Return of the Runebound Professor

It was nearly a minute before Noah finally got control of himself again. Lee had backed all the way out of the bathroom and had her back pressed to the wall. The hair on her body stuck up unnaturally, like she was a hedgehog.

Noah wiped the hysterical mirth from his eyes and shook his head, straightening up and letting out a slow sigh, barely pushing down the urge to start laughing again.

The demon didn’t somehow bind me to this body. I’m not cursed, and the power doesn’t even belong to someone else anymore. It’s all my Master Rune.

“Sorry about that. You just gave me the answer to something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I grew up in a place with very little information about Runes.” Noah looked into the mirror and grimaced. His small fit had made his eyes completely red. “Oh well.”

Lee watched him through narrow eyes.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that? I was just laughing.”

“It was… unsettling,” Lee replied. “You didn’t smell right.”

“Smell? You were sniffing me while I was laughing? And you have the audacity to be judgmental?”

“Most humans are prey. You already smelled off,” Lee said, pressing her lips together as she searched for the right words. “A mixture of confidence and vulnerability. It didn’t make sense.”

Noah shook his head. “Never mind. I already promised not to poke too deeply into your passings as long as you keep your end of the deal up. You might want to get control of your hair, though. You look like a pencil.”

Lee flicked her head to the side and her hair, which had still been standing straight up, pointed at the ceiling, flopped down around her shoulders. She fluffed it out. “Hair is always difficult to make properly.”

“Noted. Maybe we’ll get you a hat,” Noah said. He headed over to his desk and grabbed his notes, arranging them before him as he sat down. Noah picked his quill up and quickly started to write, filling in the gaps he’d left behind.

“What’s that?” Lee asked.

“Notes.”

“You write in code? You didn’t strike me as the type.”

Noah paused to dip his quill in the ink well. He glanced up at Lee. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lee didn’t respond. Noah shook his head and went back to writing. He’d never quite gotten used to rushing his work after coming out of the afterlife, so he was still writing by the time the sun started to rise.

“How much longer are you going to do that?” Lee asked with a groan. “Come on. I’m bored.”

Noah set his quill back in its spot and blew on the papers before laying them out on his desk to let them properly dry. He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “I’m done. We’re going to need to make a stop before we go shopping.”

“Oh?”

“There’s someone I need to introduce you to. Before I start passing you off as a teacher, I’m going to need to make sure that doesn’t somehow get me into trouble. If we want things to work safely, I’ll need to share your secret with her. Otherwise, I don’t think I can pull this off.”

Lee pursed her lips, then nodded.

Noah pushed back from the chair and rose to his feet. Lee trailed after him as he headed out the door, only pausing to lock it behind them. They made their way down the hall and up to Moxie’s room, where Noah rapped on the door several times.

It was silent. He peered out the window in the hallway. The sun was already rising. Well, he could see a little bit of its orange hue just poking over the horizon.

That counts as rising, right?

There was a loud thump from within Moxie’s room. Noah turned back to her door as it creaked open, revealing a very messy-haired and more than mildly displeased Moxie.

“What?” Moxie asked irritably. “Did something happen?”

“Something like that,” Noah replied. “If you’re going to be shadowing my classes, this is going to affect you as well. I need some rules clarified. Did I show up too early?”

Moxie squinted past Noah. “It can’t even be a few hours into the morning. The sun is probably still asleep itself.”

“So… too early?”

Moxie sighed. She stepped back and opened the door. “Come in.”

Noah stepped inside and Lee followed him. Moxie wandered over to her bed and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, covering a yawn. She turned back toward them and froze as her eyes landed on Lee.

“Who is that?”

“The rules I need clarified.”

“That is a child.”

“I am not!” Lee snapped. “What’s wrong with how I look? I liked this appearance.”

“Wrong? There’s nothing wrong,” Moxie snapped. “Seriously, Vermil? What, did you decide that your reputation was getting repaired too quickly?”

“Hold on.” Noah raised his hands in the air. “You know me better than that. This is a bloodthirsty killer.”

Lee glared at Noah. “That’s just cold.”

Noah shrugged. “Sorry. Not the best description, but this is the person I mentioned. I’m not about to be the idiot that gets into a really poor situation because I didn’t explain everything beforehand and then has to balance fighting off some bigger threat with keeping his allies from killing each other.”

Moxie and Lee stared at him.

“That was very, very specific,” Moxie said.

“I used to read a lot,” Noah said. He pushed Moxie’s door shut with his heel. “Moxie, this is Lee. She’s a Skinwalker.”

Moxie snorted. “Vermil, if you woke me up this early in the morning purely to play the worst prank I’ve ever seen on me, I will drive my foot so far up your ass that it never sees the light of day again.”

“Lee, can you expedite this for me?”

Lee scrunched her nose in annoyance. She hunched over and groaned, her body bubbling and twisting. It ballooned outward, gaining mass and transforming into a perfect copy of Noah. Lee straightened back up.

“Hello.”

“Shit,” Moxie breathed, reaching for a metal band on her dresser as her eyes widened. She pressed it onto her wrist and it snapped shut. A green hue washed over her bedclothes. “Vermil. Why do you have a Skinwalker in my room? And why are you friendly with it?”

