Page 75 of The Only Way Out Is Up

He skitters across the floor, focusing his primary optics on her. Ky reaches out tentatively and pats his flat metal head.

“He really isn’t like any runic I’ve ever seen,” she says. “He’s more like a pet.”

I give a cautious grunt of agreement as I start unpacking the new gear. I’ve heard that on the upper tiers, people keep animals just for companionship; down here it’s not uncommon to have a pig running around the house nosing for scraps, but it’s destined to end up on the table when it gets big enough.

“And he talks to you?”

That makes me pause. I’d explained, haltingly, how Star and I communicate; hard to deny it when his call had summoned me across half of Malkuth. But talking about it out loud still gives me the creeps, like I’m transgressing some vital taboo.

“Y-yeah.”

“What’s he saying right now?”

[Instruction: tell her I am impressed with her ability to murder her opponents efficiently.]

“He’s, um, really happy to meet you.”

[Displeasure: you have failed to convey the nuance.]

“Aw. Glad to meet you, too.” She pats him again, then looks over at me. “You know this is crazy, though. Runics can’t talk. Runics can’t think. They just do what they’re told.”

“Don’t ask me to explain it.” There’s no such thing as a ruby sigil, either, and certainly not a THINK. “Maybe he came from… somewhere else.” From Above; it’s the only real explanation.

“Speaking of impossibilities,” she says, pulling a makeshift chair over to the bench beside me. “This thing you’re building. How does it work?”

Our shoulders brush as she leans forward. I clear my throat. “It’s a little tricky to explain.”

“Try me.”

“How much do you know about sigwork?”

“The basics, I guess. What everybody learns.” There’s a pause, and I think she realizes that her idea of “what everybody learns” is worlds beyond the education of anyone in the Heap. She coughs, embarrassed. “Just—you know. MOVE sigils move things. RESIST sigils protect things. Threading wire holds it all together.”

“Do you know anything about where the power comes from?”

“There’s power in the sigils, right? And when it runs out, they break.”

I nod. “Most sigwork devices work that way, just running off the sigils themselves. Runics are… a little different.”

“Right. Runics have to have a master, and they draw power from their master’s intrinsic energy field.”

“Spirit.”

“Whatever.”

“Some devices do that, too.” At least some of my devices do; it doesn’t seem to be a common approach. Given the effects of too much drawing on your “intrinsic energy field,” I can see why. “Okay. The EXPLODE sigil is a bit of an oddity. It releases all the energy of its connected sigils at once, putting it out along the wires to drive a single effect. So it destroys itself and those sigils, but obviously it can produce some flashy results. That’s how Bug Zapper works.”

“Interesting.” She seems genuinely fascinated, and I find myself warming to my topic. And, admittedly, having her pressed up beside me.

“Bug Zapper is… crude, though. It just puts out enough energy to scramble nearby connections and burn out sigils. It works great against Twisted because it sort of disrupts their network.”

“Like blowing out a candle with a bellows.”

“Exactly. But if the sigils and wire are tough enough to contain the power, they don’t break and it doesn’t work. That’s what happened against Vripiai.”

“It wasn’t Bug Zapper you used on Gestian, though,” she says.

“No.” I take a deep breath. “I had a sigil blank, like this one, and I carved… something. Close to EXPLODE, but not quite. It had the same quality of releasing all its energy at once, but it channeled it through another sigil into the environment rather than just blowing it in all directions.”