Return of the Runebound Professor

Noah spotted Lee tensing and Moxie preparing to take a step forward out of the corner of his eye. He threw his hand up behind himself.

“Don’t!” Noah snapped, his eyes not leaving Axil’s face. He couldn’t let them get involved. Axil’s attention had to remain on him. The moment she went after someone else, they all lost. “Both of you, go back to the tent. I’ll handle this.”

“There is no need for impatience.” Axil’s head tilted to the side until her neck cracked. She repeated the motion in the other direction, then ran her hand across the seam where she’d reattached her skull to the rest of her body. “I will complete their canvases in due time.”

“No, I don’t think you will,” Noah replied. He flexed his fingers. Warped Matter thrummed to life in his palm. Gray tendrils of magic coiled off his palm in their eagerness to escape the confines of his body.

Moxie and Lee hesitated for a second, then slipped into the tent. Noah doubted they would actually stay there. Neither of them were one to sit around while someone else was fighting but getting them out of Axil’s line of sight would go a long way in making sure she remained focused on him.

A streak of black carved down toward Noah. His eyes widened and he jerked his body to the side, twisting as hard as he could. Axil’s axe slammed down into the ground, sending stones pelting into his shins. It passed so close to his face that several strands of hair fluttered past his eyes.

Axil had appeared before him so fast that he’d barely even consciously registered his movement. The only thing that had kept him from getting cut in half was his instinctive reaction to the attack.

The demoness pulled the axe free of the stone like it weighed no more than a feather. It swung up for Noah’s stomach. He drove his palm down onto the flat of the blade and used it to vault into the air over Axil’s head.

He landed on the ground behind her, but the axe was already whistling for his head. Noah ducked down and drove his palms forward into her stomach. Worms of purple energy dug through her robes and into her skin. It darkened and rotted away as they carved through her body, but his magic only made it a few inches before its effects faded.

Noah dove to the side. Axil’s axe crunched into the ground behind him, just barely having missed once again. His Fragment of Self was more than pulling its weight in the fight, and he’d still yet to leave an injury on the demoness that did more than marginally annoy her.

“I have never been more disappointed in my life,” Axil said. The porcelain portions of her face crumpled like she was a child who had just watched her birthday cake get pelted into the ground. Her grip on the axe tightened and the large weapon hummed in her grasp. “I was so excited. But this — this is disappointing.”

“I’d say you should see what I can do in bed, but I’m happily taken.” Noah sent a wave of magic down through his feet and into the earth. The ground shuddered as he ripped a jagged spike of stone up from it with Natural Disaster.

The spike drove straight into Axil’s stomach and burst out of her back with a spray of blood. She didn’t even seem to notice it. Axil took a step forward. The bones of her ribcage ground against the spike and her flesh squelched as it pierced deeper.

Then she ripped herself straight in two.

Axil stepped right past the spike, wet strands of blood and muscle reaching out to each other to re-connect her body once she’d passed by the stone. For an instant, Noah could do nothing but stare in abject disbelief.

“I am uninterested in finding out,” Axil said.

Then she swung her axe.

It slammed into Noah’s right shoulder. Carved through flesh and bone like butter. Bit into the stone below — and then, only then, did his body finish the movement that he had started. It took him a moment to realize that he’d been cut.

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Pain erupted at Noah’s side. His arm dropped to the ground at his side, landing beside the Axe with a thud. He snarled in pain and slammed his left hand into the weeping wound, calling on Natural Disaster.

Shit! How goddamn fast is she?

Frost spread across the stump of his missing limb. A burning chill drove into his arm, briefly intensifying the pain before quickly going numb. Axil lifted the axe free from the stone and ran a finger along the blood staining its edge. She ran her tongue down her finger and tasted it, sucking on the insides of her cheeks like it was a fine wine.

