Return of the Runebound Professor

Noah awoke famished the following morning. His stomach grumbled and he sat up, surprised to find that he’d somehow shifted through the night and gone from leaning against the wall to lying in bed.

Lee and Moxie were – unsurprisingly – already awake. They sat on the ground in the center of the room, a metal platter covered with bread, butter, eggs, a variety of greasy meats, and fruit between them.

“That smells good,” Noah said, sliding from the bed straight to the ground beside them without even taking a single step. “And convenient location, too. I’m starving.”

Moxie and Lee both sent Noah a surprised look as he grabbed a piece of bread, stuffing several pieces of sausage into it before stuffing the whole thing into his mouth in a technique that he’d seen Lee pull off more than a few times.

“What?” Noah asked through a full mouth. His voice was muffled from all the food, but he was pretty sure they got the idea.

“Nothing,” Moxie replied, taking a bite out of an apple she had in one of her hands. “I just haven’t seen you actually excited to eat in – ever, really.”

“I was excited when you bought all of us that fancy dinner.”

“That was also really expensive. Anyone would be excited about eating expensive food,” Moxie said.

“I’m excited about all food,” Lee said.

“A fact of which I’m greatly familiar with,” Moxie said. “Noah, on the other hand, forgets to eat unless we remind him.”

“Maybe I was just hungry after getting blown up.” Noah finally swallowed, then claimed an orange and started to peel it. “Did I miss anything?”

“No. We just woke up.”

“You just woke up,” Lee corrected, pointing a banana at Moxie before biting off half of it – skin and all. “I, on the other hand, have been awake for hours. I looked around the city.”

Moxie raised a finger, then clearly thought better and lowered it. There were some things that just weren’t worth bringing up. Lee had yet to get indigestion from any of the other things she’d eaten, so Noah suspected a little banana peel wasn’t going to hurt her.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you stabbed someone else,” Noah said with a chuckle.

“Not this time. Just did some wandering. Dawnforge is pretty at night. I refrained from getting any snacks to avoid making someone mad.”

“Might be for the best.” Moxie gave an approving nod. “We should keep the major incidents down to a one per week basis whenever possible.”

“One a week? That’s a high ask.” Noah polished his orange off, then took another sausage and popped it into his mouth. He glanced around the room. “Is there water–”

Moxie handed him a waterskin, which he took gratefully. He drank several gulps before lowering it.

“So the city isn’t up in arms or anything?” Noah asked, handing the skin back to Moxie. “We did just blow up a bakery. And then some.”

“Doesn’t look like it. There aren’t guards crawling everywhere, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m sure people are looking into the bakery now, but I suspect that they found the whole underground tunnel system and are more concerned with dealing with any remaining criminals than anything else.”

“Is it going to be a problem if we stick around?”

Moxie shook her head. “Now that we know for a fact that Gentil was a criminal? Not at all. Even if the guards do come after us, it’ll be for information rather than suspicion. Dawnforge is an adventurer city. They’re not going to get mad at us for rooting out assassins.”

“Great. In that case, what’s the plan?”

“You’re the one with the giant list of things you want to do,” Moxie said with a wry smile. “You tell me.”

You mean I actually get to choose instead of having some new problem popping up and forcing me to deal with it first? Oh, goodie.

Noah leaned back to the side of his bed and snagged his travel bag, dragging it closer and pulling his to-do list out from it. They’d been out for a bit over a week. If they set aside another week to meet up with Karina, that left about two weeks to kill.

On the Runes side, Moxie is pretty much squared away for the moment. Lee needs the most work, and we haven’t made much progress there. It’s unfortunate we didn’t get a chance to grab any Runes for her from the assassins, but that could be something to look more into.

As for me, I have to figure out how the Fragment of Renewal functions. I still don’t know what its passive is. Aside from that, I just need to get more energy into Natural Disaster and figure out what my other Rank 3 Runes will be.

Of everything, I think Lee is probably the most pressing and easiest to handle.

“Why don’t we get back to what we were actually doing in the first place?” Noah suggested. “Lee, how are things going on figuring out what Runes you want?”

“Pretty good. I like the Umbral Body Runes a lot, and I’d like to keep at least one Shift Rune. The other four… at first, I thought I’d like to do something with shadows, but I changed my mind.”

“Oh? To what?”

“You remember Brayden?”

“Quite vividly.”

“His matter magic was really interesting. I’d like to try to learn that, if I can. If I keep two Shift Runes, two Umbral Body Runes, and then get three of the Space Runes that let you teleport, I think that would work out great.”

“That’s an interesting combination,” Moxie observed. “Where are you going with it?”

Lee shrugged. “It just feels right.”

That’s a Lee answer if I’ve ever heard one. Well, it’s not like we can’t undo the combination with Sunder if something goes poorly.

