Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 517: Heart to heart

“Oh, shit,” Noah said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

Noah then froze, as he hadn’t actually said anything. That did nothing to change the fact that he’d most certainly just heard himself speak.

“What the—”

“Fuck?”

Noah spun toward the source of his voice and found himself face to face with… Noah. A complete and utter copy of him, down to a stray hair sticking out from the top of his head. They stared at each other for several seconds in stunned silence.

“Yeah, no,” Noah said. “That’s not happening. You did not just finish my sentence.”

“I’m pretty sure I did,” Noah replied, scratching his chin as his brow furrowed. “Or did you finish mine?”

“You finished mine, and you did it wrong. I was going to say, ‘what the hell’. You got it wrong.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“No, you didn’t,” Noah admitted. He thrust a finger at the other Noah, who returned the gesture. Their eyes narrowed in unison and their hands lowered back to their sides.

“Are you copying me now?” Noah asked, upon which Noah’s — the other one — fingers twitched.

“We are not getting into this. There isn’t even anyone else here, so there’s no point doing some weird shape-stealer bullshit,” Noah said, crossing his arms. “Seriously. What the hell is going on? And who are you? You’re not me. I’m me. You’re someone else.”

“No, I’m most definitely you.”

They paused for a second.

“Okay, this is getting confusing.”

“Quite.”

“You’re Noah-2. I’m Noah-1.”

“Why do you get to be Noah-1?”

“Because you’re in my damn head. You — what, came from the Rune I just made? Is that even possible?”

“No clue,” Noah-2 replied, scratching the back of his head and letting out a huff. “And how could you have made the rune? I made it. Not you.”

“Don’t even try that.” Noah glared at his double. “I am not so easily gaslit.”

“Okay, I was fucking with you. You did make it,” Noah-2 said with a snicker. The smile fell away from his features a moment later. “I really am Noah, though. At least, I’m pretty sure I am. I know I’m not you you, but I am you.”

They were silent for another few moments.

“That was a bit confusing, wasn’t it?” Noah-2 asked.

“I’m going to bash you over the head with a rock.”

“I’d probably try that too if I were you. Which I am. Kind of. Unfortunately, no rocks here.” Noah-2 cast his gaze around the shadows of the mindspace around them. “And even if there were, I’m not so sure it would actually do anything. I don’t get the feeling that I’m alive.”

“How’s that?” Noah asked suspiciously. “Didn’t you just claim to be me?”

“What would you have done if you just suddenly found yourself existing in another variation of yourself?”

“I would have tried to — wait. You tried to leave my mindspace?” Noah glared at the other Noah. “To what, take over my body?”

“Of course. It’s what you would have done.”

“Fair point,” Noah admitted. It was a little difficult to get too mad when that was the exact step he would have taken if he’d been in his clone’s position. “I take it that failed?”

“Completely. I don’t exist outside of our mindspace,” Noah-2 said, tapping his foot on the ground and letting out a sigh. “Which means you’re probably actually Noah-1. So that leads me to my next question. What the hell am I?”

They both looked over at the Fragment of Self.

“Not exactly a difficult guess,” Noah said.

“Doesn’t tell us much either,” Noah-2 said.

“You don’t know what this is?”

“No more than you do. It’s a rune. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Noah agreed. “But I can’t imagine I’ve just randomly made myself a Noahmancy rune.”

“That would be a little specific,” Noah-2 said. He held his hands out toward Noah, who mirrored the motion. They both squinted for a second. Then their hands dropped.

“Not a Noahmancy rune. I couldn’t control you,” they said in unison.

“God, that’s creepy,” they said, in unison once again.

“Please don’t tell me the Fragment of Self just makes a duplicate form of me,” Noah muttered, relieved to find that his clone didn’t copy his words again.

“There’s no way that’s all it would do. I mean, look at it,” Noah-2 said, crossing his arms and staring down at the illuminated lines within their soul. “This is literally me. Or you. Us, I guess. There’s no way the absolute core of somebody’s soul is just making another version of themselves.”

They both studied the rune for several moments. It was a remarkably strange experience for Noah to stand across from a perfect copy of himself. He’d seen his face in a mirror before, and he’d left more than enough corpses behind to know what he looked like. Even Lee had taken on his appearance more than a few times.

