Return of the Runebound Professor

“Ah, Father. I was wondering when you’d get back to me,” Gentil said, a huge smile stretching across his features. A flickering purple portal shimmered before him. Just beyond it, Father sat at his desk, his eyes as flat as ever.

Father took a slow sip from the goblet in his hand. Not a single part of his expression or body language was readable, even to Gentil. The man was truly a master of hiding what he was feeling.

“I am not at your beck and call, Gentil – and neither are my family members. Why have you been bothering Janice?”

“Because I’ve got one of your own in my city,” Gentil replied. A loud crash followed by a muted explosion echoed through the stone above him, and Gentil paused for a moment before speaking again. “He’s currently slaughtering some poor, innocent lambs. You should have taught him manners.”

“One of mine?” Father’s head tilted to the side. “Trust me, Gentil. If I had decided to wage war against you, you would not have known until your corpse hung from a noose. I have no interest in the middling criminal underground your master has built in Dawnforge.”

The smile vanished from Gentil’s face. He leapt to his feet and brought his fist down on the seat of his chair, shattering it with a furious snarl. “I have no master! I built this! Me!”

Father’s emotionless eyes met Gentil’s.

“Did you call me to throw a tantrum, Gentil? You remind me of Dayton, except he’s easier to manage. Say what you want or I will leave.”

Gentil’s fury vanished in a blink. He straightened his lapel and shook his head ruefully. “Always so cold, Father. You’ll never have any friends with that sort of attitude. And whatever you tell me, you’re still lying. My information network might not be as extensive as yours, but I know your direct line.”

“Brayden?” Father raised an eyebrow. “If he is attacking you, then it’s your fault. I ordered him to do nothing of the sort. He shouldn’t even be in Dawnforge.”

“It’s not Brayden,” Gentil said. “It’s Vermil. He’s traveling with two points of interest to me.”

Father paused for a moment. Even though his face didn’t change in the slightest, Gentil could tell that he’d finally caught the old man’s attention.

“Points of attention? Yours, or Wizen’s?”

Gentil’s lips pressed together and his fists tightened at his side. He drew a trembling breath, his teeth grinding together so tightly that they could have crushed steel. Another explosion echoed out above him, but he ignored it.

“Our desires are, for the time being, one and the same.”

Father didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. Gentil’s fingers twitched.

“I see,” Father said. “And who would these points of interest be?”

“The first is a woman by the name of Moxie. A low-level member of the Torrin family, but the mentor and bodyguard of Emily Torrin. The second is of interest to me specifically – a short girl that ran one of my men through. I need to teach her some manners.”

Father tapped a finger on his desk. “I see. And why have you called me?”

“I felt it appropriate to inform you that I am going to be disciplining one of your family. I did not want to bring up bad blood between us, Father. There is no reason for men such as us to come into conflict over something as simple as this, is there?”

“Ah. I had thought you might be defecting from Wizen and were going to offer the Torrin to me.” Father rubbed his chin, then drew another long sip from his goblet. A new explosion shook the room around Gentil. Father set the goblet down and waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t care what Vermil does to you. If you can kill him, then please feel free. He works separately from my family, so nothing he does is at my behest.”

Gentil blinked. Of all the responses he’d been expecting from Father, that had been the last. Father was known to use his family members, but giving Gentil a full pass to deal with Vermil took off a lot of restrictions. He wouldn’t have to actually leave the fool alive to send back to Father and avoid a war.

The Torrin is Wizen’s problem, but she’s the only one he wants. Being able to kill the other two makes things so much easier.

“Thank you, Father. That’s very kind of you,” Gentil said with a smile. “It was a pleasure seeing you again. We should do this more frequently. Perhaps we could aid each other in the future. I believe we both have much to offer.”

Father’s expression remained unchanging. He finished off the rest of his goblet and then set it down on the table. “It is good that you see the world in such a golden light, Gentil. Tell me, is Wizen still in Dawnforge?”

“No, he isn’t. Not even I know where he’s gone off to.”

“How will you get the Torrin to him, then?”

“One of his agents is here. I’ll just pass her to him,” Gentil said with a shrug. “It will be fairly simple. Much simpler, now that you’ve given me permission to act with my hands unbound.”

Father nodded, then waved his hand. The portal snapped shut, leaving Gentil in the darkness once more.

A smile passed over Gentil’s face as he brushed the fragments of his chair away and turned to his assistant.

“Go. You may fight without holding back.”

“With pleasure.”

***

“What could Vermil possibly be doing in Dawnforge fighting Gentil?” Janice asked Father. “I can’t see what he gets out of coming into conflict with Wizen’s group.”

“I was wondering the same myself,” Father said, leaning back in his chair. “Curious. Wizen has been working quietly for so long, but it seems he’s decided that the Torrins are his next target.”

“Should we adjust any of our plans?”

Father chuckled. “Of course. There’s about to be a power gap in Dawnforge’s underground, Janice.”

He rose to his feet and walked over to his cabinet, his eyes scanning through the various artifacts and oddities sitting upon it. They landed on a small, wooden box. He popped the latch open, revealing a tiny black flower within it.

Father closed the box once more, then handed the box to Janice, her cheeks paling a few shades.

“What would you have me do with this, Father?”

“Deliver it, of course,” Father said, his smile as dead as his eyes. “When you get to Dawnforge, place it on Gentil’s grave.”

