Return of the Runebound Professor

“You can’t mean to kill a child,” Garrick said, stepping between Revin and Eline.

“It’s none of your concern what I do with Elon, is it?” Revin asked. He tilted his head to the side, then tapped the ground with the butt of his scythe. “Get over here, girl. As discussed, your life is forfeit.”

Eline stared at him, not moving an inch. She swallowed heavily, then inched further behind Garrick. Revin pursed his lips.

“Only a monster would seek to kill someone over something as meaningless as–” Garrick started, but Revin cut him off.

“You made the bet. You wanted something important from me, and I was kind enough to accept in exchange for something important from you,” Revin said, his voice darkening. He clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Everyone’s always so willing to put their life on the line until push comes to shove and the reaper comes knocking at your door.”

Evergreen’s brow furrowed even further. Noah could practically feel her digging through her memories as she tried to figure out when Garrick and Eline had made any sort of bet with Revin. For a moment, Noah thought she would intercede to help.

Then she turned and walked away, her staff thumping against the ground punctuating every step. Noah’s eyes widened slightly.

Goddamn. She really is a cold bitch. Not even a second of hesitation. Eline’s life wasn’t even worth the time for Evergreen to get around to asking why it was at risk.

Garrick gritted his teeth. His hands clenched at his sides. Then his gaze went cold and his hands opened. He turned on his heel and strode after Evergreen, leaving Eline staring at his back in shock. She opened her mouth, then swallowed heavily.

Noah glanced at Moxie, who still had her hand on Emily’s shoulder.

Most of the Torrin family, that is. Moxie is an exception. With some luck, she’ll save Emily from becoming like Evergreen. Sucks for Eline, though.

Oh well. She’ll live. Figuratively, not literally.

“Is he actually going to kill her?” Isabel whispered urgently to Noah. “You need to stop him!”

“I’m not so sure I can,” Noah muttered. “Just wait. If he actually tries to do something, we’ll intercede. I wouldn’t try to ever read Revin’s actions, though. He’s a force of chaos, not logic.”

Revin glanced over his shoulder, catching Noah’s eye and sending him a smirk before looking back to the stricken Eline.

How the hell did he hear that? The more I know this guy, the more I start to think he might actually have some sort of information gathering magic. Maybe that All-seeing Eye thing isn’t bullshit at all.

“Well, that sucks,” Revin said. “Looks like the mentors that you were willing to lay your life down for have abandoned you completely and utterly, without more than a few words of complaint.”

Eline’s hands clenched at her sides. “They – they’ll come back.”

“No, they won’t,” Revin said. He tapped a finger on his staff. “They already left. Took them all of five seconds to give up on you. Even I thought they’d put up more of a fight than that.”

“What’s the point of this?” Eline demanded, glaring at Revin. She thrust her neck out. “Just do it already! I won’t sit here and be mocked. Kill me, if you dare. See what happens when the Torrin house–”

“Doesn’t even lose a single wink of sleep?” Revin raised an eyebrow. “Look at them, girl. They aren’t even watching your execution. They don’t care. At all.”

Eline’s eyes flicked to Evergreen, and then to Garrick. Revin was right. Noah saw the last vestiges of hope crumble away in Eline’s eyes. Nobody was coming to help her. She’d been left to deal with the consequences of a bet – one that she had admittedly agreed to, but not one that her mentors ever should have allowed her to take.

Several seconds of silence passed.

“Whelp. That’s that,” Revin said. He hefted his scythe. “We’re done here, I think.”

Eline didn’t even respond. In a blink, Revin spun his scythe so that the butt was resting against Eline’s neck. She let out a startled gasp as a tendril of shadow shot out from the hilt, winding around her neck. It tightened, turning into a tightly linked chain of darkness. It looked like a piece of obsidian jewelry.

James let out a groan. “I knew this was coming.”

“What did you do?” Eline asked, touching her neck. “What is this?”

“Proof,” Revin replied. “Your life is mine.”

