Return of the Runebound Professor

Noah watched the cube with rapt attention. He’d thought that the students had been taught pretty well. They’d been holding their own, especially during the last parts of their training.

But now, as he stared at the eviscerated corpse of the Root Fiend, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d missed something.

The monster had lasted about five seconds after its grand reveal before the kids descended on it like a pack of rabid rats – rats with devastating magic. Isabel had tackled the monster, driving it straight into a spike of stone that jutted up from the ground behind it.

Meanwhile, Emily already had an arrow charging in her ice bow. Isabel rolled out of the way an instant before Emily fired, sending the arrow straight into its chest and ripping a hole through its body.

The Root Fiend screamed in pain – also demonstrating the cube’s very impressive sound system – just in time for Todd to dart past Emily. He’d formed armor around one of his hands. With a battle cry, Todd drove his fist into the Root Fiend’s chest, even as it started to heal from the wound Emily had left.

With a thwump, Todd’s fist exploded. He leapt back as a ball of fire roiled out of the Root Fiend’s mouth. If it hadn’t tried to seal its wound over, the damage likely would have been far less severe. But, with nowhere to go, the flame was forced to expand throughout the Root Fiend’s body instead of rushing out.

Wood splintered and shattered. The Root Fiend pitched back, crashing to the snow as the light in its eyes went out. The four students stared at it, barely even breathing heavily. James hadn’t even gotten a chance to do anything.

“Well, shit,” James said. “How long have you been working together exactly?”

“Just a few weeks,” Emily replied, flicking a strand of hair away from her face. Her attempt to avoid looking smug crashed and burned. “I think we’ve still got some room to grow, though.”

“Are you kidding?” Todd asked, rubbing his neck with a grimace before wiping the pain from his features. “That was badass. If Revin was here, I bet he’d be salivating. We should probably keep moving, though. That made a lot of noise and someone might come to check it out.”

“Hold on,” Isabel said. “The Root Fiend might drop a token, right?”

They all paused for a few moments, watching it silently.

“Don’t think this one had a token,” James said.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Isabel agreed. “Let’s go, then. Maybe there’s a cave we can use. If not, I’ll set up tents.”

They all set off, trudging through the heavy snow. The cube – or whoever was controlling it – had some dramatic sense, because it let them leave the frame before it suddenly sped to catch back up with them.

“Interesting,” Evergreen mused, leaning back in her chair. “Acceptable teamwork.”

“Acceptable? I’d say it’s a bit more than that.” Noah sent a small frown Evergreen’s way. “They worked like a real team. If you think that’s just acceptable, then you should have seen them when they first got started. None of them knew how to work with other people.”

Evergreen tapped a finger on her chair, her eyes still on the screen. “Emily had no such difficulties. She is–”

Noah burst into laughter. Evergreen’s lips thinned and she turned to look at him. “Is something I said amusing, Magus Vemril?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. “But I’m going to piss you off if I say it. Even though you can’t do anything in Arbitage, I don’t really want to worry about having to kill all the assassins you send after me.”

Evergreen studied Noah for several seconds, just long enough for the silence to grow uncomfortable. “That’s an odd way to phrase things. You’re more worried about having to kill my assassins than the risk of dying yourself? Arrogant.”

“Magus Evergreen, do I strike you as somebody that makes friends easily?”

“No,” Evergreen replied with a wry smile. “Let’s see – you basically asked if you could speak openly, yes?”

“I did.”

“Then I will do the same. You strike me as an insolent, arrogant brat with no patience. You could have gotten far more out of the scroll you gave me if you bided your time with it. It was worth thousands of gold – probably more than a side branch member as yourself has ever seen. Instead, you wasted it to try to protect a worthless servant.”

Damn, she read me that easily? I thought I was being slick.

“You got me,” Noah admitted with a sheepish grin. He rubbed the back of his head. “Do I have permission to speak openly, then?”

“Go ahead. Words from a whelp are hardly going to cause me any lack of sleep.”

“I’m relieved, then. The Torrin family wouldn’t go back on their word,” Noah said, his gaze hardening. “Then I have to say that if you sent assassins after me, I would kill them. How do you think I got that scroll from Dayton? By the way – that plan was horrible.”

Evergreen’s lips thinned. “Please, elaborate.”

“You pinned the whole thing on some worthless servant who was already busy trying to protect Emily,” Noah said, crossing his arms. “Not to mention a complete lack of backups or alternatives.”

“Is that all?”

“No. Do you even know anything about your own family members? I mean, how can you go around threatening Moxie when she’s been doing such a good job teaching Emily? If you killed her, I’d be willing to put money that Emily would turn against you.” Anger bubbled in Noah’s chest, spilling out into his words. Lee urgently tugged at Noah’s sleeve, but he barely even noticed. “Brilliant planning, Magus Evergreen. It’s little wonder that Father outmaneuvers you at every turn.”

