Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 715: Clonk

There was only one thing keeping Noah from deciding the whole situation was well and truly screwed beyond repair. Carmen hadn’t attacked him yet. Noah might have had a chance to hold his own against her for a short while if he’d been given any prep time. He hadn’t.

Someone as powerful as her easily could have killed him with a single move. And that meant he should have already been dead.

But he wasn’t.

And that meant she — unlike Alice, who had been off doing something else — had been paying attention during the meeting that Noah had had with all the Apostles. She knew that he was far from friends with Kyyle.

Fortunately, they seem to dislike each other enough that I highly doubt she’s about to blow my cover.

“Can I give you a hand with anything?” Noah asked, lifting his severed arm and giving it a weak waggle in the air.

“You do not belong here,” Carmen said in a flat tone. “You’re weak. I do not understand why Garina chose you, but I understand the need for self-preservation. It is clear that Kyyle blackmailed you. Stay out of this fight and you may live. Raise one finger against me and I will consider you an enemy — and treat you as such.”

He glanced down at the severed arm he was still holding, then pointedly lowered it. Things were looking bad. Even if Carmen wasn’t about to dispatch him on the spot, he couldn’t sit around and do nothing like she suggested.

The moment this contest ended, things would go from bad to worse. Kyyle was not going to be happy about the bullshit that Noah had been sowing. That was an acceptable price to pay if he actually got anything out of this.

But if he didn’t, the only thing he’d have accomplished would be making a new enemy.

Damn. This is unlucky as hell. Why couldn’t Alice have just attacked Carmen and left me to fiddle with the rune?

Then again, I’ve always made my own luck, haven’t I?

“Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?” Carmen asked. “It is not an answer. If you attempt to attack me when my back is turned, I will kill you. Just know that I take no pleasure in defeating those weaker than me.”

“Correction,” Noah said. He pointed his severed arm at Alice. “I’m not weak. I’m specialized.”

Carmen glanced to Alice, who didn’t seem to be having much luck breaking the rune free from its bindings. She didn’t seem very concerned about losing it. She just looked back to Noah and raised an eyebrow. “In what?”

Dying, mostly. Also various things that rhyme with dying.

“Mostly being annoying,” Noah replied. His brow furrowed as he tried to shift his soul. He still couldn’t sense Carmen. Her Soul Shaping must have been incredible. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pick up any traces of her presence before him.

“That does not seem like a particularly useful trait if you want to remain living for long. Get out of my way.”

You know what? Screw it.

“You’re much stronger than I am,” Noah said. “I’ll admit that. But — correct me if I’m wrong here — you’re pretty evenly matched with Alice. That’s the only reason you’ve even bothered to look in my direction. You don’t want to kill someone weaker than you who isn’t interfering in your fight, but you can’t afford to let me screw you over because even the slightest push might shift the scales, right?”

Carmen’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What of it? Are you threatening me?”

That’s a seriously impressive moral code. If I were in her shoes, feel like I’d probably have just killed me by now. Probably not a good thing to admit. Maybe I need to do a little self-reflection.

“No. Definitely not a threat. I’m not that stupid.” Noah raised his hand — which actually ended up raising both of them, as he was still clutching his severed limb. “And I take it you’d be equally displeased if I interfered in the other direction?”

“Stay out of our fight,” Carmen said. Her eyes bore into him with a burning intensity. “You’ve already lost an arm. That can be fixed with a suitably strong potion. Your life can’t. Return to challenge us when you actually have some strength to your name. Anything more would be throwing your purpose away.”

Noah suppressed a curse. Of course he’d found the one Apostle that somehow had a moral code. One that wouldn’t even let him bribe her with help to trade the Rank 6 rune for some Rank 5s in her collection.

His hands were tied. He got the feeling that Carmen wasn’t about to just give him the Rank 6 either. A moral code didn’t mean she was an idiot. Nobody was going to give power like that up, especially to someone they saw as so weak that they weren’t even a threat.

Noah’s eyes narrowed.

I’m not giving up that easy.

“Then grant me this much,” Noah said. “If I don’t at least try to stop you, I’m done for. It won’t matter if I survive this. Alice or Kyyle will kill me. Let me get one attack off on you so I can at least claim that I managed to do something… and to show me what the power I should be aiming to claim for myself is truly capable of.”

Carmen tilted her head to the side. A flicker of approval passed through her eyes. “Very well. Strike as you will, but do not attempt to delay me any longer or I will be forced to treat you as an enemy.”

