Return of the Runebound Professor

As it turned out, the amount of time it took Treadon to figure out who had assassinated a Rank 5 that worked for Lord Belkus was just around three hours. Noah had long since finished with his Mind Meld meetings and was eating lunch with Lee and Moxie in their tent when the flap flew open and Violet practically tripped over her own feet in her haste to run inside.

“We’re going to be attacked!” Violet exclaimed, her words coming out so quickly that they practically blended into each other.

“We’re what now?” Noah paused with a strip of aged meat halfway to his mouth. “A little slower, please.”

“We’re going to be attacked,” Violet repeated in a voice taut with stress. “Four Demons. I think they’re Rank 5. They’re flying in this direction.”

“Flying?” Moxie rose from her chair. “On swords?”

“No. External magic,” Violet replied. She shifted from foot to foot and glanced over her shoulder at the air above them as if expecting a demon to drop down at any second. “I don’t know how long we have. Vrith saw them coming and ran back to report it. She’s warning the rest of the camp.”

Lee plucked the strip of jerky from Noah’s hands and stuffed it into her mouth while he was distracted. Noah heaved a sigh and rose form his chair. He handed Lee his gourd and scooped his grimoire off the ground, slinging it over his back.

“You’re sure they’re coming for us?”

“Vrith was. They’re headed right in this direction.”

“Took them longer than expected,” Noah said. He cracked his neck and Violet edged back as he stepped out of the tent and craned his neck back. “Where are they coming from?”

Violet pointed to the south and over the rooftops. Buildings blocked him from seeing too far away, but the air was still clear at the moment.

Four Rank 5 demons was nothing to scoff at — especially if they were more competent than Igris had been. Noah wasn’t so sure he could handle four Azel-level threats on his own. Fortunately, he wasn’t on his own. Moxie and Lee both emerged from the tent behind him and joined him in scanning the sky.

Demons bustled all around them as they rushed to shelter. Noah made a note to thank Vrith for warning everyone immediately. It would have been a huge pain in the ass if all the demons in his camp got killed during the fight. That would have set his information network back by days — not to mention the damage it would have done to his reputation.

A head of silver hair caught his attention. Noah glanced to the side as Yoru stepped out from Violet’s tent. Her hair had been braided back into a long ponytail that just barely avoided sweeping across the ground.

“You’re going to fight?” Noah asked. He hadn’t expected Yoru to actually stand with them. He’d just assumed that the powerful demon would—

“No,” Yoru replied. She tilted her head to the side. “Belkus would interfere if I acted, and I do not see a future in which I achieve the victory I desire if he acts here. I do not believe you will need my help.”

Of course.

“Care to tell me what we’re up against?” Noah asked. “Anything I should know?”

“There is not a future in which I interfere in this fight. Thus, I do not understand the probabilities of its outcomes.”

“That’s a fancy way to say you don’t know shit,” Moxie drawled.

“Correct.”

Noah couldn’t keep himself from laughing. He just shook his head and nodded to Violet. “Just keep her out of trouble, will you? I don’t need Rank 3s that I’ve spent effort on making getting squished.”

“I don’t need to be watched over,” Violet said.

Noah glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes. “What, you think you can take care of yourself against a group of Rank 5 demons?”

“No. I’m not stupid enough to interfere. I’ll be hiding together with Aylin and everyone else that doesn’t want to die.”

“Ah.” Noah nodded sagely. “Good. I was worried you were going to do something stupid for a moment. Glad to hear you’ve got your head screwed on right. Get to it, then. And make sure everyone else is thinking the same way you are. I’m going to be pissed if I waste any of the resources I’ve been cultivating.”

Violet gave him a sharp nod. She darted off toward the large tent that held Aylin. Yoru made no move to follow her. Noah arched an eyebrow. Yoru’s head tilted to the other side.

“You are waiting for me to follow.”

“Very astute. Did you use your magic for that one?”

“No. I deduced it from the expression held in your eyes.” Yoru sounded somewhat proud of her words.

“You’d be correct. What are you doing here?” Noah asked. “I thought you weren’t going to interfere. Just keep the others alive.”

“They will be fine,” Yoru said. “I am watching.”

Something told Noah that she wasn’t watching the present. For a moment, his mind was tempted to wonder just how her power functioned. Being able to see probabilities of the future seemed like it would be a pretty effective way to drive himself insane. He shook the thoughts off. There would be time to worry about Yoru later. For the moment, he was much more concerned with where their supposed attackers were.

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“Is everyone Lord Belkus hires always late?” Noah asked. “It took them forever to figure out we offed one of his men. This is honestly kind of sad. You’d think a group of Rank 5s would be capable of more.”

“Have you forgotten Dayton?” Lee asked with a snicker. “There are a lot of idiots with high ranks. Doesn’t make them very good at anything. It’s just like a good cake pan. Having one doesn’t make you a baker.”

Noah turned to Lee. “That’s a good analogy. Did you ever decide to go through with learning cooking? I remember you were interested in it.”

“I kept getting distracted by the ingredients.”

“Ah. Right. Should have seen that one coming,” Noah said.

“I’ll get there eventually.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Noah’s gaze was pulled upward as several forms appeared in the air above them, shooting over the city line. Four demons, each clad in red armor trimmed with gold, dropped from the sky and made a beeline toward the camp.

They crashed down on the stone opposite to Noah’s group, shattering the ground beneath their feet as they landed. Each of them bore a large, two-handed sword engraved with a line of demonic script that Noah couldn’t read.

