Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 6

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 6
The Winter Sword (6)
“I’ve lost him!”
The chaos that had engulfed Jineman Manor was being brought under control—though not in the direction Yulken Jineman had hoped.
Without their commander, the soldiers fell before the invading army. Fewer than a hundred remained. Only half of them continued to resist with any conviction.
“You’re telling me you couldn’t find him?”
The moment Blado Jineman lost sight of his brother, he summoned the mage Jonggenal and had him signal the scouts he’d positioned in advance along the territory’s perimeter.
Though Jonggenal participated in this conflict under Khan Elector’s orders, he harbored no particular fondness for Blado. Nor did he harbor any dislike.
To be precise, Jonggenal did not believe himself to be in a position to receive orders from Blado. He held the rank of supreme overseer of Khan Elector’s mages. Yet he could not defy his master’s command. Currently, his master’s will was that he aid Blado.
Upon receiving the signal, the scouts moved swiftly to seal off the passages leading out of the territory. Yet despite considerable time passing, no one reported any sign of Yulken Jineman or the mage Tulk.
At most, it would have been teleportation, so they couldn’t have gone far. The scouts carried several pouches of Hinden’s Powder—a substance that detected objects imbued with magic when scattered into the air—so even if they’d hidden themselves with invisibility magic, they should have been caught.
Blado was furious, but Jonggenal’s mood was equally sour. To be taking orders from someone he considered beneath him was already galling; to be deemed useless by that same person only deepened the wound to his pride.
As Blado turned to face Jonggenal with a contorted expression after hearing the scouts’ report, something welled up inside the mage and burst forth.
“Leave it to me. I’ll use Dagnes Quirey’s Eighty Eyes.”
Jonggenal spoke with the tone of one saying, “Be grateful I’m employing such a powerful incantation for someone like you,” and Blado understood perfectly. Rather than bristle, Blado smiled wickedly.
“I’m in your debt.”
Simple magics bore functional names due to their ancient origins, but refined and powerful spells often carried the names of their creators. Dagnes Quirey was a mage who had devoted his life to magic that expanded one’s vision to pierce through distance and concealment alike.
The Eighty Eyes was the second most powerful spell Quirey had ever devised—a magic that boasted a fearsome precision, capable of finding even a single needle dropped in a haystack within a radius of half a day’s journey.
While Jonggenal prepared the spell, Blado and his soldiers finished off Yulken’s remaining forces—until none remained save the dead, the fled, and the hidden.
The circles of magical power and runes drawn with moonlight-infused styluses were now complete. The circle’s radius stretched three paces across. Within it, dozens of overlapping circles, runes, and incantations were densely packed. Jonggenal sat cross-legged within the triangle drawn at the circle’s center and began to slowly weave hand seals.
The soldiers stepped back so as not to interfere, but witnessing a grand mage perform such an intricate spell was rare enough that curious eyes remained fixed upon him.
One: fingers that had traced a horizontal circle in the air now touched the ground.
Two: three short words spoken aloud as palms pressed together.
Three: interlaced hands raised slowly, then released.
With each hand seal completed, the runes drawn in moonlight began to spark. Soon dozens of runes blazed, and the interior of the magical circle grew bright.
A sallow light flickered across Jonggenal’s closed eyelids. As he completed the final seal—covering his eyes with both hands before opening them—a ring of light rose around him and expanded in the blink of an eye.
It surged beyond the circle, past where the soldiers stood, stretched across the Meadow beyond, and vanished.

I thought a brilliant flash of light was surging toward us. It was fast. The moment I tried to perceive it, it vanished.
Yefnen and Boris couldn’t even guess what it was. But what happened next was different.
The empty space before their eyes rippled like water, then disgorged two human figures. They emerged as if stepping out of a mirror.
Yefnen cried out.
“Father!”
Then, with a slightly altered tone, he cried out again.
“What… has happened!”
Yulken Jineman remained conscious, but his body would not obey him. Tulk had cast recovery magic several times, but it provided little help.
The dark blade Hagrun, which Blado Jineman had driven into Yulken, possessed a potent magical toxin that prevented wound recovery. This very property was the reason Hagrun, despite its unremarkable sharpness, earned its place among the renowned blades.
Tulk was the family’s mage and ordinarily served as steward, but he rarely engaged in lengthy conversation with the sons. He consulted on all matters only with his master, Yulken. As a result, he came across as taciturn—even sinister in demeanor.
Tulk offered a respectful nod to Yefnen, the family’s eldest son, then spoke in a low voice.
“You have been wounded.”
“Have you used recovery magic?”
It was natural that Yefnen didn’t understand. Tulk had never studied destructive magic, but he was unquestionably exceptional in recovery and similar arts. Tulk shook his head expressionlessly.
“It is useless.”
Then Boris approached his father. Leaning on Tulk’s shoulder, Yulken said nothing and looked back and forth between his two sons. His face hardened.
Tulk spoke instead.
“Young Master Yefnen, why did you not depart first?”
“…”
Yefnen bit his lip but offered no answer. He knew better than anyone that explaining to his father would be futile. Tulk looked at Yulken’s face again, then continued as if reading the question his master wished to ask.
“Have there been any unusual occurrences while you were here?”
“We were attacked by a strange monster. But my brother killed it. That Winterer.”
It was Boris who answered. He realized his brother was being reproached and hastily spoke of his brother’s accomplishment.
“Without my brother, I would not have survived.”
Tulk glanced at the corpse behind the brothers—a piece of leather pouch-like remains—and the slime. But he showed little interest.
“Was there anything else? Magic, perhaps?”
Yefnen spoke.
“Just now, a bright light seemed to come from the direction of the manor, but it disappeared in an instant.”
Yefnen didn’t know how significant his words were. But seeing Tulk’s nearly expressionless face turn pale, he hastily asked in alarm.
“What is that? Is it something terrible?”
Unconsciously, Yefnen reached out and grasped Boris’s hand. Tulk turned his head toward Yulken and spoke.
“Master, if I am not mistaken, one of the Eyes of Quirey has been activated. If it is Jonggenal, he can use up to eighty of the eyes. Since the young masters saw the flashing light, your positions have already been discovered. However, since the master and I were in transit, it is uncertain what location we were read as.”
This time Boris understood as well. Yefnen bit his lip and asked.
“Then what should we do now?”
Instead of answering, Tulk laid Yulken on the ground and cast one more recovery spell. He merely chanted two runes within his mouth—no other complex process was required. Soon Yulken’s breathing became somewhat easier.
When Tulk’s answer came, Boris’s eyes were wide open, as if trying to see the water droplets suspended in the damp air.
“We must pray for fortune.”
Yefnen understood the meaning of those words. In other words, there was no hope.

