Return of the Runebound Professor

“I’ve changed my mind,” Noah declared. “Let’s just see what happens if I walk out of Arbitage. We can talk to them when they come to kill me.”

“Absolutely not,” Moxie said, grabbing Noah by the shoulder with one hand before he could rise from his chair and pushing him back down into it.

They’d arrived at the Office just a little over two hours ago. It was surprisingly plain – by Arbitage’s standards, at least. The building was made from plain but well kept white stone and stood several stories high, standing out like a sore thumb in a sea of other, far more extravagant ones.

However, any fascination Noah could have possibly even considered having with it had dried up like a droplet of water in the desert as soon as they’d stepped inside to find a secretary sitting at a large counter, eating what must have been a six course meal.

There were twelve other chairs around her, and every single one of them was empty, meaning she was the only one to talk to. And, as soon as the two of them had stepped up to the counter, she’d raised a finger to tell them to wait.

Noah had expected that she’d just needed time to finish chewing. What she’d actually meant was that she wasn’t going to speak with them until she’d finished off the rest of her food, and she clearly wasn’t in any rush.

They’d sat there for an hour until, finally, the woman finished her meal. Noah – whose eye had been twitching in irritation the entire wait – let out a sigh of relief as she rose, but it turned into a strangled curse as she strode off.

It was an hour before she returned. The secretary looked mildly surprised to find the two of them still waiting there. As if the very idea of helping them gave her physical pain, she’d ushered them into a tiny room.

It only had two chairs and a desk, and the chairs were squeezed so tightly together that they might as well have been a couch.

A minute later, a stack of papers as tall as Noah’s forearm had been plopped on the desk and the secretary had vanished once more, ignoring the Noah and Moxie’s questions and only pausing to slap a quill and ink jar down beside the papers before closing the door behind her.

“If you don’t fill this crap out, then we might genuinely have some serious trouble,” Moxie said, but even she looked exasperated. “Just do it. The faster its done, the faster we can leave.”

Noah shook the first paper in the pile at her. “How are these even slightly relevant? They’re asking me the length of my forearm. Why would I know that? I’ll show them the length of my middle finger instead.”

“They aren’t that stupid. You’re just being a complainer.” Moxie snagged the paper from his hands. Her eyebrows crept up on her forehead and she slowly set the paper back down. “Okay. I thought you were joking.”

They stared at each other. The irritation wasn’t helped by the tiny room around them, devoid of any decoration or even windows. It was just white walls.

“You sure you wouldn’t rather risk someone trying to kill me?”

“Tempting,” Moxie admitted. “But no.”

Noah sighed. “How long does my forearm look to you?”

***

It took another two hours to fill out all the papers. They asked a variety of, as far as Noah could tell, entirely useless questions that ranged from random factoids about himself to a literal sudoku puzzle.

When they finally finished, the two of them practically sprinted out of the room to find the secretary – only to realize she was eating dinner. Noah’s Runes trembled in his soul as the incredible urge to grab a plate of rice from the table and pelt it into her face beckoned to him.

“We’re done,” Moxie said, giving the bowl of rice a very long look.

The secretary held a finger up. The plate of rice tempted Noah even harder. He took a step forward.

By some stroke of luck, a door down the hall opened and a man headed out. He paused as he spotted Noah clutching the papers to his chest with one hand, then frowned.

“What are you doing? We’re closed for the day.”

“I’ve been here for hours filling this crap out,” Noah said. “The least you could do was let me talk to the person I came here to see.”

The man looked down the bridge of his nose at Noah and adjusted a pair of round glasses that were perched on his long nose. “It takes a good amount of time to read through your introductory papers, you know.”

“Well, it took time to write the damn things,” Noah replied. “And it’s not even dark outside yet. What time do you close?”

The man shrugged. “Whenever I get tired, I guess. There aren’t strict hours. It’s not a big deal.”

It was Moxie’s turn to have an eye twitch. Between the two of them, they probably could have powered a train with the steam rising from their ears.

“How about this,” Noah suggested. “You throw these useless papers out and just tell me where I can find Neir or one of the other Investigators and save us both a very, very severe headache.”

The man let out a huff. “Who are you looking for?”

“Neir.”

“Oh. He doesn’t work here.”

“Why don’t you tell us where he works?” Moxie suggested, pressing her hands against the sides of her legs and grinding her teeth. “That would have been nice to know when we go there.”

“You should have asked.”

They both looked at the secretary. She looked up at them through a mouthful of soup. Then she raised a finger.

I am going to blow myself up.

“How about you just tell me where Neir is?” Moxie asked, walking up to the man and slapping a hand on his shoulder. “Because, if you don’t, I’m going to shove a vine down your throat and see what kind of flower you make when it sprouts.”

“That’s not how flowers w–”

“I’m uneducated,” Moxie said through clenched teeth. “Just tell me where the Investigator is.”

The man swallowed and adjusted his glasses. “He’s in the building across the street. Enforcers don’t work in the Office.”

Moxie spun on her heel and grabbed Noah by the wrist, causing him to spill all his papers across the floor as they stormed out of the office. The man squawked in annoyance as they left, but the door slammed shut and cut off any complaints he might have had.

