Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 901: Little surprise

Red-hot pain seared through Og’s mind.

He tumbled forward, falling face-first on cold stone. His insides were aflame. He couldn’t even scream. His vocal cords were gone — his voice melted into his lungs. Stone veins ran through him, driving into his flesh from within with every breath he tried and failed to take.

Agony gripped his entire form. He couldn’t even call on his magic. Darkness beat on the walls of his vision and threatened to swallow everything whole. His body was desperate. For air. For relief. For life.

It found none of it. Even as he clawed at his chest, claws digging gouges into his flesh in desperate attempt to tear the solidified stone free from where it had entombed itself within him, the only thoughts within his mind were those of primal panic.

And then a hand drove into his back.

The world shattered.

Fragments of reality flashed past Og’s vision.

He felt himself yanked back, as if by a thread attached between his shoulder blades. The pain evaporated. The panic stopped. The fear extinguished.

For a brief instant, there was nothing at all.

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t feel. He couldn’t even think.

In that instant, to have claimed that Og existed might have been a step beyond reality. He was nothing more than a living memory. The fading echo of a being that had once existed, split apart into a thousand different pieces of a puzzle that could never have existed had even one of them been missing.

His eyes were sightless, but the saw death.

A hand extended toward him, its palm bigger than the world, fingers closing in around him like the bars of a cell, and he was already within its grasp.

Then there was nothing but red.

Reality slammed back into its place.

And with it came the pain and the fear.

Og screamed. He pulled in on himself, dragging in a ragged, desperate gasp of air. The hand was still there. It was closing in around him. The end was coming. It was — no. It was already here. It was here. It was everywhere.

He was dead.

“No!” Og screamed, thrashing. “No! Leave me be!”

His hand struck stone. A flicker of pain danced down his knuckles. Og’s conniption halted.

He could breathe.

The agony was gone. His lungs were no longer melted, his face no longer warped.

Og was alive.

He stayed there for a moment, his heart thundering in his chest, freezing cold sweat soaking his back and stone pressing into his side.

A dream?

Og swallowed. His mouth was dry. Bone dry. Like it had never been graced by a drop of water in his entire life. He swallowed, just to remind himself that he could. His palm pressed against the stone. Then, slowly, he rose. Every single one of his limbs still shook.

He could still feel the end. The fingers hung over him, the palm rested beneath. The hand of death had been so close. So close to closing entirely. But something had stayed the fingers.

His eyes lifted.

Orlen sat before him.

“Are you quite done?” Orlen asked.

Og pressed a hand to his chest. He could feel his heart striking against his ribcage, still trying to break free from its bindings. The furrows he’d torn into himself were gone.

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Orlen had remade him.

“I made it,” Og breathed.

“In a manner of speaking,” Orlen replied. His gaze was distant. “You forced my hand, Og. I do not have time to be cleaning up your mistakes. It is not yet time for me to be here. I must be elsewhere. You have no idea what you risk in your incompetence.”

“Forgive me,” Og said. He still couldn’t quite calm his heart. His words felt shaky, those of a trembling child rather than a warrior. “I — I could not expect it. I was not prepared. The False Herald. He—”

“Og,” Orlen said. “I do not care for your excuses. You will do better. I cannot save you again.”

And then Orlen was gone.

The man still sat in the chair, but he was no longer present. His attention was everywhere and nowhere, scattered through the cosmos once again.

Og stood in silence for several long seconds. The only sound in the room was that of his labored breathing. His nails dug so sharply into his palms that they drew blood.

It hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a vision.

The False Herald had nearly killed him. He’d torn through Og’s domain like it was nothing but paper and had been just instants from melting him into a puddle in the middle of Vivian’s banquet hall — and if Orlen hadn’t remade him, that would have been the end of it.

When did that man become so powerful? And what magic was that? He tore my domain away like it was nothing. I’ve never seen anything like that before. It wasn’t Chaos magic. It was something else entirely.

Og wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. He looked down at his hand. Then his fingers clenched into a fist. He’d nearly been killed. By a False Herald, of all things. Worse… he hadn’t even figured out just how strong the man had become.

