The Runic Alchemist

Without VoidFlame and now Lightbringer, Dawnstar was not at its strongest. Illuminator left everything to his only surviving son, Nimrel. As the scion of the Sun God wallowed in immense guilt, realizing that no decisions he had made when it came to matters of his own family and the faith were the right ones.

His lack of attention divided Nimrel and VoidFlame, his obsession with strength distanced Nimrel and Lightbringer. He was neither a good father nor a good teacher to Lightbringer. His lack of will to act when it was necessary forced the Sun God to step in, resulting in permanent disgrace on Lightbringer’s name before the Sun God’s eyes.

The boy he thought would succeed him one day, the boy who was just like his younger self. He failed to teach him the necessary lessons at the right time. His young self had grown up in a period of constant war and conflict; responsibilities were always his highest priority, not personal strength.

So when the time came for him to chase personal strength, he always lamented how much he could have done in his younger years and failed to do. So he pushed all his students, even his sons, to achieve the highest peak of their potential. Perhaps that was the reason why VoidFlame resented his talented younger brother.

With such weakness in Dawnstar, others could not sit idle. After all, we were sons, daughters, and grandsons of the ancient barbarians.

Beast Nation and that bastard Ruinweaver started the War of the Three Scions. Attacking Dawnstar on two fronts. Neremis, the whale-bound, with her gentle personality, was a good friend to Nimrel. She aided him, and the two of them, with the might of their two nations, held the two invaders in a standstill.

It would have been resolved if it had stayed that way for a while.

But then one day, he showed up at our doorstep after disappearing for years. Lightbringer.

He claimed the old laws of guest-right, and by honor, we could not refuse him. I wanted to.. but Kelmira said the law of the stone god should not be broken. Lightbringer was no criminal, and he was friends with Harmon after he had gifted a rare metal found in the Dawnstar royal dungeon years before this.

For us Dwarves, honor was the greatest thing a warrior could have. Over half of the Dwarves living in Bouldor considered all that had happened with Lightbringer unjust. Without the trickery of war, we had grown naive. The god of honor was long dead. And there was no legacy of honor left behind. We, living atop our rocks, had forgotten that simple fact.

Lightbringer became one of us. As if he were born again, the man was completely changed. Gone was his single-minded, obsessive personality. He was more charming than Nimrel. With lots of stories of strange dungeons he had explored. He always was a devilishly pretty man; with this personality change, he was more popular than ever inside Bouldor.

Years went by like that. Lightbringer fought all monsters and men alike that came after our people. Gave revolutionary ideas in crafting tools and city management. He was the best guest anyone could hope for. The bastard had surprisingly in-depth knowledge of runic tools and even my metal golems. He and Harmon often discussed the topic for hours.

The boy even had the balls to give me.. the god of metal golems, pointers on crafting golems! His insight was proven quite useful, though, for my research work.

Still, I always felt there was a shadow hiding behind that smiling face. I gave him the worst and hardest tasks, and he accepted them all with a smile on his face.

It got to the point that some of my own people became against me for treating the guest of Bouldor in such a way.

One day, I asked him to go and accompany some of the dwarves stuck in Eldoris back home. The way back was through the war-torn land where the three scion’s armies were fighting for years now. I knew he would refuse this task since it required him to leave Bouldor. But to my shock, the bastard accepted it.

He asked permission to give just one custom order to Harmon for taking on this rather difficult task. I thought nothing much of that. People from all over the mainland rewarded Harmon with gifts and did everything possible to gain his favor. Only to have him craft something special for them.

Harmon was more than prepared to create something with his friend using one of the new, weird methods of crafting they had come up with. Prime spells were forbidden in my time. But only if the prime spells used a pathfinder’s blood. Lightbringer had some powerful creatures’ blood in his spatial storage.

Harmon told me it was the most powerful mana-potent blood he had ever come across in his entire life. Even more potent than a powerful transcendent’s blood. Harmon had created weapons using that in the past, so he knew better than anyone.

I knew this creation could not do anything good. But the words were spoken, promises given. If I went back on my word, half of Bouldor would be against me. And Stone Father hated the people whose words held no honor.

So Harmon created it. The creation that nearly killed him. A fourth ranker runesmith was brought to his knees by the end of the creation of just one weapon. Using some strange spells that only Lightbringer and his odd dungeon relics could produce, Harmon created the first weapon in the world with a prime spell that used a dead ancient god’s blood.

Many years later, when we witnessed a true fifth ranker god bleed, Harmon had described the blood spilled as the same he had used years ago with Lightbringer. Only then did we know what we had done. Though we suspected something of beyond this world was created that day, the feats Lighbringer achieved using that weapon only confirmed that thought.

A sword it was. With so many strange runes inscribed on it that the naked eyes of a transcendent couldn’t even decipher it.

Lightbringer called it First Dawn.

Taking it, Lightbringer left to finish the promised task. I thought that would be the last of him I ever heard, but I was wrong. Lightbringer, till now, was simply a madman obsessed with strength. But from here on, he had a tool to unleash his monstrous abilities fully.

There are many stories of what feats he achieved on the journey, but those are not important. He reached Eldoris and met up with all my people. It wasn’t without note, though. He fought some of the elf lords while he was there and was even presented before Aerylyn, the Star-Spring.

Who knows what happened there, but she ultimately released him. Some say it was because of a task the Scion assigned him. A task to bring her daughter back in exchange for the thousand dwarves now in her control.

You see, the Mistborn Aerylyth, goddess of fog and secrets, had an elder sister. The most talented of elves in our generation, but stories and rumors about her were not widespread. Perhaps by design that was.

Lady Elsinore, she was called.

Ruinweaver, that scheming bastard, somehow gained her favor, and they had become lovers. The Fallen Branch had run away from her family. Fearing her abilities and talents might be used against them, the queen of Eldoris, her own mother, activated a deadly spell etched in her daughter’s armor.

A spell that severed her connection to her own manapool.

Despite the lack of strength and the fear of waging war between the two kingdoms, Elsinore and Ruinweaver did not fear anything and lived their lives as a couple that bards could not tire of creating songs about.

The Star-Spring was not willing to send any of her precious children after the Fallen Branch, but she never forgot about her eldest daughter. Asking Lighbringer for this was nothing planned; she simply had no capable warriors left who still had to attempt to take Elsinore back from Ruinweaver. All had failed, and Lightbringer was not of Eldoris, so she did not really care what happened to him.

To everyone’s surprise, Lighbringer left Eldoris alone and rode his horse straight to Ashkara (Old Ashenvale). The news of his arrival reached Ashkara before him, though. And Ruinweaver sent his most powerful transcendents to deal with Lightbringer, along with a massive army. For he had seen the fight between Nimrel and Lighbringer.

No matter who came with how big a fame or army, none were left alive by Lightbringer. He was simply one man against thousands, but this time he had a weapon that could level mountains in his hands.

Wherever Lightbringer fought, the land itself was changed by the battle. Large green fields were left full of craters and molten lava. All villages in the path that witnessed this firsthand named it The Charge of a Demon.