Grandma stomps on the runes Will drew until they were really dead. She stops, out of breath from that slight exercise. Looking at him suddenly, eyes wide.
"Where the burning hells have you learn that filth?" She gets closer to the stunned Will. Her finger stabbing him with as much force as she could muster, which wasn't much.
"I-I uh… I just memorized the runes from the bowl. I noticed them light up when they touched the cage and it-it was the first runes that I could look at close up" Will wasn't prepared for her to react this way. She always seems so jovial, maybe a bit sad underneath. But right now she was staring at him with a wild, almost insane look in her eyes.
"Those runes are tainted. Just looking at them made me feel disgusted. Don't copy exactly what you see crafted by that bastard. It's a miracle you were even able to memorize them, much less even write them down in front of me. Why did you want to decipher these in the first place?" She sighs, seemingly calming down. Wiping the wrinkled skin on her forehead to the back of her head. Stressed.
Was the taint she mentioned having something to do with the Corruption? Like some of the glyphs and things Sunny mentioned that were dangerous to even look at let alone know. His attribute comes to mind right away.
Void Affinity: [Grants faint resistance to abyssal corruption while subtly easing Nightmare Creatures' aggression by marking you as "kin."]
Was it giving him some sort of resistance to it? It said faint resistance so maybe since these runes were only made by an awakened he able to withstand it. In any case, Will was lucky he had some sort of resistance to it. He was sure if he didn't then, the runes might've infected him somehow. That would've been a short adventure into the world of Shadow Slave if he didn't.
Will grimaces at the thought of him instantly becoming corrupted before he even stepped foot into the waking world.
"I think they're the key to opening the cage to release the Salamander. Those bars are too thick and strong. Along with the chains binding it we're gonna need some sort of key to release it."
Grandma considers his words carefully.
"Fine. But we'll make our own version of the runes, we cannot use the originals. They could easily taint us both and we'll never be able to escape this place." She wrote a new set of runes similar to what Will had initially written in the dirt. These were very similar to the ones he could visualize in his mind. But fundamentally different. They didn't hold this air of pressure or almost slimeness.
"How do these look the same but feel different?" Will was fascinated by these things.
"Well, those runes you memorized were written too perfectly. You were able to even copy the intent of which the original runes were made from. In some cases that is an impressive feat." She pauses at that thought mid writing a new rune. "Very impressive. But when it comes to the runes made by a vile creature like that." Spitting on the ground at the thought of it. " Because they're so skilled, its intent and abilities can bleed into the things it creates. They can very easily infect us normal humans who aren't able to withstand it."
Will nods, mostly understanding the concepts. He was sure that if he didn't know the ins and outs of the Shadow Slave world, along with the concepts for the different schools of magic, he would've been completely lost in this conversation.
Grandma carved clean variants. Will copied. Failed. Erased. Copied again.
Together they were studying the 4 runes he had presented, breaking them down into pieces instead. Each one written in its entirety since Will didn't know how to write them without the intent of which they were designed with. Most of the work was done by Grandma. She would stop occasionally to explain her process, but a lot of it went right over his head the first time.
Like explaining calculus to someone who hasn't fully understanded PEMDAS yet, by the time the night was approaching, Will had a raging headache from staring at foreign letters and listening to strange concepts.
By dusk, his temples throbbed.
Around the time her lessons ended, Coal returned from whatever task he was sent to accomplish. He looks a bit beat up. His chest, now marked with new cuts and lashes, was still moving quickly. As if he just finished a heavy workout or a marathon. His face and arms had scattered bruises from whatever thing beat on the mountain of a man. His face was one of annoyance, until he got closer to the two studying the runes. Grandma looked up and her eyes pulsed gently with an orange light and that seemed to clear whatever was irritating the giant.
Whatever beat on someone like Coal around here had to be plenty strong. Much more than anything Will could handle. Together the three of them walked back to the cave they called a home. Grandma kept trying to shove concepts and ideas into his brain, but a lot of it just fell away like rain water running down the gutter. Not that he wanted to ignore her, but his brain seemed to have given up on him.
