Return of the Runebound Professor

Moxie's words proved to be a challenge to the universe.

Somehow, the group had gone from being completely unable to find anything other than goop-creatures to being swarmed with monsters. None of them were particularly powerful, so the fights went considerably better than the previous ones.

Lee had so much pent-up energy that she ended up ending the majority of the fights before they could even get properly underway. She snapped the neck of a creature that resembled a rock golem before it had even finished pulling itself out of the ground, which was just plain disrespectful, and punted more than a dozen small stone spiders so hard that they disappeared over the hills.

Noah had reminded Lee that they still wanted to loot the monsters to sell their parts after that particular event, so Lee had pulled back – only for Moxie to step in. Somehow, she was actually even more brutal than Lee was.

As a vine wound around the leg of another craggy rock monster and lifted it into the air, Noah raised his hands to summon a blast of wind and finish it off. Instead, Moxie’s vine whipped it straight back down. There was a loud crack as the golem’s head hit the hill, but she wasn’t finished.

Like a toddler flinging around a toy in a tantrum, Moxie’s vine raised and slammed the poor monster in every direction, bashing it to pieces until all that was left was a crumbling leg. Noah cleared his throat as Moxie shot him a glance.

“What?” Moxie asked.

“Nothing, nothing. You aren’t mad at me, are you?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

Moxie rolled her eyes. The vine tossed the crumbling leg to the ground before them and slithered back beneath the rock. Moxie knelt, picking the leg up. “Here. Loot.”

“I don’t think anyone wants to buy the foot of some weird rock thing.”

“You never know. Maybe a collector will like it.” Moxie pushed the leg into Noah’s already bulging pack. He opened his mouth, then closed it. She was trying to help. Probably. It was equally as likely that she was making fun of him – and now that he thought about it, it was far more likely that she was making fun of him.

After what she’d done to the rock monster, though, Noah decided that lugging a leg around just on the off chance that someone did want to buy it probably wasn’t the worst. Money was money, after all.

“Are you going to fight at all?” Lee asked, tugging on the side of Noah’s shirt. “You’ve just been watching today.”

“I’ve been concentrating on my Imbuements,” Noah admitted. “I know I’ve been mooching a bit off you two, but I feel like I’m close. I just want to figure out how to recreate the tremorsense I had.”

“Why do you need to recreate it?” Lee asked.

“Because it was useful?”

“No. I mean why not just use the same Rune?”

Noah’s brow furrowed. “I reached Rank 3. I don’t have Focal Quake anymore, so I can’t use the same Rune.”

Lee stared at Noah. “Can’t you chop Runes up or something? Just re-form Focal Quake and use it until you find a way to do the Imbuement with your Rank 3 Rune.”

A second of silence passed. Noah’s eye twitched and he sucked on the insides of his cheeks. Moxie let out a snort of laughter.

“Got too caught up in the details and it slipped your mind, didn’t it?”

“Might have,” Noah muttered. “But I’ve already got the Rank 3 Rune, and I’m not taking the damn thing back apart unless I absolutely have to. I’m sure I can emulate tremorsense with Natural Disaster. I just need to figure out how to only use a portion of the magic in it rather than the whole thing.”

“Too bad Todd isn’t here,” Lee said with a sad shake of her head. “I bet he would have known something about that.”

“Probably,” Noah agreed. “I’ll pause the Imbuement stuff until we get to the city.”

“Great,” Moxie said, holding a hand up. Lee and Noah froze in place and Moxie jerked her chin forward to a small mound sticking out of the hill before them. “Then you can handle that one, Noah.”

“I imagine that the rock I’m looking at is more than a rock?”

“Crag Spider,” Moxie replied. “That’s its head. From the size of it, I’d imagine that the spider is probably six or seven feet long. Big bastard. Lucky us, though. Their venom is prized and can be really difficult to get a hold of. The best way to get it is while they’re still alive, though.”

Noah shot Moxie a look out of the corners of his eyes. “Something tells me that the spider isn’t going to just politely sit around while we take the venom. How am I supposed to get it while it’s alive?”

“Normally, one person holds its legs down, the other holds the head, and the last few work on pulling out the poison gland. It can be difficult because the gland often bursts if the Crag Spider struggles hard enough, spreading a cloud of poison in the area. It takes a lot of skill and practice to pull off.”

“I see what you’re getting at. You want me to freeze the spider?”

Moxie nodded. “Or at least try to. If you used the earth to just squish it, the gland would almost certainly pop. It’s fragile.”

“I’ll give it a shot. How big is the poison cloud if I screw up, though?”

“Fifteen, twenty feet. Nothing too crazy. We can avoid it.”

“Works for me. It’s awful convenient that the spider is sitting belowground with only its head sticking out. I assume you can get to the gland if it remains in that exact position?”

