He had felt True Wind's threads snaking all through this labyrinth, grazing against him in chill zephyrs that set his bones to shudder and filled his heart to bursting urgency; it screamed at him in desperation, and he could not but respond to it, needing no map to pick his way through the twisting corridors, his Rune-sense weighting the strength of the currents like a shark tracking blood. He had passed through the chamber that had held his own Rune, felt the walls saturated with its energies, crystal formations and climbing vines flooding from the stone; flowing from it, an extension, not a violation, of its will. He was surrounded by the beating hearts of his companions' own Runes, far more audible than their bearers': True Lightning pulsed in arrhythmic fits and surges, spitting searing-cold sharpness at the earth-soaked walls; Water crashed over the shores of his mind, foamy waves spilling into his consciousness, eroding the surface thoughts there and replacing them, for a time, with calm; simmering embers on the edge of his awareness flared and quelled, with an odd regularity for Fire, he thought, pacing, steady, biding its time. Two elements had new partners in this timeless symphony, and the chords were appealing to his sense of life's rhythms; Water was a newly invigorated thing that leapt and swirled, infused with Hugo's youthful energy, while the cautious, determined spirit of the Lady Chris Lightfellow lent a singular purpose to Fire's chaotic rage.

But True Wind's threads gathered and merged and soon were cords and ropes and vast coiling wyrms around him, and tremors rippled through the stone and sweat slithered down his spine in the heat, and long before Luc registered in their physical sight the Rune's building presence solidified to a wall of sheer energy that hit him like a breaking wave. Nothing had prepared him-- had prepared any of them, and he could tell, from the expressions on the others' faces if not from sheer logical deduction-- for what it was to be surrounded by all five elements. The confines of the labyrinth felt much closer than they were, sent waves of claustrophobia through those with such fears and unsettled even those without, as an overwhelming sense of no space pervaded the passageways; there was less than no space between the forces that amassed here, their energies merging and combining where they could, struggling for dominance and dissipating, reflecting and expanding and rebounding off the walls in an echo wholly nonphysical and wholly felt. They splashed over the floors and spilt into the walls and bled out through any crack or fissure they could come across, into the sky and into the earth, the whole ruin leaking spiralling trails of raw Runic energy from its every gaping pore.

Sasarai hardly feared enclosed spaces, but even he felt the compulsion to count heads, or to try to, unable to shake the feeling that there were more of them here, far more than he could count, their presences hovering at the boundaries of his senses. Hugo, meanwhile, looked as if he would bolt like a rabbit up the next passageway presented to him; his eyes were drawn far wider than human eyes should ever be, and the rest of the party took pains not to crowd him, not wanting to be the ones in his path if the compulsion to dash for the surface overtook him. Energy rolled off all of them in waves, bright arcs of colour outlining their forms, painting them as one with their elements: Chris' armour seemed of burnished gold, reflecting a glow that had no point of origin in the dim corridors, her eyes dark coals behind which flickered patient heat; sparks leapt from the surface of Geddoe's armour, causing the leather bindings to sizzle, blue-white currents coursing over skin and hair that lightning could not harm. Sasarai looked down to see vines wrapped around his legs, not to trip or tangle him, it seemed, but as part of some great anointment, leaves dripping luxuriant green winding up to drape about his shoulders. The energy was real, but how much of what he saw was literal, and how much the product of his overloaded mind, he found it difficult to tell. This was a dream of the Runes, perhaps; the Runes dreamed, even if they never slept, and he thought perchance he walked now through the corridors of those dreams, bright and eternal and deep.

Yet even amidst the chaos in his mind, Sasarai found some chord within his blood stirred to a rapture he had not known before or since. The Runes spoke in orderly voices; he just had to disentangle them from one another, just had to pick out the separate strands of each, and listen. Awareness of that harmony pierced the chaos in irregular spurts, and when it did, he found himself brought almost to his knees by the chorus, bracing himself against the breathing walls to stave off the overpowering need to fall. The five elements were meant to dance this dance, meant to work together and oppose, meant to breathe and bluster and burn in this passionate cycle of life. They were not meant to be scattered, cast so far from the other their strained bonds ached and cried, their voices dissonant and out of step. This, for all its confusion, for all its clamour, was right. It was so right he could barely breathe, and then all at once he could breathe, the fullest breath he'd ever taken, for Wind and Earth were in harmony and air was flooding him and receiving him, embracing him, buoying him almost aloft. --now he felt too lightheaded, the air he'd breathed too pure, and all that was keeping him from hitting his back against a wall and sliding down it until he kissed the ground was the shrill strand of pain that wound throughout True Wind, the cry for help that twisted at his gut even in this harmonious concert.

They walked onwards, through shimmering streams and glittering sparks and the walls that sang their names.


