Chapter 57

**Merianna**

“Merianna!” I heard Raska yell from the left. Glancing around Thyrion I saw her standing under a picnic tree with Jasnine waving at us.

“Damn, found already.” Thyrion muttered.

I chuckled. “Well, we found who we were looking for, so let's go.” Dragging Thyrion along, we made our way to where they were happily relaxing.

“What are you two doing out here?” Raska asked as she pulled me into a big hug.

“We figured that you and Thyrion would be locked up in your room all day long.” Jasnine teased with a wink.

My cheeks flushed. “There is a limit to how much fun this body can handle.” I grumbled as Thyrion chucked and pressed a kiss into the back of my head.

“Must have been veeeery fun then.” Raska teased.

I pouted. “Like I told Noch earlier, it’s none of your business.”

“You saw Noch?” Raska asked curiously.

“Yeah, we bumped into him in the cafeteria. He is having a mid-life crisis after realizing that he was probably getting mellow, so he stormed straight to the dungeons.” Thyrion chuckled.

“What? He went there already?! Why didn’t he let me know?! I also want in on the fun!” Raska quickly turned on her heel and left without another word, leaving the three of us to watch her sprint back into the castle.

“Is she also having a mid-life realisation now?” I asked curiously.

“No, she just hadn’t tortured anyone in nearly a century so she’s probably feeling left out.” Jasnine shrugged and took a sip from her very modern coffee flask. It looked so out of place in her hands that I nearly had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t actually a teacup.

“We were actually wanting to ask the two of you for more information on how the tracking went.” Thyrion said as he took my hand and led me to sit with Jasnine under the shade.

“Is that so?” She tilted her head. “There isn’t all too much else to share really. It irks me that every time we tried to track him, our spells bounced all over the place or just fizzled out into nothing. We racked our brains to find a way through it but failed, finding someone that had recent enough contact with him was the best we could do.”

“I find it interesting that Orbus’s protections would be strong enough to hide himself so well from the two of you. Do you think it could be possible to reverse formulate the protection in order for it to show an energy pathway back to the caster?” I asked.

Jasnine blinked at me for a second.

“I know you know, warlock spells and magic are mostly rune formula based so it should be possible to reverse formulate the runes that he might have used once we figure out all the core effects he was possibly using.” I elaborated. This time even Thyrion was blinking at me in surprise.

“What?” I asked worriedly.

“I know that you excelled at rune crafting, but I was your teacher. I’m just baffled that I hadn’t thought of that myself.” Jasnine looked thoroughly baffled.

“Maybe you’ve just gotten rusty?” Thyrion teased with a grin.

Jasnine shot him an annoyed glance. “Hey, you’ve been sitting under the guy’s thumb for over a thousand years now, I don’t want to hear that from you.”

Thyrion’s expression instantly soured and he just turned to hug me without saying another word.

“So what were the effects that you guys were able to notice?” I asked curiously trying to get back onto the original topic.

“Right.” Jasnine frowned for a second, thinking hard. “We noticed some deflection, rebound and rerouting effects. There are most likely also a lot of protection and concealing effects going on, but the ones that divert our tracking spells to other places or people are the most troubling ones.”

“Hmmm that might probably be enough to be able to find the spell's origin once those effects are negated. Even if he were using protection and concealing spells, they would be easy enough to pinpoint the origin from since they won’t be covered by something that bounces outside spells away anymore.” I thought out loud. To me the whole concept made perfect sense, with the amount of rune combinations that were already coming to mind it definitely didn’t seem impossible.

My thoughts froze for a second as I noticed that the methods of rune crafting that filtered through my mind at that moment were quite different from what I had learned from Jasnine in the past. Did that mean that these methods and memories that were connected to rune crafting probably came from a memory of before the cataclysm? Maybe even from Denaue herself…? I did have that strange memory in the Council archives after all, if Denuae had taught the Warlocks their method of magic and was the source of their knowledge, who was to say that any spell the Warlocks crafted was above her understanding?

So many years have passed as well, methods of casting, languages and translated documents always tend to change the very meaning of the original methods. As generations change and adapt, their methods could either become more advanced, or watered down depending on who you were looking at.

“We can always tinker around and have a look-see at what works and what doesn’t. Would you mind helping me out with it?” Jasnine asked, looking like she was fired up and ready to take on the challenge.

“Of course! It sounds like it’ll be a fun experiment!” And I genuinely was excited, not just about working with runes again, but the fact that I was going to be working on something like this on equal footing with Jasnine.

“Come on, let’s go!” Jasnine grinned happily and jumped up from the grass, holding her hand out for me to grab.

I grabbed her hand and let her pull me up, but I stopped for a second and looked down at Thyrion when I noticed that he didn’t get up himself. “Are you going to come along?” I asked him.

“I’ll hang out here in the shade for a bit.” He grinned up at me and took my hand to give it a kiss.

“Right, hanging out in the shade huh?” I said dubiously. I knew full well that he wasn’t going to stay under the shade for all too long like he said he would.

“Yes?” He looked a bit sheepish as he avoided eye contact with me like a naughty toddler.

“You’re going to go to where Noch and Raska are, aren’t you?” Jasnine chuckled. Even she knew what he was planning on doing once the two of us went to get busy crafting runes.

He pouted. “Can you blame me?”

I shook my head and leaned down to give him a kiss. “Not at all. Just make sure not to kill the guy, we might still need him later. Save the good stuff for when we manage to catch Orbus”

The grin Thyrion gave me practically melted my heart even though I knew full well what he was planning on doing once he reached the dungeons.

“I’ll try my best. Would you want to have a go as well?” He offered with a tilt of his head.

I actually had to think about that offer for a second. I’ve missed 2000 years of being with my loved ones, my family that has a deeper bond to me than any mortal family I get born into with each reincarnation. The time missed will never be recovered again, and that made me angry. But, compared to my impulsive and violence seeking impulses of the past, I felt like my energy was better spent elsewhere doing more constructive things instead of venting out my resentments. Fighting and bloodshed in general didn’t have the same appeal to me now as it did in the past.

“Ask me that again once we catch Orbus. Right now, I don’t care about what you guys do with the current captive. Keeping him alive though sounds fair seeing as he isn’t the actual person behind all of this.”

“Your wish is my command.” He stood up and gave me a nice tight hug before meandering off back towards the castle.

“Shall we go then?” Jasnine smiled and grabbed a hold of my hand. “I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with.”

“Time to get to work.” I laughed as I followed along.