Return of the Runebound Professor

Before Noah knew it, Moxie was kneeling by his side, shaking him awake. His eyes snapped open and he nearly called on his magic before he spotted her face in the darkness and let himself relax.

“My watch?” Noah whispered.

Moxie nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on Lee. It’s been quiet, so I doubt you’re going to have any trouble. I’m also pretty sure Isabel left in the middle of the night to train. She’s not as sneaky as she thinks she is.”

Noah’s brow furrowed. “Is that safe?”

“Emily went with her. They’ll be fine, they didn’t go in the direction of the forest and they’re capable enough to make decisions for themselves,” Moxie replied. “Keep an ear primed just in case, though.”

“Will do,” Noah said. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and rolled to his feet, snagging his belongings and throwing them on as he stood.

Moxie took the bed of vines he’d been sleeping on, laying out on it as Noah headed outside. The moon hung overhead, casting faint silver light over the grassy plains and illuminating the Vibrant Woods in the distance. He activated his tremorsense, more to get into the habit of it than any other reason.

Wind rustled Noah’s clothes, but the night chill wasn’t uncomfortable with Combustion heating him from within. It just prickled slightly at his exposed skin and eyes. Noah walked a slow circle around the camp, waking himself up properly.

His thoughts drifted back to what he’d been thinking on before he’d gone to sleep. The energy in his mindspace could heal soul damage, but he just didn’t have a way to get it into Lee yet.

Practicing without any further guidance would just involve killing himself over and over – not something he was opposed to, but leaving a string of corpses around probably wasn’t the greatest idea without Lee to eat them.

On top of that, they were still traveling. If Noah let himself die and they got attacked, Moxie would be the only one that could fight.

I can’t afford to die right now just to test theories. I might be able to negate the damage by forming the Rune partially again, but I might have a limited amount of tries to form the Rune. The energy might not sit around in my soul forever, so wasting it is a bad idea. I need a more educated approach.

Noah reached into his bag and pulled out Dayton’s grimoire. There were a variety of reasons why he might have failed to form the Rune that had healed him, but one of them was just the chance that his soul didn’t have the room to contain it.

Reaching Rank 3 might help, even if it doesn’t fix everything. It certainly can’t hurt. At the moment, I already have Seven Runes, but I’ve got duplicates. If I’m going for some sort of natural disaster Rank 3 Rune, Dayton did have a lot of lightning based ones. Adding one of those into the mix could help balance everything out.

Noah dug a piece of paper and his quill out of his bag. Whenever it came time to actually plan things out, he couldn’t help but just write them in English. Nobody could understand it, and putting thoughts to paper always seemed to help him think much more than just running them through his head.

He jotted down his current Runes. Howling Maelstrom and Weeping Storm both had equal amounts of pressure coming off them, so he knew both of the Runes were perfect, even if he planned to eventually tweak Weeping Storm’s combination or intent.

(Perfect) Pyroclastic Resonance - Rank 2

(Perfect) Focal Quake - Rank 2

(Perfect) Howling Maelstrom – Rank 2

(Perfect) Howling Maelstrom – Rank 2

(Perfect) Weeping Storm – Rank 2

(Greater) Wind – Rank 1

There were a total of 5 Rank 2 Runes in addition to his single Rank 1 that he still had sitting around, and two of them were Howling Maelstrom Runes. If he was going to go for a proper natural disaster angle, he had two possible angles.

The first would be to double down on his current Runes by making some duplicates. The second would be to find three more Rank 2 Runes that would fit into the mix, then remove one of his Howling Maelstrom Runes.

Noah chewed his lower lip in thought. Even if he took a lightning based Rune from Dayton, he’d still be missing two more.

Stretching myself too thin might end up being a poor idea, and a lot of natural disasters would be somewhat similar. Both a landslide and an earthquake are earth-based, but an avalanche Rune seems too specific to be worth getting.

The angle might actually be to get that extra Lightning Rune, then have duplicates to fill in the gaps and rely on intent to finalize everything. If that doesn’t work, I can try taking the Rune apart again and I’ll figure out what’s wrong with it. Either way, it’ll get me to Rank 3. That means I can try forming that soul-healing Rune again.

Noah waved his paper in the air to dry the ink out, then folded it up and slipped it into his bag. He pulled out Dayton’s scroll and scanned through it. Nearly every single Rune the gullible Rank 5 had possessed were related to lightning in some way or another.

Wait. If I Sunder any of these, then I’ll end up cutting up the damn Catchpaper. I need one on the corner, or I’ll end up doing too much damage to the scroll.

Noah’s brow furrowed in annoyance. He really needed to get a better way to get Runes off Catchpaper. He could always wait until he found enough Rank 1 Runes to form a Rank 2 Lightning Rune normally, but getting Lee healed quickly was more important to him than perfecting a combination that he could go back to after she was healed.

Something rippled at the edge of Noah’s senses. He’d only been putting enough power into tremorsense to keep it active to try and build a habit, but his eyes shot up from the scroll. Noah hadn’t properly been paying attention, so it was more of a vague impression and a direction than anything more specific. He rolled Dayton’s scroll up and slipped it back into his bag, preparing to call on his magic.