Each of them stood almost two heads taller than Noah. Their red skin was covered with rippling muscle. Their horns jutted out from beneath beds of thick black hair, curling up from either side of their head like those of a goat.

“Spider,” the largest of the demons said. His voice sounded like brick grating on brick, and his features screwed up in disgust like he’d just eaten a dozen lemons.

“The Billy Goats Gruff got an extra member. Who would have thought,” Noah said. “Which one of you is adopted?”

They all stared at him, black eyes narrowed in confusion and anger.

“I’m not sure I got that one either,” Moxie whispered.

Noah sighed. “Forget it. I don’t think half the people from back where I came from would have understand that either. Now I feel old.”

“Your mockery means nothing. You killed Igris. A challenge to Lord Belkus’ authority will not be tolerated. Challenges against his men must be properly announced.”

“What makes you think I killed Igris?” Noah asked. “Did you see me do it?”

“The source of our information is irrelevant.”

More like they knew he was coming after me and made an educated guess I was responsible. Did they leaf through his documents or something? Or was Igris’ harassment of me due to more than just annoyance that I offed someone paying him money? Well, that or someone saw us. I wasn’t exactly discreet.

“Right,” Noah said. He cracked his neck and drew on his runes. “Well, let’s get this on with then. I was hoping to get my hands on a few more runes anyway. You’ll be useful, but I was in the middle of lunch, so I’d really like to get this handled quickly. Were you planning to come at me one by one, or did you want to do this all at once?”

A flicker of hesitation passed through the enforcers’ eyes. They definitely hadn’t been expecting him to meet their arrival with so much confidence — and they didn’t know how strong Noah actually was.

They knew he’d managed to kill a Rank 5 demon and escaped without any significant injuries, so their guards were definitely going to be up. Noah repressed a grimace. Despite his words, this fight wasn’t going to be easy.

Even if the enforcers’ runes weren’t incredible, they were still a higher rank and outnumbered him, Lee, and Moxie. They weren’t going to win this fight if he didn’t go all out. Noah’s fingers flexed and power coursed through his veins as he drew deeper on his magic.

I’ll Sunder the big guy before he knows what hit him. Maybe get another one with the inversed power of the Fragment of Renewal. As long as Lee and Moxie hold the other two off until then, we should be able to win. I might get killed in the process once the other two realize they can’t let me get close, but that’s fine. It’s only one death.

“You aren’t denying it, then,” the large enforcer said. His lips pulled back into a snarl. “Then, on the authority of Lord Belkus, you are to be executed.”

He lifted his sword toward Noah.

A whump split the air. Stone shattered. The enforcer’s lips parted in a split second of disbelief before his body peeled apart, blood pouring apart from two severed halves. His armor clanged as it crashed to the ground, revealing a huge black axe embedded in the stone behind him.

A woman clad in white robes blurred overhead. One of the other enforcers swore as she slammed into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. He thrust his sword for her chest, but the woman caught his wrist with a hand.

She ripped his arm off with a sharp tug. Blood sprayed across the ground. The demon’s scream was silenced as the woman’s jaw cracked, unhinged, and crunched down on his face. The entire front half of his skull vanished down her gullet as she rose, gray lips carved apart by a crimson, ecstatic grin.

One of the remaining two enforcers took a step back, horror washing across his features. “What the fu—”

The woman’s axe sailed through the air and slammed back into her hand. She spun, using the momentum from its arrival to whip it back out like a boomerang. The demon lifted his hands defensively before him. A disk of molten energy formed between him and the flying weapon — and shattered into raining fragments of glass as the axe carved straight through it.

The weapon slammed straight into the enforcer’s chest. Bone and metal crunched beneath it and the demon staggered back, eyes wide in disbelief. Before he could even try to respond, the woman lurched forward and drove her foot into his face, ripping the axe free from his chest and spinning, striking him a second time in the neck and sending his head flying free of his body.

She grabbed the decapitated cranium from the sky and whipped her hand forward, sending it crashing into the final enforcer’s face. He screamed in fear, disgust, or most likely, both.

The enforcer leapt, wind launching him into the air as he fled for safety.

He didn’t make it far.

The ground shattered beneath the white-robed woman. She launched into the sky like a missile and slammed into the fleeing demon, grabbing onto him and ripped into his neck with her teeth.

He let out a gargling scream that ground to an abrupt halt as the woman swallowed his head whole. They both plummeted back to the ground. The woman used the demon like a landing pad, driving his corpse into the ground in the center of the square with a wet crunch.

She stepped off the dead demon and grabbed the axe from where it still laid buried in another enforcer, ripping it free of its fleshy prison. Then she turned to Noah, giving him his first look at her face.

One half of it was like gray porcelain, splattered by blood and completely without expression. Its features were glassy and flat. The other half was heavily warped, twisted like putty into a horn that rose up from the side of her skull beside her eyes. Her eyes — where all the emotion that her features lacked had been pooled and gathered in pools of manic delight.

Noah stared at her, his mouth hanging slightly askew. The entire fight had only taken seconds at most. Four Rank 5 demons had been killed in mere moments.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Lee whispered.

“Spider. Your canvas is even more breathtaking up close,” the woman said, a faint tremble in her voice. Her tongue ran along glassy lips, cleaning the blood from them. She lifted the bloodied axe to point it at Noah. “May we share a dance?”

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