Return of the Runebound Professor

Noah turned in a slow circle, his eyes flicking at every faint rustle of wind through the cracked trees. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths and he held his hand before his chest, his teeth bared.

“Come on,” Noah snarled. “Where are you?”

A powerful blow slammed into Noah’s back and he staggered forward. He staggered to the side, but too slowly to avoid a clawed hand as it raked across his back. Noah screamed and fell to the ground, desperately twisting around to see the monkey lunging to rip his face off.

Magic swirled and a blade of wind caught the monster in the neck. Its corpse slammed into Noah, knocking him to the ground. The wounds on his back screamed in pain and Noah snarled, shoving the creature off him.

 Numbness crept along his body. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t work properly. He slipped in the growing pool of his and the monster’s blood on the scorched ground and fell back with a groan.

With a feeble, shaking hand, Noah grabbed his makeshift dagger. He dragged himself back across the ground with it, pushing himself against a tree to prop himself up. Every breath came shallower than the last, but Noah kept his dagger raised before him.

“One more,” Noah wheezed. “Come on.”

Seconds ticked by and Noah’s hand dipped. The world grew darker and his vision narrowed to a pinpoint. Strength left Noah’s limbs. His last action was to toss his dagger as hard as he could – which, at this point, was just half a dozen feet away from him.

A tiny flicker of motion in the edge of his fading eyes was the last thing he saw before he slipped off.

Noah’s soul peeled away from the body, lifting into the air. He stared down at the bloodied corpse beneath him and scrunched his nose. The final monkey was behind a tree, staring warily at his body.

“Well, not a bad run by any means. A definite improvement over the previous one. And – oh, goddamn it. Please stop that. Don’t eat my face, that’s disgusting.”

The monkey couldn’t hear him. And, even if it could, Noah suspected that his request would have fallen on deaf ears.

Greyish black energy wound around his neck. Noah didn’t even blink as it yanked him away.

An instant later, he sat up with a ragged gasp. His head pounded with a violent headache, and the gourd rested on the ground beside him. Noah pushed himself upright using the trunk of the tree, leaving his gourd on the ground.

He instinctively tried to call on his magic, but it was for naught. The runes were completely inaccessible for him, and judging by previous experience, they’d remain that way for several hours.

Noah massaged his temple and trudged into the forest in the direction of his corpse. Even if he didn’t have magic, he needed to get his clothes back or he’d be returning to Arbitage with everything on display.

He repressed a pained chuckle.

That’s one way to get fired.

Several minutes later, Noah stopped walking. Loud crunches came from where he’d died, and he didn’t need to use much imagination to know what they were. Noah crept forward, watching the ground to make sure he didn’t step on anything too loud.

Luckily, the monkey seemed distracted with what it likely assumed to be the prize of its patience. It was hunched over his body, letting out faint hoots as it ripped him apart. Noah’s dagger rested on the ground where he’d thrown it.

Moving as quietly as he could, Noah walked up to the dagger. He scooped it off the ground and the monkey paused, looking up from its meal as its ears finally picked up on the noise.

It was too late. Noah plunged the blade into its ear, twisting it savagely before ripping it out and slamming it into the base of the monster’s skull. The sharp claw bit through the dense hair and the flesh beneath it.

The monkey slumped, dead before it even got a glance at him. Noah shoved it to the side and grabbed his clothes from his corpse, doing his best not to look at his now mangled face. He ignored the blood soaking into his shirt and pants as he pulled them on and turned, heading away without a second glance.

He collected his gourd, still fighting the violent headache pounding in his skull, and climbed into a tree to wait for his magic to return. Despite the pain rippling through his body and the fog in his mind, Noah’s heart thumped with excitement. He was starting to really enjoy this.