Arriving after dark the two-hour trek to his hunting shack took over three hours to complete. It took everything Grimvir had not to lay down and sleep against a tree. Entering his shack, he fell onto bedding and went into a deep sleep that lasted till well after noon.
Grimvir woke up feeling like he had been beaten while he slept. For the past month and a half, he had gotten up around sunrise, eaten some smoked meat before he set out to check his traps. Anything in the traps would be skinned and its fur processed, its meat would be smoked and eaten. If nothing was in the traps or an animal with no fur, then after a trip to the cave pit to toss rotten meat and bones, then Grimvir would go hunting for wild boar or deer. Yesterday was a disappointing catch of 2 lizards and a swamp skunk, none of which were of use, so they were tossed in the cave pit before he went hunting.
Grimvir looked at the dark black ring against the pale gray skin of his finger, before waving his hand and three chests appeared before him. One was a plain wood chest, while the other two were adorned with bronze fittings and were slightly bigger than the plain chest.
Opening one of the bigger chests lead to immediate disappointment, it full of books. The second chest was filled with a mix of books and scrolls.
"Why are they filled with books? And what are these runes? There not elvish or common human and I don't think they are from the beast peoples. Not that I have seen the beast people writings."
Having books that can't be read may have value to nobles, but to Grimvir they can only have two purposes: lighting fires and wiping his ass.
After closing the lids, a wave of the hand sent the chests away. Leaving only the smaller plain chest, which Grimvir was staring at it.
"I don't know if the god of that rot brained priest is real or not, but if you are, please let this chest hold something of value... that won't get me hunted down and murdered."
Opening the lid led to confusion. It was full of colored balls, each the size of a walnut. Grimvir knew they weren't jewels; they were too big. In the center of each ball had a rune of different colors in them. The runes look similar to the runes from the books.
Curious Grimvir grabbed a dark red ball with a black rune, and immediately dropped it, quickly pulling his hand back.
"What the fuck! What the hell was that?"
The moment his hand touched the ball he heard screams and felt a chill flow through his body.
After a few minutes of desperately trying to convince himself that he imagined the screams, he picked up an orange ball with a golden rune.
Warmth, and he felt like he could hear the sound of a fire. A yellow ball made his arm tingle, and he could hear a zapping sound. A dark blue ball made his hand feel moist and her could hear water flowing, while a light blue ball was cold, and he couldn't hear anything, not even the birds outside the shack.
"What the hell are they?"
Nothing Grimvir knew of fit these colored balls. His people's myths and legends, the drunken priest's talk of knights and holy relics, or any of the stories of the traveling merchants. Nothing.
After a long time Grimvir took his eyes off the colored balls and started looking at the chest they were in. In the center of the inside lid were two compartments. After sliding the lid of the compartment on the left side, a clear ball without a rune was inside.
The ball glowed when held, but there was no feeling or sound of any kind. The light it released was about the same as a small candle. While Grimvir could think how the ball of light could be useful when it's dark, he could help feel let down by not feeling or hearing anything.
Placing the clear ball back in its compartment, Grimvir opened the other compartment, inside was a silver ball with a rune in it.
As soon as Grimvir's fingers touched the silver ball, he was overcome by a sound that was like a heartbeat of crashing waves. His whole body felt tingly and began to pulse along with the sound.
For the first time instead of just hearing and feeling something, Grimvir was also seeing things.
Grey fog with golden runes floating around him, some were alone, but most were in groups of two to over a dozen.
The more Grimvir looked at the runes around him the more he felt he understood what they meant, even if he still couldn't read them.
It didn't take long before knowing what the runes meant without being about to read them changed to knowing what they meant because he was being to be able to read them.
The first rune he could read was the one that was repeated many times, it meant "soul".
"Mana", "breathing", and "circulation" were the next few words that could be read. Soon more and more of the runes could be read, until a few minutes later Grimvir could read all the runes.
The golden runes that were lazily floating around in the grey fog began to organize themselves into groups with smaller groups underneath.
While looking at these groupings of runes Grimvir began to feel pain behind his eyes and an exhaustion similar to when he overused the space ring.
Grimvir wanted to stop looking at the runes and rest, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't look away or release the orb in his hand.
Every breath that passed looking at a rune grouping caused the golden color to fade and the pain and exhaustion to increase. When the first rune grouping faded into nothingness the pain change to a fierce burning sensation in his mind, as if the runes where being burned into his mind for all time.
Outside the hunting shack, every animal within a certain radius stopped what it was doing and looked towards the direction of the shack for a few moments before fleeing away. Deer and a sounder of boar ran past a red bear while only getting a halfhearted growl. Birds flew through the air as squirrels flung themselves to the ground from tree branches landing on waves of bugs all running away in waves.
Inside the shack Grimvir sat with a brightly glowing orb in his hand. Under his grey skin glowing blue veins snaked throughout his body, his hair and clothes were drenched with sweat.
As the last of the rune burned themselves into his mind, the orb stopped glowing and fell out of his hand as his body slumped to the ground unconscious.
After the orb rolled to a stop on the ground, a strand of light emerged and took the shape of a man. The man of light looked down at Grimvir and smiled as he kneeled and extended his hand to touch Grimvir's forehead and disappearing.