Page 84 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

Her eyes skimmed over one of the random pages.

Runes can be broken in two simple ways?—

Kolfinna sighed. She had been so excited when she got to this chapter, but it was something Revna had taught her in the Eventyrslot ruins. A very fundamental basics of rune magic.

One, overwriting a rune with another rune to counteract or neutralize the rune. Two, by overpowering the rune with your mana.

It was such a simple concept. Kolfinna had used the latter to break the runes that had kept Revna stuck in the house in the desert dimension in the Eventyrslot ruins. She could still remember how hot it had been that day, with those two suns blazing down her back, and how she had painstakingly broken each rune one by one.

It was one of the basics. She had skimmed past it before, but now she stared at it harder. A thought formed in the back of her mind. What if …

She tried to calm her breathing as she placed a trembling hand on her wrist atop the golden rune. What could she evenuse to neutralize the rune? If memory served her right, this rune represented that she would always follow Sijur’s will and never disobey him. What could she put to neutralize that?

I will disobey Sijur.

She poured her mana into those runes, but just as the mana touched the rune, she let out a hiss of pain. A white-hot burning sensation tingled her wrist and she squeezed her eyes shut until the pain slowly ebbed away.

Okay, that didn’t seem to work.

Maybe it was too close to disobeying him? Was simply making the neutralizing runes going against his will, therefore making it impossible for her to neutralize them?

A headache began throbbing in the back of her eyes.

Maybe it was better to overpower the runes? But that too was going against his will, wasn’t it?

Kolfinna tightened her grip on her wrist and poured even more mana into the rune. This time, she focused on breaking it. She imagined a chain of magic wrapping around the rune, squeezing it tightly, and shattering it into pieces. She braced herself for the hot pain that would follow after, but nothing happened.

She kept at it, draining her mana and slamming it into the single, crescent-shaped rune. Sweat formed between her brows, between her shoulder blades and down her itchy spine.

But nothing happened.

She exhaled loudly.

This could take a while.

Kolfinna was so focused on her wrist that it wasn’t until a pillow smacked straight into her face that she realized Herja was awake. The pillow plopped down on her lap and Herja laughed, granting her a glare from Kolfinna.

“What the heck,” Kolfinna said, snatching the pillow and tossing it back at her.

She caught it with one hand, grinning widely. “Rise and shine, fairy girl.”

“What was that for?”

“No reason. Just felt like it.” She stretched out her arms and yawned.

Another strange development was that after the night when Kolfinna, Inkeri, and Herja had talked about their relationships and men in general, Herja started treating her more like a friend. It was a jarring turn of events, especially since Herja should’ve hated Kolfinna more than before. Inkeri had told her that Herja disliked her because she didn’t like that Kolfinna meant something to Blár, so it was even more strange that Herja was now acting …nice?

Maybe after her rejection, she already moved on? Kolfinna couldn’t be sure and it wasn’t like she could ask her.

Herja plucked a comb that was already fully tangled with her red hair between the wide teeth, and began brushing her hair with it. “Why were your eyes glowing like that? Are you using magic?”

“Something like that.” Kolfinna gently closed the book she had been reading and placed it beneath her pillow. The candle she had used to read through the night was almost melted to a stump. She blew out the flickering flame. “When are we going to go on another mission?”

“Not sure.” Herja frowned and lowered her comb. “I wonder if the reason we haven’t done anything is because of what Blár said the other day. You know, about the weird armies attacking the southern border.”

Kolfinna’s mouth flattened to a grim line. She turned away so Herja wouldn’t notice. “Yeah, I wonder.”

“They can’t lose.” A sudden vulnerable expression passed over Herja’s face, quickly replaced by a nonchalant one. But evenas she tried to mask her worry, Kolfinna could hear the inflection in her tone. “They have Hilda Helgadottir.”

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