Page 84 of The Ruins of the Heartless Fae

If Kolfinna saw her again, she had a lot of questions to ask.

21

Kolfinna’s thighsburned as they trekked the sandy dunes of the desert. The dreki was nowhere to be found, even though they had been walking the whole night until dusk. The suns beat down on the back of her head and sweat poured down her face, drenching her uniform. Blár’s own uniform was similarly soaked with sweat. He had discarded his cloak at some point and had unbuttoned the first three buttons of his uniform.Neither of them talked about Revna; their sole focus was on finding the dreki.

Kolfinna blotted her sweaty forehead with the sleeve of her uniform. “When we were running from that monster, it came upon us every chance it got, but now that we’re actively looking for it, it’s disappeared.”

“What’s our plan anyway?” Blár shifted his sword in his other hand, careful not to let the sharp edge drag across the sand like Kolfinna was doing. He eyed her sword, which sliced into the granular ground, with a frown. “Once you’re a Royal Guard, you can’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Actively drag it across the ground. Royal Guards are supposed to uphold an image.” He rolled up one sleeve at a time, balancing the sword and revealing his sunburnt, red skin. Kolfinna couldn’t stop staring at his forearms and the way his muscles bulged. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” he continued, oblivious to her stare. Sweat dotted his forehead, and sand particles clung to the sunburnt skin on his cheeks and nose. “Anyway—are you going to change the runes or are we going to fight it with these?” He motioned to the sword. “I’m not much of a swordsman.”

Despite his words, Kolfinna still dragged the sword behind her. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but the sword was too heavy to carry upright for hours on end.

Slaying a monster with a sword shouldn’t have been as daunting of a task as it seemed, but the thought of killing it with a weapon instead of using her magic made her uncomfortable. Attacking something with magic was quick and she didn’t have to get so close to it, but with a sword, she would deal the finishing blow.

“I don’t think I can create new runes. I’m only good at breaking them, not making them.” Kolfinna’s feet dragged into the thick sand with each step. “I guess we’ll have to fight with these swords.”

“You only had your first rune lesson two days ago. How do you know if you’re good or bad at creating them?”

The deafening silence stretched between them as Kolfinna pondered those words. She had listened to whatever Revna had told her, but it was true, she had only tried once to create runes. Maybe it would be different this time?

A sizzle of mana caught her attention and she froze as the sensation sent a jolt of warmth up her spine. She whipped her head up to the sky, but there was no familiar flapping of its wings or the pressure of the wind as the dreki flew. She waited with bated breath, gaze flickering over the clear skies, but there was no dreki. The wind howled and she remembered to breathe.

She craned her neck to where the mana sizzled and found a boulder with mana spilling forth from it. Kolfinna ran to the boulder, her sword clanking behind her as it bumped across pebbles. She heard Blár’s footsteps disrupting the sand behind her.

Kolfinna stopped when she reached the boulder; golden runes danced over the rough ridges of the stone.Slay the dreki; magic does not work.

“This is where we started,” she said.

Would she be able to break the runes here? Her fingers splayed against the runes and she quickly withdrew her hand from the scorching boulder. The rays of the two suns made the boulder unbearably hot, but she hesitantly placed her hands an inch away from the runes and she closed her eyes, feeling her own mana deep within herself. She called it forth and imagined it like a rope lassoing around the runes and suffocating them.

The runes didn’t break.

Sweat dotted her forehead as she focused her mana on the runes again. Breaking the runes at Revna’s house was like butter melting in her hands, or like antiques withering to dust at her very touch. These runes were solid and sturdy, holding their shape no matter how much mana she slammed into them.

She twisted and wrestled the runes, but they didn’t budge.

“What’s wrong?” Blár asked when her breathing hitched.

Her hands curled into fists until the grooves of the boulder scraped her skin atop her fingers painfully. If she wasn’t able to break these runes, didn’t that mean she wasn’t good at breaking runes? What if she was just terrible at rune magic?

Kolfinna quickly cast that thought away. She didn’t have time for her insecurities. When she was alone and privy to her own feelings, she would allow herself to wallow. Now wasn’t the time.

“It’s not working. I-I’m trying—” She cringed at the hopelessness underscoring her words and tried to ignore the stinging in her eyes. The wind blew against them gently and she squeezed her eyes shut to keep the sand out of them—and the tears.

“Why don’t we try breaking the rock?”

Kolfinna’s eyes snapped open. “No! We have no idea what would happen if we do that. What if we get stuck here forever?”

Blár studied the boulder expressionlessly, his winter-like eyes shifting to her. “You can’t do it?”

A frown tugged at her lips. “It’s not easy, you know.”

“All right, then we just wait for the dreki and kill it ourselves.” He struck his sword into the sand, where it tilted to the side. “We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“I’ll keep trying with the runes.”