The small space was dark and, as it turned out, not empty. Two boys pressed themselves against the narrow corners, almost completely covered by blankets. Vidar peered inside but decided not to enter. If he made some mistake, he didn’t want anyone else suffering the consequences, and the one room inside wasn’t big enough to ensure anyone’s safety.

  At that point, it wasn’t snowing anymore, and the cold might perhaps motivate him to get the sowilo rune working without delay. To that end, he moved to a nearby alley with no people around. A dog barked somewhere in the distance and someone shouted a few streets over. By now, he was used to the sounds and knew he could work with little risk of interruption. The kenaz rune could stand on its side on a protruding bit of rock in the wall, and he triggered it to give himself light to work by.

  Most of the stones in the wall were not flat. Bulbous shapes were a terrible place to draw a rune, but after some searching, he found one part of the left wall that was decently level, at about hip height from the ground.

  “Let’s see here,” he mumbled to himself, withdrawing one of the rubbings and squatting down. Vidar wondered, and not for the first time, at the reason for the runic symbol’s shape. His best guess was that it was some ancient, now dead language. The two jagged lines might’ve spelled sowilo, which in turn translated to warmth, fire, or the like. How that allowed the rune to trigger and work was beyond him, though. And if it was a written language, why didn’t the symbols twist, turn, and dance when he looked at them?

  Questions without answers. Perhaps Alvarn knew. He’d have to ask the scribe student when he found him. Focusing on the task at hand, Vidar withdrew the paint. He’d selected a small bottle of bright red, figuring it was closest to the etching on the wooden discs on which the kenaz runes were embedded. Usually, you would dilute the color with water to make the solution a little thinner and easier to use, but with his canvas being stone rather than paper or even wood, he didn’t dare lessen the paint’s thickness.

  With paint prepared on the thin brush, Vidar held it near the stone. His hand shook. It always shook when he allowed his thoughts to run wild with worry as he lettered in his previous life as a scribe’s apprentice. The only time he managed some semblance of steadiness was when he let his mind relax and his vision blur so he could zone out and eliminate every distraction.

  His father would not come check his work over his shoulder today. The only one relying on the result was himself. Vidar could do this. It wasn’t even letters, just runic characters. They would stay still for him. Breathing out, he gently touched the tip of the brush against the coarse rock, moving it left and down to make the first stroke.

  Not wanting to give himself time to worry and overthink things, he made the next, then the next, and soon the symbol sat complete before him.

  After a brief pause, he gently rubbed snow on the brush to remove any lingering paint. Vidar hunched down and put his face right next to his completed work. It looked right. Perhaps a little crooked.

  “Close enough?” he asked the empty alley.

  He closed his eyes and imagined the circle around the rune, but none would show before his inner eye. Feeling stupid, he reached out to physically touch the rune, like he’d done every other time. It put him off balance and Vidar tilted to the side and landed in the snow. His hand brushed against the wall as he fell and the circle appeared, then disappeared again when he let go of the wall.

  Frowning, he touched the wall again without getting up. His fingers were far from the actual runic symbol, but the circle appeared in his mind nonetheless. Puzzled, he reached for the other wall, where the kenaz rune rested above him. No circle appeared.

  “Strange,” Vidar said, getting up to his feet.

  Perhaps the circle on the light rune walled it off. The sowilo rune had no such barrier. This was interesting, he thought, and it needed further testing, but not today. Today, he wanted warmth. To that end, he reached out to his newly painted sowilo rune and pried the barrier open so he could fill it with his own essence.

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  Strength zapped away from his arm in an instant and it went from tingling to numb straight away. The sensation continued to his shoulder and then began reaching into his chest. Vidar grunted but didn’t want to stop, not just yet. Before his arm fell to his side, he switched hands, putting his left on the wall instead. The tingling sensation seized the left hand and arm instead, while his right recovered a little. The drain moved far faster than he could manage at that point, and in a last-ditch effort, he kicked a shoe off to replace his left hand with his left foot.

