Return of the Runebound Professor

They faced no further threats on their trip out of the Vibrant Woods. By the time night had fallen on them, the group had made its way out of the colorful forest and out into a grassy plain beyond it, quickly finding the main path.

“We should get a little farther before we set up camp,” Moxie said, sending a glance over her shoulder at the woods behind them. “I don’t want to risk something coming out, especially while we’re down a fighter.”

Lee still laid limp in Noah’s arms, though he could still feel her breathing. At least the damage didn’t seem to be getting any worse, but he knew firsthand just how bad soul damage could be.

I wonder just how much soul damage she took. I never got enough to get a physical injury from it, but those visions were pretty bad. It did seem like they had a lot more to do with the Hellreaver somehow accessing that weakness in my soul than just being injured, though.

Maybe I can somehow heal Lee’s soul in a similar manner to how I healed mine?

Noah remained lost in thought as they continued along the road. He nearly didn’t realize they’d all stopped at a campsite until he’d stepped past the rest of the group and had to spin on his heel to rejoin them.

Isabel was already setting up stone tents. They no longer had a bunch of trees to access for firewood, but Todd formed a small flame in the center of the camp and held it there for warmth. It didn’t do much, but Noah wasn’t particularly concerned with being cold anymore.

“How’s Lee?” Moxie asked, walking up to Noah, a worried frown on her lips.

“Unconscious,” Noah replied, shifting her gently. “She doesn’t seem to be changing much in one direction or the other. I guess that’s probably a good thing for the time being. Were you serious about her being out for days?”

Moxie chewed her lower lip and nodded. “It’s not like I’m an expert on soul damage. I haven’t experienced much of it myself. There’s a reason it’s such a thing to avoid, you know. The cures for it are all either incredibly rare or expensive – and usually both.”

Not all of them.

“How bad are we talking?”

“Thousands of gold if you want anything effective. Probably tens of thousands, honestly. You’d need a connection that would actually be willing to sell to you as well. Anything that deals with restoring the soul is in very high demand, so you’ll be vying against a bunch of powerful mages.”

Noah grunted. Moxie mistook his action for disappointment and raised her hands. “Don’t worry. It’s not all that bad. Maybe demons heal from soul damage faster than humans do. Like we said, Lee’s not dumb. She wouldn’t take such a big risk if it wasn’t for a reason.”

The ground trembled as Isabel pulled out another stone tent from within it. She was getting faster at using her Runes. What had previously taken her almost half an hour to gather the energy to do was now only taking minutes.

“I might be able to heal Lee’s soul damage,” Noah said. “I healed my own.”

Moxie’s eyes widened and she glanced back at the students before lowering her voice. “You’re serious? You can heal soul damage? For other people?”

“Well, I’m not totally sure,” Noah admitted. “I healed my own soul damage, though. If I could have just formed the damn Rune, I bet I could heal Lee as well.”

“I remember you mentioning that, but I think it somehow managed to slip through the cracks of all the other lifechanging things you mentioned,” Moxie muttered. “Didn’t it fail, though?”

“Yeah. I formed the Rune for an instant and that healed my soul, but then it shattered. That was enough, though.”

Moxie shook her head. “I have no idea how you even managed to get that far. I don’t know anyone that’s formed a Rune themselves – though I suppose it might be more common at higher Ranks, and the small fish like us just don’t get told about it. But… how did you do it?”

“Like you said, I failed,” Noah reminded her. “But I just followed your suggestions. Got a bunch of concentrated energy and pulled it together while trying to picture what I felt like it should be, then gave it an inciting incident to kick things off. It shattered before it could fully form.”

“Where’d you manage to find that much energy in my bed? I promise I didn’t have anything just sitting around.”

“I told you I killed myself for a purpose, didn’t I?” Noah lowered his own voice.

Moxie paused. “That’s what that was for? Then the energy was in your soul, wasn’t it? Built up from dying before. But for you to have enough to do that… how many times have you died?”

“Don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answer to,” Noah said, his back stiffening as his mind pulled up the now-countless scenes of his deaths, each excruciating in their own way. “Death is a great teacher provided you survive it, though. Evidently, if you do it enough, you get left over with some of its power.”

“Incredible,” Moxie breathed. “Why do you think it failed?”

“I was hoping you’d have the answer to that.”

“Noah, you’re the only person that I’ve ever spoken to that’s gotten close to making a Rune. If you figured it out, then there’s probably a good chance that Evergreen has as well, but there’s no world that she’d explain the process to me.”

“Well, shit,” Noah said with a sigh. “Same problem with Father. He might be willing to give me the information, but it’ll probably cost much more than what we’re willing to pay.”

They both fell silent for a few moments.

