Return of the Runebound Professor

“I win!” Lee exclaimed.

“No, you don’t,” Noah and Moxie chorused.

“Yes I do. I got eleven kills.” Lee puffed her chest out and beat a fist against it. “You’re just mad that you have to cook for me. I want a seven-course meal, by the way.”

When did this go from choosing where we go to get food to cooking for the victor?

“The last Molster you killed was number thirty-one,” Moxie said, crossing her arms. “It doesn’t count. We agreed to stop at thirty.”

Lee paused, mentally counting in her head as she turned in a circle, looking at the carnage that surrounded them. The Molsters hadn’t had a good time of things. Their corpses littered the ground all around, cut to pieces and fried.

“Oh.” Lee scrunched her nose in annoyance. “Well, that sucks.”

“Unless I counted wrong, we all killed ten before we reached the limit. Any extra kills after that don’t count,” Noah said, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sighing. “Maybe we should have picked a number that didn’t let us tie.”

“That might have been a wise decision,” Moxie agreed. “Oh well. I guess we’ll have to cook something together.”

Noah glanced at Moxie out of the corner of his eye. She sounded slightly too satisfied with that conclusion. Almost as if she’d gotten what she was aiming for the entire time. Moxie spotted his look and flashed him a smug grin.

Eh. Can’t say I’m dissatisfied with that.

“We’ll have to lug all these things back to Dawnforge first. Let’s start taking them apart,” Noah said, nodding to the bodies surrounding them while continuing to use his tremorsense on the ground beneath them.

It looked like the Molsters had figured out that they weren’t worth challenging after losing well over thirty of their members, as he couldn’t sense any more vibrations near them. The monsters hadn’t put up much of a fight, but they did have a decent amount of energy. Natural Disaster had filled by one or two percent, which was pretty significant. Of course, it got harder to fill the closer to full the Rune was, but for the tiny amount of work he’d put in, Noah had reaped solid results.

Lee’s axe flashed in the rising moonlight as she brought it down on one of the Molsters, severing its claws from its body with a thunk. She lifted it effortlessly, and its bloodied blades flashed ominously.

Noah suppressed a shiver. There weren’t many things that he’d seen after arriving at Arbitage that gave him much pause, but the effortless way that Lee swung the axe around was unsettling.

He’d seen firsthand how the weapon was an instrument of death. Lee had carved through every Molster that got close to her in a blur of steel. If it hadn’t been for Noah’s ability to sense where the Molsters were going to come out of the ground, he was certain that Lee would have won their challenge. She was just too fast.

What made the weapon somehow even more terrifying was the fact that Lee had absolutely no idea how to properly wield it. She swung it around like a toy rather than an axe with real weight to it. And, because of that, she had absolutely no fighting style. It was impossible to predict how she’d swing or attack next.

Even if it isn’t magic, I’m glad she’s on our side. Lee’s speed paired with her strength is seriously unsettling. I can see why people in this world are scared of demons. If it hadn’t been for the inquisitor’s stupid power that somehow blasted Lee and I, she probably would have killed the guy in a few seconds flat.

Lee’s axe thunked as she cut through the body of another Molster. She hummed to herself as she worked, striding over to the next monster and bringing the axe down once more.

Moxie slid up next to Noah and nudged him gently with a shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just got distracted,” Noah said, shaking his head and giving her a smile. “Lee’s pretty intimidating with that big ass axe.”

“Tell me about it,” Moxie agreed. A vine wound around the carved off Molster parts and brought them over to her. Moxie opened Noah’s bag and stuffed them inside. “This was pretty profitable, though. Even if we don’t make much money selling their claws, I got a good bit of energy.”

“Same,” Noah said. He knelt by another Molster and summoned a blade of wind to his hand. Natural Disaster’s powers made it considerably larger than he’d wanted, but he managed to carve the monster’s claws away even despite that. “I’m not sure if I should feel bad about massacring all of them, though.”

“Don’t. They’re pests, and they’re far from intelligent. They’re basically hive-mind pack monsters, closer to some sort of fungus than a normal living creature. I doubt they even realized what was happening until enough of them died. Besides, they’ve killed more than a few unlucky people traveling the roads. They’re a huge threat when they get the jump off on you.”

“I can see why.” Noah held up one of the monster’s long claws. None of them had managed to land a blow, but if they had, he was certain it would have gone through flesh as if it wasn’t even there. He sent a glance down at his pack. “What are the chances that these things cut through my travel bag while we fly?”

“Almost one hundred percent. Just pack them tight and try to keep everything pointed in the same direction. I’ll bind them with a vine and we can put some of the money we earn toward getting you a new one.”

“That beats just carrying them around in my hands, I guess. With my luck, I’d trip and put one through my brain.”