“Can we burn that building down?” Noah asked. “I hate it.”

“It wasn’t that bad the last time I was there,” Moxie said. She took a slow breath to calm herself. “You’re just cursed. This is your fault.”

“Mine? Why?”

“Because,” Moxie replied, not adding anything else as they hurried over to the building the man had indicated. The sun was already starting to set, casting the sky in orange hues, and Noah half expected the door to be locked when they arrived at the considerably smaller, much less well kept building. It was still nice, but nothing that he wouldn’t have expected to find in a normal town.

To his relief, the door actually opened into a small room. A short man sat on top of a counter, holding a mug in one hand and studying a map laid out before him. He glanced over as Noah and Moxie walked inside.

“Wrong building,” he said. “This isn’t the tavern.”

“We weren’t looking for the tavern,” Moxie said. “Is this where the Investigators are currently staying? We checked the Office, but were told that they weren’t there.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s here,” the man said, hopping down from the counter and spilling his drink across the ground in the process. He reached up and put the mug down a little too late, then wiped his hand off on his shirt. “Name’s Blake. What can I do you for?”

“Is Neir here?” Noah asked, resisting the urge to ask if Neir was near. “I need to speak with him.”

“Neir? Yeah. He’s just in the room over there,” Blake said, nodding toward a closed door. “Why are you looking for him?”

“It’s about the investigation.” Noah glanced suspiciously around the room. There weren’t any stacks of papers waiting for him to fill out that he could see, but there was always a chance they’d be hiding. “That’s it? We can just knock?”

“Yeah,” Blake replied with a frown. “What else would you do? Yell? That would be rude. No point wasting time, right?”

Noah’s eye twitched. “Yeah. No point.”

He approached the door and, after exchanging a glance with Moxie, rapped on it. Several seconds passed. There was a thud followed by a click a second later. The door opened, revealing a room covered with papers strewn around in every direction.

Neir stepped out from behind it, his face taut in annoyance. His brow scrunched as he looked down at Noah.

“Who are you?”

“Vermil Linwick. We spoke briefly at the transport cannon,” Noah said with a frown. “About the Hellreaver thing?”

Neir tilted his head to the side, pursing his lips in thought. His eyes lit faintly and he nodded with a snort. “Oh, right. The Rank 1 Professor. What do you want? Have something useful for the case?”

“Not useful, but we’ve got an exam coming up pretty soon,” Noah said as he rubbed the back of his head. “You said I couldn’t leave the campus. Brayden took me out to our estate for a while, but now that I’m back, we figured it was probably a good idea to let you know before I did anything.”

Neir grunted. “Right. Where are you going?”

Noah glanced at Moxie.

“We haven’t figured it out yet,” Moxie replied. “But I’m a member of the Torrin family and he’s part of the Linwicks – we’ve both got reputable families. We aren’t going to run away.”

“I see,” Neir said. He heaved a sigh. “I was hoping you had something useful. All we’ve got to work off is a corpse. Pain in the bloody ass.”

Blake cleared his throat from behind them. “Keep the details between us maybe, Neir? Low Rank or not, we shouldn’t be leaking information.”

Neir grunted. “Like these two are going to do anything. They came to tell me he was going on a trip. You really think it’s part of some big plot?”

“It will be if you keep treating everyone that comes in like an idiot,” Blake said with a shake of his head. “Stop being so arrogant, Neir.”

“Hardly matters. Not like they can fight me, even if it was a plot,” Neir said through a yawn. “They’re weak.”

“So we can go?” Moxie pressed. “If you don’t think we’re a threat, then it shouldn’t be any issue at all. You’ll be able to track Vermil down if you need him for something – not that he’s actually capable of doing anything on his own. Why do you think I’m the one teaching his class for him?”

“Hey!” Noah exclaimed as both Neir and Blake started to snicker.

“Just get out of here,” Neir said with a shake of his head. “And don’t be long for longer than a month, or I’m going to assume that you’re on the run – and I will find you. Incompetent or not, we’ll be watching you.”

Noah and Moxie grinned.

“Thanks,” Moxie said, turning to leave. As Noah turned to follow her, Neir caught him by the shoulder.

Noah glanced back at him.

“When’d you hit Rank 2, by the way?” Neir asked.

“Just recently, while I was at the Linwick Estate,” Noah replied, keeping his words even. “Decided it was time to start working on myself a little more. I didn’t realize it was that noticeable.”

“You’ve got more pressure coming off you than you did before,” Neir replied with a grunt. “No matter. Try not to get yourself killed, or I’ll have even less suspects to claim I’m watching.”

Moxie and Noah nodded, then left the house. Only once they were a few minutes away did Noah let out a relieved sigh.

“That was stressful. And it also took a grand total of about five minutes. I hate the Office.”

“Can’t say I disagree,” Moxie muttered. “Let’s just be thankful that all we did was waste time. All things considered that could have gone worse. We should find Lee and figure out where we’re going to go to train.”

“Sounds good to me,” Noah said, sending one last glance over his shoulder before he turned back and followed Moxie back to the T building. Hopefully, that would be where things were left to lie with the Investigators. After all, the Linwicks were providing a replacement soon, and Noah was hopeful that the entire problem would soon blow over.

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