“How long did the Rune last before it shattered?” Moxie asked. Behind them, the others started to pull out jerky and cheeses for dinner, sitting around Todd’s campfire to give the professors some privacy.

Noah thought for a moment. “No more than a few seconds.”

“Enough for you to draw on its power and try to channel some of it into Lee?”

“I’m not sure,” Noah admitted. He shifted his stance to take some of the weight off his right leg, which was bearing the brunt of Lee’s weight. Even though she was fairly light, he’d been carrying her for hours now. “But I don’t think I could. Not unless I figure out what I was missing the first time around. The healing came from when the Rune shattered. I never got a chance to actually control it.”

Moxie nodded, pressing her lips together. “Then the best thing we can do for now is wait. Letting Lee rest for a few days isn’t going to hurt her, and she’s not going to be in any shape to fight for a bit anyway. No point forcing things. A few days won’t change her circumstances.”

“Yeah. I’ll try to think on it and see if I can figure out a way to help Lee,” Noah said with a nod. “What are we going to do about the kids, though? We were planning to stay in the Vibrant Woods for at least another week.”

“It’s fine. They’ve been improving at a good rate, so we can head straight to the Red Barrens. They’re a lot less hospitable than the Vibrant Woods, but they’re more open so it’ll be much harder to ambush us. It’s well within our capabilities, and it’s only a day or two of travel.”

“Have I ever mentioned how grateful I am that you actually know what you’re doing?” Noah asked.

Moxie smirked and shook her head. “You’d know more if you just read a few more books.”

“I’m working on it, okay? I read the dossiers. That’s more than I normally do.”

“Do you want a medal?”

“Yes.”

Moxie rolled her eyes and nodded back in the direction of the students, changing the topic. “There’s a lot more we can still cover with them, but I’m going to be spending a little time going over theory again. I don’t think Isabel or Todd ever got the opportunity to learn it.”

“Probably a good idea,” Noah admitted. “You don’t think they’ll need the extra practical experience?”

“I think they’re going to get it one way or another, so I might as well try to round it out a bit,” Moxie replied. “I’ll probably ask you to handle some of the physical training. I hate to admit it, but you’re better at fighting than I am.”

Constant life or death battles are a great way to increase your combat abilities really quickly. You should give it a try sometime. The worst that can happen is that you die.

“I don’t think the methods I used for myself are going to be particularly applicable for anyone else,” Noah said with a knowing look. “But if we’re going to be doing any training in the style that I taught Isabel and Todd back in the Scorched Acres, we’ll need a Great Monster. Does the Red Barrens–”

“Yes,” Moxie said. “The Sandray. It’s a huge, flat monster with a big stinger that swims beneath the sand in the Red Barrens. It wasn’t placed there by Arbitage, but it’s too big to actually hurt and usually doesn’t bother anyone. Many of the monsters in the area should be under its influence, though.”

“Perfect. I’ll train against them while you do the theory stuff with the kids to save time,” Noah said. “I should be able to get a good grasp of what they can do in a day or two.”

Moxie nodded, but she didn’t look completely convinced. “I have to ask – doesn’t this method only work against individual monsters? The moment they come up against something that doesn’t have a set fighting style, they’ll lose a lot of what they’ve learned.”

“Some of it,” Noah agreed. “But I wouldn’t say they lose it. They’ll just have to adapt more, and they’re already doing that. The purpose of my training is to push them to understand how their enemies fight. The better they understand it, the more they’ll eventually be able to put the pieces together. Human minds learn by finding relation between things. As long as they’ve fought enough enemies with varying fighting styles and are clever in their future fights, then they’ll be able to adapt.”

Moxie inclined her head. “True enough. I’ll take the first watch, then. You’re probably tired from carrying Lee around all day. If anything happens, I’ll wake you.”

“Sounds good,” Noah said. “Thanks.”

Moxie just nodded. Noah walked over to the group of stone tents and ducked into one of them, kneeling on the ground. Two bunches of soft vines pushed up from the ground in the tent, forming into two beds.

Noah glanced over his shoulder as Moxie walked past, joining the kids at the fire. A small smile crossed his face and he gently laid Lee down on one of the beds before claiming the other for himself.

He had a lot of work to do that night, and he’d need all his energy to actually focus on it. For now, the best thing to do was actually take Moxie up on her offer. Noah laid back on the vines, surprised to find them far more comfortable than he’d expected. They weren’t quite a mattress, but they weren’t far.

Noah let his eyes close. He wasn’t sure how things would turn out the next day, but he was sure of one thing – he was going to find a way to make sure Lee’s damage wasn’t permanent, even if that meant forming a Rune that nobody had ever made before.

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