“Probably.”

“Great,” Noah said, calling on Natural Disaster. Runic energy flooded through his body as he drew deeply on the magic. He wasn’t sure exactly how much power he’d need to freeze a six foot spider solid, but if it came between overfreezing it or underfreezing it, Noah felt like he’d much rather prefer the former.

The air around Noah quickly started to drop in temperature as his will flooded into his Rune. Once he’d gathered enough power, Noah let it loose. An arctic breeze flowed out from his palms, rolling across the ground and turning it icy as it passed.

There was no sharp crack or loud shattering noise as his magic connected with the spider. There was only silence – silence that did absolutely no justice to the sudden flash of blueish white frost that rolled across the ground surrounding the spider.

Noah tensed, waiting for the monster to try to rise or otherwise avoid his magic, but it didn’t even budge. He and the others watched in mild shock as a large circle around the spider froze solid and the monster didn’t even try avoiding anything.

A few seconds later, the spider glistened. It was frozen solid.

“What was that?” Noah asked. “Is it stupid?”

“I don’t think spiders are very sensitive to cold,” Moxie said, blinking. “Maybe it didn’t even realize that it was freezing?”

“Maybe get the poison thing before it dies,” Lee suggested.

Moxie snapped out of her surprise and nodded. She raised a hand and a vine slipped out from her sleeve, winding down into the mound and poking at it. Noah still wasn’t sure where the spider’s mouth was – he’d just taken Moxie’s word that he was actually attacking a monster – but she seemed to know what she was doing.

Her vine wound around the rocky mound and sank into an opening on its back that Noah had missed. Moxie’s brow creased in concentration and several seconds passed in terse silence. Then, gently, the vine rose back up. Suspended at its end was a small green sac the size of a child’s palm. It was covered in a very faint layer of frost. The vine brought the sac over to Moxie’s hands and deposited it gently.

“Well,” Noah said. “And we didn’t even kill–”

A rush of energy entered his body. He stiffened for a moment in surprise, then cleared his throat. “Okay, never mind. It’s dead now.”

And that felt damn good too. Adding Freezing Blizzard to Natural Disaster was definitely the right move. Ice is powerful, especially when your opponent just sits around and lets you freeze them solid. Natural Disaster also feels a lot easier to call on now. Not stronger… just smoother.

“They don’t usually survive the sac getting removed. I can’t imagine getting frozen solid is going to be great for its health either,” Moxie said sagely. “That was really damn effective, though. Good job. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a successful extraction.”

“Did you see a lot of other extractions?” Lee asked. “How often did you come here?”

“Not that many,” Moxie admitted sheepishly. “Only like… three. And almost all of them failed. Maybe that’s because nobody was trying to freeze the spiders solid. It was just some family members, not trained professionals or anything. We didn’t really need the money, so it was sport and fun more than actually going for success.”

“Makes sense,” Noah said. “We should definitely get to Dawnforge as soon as possible now, though. We’re basically walking around with a little bomb.”

“We’re only an hour or two away,” Moxie said, nodding to the city. “And I was about to suggest the same. Let’s get to it. I have to admit that I’m curious to see how much money we’ve made.”

***

As Moxie had predicted, they reached one of Dawnforge’s gates a little over an hour later. The sun had just reached its apogee in the sky, shining down straight on top of them and doing away with the shadows.

Despite how huge the entrance was, there was still somehow a small line on the road leading up to it. They stepped into it behind a team of heavily armored men and women, waiting patiently as the line slowly moved along.

Half an hour later, they’d finally reached the front. The gate was manned by a dozen guards, all armored in shimmering metal armor covered with swirling Imbuements. They strongly resembled what Gavin, the Soldier that had helped fight against the massive Root Fiends, wore.

And that probably means they’re roughly as strong as he was. That’s simultaneously relieving and concerning. If people this powerful are guarding the gates, how strong are the other folks in the city?

“Adventurers?” one of the guards asked as they approached. He wore a helm that matched his silver armor, but a small tuft of black hair poked out from beneath it. His green eyes sparkled in mild amusement.

“For the time being,” Moxie said, stepping forward to keep their attention on her. “We’ve been hunting some monsters outside the city.”

“I could tell,” the guard said, his eyes drifting to the bag at Noah’s side. A grin flickered across his face. “Looks like you had some success. Have you been to Dawnforge before?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic. Spares me from listing the rules off. Waste of damned time, really. Name?”

“Moxie Torrin.”

The guard didn’t even flinch at Moxie’s last name. He just nodded, then beckoned them through. “You’re responsible for your companions. You know the deal.”

“I do. Thanks,” Moxie said, nodding to the guard.

And, just like that, they passed through the gate and entered Dawnforge.

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