“He did the same shit to me,” James said, rubbing the bridge of his nose and letting out a weary sigh.

“You… aren’t going to kill me?” Eline asked in befuddlement.

“You’re going to wish he did,” James muttered.

“Of course I’m not.” Revin let out a bark of laughter. “Why would I kill someone as weak as you? There’s absolutely no fun in that at all. No, Ellie. I’m not going to kill you.”

“Eline.”

“Don’t bother,” James said. “He’ll be doing this for a while.”

“I won’t kill you. I’ll train you,” Revin said, a grin stretching across his lips. “I’ll fix all the mistakes that the Torrins made that let you get to where you are now. And then, when you’re strong enough, you may earn your freedom back.”

Eline stared at Revin uncomprehendingly. Finally, she swallowed. “This isn’t a joke? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I felt like it,” Revin said with a shrug. “I get bored too, you know. Sometimes, it’s nice to just do something to help people with absolutely no ulterior motives.”

James’ eyes narrowed. Revin pointedly didn’t look in his direction, but James walked to force Revin to look at him.

“No ulterior motives?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Are you sure?” James arched an eyebrow.

“Of course I am,” Revin said. “Why would I ever lie about such a thing? My motives are pure as freshly fallen snow.”

“So it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’ve got to give me the next few months off?” James pressed.

Revin cleared his throat. “I do? I had completely forgotten, if I’m being honest. How amusing. No matter. I hardly care. What you do is your own concern, not mine.”

“Of course, of course,” James said knowingly. “So you didn’t do all of this specifically because you aren’t going to have anyone to force to make you breakfast while you’re out traveling?”

“Your questions have a very accusatory tone,” Revin declared. “I don’t like them very much, so I will choose not to answer.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed.

You can’t be serious.

“On an entirely unrelated note,” Revin said, drawing the last word out. “Elton, how are your skills in the kitchen? Have you had any survival training?”

“What? I guess I’ve had some,” Eline stammered. “Is he joking? Did you seriously–”

“Fantastic. We’ll have to put those to use soon,” Revin declared. He paused for a moment, then glanced at James. “When are you off again?”

“A week.”

“We should start in a week,” Revin said with a nod. “That’s a good time. Oh – you’ll need some preliminary training, though.”

“That just means he wants to make sure your cooking isn’t so awful he hates it,” James put in.

Eline gave James an aghast look, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything else. Revin tapped her on the shoulder with his scythe, then nodded to Noah.

“I’ll be seeing you all. And read the book I gave you, Vermil.”

Eline let out a startled yelp as she plummeted into a shadow that opened up beneath her, vanishing into the darkness. Revin sank in after her, and then they were gone. Everyone else stared at where the two had been standing moments before.

“I think death might have genuinely been a better option here,” Isabel said, shuddering. “James, your professor has some serious issues.”

“Tell me about it,” James muttered.

Emily put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “That sucks.”

Eloquent. Accurate, though. I think I can hesitantly decide that Eline will be okay. Revin is a wacko, but I don’t think he’s actually malicious. More like chaotic stupid. I honestly don’t care a ton about Eline one way or another, so I’m grateful to be able to cross another thing off the plate. I’ve got too many other things to worry about.

“You know what I want to know?” Noah asked. They all looked at him. “When did all of you manage to hit Rank 2? Was it during the exam? I never even noticed.”

Todd grin. “No. It was before.”

“While we were out training in Graybarrow,” Isabel said. “Toward the end, we started hunting at night more. We’d been hunting a ton already, and we’d all made duplicate Runes and filled them up. We just combined them one night.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” Moxie scrunched her nose. “You could have told us. I didn’t realize either.”

“It was meant to be a cool surprise,” Emily said. “It was pretty impressive, wasn’t it?”

“Are your Runes good?” Noah asked.

Todd nodded. “I ended up getting rid of my Heat Rune. My Rank 2 is called Shattering Blows. It’s not perfect, but it’s a really good Rune. I made it with a mix of Rock, Stone, and Ice.”