  He laughed maniacally as essence drained from the leg instead. Vidar could decide from where to take the essence. A revelation, to be sure. Before allowing the rune to take so much that he wouldn’t be able to stay standing, Vidar closed the opening he’d created in the circle.

  Panting, he examined it. To his surprise, the circle in his mind contained almost no essence. What little he could detect had a shimmer to it, almost appearing hazy. Vidar couldn’t be sure, but it looked almost like it drifted past the border of the circle.

  This did not feel right. Still, he’d spent far too much time to turn back now. Vidar wasn’t a coward. Still, his hand trembled a little when he reached out to trigger the rune.

  The next thing he knew was the back of his head and the rest of him hitting the other wall in a flash of blinding pain. He fell face-first into the snow and groaned, grabbing the back of his head. His fingers came away bloodied.

  A gentle warmth bathed his back for a brief moment before dissipating. Without getting up from his stomach, Vidar reached out and touched the wall. It was still warm, if barely.

  That’s why the essence looked so strange to his inner eye. It didn’t stay near the wall. Vidar chuckled, then let out a grunt of pain. From the look of things, he’d just attempted to fill the entire building with his essence. No wonder it hadn’t looked like much. He stayed like that for a good long while before attempting to get up. With both arms out of commission and his foot tingling like it’d been sleeping, there wasn’t much he could do until he recovered.

  That dog barked again. Closer this time.

  Vidar found himself drifting, like he was close to falling asleep. That probably wasn’t a great idea, but his thoughts moved slowly and his vision swam.

  Something smelled terrible, and he rolled over, only to realize he’d vomited all over the ground and himself. He couldn’t recollect when that’d happened. His arms and leg were better all of a sudden. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep without noticing.

  A dark shape moved from around a corner across the street. Vidar struggled to a sitting position and peered into the night. There it was again. A human shape. Moving darkness. He blinked, and it was gone.

  Strange. Had he imagined it in his dazed state? Vidar turned his attention back to the other wall. The runic symbol was unaffected by the sudden burst of essence, as far as he could tell. The circle was necessary, he decided. Those wooden discs Alvarn used, and he himself was hoping to use, didn’t have a painted circle, but the physical form must work in the same manner. The plates affixed to the walls in his family home did have circles surrounding the runic symbols.

  Without giving it any more thought, Vidar brought out the paintbrush again and used that same red color to paint a circle around the symbols. He used his shoulder to create a long but steady stroke with the brush, like his father thought him way back when he was starting out. Even with the technique, it looked more like an oval. It would have to do. At least it enclosed the symbols into a smaller area.

  Vidar’s theory proved correct. The circle in his mind showed up far more pronounced this time. Filling it allowed him to see the essence inside, and it didn’t drain him nearly as fast as his previous attempt.

  Praying to all the fallen angels whose names he barely remembered from childhood stories, Vidar triggered the sowilo rune. It didn’t explode this time, which was a marked improvement over his first attempt, but he barely felt a difference in temperature when hovering his hand above the painted symbols.

  “Dammit,” he muttered.

  The angles were all slightly off, he realized once he’d taken out the rubbing to compare his work. Trying to correct the already painted symbols was futile, so he made another attempt next to them. This one was a little better, but he couldn’t fill it much due to his exhaustion. Panting, he did a third before running out of rocks flat enough to paint on.

  This one actually gave off noticeable warmth even when standing by the opposite wall. The snow at his feet slowly began to melt as he leaned back to stand as close to the rune as he dared, basking in the heat.

  Vidar shambled back to the shack after retrieving the kenaz rune and collapsed into a heap right in the middle of the floor. Soon, he promised himself. Soon he would sleep in a proper bed surrounded by heat runes to keep him warm. His belly would be full and his limbs rested. It was within reach now, and he would seize the opportunity with all his might. He’d show them what he was really made out of. They’d see. They’d all see.