Return of the Runebound Professor

As soon as Sticky voiced her assent to his request, Noah called upon Empty Proliferation. The Mind rune might have been made to defend himself against Wizen and other mind mages, but it also served a very useful second purpose of letting him knock on the figurative door of someone else’s mindspace.

The Rune was nowhere near as effective as a Mind Meld Potion. The maximum amount of time Noah could keep it going was probably no more than ten minutes if his target wasn’t actively trying to shunt him out of their mind, but it was free — and he didn’t have to carry a bunch of vials around with him everywhere he went.

His mind prickled as it brushed against Sticky’s, but her soul was so weak that there was almost no delay before his consciousness entered the small demon’s mind.

Color bloomed all around him. Gentle blue-green water spilled across the ground and formed into a deep ocean, as smooth as a mirror and still as a painting. Ripples of energy rolled out as Noah’s feet alighted upon its surface.

Gentle light shone overhead, illuminating the cloudless sky. There didn’t appear to be any source for it. The light was simply there. It warmed Noah’s skin and wrapped around his body like a comforting blanket.

In summary, it was the least demon-like soul that Noah had ever seen. Even his own soul felt like it fit the bill better than hers. Then again, given what Sticky was, perhaps this was the most demon-like soul that he’d ever seen.

Noah’s neck craned back. There wasn’t a single rune floating anywhere. Her soul was completely and utterly empty. He’d known that to be the case, but it still felt odd. Incomplete.

This is… odd. Shouldn’t Weave be here somewhere? Wizen definitely didn’t keep it. I saw the rune in Sticky’s eyes.

Now isn’t the time to worry about it. Perhaps it managed to hide itself somehow.

His eyes lowered back to the surface of the sea.

Sticky stood across from him, looking up with wide, nervous eyes. Her hands were tight at her sides. She wanted to hope, but she couldn’t let herself do it. Not yet — but Noah would fix that.

“What do I have to do?” Sticky asked.

“For now? Just stand around while I have a look at you,” Noah replied. His senses crawled across the ocean and reached into the sky.

There was a pattern hidden somewhere within this still world. It wasn’t a question of if it existed. Even human souls were patterns. Noah had seen that in his own soul, even if it didn’t fully qualify as a normal mortal one anymore.

He hadn’t even realized the pattern existed before he’d managed to harness a tiny portion of that pattern to mistakenly make his Fragment of Self. But now he did — and in theory, this was even easier than a human soul.

Demons were their runes. Sticky existed. And, thus, she had a rune that represented her. Noah just had to find it and carve a little chunk free with Sunder.

And so he searched.

Sticky watched on quietly.

Noah’s domain swept through Sticky’s mind in pursuit of magic. Seconds ticked by and turned to a minute. His mind and his logic warred. To his magic, there was nothing. Sticky’s soul appeared barren and empty.

It seemed as if there was nothing there, but Noah didn’t believe that for a second. There was a pattern. Everything had a pattern. Sticky was not so great an anomaly that she could somehow break every single law of magic that Noah had learned since he’d arrived in Arbitage.

I just need to figure out where it’s hidden. It has to be here somewhere. Maybe buried deep within the ocean, or hidden somewhere within the sky? She’s tricky. I’ll give her that. But there’s a rune here somewhere, and I’m not leaving until—

And then he saw a flicker

Noah’s eyes widened. He blinked several times as his mind adjusted. Noah banished his domain, pulling the magic back and looking on with only his eyes. He’d been looking at her soul the wrong way.

A laugh nearly slipped from his lips.

The pattern was right in front of him, in plain view. It wasn’t hidden somewhere. The pattern was the stillness of the ocean. It was the endless depths below and the warm sky above. Every single piece of the soul around him was the pattern that Noah sought.

“Fascinating,” Noah breathed. “There it is.”

“What is?” Sticky asked. “Did you find something? Where is it?”

“Yes. I found what I was looking for, and it’s everywhere,” Noah replied, casting his hands out. “All around us. Every single thing.”

Sticky’s brow furrowed. “I don’t get it.”

“You will.” Noah chuckled. He lifted a hand, veins of black carving beneath his skin as he drew on the faintest trickle of Sunder’s power. He had no desire to accidentally split Sticky’s soul straight down the middle and accidentally kill her.

