Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 899: Not Quite.

Yoru hadn’t predicted this.

“Shit,” Yoru muttered, her hand clenched so tightly around her wine glass that it would have shattered had it not been made from pure diamond.

Og wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in the tournament. The demon hadn’t so much as made an appearance when she’d weighed the probabilities of the future before setting her plans into motion. His influence was nonexistent.

Even now, staring right at him as he spoke with Noah, Yoru couldn’t feel his weight at all. It was if he didn’t exist. Her probabilities remained entirely unchanged. Her magic told her that everything was exactly as it should have been. The future hadn’t changed at all.

They said that Noah spoke with the Apostles, just as he’d been meant to.

Alone.

But her eyes told an entirely different story. Og was right there. He was literally just a few dozen feet away from Yoru, and her magic couldn’t even comprehend the fact that he existed. No matter how she tried to measure the future, it didn’t change.

There would have been a time where she would have simply dismissed the fears. Being blind came with some benefits. She’d once thought that all that had been needed to see was the knowledge of the future. Anything that could not be accounted for by Moonlit Prophecy was simply too small of a variable to matter. It was a passing wind that would not stay the course of the ship that was the future. This was no longer that time.

Yoru trusted her eyes. Even without anything but her magical sight, she still trusted them.

She knew, without so much a shadow of a doubt, that Moonlit Prophecy had failed.

Og had some manner in which he could evade her magic. And that meant all of her analysis prior to this moment was completely worthless. She couldn’t trust Moonlit Prophecy any longer. Not with regard to this tournament. Not until she figured out how Og had tricked her.

And so Yoru did what her former self never would have even considered.

She canceled the flow of power flowing into the rune.

The flow of knowledge flowing from the rune evaporated. Her grasp on the weights that would pave the future evaporated, and then she stood armed with nothing more than the fading remnants of a future that would no longer come to pass.

I can’t leave Noah there. I set this up. Whatever Og is planning, it’s bad. For all of us. I don’t need Moonlit Prophecy to tell me that he’s an enemy.

It looked like she was going to have to take things into her own hands.

***

Noah’s back was stiff. A dozen different thoughts flashed through his mind all at once, but none of them had the chance to come into fruition. Something cold deep within his soul roared up in an instant, swallowing his thoughts and narrowing them down to a single point as everything unnecessary was shaved away.

Og had found him.

He’d managed to survive the end of Arbalest. And, worse, he’d somehow not just managed to track Noah down to the tournament but had gone so far as to recognize him within the masquerade. Noah didn’t spend the time to wonder how so many impossibilities had come to pass.

It didn’t matter.

The circumstances that had led to this point could be dealt with later. What mattered was that they had led to this point. Og knew who he was. And, worse, the Apostles were all around him. The last thing Noah needed was for an entire new group of his enemies to figure out his identity.

The Apostles know me as Noah. I never found out which of my names Og learned, if he even bothered getting past False Herald. Either way, I can’t allow him to reveal my identity under any circumstances.

But Noah hadn’t forgotten how their last fight had gone.

Og’s mastery of Chaos Magic was incredible. The first time they’d met, the demon had taken Noah’s strongest attack and tossed it aside like a scrap of paper. This wasn’t someone he could afford to play games with… and something told him that bluffing was probably well out of the picture at this point.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

There would be no way to get through a conversation without revealing far too much.

“Something wrong?” Og asked, his lips curled in amusement. “I can’t see your expression with that useless mask of yours, False Herald. I’m hurt. Is there a chance you aren’t pleased to see me after all this time? You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

“What’s this, now?” Kyyle asked, watching the two of them. Even if he hadn’t been wearing a wolf mask, he would have sounded like one. Noah could practically hear the saliva dripping from his words. “Are the two of you acquaintances?”

“We are,” Og said. The demon was clearly having fun with this. “And we go a ways back. Back far enough that I thought this good man here was dead. But who would have known that he was just wandering around the world of the living, too proud to let his old friends know that he survived. I have to say… it isn’t often that someone surprises me. I did really think you were dead, False Herald. I thought you didn’t have what it took. When did that change?”

The option buzzing in Noah’s head narrowed down. Paths toward the future evaporated. He wasn’t Yoru. Noah couldn’t weigh probabilities to determine what the next few moments would hold. But he didn’t need to. If this conversation went on any longer, everything he’d been working to build in Obsidia would collapse.

