Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 443: Flowering

Moxie sat in the thick forest of her mindspace and looked out over her Runes, a contemplative frown on her lips. All seven of them were full. She’d gotten back to where she’d been before her runes had been shattered at the Torrin estate.

Seven flawless runes, when she hadn’t even known that there had been a stage beyond flawless just a short while ago. And yet, before all the insanity with flawless runes and everything she’d learned in the last few months, she’d known the direction her Rank 4 rune would go.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Moxie rolled a vine between her fingers and drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. It was tempting to just sit there and think. Thinking was easy. It didn’t require action. If one wasn’t careful, it would just keep pushing the subject at hand back until it was too late to deal with.

That wasn’t to say there wasn’t a time and place for thinking. She’d just gotten to the point where, perhaps, a different strategy was in order. One more inspired by Noah.

When thinking doesn’t get me anywhere, then it’s probably time to just do some stupid shit and see what happens. It’s a damn good thing we’ve got Sunder. If we didn’t, even so much as thinking about throwing something together without extensive planning would be a stupid move.

Moxie uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet. The plants around her feet rose up, lifting her into the air above the forest so she could look down on all of her runes at once. They crackled and hummed with pressure. It was as if waiting for her to make a decision.

But, even if she was going to brute forcing things, she wasn’t about to just throw everything together into a random Rank 4. It needed a goal. The goal couldn’t be too broad, nor could it be too narrow. She and Noah had learned that for sure, so any rune she made had to fall in line if she didn’t want it to be a guaranteed waste of time and energy.

She still knew the general path that the Torrin retainers were meant to take. It was quite simple. Just keep stacking on thorny vines and sharp trees. Avoid just about everything else. It was a straightforward path. As long as one used Torrin runes the whole way up, it would take them right up to Rank 5.

Moxie’s lips curled in distaste. She held a hand out and vines twisted up from the pillar supporting her, traveling up her arm and gathering in her palm. A small red bud sprouted from one of them, peeling open to reveal a four-petaled flower.

Evergreen wouldn’t have approved of this at all. She’d judge it as a completely worthless Rune. Adding Sprouting Plant into my mix doesn’t give me any direct offensive capabilities and strays from my purposes as a retainer.

That’s probably what she would have said.

Moxie let out a small laugh. More buds bloomed along the vine, dotting its entirety with flowers. Evergreen wasn’t around to tell her what she could and couldn’t do anymore. And, even if the flowers were a complete waste and ruined her progression completely, Noah could just sever the Rank 4 Rune she made and there would be another chance to do things differently.

Her chest tightened at the thought, and it struck her with startling clarity that she didn’t want to do things differently. A blush reddened her cheeks.

“How childish am I?” Moxie muttered to herself, running a hand along the petals of a flower. “Wanting to have flowers in my combination so badly that I’m getting worked up over the idea of it not working out. I haven’t even tried doing it yet.”

There was no answer. She was alone in her mind. But, even so, she could almost hear what Noah’s answer would have been had he been there.

Who gives a shit? Just do what you want and make a rune that fits you.

Moxie set her jaw. It wasn’t like her desires were completely unfounded. The vines holding her up in the air retracted until they brought her back down to the ground, then withered away.

From the dry pile sprouted flowers, larger than the ones before them. Moxie watched silently as they grew, then withered and died away as well. It was a process she’d been spending quite a bit of time studying as of late.

Noah’s suggestion to make her pattern the entire life cycle of a plant had been quite effective. Plants were surprisingly complex. There was so much that went on within them that it was borderline impossible to understand completely at her current stage.

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But, by taking just a single step back and looking at them as a whole rather than their individual parts, Moxie entered a realm in which she was far more familiar. Life and death were no strange concepts to her and plants were the perfect actors in the play.

Add magic and they grew. Take it from them and the life left with it, causing them to wither away. Flowers sprouted around her feet as she drew breath in and died as she exhaled, their power taken to fuel the next generation.

It was meditative, in a strange way. Life and death were just two sides of the same spinning coin. That was a powerful concept. Of that, Moxie was certain. She just wasn’t sure how it would play into her current rune.