“Thank you. I’m coming at you with all I’ve got,” Noah said. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, drinking deeply from Unstable Pandemonium and focusing on the heat aspects. Noah pulled power from the rune until it filled his body to the brim. Then his eyes opened once more to lock gazes with Carmen. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

This is going to hurt like shit.

Before Carmen could ask what Noah was talking about, he released all the magic at once and activated Combustion.

A spark caught in the air, borne of raw magic. It illuminated the surprise and confusion on Carmen’s face for a brief instant as it bloomed into a flame.

Then a deafening explosion ripped through the space before — and around — Noah. A thunderous roar of heat and force slammed into his chest and tore across his body. It picked him off his feet and launched him backward, tearing his severed arm from his grip and sending him tumbling across the ground like a smoldering doll.

Immense pain tore through Noah. He felt his flesh melting, felt the flames tearing across his clothes like a hungry beast digging into his still-living flesh. The smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils.

He barely even felt himself hit the ground and tumble across it. Noah was too focused on his soul. Even the slightest slip-up would make everything completely pointless. He had to do this perfectly. Noah shaped his soul as he tumbled, squeezing its shape into a new form even as he skidded to a stop on the rough ground. He could still feel fire licking across his body. Every instinct he had screamed at him to put it out. But he did no such thing.

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Noah just laid there and burned.

***

Garina’s feet landed on the ground of the cave, her lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure. Somnus stepped out from the portal behind her, the skeletal man’s ever-tired features even more weary looking than usual.

“Why must you do this, Garina?” Somnus asked, raising a hand to the portal behind him without averting his gaze from her once. It sliced shut without a sound. “You make everything so difficult.”

“That’s what I do best,” Garina replied with a smirk. “And it’s been a while since we’ve spoken. Do you really dislike our conversations that much?”

“No,” Somnus said. “But I have found that our conversations tend to coincide with particularly distasteful events rather frequently.”

Garina started off through the hall and Somnus hurried to keep up with her.

“That’s because you only come to talk when everything is on fire. Maybe swing by when the world isn’t actively trying to destroy itself or we aren’t trying to rip each other’s throats out,” Garina suggested.

“I will take your advice under consideration. Though I must say, your apprentice is more like you than I would have liked.” Somnus blew out a weary sigh.

“Is that so?” Garina’s lips twitched into a grin. “I’m sure he’s having the time of his life right about now.”

The two of them turned a corner through the long hall. Before them splayed a large meeting room, within which the other Apostles sat around a table to watch a shimmering three-dimensional hologram of the Spilling Grounds splayed out across it.

“You called?” Garina asked as she strode into the room moments later.

The Apostles seated around the table looked up to her.

“You’re late,” Kyyle said. “To your own trial.”

“There’s nothing to put on trial and you know it. I’ve spoken to the Prophet already. You’re just going to waste my time for a few hours and then send me off. If you’re lucky, you might even give me a slap on the ass on the way out,” Garina said, grabbing a chair and pulling it out. She glanced back at Somnus, who gave her an appreciative nod.

He moved to take the seat. Garina then spun the chair around and sat down on it herself, letting her arms rest on its back as she leaned forward with a lazy smile.

Somnus sighed. He grabbed the seat beside Garina and sat down. “Should have seen that one coming.”

“Works every time,” Garina said.

“Childish,” Vaugh said.

“It was a bit funny, though,” Audren said through a snort. “Much like your apprentice.”

Crone just glared at all of them.

“Funny is not the word I would use,” Kyyle said, his words terse with barely restrained anger.

“Speaking of which, where is he?” Garina asked. “I was told he’d be here.”

Kyyle’s eyes narrowed in anger. He jerked his chin toward the hologram. “You’ve chosen an apt time to arrive, Garina. Your idiot apprentice is right there.”

“You put him into the fucking Spilling Grounds? As a Rank 5?” Garina asked. She looked over to the hologram.

Alice and Carmen were locked in a furious fight. The two of them danced around the Spilling Grounds, pressure rolling off them with enough force to distort the hologram on the table with every strike they exchanged.

Carmen’s golden halberd cut through the sky like the heavens themselves had descended to cut down her opponents. But, every time it grew close to Alice, an invisible force slammed her strikes to a halt or screeched across her armor, leaving thin furrows in its wake.

The two of them were roughly evenly matched at the moment. This wasn’t the first time they’d fought. Garina had seen them go at it before. It had gone similarly the previous time she’d seen them fight.

And just like the previous time, Garina was certain Carmen would win.

