Return of the Runebound Professor

“We are prepared for anything it is that you require,” Aylin said, his features completely serious as he pressed a hand to his chest. “If you wish to begin your conquest of the mortal plane, then we will all prepare to—”

“That is not the kind of thing I was about to ask for,” Noah said sharply, holding a hand up in the air to forestall Aylin before the Knowledge Demon could say anything else.

They — along with all the other demons, had gathered near the broken trunk of a large, burnt tree. Everyone else stood off to the side. They were still in earshot and able to see what was going on but had given just enough space to the demons to avoid being rude.

Among their number was Brayden. Noah hadn’t had a chance to properly talk to his body’s brother yet, but it was high up on his list. He’d actually been planning on doing it right after his conversation with Silvertide, but the renewed warning about the Inquisitors had been enough to kick his butt into gear.

“Oh,” Aylin said. “So we aren’t going to conquer the mortal plane?”

“We’ll put a pin in that. There’s something more important that we have to do first.”

“Taste all the food! It’s so much better than the stuff in the Damned Plains,” Lee suggested.

“We can get to that afterward,” Noah said, narrowing his eyes. “This is a slightly more pressing matter. Truth be told, I’d prefer you all got to know my other students better. You’ll be working together closely in the future — but unfortunately, life doesn’t always follow my orders. There are a number of people on the mortal plane that have a pretty significant distaste for demons. I’d like to make sure we’re ready to deal with them when the time comes.”

“Inquisitors,” Lee said, her features twisting in rare distaste. She pursed her lips like she’d eaten a sour lemon. “Assholes.”

“They’re a big enough threat that even you have to be worried about them?” Aylin’s eyes went wide. “What manner of power do they wield?”

Noah bit back a laugh. Aylin acted as if he was basically a god made flesh, able to deal with any threat with little more than a flick of his hand. He supposed that was probably a good thing — but as strong as he was, he wasn’t that strong.

“Inquisitors have specialized ways to directly hunt and attack demons. Incredibly effective ones that can bridge the gap between even a weaker mortal and a powerful demon,” Noah said. He remembered all too well just what they were capable of. The memory still made his chest burn with fury. They’d nearly killed Lee, Isabel, and Todd back on their way back from the Linwick Estate to Arbitage.

He had no plans of ever letting that happen again.

“Is there a reason you choose to allow them to exist?” Aylin asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion. “If they possess such a power, then they should be crushed before they get the opportunity to attempt to turn it against us. You could destroy them with a wave of your palm — so perhaps this is a training exercise for us? You wish to see if we are capable of defeating these mortals.”

Okay. I appreciate the vote of confidence, Aylin, but I am not about to go solo the entirety of the Inquisition. At some point I’m really going to have to sit down with the demons and let them know that I might not be quite as strong as I led the vast majority of everyone who I ran into in the Damned Plains to believe.

“They’re a little too problematic for me to quash them entirely on my own,” Noah said. He very pointedly avoided looking in the direction of the human students and professors. They were definitely going to be cracking up in the corner, and that would ruin his mysterious persona entirely.

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“They’re so strong that they threaten even you?” Vrith asked. The catlike demon’s eyes grew wide and her ears flattened against her head. “What could we possibly do against existences like that?”

See, there’s an interesting thought. They were able to use the anti-demon magic on me the last time we fought. It worked, but not nearly as much as it did on a demon. For a long time, I had absolutely no idea why… but now I do.

Those rosaries somehow resonate with demons. It’s a form of sympathetic magic or something. Anything with any amount of Decras’ power would get affected by their magic. They think they’ve got anti-demon powers, but what they really have is anti-Decras powers.

And if I take the Decras out of the demons, then the only thing the Inquisitors are left with are a bunch of useless bone beads that work on me more than they do on the demons.

“It’s not me that I’m worried about,” Noah said, realizing that he’d been quiet for too long. “There are very few things in any world that I’m truly scared of — but you and the other demons are an entirely different question. As things stand now, a single Inquisitor would likely be able to kill many of you.”

“Not all of us,” Yoru said.

“You’re an exception,” Noah said. “There isn’t much of anything that can kill you.”

Yoru tilted her head to the side at that, and Noah could have sworn that her gaze was boring into his skull from through her mask.

He decided to ignore it. Yoru would be a task all on her own. Out of all the demons, it was actually her that he was the most concerned about. He could fix Aylin and the other Rank 3s — but Yoru was a Rank 7.

She was immensely powerful, and that meant that ripping her runes up in order to replace Decras’ influence with his newly minted Fragments of Sticky would be… problematic. He had no plans of leaving her as she was, of course.

Possibly more than any of the other demons present, Yoru needed his help. She’d been chained by her rune for so long that Noah refused to leave her in that state, Inquisitors or not. Yoru deserved to be able to make her own decisions instead of being forced to be a pawn of the fates that she saw.

“So what do we do against these Inqusitors?” Violet asked. “Whatever your orders are, I’m ready for them. Is there a technique we can learn to defeat them?”

Noah glanced at Sticky, and the small demon gave him a small grin. She was clever. She’d already figured out where this was leading — though being proxy to all the conversations in Sievan’s domain had definitely helped fill in some of the gaps for her.

“I like the enthusiasm, but to tell the truth, there’s no technique that could fix this. No, what we need is a far more significant change. Fortunately, we’ve got some time before my good friend Jalen returns here,” Noah said. “He’ll be bringing an invitation to play some games with mortals. It should be a day or two, in my best estimation.”

“That’s a lot of time,” Aylin said.

Noah cleared his throat. “Sorry. I should have clarified. Days aren’t quite as long here as they are in the Damned Plains. Your day-night cycle is several times longer than the one here.”

Aylin stared at him. “How many hours do we have?”

“Something around twenty four to forty eight.”

“That is… not a lot of time.”

“No,” Noah agreed. “It isn’t. Fortunately, we’re not going to need that long at all. My solution is quite simple. And, when it’s done, then the Inquisition will have absolutely no leverage over any of you.”

“I thought you said they could defeat demons that were even more powerful than they were,” Vrith said with more than a little concern. “I will obviously do as you order, but it seems that we may not be suited to fight this type of opponent.”

“You’d be correct. The Inquisition has perfected the art of fighting against demons. And that’s why, by the time Jalen gets back with our invitations, there isn’t going to be a single demon left in this clearing.”

“It kind of sounds like you’re going to kill them,” Lee said through a snicker.

Noah’s shoulders fell and he let out a sigh. There went his grandiose speech. Lee was right — even Violet was staring at him with a more than a little concern. His reputation had gotten just a tad out of hand.

“I’m not killing anybody here. That would be pretty damn counterintuitive after all the effort I went through to pull you out of the Damned Plains,” Noah said wearily.

“Wait,” Aylin muttered. Realization lit behind his eyes. “Them. Lee referred to us as ‘them’, but she’s a demon. The only reason she’d do that—”

“Is that she’s not a demon anymore,” Noah said, fighting to hide his smile. He made a mental note to thank Aylin later for rescuing his speech from Lee’s sabotage. “She’s so much more. Something greater. And when I’m done here, all of you will be too.”

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