***


The creature trembling within Luc's body wailed an unearthly cry, and Sasarai saw shivers start at his collarbone, lines of force rippling over his chest, under his skin; no human shiver, but the thrashings of a trapped spirit, sentenced to death by the man who should have held it most dear. Yet he knew True Wind would not knuckle to that fate: it could not; the consequences were something that the Runes would never allow. They kept this world in balance, and their efforts were not about to fall to the schemes of one troubled boy, his reluctant co-conspirator, and their unwisely-chosen companions. For all that Luc desired this end, the desires of the many and the vast were against him. No, the inevitability he feared was not the world's destruction, but what he knew the Rune was about to do-- had no choice but to do-- to his brother. Its pain was keenly felt, a second knife within his heart, bitter anguish threading through the power that pulsed through his right arm's veins; at that moment, the hearts of Wind and Earth beat as one.

Then that unity was ripped apart, the screams echoing over and over in his head, within and without, Luc and Wind and Earth and somewhere in the mix his own hoarse cries as the air around snapped taut, momentarily choking all of them as it spasmed in pain. He felt each wing slice through his brother's flesh, soft as down and sharp as razor's edge, feathers reddened and stiffening with blood that had no way to cling to them; in the space where once one had existed two now fought for presence, the power of the huge Rune carving effortlessly through the smaller human form. He didn't know which he felt more sharply, his brother's physical pain or the tearing of his soul or the birth agonies of the incarnating Rune, or the sorrow it itself felt at having to sever a bond meant for eternity, and in all of that his own emotions throbbed dully, small and grey and curled into a sad little knot in the pit of his stomach, all but drowned out by the empathic clamour of them all. He wanted to be sick, and glancing up to see his brother's form a mess of blood and bone and feathers did absolutely nothing to stall that urge, but his stomach only clenched around air; air that tasted awful, like tangible distress. Air that was suddenly much more than air, air that was writhing and massing and alive as the great bird finally tore free of the cage of Luc's ribs.

It was beautiful, and it was terrible. Terrible, because it should never have been, not like this, not these torn halves of a soul but the flow of magic in his brother's veins, eternal and secret, complete. Yet beautiful, because whatever about it that should never have been was eclipsed by so much that was meant to be, by the perfection of the wind realised in a singular form, this being that barely filled the room yet contained within it the vastness of all the skies. Wings unfurled to drum a sad tattoo, not on the sky but as the sky itself, the breath in each of them seeming to shudder and surge in time with each massive structure's beats.

And then all breathing stopped, as the creature Looked directly at them. Sasarai's eyes were turned to the ground, but he did not need his eyes to meet that gaze, and he knew it was Looking at the others, too. He had been examined by the Runes before, been fixed beneath their knowing sight, stripped of all pretentions and made starkly aware of his human nature, how small and how vulnerable he seemed to himself before these vast forces' perfection. Yet that weighing of his soul had been a prelude to affirmation; True Earth, before they had merged completely, had sought to show him just what it was that he offered up to the Rune to unite with, and how wholeheartedly that offer was embraced, how, despite how insignificant he felt himself in comparison, he was valued and found dear.

But this was not that Look, not the gaze upon his soul of a sane entity that knew him more completely than he could ever know himself, and loved him yet. This was the Look of something haunted and abused and impossibly, incomprehensibly vast. This was the Look of something ancient as the skies, and heartbroken as a tiny child.

And all it wished, in this horrible instant, was to cry out its pain to the world.

"Guard your minds!" He couldn't tell if he'd whispered or screamed into the storm, the words seeming to come to his ears long moments before he'd thought of speaking them; he was not so composed as to be thinking such things, focusing on practicalities as opposed to throwing his arms around his brother's huddled form, absurdly small now beside the incarnate Rune, and clinging to him until he passed out. But apparently he was, and if he had threatened to faint he would have been held standing and awake by the forces that filled these ruins, he knew, the Runes flooding his body with energy faster than tears and spit and shivering could drain it out of him. Even if Wind and Earth no longer were in harmony, even if nothing about this seemed right anymore, the five elements would continue to do what they always had: fuel the perpetual cycle of life.

Fire guttered and choked, Water swirled in agitation, and he could feel Earth's tremors within his own frame before he felt them second-hand. Through the haze of heavy magic he could see Hugo grappling with some unseen force, his eyes awash with agitation and struggle, his brow glittering wet where frost had settled on it to cool him, already melting. In his mind he saw waves swell and rear in anger as the wind buffeted them, tried to force them back, whipped the surface into frothy little pockets of foam; they climbed higher in protest, riding the wind's razor edge, rippling with the strain of it, until they could bear their own weight no more and slammed down in a roar against the gale, submerging it, smothering it. He thought he saw triumph in the young man's eyes, shining, through the tears. Good, Hugo. Fight. Geddoe's face was a schooled mask of calm, his body inert though his mind was racing; he flashed and whipped, dodged and lanced, never letting the wind catch up. On this battlefield, where earth and sky were at bitter odds, Geddoe was ally with neither and bridge between both; sparks licked over the ground in a swift mockery of a caress, leaping up to embrace the sky, to become the sword that sliced through it, effortless, unharmed. Chris-- he could not see her, could not make her out for the swelling flames, and it was with a sink in his stomach that he realised Wind's ploy; it was whipping her into a firestorm, turning her own mind against her, consuming.