“Great,” Noah said, slapping his hands on his knees. “That’s our goal, then. We need to get three Space Runes for you. Those don’t seem like they’d be all that easy to find, though.”

“They aren’t,” Moxie confirmed. “Any monsters that have the ability to teleport are going to be really dangerous for obvious reasons. I don’t know what the monsters in the area are like, but I’d imagine we’d have trouble finding a perfect one anytime soon. Luckily, teleportation style magic is always high in demand. I know for a fact that we should be able to find something like for sale.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” Noah said. “Thaddius?”

“Thaddius,” Moxie confirmed. She rose to her feet, and the other two mirrored her. Noah grabbed an apple on their way out the door, taking a bite out of it and chewing thoughtfully as they walked out of the inn.

***

“Thirty-eight thousand gold,” Thaddius said.

Noah’s eye twitched.

“That’s with the discount,” Thaddius added, tapping a finger on the bridge of his nose. “Do you think it’s easy to get high quality True Space Runes? A Rank 3 Rune is already quite expensive, and you’re asking for one of the ones that are in the most demand. The noble houses all want to buy them up themselves.”

“What about a set of Rank 2 Runes?” Noah tried.

Thaddius just chuckled. “Might be even more expensive because you’ll have to find a set of them. If you weren’t on a time constraint, it would definitely save a good bit. Maybe bring it down to twenty thousand or so, but you said you wanted it fast.”

“And there aren’t any ways to buy one for cheaper?” Moxie pressed.

Thaddius shook his head. “Trust me. If there was, I’d be selling ‘em for half the price and making ten times the sales. Things get dicey when you try to get your little paws on the really strong stuff and aren’t directly sponsored by a noble house. That would get you some discounts.”

If this is how expensive powerful Runes are in the normal market, I don’t even want to think how high auction prices will push. If we have Karina take us to one, then we’re going to need to make sure we’ve actually got enough money to buy something.

“How about the gems we showed you?” Moxie asked. “What’ll you pay for those?”

“They’re quite nice. I’d be willing to give you a thousand five hundred, but I’ll be honest with you. You could probably get more in a different city. There are so many rock monsters near Dawnforge that the price of gems here isn’t as high as it is in other locations.”

“You? Being honest?” Moxie’s eyebrows rose.

“Don’t get used to it,” Thaddius said dryly.

“What about worse versions of the Runes?” Noah asked after a moment of thought. “Poorly constructed Rank 3 or 4 Runes with Space Runes in them?”

“Ten to fifteen thousand, I’d guess.” Thaddius rubbed his chin. “I’d have to find someone selling one, though. You have to remember that I’m not exactly licensed to sell Runes. Good luck finding a vendor that is, though. Unless you’re there on house business or show up slinging coin, they won’t even waste their time with you.”

“Isn’t selling Runes illegally really dangerous?”

“Oh, sure. But I said technically. I’ve done dealings with nobles before, and as long as I don’t go around sticking my nose out too far, they can’t be bothered to deal with me. It ain’t making the Runes cheaper for you either way, though.”

Noah scrunched his nose. He was pretty sure they could rack up a lot of money if they spent all two weeks hunting monsters incessantly, but that would only buy Lee a single one of the Runes she needed.

He could bring the price down by buying a bunch of bad Runes and re-combining them, but that would still take a fair bit of time and money. It was really looking like finding the Rune organically would just be the easiest and fastest option.

I wonder if we could find Brayden and convince him to Imbue a bit of one of his Runes.

“I’m afraid you’re shit out of luck, unless your luck isn’t shit.” Thaddius let out a booming laugh.

“What’s that meant to mean?” Moxie asked, her brow furrowed.

“Ah, just making a joke about the casino. They have real nice Runes as prizes for a variety of things, but you’d be better off saving your money and working up to the Runes normally.”

“Prizes?” Lee’s eyes lit up. “They give Runes?”

“That is a very oversimplified way of sayin’ they dangle Runes to get all your coin,” Thaddius corrected. “If I’m a crook, then the casinos are monsters. Nobody ever walks out of there feeling happy. Just because there’s a miniscule chance that you win a game and get a good Rune doesn’t mean–”

“You get to win Runes and play games? I want to do it.” Lee turned her eyes toward Noah. “Can we do it?”

Oh boy. This can only end well. I suppose Lee does have the three hundred gold from the split. Losing it isn’t going to be that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Noah glanced at Moxie, who shrugged and passed the decision off onto him.

“I suppose it can’t hurt to take a look,” Noah allowed. “Do you know where they are, Moxie?”

Thaddius let out a long-suffering sigh as Moxie nodded.

“You’re just wasting your gold,” Thaddius called after them as they stepped out of the shop.

“Just don’t forget about the auction,” Moxie replied, looking over her shoulder at the merchant. “You better sell that horn soon – and remember you owe us ninety percent of the sale.”

With that, they left the shop and headed out in the street, making for the casino.

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