Noah’s return to Arbitage came not long after his fight with the Inquisitors. The Transport Cannon called him back to Arbitage, depositing him beside Tim amidst a veritable sea of sleeping demons.
Tim lifted a finger to his lips to signal for silence. He sent a glance around the room at all the sleeping demons, clearly wanting to make sure that they weren’t accidentally woken up. Noah didn’t blame him. He couldn’t imagine demons were typically very quiet guests. The old man was probably more than grateful for a moment of silence.
Noah exchanged a quiet nod with Tim before he made his way out of the tower, stepping carefully around the sleeping demons. He couldn’t help but feel like there weren’t as many of them as there should have been.
None of them are stupid enough to get themselves caught. They understand the stakes, so I’m sure they’re just off getting food with Lee or something like that. I’ll get worried if they aren’t back by tomorrow. For now, I just need to speak with Moxie — and Alexandra.
Though maybe Alexandra should come tomorrow. I really don’t need to be re-igniting any of those old rumors about Vermil.
He set a brisk pace for Moxie’s room without any delay. Thoughts swirled through his mind in a turbulent whirlwind. Noah barely even cared about the Inquisitors that had tried to attack him.
All he could think about was his pattern. He didn’t even fully understand what it was yet, but it had been enough to somehow rip power from another mage’s runes and feed it to his own. The implications of such an ability were astronomical.
You’d think I’d have gotten used to the traditionally established rules about runes not being all that accurate by now, but somehow I’m still surprised. But the more I think about it… the more I feel like I shouldn’t be.
Energy is energy. The runes are just a pattern through which that energy expresses itself. So, logically, there’s no reason for energy from one rune to not work with another. I’ve even seen that work during combinations, when I break one rune apart and use its power to fill a different one.
This is the same thing. Just a very different application of it.
Noah arrived at the T building and swept through the doors. Ideas and questions bloomed and mixed in his mind like some strange witch’s potion. Even if he could logically understand how the pattern had worked this particular time, he still didn’t know what it truly was — and that wasn’t even starting to address the full potential of what patterns could do.
If they can mess with other people’ s magic, then patterns are even more powerful than I originally thought. Alexandra is a genius. Mages can normally only control their own magic because the patterns are just… there. Part of their souls. But if you take that magic and imprint it on the external world with a pattern, then so many of the rules that everyone thinks are absolute about patterns are going to become wrong.
Noah had thought that discovering Flawless runes had been huge, but he was starting to think this might be even larger. It was practically a completely new application of magic… and he was willing to bet that not a single person in Arbitage had the slightest clue about it.
Formations were so restricted and feared that the only ones that practiced them followed rigid guidelines. That sort of approach would never let them reach the intuitive understanding that Alexandra had achieved. Even getting to the point that Noah had gotten to today would be impossible for them. From the information that Noah had gotten from the books on Formations, the few Formation Masters that did exist had the equivalent of a Swiss army multi-tool and were choosing to use the whole thing as a hammer.
He arrived at Moxie’s room, still trying to process everything that had happened today. Then he paused. There was faint noise coming from within the room. There were people talking within it — but he didn’t recognize either of the voices as Lee’s.
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Who visits us other than Lee? It isn’t Karina or Contessa either.
Noah tested the doorknob. It was unlocked. He cracked the door open, his domain rolling out before he could get anything more than a brief glimpse of the crack. There were two people in the room.
One was Moxie, which really wasn’t a surprise. But the other voice… it belonged to Alexandra.
Is it a private conversation or something? I probably shouldn’t butt in if it is… but standing around at the door would probably be even worse. Oh well.
He pushed the door fully open.
Alexandra sat at the desk, her back hunched and head cradled in her hands. Her posture was stiff and lines of strain creased what little of her face that Noah could make out. It looked like she was in pain.
Moxie stood beside her, a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Her gaze shot to Noah as soon as he stepped into the room.
“Noah. Good. I was just about to go looking for you. Alexandra’s in a bad state. You need to help, now.”
“What happened?” Noah asked, striding over to them. “Did someone attack you? Inquisitors?”
“No,” Alexandra said through gritted teeth. “Sorry. I know it’s late. I gave myself soul damage. A lot of it. I was going to wait until tomorrow to ask you to fix it, but—”
“Explanations later,” Noah said sharply. He swung his grimoire off its spot on his shoulder and set it down with a thunk as he drew on Unstable Pandemonium’s power. “Relax as much as you can. I’m going to use Mind magic to take a look at your soul.”
Alexandra let out a grunt of understanding and said nothing more. Even if she’d planned to, Noah wasn’t going to wait for it. He recognized the look on her features. Alexandra was resilient. Pain like what that could only come from an immense amount of soul damage.
What the hell happened to her? There’s no way she should have been able to take that much damage unless she literally ripped her last Rank 3 Rune right out of her soul. She’s not stupid enough to do that. Is this the result of an attack? Did somebody attack one of my students?
Anger welled in Noah’s chest, but he crushed it down. Emotions would do nothing right now. He sent his magic forward, letting it form a connection between his mind and Alexandra’s. Moxie looped her arms around his shoulders a moment before Noah felt his body go limp.
His soul leapt free from its fleshy prison and darkness swallowed his vision.
***
Alexandra’s soul bloomed around Noah in a swirl of gentle light. A cold wind rolled against his skin as his feet materialized on the top of the mountain that made up the base of her Mindspace.
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“Shit,” Noah breathed.
Enormous cracks split the sky, spilling empty white light out across the sky and over the mountain peak. They ran through the clouds and down into the base of the mountain like the web of a deranged spider.
Alexandra’s soul wasn’t about to split apart, but it wasn’t far from it either. This was some of the worst damage that Noah had seen in any soul other than his own. He didn’t even wait to see where Alexandra was.
He extended his senses toward the Fragment of Renewal instantly, drinking deeply from the rune’s power. Rivers of gentle energy welled within him and his runes shuddered as they pressed back against the Fragment of Renewal’s might.
Pearlescent energy swirled at Noah’s hands. He continued to drink from the rune, gathering as much of the healing magic as his body could handle before thrusting his hands forward.
Streams of power poured out from his hands and twisted through the air. They poured into the cracks riddling Alexandra’s Mindspace. Noah held the magic for as long as he could before the Master Rune finally pulled back and its flow of energy ground to a halt.
He let his hands drop and swayed, a wave of dizziness washing over him for a moment before he managed to shake it off.
The smallest of the cracks started to seal as Renewal’s power worked through them, but the larger ones would take longer. If Noah hadn’t been Rank 5, this might have required multiple applications of the Fragment of Renewal to fully fix.
Now, he was fairly sure that the one application would be sufficient. From the rate the large cracks were healing at, he was pretty sure they’d be closed up within the next few hours.
Noah blew out a relieved breath. Alexandra wasn’t going to die — but the question still remained.
“What the hell happened?” Noah asked, finally turning to search for Alexandra.
She stood behind him, a hand pressed against her skull and a fading grimace on her lips. But her gaze wasn’t directed at Noah. It was focused on a spot right in front of him.
Noah turned back to see what she was looking at. And then he froze, his eyes widening in surprise.
Imbued into the surface the mountain was a rune whose pattern worked throughout the stone surrounding it, delving so deep that it may as well have been one with her.
Fragment of Alexandra
She’d managed to create a Fragment of Self — and without the use of Sunder.