Neither life nor death was a concept that a Rank 4 Rune was ever going to be able to fully encapsulate. And yet, runes were patterns. Noah had stressed that over and over again — and the more Moxie studied her own pattern, the more she came to see what he was talking about.

Even if the exact concepts within her pattern were too high-level to actually grasp with a Rank 4, that didn’t mean she couldn’t draw from them. Moxie let the pattern fade away and stepped over the pile of dead foliage, bringing her hands together.

The runes floating around her soul shifted. They rose and floated over to gather before her, looking down on her like seven churning eyes.

Sprouting Plant

Sprouting Plant

Sprouting Plant

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Bloodletting Plant

Sowed Earth

Sowed Earth

“I definitely have a preference, don’t I?” Moxie asked rhetorically with a wry smile. “Noah’s right. I’m not going to try to avoid it. There’s no reason. We’re just going to do this his way. I know what I want, and I’m going to get it.”

Her hands tightened. The runes shuddered and grew nearer. Energy crackled as their edges touched and started to overlap. Moxie focused her intent. She’d come to learn quite a bit about the earth and plants in her time alive. Every single bit of information and knowledge she had would be vital.

I might be greedy, but I don’t care. I’m tired of standing aside and setting my own desires out of the way to do the thing that’s been requested of me. It might be wrong of me to admit this, but I rather liked the Torrins, even if I hated Evergreen.

I like teaching Emily. When I was forced to be her guardian, I didn’t truly hate it. Not at the time. I was okay with living as I was told and just existing according to Evergreen’s will. That hasn’t been the case for a long time.

My runes are the last holdout. They’re the only things I haven’t taken back for myself. That changes now. My next Rank 4 is mine. Nobody else’s. It’s going to be exactly what I want I to be, and I want some damn flowers.

Moxie pulled her hands apart. Then she clapped them together, shoving the runes together with a burst of will. A brilliant crack rang out through her soul as the runes merged. A wave of power blew her hair back and she gritted her teeth, focusing every scrap of her will.

Energy churned like a furious storm trapped within the confines of her soul. Moxie wrapped bands of will around the glowing mass of runic energy as it fought against her, trying to break free.

She gave it no quarter. Her intent was unflinching. She didn’t care if it was the right intent or if it was optimized to be the perfect warrior. She didn’t care what the most powerful or efficient runes had been researched to be.

The only thing she cared about was the rune she wanted. And, in that, she was unshakable. She knew what she wanted, and the rune would become the manifestation of her desire. There would be no room for argument. No open spots for her intent to falter or leave a command unsaid.

A brilliant flash of light lit her mindspace up. It was followed by a powerful wave of pressure that slammed into Moxie’s chest like a six-foot wave. She staggered back and held her hands up, blinking furiously through the blobs of white that swam through her vision.

She’d made a Rank 4 Rune. Excitement bubbled in her stomach but she forced it down. Reaching Rank 4 was admirable, yes, but there would be no celebration until she saw if she’d been successful.

Moxie lowered her hands and squinted in the direction of the rune — and there she saw it.

Flowering Genesis

The rune was ten percent full. A laugh slipped out of Moxie’s mouth and she finally let her hands drop. A tear ran down the side of her face, but she barely even noticed it. She’d formed a Rank 4 Rune — not the one she’d been told to make, but one she’d decided on entirely of her own volition.

Moxie drew power from the rune and tested the pressure that came off it. Power pressed into Moxie’s face like a strong wind, but it didn’t change or falter. She could barely believe it, but it was impossible to deny. As she tested out different parts of the rune, pulling the power into her body and letting it dissipate, there was no denying what she saw.

The rune wasn’t just perfect. It was flawless.

I guess I might not need Sunder this time around, Noah. I managed this one all on my own.

She knew that wasn’t entirely true, and it only made her smile stretch wider still. Even if Noah hadn’t been physically beside her, he’d still somehow been there in word and spirit. The rune was hers through and through, but it wouldn’t have ever so much as taken shape without him.

Moxie let her eyes drift open in the real world, leaving her mindspace behind and returning to her room. The world around her felt sharper — clearer, as if she could see in every direction rather than just through her eyes. In a way, she could.

Her domain had revealed itself.

Moxie had reached Rank 4.

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