Earth rose up to block the storm, and Wind squalled in frustration against the solid stone wall, the flames dying down; stray gusts struggled to nurture their edges, curl them around its teasing strands, but it was not enough. The blaze had condensed, reinforced by the earth, an impenetrable magma wall. Wind howled; cold Water battered down its mental pleas, Lightning evaded its grim caress, Earth and Fire stood calm against its pain. It Looked to all of them in turn, searching their souls for an entrance, but they held steady; they had seen its weaknesses now, and their resistance did not crack.

They did not need a cry of now; all seized upon Wind's uncertainty and struck out at it with full force. Spears of ice and light and flame tore through the oppression of its thoughts, and though the attacks were no physical pain to the creature, Sasarai winced at its sorrow. It had sought understanding, sought pity, in their minds, and though to have succumbed to it would have been to be torn apart, it did not deserve this cruel rebuff, this all-out mental onslaught. He saw the bird curl and wither, a magnificent embodiment reduced to a wretched flapping thing, and threw a canopy around it, ice daggers shattering against its surface even as it pinned the creature to the ground.

"That should hold it," he said, and he thought it would. He tried to whisper to the wind, to offer words of consolation, to soothe the anguish he knew it felt at what it had had to do; but its mind was a jumble of flashes and anger and concept and word, word broken at the stem and scattered, strewn incoherent throughout raging thoughts.

And then the canopy started to stretch, and before he had time to yell a warning the thunderous crack of air pressurising ripped the capacity for words right out of them, vision blacking out as only the thin shields that lingered around them in Earth's presence kept their bodies from being compressed. Sasarai felt as if he'd smacked into something, hard, high whining filling his ears in the wake of it, his head lancing pain through shattered nerves as he struggled to open his eyes a crack, blindly wiping away blood from his nose and mouth. He couldn't see the Rune, but he could sense it, and another canopy went up, magic-abused veins crying out in protest as golden currents flooded them once more. Again the wind battered it down, almost as soon as it had arose, and he reached out for it again. He could feel True Wind tiring, dwindling, but it was stronger than Earth, had always been stronger, and True Earth too was flagging as it struggled against its brother. As a sickening crack forced his eyes open wide, he realised in horror what that meant.

The earth around him was trembling with the strain of holding Wind. Already stressed by the sheer force of magic they'd been forced to contain, these ruins were giving way.

Wind would not be crushed; the very concept was anathema to it, and indeed he felt it use the last of its energy to disperse, slip easily out through the barrier and spiral upwards into the sky in a million separate strands, coalescing high above the clouds, unseen but felt, as the great bird once again. The rippling of the air in its wake had done nothing for the stability of the ruins, and as another groan reverberated through the structure's frame, he realised for the first time since opening his eyes where they actually were.

The explosion of air pressure had pushed them out of the chamber of ceremony, and a good way out of the ruins entirely.

"Have we.... the Rune?" Hugo's voice was thin as he paused every other word to cough up blood and dust. Seemingly as an afterthought, he lifted one hand and chanted a few words sotto voce, arching back into the blue glow that seemed to rise to embrace him; when he emerged, there was a fresh clarity in his eyes. "I kind of forget I can do that," he added, sheepishly.

Sasarai looked to the skies, more with his mind than with his sight, though he raised his eyes from the splintered ground below him all the same. "It won't harm us. It'll return to Luc when it thinks it's safe," he said, his voice tinged with remorse as he brushed the receding creature's mind; humiliated in a way no force so grand should ever be reduced to, not by humans, who are not obligated to revere such things but ought to want to.

"Return... to him?" said Hugo, and Sasarai could feel the boy's gaze on him, but did not meet it. His sight was now fixed on the ruin ahead, and would not shift from it. Gold crystal shimmered in the back of his hand, the currents tugging him this way and that, and slowly he felt his senses yielding to the visions of the Rune, melting away in the heat like spring frost at first light. Protect him, the Rune sang, without words or ambiguity, and he knew he could not choose, even as Hugo's protests of danger filtered through from the small segment of his mind still attuned to the outside world.

He heard them, but ignored them. Sasarai did not fear the rupture of the earth. What he feared was the rupture of the sky.

Brother... I won't abandon you this time, his mind whispered, but the words came out in a scream, flooding his lungs with the bitter-tasting silence of the wind.