The shadows ten paces away from Noah rippled. He tensed as a man clad in tattered black clothes emerged from the darkness, his bright orange hair sticking out like a sore thumb in the night.

“Revin?” Noah asked, not sure if he was relieved that the man wasn’t a monster or even more concerned for the exact same reason.

“You spotted me,” Revin said, sounding impressed. “Even in my stealth. Impressive.”

“I smelled you,” Noah said, taking a page straight from Lee’s book. “Why are you here? Did something happen?”

“I believe the appropriate phrase would be I was stalking you.”

Noah stared at Revin, but the man’s face was completely straight.

“Stalkers typically don’t inform their targets of said stalking,” Noah said. “And why exactly are you stalking us?”

“Boredom, mostly,” Revin replied.

“And you’re telling me because…”

“Also boredom. Hiding in the night isn’t nearly as cool when nobody realizes you’re doing it.” Revin crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Right,” Noah said slowly. If anything, his interactions with Revin just made him even more confused. The man was strange, and that was saying a lot coming from Noah. “Is… that all, then?”

“No,” Revin replied. He extended a hand and his scythe materialized within it. Noah lowered his stance, but Revin spun the scythe around and buried its head in the dirt, leaning on it. “I was curious. Why are you carrying around an unconscious woman?”

“She’s got some pretty bad soul damage as a result of the monster we warned you about,” Noah replied. “You don’t happen to have something on you that could help with that, do you?”

Revin shook his head. “I’m not nearly rich enough for that.”

They were both silent for several moments, just long enough for it start to get uncomfortable. Revin tilted his head to the side.

“So… are you going to invite me in?”

“What? Where?” Noah asked, baffled. “Into a tent?”

“Yes. That’s the polite thing to do.”

“No,” Noah said. “I’m not. You aren’t even wearing an Arbitage uniform. I have no way to know you’re telling the truth. I’ve got students to protect. You understand, I’m sure.”

Revin rubbed his chin. “Not really. I try to get mine killed on a pretty regular basis.”

Noah stared at him, but Revin didn’t laugh. The man looked dead serious.

“Well, nothing begets improvement like near death experiences, I suppose.”

“Exactly!” Revin exclaimed.

Noah shushed him. “Don’t be too loud. There are people sleeping, you know.”

Revin grunted. “Right, right. Forgot that people need to sleep.”

Can’t say I haven’t done that before, but it starts getting to you if you haven’t been able to kill anything and gather energy in replacement of sleep.

“Is there another reason you’re here?” Noah asked. He had absolutely no idea what Revin’s goals were, but the man clearly wanted something.

“I mostly just wanted to talk with you,” Revin replied. “You caught my attention. Something about your Runes feels off.”

“Oh? Anything in particular?” Noah kept a straight face, not letting any of his emotion slip through.

“Just cool, I suppose,” Revin said with a shrug. “Mystery is nice too, though. I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery. Maybe it’s better if you don’t tell me, actually. That would make things a lot more interesting. Your students are in their second year, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Then we’ll be seeing each other at the survival exam,” Revin said with a smile. “James is in their year.”

“That’s… great,” Noah said, squinting at Revin.

“We’ll talk again soon,” Revin said. “It’s nice to meet someone else that’s holding their Rank back. If I’d known there was another, I would have sought you out earlier. You don’t have a domain yet, but the pressure coming off your Runes is pretty significant. Perhaps you’re holding back from reaching Rank 4 to get more practice with Formations?”

Holding my Rank back? Formations? I can’t tell if this guy is completely off his rocker or if he’s just speaking about things I haven’t heard about yet. Dayton was a Rank 5, and he thought I was just a normal Rank 3. Can Revin somehow feel my Master Runes?

“What do you mean by that?” Noah asked conversationally, not willing to let the potential information slip through his fingers. “I’m not doing anything special.”

Revin snorted. “Playing coy isn’t really all that interesting. It’s much cooler to show off how impressive you are – but I get it. Formations get so much shit from incompetent fools, but the sooner you get started on learning them, the more powerful they are.”

“Of course,” Noah said. “I love Formations.”

What the hell is a Formation?

“Thought as much. We’ll have to match our strengths at some point in the near future,” Revin said with a wry smile. “You can’t hide your talents from me. You’ll have to get better at lying if you want to pretend we aren’t on the same path. I’ve read you like a book.”

Maybe if the book was upside down and in a language you don’t understand.

“I’ll work on that.”

“Good,” Revin said. “I’ll be stalking you, then.”

“Could you–”

Revin vanished, disappearing both from sight and Noah’s senses.

“–not,” Noah finished, dropping his hand with a sigh.

Just what I needed. Someone even more mentally deranged than I am.

Noah waited for a few moments, pouring extra energy into his tremorsense to try to pick up where Revin had gone to, but there was no sign of the strange professor. The man had completely vanished. With a sigh, Noah shook his head.

I’ll tell Moxie about it in the morning. Maybe she’ll be able to make sense of some of what that nutter is talking about. No matter how strange Revin is, he’s clearly fairly strong – or strong enough to fool my tremorsense, and not even the jaguar could do that.

With Revin gone, though, Noah was hopeful that the rest of the night would go quietly and he’d have some time to focus on his Runes before morning came.

He should have known better.

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