All he needed to do was to take a tiny sliver.

“Is this going to hurt?” Sticky asked nervously.

“Not at all,” Noah replied with a smile. “This is nothing more than a little haircut.”

He pressed his palm into the still ocean beneath his feet. The tiny amount of power he’d gathered in Sunder, slipped out, guided by his intent as it pierced into Sticky’s soul. His brow creased in concentration. Despite the amount of power he was using, this was far from a completely simple task.

Sunder was a razor-sharp scalpel. It would cut through anything in its path if he let it, but he wasn’t trying to carve Sticky’s soul apart at the seams.

It was actually harder to guide the tiny amount of power he used from the Rune than it would have been to flood it with energy and just demolish everything in his path — but Noah had been using Sunder for quite some time now.

The Master Rune was no longer foreign to him. Even though he’d yet to unlock the full extent of Sunder’s strength, Noah could use every bit that he could access near perfectly. It was an extension of his will.

A tiny black line sliced into the bottom of Sticky’s soul, cutting into the still water and parting it like a block of Jell-O. Black threads stretched out between the two halves of the ground. Beneath them, a fragment of white void shimmered, marking a minor amount of soul damage.

Noah smiled at the sight.

There we go. I was starting to wonder if she was even a demon at all. Still the same race at the core, but their souls were never meant to be a goopy sea of corrupted emotion.

Noah reached into the darkness and extended his will along with his hand. Tingles prickled against his palm as energy rose up from the cut. He gathered it into a tiny ball of shimmering white light, then turned to Sticky and extended his palm.

“This is your energy. It’s already part of your soul. You just have to condense it down into a Rune.”

“How?” Sticky asked, shifting from foot to foot nervously and swallowing. “I’ve never done something like that. I didn’t know you could make runes.”

Ah, shit. Forgot about that bit.

“You need three things to make a Rune,” Noah said. “Energy, intent, and an inciting event — Something to kick the combination off. This is the energy. For the intent, just focus on yourself. Who you want to be.”Nôv(el)B\\jnn

“What about the last thing?”

Noah gestured around them. “That’s you, Sticky. Demons are a race of desire. Your souls and bodies are completely connected. You don’t need an external event. That’s the piece I was missing for so long. I was trying to figure out how a demon could make a Fragment of Self. But demons are desire. What moment could be more of an event for your kind than the deepest longing to become something?”

“I… don’t understand.”

“That’s fine. You don’t have to understand. I know you’re content with how things are. But is this really all you want? There’s nothing more in life you want than to die?”

Sticky stared up at him. At the energy in Noah’s outstretched palm. She swallowed.

“No. I don’t want to die.”

“Then change your fate.”

The demon’s features set. She extended her hand toward Noah.

Traces of light lit around Sticky’s fingertips. The power intensified and buzzed around her palm like a hive of angry bees. Flickers of magic slipped away from the energy Noah had gathered from Sticky’s soul and transformed into streamers of light that wove around her fingers like gray threads.

Sticky’s hands clenched into fists. The rest of the energy ripped away from Noah and gathered around her. A tiny prickle of pressure pushed into Noah. Two lines of gray light sliced into the air.

The strokes of a rune. They burned in the air, buzzing with silent power. More strokes followed after, swirling out to begin taking the shape of a rune. Wind howled past Noah and gathered around the small demon in a vortex.

Tremors shook Sticky’s hands as she fought to control the power. It might have only been a Rank 1 Rune, but she’d never had a rune to call upon before.

She needs a push.

“Say it,” Noah yelled over the growing howl. “What do you want? If you could have anything in this world, what would you choose?”

Sticky’s hands clenched.

The wind stopped.

“I want to live.”

The final stroke of the rune carved through the air.

Yes!

A brilliant flash of gray lit the small demon’s mindspace.

Noah staggered back, blinded, as a wave of crackling energy rolled past him. It buzzed against his skin and curled through his hair like an electric current. He raised a hand, blinking furiously and squinting through his fingers until his vision returned.

And then he saw it.

Noah’s face split apart in a smile.

Floating between him and the small demoness was a small gray Rune — and he could read it perfectly.

Fragment of Sticky