Noah didn’t get long to think on what he’d just discovered. A crash like a glacier splitting and dropping into the sea tore through the air and ripped his attention away from the Rank 1 Demon Rune. He spun, drawing on his runes, to face Igris, but it wasn’t the demon that he found waiting for him.

Brilliant white light poured from a gaping fissure running through the seas of gold. Coins spilled over its edge and plummeted into the pale void, vanishing without a sound. The spiderwebbing damage covering Igris expanded from the fissure and stretched all across his entire body. Hairline cracks covered the floor and ran beneath Noah’s feet.

Igris laid motionless on a pile of gold. His eyes were glassy and lifeless, all resistance having left him. He was dead.

As to how long he’d been dead, Noah was unsure. He’d had the demon suppressed under Sunder’s weight to the point where he hadn’t even been able to speak. The soul damage had just gotten to a point where he couldn’t hold out any longer.

More cracks echoed out. Igris’s soul spilled into the fissure. It expanded in jerky motions, zipping out across the ground and letting more white energy spilling in like opening a broken zipper on a tent caught in a snowstorm. A rumble shook the soul as the cracks traced up into the sky and connected above Noah.

I think I may have started to overstay my welcome. What happens if you get caught in someone’s soul when they die? I don’t imagine I’d die as well. The cracks aren’t connected to me— but I don’t’ really want to go around touching that white void any more than I have to. Why am I not getting pulled back into my body? I swear it’s been —

A wave of dizziness smacked into Noah’s head. He staggered. Braced a hand against his knee. Coins poured at increasing speeds, a tide pushing against his feet and trying to pull him down along with them.

Igris’ body was caught in the roiling waves consuming what remained of his soul. Coins rolled over his corpse, swallowing the demon whole as they flowed toward the fissure. Noah caught one last glimpse of him as he plummeted over the edge, suspended in the air for a brief second amidst raining gold, and then he was gone.

The buzz in Noah’s head intensified. A thousand bees smacked against the insides of his skull and clamored for escape. His skull pulsed in disorientation and darkness danced at the edges of his vision. Gold coins pelted against his legs. What had once been a tide was now a vortex. The floor disappeared, replaced by a glistening ocean that refused to take no for an answer and stole his footing out from under him.

Noah slipped and fell back into the rushing gold with a grunt. The instant he made contact, coins rolled over him and he was caught within the current. He couldn’t even call on his runes. The buzzing was so loud, the disorientation so strong that his power slipped through his fingertips like falling sand.

His stomach dropped out from under him. He shot down into the fissure, flushed from the soul together with what remained of Igris. Noah found himself launched free of the golden sea. For the briefest instant, he was suspended in an infinite expanse of white, surrounded by a rain of riches.

Then there was a pop. The world shattered, and he was gone.

***

Noah’s eyes snapped open in Igris’ room. The house was silent. He was alive, and nobody was in the process of trying to rectify that issue. That was a good thing. Moxie had been able to keep anyone from interfering.

Thoughts clouded through Noah’s head like muddy water. The magnitude of the discovery he’d made and the ramifications of what it meant, not just for Lee, but for every single demon, swirled through his mind. He wasn’t sure if he’d answered more questions than he’d gotten, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

Noah shoved himself upright. Igris’ huge body laid by his side, lifeless. Blood trickled from the demon’s nose and ears, pooling around his head. His mouth was open in agony and his eyes were bloodshot. The demon had been dead for quite some time.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, Noah pushed himself up to his feet. Energy prickled at the back of his mind like a distant memory. His runes had drunk the power from the demon and grown considerably as a result. Killing Rank 5s was a pretty effective way of getting stronger, but he couldn’t just stand around and waste time. Moxie couldn’t keep buying him time forever. The sooner he got out of here, the sooner he could actually sit down and process what he’d just learned.

His gaze traveled over the formerly beautiful room, now heavily scarred from their fight. Golden slag littered the ground around Igris and the walls had been scorched black. Coins shifted beneath Noah’s feet as he stepped around the dead demon’s body and scooped one of the embossed golden daggers — nearly as large as a sword when held in his hands — off the ground.

I can’t exactly leave here with a sack bulging full of stolen shit, but who knows when I’ll need proof of offing this idiot. Don’t want someone else taking the credit for it when I can leverage Igris’ death to my advantage. Intimidation factor is always useful.

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Noah picked up his Flying Sword and glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. Moxie’s vine was still blocking the exit of the room, and he didn’t exactly want to just stroll out into the street. He pulled his face wrappings tighter before launching himself into the air with a burst of wind magic.

He grabbed onto the edge of the hole in the ceiling and pulled himself up into the small room above. Noah rolled to his feet and strode out of the room at a brisk pace, soon arriving at the broken window that he’d entered through.

