Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 358: Rats

“You’re going to have to give me more than that to work with.” Noah drained the last of his wine and set the empty glass to the side, interlacing his fingers and leaning forward. “You know things about everyone. What’s the gap in his armor? I could find it myself, but it would save a lot of effort if you just told me.”

“If he had a gap wide enough for me to take advantage of, I would have already done it.” Father shook his head. “There are mannerisms – repeated mistakes that Wizen is prone to making, but none of them are significant enough to properly turn against him. He is arrogant, as all of power are. He is irrational, which works both for and against him. His people are loyal.”

“Voluntarily?” Noah asked. “Or are they puppets?”

“Wizen, despite the appearance he has put on thus far, is not a puppet master,” Father warned Noah. “Not in the literal sense of the word. Only recently have I seen him working with anything construct or puppet related, and just now am I hearing about plant related abilities. He is – or at least, I believed him to be – a Mind Mage.”

Did he get his hands on a bunch of Runes? That seems a little odd. Something isn’t adding up here.

“When you say Mind Mage, what do you believe are the full extent of his powers that you do know of?” Noah asked carefully. He didn’t want to give away that he had basically no idea what a Mind Mage was actually capable of beyond possibly telling if someone was telling the truth or not and doing whatever it was that Wizen had done to Alexandra.

“His main ability has always been his ability to read his opponents’ plans. It is not proper mind reading, but it is very close to it. He can pick up on your intentions and react before you can adjust as long as you’re within his domain,” Father said. He poured himself another glass of wine and looked to Noah, who shrugged and nodded.

“What else?” Noah asked while Father poured him a glass. “That can’t be all.”

“He can forcibly take control of someone’s body if he has sufficient time by imbuing them with a portion of a Mind Rune,” Father said, his features narrowing in distaste. “It is not an effective strategy against an opponent who can fight back, and it’s very easy to tell who has been affected by it. The binding is very literal and those under his control can ignore commands not directly given. He uses it more to show his power than as a real weapon, though he can reinforce the bodies of people he imbues.”

So exactly what he did to Alexandra.

“How long would it take to do that?”

“Days, at the minimum. Possibly weeks.”

It sounds like that particular power isn’t going to be a direct issue, then. Not as far as protecting the others, at least. The most pressing matter is to figure out how to deal with his puppets and then I can work on the other crap later.

“Wizen can only mind read you when you’re near him?” Noah asked.

Father nodded. “Yes. And, last I was aware, the range of his domain was one hundred feet around him.”

I wonder what the chances are that Wizen is in Arbitage. Something tells me he isn’t. If he was actually able to do all this mind magic crap, I don’t see why he’d resort to having plant clones strolling around. This is probably the same situation that Evergreen’s construct was in, so he’s off somewhere else, probably nice and safe.

Works for me, though. It means I should be able to focus. It doesn’t matter how Wizen started getting puppets. What matters is finding a way to recognize them.

Noah leaned back in his chair, idly going to take a sip from his glass before realizing that it was empty. He didn’t know if Ulya’s strategy of cutting the back of everyone’s necks was the best one to use. They’d have to do it every single time anyone left their sight for more than a few seconds, which sounded like a huge pain if nothing else.

Wizen is using plants to make his plants and can steal control of other people’s constructs. I don’t think anyone other than Evergreen has a construct just strolling around casually, so I can focus on the plant shit.

Seconds ticked by. He’d narrowed down the scope of the immediate problem, but it didn’t change the fact that he had absolutely no idea how he could figure out if someone was made out of plants without just cutting them open.

Noah could feel Father’s gaze boring into his skull, reminding him that this fight was far from just him and Father versus Wizen. It was a three-way battle, and Father was only a temporary ally – if that. There was still a chance Father was going to double cross him somehow.

“Do you have anyone that uses puppets that you could bring in?” Noah asked, deciding sitting silent any longer would show more concern than he was willing to reveal.

“Perhaps,” Father allowed. “Why?”

“I want to test something.”

“Will you kill them?”

“Do you care?”

“Yes,” Father said. “They are an important part of my family.”

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Ah. Someone you still need alive. Not like I was planning on killing anybody for no reason in the first place. Good to keep up some degree of appearances, though.

“I won’t harm them,” Noah promised. “I can’t say the same for their puppets, though. I’d like to test a few theories.”

Father considered him for a moment, then inclined his head. A moment later, the door rumbled open to allow Janice entrance. If she was surprised to see Noah, it didn’t show on her face. She just gave him a small nod of greeting before turning her attention to Father.

“What can I do for you, Father?”

“Get Ian and tell him to bring one of his puppets with him. One that isn’t important.”

Janice stepped out of the room without another word. The next few minutes passed in silence, with Noah and Father sitting on either side of the table wordlessly. Fortunately, Janice worked fast and they didn’t have to wait long.

Three pairs of footsteps walked back into the room, and Noah resisted the urge to turn and look over his shoulder. Janice re-entered the room accompanied by an average looking man. He had curled brown hair and matching eyes. A beard covered the lower half of his face and his hands were stained with grease.