“You taste wrong,” Axil said, the features on her face that could actually move contorting in confusion. “Why do you—”

Noah’s fist slammed into her face. He drove Axil down into the ground. Her skull crunched as it struck the market floor. Noah’s fingers tightened around Axil’s head and the temperature of the air around them dropped like a boulder from a cliffside. Gray turned to white as a slow moving storm of frost dug into her skin and worked its way through her features.

Axil didn’t even seem to notice. Her hands twitched and her axe blurred. Noah flung her to the side at the same time as he ducked into a roll. Pain carved into his missing limb and he skidded before managing to stagger back upright.

The demoness rose as well. She reached up to her face and dug her fingers into the frostbitten skin, ripping it free. Axil discarded the ruined flesh at her side, even as new gray rippled across the exposed muscles of her face. In seconds, her body had reformed once again.

“Better… but still wrong. You are wrong. Why are you wrong?” Axil’s eyes were wild. She slammed the axe into the stone and stomped a foot against the ground like she was having a temper tantrum. Any semblance of sanity she may have had — no matter how little — was rapidly evaporating.

Normal attacks aren’t going to kill this crazy woman, but she doesn’t know about the Fragment of Renewal or Sunder. I think I’ve gotten her guard low enough by now. I don’t have time to get a proper Formation done — not that I could do that anymore. I’ve only got one damn hand left.

“Come and find out,” Noah replied. He raised his one remaining hand to Axil and beckoned her forward.

Axil’s eyes locked into his. The bottom of her jaw unhinged. Her mouth yawned open. And even though Noah was already planning to die, a shudder ran down his spine. He was not about to get his face eaten off by a crazed nutjob.

He extended his senses into his soul, and power met them. The immense strength of Sunder slammed into his body like the weight of a mountain. He pulled his lips back in a snarl. Black carved across his body, consuming his veins.

Axil blurred.

Noah dropped at the last second, shifting his weight and driving his injured shoulder into Axil’s stomach. Her momentum knocked the breath from her lungs in a pained wheeze. Bone crunched against Noah’s shoulder but he was nearly slammed to the floor form the force of her arrival. He wasn’t even sure whose bone it was that was breaking.

He swept Axil’s feet out from under her. She stumbled, managing to keep herself from falling, but in the brief instant where she was off balance, Noah struck. He struck her in the shoulder and spun the demoness around so her back was facing him. In the same motion, Noah wrapped his good arm around her neck and jerking it taut.

A loud crack echoed through the air. Axil’s head twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees so she was nose-to-nose with Noah. He could smell the carrion and rot on her breath, the blood splattered across her lips.

“Fuck that,” Noah said, releasing her neck and striking Axil in the jaw as her mouth opened to bite down on his face. Her head spun the rest of the circle, turning back to face away from him.

Axil turned her head back toward him.

Noah hit her chin again and spun her back around.

“Stop that!” Axil hissed. She bucked against Noah’s grip, but the Fragment of Self wasn’t held back by the activation of a Master Rune. Axil was fast, but Noah was stronger than she was. He clung to her back, refusing to let the demoness free of his grip. “Let me kill you!”

“No!” Noah yelled back.

Sunder thundered inside Noah’s body. Its power continued to pour through him, growing in intensity until it was a raging ocean. Noah’s grip tightened even further on Axil. His lips pulled apart.

Axil twisted turned to look at him once again. Her neck had definitely broken itself so many times at this point that her head was probably just spinning on a rotating point. A crack echoed, her jaw opened.

Then she hesitated. For an instant, something gave her pause. Her head tilted to the side. Words formed on her lips, but they didn’t get a chance to make it out.

Noah released Sunder.

Jet black power screamed out of him. His veins snapped back to normal as the magic poured into Axil’s body. A black point shimmered in the sky just above them.

“Turn around,” Noah said, his lips pulling back in a grin. “You’re going to want to see this.”

He drove his forehead into Axil’s nose at an angle. Her head was forced back to its normal position just in time to see a glistening onyx black spear take form above them. Axil’s body stiffened. She drew in a breath — whether it was disbelief, surprise, or awe, Noah never found out.

The spear crashed down.

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