He couldn’t afford to have the Apostles on his ass. Not yet. Not before he’d found his people.

But it was clear that Og was here to try and screw with him. It didn’t seem like he was trying to kill Noah. Not yet, at least. There would have been no point for Og to reveal his presence if he had been. This was entirely just to put Noah on edge — or potentially to ensure that his identity ended up getting revealed to the Apostles.

And that really only left him one option.

“Yeah,” Noah said. “We’ve unfortunately met. There’s no lost love between us.”

“Now I’m truly hurt,” Og said. “And I can hear the anger in your voice. Is that directed at me? I should hope not. The only thing you should feel any distaste toward is your own weakness. You were lacking the last time we met. I do hope that things have changed since then.”

“They have,” Noah said, drawing on his runes. He clapped Og on the shoulder. “But you screwed up, Og. You should have finished me when you had the chance.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Og said with a savage smile. “Fighting words. Much better than the last time we met. But words only go so far. I suppose we’ll have to see just how much you have been sharpened, Noa—”

Noah extended his mind to the Beyond filling his soul. He drew on it, letting the faintest sliver of the pure white magic to slip free.

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Then he sent the Beyond flowing out from his hand and into Og.

As tiny as the amount of magic was, Noah knew all too well just what a tiny fragment of the Beyond was capable of — and he also knew that Og didn’t know. He wouldn’t be ready.

Noah released Concentrated Singularity.

The gravity just beneath Og intensified a hundredfold, abruptly yanking the demon forward. He staggered. His head accelerated down in a perfect arc to meet Noah’s knee, which had coincidentally been driving up right in the opposite direction.

A loud crack rang out. Og’s head snapped back and the force of the blow, empowered by the Rune of Self imbued into Noah, threw the demon back onto his feet and sent him stumbling backward. Blood dripped down his face as his eyes went wide in surprise.

And that meant he certainly wasn’t expecting what came next. Noah drove his hand forward in a blur, driving his palm straight into Og’s face. The demon’s teeth pierced into his flesh in several spikes of pain. Crackles of power raced down Noah’s fingers.

Then he drew from Volcanic Cataclysm.

Molten stone materialized directly within Og’s mouth, pouring down the demon’s throat and searing his body from within. Hot steam exploded past Noah’s fingertips as his magic carved through the domain. Og’s scream was swallowed by the furious, searing hiss of magma.

He threw himself back, his face partially melted from the sheer heat of the magic, clutching his chest. Fury and hatred twisted through the demon’s eyes. Then he blinked, collapsing in on himself and vanishing in a tiny mote of red light.

Even without the ability to sense domains, Noah recognized the magic.

Chaos.

Goddamn it. I didn’t kill him. How fucking tough is his inside? That should have completely melted him.

At least he’d stopped Og from mentioning his other name.

“Holy fuck,” Kyyle said, letting out a delighted, disbelieving laugh. “Incredible! I take it all back! This is exactly what I was fearing I wouldn’t find!”

“Shit,” one of the other Apostles muttered. “He just tried to kill someone in the middle of the banquet. We need to get out of her. Now. Before Vivian shows up.”

“Fuck that,” Kyyle said. “I want to watch. This is the most interesting mage we’ve seen during this whole trip.”

“We’re leaving,” another one snarled, and there was a note of command in his voice that couldn’t be ignored. “Now.”

“Damn,” Kyyle snarled. He thrust a finger at Noah. “You! Name!”

“Spider,” Noah replied coldly, letting his hand drop as he turned, already searching for a way out. People in the crowd were starting to turn toward them, but the fight had been too short. Nobody had caught what had happened out of anything more than the corner of their eyes.

“His name won’t matter,” an Apostle said. “He’s dead. Vivian is going to slaughter him. No fighting is allowed during the banquet. It’s not a tournament round.”

The Apostles were right. He needed to get the hell out of here before Vivian rolled up.

Damn. Where do I go? Can I reactivate this stupid badge to send me back to my room somehow?

A hand grabbed Noah’s wrist. His head snapped around. Then he e nearly choked on his own saliva.

Grasping his wrist was a wrinkled hand. A very familiar hand that Noah had seen dancing across the controls of the Transport Cannon so many times that it may as well have been seared into his mind.

“Tim?” Noah breathed in disbelief despite himself.

“No,” the old man replied, a faint sparkle in his dark eyes. “Not quite.”

Then a flash of shadow roared up from the ground to swallow Noah, and the masquerade was gone.