Waking was not a sudden event, not a switch flipped from the blackness of sleep to the awareness of the present. For me, especially after a deep session of Runic Scribing, it was a process, a slow tide rolling back in. The intensity of the work, the sheer, unadulterated focus required to persuade the very fabric of an object to accept a new reality, left a psychic residue. It was a state of profound mental quietude, a silence born not of peace, but of exhaustion. My mind, a cognitive engine that was almost always running hot, processing strategies, analyzing threats, and managing the myriad details of our fledgling civilization, was forced into a cool-down cycle. Most would feel a debilitating mental fatigue, a brain-fog that would last for hours, if not days. For me, it was different. My intellect, my primary attribute, fought back against the fatigue, cordoning it off, processing it in partitioned background threads until all that remained was a clean, hollowed-out feeling, like a room that had been scrubbed bare.
The first sense to return fully was touch. The rough-spun wool of the blanket, the surprising weight of Lia curled into a warm, breathing ball on my chest, her small hand clutching the fabric of my tunic. The second was sound. The Grotto was alive, even in the pre-dawn hours. I could hear the distant, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of Leo's hammer on a cold piece of iron, the soft, melodic cadence of Samuel's morning prayers drifting from the main cavern, and beneath it all, the gentle, almost inaudible hum of the consecrated ground, a constant reassurance of safety.
My eyes opened. The light was thin and grey, the kind that promises a cold morning. And standing there, a silhouette against the cave mouth, was Elara.
She wasn't waiting, not in the passive sense. She was observing. Her stance was one of perfect, predatory stillness, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. In her hands, held loosely but with an undeniable familiarity, was her axe. My work. From this distance, I could see the change. The Orcish Greataxe had always been a brutal, pragmatic tool of war, its surface scarred and pitted from a hundred battles. Now, it was something more. The rune I had so carefully inscribed upon its head, the single, potent word 'Cleave,' seemed to drink the meager light from the air. It was a stark, clean line of silver that pulsed with a faint, internal energy, a stark contrast to the dark, blood-stained iron it was set in.
A small, satisfied smile touched my lips. Carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping child on my chest, I shifted my weight. I slid one arm beneath Lia, supporting her back, and with the practiced ease of a parent, I gently lifted her and settled her into the warm depression I had left on the bed, pulling the blanket up to her chin. She murmured something in her sleep, a single, trusting sigh, and burrowed deeper.
I rose, my joints protesting with a series of quiet clicks. Elara's eyes, sharp and focused, shifted from the axe to me. Her expression was unreadable, a mask of professional neutrality that I had come to understand was her default state when processing new, significant data.
"Cleaving, huh?" Her voice was a low murmur, the words carrying a weight of consideration.
"Yeah," I yawned, the motion pulling at the tight muscles in my back and shoulders. I stretched my arms out before me, rolling my wrists and flexing my fingers. The phantom sensation of the scribing tool, the delicate pressure needed to carve into enchanted steel, still lingered. Scribing was an art of supreme control; a single tremor, a momentary lapse in focus, and the entire construct could fail, or worse, result in a flawed, unstable enchantment. The price of that control was a near-certainty of cramping that felt like it settled deep in your bones. "We're walking into the unknown. The mountain settlement could be friendly, or they could see us as threats. We have no idea what kind of System-derived armor or natural defenses we might encounter. I needed you to have a tool that could reliably bypass physical defenses."
I let my hands drop, turning my full attention to her. "I considered adding other runes. Something for speed, maybe a minor ward of protection. But the Orcish steel, it's… stubborn. It has a history, a purpose forged in blood and rage. It would have fought the concepts. A weapon like that can refuse an enchantment if the word doesn't match its inherent nature. Adding too much, too many conflicting ideas, could have shattered it from the inside out."
I paused, gathering my thoughts, trying to put the complex theory into simple terms. "But then I realized you didn't need all of that. You've always been the tip of our spear, the one who breaks the enemy line. Your fighting style isn't about finesse; it's about overwhelming, decisive force." I made a short, sharp chopping motion with my hand. "You don't just hit things, Elara. You cleave through them. The rune doesn't give you a new ability. It simply takes the core concept of what you already do and elevates it, makes it absolute. It persuades armor to part, shields to split, and bone to yield. It should be much easier to cut through… well, anything, now."
A smirk finally broke through her neutral expression, a flash of the fierce, confident woman I knew. "You're acting like I understand a single word you're saying, Kale." She shifted her grip on the axe, her knuckles white. "And also," she added, her eyes glinting with a familiar, teasing light, "it seems you don't either."
Before I could form a retort, before I could ask what she meant by that, something impossible happened.
The axe in her hand, the solid, heavy, thirty pounds of enchanted Orcish steel, simply ceased to be.
It didn't vanish in a puff of smoke or clatter to the floor. It dissolved. One moment, it was there, a tangible instrument of death. The next, it broke apart into a million motes of golden-white light, each one a tiny star. The swarm of light didn't disperse. Instead, it flowed like liquid starlight, swirling from the space where the axe had been and sinking directly into her hand, her arm, her very being. The light traced its way up her skin for a heartbeat, illuminating the muscle and sinew beneath, before vanishing completely.
My own mind, the ever-analytical engine, stuttered. My first, panicked thought was that the enchantment had failed catastrophically. I instinctively checked my own status, my mana levels, searching for the backlash notification from a shattered runic construct. Nothing.