After all, my brother was no fool.
As I thought this, my twisted grimace transformed into a smile. I had to admit that while I believed I knew my brother well, there were many things I had failed to anticipate.
Unexpectedly, he was strong enough to hold the Jineman Family steady even as it crumbled. The family’s decline had come naturally from following a superior house—Katsuya Elector—into ruin, not from any fault of my brother Yulken. A house that fell in such a manner could never recover unless the superior house it served was resurrected.
That my brother was strong meant he had not abandoned his superior house even in such circumstances. I needed only look at my own position to understand how base an act it was to betray one’s master and attach oneself to another family.
Because I had betrayed the Elector I once served and come here, how much humiliation had I endured and how many sordid dealings had I made before earning Khan Elector’s trust? Looking back, those years had been so agonizing that I sometimes thought it would have been better to quietly decline alongside the family I once served.
Yet now, as the Jineman Family slowly crumbled like my own, how strong was the impulse to change my allegiance and resurrect myself? Even if it meant selling my soul, if only I could retrace that path.
But my brother endured. Unchanging. So I must not underestimate him.
“Emera Lake, then….”
The word fell softly from my lips as I rode with hundreds of soldiers, a phrase I had forgotten whose eerie resonance returned. A chill ran across my lips, then faded.
That place was the ancient terror of Longord’s people. It was also forbidden ground for us brothers. The image of beautiful, gentle Yenichka, her eyes reddened as she thrashed about like a beast, tearing at her clothes, suddenly became vivid before my eyes.
I shuddered involuntarily. There was no need for this, truly.
My sister had died in her beauty. I, growing old, was no longer that ugly, weak younger brother who had crept close to cover her eyes.
Yenichka was the only person the two brothers, who had quarreled over trifles since childhood, had ever cherished together. A golden-eyed child who loved reed flowers and bird feathers, a mischievous girl who had hidden in a wardrobe to surprise her searching older brothers and fallen asleep, a sister who had grown fresh as a green apple.
And so the brothers could not forgive each other. Deceived by the younger brother’s temptation, the elder had searched for his betrothed at Emera Lake, and she had died by the elder’s hand. A flower that never bloomed, never bearing the child she so longed for.
‘That is your fault.’
If my sister returned, whom would I blame more?
“We have arrived!”
I raised my hand to halt the soldiers. Turning my back to the direction we had come, I arranged them in a semicircle. The soldiers began searching through the brush. Those with bows stood ready, arrows nocked.
I would kill my brother. For whoever’s sake. That brother, who had become the reason I endured all this humiliation, I would kill him.
“Over here! There are footprints!”
The area around Emera Lake had long since turned to swamp, with mire everywhere. An ordinary person could not help but leave footprints, but if my brother was here, Tulk would be too, and he would not have allowed footprints to remain.
I decided in my heart that only my two nephews seemed to be here.
“Narrow the circle and search!”
Yefnen and Boris were my only two nephews, as I had no wife or children. I thought that if one of them had been a girl, and had resembled Yenichka even slightly, perhaps my heart might have wavered.
But my nephews did not resemble Yenichka. Neither boy possessed the golden light she had carried—not in their hair, not in their eyes.
I have no sympathy for those children…. The fine wrinkles surrounding my yellowish eyes trembled, betraying my emotional turmoil. I would cover my ears to their screams and flee. I would kill those children and force my brother to rush before me!
The southern shore of the lake was a vast swamp, so the soldiers tightened their encirclement only from the north, east, and west. Soon Emera Lake came into view.
Dead trees, black and white, twisted together in a mockery of life long extinguished. The lake, where so much was dying and would die, gleamed with a milky oil slick….
It was the lake from memory. To see clearly where I was going, to commit this place I would never return to perfectly to sight, I demanded light from the mage.
Whoosh!
A brilliance like midday erupted like a fireball spat from the lake. It was bright enough to see even the flying insects darting through the grass within forty paces in all directions. Hundreds of eyes rushed to find whatever moved.
“I will grant a thousand Elso to whoever finds and cries out first!”
It did not take long for the first cry to sound. But it was not quite what I had expected. And it was not a single voice.
Screams tore through the air once more.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————