“Just a Rank 2 Stone Rune for me,” Isabel said, shrugging. “Also not perfect, but it was at fifteen percent full when I made it, so not far either. My future Runes will have to have more variance to avoid getting unbalanced.”

Wait, just Stone? What was the blue energy you’ve been using, and why didn’t you use it during the exam? With how highly you were valuing your father’s magic… hm. I think I might know where that Master Rune the noble families were looking for went.

I’m not letting either of them keep anything other than a perfect Rune, but I think it might actually be better to let them get some training and practice at Rank 2 before I go and force them back down to Rank 1 and have them re-combine things. If they know I’m just going to fix their mistakes, it’ll make them sloppy. We’ll deal with repairing their Runes at the end of vacation. It’ll be a good way to kick the school year off.

“Not like you need to hear it, but I’m proud of all of you. You’ve done really well getting this far, and it’s been almost entirely due to the hard work you’ve been putting in.”

“Does this mean we get another pizza party?” Lee asked eagerly.

“Actually, we were going to go get dinner,” Todd said, exchanging a glance with the other students.

Lee opened her mouth, then glanced at Noah and closed it.

“Well, don’t let me get in your way,” Noah said. “I’m your teacher, not your father. Enjoy yourselves. It’s important to take a few moments to appreciate how far you’ve come so you have something to keep you going when things get hard again.”

Isabel gave Noah a thoughtful look, then inclined her head. “Yeah. Are you going to be on campus for much longer?”

Noah tilted his head to the side. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“The survival exam was the final exam this year,” Moxie said. “You never bothered reading a schedule, did you?”

Noah cleared his throat sheepishly. “I… forgot?”

“Right,” Moxie drawled. “Well, I’ll remind you. The students are all dismissed for two months. Usually, this is when they go back to their families to learn about business and improve relationships with other families, but…”

“Not happening for us,” Todd finished. “Isabel and I are going to go train on our own.”

“Just train?” Noah asked, sending Todd a pointed glance.

It was Todd’s turn to clear his throat. “We won’t do anything too dangerous, I promise.”

“Well, just make it back alive. I’d prefer not to have to find new students. I rather like my current ones,” Noah said. A thought struck him and he sent a worried glance at Moxie. “Our students stay the same, right?”

“Of course they do,” Moxie said with a snort. “You’re a mentor. Why would they swap them midway through their education? It’s not like someone else hates their kids enough to land them with you. Emily, this is probably a good time to tell you that I’ll actually be taking a vacation this summer myself. It’s the first one I’ve gotten in years, so I hope you don’t mind.”

“Really? You’re finally taking a break? I was worried you never would. I’m glad.”

Moxie blinked. That clearly hadn’t been the reaction she’d been expecting. “I – yeah. I am.”

“I was planning to follow you around until school started so I could get ahead on my training,” Emily admitted, glancing to the side. Her eyes brightened and she shrugged. “It’s okay, though. I’ll figure something else out.”

“I’ll be training as well,” James said, clearing his throat. “You could join me, if you wanted to. You don’t have to if you don’t want–”

“That works!” Emily grinned. “I’ll do that.”

Smooth.

“Dinner time,” Todd proclaimed. “Let’s go. See you, old folks.”

“I’m not that much older than you are,” Moxie snapped, but she joined Noah and Lee in waving farewell as the students headed away.

“I’m hungry,” Lee said with a sad sigh. “I wanted to join their dinner as well.”

“It’s fine. We’ll get dinner ourselves,” Noah said. “You want to join, Moxie?”

“I figured that was implied. Let’s drop off the results of the exam and go,” Moxie said. “We can figure out what we’re doing for vacation while we’re at it.”

“We?” Noah asked, blinking.

Moxie raised an eyebrow. “Were you planning on leaving me out?”

“Of course not,” Noah said. “I just didn’t–”

“Noah?” Moxie glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes while Lee snickered beside her.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up. You’re digging the hole deeper.”

“Right.”

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