I opened the door to my house and walked inside, I took off my shoes and put them in my part of the shelves with our clothes and footwear. I could hear voices from the living room, they seemed to be discussing something, so I assumed it was my mom and the client my dad was talking about. I walked past the staircase leading up to the second floor and into the kitchen. There was no separation between the kitchen and the living room so I could see the client my mom was talking to and hear their conversation.
When I got into the kitchen I could see my mom sitting on the couch, she was sitting in front of the living room table. On the other side of the table, sitting right above my mom, sat one of the most well-dressed men I had ever seen. He was wearing an expensive black suit with a matching set of pants, the suit had zero wrinkles even though he was sitting down. His shoes were of brown leather and was so polished I thought I could see my own reflection in them. His hair was black with a few gray hairs, this didn’t make him seem older in any way, instead it seemed to make him more dignified. His posture was perfect, and his expression had a polite smile and his green eyes gleamed, as if to show his interest in the subject. For a fraction of a second he looked up from his conversation with my mom to look at me, but then just as fast he looked back to my mom.
I walked further into the kitchen, far enough so that they couldn’t see me, but not too far so that I couldn’t hear their conversation. “That much wouldn’t be necessary for this kind of project”, I heard my mom saying. “Even half off what you are offering would be sufficient”. This was kind of unusual since my mom was not the type of person to refuse a good offer for my parents’ work. “I insist on this price, I want to pay the proper amount for something this demanding.” The client had an eastern accent, but it was so slight that you almost didn’t notice it.
“Then I won’t refuse your offer Mr. Nevola.”, my mom said in a cheerful tone. “You have already brought us the special materials need for the sculpture so how could I not!” This was indeed a special job then, usually my parents provided the materials but that was included in the cost for the sculpture. This also meant that the material was something that couldn’t be easily acquired, I had never heard my parents getting a commission like this before.
“What are you doing?”, a voice behind me asked. I let out an involuntary yelp and spun around to look at the perpetrator. The perpetrator, a girl about 2 years younger than me, is hunched over with her hands on her stomach, laughing. “You should have seen the look on your face!” she says between laughs. “Ha ha, very funny Terra.”, I said sarcastically. This little demon was my sister Theresa, but everyone just called her Terra. She was in her last year of middle school, she was one of the popular girls there, one of those girls who used way too much make-up and dreamed of becoming strippers. Her long brown hair was hanging wet over a towel around her shoulders, she had apparently just gotten out of the bathroom after a shower.
I start walking out of the kitchen, I was going to my room to get away from this foul creature. “I don’t think mom would like it if I told her that you were listening in on her meeting”, she said after me in a low tone as to make sure our mom didn’t hear. I turn around and look at her smug face, this little shit was actually trying to blackmail me. Two could play that game. “I don’t think mom would like it if I told her where you get most of the money for your make-up” I said back to her in the same low voice she used. The smugness vanished from her face, “H-how did you?”, she asked, shocked at my response. “Don’t ever try to threaten me again”, I say while turning around to leave, I can hear her trying to hold back tears behind me, but I don’t really care, I’ve had a shit day already without her trying to squeeze some extra pocket money out of me.
I walked to the stairs leading up to the second floor and made my way upstairs. There are six rooms on the second floor, one belonged to me and one to my sister and a third was my parents’ bedroom. The last three room weren’t used as often, one of them was used as a closet where we kept stuff like the vacuum cleaner, the second was a room my parents used as a work room, they said it was where they sketched for their commissions, but it was mostly used by my mom. My dad liked sketching while out in the garden, looking at stone block he would be carving, he said it stimulated his creative senses when he imagined how he would carve the stone.
The last room was a little more interesting, it was where my parents kept all the projects they said were failed or the commissioner never picked up their sculpture. It was filled with a lot of different types of sculptures, ranging from ones that someone modeled for, to the most bizarre kind of creatures you could imagine. It kind of surprised me how many of these we had, most of them were ones my parents called failed because of some small imperfection, but there were two sculptures where the commissioner never showed up.
I walked up to the door leading to my room and took my key out of my pocket, I put the key in the lock and turned it. The lock opened with a click and I pushed down the doorhandle and opened the door. I had started locking my room after I found my sister was stealing money from my parents, what would be stopping her from stealing from me when I was at school, or out with friends if I didn’t lock the door.
I walked inside my room, closing the door behind me. My room was just how I left it, my bed was standing in the innermost corner of my room, still a mess from me waking up this morning, my nightstand right next to it. I had a desk along the opposite wall of my bed, on my desk was my laptop, which I used for gaming and sometimes schoolwork. It was just a normal laptop, but it worked well for the games I played.
Next to my desk was my chair, and in my opinion it’s the best thing I own. It’s a very high-cost gaming chair lined with pillows and stuffing all over it, the back and seat are both black with blue around the edges. I am really proud of this chair because it’s one of the only things I’ve paid for all on my own, I worked by mowing lawns around the neighborhood and walking dogs. It took me 4 months of working non-stop at this until I had enough for the chair.
I walked over to my desk and sat down in my chair, the instant my body hit the chair it started heating up. The chair had a rune built into it, and there was a mechanism inside which activated the rune whenever someone sat down in the chair. There was no use of power involved, just the rune was heating up my chair form the inside. There were only some cases where power was used together with runes to make more complicated contraptions, but mostly runes were what powered everything.