“So long as its yours and not one of ours.” Moxie snorted, then paused for a moment. A flicker of worry passed over her features. “You… do have infinite lives, right? Not a limited amount?”

“As far as I’m aware, yes.”

Moxie breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, good. I would have gotten really pissed at you if you’d been wasting your chances. Gods know you need them.”

Lee ambled back over to Moxie and Noah, then dumped the pile of claws she’d gathered at their feet. Moxie gathered everything up with a vine, then stuffed them into Noah’s bag as best as she could. She managed to get a little over half of them packed in before running out of space.

“Well, that’s awkward,” Noah said.

“I could carry some,” Lee offered.

“You’re going to be a little bird when we fly back.” Noah pointed out.

“Oh. Right. Moxie could–”

“No. Flying is too erratic, and she could end up stabbing herself on accident,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “It’s fine. Having extra is never a bad thing. Just leave them behind and be happy that we had abundance. We might have to come back for the rock monsters later, though. There’s no room for their gems.”

Lee shrugged. “Kay! Are we going back, then? I’m hungry, and I want to eat something good. Molsters will spoil my appetite.”

Noah glanced at Lee in surprise. It was rare that she actually opted not to eat something, no matter how unappetizing it looked.

He started to nod, but froze. A flicker of reddish-purple light danced in the darkness at the top of a nearby hill, disappearing into a hole in the ground as soon as he spotted it. Noah’s eyes narrowed.

“Did you guys see–”

“Yeah,” Moxie said, a vine rising from the ground at her feet. “The cat again? I saw the spines as it jumped into that hole.”

“How the hell did it manage to follow us all the way out here?” Noah asked. “We were on a flying sword!”

“It could just run fast,” Lee offered. “I could probably make a really good pace on the ground if I was putting everything into it. Maybe it just caught up to us?”

“It’s legs are short and stubby. If it was actually that fast, I’m pretty sure it would have killed all of us by now.” Noah’s voice was terse. He scanned the ground with his tremorsense, trying to pick up on the cat.

Everything was calm. There were no traces of it anywhere. It had gone underground outside the range of his abilities, so he didn’t know if he even could sense it. The cat seemed closer to an apparition than a physical being. If Moxie and Lee couldn’t see it, he would have suspected that he was hallucinating again.

“Did it leave?” Lee whispered.

Noah’s tremorsense picked up a shift in the ground. His brow furrowed and he focused in, tuning his Body Imbuement to try to pick up on the motion. Noah’s sharpened concentration and focus was the only thing that let him spot the miniscule shift in the darkness near a large grey crystal at the very edges of his tremorsense.

A small blur of black flitted toward Lee, moving as fast as an arrow. Noah’s hand shot out. The blur slammed into him and he let out a pained snarl. The energy faded away, revealing a dagger embedded in his palm.

Moxie and Lee spun toward the source of the attack. The darkness rippled, revealing two men. One of them was bald and covered with scars. He held a jagged bronze sword at his side in a casual position, as if he were out on a stroll rather than assaulting strangers under the cover of the night.

The other looked plain. He snapped his fingers and the dagger vanished from Noah’s palm and reappeared in his hand. Blood poured from Noah’s wound and he gritted his teeth, repressing the pain.

“Nasty fast reaction speed,” the dagger-wielding man said, rolling his neck. “Won’t save you and the murderous brat, though.”

A faint flicker of a familiar red-purple energy danced across the ground behind the men as the cat slipped out from the ground behind them. It licked its paw, its dark eyes catching Noah’s. He could swear that the little monster had a smug expression on its face.

“It’s with them!” Lee hissed. “How long have they been chasing after us?”

“I’m not sure, but I intend to find out,” Noah replied, his eyes cold. He drew on Natural Disaster, calling its power to rush through his body like a raging sea. He prepared to attack.

He never got a chance.

His senses went white as his tremorsense was obliterated by an enormous amount of information slamming into him within the span of an instant. Noah staggered, a hand shooting to his head reflexively.

The ground shattered. A massive, spine covered paw the size of a warhorse rose up behind the two men and swung down, straight at the glowing cat. It sent him one last look, then yawned and vanished.

Unfortunately for the two men, they had no such luck. There was a splattering crunch, and the two of them were flattened before they even got a chance to turn around.

Another paw burst from the ground, and what resembled a rabid rat mixed with a porcupine clambered out from beneath the ground, dirt sloughing off its grey body. Thick, pointed spines jutted out in every direction, rippling with faint gray energy. Its mouth frothed with white foam, and its eyes were a deep, ruddy red.

It let out a furious screech, splattering saliva across the ground before it. The liquid sizzled, burning through the ground.

“Noah?” Lee whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think the cat was with them.”

The rabid monster screamed once more.

Then it charged.

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