ADAD Chapter 30: First tests
Harvey and Darius had booked one of the many laboratories in the Orestria Academy, and were now testing prototype runes on rats.
First, they injected the rodents with chemicals, which brought them to bloodlust, and then they activated the runes.
So far, they have tried all the languages of the human realm, Gorgon's Enchain, and were now looking into the native languages of Orestria.
The results were all the same. The rodents would stop their frenzy, yet, then they will get depressed and stop eating. Withing a couple of days, they were dead.
"We better hide this research," Darius said, as he watched yet another rat die miserably. "Or else someone will use these runes for assassination purposes."
"You have the right of it," Harvey rubbed his temples. He had never been so frustrated during the rune making process. What would it take, to replace the bloodlust with a positive emotion, and then to keep the enchanted strength, that demons got when they went into a frenzy?
"We are missing out on something," Harvey said, and looked over their notes once more. Then, he got an idea. "All our attempts so far were with single language runes, right?"
"Are you saying that we should mix everything up? That is poor style," Darius said, and Harvey shook his head.
"I am saying that we should make a rune so big, that we can add small runes into the sides," Harvey said. "Like a teleportation rune. We will need to get an anchor for it."
"I tried to get a teleportation rune to work as a tattoo, but quit, when Anastasios got captured," Darius said. Harvey nodded. His demon friend had told him all about his misadventures in Nebula.
"I think such a rune would be the key. After all, the brain would still be affected, if you teleport. Let us begin the work on it, and put the emotion rune on the back-burner for now," Harvey suggested, and Darius pulled out his teleportation rune notes.
"This is all I figured out. I decided that the heart could be a good anchor. Seeing as that was Mustafa's anchor, and he and Noah could use magic to teleport," Darius said, and Harvey leafed through the notes.
A paragraph caught his attention. It looked like it was scribbled in haste. If Harvey knew one thing about Darius, it was that when his handwriting was incredibly atrocious, then he had a breakthrough.
Using the veins as a pathway for the mana is critical. As mana flows through them, and the veins connect everything, it is safe to say, that if they are the anchor, together with the heart, the teleportation will be successful.
"Did you forget about this?" Harvey pointed at the paragraph. "Making the veins a secondary anchor?"
"It must have slipped my mind," Darius said. There were many more notes after this paragraph, but this one looked the most promising.
"So, how do we go about making all the veins in someone's body into an anchor? I am not saying that it can't be done, just that there are so many of them," Darius asked, and Harvey smiled at him.
"And I know where they are. This will be a full-body tattoo," Harvey said, and Darius tilted his head to the side.
"Can we even test it on rats? How do we know that, once they go puff, they don't die, but teleport somewhere?" Darius asked, and Harvey nodded.
"We can't test on animals, no. We will need to test on someone who can take some injury," Harvey looked at Darius.
"It will be me, then. I agree," Darius said, and the two huddled together, to think about what type of language they could use.
After a bit of musing, the two decided that Chinese hieroglyphs would be the best ones. After all, the original teleportation rune was written in them. They wrote a big canvas full of the rune, and then Harvey waited, until Darius turned it into a tattoo rune.
Darius looked at the writing on himself. He really needed a cream rune. The demon looked like a ritual groupie at this point, seeing as he had tested most of his original runes on himself.
Deciding that the rune would hold, Darius took out a cream rune, and pressed it on his neck. For the first time since he was young, his skin was no longer covered in writing.
"Took you long enough to cover all those runes up," Harvey said, and then Darius took in a deep breath.
"Ok, should I go to Gorgon?" Darius asked, and Harvey nodded.
"Mustafa knows his way around healing. If something happens during the teleportation, and you come back on the other side hurt, he can help you," Harvey said, and then smiled wistfully. "If this rune is a success, then I can teleport to sleep with my soulmate every night."
"I am sorry that I separated you from him," Darius said, and then winked. "I will tell him you miss him already."
He was gone in a blink. When he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of a throne room, with Mustafa sitting on a throne. There was another throne next to his, but it looked far more delicate.
"Harvey won't like how fragile you take him for," Darius said with a smirk.
"Ah, Darius? How did you get in here? I didn't see an array appearing," Mustafa asked. Darius noticed that the throne room was full. He stepped closer to the thrones, and bowed to the ruler of Gorgon.
"Harvey and me created a new rune, to see if veins can be an anchor for runes alongside the heart. Seeing as you don't have to rush me to the hospital, I think it was a success," Darius told him with a soft smile.
Murmurs were heard from the gathered crowd. People were craning their necks to take a good look at Darius. Most of them knew him, and the Demon waved at some that he knew from his time as one of Gorgon's two runesmiths.
"Did Harvey send me a message?" Mustafa asked, hopeful.
"He will be back tonight to cuddle," Darius said, and then he disappeared. The next thing he saw was Harvey's worried expression. "It worked."
The two did a high five, and then huddled together to see if they couldn't scavenge something from the teleport rune, and place it into the mind rune. One thing was for certain. They were going to write the rune in Chinese, with Sumerian small runes to anchor it.