Peering out of it revealed an empty street. He could see a few demons mulling about through the windows of their mansions, but either nobody was coming to investigate what had happened or they simply just didn’t care. Noah had mostly avoided too many loud noises, so there was even a small chance that he hadn’t been noticed.

Not yet, at least. It was only a matter of time.

He tossed the Flying Sword down and jumped onto it, activating the artifact and zipping out of the house without any further ado. It brought him down to the alley that he and Moxie had come from in a split second.

As soon as he landed, Noah jumped off the weapon and slid it back into his belt. He pulled his jacket off and wrapped Igris’ sword with it before extending his senses around himself. No demons were in the area and Moxie was nowhere to be seen. There was only cold stone. No signs of a fight marred the alleyway. Noah didn’t believe for a second that Moxie might have been taken by so much surprise that she would have gone down without a fight.

She’s already headed back to the camp, then. Good. I’m glad she didn’t stick around too long. I really need to ask her how the hell she did that huge vine thing. I had no idea she was capable of anything at that scale.

Noah cast a glance over his shoulder and back at Igris’ mansion. The front door hung slightly askew, a mass of greyish black matter just beyond it. Far above, the shards of glass jutted from the top window. Their operation was hardly discreet, but it hadn’t been a complete shitshow either. That was all he could really ask for.

Turning on his heel, Noah strode down the alley and back toward the camp.

The trip back was considerably shorter than the one over. The cause for that was equal parts not getting lost and not getting waylaid by a massage. While the idea was somewhat tempting, Noah had slightly more important things on his mind.

Nobody stopped him on his way back to the camp and he arrived at the market square a short walk later. At least, he was pretty sure it was a short walk. Telling the time was already a little difficult for him. The Damned Plains only made that worse because of how slowly the days and night passed.

Noah headed straight over to the tent he and Moxie shared, barely noticing the demons he brushed past as they cowered out of his way. He threw the flap open, a flicker of concern passing through his chest a moment before his eyes landed on Moxie.

She was mid-step through pacing back and forth in the tent, her hands clasped behind her back and brow furrowed like a stressed school teacher. Lee sat perched on the head of the bed behind her, his gourd cradled in her hands.

Both of their heads jerked up as Noah entered. Moxie blinked in surprise and shifted back. Confusion shifted to suspicion and her eyes narrowed. “Who’s following you?”

“Huh?” Noah glanced over his shoulder. “Nobody. Why would somebody be following me?”

“You made it back alive.” Moxie strode over to him and grabbed him by the wrist, lifting one arm up into the air before pulling his shirt up and examining his stomach. “Did you get stabbed somewhere serious? About to die from blood loss or poisoning?”

“I’m fine, Moxie,” Noah said, suppressing a laugh. “All the wounds are superficial. I took more damage from diving through the window than I did from Igris. He’s dead, by the way.”

“You killed a Rank 5?” Lee hopped to her feet and carefully set his gourd down on the bed before looking back to him. “And you survived the fight?”

“You don’t have to act so surprised. I don’t always kill myself.”

“Hellreaver,” Lee said.

“Evergreen,” Moxie said.

“The Inquisitors,” Lee said.

“When you went to practice your patterns,” Moxie said.

“When you first met Father. Also, with Dayton. Multiple times.”

“Okay, I get it!” Noah exclaimed, letting out a defeated laugh. He carefully extracted his hand from Moxie’s grip and unwrapped his jacket to reveal Igris’ sword. “I may have a problem. But this time around, I made it out alive. That’s almost certainly thanks to that plant of yours, Moxie. What the hell was that? It was incredible! Did you fill the entire damn house with vines?”

“The culmination of a lot of pattern practice,” Moxie replied, her cheeks reddening at the praise. “The vine itself is part of the pattern. It grows from organic bodies of matter. The more people it can draw energy from, the bigger it gets. Nobody in the house was all that strong, so they weren’t able to do anything against it in time.”

“What exactly did you do to them?” Noah asked. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to know the answer, but he couldn’t keep his curiosity under wraps.

“The vine had poison in it. I’m pretty sure it either put them to sleep, paralyzed them, or killed them.” Moxie hesitated for a moment. “I’m not really sure. The poison was based off something I was reading back in Arbitage. I had no clue what it would do to demons, so I put a lot extra energy into the part of the vine that killed things by draining their energy. There’s a chance the poison didn’t do anything at all.”

“You killed everyone in the house?” Lee asked.

Moxie’s face darkened. “Yes. The vine automatically looks for energy in the same way that flowers search for sunlight. I’m not taking chances when it comes to your lives. I just hope all that death was worth it.”

That snapped Noah’s attention right back to the rune that had been occupying his mind. It had been momentarily pushed to the side when he’d seen Moxie and Lee again, but there was nothing delaying his attention any longer.

“It was,” Noah said, keeping his words hushed. “I think I found the problem with demons. I know what’s wrong with Lee’s runes.”