Then I looked at her face. There was no alarm, no confusion. Only a quiet, profound sense of satisfaction. A faint, golden luminescence lingered in the depths of her irises. And I understood.
My mind, which prided itself on processing information at a speed that bordered on precognitive, came to a complete and utter halt. The flow of analytical thought, the constant stream of data and projections that defined my existence, simply short-circuited. For a solid three seconds, there was nothing but a silent, gaping void where my strategic consciousness should have been. The event I had just witnessed did not fit into any known category. It wasn't magic as I understood it, not an illusion, not a skill I could look up in a tree. It was an ontological shift, a violation of the basic principle that an object, once created, possessed a distinct and separate existence.
The motes of light had faded completely, leaving no trace, no residual scent of ozone or displaced air. Elara's arm was just her arm, flesh and blood and scarred skin. But something was different. I could feel it, a subtle pressure in the space around her, a faint thrum of latent power that hadn't been there a moment before. She flexed her hand, her fingers curling into a tight fist and then uncurling, slowly. It was a gesture of testing, of familiarizing herself with a new weight that was both there and not there.
My own voice, when it finally emerged from my paralyzed throat, sounded distant and thin. "That is… unexpected."
Elara turned her head, her gaze meeting mine. The faint golden light still swam in the depths of her irises, like embers stirred in a dying fire. There was no surprise on her face, no shock. There was only a calm, profound, and weary acceptance. She had been in this world longer than I had, had faced its horrors alone before we ever met. She had learned its fundamental lesson far more intimately than I had.
"This is Norrath, Kale," she said, her voice a low, steady anchor in the sea of my confusion. She took a step closer, her presence filling the small space of my quarters. "We were ripped from our world by a System that communicates through floating blue boxes. We were dropped into a forest filled with monsters that want to eat us and gods that grant miracles when it suits them. We've seen goblins evolve into a new species because you fed them the right kind of meat and told them a good story. We are leaving on a mission to meet a city of strangers in the mountains, with an army of reformed monsters at our back."
She lifted her hand again, the one that had absorbed thirty pounds of enchanted steel. "I can feel it, Kale. It's not in my hand, it is my hand. It's a thought. A promise of violence. When I need it, it will be there." She let her hand drop. "In a world like this, a world of gods and monsters, of magic and madness, I don't think anything is truly 'unexpected'. There are only things we haven't been killed by yet."
Her logic was, as always, brutally flawless. My mind, which craved order and predictable systems, was constantly being reminded that Norrath operated on a logic all its own. I was trying to write the rulebook while the game was already in its final quarter.
A slow nod was my only reply. I took a deep breath, pushing the intellectual vertigo aside and reasserting control. She was right. Analysis could only be based on available data, and the data was constantly, radically changing. Adapt or die. It was the only rule that mattered.
"Get your gear," I said, my voice returning to its normal, commanding tone. "The escort is waiting."
We met them at the main gate, the newly-fortified entrance to the Grotto. The past two weeks had transformed the place. What was once a simple cave was now the heart of a bustling, organized settlement. The air hummed with the symphony of industry: the clang of Leo's forge, the rhythmic scrape of Maria's tanning tools, the distant chanting of Samuel's acolytes practicing their first minor prayers. This was what we were fighting for. Not just survival, but progress.
Waiting for us was a testament to that progress. Gnar stood at the head of a five-hobgoblin squad. They were no longer the ragged, cowering Guttersnipes I had found starving in the filth of Grul's camp. Elara's relentless training and the Grotto's resources had forged them into something new. They wore boiled leather armor, expertly crafted by Maria and reinforced with iron plates from Leo's forge. They carried short, thick-bladed swords and heavy wooden shields bearing the new sigil of our settlement: a single, stylized eye weeping a tear of golden light, the symbol of the MourningLord.
They stood in a perfect, disciplined line, their posture straight, their movements economical. But the most profound change was in their eyes. The feral cunning of the goblin had been replaced by the cold, sharp intelligence of the hobgoblin. They watched us approach not with fear or subservience, but with the quiet, waiting confidence of professional soldiers.
Gnar stepped forward as we drew near. He was taller than the others, his presence more commanding. The crude bone piercings of his former life were gone, replaced by a single iron stud in his ear. He brought a fist to his chest in a crisp salute, a gesture Elara had drilled into them.
"Speaker," he rumbled, his new voice a deep baritone that was still strange to my ears. "The Gutter-Guard stands ready. Rations are packed for three days. Water skins are full. We await your command."
There was no hint of our previous deception, no mention of my human form. It didn't matter to him. I had shown him the path to power, had delivered on every impossible promise. My species was an irrelevant detail. My results were all that mattered.
I gave him a sharp nod, my eyes sweeping over his squad, my Analysis skill activating out of pure habit, cataloging their levels, their equipment, their near-perfect morale. "Report, War-Chief."
"The perimeter is secure," Gnar stated, his gaze unwavering. "Torvin holds command of the Grotto's defenses. The new conscripts are on wall duty. No incidents to report. The way to the foothills is clear."
I looked past him, to the dark, imposing silhouette of the mountains that clawed at the horizon. Somewhere in that cold, unforgiving stone was another group of humans, another piece of the puzzle. Another potential ally, or another devastating threat.
"Then let's move out," I commanded, my voice echoing slightly in the morning chill. "The sooner we leave, the sooner we return."