Page 20 of Truthfinder’s Promise

8

Bright, red-hot pain seared Meredith’s chest, jolting her awake. Her wards. Something was trying to break through her wards. And they were succeeding.

She ran downstairs on the tips of her toes, barely aware that Monster followed, and grabbed the Aspect-imbued dagger hanging by the front door. Valkyrie had made it for her, and the runes etched into the hilt ensured accuracy of aim and strength. Two things Meredith couldn’t manage much on her own.

Another spike of pain flared through her chest, another raw puncture in her warding. Tying the wards to her in the way she had—to her emotions, to her pain—might have been risky, but it was effective. She burst outside and jumped onto the dirt bike that was parked by the front drive for just such a need as this one. The engine growled to life. She toed the bike into gear and twisted the throttle, shooting off down the half-mile drive from the house to the front gate.

Monster tore after her, keeping pace with the bike. Impressive, considering yesterday he’d looked like he was at death’s door. She didn’t have much time to dwell on it. The intrusion into her wards was like a festering wound, unable to close over. Which meant whatever had caused the breach was still there, doing damage.

That was fine. Stay there, you asshole, she thought. Stay right there and let me see your face.

But when she slid the bike to a stop just shy of the front gate, it wasn’t a person she found.

The tip of a short sword bit into her wards, right between the bars of the front gates, like a knife plunged into a tree. No hand held the blade. To a Null, it would look as if the sword hung in midair of its own volition.

Aspect poured from the blade and the tip sank deeper, fully piercing the first layer of her protections. The blade and hilt were covered in dozens of runes, each one steeped in power. So much power. The weapon must have been years in the making. Six of the runes had gone dark breaking through her first ward layer and two more darkened as it sank halfway through the second.

Her wards had four layers, each successive one stronger than the last, shored up by daily additions of her Aspect. The setup was far more paranoid than even Valkyrie would bother with, because Valkyrie knew she could kill anything that got through to her.

Before this moment, Meredith would have said it’d take nothing shy of a dozen Breakers to get through her defenses. Certainly more than a single, unmanned, imbued weapon.

But the sword bled Aspect like the resource was cheap. Rune after rune went dark, until the blade pierced through the second layer and kissed the third.

Half of the runes on the blade were still unused, and there were all the ones on the hilt to go after that. Even if Meredith poured all the Aspect she had into bolstering her defenses, it wouldn’t be enough.

Monster growled at the sword, muscles bunching like he was about to launch himself at it.

“Don’t,” she ordered sharply. She didn’t know how the wards would react to him. If they interpreted him as an animal they wouldn’t harm him. But if they recognized him as something other they would grip and hold him, freezing him in the sword’s path.

Mercifully, he obeyed her command, but he looked at her and gave another pointed bark at the sword.

“I know it needs to come out, I’m just not stupid enough to step on the other side of the magic line to do it.” In addition to leaving her defenseless, if she tried to pull the sword free there was no telling what touching the hilt would do. Some imbued weapons defended themselves if anyone but their maker attempted to use them, and there often wasn’t a way to find out if that was the case short of picking one up and seeing what happened.

She needed a way to remove the weapon without stepping across the ward line or physically touching it. The dagger in her hand vibrated, as if sensing her conundrum and offering its services.

She looked down, considering. The Aspect stored in it was in no way equal to what the sword possessed. But the sword had been set to the task of bringing down the wards, not fighting off another attack.

There was a chance, if she hit her target perfectly, that she could force the sword out. Ordinarily, she would put her chances of success in such a scenario somewhere downstream of ten percent. Ordinarily, she didn’t have a dagger spelled for true aim by Valkyrie Tremayne.

She hefted the dagger in her hand. The magic in the runes perked up and she focused her objective, her intent, on it. Sincerely hoping she was better at giving an enchanted blade directions than she was at stabbing things with an ordinary blade, she trained her gaze on the tip of the sword and thrust the dagger at it.

The rune beneath her palm came to life, a steadying warmth burning soft against her skin, guiding her hand. Her wards, sensing her hand behind this movement, allowed the dagger to slip easily through them. Tip of steel hit tip of steel, and for a moment the two blades were perfectly balanced, point to point.

Then the remaining runes on the dagger woke, channeling strength and fury into her thrust. The sword, already battling the halting force of her wards, resisted her attempt to force it out.

But imbued weapons, for all that they were powerful, were not sentient. The sword could not make a decision to shift its power use from attacking the wards to defending against the dagger. Only its wielder could change that course for it, and no wielder appeared out of thin air to give it such instruction.

Prompted by the dagger’s guidance, Meredith shoved forward. The sword popped free of the wards, clattering to the ground, its runes three-quarters dark.

Meredith considered leaving it before deciding the risk was too great. She flipped her grip on the dagger and reached across the ward line, catching the sword between the blade and the crossguard. The two weapons sparked with animosity, but Meredith managed to drag the sword through the boundary.

She examined the depleted runes. There were two types of runes in Aspect Society: standard and specified. Standard runes were the kind any Aspecter could use to imbue an item. Generic runes like that gave almost no indication of who had carved them, unless they still contained their maker’s Aspect and you happened to be familiar enough with said Aspect to recognize the signature.

Most Aspecters never went past standard runes. Their use took a certain level of skill to master, and most people wasted more Aspect than they managed to imbue the rune with. Aspecters who found an affinity for rune work tended to move quickly from standard runes to specified. No dictionary of specified runes existed because they were created by, and unique to, the Aspecter who made them.

Looking at the markings on the sword, Meredith carefully placed the dagger next to it. The weapons sparked again, like two cats hissing over territory. Looking between them the similarities were obvious. The runes weren’t identical but they had much in common, as if one style had been learned from the other and then modified.

“Well, fuck,” Meredith said to the night air. Monster growled, seemingly in agreement with her sentiments. “What are my chances of you bringing me my phone while I guard this thing?”