But she wasn’t focused on Carmen or Alice.

Garina was far more interested in the smoldering one-armed corpse laying on the ground beside the pedestal bearing what seemed to be a caged Rank 6 Rune.

Oh, shit.

The body was so badly scorched that it was unrecognizable. Cheekbone shone through on its melted face and one of its eyes was gone, the bone of its eye socket and remaining scraps of flesh exposed to the air. Hair had melted to its skin and still burned around it like the halo of a fallen angel.

“He killed himself,” Kyyle said. It was clear he took no small amount of pleasure in that. “Serves the backstabbing little shit right.”

Already? That’s fast, even for him.

“He did,” Audren said. It was hard to tell if the large man was amused or impressed. “Tried to hit Carmen and blew himself up in the process.”

Goddamn it. Does that mean I came all the way out here for nothing? I wouldn’t have even bothered following Somnus if I didn’t think Noah was still alive. Guess he got fed up wasting time and—

The corpse twitched.

Garina blinked.

Was that just the projection flickering?

That idea was dashed a moment later when the fingers of the corpse’s burned hand slowly uncurled. The hand pressed down against the ground, arm trembling. And then it started to rise.

Alice and Carmen continued their dance throughout the Spilling Grounds, completely unaware of what was happening beside the pillar bearing their prize.

“He’s still alive?” Audren asked, his eyes growing wide as he leaned forward. A delighted smile crossed his features. “Look at that. Little bastard won’t give up that easily. But they’ll kill him the moment he makes a move toward them.”

“No, they won’t,” Vaugh muttered. “His Soul. It’s shaped. They’re too focused on their own fight. Neither of them can sense him.”

The corpse rose to one knee. Then, legs trembling, it pushed itself fully upright. It swayed for a moment. For a moment, Garina thought Noah’s body would pitch right back down to the ground. Moving in such a state felt like it should have been impossible.

There was no man left within the corpse. Before them was nothing more than the manifestation of an eminent end, clinging to its last faltering scraps of life. But those scraps were enough.

It took a stumbling step forward.

Then another.

And another.

“How is he still moving?” Kyyle demanded. He slammed a fist down on the table. “How is he alive?”

Crone said nothing, but his eyes spoke more than words ever could. There were memories within them. Memory — and fear. He hadn’t forgotten what Noah had shown him.

Garina grinned. She had no idea how Noah planned to actually take the Rune from the restraints binding it. It wasn’t going to be so easy as just grabbing it — but just the reactions the other Apostles were having were more than enough to have made this trip worth it.

The corpse’s stumbling advance finally came to a halt. It stood directly before the pillar bearing the caged rune. Half of its face was pulled back into a permanent smile, lips and cheek melted away to reveal the bone beneath.

A visage of death itself stared at the rune waiting before it.

Then it extended its one remaining hand.

Garina’s eyes went wide as she finally realized what Noah was doing. There was only an instant to react.

“That apprentice was mine to kill, Kyyle!” Garina yelled.

She yanked on her magic — and dove across the table. The other Apostle’s eyes only had an instant to widen before Garina’s fist, full of power from the rune that Decras had given her through the Prophet, slammed into his face.

The two of them slammed to the floor.

“Have you gone mad?” Kyyle snarled, shoving Garina away from him.

Garina didn’t even wait to see the results of her strike. She rolled to the side and shot to her feet, Decras’ magic still pouring out of her in a thick haze.

And, while all the other Apostles stared at her in confusion, Garina’s attention was fully directed down at the projection on the table. Toward Noah. Toward the tiniest flicker of Decras’ magic that seeped through into her senses — a flicker that was instantly overwhelmed by the magic she was using herself.

Even as Kyyle rose to his feet and sent his fist into her face with enough force to snap her head to the side and send her crashing back into the table behind her, blood splattering from her lips as one of her teeth cracked, Garina continued to stare at the projection.

“You want to fight?” Kyyle snarled. “Try me, Garina.”

Audren’s hands slammed down on their shoulders.

“Enough. No fights in the meeting room. We agreed. Release your magic, Garina.”

Garina didn’t even bother replying or wiping the blood trickling from her lip. She just looked down at Noah as his finger, almost gently, brushed across the caged rune. A black line sliced down through it.

All the power that had been stored within him vanished in an instant. Any traces of his magic evaporated, drops lost in the sea that Garina had summoned.

And in that instant, the Rank 6 Rune — the prize that all the Rank 6s within the Spilling Grounds fought over, bindings and all — shattered.