“When I said you could speak openly, I didn’t think you’d actually be so honest,” Evergreen said with a cold laugh. “You seem to have a personal vendetta against me, Magus Vermil.”

“This is enough,” Moxie said. “Vermil, you’re going too far. Magus Evergreen is well within her right to–”

“I don’t care,” Noah growled. “I’m so fed up with these nobles throwing their weight around like they’re hot shit when they don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about. You know what you remind me of, Evergreen? Upper management that think they’re hot shit, but all they can really do is count beans and fire people that everyone loves.”

The air around Noah’s skin heated. Lee pulled her hand back.

“Are you challenging me, Magus Vermil?” Evergreen asked. Her voice was even and measured, but he could tell she was goading him on. “I will accept if you keep pushing. Perhaps you can change my mind and prove that I truly am blind.”

A ripple of lime green energy washed off Evergreen and blanketed the room in an instant. Vines erupted from the chairs, winding around Noah’s body and slamming him back down as he tried to rise. Lee and Moxie were both grabbed as well.

“Continue struggling, and I will take it as a challenge,” Evergreen said. “Otherwise, still your mouth and watch the exam. It has only just begun.”

“Vermil,” Moxie hissed, her voice dangerous. “Enough! What are you doing?”

Noah didn’t hear her. The rage that had bubbling in his chest ever since he’d first tried to form the Fragment of Renewal had finally boiled over, and now there was no stopping it. The heat pouring from his skin intensified.

He worked his jaw as it started to ache. Thin tendrils of smoke drifted up from the vines enveloping him. Evergreen’s expression flickered as a flash of confusion passed over her features.

A tiny spark of flame lit in the base of Noah’s throat.

It erupted.

Smoke poured out of the vines, gathering on the ground before Noah. Swirls of fire flashed within it, gathering into a humanoid form in the span of seconds. It started hunched over, but straightened as features started to solidify on it.

A cloud gray jacket, trimmed with dancing flames. Ash-colored hands, burning from deep within with dull orange light. They ended in thin, pointed fingers that adjusted the top lapel of the jacket as the rest of a man came into being.

His legs were bent in the wrong direction, his knee joints reversed. A lone, curled horn of a deep blood red color curled out of the side of his head, tiny motes of ash falling down from it as the last of his body solidified.

“Finally,” the demon breathed, a tiny tongue of flame curling out from his mouth. “Do you have any idea how long I was trapped in there?”

Evergreen’s eyes widened in shock and she leapt to her feet, grabbing for her staff. The demon spun, slicing his hand down through the air. A blade of ash ripped out, slamming the staff from Evergreen’s grip.

It flew across the room and slammed into the wall. Evergreen whipped a hand forward, sending a vine to reach for it, but the demon moved faster than Noah’s eyes could track. One moment, it was standing before Noah. The next, it had appeared behind Evergreen, wrapping its hands around her head.

It yanked back, slamming her head into the seat of the chair with a crack. She crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. The demon looked mildly surprised at how easily she’d gone down. It glanced from Evergreen to her staff, and a knowing smirk passed across its features.

Evergreen’s bindings slipped away, returning control of Noah’s body to him. Lee urgently tugged at his sleeve.

“We need to go. Right now.” Lee’s voice trembled in terror.

The demon turned back toward them, the smile on its face growing wider.

“Nonsense. We only just got to meet face to face, after all. I couldn’t possibly allow you to leave.”

“That’s a lie,” Lee whispered. “We’ve met before.”

“Oh, I wasn’t concerned about you,” the demon said with a bassy chuckle. “I remember you, little impling.”

“You know this thing?” Moxie asked, swallowing heavily. Her eyes flicked from the monster to Evergreen, who still laid in a crumpled heap on her chair. The demon had knocked out a Rank 6 mage in the blink of an eye.

“Of course she does. She followed me out into the mortal plane after the original owner of that body summoned me,” the demon said, nodding to Noah. “Imagine my pleasure when the moron failed to properly bind me.”

The demon’s face darkened and it took a step toward them, raising a thin finger and pointing at Noah’s chest. “And imagine my fury when you arrived. When your cursed Rune shredded my body and soul to pieces, just to use as fuel to bind you to this plane. Can you even comprehend the agony of that? To be fragmented and scattered throughout another being’s soul, unable to do anything but observe as they bumble through everything? I thought I would be doomed to that agony for eternity.”

Noah’s spine froze as he finally put the last pieces of what he’d been missing together.

“I healed your soul when I healed mine, didn’t I?”

“So you did. And then it was only a matter of pushing you until you got angry enough to actually give me a moment to slip free,” the demon said, his smile stretching across his face until it was unnaturally wide – rows of long, pointed teeth ran from one of his ears to the other, each glistening in the dim light. “Months I have waited, Noah. I’m going to enjoy this.”

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