The heat spread throughout my chair and into my body, this was one of the greatest feelings ever. I opened my computer and it started up with its familiar “ding”. I typed in my password and let the laptop load up for a few seconds, after it had loaded I started the writing program I used for school. It opened on the last document I had written, it was an essay on my goals in life and what I wanted to do when I was done with school. The document was just as I had left it when, completely empty. I had no ambitions in life, I just wanted to enjoy myself and spend my time how I wanted.
For me, school had always seemed like a waste of time, there was a time where I was excited to go to school. My first few years in school had been pretty fun, but over the years everything became so serious. With the start of things getting serious, the teachers would start getting mad at me for missing work or showing up just a few minutes late. It never mattered if there had been a family emergency or I just hadn’t had the time, I always got a scorn and a note to deliver to my parents. This was also around the time my relationship with my parents started falling out.
I closed the document and opened a new one, I named the document “The most widespread use of runes in modern time”. I had no idea what I should start with, so I started writing down a continuation of my train of thought from earlier.
“In the world right now, there are 5 different types of runestones, these are the runestones for water, fire, air, earth and lightning, the first four are also known as the four elements, the last, lightning is an electrical discharge inside a cloud.” This seemed like a good start to my text, I thought explaining the different properties of the runes would be easy and make a longer text, everything to get a thousand words on this boring as hell subject. All the stuff I was writing down right now was stuff we had learnt since the 3rd grade.
I continued writing. “These 5 runestones also have less powerful versions of themselves called lesser runestones. The lesser runestones are less powerful versions of the 5 runestones. They are also the most common ones, and they are the type that is most used in technology nowadays.” It is so annoying having to write in this formal speech, but if I didn’t Miss Westby would just tell me to redo the entire essay.
And no one used the name runestones, everyone just called them runes for short. “The most commonly used lesser rune is the one for lightning, which is used for powering stuff that need electricity. The lesser rune for fire is often used as a heating source and is mostly installed in showers or sinks. Since these lesser runestones are less powerful they are also limited in how long they can be used too, most lesser runestones have the lifespan of about 1 year of usage, but the length can vary depending on size.”
In the case of lesser runes, they were everywhere. The rune heating up my chair was lesser, and so was the one powering my laptop. None of this information was new for anyone except kindergarten students, everyone knew what runes were used in and that almost everything used runes. The water in the sink was produced by a water rune and heated by a fire rune, and my lights turned on because of a lightning rune, and this was the same for everyone else. Everything ran on runes so there wasn’t a day where you didn’t hear about them, I was tired of the subject.
I closed my pc, concluding that this was enough writing for today. I stood up from my chair, and went over to the corner of my room where I had thrown my backpack. It was almost never used, because I never took notes in class, there was nothing that be brought with me to school. I took the backpack back to my desk and put my pc into it, deciding that during detention I would finish the essay. I closed the backpack and sat it next to my bed so that I wouldn’t forget it in the morning.
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in!”, I shouted to the person outside the door. My father opened the door and stood in the opening, “We are going to bed now, there is some dinner left in the fridge if you want”, he said looking worried at me. “I might take some later”, I replied dismissively. “Okay then… Good night”, my dad said while taking a step out to close the door. “Good night dad”.
The door shut and I was alone in my room again. I hadn’t eaten dinner together with my family for at least 6 months, so this exchange between me and my dad was something we did almost daily.
Taking out my phone from my pocket I went over to my bed and laid down. Before I went to bed myself I wanted to check out the news a little, I opened my news app called WNO, the worlds news organization. WNO had articles depicting stories from all around the world, which made it one of the best news sources.
The app loaded up and I was shown an image of a burning building and a headline saying, “Fire in hospital after rune went berserk!”. These kinds of news weren’t new, almost daily there was an article about a rune malfunctioning or someone tampering with a rune making it go berserk. I scrolled farther down until I saw an article that interested me, “The Urnack cult robs another distribution center!”. This was another news article which was pretty common, but the Urnack cult was interesting to me. They worshipped a wolf god, which according to them would soon come down upon the world and devour all non-believers.
I clicked on the article, the picture that showed was the symbol of the Urnack cult, a pair of fangs like a wolfs. I started reading the article, “Tuesday morning the police got a distress call from one of rune distribution centers in Reaver city. When the police arrived at the scene the Urnack cult had already finished stealing 70% of the distribution centers runes. Almost all the runes taken was lesser runes, but we have been informed that 2 runes were of the powerful kind. The casualties for this incident have yet to be confirmed, but the police suspect that the number is over 20 dead. The reason the police suspect the Urnack cult of this crime is because of the trademark symbol of the cult, which was spray painted in front of the distribution center. Further updates will come with more information.”
I closed my phone and laid it on the nightstand next to my bed. Another robbery, and not even far from here. Reaver city was the city next to the one I lived in, Verda City, and was only about an hour from my house. The robberies themselves weren’t new, but they had never been this close to me. “What if they came here?”, I thought to myself. Well, nothing would happen to me anyway since I was almost never at a distribution center.
I stood up from my bed and got undressed, putting all of my clothes on the chair since I was going to use them tomorrow anyway. I got into bed again putting my blanket over me, and almost instantly going to sleep. My last thought before drifting of wondering what the Urnack cult needed all those runes for.
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