Standing beside him was a scraggly looking animal. Noah wasn’t sure what animal it was meant to be. It walked on four legs and was vaguely reminiscent of the monkeys he’d seen in the Scorched Acres, but it didn’t have any hair – nor was it alive.

Instead of skin, it had exposed grey muscle. It had indents for eyes and an open hole for a mouth. Once the creature was close enough to Noah to enter his domain, he picked up a faint amount of energy curling off its form.

“You called for my services, Father?” The man asked, wringing his hands together. His eyes darted around the room, barely lingering on Noah for more than an instant.

“Thank you for coming, Ian. Magus Vermil has requested to inspect your puppet,” Father said. “You may leave. Remain outside the room.”

Ian let out a breath, not even trying to hide his relief. He hurriedly shuffled back out of the room and stood just outside the open door. Janice sent one last glance at Father, but when he gave no further command, she followed after Ian.

The door ground shut behind them, leaving Noah and Father in the room with the gray hairless monkey.

“Do what you will with it,” Father said with a vague gesture, but Noah didn’t miss the subtle interest in his posture.

Noah examined the puppet. He walked in a small circle around it, trying to think on what relations it would share to something under Wizen’s control. The monkey obviously wasn’t made out of plants, but they both functioned with imbuements.

That didn’t narrow things down much. A lot of things had imbuements, and many mages had Body Imbuements. Besides, even if the imbuements had stood out, it wasn’t like he could check everyone for them. He needed something more obvious.

There had to be something that set the puppets aside from everyone else and made it possible to immediately identify who had been replaced and who was safe.

Minutes passed. Noah studied the puppet, keeping his thoughts to himself. Father seemed content to do nothing but watch, which was just fine with Noah. He preferred to work in silence, but the silence didn’t change the fact that he was finding precious few similarities he could actually rely on.

Wizen’s plants had been supposedly able to infiltrate Will’s body and completely control it, so shape and appearance were out the window. The faint amount of magic coming off the monkey wasn’t particularly noteworthy in comparison to other mages either.

There were a lot of things that would have caused similar effects, including just about any imbued item with more than a little power stored inside it. That didn’t stop Noah, though. He continued to dig through his mind, searching for a solution as he walked circles around Ian’s puppet. The most obvious signs were the ones where he’d have to look so closely that it would be obvious. He needed something he could pick up on in just instants.

I wonder if my domain would be able to do anything. I haven’t fully tested its abilities yet, but I can feel the area covered by it a lot better than anywhere else. Maybe there’s something internal I could pick up?

Noah focused his senses on the area of his domain and the puppet within it. He could feel it sitting there, empty eye sockets staring into the wall. Streamers of magic tickled his senses, but they still didn’t stand out any more than they should have.

The puppet was just… that. A puppet. It had absolutely nothing remarkable about it. Noah’s fingers twitched in annoyance. He was so focused on his domain and the information filtering in from it that he realized he was amplifying just about everything in the room.

He could feel the blood rushing through his own body and hear the gentle thump of Father’s heartbeat across the table – a slow, steady rhythm that Noah suspected rarely ever changed.

And then it struck him. The solution was so simple that Noah nearly scoffed at himself for even daring to think of it, but the more he thought, the more he realized that simple was exactly what they needed.

The puppet was just a puppet. It was a mass of magic, flesh, and whatever else Ian had thrown into it – but it wasn’t a human. It wasn’t alive, and it certainly didn’t have a heart.

It’s not that easy to pick up on unless I’m really amping my senses to the max and feeling for everything, but now that I know what I’m looking for, it’s obvious.

There was no noise from the puppet, and plants would be no different. If Wizen replaced someone’s body with a bunch of magic, then their heart would no longer be beating. All they had to do was look for people without a heartbeat and blood flow and they’d root Wizen’s clones out without any difficulty.

“Ah,” Noah said. “That helps.”

“What does?” Father asked, tilting his head to the side. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I did. And I didn’t even have to break anything. Proud?”

This answer is so simple it makes me wonder why Father didn’t think of it himself. Or did he already figure it out and just didn’t tell me? Damn it. I can never tell with Father.

“That would depend on whether your solution works. Do not say it aloud,” Father warned, raising a hand before Noah could say anything else. “The fewer people know about what you have determined, the better – myself included. Fewer people means there are fewer targets he can steal information from.”

Just how strong is Wizen if Father thinks he can breach his sanctum? Then again, Father is a paranoid bastard.

“Noted,” Noah said. “In that case, you’ve given me what I needed. Now that I know you won’t be interfering, I’ll return to Arbitage and deal with the remainder of this issue.”

Father nodded idly. “I’m sure you will. I will give aid. Any opportunity to inconvenience Wizen is too tempting to pass up on.”

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Father lifted a hand, pressing his other palm to a rune circle on his desk. A hum filled the room and a purple swirl hummed to life behind Noah, twisting out into a portal as energy crackled at its edges.

“Someone talented in dealing with scurrying little rats,” Father replied, the corners of his lips twitching. “I will send Brayden.”

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