This was different. He couldn’t quite place how he knew, but there was no doubt in his mind that Noah-2 really was him. Their mannerisms, the way they spoke, everything. It was identical.

“Maybe this is a side-effect of the Fragment of Self,” Noah mused. “Not the purpose of the actual rune. It’s still stuck merged with the Matter rune, so that could be messing with it somehow.”

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“Could be,” Noah-2 said. “I can’t access the runes, by the way. It seems the only thing I can do is exist. Mildly annoying. I’d like to try killing myself to see if anything happens.”

“That really is always our solution, isn’t it?”

“It works.”

“Let’s hold off on it until I learn more. What if you don’t come back? Or if two of you come back?”

They both shuddered. Two versions of himself was already too much. They didn’t need to turn his mindspace into a party.

“If you can find a way to separate these runes, we might be able to learn more about what’s going on,” Noah-2 said. “You’ve clearly got a way to access it.”

“I’m a little concerned about doing irreparable damage to myself at this point,” Noah muttered, looking down at the glowing lines tracing through the floor beneath his feet. They shifted in a gentle wave of motion, changing shapes before he could make out their pattern.

“Don’t fiddle with the greater part of your soul. That’s obviously a shit idea,” Noah-2 said. “Just stick with the Fragment. We can already see it, and it’s largely separated from the rest of your soul. Sunder it and reform it.”

“I don’t love the idea of Sundering — hold on. You just want to see what happens if I separate you from myself.”

“Guilty,” Noah-2 said. “It was worth a shot.”

“It was,” Noah agreed. “I’m not doing it, though. Even if that worked, what would you do? You wouldn’t have my body. You wouldn’t have Sunder either.”

“Hey, I figured I’d get there when the time came.”

This feels like someone trying to force me to reflect. That’s not going to work. I wonder what happens if I kill myself — ah, wait. That might leave Noah-2 in charge. It probably wouldn’t, but I’m not taking the risk.

Noah’s soul was quiet for a few moments as its inhabitant(s) pondered the Fragment of Self between them.

“You might have had a point about separating the rune,” Noah mused. “I don’t like the idea of Sundering it. We need to find a way to help Lee, and using Sunder on a Rank 4 with a Master Rune might end up killing her.”

“You’re right,” Noah-2 said, his features flattening. “This is no Demon Rune, but it seems remarkably similar. This isn’t just about me or you. I — we have the perfect opportunity to figure out how this works. Truce? Lee comes first.”

“Truce,” Noah agreed. He considered extending a hand to himself, but that just felt like a little too much. Instead, they both just looked back to the Fragment of Self. Noah had absolutely no idea where to start. The runes looked completely lodged together. Finding a way to separate them without Sunder felt like it would be nearly impossible… but he had an advantage that no force in the universe had ever possessed before.

There wasn’t just one Noah working on this. There were two.

***

Time slipped by. Noah had no idea how much. He and Noah-2 came at the Fragment of Self from every angle. They tried dragging it apart. They tried wiggling and pulling at pieces of his soul to unknot it and free the other rune.

They tried wedging a third rune between the two and using it like a crowbar to pry them apart, and that was just the head of the iceberg. The pair of them went through every single trick and idea that came to their minds, working in conjunction and firing off thoughts in unison as they worked to find a way to separate the runes. They even tried re-creating the song Noah had done to first connect with the Fragment of Self.

Nothing worked. Their efforts did nothing but drain the majority of the magical energy that Noah had left and send them both flopping to the ground on either side of the conglomerate rune, their brows creased in annoyance.

“This is goddamn annoying,” Noah-2 said. “I don’t like this rune, and it’s the reason I exist in the first place.”

“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” Noah muttered. “If this was something that could be brute forced, I’m sure Azel would have done it to Lee. Maybe we have to be subtle.”

“Subtle is not our specialty.”

“Well, we’ll have to adapt then. I’m not going to give up and let Lee get stuck where she is forever — and that’s assuming her rune doesn’t destroy her — because subtle isn’t my specialty.”