The False Herald had nearly killed him with little more than a passing thought and a single blow. An uneasy air settled in around Og.

Even if he was prepared next time. Even if he came knowing what the False Herald was capable of… he didn’t know what method had been used to destroy his domain. And if he didn’t know what it was, then he had no way to prevent it. And if he couldn’t prevent it…

Og was a dead man walking.

***

Noah turned on his heel just in time to see the portal he’d been shoved through vanish. He was in a plain room, and standing directly across from him with a wry smile plastered across his kind features was Tim.

At least — it looked like Tim. That ended at his eyes. They were pitch black, two empty voids of shadow with no end.

“Noah,” Tim said in a voice that was not his. “It’s been a while. You’ve grown a lot since the last time we’ve met. I have to say, this isn’t how I saw our reunion going.”

Noah recognized that voice. He stared in disbelief for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Sievan. Why are you pretending to be Tim?”

“Pretending?” Tim’s head tilted to the side. Then his eyes fluttered, rolling back into his head. The darkness drained away from them in an instant. There was a sudden shift in his demeanor, and the grin on his lips grew far more relaxed. “Noah! It’s great to see you again, my good man! You’ll have to excuse me. I’m letting Sievan control things for the moment, but we must get together over a cup of tea. I have so much to ask you!”

And then the darkness in Tim’s eyes returned.

“What have you done?” Noah asked sharply. “Why are you in Tim’s body?”

“A mutually beneficial agreement,” Sievan replied. He raised his hands. “Do not worry. I would not harm the mortal.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Noah replied. “But that doesn’t change my question. What’s going on? I — thank you for the save, by the way. Good timing on that.”

“You are welcome,” Sievan replied. “And I am doing it because Tim paid me a visit and we realized that a partnership would be useful for both of us. It has been too long since I left the Damned Plains and took a look around the Mortal Plane. And Tim — well, a little extra firepower can never go wrong. We have been discussing a great deal of rune theory. He is a very insightful man.”

“So he is,” Noah allowed. He couldn’t keep the smile from crawling across his face. Tim was alive. In good health, too. He had no damn idea how Tim had somehow ended up with Sievan, but it barely even mattered. One more of his people had made it. A laugh slipped free from Noah’s lips. “I can’t say how good it is to see both of you.”

“Likewise,” Sievan said. “Though I can say it seem you haven’t grown any less rash from the last time we met.”

“Trust me,” Noah said. “That bastard had it coming. My only regret is that he got out. If I could have killed him then and there, we’d all have been better off for it.”

“I should suspect so,” Seven said. “I would imagine you wouldn’t act brashly with so much at stake.”

“I wouldn’t,” Noah said, his amusement falling away as his features hardened. “Before I go any further, where are we? Should we expect company?”

“No,” Sievan said. “We are safe. Vivian is not powerful enough to follow me here. Not alone, and not without a scene that she can ill afford. When the banquet ends, your badge will still send you back to your room as normal. At least for the time being, you are not in any danger.”

“Good,” Noah said, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Gods. What a shitshow. I can’t say this is how I saw things going. Have you met anyone else? Are any of my students—”

“Yes,” Sievan said. “I have.”

Noah’s paused for a moment.

Then his eyes narrowed.

“Yoru?”

“Yoru,” Sievan confirmed.

Noah pinched the bridge of his nose.

Whatever her plan is… I don’t know how the hell this gets anywhere close to accomplishing it.

“Of course,” Noah said.

“She’s doing her best,” Sievan said. “Nobody gets things right on the first try. It’s better than she used to be.”

“So long as she has a good reason for it. A damn good one,” Noah said. He shook his head. “But as much as I’d like to spend time just chatting, if we’ve got a few quiet moments, there’s something I need to know — and I don’t know when the next time I’ll get the opportunity to ask will be.”

“I will answer what I can,” Sievan replied. “What is it?”

“What do the Truthseekers actually want?” Noah asked. “And who is Orlen?”