like sentinels. A murder, an extermination had taken place here, a brutal comedown that left the world trembling in its wake. She wept as she walked, as she always did, as they fell and melted around her, generations of memories lost in fury of some unforgiving god.

Yes, the god – she knew him, she was going to him, now, and she found her way up the once-path, slowly out of the silver magma and up the darkness of the slope, where stood the black door in a white frame, the house of the Gate. Inside, he waited, and in his waiting –

Her hand trembled before the heavy, unmovable obsidian, the runes that were carved into every last groove of it flaring, brighter than full moons in the midnight blackness of this realm tearing her eyes.

And here, it would end. Usually, at least.

A thousand times, a thousand pushes, a thousand dark doors and never a single glimpse of what lay inside the house of the Gate. How many times had she awakened to sweat on her temple and her hand splayed in the cool night air before her, a name on her tongue that she would never utter?

Tonight, though, her flesh met the door, and the push yielded –

She was inside, for the first time ever.

And so was he.

Her breath was stolen, her shock at their meeting driving all thought from her mind.

"These nights that I have waited for you, speaker." A voice mild as spring sunlight on her hair, as gentle as a breeze passing through the petals of wildflowers, and yet as deep as the depths of the Eastern Sea. "I have been so alone."

Seeing him, she felt she knew him – but that was not possible, for he...

He was not human.

Her dream-self knew him, though she did not, and everything in her body rejoiced, yet wept, and in a rush of dizzying emotions she found herself on her knees before the god, the god who was glowing with silver, with the secrets of an entire lifetime –

"Speaker." He said, and held out his hand. "Will you help me?"

"-"

The name finally spoken, the syllables cried out, and the dream broke even as she spoke them, the scene falling before her eyes, the echoes of his voice fading to nothing.