Return of the Runebound Professor-Chapter 662: Surrender

Pressure from Eternal Cycle bore down on Moxie like the weight of a mountain driving down into her shoulders. Her other runes shuddered as they pushed back against its immense might and she grit her teeth, casting her gaze up to the massive Master Rune.

It was powerful, and immensely so. Moxie knew more than enough about Master Runes at this point to recognize that. She’d been in Noah’s soul enough times to recognize the strength of Sunder and the Fragment of Renewal. While Eternal Cycle wasn’t quite at their level, the rune wasn’t far.

Sievan really gave me some good pointers, and the guideline pattern from the Broken Master Rune we used was incredible. Almost makes me wonder what it would have been if it had formed correctly the first time around… but in the end, that doesn’t matter.

I need to remain focused. There’s too much power for me to let my mind wander.

Moxie drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She raised a hand toward Eternal Cycle, pausing a moment before the tips of her fingers could brush across its humming surface. Then she extended her fingers ever so slightly.

A deluge of power drove into her chest like a shot of adrenaline. It raced through her veins and slammed into her heart, making it skip a beat as her eyes shot wide open. Logically understanding how much strength the Master Rune could bring to bear was vastly different from actually harnessing it.

She let out a surprised hiss and yanked her hand back. The power she’d taken from the rune stayed within her body, dancing through it like raging ocean waves crashing against her from within.

It wanted to break free from its containment. To tear through the world around her and conform everything to its will.

Moxie gritted her teeth.

This is nothing like drawing from a normal rune. It’s like the Master Rune has a will of its own, and that will isn’t aligning with mine. I want to study the power without releasing it… but I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to hold this.

“Settle down,” Moxie said through clenched teeth. She tried to still the churning power in her veins, but it was like trying to hold down a bucking horse. The magic couldn’t have given less of a shit about what she wanted. It just wanted to be free, and the more she held it within her, the more insistent it got.

No wonder Noah never channels Sunder for long. The moment he starts drawing on it, it must start trying to fight back. But how does he get it to hold back for long enough to put it into a Formation? I’d never be able to do that as things are now.

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I’m missing something. Eternal Cycle shouldn’t even have energy like this. Life and Death isn’t some crazed, intense thing. I already know that. The Line is anything but energetic. My Rune might not represent the line, but it shouldn’t be that far from it either.

The energy fought back against Moxie even harder, desperately pressing against the boundaries of her soul in attempt to slip out into the outside world. Pressure bore down on her from the Master Rune above and her other runes trembled as they fought to keep it from crushing her.

Something in the energy shifted, almost as if it had understood her words. Then it bucked even harder. The magic tore out from her palms, twisting and dissipating into the Mindspace around her.

Moxie’s lips thinned as a spark of anger ignited within her chest. The Master Rune had straight up ignored her — no. It was worse than that. The rune had understood what she wanted and actively chosen to do the exact opposite, wasting its power instead of bending to her will.

“That’s how you want to play this?” Moxie asked, glaring up at the rune.

It, somewhat unsurprisingly, did not respond. If Moxie felt any shame about speaking to what really should have been a largely inanimate object, she certainly didn’t let any of it show in her words.

“You are a rune,” Moxie snapped. “And I decide how your power is applied. Not you. If I decide you will sit still while I study you, then you will sit still.”

The pressure on her shoulders abruptly intensified. Moxie staggered and nearly fell to one knees in her surprise.

Eternal Cycle understood her — and it didn’t seem that it was much of a fan of her demands.

She gritted her teeth and drew on her other runes, letting their power flow through her body as she straightened again. The Master Rune fought back and pressure tore through her soul like a violent gale, sending her hair whipping around her face.

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That was as clear of a challenge as any words ever could have been.

But, just in case she’d managed to miss it, another pressure hammer crashed down into her shoulders. This one was far stronger than the last. It slammed Moxie to the ground, nearly breaking her legs in the process, and ripped every scrap of air from her lungs in a coughing wheeze.

The spark of anger in her chest ignited into a roaring flame.

“Who do you think you are?” Moxie snarled. She drove a hand into the ground, drinking power from her runes until it filled her body to the brim. Power continued to bear down on her from the Master Rune as it fought to keep her pinned to the ground.

Her fingers twitched. They tightened into a balled fist. With a grunt, Moxie drove it into the ground. Her muscles flexed as she pushed herself upward, trembling with strain, and slowly started to rise once more.

