Noah beat the sun to rising the following morning. His eyes fluttered open against his own desires, only for him to find that he was alone in Moxie’s bed. That alone was enough to pull him completely out of his slumber.

    He pushed himself upright, pushing the vine curtains to the side and peering out of the window onto the still-dark campus. It may as well still have been night. And even though he knew it would probably only be an hour or two until the sun made its appearance, his body had somehow already gotten used to the day-night cycles of the Damned Plains. He half expected it to remain night for another day.

    Moxie’s absence wasn’t entirely surprising. She’d been doing a lot of practice and research on her runes — real practice, not what they’d been up to the previous night — and now that they’d returned to Arbitage, she probably had a lot she wanted to test.

    That desire was not unique to her.

    Unstable Pandemonium lurked in wait within Noah’s soul. He’d yet to fully determine the abilities that it possessed, nor had he even really managed to delve deeper into the other boons that came with reaching Rank 5.

    If I recall correctly, Rank 5 is the turning point where you no longer need your rune’s element in the environment to use it. I should be able to manifest the power of my rune directly — but what the fuck is Pandemonium manifest?

    Noah rose from bed and pulled a fresh set of clothes on, barely even paying attention to his motions. His thoughts were completely turned to the rune that lurked within him. The questions running through his head now weren’t ones he could afford to keep unknown.

    There were far too many of his own enemies lurking, not to mention the people that would inevitably come for Isabel’s Master Rune when the nobles managed to untangle some of the bullshit he’d wound around them.

    Not knowing what he was capable of was a great way to screw up in the middle of a fight and get someone other than himself killed.

    I’ve got a few hours until class. That should be more than enough for me to get a little extraneous testing in. But where to go?

    Hmm. I wonder...

    ***

    “You’re here awful early,” Tim said in a low whisper. He stood across from Noah at the top of the Transport Cannon, surrounded by half a dozen sleeping demons. The two of them were the only two people in the tower that were awake at this hour. Tim adjusted his overalls. “I didn’t take you for such a morning person.”

    “Generally, I’m not,” Noah admitted. “But a lot has happened — and I mean a lot. I was wondering... is the Transport Cannon active again? Now that the Key is back and all that?”

    “Not technically, but I could make an exception. Is there somewhere you need to go?”

    “The Scorched Acres,” Noah said. “I want to do a little testing, and I hold a grudge like a motherfucker. Do you think you could send me there for about two or three hours?”

    “Simple enough.” Tim flashed Noah a grin and ambled by the piles of demons, navigating through them like he’d been doing it all his life, before arriving at the control panel. His hands played across the controls and a faint rumble shook the Transport Cannon as its turret shifted.

    “Appreciate it,” Noah said.

    Tim just nodded in response, waiting quietly as the cannon set itself into position. A faint clunk echoed through the room before it fell still once more. Not one of the demons woke up. Tim gave a thumbs-up and nodded to the cannon’s chamber.

    Noah climbed into it.

    “Means I can still do most of what I could, just at a slightly increased cost and a whole lot stronger,” Noah mused to himself. He called on Unstable Pandemonium again, letting more red electricity crackle across his fingers and studying it intently, all too aware of the power seeping from his rune.

    Using it like this drew a ridiculous amount of energy, but Noah was literally creating magic from nothing. He wasn’t exactly surprised that it didn’t come easy — and the Rune wasn’t even Flawless. It only had room to improve.

    But if it was to improve, he had to understand it. And if he was to understand it... he had to practice.

    It’s too early to stick this red stuff into a Formation. I don’t understand how it works well enough, so I’d definitely just end up blowing myself up. There will be a time and place for that. But I need to have my magic for class today — which means we’re doing the old fashioned style of practice.

    Noah slipped down from the tree and landed on the ground with a soft thump. Destroying the tree with a blast of wind had made a whole lot of noise. He was pretty sure the monkeys that lived in the forest wouldn’t have been too huge a fan of that.

    Sure enough, Noah felt something prickle against his domain — and, in the back of his head, he was reminded that he had to rebuild all of his body imbuements, which had evaporated in his advancement to Rank 5.

    Noah turned toward the intrusion to his domain. He knew what he’d come to see before he’d even started to move. His domain told him everything he needed. Standing behind him, partially hidden behind the trunk of a tree, was a Slasher.

    The massive monkey loomed over Noah. Its beady eyes bore into him as saliva dripped form its open mouth. He couldn’t even remember the number of times that empty, hateful gaze had been the last thing he’d seen before he’d died.

    “Well, hello there,” Noah said, lifting a hand toward the Slasher.

    A streak of red energy carved free from his palm. It jerked and zipped through the air, moving up and down, left and right, but somehow slamming home exactly where he’d been aiming.

    The Slasher’s chest.

    The monkey let out an agonized scream silenced only by the loud cracking that split the air as it collapsed in on itself. Noah watched on as the Slasher was practically turned inside-out. Huge chunks of the monster tore themselves apart until there was nothing left before him but a pile of gore.

    The corner of Noah’s mouth curled in distaste. A greater man than he would have felt some sense of unease about the gruesome death — but he’d been killed by the monkeys in the Scorched Acres so many times that the only emotion he felt looking at the desecrated corpse was curiosity.

    A faint amount of magical energy trickled into him, not nearly enough to be worth noting. Killing the Slashers wasn’t going to get him any significant amount of power. That was fine. For the time being, the only thing Noah wanted to do was push the limits of Unstable Pandemonium and see what it was capable of.

    I’m only using small chunks of power, and the name Unstable Pandemonium implies this rune is capable of doing a whole lot more than folding monsters up like origami.

    Something prickled against Noah’s domain.

    Another monkey.

    He turned toward it, red electricity arcing across his fingertips.

    Let’s find out, shall we?