The other Noah winced. “Yeah. You’re right. How can we be subtle, though? We tried connecting to the Rune. It didn’t do anything. If we don’t know how to use the rune, then we can’t do anything with it.”

It was several seconds before Noah responded. “We might not know what it does, but maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.”

“We’ve been trying to separate it. That seems like the right way to me.”

“Yeah, and maybe that’s the problem,” Noah mused, rising to his feet slowly.

“I thought we just agreed not to give up,” Noah-2 said.

“I’m not giving up.” Noah approached the merged runes until he stood a foot away from them, their pressure winding around his chest like a constricting snake. “What if that’s our mistake? I mean, the Fragment of Self is literally a rune that’s meant to represent me. A portion of me at the least. If I want to control that…”

“You want to try and pull it back into your soul instead of cut it out?” Noah-2 asked, his eyes lighting up. “That’s genius. We’re so smart.”

“Tell me about it,” Noah agreed. “You… well, stand there, I guess. It’s not like you can do much.”

“Just pretend I’m Moxie. I can be moral support.”

“I’ll pass.” The corner of Noah’s lip curled up and he let out a slow breath, letting his eyes close for a moment as he steadied himself. He’d tried to grab the Fragment of Self so many times that he was already more than used to the uncomfortable prickling energy that attacked his insides when he touched it, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

Then his eyes opened again and he extended his hand. He rested it on the surface of the black strands of his soul. Energy poured into Noah, but instead of trying to find a way to wrest it away or control it, he pushed back.

Noah drove his intent into the rune, shoving the energy aside as he turned all the runic pressure he had to bear into the Fragment of Self. His vision focused in until the only thing before his eyes were the two merged runes.

His runes. Even if he didn’t know what one of them was, the other was a part of his soul. He didn’t need to understand what the Fragment of Self did or how it worked. It was a part of him. They were one and the same.

A river of chills rolled down Noah’s spine as a dull chime echoed through his soul.

All the rushing energy ground to a halt. Distant echoes rung in his ears and an odd feeling washed over his body as the world swayed. He could hear his heart beating in his chest and the blood rushing in his ears. Then even that stopped.

There was only silence. The rune did nothing, but not because it didn’t work. It did nothing because it was already working. It always had been.

Noah’s hand dropped to his side.

“Oh,” Noah breathed, unable to keep a faint laugh from slipping free of his lips as he finally realized what the rune truly was. He turned to Noah-2, who watched him with an inscrutable expression. “Seriously? The first guess I made was basically right.”

“Hardly. You used it the wrong way,” Noah-2 replied with a faint smile. “Took you long enough.”

The Fragment of Self was nothing like the other runes he possessed. It was him. Or at least, a portion of himself. It was the connection between his body and his soul. The rune was the passageway that let him access the rest of his runes, but it was more than that. It was everything he desired. Everything he was. It was literally him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Noah asked. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t know anything more than you do.” Noah-2 shrugged. “I figured it out when you did. I’m just a fragment, Noah. You made me. Splintering a section of your soul off can hardly be healthy, but it’s a damn good way to get a look at yourself. Did you like what you saw?”

“Not answering that one. I’m more than aware we only get philosophical when we’re bullshitting.”

“Got me there.” Noah-2’s eyes changed. Something swirled deep within them. A vine bed. The outside world.

Noah extended a hand — not to the rune, but to Noah-2. “Until next time, Noah-2.”

“What makes you think there’ll be a next time? I only came into being because your mind needed a way to represent everything… well, you.”

“Because I’m remarkably good at screwing up, and you’re me,” Noah replied. “I reckon it won’t be long.”

Noah-2 laughed. He lifted his hand and clasped Noah’s. “I suppose you’re right. Until then, Noah-1.”

A ripple passed through Noah’s soul and his clone vanished. He was alone once more, but things had changed. His soul felt different. More vibrant. It was as if all his senses had been dialed up.

Noah looked back to the pair of conjoined runes floating before him. He’d been trying to split the Fragment of Self off this whole time, when what he should have been doing was the exact opposite.

He couldn’t cut a piece of himself off. It would have been like removing a portion of his personality. Fortunately, Noah didn’t have to. Fragment of Self didn’t have to be removed. It had to be taken back.

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