Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 565: Afterlife

Gray light from the newly made Rune shimmered across Sticky’s mindspace. It reflected off the water and faded into the warm sky, slowly fading away as the demon’s soul calmed down. Strands of black reached up from within Sticky’s mindspace, wrapping around the rune in attempt to pull it back into her greater soul, but it had been split apart until she re-imbued it.

The air was silent for several long seconds. Neither Noah nor Sticky spoke. They both just stared at the small Rank 1 Rune that floated between them.

“A Rune,” Sticky breathed, staring at her creation with wide-eyed awe. She reached out toward it, then caught herself before her fingers could brush across its surface. “I made this?”

“All you,” Noah confirmed. He could feel the power in Empty Proliferation starting to erode. He didn’t have much time left, but there would be more than enough for the rest of what he needed to accomplish. “How are you feeling?”

“…fine,” Sticky said after a moment of hesitation. She swallowed. “Am I supposed to feel different? Did something go wrong?”

“No,” Noah said with a chuckle. “If anything, you might have felt a little worse because of the soul damage I gave you removing a chunk of energy to work with. I’ll get that patched up soon enough. There’s only one thing left that you’ll have to do.”

Sticky blinked. “There’s more? What is it?”

“You need to finish the bridge,” Noah replied. He nodded to the rune. “That’s a representation of yourself, but it belongs with the rest of the whole. Demons already have souls that are very connected to their bodies, but you still need to bridge that gap completely. Imbuing your own body with the Fragment of Self will solidify it within you and keep that slot open for other runes.”

“Demon Runes?”

“No,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “You don’t need those anymore. Demon Runes are all built off fragments of somebody called Decras. They’re flawed, and they’re part of the reason demons consume emotions.”

“So the Demon Runes cause everything? Demons are just… humans without them?”

“Not at all. Demons are demons. You have an incredible connection between your soul and your body. That will never change.”

“I’m… still confused. I want to understand, but I don’t.” Sticky’s brow furrowed. “There’s still a flaw in us, then?”

“No. The issue is gone now that you’ve created that rune,” Noah said with a grin. “Now, demons are just different. It took me a long time to really figure out what the original issue with demons was, but it boils down to two things. Your runes and your nature. They feed into each other in an endless cycle. That’s what caused the problems.”

“Our nature?”

“The connection I just mentioned. Because of how closely tied your mind and body are, demons don’t just use runes. You are your runes. And if your runes affect you, then it would only make sense that your desires affect your runes. The desires of a demon shape their runes just as much as their runes shape them.”

“And the Minuscule Fragment of Decras messed it up?”

Noah nodded. “Exactly. The first Rune that every single demon gets is a Minuscule Fragment of Decras — and that Rune is tainted. It’s full of someone else’s desires. And when a demon wants for something, that rune latches onto that desire and tries to fill it. But it can’t. You can never truly feel satisfied when the satisfaction doesn’t come from you. All you’re doing is trying to fulfill someone else’s vision of you. So the rune overcompensates. It hungers for more, and the pattern grows. As the demon gets stronger, so does their desire.”

“And it just keeps going,” Sticky said, her eyes going wide in realization. “That’s why strong demons are all so obsessed. They keep needing more and more of their emotion until they become it.”

“And it’s not even their emotion. It’s just the emotion they wanted most. Nobody is just a single emotion, but there’s no room for anything else when your runes are warping your whole body to optimize for a single thing,” Noah said. He nodded to Sticky’s Rune. “That’s why this is so important. You don’t have a bias toward an emotion, and you’re a true demon, one without any influence warping you.”

“But won’t my rune just cause demons to become… me?” Sticky asked worriedly. “That doesn’t seem much better than how things already are.”

“If they tried to replace their current Demon Runes with yours, yes. But that’s not what we’re going to be doing. I don’t know if it’s possible, but what I want is the energy from your Rune. Your rune is you, but the energy that went into it is pure. Any demon can use that energy to then form a Fragment of Self that represents who they are.”

Sticky’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“I’m almost certain of it,” Noah replied with an excited smile. It fell away, briefly replaced by a grimace. “This does mean I’m going to have to ask you for a favor. I need a copy of your rune. I’ve tried to split a Fragment of Self from my own body before and it didn’t work, but I’m hoping it’ll be different because of your unique physiology. The connection between your body and rune is stronger, but that goes in both ways. My runes can’t exist without me, but I think yours can. No matter what, this won’t be easy. It’s definitely going to cause soul damage, but—”

“I’ll do it,” Sticky said.

“I didn’t even finish. I can deal with the soul damage,” Noah said. “Don’t agree to people asking to damage your soul before you hear them out completely.”

“I’ll do it,” Sticky repeated. “It’ll help Lord Sievan too, won’t it?”

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“Possibly. I’d like it to.”

“Then I’ll do it. How do I imbue the Fragment?”

She’s almost too eager to mutilate herself. I feel like the universe keeps showing me how Moxie feels when I repeatedly off myself.

“First, you need to get another Fragment,” Noah said. “Once you’ve got two of them, you’re going to imbue the first Fragment back into your soul. You do that by drawing it onto the surface and pushing power into it.”

“Okay,” Sticky said. “Cut me again.”

“Let’s phrase that differently, please. You’re making me sound like a psychopath,” Noah said with a frown. He summoned a flicker of Sunder’s power to his fingertips. “This part should still be fairly easy. It’s the imbuing that might suck.”

The demoness gave him a firm nod. Noah reached down and pressed his palm to the still water beneath his feet, sending a blade of power cutting through it.