She craned her neck back to stare straight up at Eternal Cycle. Even though the rune didn’t say anything, she could almost read the exact thoughts passing through it.

Eternal Cycle was an immensely powerful Master Rune. One created with the aid of Lord Sievan himself. It wanted to be used. To be freed. A concept as strong as the one it embodied refused to bend knee to some arrogant mage that felt she had the right to order it around.

“You’re new here, so I’ll give you a pass,” Moxie hissed through clenched teeth. “You don’t have the faintest idea as to who I am.”

The pressure drove down into her back, trying to force her back to the ground.

Moxie didn’t budge.

“Perhaps you’re disappointed that I’m the one who kept you,” Moxie continued. “That I took what you once were and formed you into this with Sievan’s aid. But if you want to be anything at all, you will do as I say.”

She drove a foot down into the ground, bracing herself with her hands. Her knee trembled as the muscles in her leg fought against the power roaring around her.

“I am Moxie Torrin. I am an exile of my own house and I have gotten great swathes of aid from those around me to get where I stand. I have no great feats to my name.”

And, inch by ponderous inch, Moxie started to rise. She didn’t let her eyes break from Eternal Cycle as she pushed herself to one knee, then slowly started to rise back to her feet. Her entire body ached and groaned from the pressure bearing down on her from every direction.

Each breath she took was a fight — but Moxie refused to even blink.

“But I faltered once,” Moxie continued. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands. Blood beaded against her fingertips. “I gave up. And that will never happen again. Not even if you were a god. But you aren’t one. You’re just an insolent rune. I am not the woman I was yesterday. And tomorrow, I will not be the woman I was today. I will be more. And you will not change that. Bend or break — because I will not.”

Moxie rose fully to her feet. She stood tall as the rune’s pressure drove down onto her, but all the howling wind around her could not bring her back down to her knees. The forest whipped and howled. Vines thrashed; trees creaked and groaned. They were ripped from the ground and shattered. Fragments of wood thundered as trees literally exploded from the force of Eternal Cycle’s power.

Her very soul began to crumble.

Moxie did not budge.

She and Eternal Cycle stood steadfast.

And, in the storming gale of pressure and energy that surrounded her, Moxie couldn’t help but feel a flicker of recognition. There was something within that furious storm. Something that her eyes couldn’t ignore.

It was almost as if there was…

A pattern.

Her lips twitched.

And from the ruined ground at her feet, a single sapling pushed free from the soil. Its twin leaves unfurled. It couldn’t have been any taller than an inch, but the tiny plant didn’t so much as sway in the furious wind.

“Throwing a tantrum will change nothing. Even if you rip me, I’ll just come right back,” Moxie said, and the more she spoke, the truer she knew her words to be.

It didn’t matter if her soul was torn to shreds. If her runes were shattered or if her body was broken. It was from death that life came. A forest could not exist without fallen trees to grow upon.

She knew her pattern, and it was rebirth.

The sapling at her feet started to grow. It ignored the wind howling around it as it rose, reaching up past Moxie’s legs as leaves erupted from its stem.

Death begat life, and life returned to death. Passing between them was simply the natural order. Even if Eternal Cycle pushed her to the very edge, Moxie would return — and she would be stronger.

“If you completely break my soul, then you die too,” Moxie said. “You cannot break my will. This will continue until you surrender. If you choose to continue, then my soul will be reborn or shatter. Perhaps you can defeat my pattern. But Noah will bring me back. Who will save you?”

The gale around Moxie roared on for a second longer.

Then it went still.

Fragmented shards of wood rained down to the ground as trees pitched over, finally falling to their resting places with thunderous crashes. And then her soul was silent.

Eternal Cycle surrendered.

Warm sunlight washed over her soul. The jungle that had been her Mindspace had been completely destroyed. It was nothing but fallen trunks and scattered sticks. Shimmers of white soul damage spilling from fractures raced along the ground.

Saplings begun to push up from the ground all around her, slowly stretching open to reach for the light above. They wound through the cracks in her Mindspace, pulling them shut like stitches.

Moxie smiled. She didn’t fully understand how her pattern or her Master Rune worked yet, but they were hers, and they both knew it. She now had all the time in the world to figure both of them out. Neither was going to be giving her problems any longer.

And, even though Eternal Cycle couldn’t respond, she spoke to it once more.

“I look forward to working with you.”