***

Noah lowered his hands, residual arcs of electricity raining down and dancing across the floor around them. The man he’d just unleashed a bolt of lightning into fell forward, crashing to the ground in a smoking heap. Energy flowed into his body, and he tried not to think too hard about where it had come from.

“Damn,” Moxie said, stepping out behind Noah and eyeing the dead man. He was the fourth one they’d met after heading through the trapdoor in the bakery, and he was the fourth one that they’d left dead on the dark, cobbled floor.

“You shattered his shield like nothing,” Lee said, eyeing the man and adjusting her grip on the large axe. “Can’t you leave something for the rest of us to do?”

“Turns out Natural Disaster is pretty effective when I’m not trying to hold it back too much,” Noah said. He wasn’t sure if it was right to feel smug about having blown four people into the afterlife, but they were the ones that had made the decision to attack Lee, not him.

“Too much?” Moxie let out a bark of laughter. “You’re telling me that you’re still holding back? Isn’t that just a Rank 3 Rune?”

“A really blunt one,” Noah replied. “It’s a hammer, and our opponents are nails. If we were trying to do this stealthily, it would probably go a lot worse. It’s just a good thing that lightning is so easy to use down here. Lots of static energy to draw from and start blasting with.”

The door at the end of the small room they stood in slammed open, and a ball of fire rolled out from within it without warning. Moxie thrust her hands forward, and vines ripped up from the ground, forming into a thick wall in the flame’s path.

A loud explosion rocked the room and a wave of heat washed past Noah’s face. The fireball failed to penetrate Moxie’s defenses, and a scream of pain was silenced a second later. Pulling away, the vines revealed a man, speared through the throat by a thin, pointed vine.

Moxie ripped her plants free of him and he flopped to the ground, dead.

“Leave some for me!” Lee complained. “I’m the one that got attacked, you know! I should be allowed to have fun!”

“You can get the next one,” Noah said, stepping into the door that had just opened and peering down the hall. Now that they were beneath the ground and standing on stone, his tremorsense was marginally useful once more – and it was telling him that four people were running up a set of stairs just around the corner. “Next four, actually. They’ll be here in a moment.”

“Mine!” Lee dashed forward, hefting her axe like a spear. If anyone else had tried to do the same move, it probably would have ended in disaster. The weapon was just too heavy to hold out like that – but Lee wasn’t anyone else.

There were a series of wet thunks followed by pained screams that were all quickly cut off. Moxie grimaced as she and Noah continued down the hall, finding the four men that Noah had sensed all split apart and lying in a growing pool of blood at the top of the stairs.

Lee was nowhere to be seen, but a man’s terrified scream a few seconds later told them that she was at the bottom of the stairs.

Isn’t that cute? Our little demon, all grown up.

Shut up. They had this coming.

I never said they didn’t, Noah. Most people have it coming. We just enjoy paying back what they owe.

Noah didn’t bother gracing Azel with a response. The demon wasn’t worth getting into an argument with, and getting distracted while they were storming a base of murderous bakers was a fast track to getting himself – or worse, someone that he actually cared about – killed.

The clang of metal on metal echoed through the halls and Noah accelerated, sliding down the stairs and running into the next room. Moxie dashed after him, and the two emerged in a large, circular room a few moments later.

Lee stood at its center, surrounded by several bleeding men. Across from her was a man with two long, jagged daggers in his hands. His body was covered by a tattered cloak, but his eyes were two faint gray lights beneath his hood. Lee’s body blurred as she swung her axe – and, to Noah’s shock, the man caught it on the edge of his blade.

The two weapons clashed with a loud shriek, but the man didn’t even budge from his spot. He flicked his hand, tossing Lee’s strike to the side, and then drove the other dagger at her neck with blinding speed.

Lee vanished, sinking into the ground and reappearing behind the man. She lunged, swinging her axe – and jerked to a halt as the man’s other dagger whipped for her face, matching her speed perfectly. Lee dropped, sinking into the ground an instant before the blade bit home.

She reappeared beside Noah and Moxie, her eyes narrow. “He’s fast.”

The gray light burning within the man’s hood flickered. “Which of you is the Torrin?”

“The one with the badge on her chest, idiot,” Moxie said, a vine whipping out from the darkness at the man.

He twisted to the side and his daggers flashed, severing the plant before it could reach him. With the same movement, he spun out of the way to avoid the bolt of lighting that tore from Noah’s palms. It lit the room up with a brief flash before slamming into the wall behind the man.

“Perfect,” the man said, a flicker of a smile illuminated by his glowing gray eyes within his good. “Then I don’t have to worry about holding back against the rest of you.”

He vanished. Noah’s tremorsense screamed a warning and he dove out of the way. A dagger carved through the air where he’d been standing, moving fast enough to snag on the back of Noah’s robes and cut a thin line across them. He hit the ground in a roll, then spun to face the dagger-wielding man.

Shit. This guy’s really goddamn fast, and we don’t have time to play around with him long. Every passing second means more time for these pricks to gather their forces.

Moxie’s vines swam through the air and the man jumped back, avoiding them easily.

“No- ah, Vermil?” Moxie’s voice was terse. “Might want to handle this one quickly.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Cute,” the man said with a low chuckle. “Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of quick, so I’m going to have to decline. I prefer to make the fights more interesting.”

He vanished, leaving the three of them standing in the darkness. Noah’s blood thumped in his ears as adrenaline coursed through his body. He focused intently on his tremorsense, but it couldn’t pick up anything. That didn’t change the fact that he knew the man was still somewhere in the room, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Yeah. This might be a bit of a problem.

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