Sticky burst into action. She was a fast learner. As soon as the power swirled forth from the new crack within her mindspace, she gathered it to her fists and narrowed her eyes in concentration.

Just seconds later, a second Fragment of Sticky floated in the air before her.

Good. It’s better to just completely Imbue a second fragment than worrying about playing around with splitting the first. Keeps things a lot simpler, soul damage notwithstanding.

“What now?” Sticky asked.

“We go back to the Damned Plains,” Noah replied. “And then we wait a bit before you try Imbuing anything. I need to rest so I can get my—”

He paused. A frown crossed over his lips. Noah had been about to say that he needed to get the energy from the Fragment of Renewal back. He’d used it trying to save Sticky, which meant it should have been inactive until the next day — but for some reason, the power met his thoughts without reservation.

Huh? Why has the Fragment of Renewal awakened already? There should have been hours left before it came back! Did returning to the afterlife somehow refill it?

I’ll have to worry about that later. We have an opportunity to end this problem for good.

“Scratch that,” Noah said, shaking his head. “We can do this immediately. I’m going to send us back. Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” the small demon replied with a determined nod.

He released Empty Proliferation.

Sticky’s mindspace crumbled as his soul flew back into his own body.

Noah’s eyes snapped open. The darkness shifted before his vision as an obsidian platform materialized beneath him. He sat up, pushing away from the cold stone and rising back to his feet.

A small groan echoed out as Sticky awakened beside him. She rubbed at her eyes. “My head hurts.”

“It’ll be done soon,” Noah replied, removing the grimoire from his back and flipping it open to a blank page. He sat it down on the ground before Sticky. “Don’t feel pressured, but whenever you’re ready, do your best to imbue one of the Runes you just made here. It might take you a few tries, so you can relax—”

Sticky pressed her finger to the page. Her brow furrowed in concentration, and Noah’s mouth snapped closed. Saying anything else would just distract her, and the little demon was far too determined to hesitate any longer than absolutely necessary.

Minutes ticked by. Sticky didn’t move as she stared at the page. Considering she’d never had Runes of her own, she couldn’t have had the opportunity to practice Imbuing.

Will she be able to do it? Even I couldn’t split apart a Fragment of Self. But as a demon, it just might be possible because of the very thing that makes demons what they are. That connection between their body and runes might be the legs her rune needs to exist without her. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one I’ve got right now.

That didn’t seem like it was going to stop her. After another minute, Sticky started to draw. Gray light shimmered at her fingertip. Her jaw clenched and a droplet of sweat rolled down the side of her face.

“I can’t believe it,” Sievan breathed, his words nothing more than a whisper. “She has a Rune.”

Discomfort turned to pain in Sticky’s features as she worked, but she didn’t let herself slow.

Noah drew on the Fragment of Renewal. Cooling energy rolled through his veins and gathered at his hands as he prepared to release its power. He watched the demon like a hawk as her finger continued to move across the paper.

Her discomfort grew. The muscles in her neck went taut and her finger trembled, but she didn’t slow. Even a fool could have seen that it was taking every single scrap of self-control Sticky had to keep going.

But keep going she did.

The demoness drew the final lines of the rune with a pained wheeze.

Energy solidified into solid lines with a snap. She’d managed to successfully imbue a Fragment of herself.

At the very instant she pulled her hand away from the page, Sticky swayed and her eyes threatened to roll back. Noah grabbed her by the shoulders and unleashed all the power he’d gathered from the Fragment of Renewal. Soothing magic poured out from him and into her.

The tension slipped away from Sticky’s features. She relaxed, her eyelids fluttering as she pulled back into consciousness.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked, supporting Sticky to keep her from falling.

“Yeah,” Sticky murmured. Some of the strength seeped back into her voice and she looked down at the page. “Did it work?”

“Yes,” Noah replied. “It did. You did everything you had to. Thank you. This is huge. You have no idea how much we’re going to be able to do with this.”

“Can you help Lord Sievan next?”

A quiet laugh echoed through the void as the Lord of Death shook his head. “Did you truly find a way to solve our flaw, Spider? You did what I — what Decras himself — could not?”

“Now you’re just setting me up to sound like a proud asshole,” Noah said. “Really, Sticky did everything. I’m just stealing some of her power. She’s the building block we needed. I’m going to have to make copies of this Rune. A lot of them. From there, demons can break the rune and use it to form a new Fragment of Self to bind their soul with. It won’t be easy — you’re probably going to have to rip out the bad runes you’ve got. Not every single demon will be capable of that. But for the ones that can… it should fix them.”

Or for the ones I use the Fragment of Renewal on, but I’m not going to sit around fixing every single demon in the Damned Plains. Even if they can’t get rid of Decras’ runes entirely, this should help them get some control of themselves back.

“I see,” Sievan said with a small smile. “But it is not yet my time for this.”

“You’re not going to let him help you?” Sticky asked, blinking in surprise.

“I am not so easily repaired. I must rebuild my soul. I have felt Spider’s power, but the immensity of what must be fixed is beyond even your abilities. It will be years before I am ready for such a procedure. This is a procedure for the young and easily changed.”

“I’m sure I could help the process along,” Noah said.

“Perhaps,” Sievan said. “But there are some things that must be done on your own. When you reach my strength, you will come to understand this as well. And I suspect you have a slightly more pressing matter at hand.”

“I do?”

“Yes,” Sievan replied. “There are those that wait for you. It has been some time since you followed Wizen into the next realm.”

Noah’s eyes went wide.

That’s why the Fragment of Renewal had returned. Not because it had been refilled, but because it had been given enough time to regenerate.

Oh, shit. How long was I stuck in the afterlife?

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