“Because she’s working with me. She swore a Rune Oath.”

“A Skinwalker? You got a Skinwalker to agree to a Rune Oath? First – how? Second? Why? You’re insane.”

“That,” Lee replied, her lips stretching into a cold smile, “is not your concern.”

“Yes,” Noah said, flicking Lee in the back of the head, “it is. Don’t do that coy shit with Moxie, please. I’m doing enough for both of us. We need her help. And Moxie, what do you mean by why? It’s just an oath she can’t break, isn’t it?”

“A Rune Oath takes something from both parties,” Moxie said, pressing her lips together. “You’re literally binding your Runes and souls together. If someone kills the Skinwalker now, your Runes will take damage. Nothing permanent, but more than enough to be a step beyond an inconvenience. Take too many Rune Oaths, you’ll pull your own soul apart. And, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Skinwalkers don’t tend to live long in human societies. The same obviously goes in the other direction, though.”

Ah. Damn. Well, that explains why people don’t just go around swearing Rune Oaths willy nilly. Runes are part of my soul, not my body, so she shouldn’t be negatively affected by my deaths since the runes are still perfectly fine.

Lee let her shoulders slump and sighed. “Every day, I regret this even more. First you make me sit around for two weeks. Then you won’t even let me have fun. Are you even going to take me shopping?”

Moxie’s hands slowly lowered. She looked from Noah to Lee. Then she tilted her head. Noah recognized that look – he was starting to get used to it. It was the one Moxie made right before she figured out something he wasn’t quite about to tell her.

“This was your backup plan for the exam?”

“Worked like a charm.”

Moxie ran a hand through her hair. It looked like she couldn’t tell if she was supposed to be surprised, impressed, or disappointed. In the end, she managed a little bit of all three.

“Okay. Right. You’re sure you swore a Rune Oath?”

Lee and Noah nodded.

“No more eating humans for me,” Lee promised. “Only large animals that won’t be noticed when they go missing.”

Moxie cocked an eyebrow. Noah cleared his throat.

“It’s a work in progress. She’s on our side, though.”

Moxie considered Noah for a moment, then gave him a small nod. “If you say so. I can see why you woke me up so early, though. You need to find a way to hide her?”

“No. I’m going to have Lee help teach my class.”

Moxie turned without a word, walking over to a shelf and pulling a crystal bottle full of a dark liquid down. She grabbed a glass and poured herself a cup, then tipped it back and drank the whole thing in one shot. A shudder ran down her back and she opened her eyes again, all traces of sleepiness gone.

“Can it count as day drinking if the sun isn’t up yet?” Noah asked.

“This isn’t alcohol.” Moxie wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Though I’m kind of wishing it was. It’s a potion to help me wake up. I’m not dealing with this half asleep. Now, say that again. You want the Skinwalker to teach your students?”

“She’s very talented at physical combat. That’s just as important to fighting as magic is.”

Moxie frowned. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Dodging attacks seems pretty damn important to me. And I’d like to point out that just about every victory I’ve had over other mages has involved my fist and their nose meeting in a very wet, messy kiss.”

Moxie stepped into her closet and pulled the door closed behind her.

“You might have a point there. There are a few mages that consider physical prowess an important part of growing their control over their Runes, but most of us tend to gravitate toward just getting more powerful Runes to work with. A punch isn’t going to do you much good when someone can bring a mountain down on top of you.”

“Depends how hard I can punch.” Noah kept a straight face for a moment, then laughed. “I’ll be honest, a lot of what I’ve seen from other mages has been arrogance and airs of superiority. Maybe when I’m strong enough to kill things with a glance it won’t matter how fast I can do a hundred crunches, but especially for students that aren’t using Shields, it’s vital that they learn how to fight without getting hit.”

And I’d like to get a bit better at it as well. Either that or I start carrying a bomb around to blow myself up and keep any monkeys from eating me after I die.

“Interesting,” Moxie said. “But you’ve got a point. Somehow, you’ve shocked me enough that I forgot you’re teaching them to fight naked. Fine. What exactly do you need my help with?”

“Mostly Arbitage itself. Am I going to get in trouble for introducing someone that isn’t an official teacher to the students?”

Moxie rubbed her neck. “If your students were part of noble families, probably. But… as it stands, for an issue to rise up, someone in your class would need to place a complaint. And I don’t think that’s going to happen. Arbitage doesn’t care what happens to Todd or Isabel either. You should be good to go.”

“That’s simultaneously depressing and great news,” Noah said. “Great. One more question. How invested are you in working with me?”

“Working is a bit of a stretch. A temporary partnership–” Moxie started, then sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. I’m too curious at this point. What do you want?”

“I promised Lee I’d take her shopping for clothes. She’s been looking forward to that. Unfortunately, I find myself unaware of where to go for that kind of thing. Care to save us some time?”

“I want to see everything. I’ve only heard stories,” Lee said. “You call them Skinwalkers, but you also walk around wearing other animal’s skins. Let’s start with that.”

“Yeah, I know some places that are probably unfortunate enough to be open already.” Moxie poured herself another shot of her potion and downed it. She put the bottle back on the shelf before snorting and muttering to herself under her breath. “Shopping with a Skinwalker. Who would have thought.”