It took Coal a few tries to shove the boulder out of the way for them. Poor guy must've tired himself out doing whatever that she-devil requested of him. Coal closed the 'Door' behind the trio.
Will collapsed. Coal followed, a mountain falling. Two beaten men, one in mind, one in body.
Plopped into their beds skipping dinner instantly letting the sweet hardness of the soft enough bed hold them.
"Oh, what a couple of babies. We're just getting started and they're already like this." She jokes in the darkness before falling asleep just as fast. She didn't want to admit it but having to do so much thinking, teaching and using her aspect, she hadn't felt so tired in nearly a decade.
This continued for two more days. The trio would get up in the early morning. Coal would go off to accomplish his task, coming back beat up at the end of each day. After which Grandma would help him recover. She couldn't heal everything of his since during these last two days she was accompanying Will to help feed and heal the Salamander. Both of her abilities were much better if she had physical contact with the target but still worked, albeit, much weaker at a distance. The Salamander hardly reacted much to her. With the pain from its wounds and its body using all of its energy even faster to heal, the thing was hardly awake for more than a dozen minutes a day. It's healing was coming along nicely. Most of its scales have grown back, and Will could feel the energy around it becoming more palpable.
Weirdly enough, Will wasn't having a bad time in his first nightmare. Sunny's experience was a frigid hellscape. His was the opposite, but he seemed to have a good pair of people to help him through it. It made the painful feeling in his chest from the smog and smoke, as well as the relentless heat of his surroundings, just a bit more bearable.
On the third day, the routine changed though. Grandma said she wanted to go take care of the beast on her own. Of which he expressed his concern, without his abilities who knew how the creature would react to her.
"Don't you get any cracks in that boulder worrying about me now. You have plenty to worry about with our lessons, you haven't even been able to inscribe the basic alphabet as perfectly as you did with those profane runes you showed me when we started. So I won't settle for anything but the best from you." She cracked him over the head with the 'brush' they made. It was just a stick, but she insisted that it was becoming of a future runic scholar to use their fingers in the dirt.
"You'll be having lessons with Coal today. We can't have you just be some pansy, posh man, you don't have the looks to sell that. So you'll need to learn to defend yourself, at least." She grumbled walking away, heading towards the 'Grumpy Lizard'.
He turns around, then craning his neck till it felt like he might break it. He has to squint his eyes. The shape of Coal's shiny head was illuminated by the morning sun. The one time you could see it on the horizon before it made its journey above the everpresent layer of ash in the sky.
"Come." Coal commanded. Turning away, leading him along to whatever hell-like training he's been doing this whole time. Eventually, they came to a clearing not too far from where Grandma and Will spent their runes lessons. Will guessed that even though her ability could be used at a distance the effectiveness would wear off if they were too far apart, so Coal trained nearby. What kind of doom that spelled for him, since she was going nearly across the crater and he was stuck in some combative training with the man? Will just hoped Coal would be nice enough to only break some of his bones.
"You wanted lessons. Learning runes is useful. But. Learning survival is good too." Coal holds up a hand, a signal for him to stop at one end of the clearing. "There are lots of dangers on the mountain. But a useless partner is the most danger." He says matter of factly.
'I would correct his grammar, but I would like to keep my arms. 'Will thought to himself.
Coal stopped at the edge of the clearing, tossing something back to him. Picking it up, Will realized it was a type of knife. The handle was some type of light but sturdy bone a little too large to fit in his hand perfectly, clearly designed for Coal's massive hands. The blade was actually just a sharpened fang that he recognized as coming from one of those ash wolves, like the one he received his collection of fangs and teeth from.
"The best teacher for danger. Is the danger." Coal explains laying some deep philosophical knowledge on him. Will was about to crack a joke but then he watched as Coal reached under a rock and pulled out a rapid creature foaming at the mouth.
"Survive" Coal commanded once more before tossing the creature at Will.
The thing landed on the floor. Took barely a moment to gather its bearings, charging at Will, claws and teeth bared.