Power crashed around Noah like a roaring ocean. It flooded his lungs and pooled in his stomach, slamming into his mind like mighty waves. He grasped the reigns of consciousness and weathered the violent magic with every scrap of intent he could bring to bear.

His will dug deep into the swirling magic and drew it together, forcing it to obey his mental command. The more his body formed, the harder the energy tried to escape. Noah didn’t let it. His reformation ground to a halt as it slammed into a mental wall and he drew deeper on the latent magic that came in his reformation.

The throbbing pulses of his headache grew stronger with every second as he resisted the pull of Sunder. His vision fluctuated between the darkness of his soul and the dim light within his tent in the Damned Plains. Flashes of runic pressure wove in and out together with his consciousness, but Noah’s will had been forged by the very Line itself. He had millennia of impatience and determination to draw upon — but that wasn’t all. Noah had one flame of motivation that burned brighter than anything else ever possibly could have.

Moxie would be fucking pissed if he had to kill himself a second time.

That was more than enough to keep him on track. The waves of power slammed into him over and over, and Noah drank from them with every blow. He ripped the churning power out and pulled it into himself, forcing it into his soul and bending it to his intent.

Crackles of grey and white energy flashed behind Noah’s eyes and arced through his mindspace. They slammed home before his flickering hand, driving themselves like pieces of jagged porcelain into the beginnings of a rune forming before him.

Every single angle of the rune seemed as sharp as a blade. It had no curves — only jagged lines and floating components connected to the others by nothing more than a thread. If someone had grabbed their favorite plate and dashed it across the ground with all their might, the instant after it shattered would have been a fair representation of the growing rune.

Pain burned through Noah’s soul as pieces of it started to fragment. Chips formed in the empty darkness, allowing brilliant white light to spill through. They lengthened into cracks that spiderwebbed through his soul like fingers of frost.

Noah snarled, the noise lost to the recesses of his own mind. There was less power now, but the mounting pain and soul damage were starting to eat away at his concentration. He could feel himself faltering and the rune’s formation slowing.

He still hadn’t managed to draw in all the latent magic flowing through his soul. There was more left. If he failed now, it would all be wasted. He’d have to go back to the auction or find another way to get more runes.

I won’t let that happen. We don’t have the time to waste. I will not fail now. I’m so damn close.

Noah snarled in defiance. He doubled down, thrusting every scrap of intent and power he had forward. Pressure bore down on him from Sunder as his will locked horns with its power. A tight band of force wrapped around his neck and started to constrict, trying to force him out of his soul and into his forming body.

Some of the cracks carving through the dark widened. Agony gripped Noah’s skull in a vice. His vision of his soul started to fade away. Tingles raced down his fingertips and toes. They reached down his limbs and raced toward his chest. He was getting pulled back into his body. If the rune wasn’t formed by the time his eyes truly opened, then everything would be wasted.

Noah desperately pushed back against the encroaching feeling, but it was fruitless. Sunder’s pull was too strong. His soul faded away completely. He tasted blood in his mouth and his entire form tingled like every one of his limbs had fallen asleep. A thick fog started to form at the edges of his mind, taking with it his access to magic.

He groaned, and the sound dimly reached his ears in the distance. He’d nearly completely reformed. Desperation burned in his chest as he clutched onto the final strands of power he still had. Noah couldn’t see the darkness anymore. His senses were fading, but he could still feel the energy at the back of his mind.

With one final cry of defiance, Noah yanked on the remaining power. There was a sharp crack followed by a brilliant flash of light. A wave of force slammed into his head and fog rolled through his mind like a crashing tsunami, washing away every last scrap of connection to his soul that remained.

Noah’s eyes snapped open and he drew in a ragged gasp. Pain slammed in his skull like someone had been hammering away at it for the past hour. He could feel the blood pumping with such intensity that it made the veins on his forehead and the back of his neck bulge.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

A hacking cough forced its way out of his chest, intensifying the pain with every sharp movement, and blood splattered from his lips onto the ground. Something grabbed his shoulder. Noah couldn’t make out who it was. The world was a sea of hazy indecipherable colors and all-too bright lights that burned into his retinas like hot brands.

He squeezed his eyes shut and grasped the sides of his head as if to dig the pain free with his own fingers. Something wet trickled down from his nose and across his lip. He barely even noticed. It wasn’t just pain — the world felt disconnected. Distant.

Voices brushed across his ears, but their meaning arrived at his mind garbled and destroyed beyond comprehension. Forming words was equally impossible. His tongue was thick and heavy in his mouth. Every thought that attempted to take root in his mind was washed away by the powerful ebb and flow of fog.

There was no option remaining to him. The human body could only handle so much before shutting down. Noah’s consciousness mercifully drifted away until only empty darkness remained.

***

Thought returned slowly. The world was still dark, but the pain had abated. A throb was still present in the back of Noah’s mind. Its savage claws dug deep into his soul. He definitely had a significant amount of soul damage.

The rest of his senses started to trickle back. A faint sweet smell reminiscent of strawberries lingered in the air. Something warm and soft was pressed against his body and his face was nestled in a smooth, tickly bed.

He groaned and squeezed his eyes even harder. Noah worked his lips and opened his mouth, only for something to work its way in. Hair. He let out a startled grunt. The movement sent spikes of pain jabbing into the back of his head and he jerked to a halt with a grimace. His grip subconsciously tightened around the soft bed he was laid out on.

“Noah?” Moxie’s voice came from just behind his head. Her tone had been gentle, but the words resonated through his head like the echo of a massive drum. He grimaced and forced his eyes open, blinking furiously. Even the dim light felt like it were made of dozens of tiny needles trying to work their way into his skull.

“That… didn’t go how I planned it to,” Noah muttered. More of the world formed around him. He was laying on against Moxie on top of her bed of vines, his arms wrapped around her back in a stranglehold that probably would have been somewhat dangerous if he didn’t feel so drained of energy.

“Are you okay?” Moxie asked, tone tinged with deep concern. Her voice didn’t come out as loud this time around. It was almost manageable.

“Yeah,” Noah said. He reluctantly released his grip on Moxie, though he made no move to distance himself from her side as he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m fine. That was rough, but the worst is gone. Just some nasty soul damage.”

“Idiot,” Moxie muttered into the top of his head, giving him a gentle squeeze. “This is why dying shouldn’t be your first solution to literally every single problem.”

“Hey, it’s been a while since the last time,” Noah defended. The last dredges of disorientation finally sloughed away, though he could still feel traces of fog lingering in his mind. “How long was I out?”

“It’s kind of hard to tell hours down here, but I’d say something close to half a day back in our world. Maybe a bit more,” Moxie replied.

“Seriously?”

And I still have a headache? Goddamn. What did I do to my soul?

“You’ve been out for a while. Lee and I were worried,” Moxie said through a huff. “I trust it was worth it?”

“I sure hope so,” Noah replied. He reluctantly pulled away from Moxie and pushed himself upright. A twinge of pain shot through his head again and he grimaced. Moxie sat up beside him and sent him a worried glance.

“Are you sure—”

“No,” Noah admitted through a wince. “But I’ll find out. If it’s been half a day, my magic should be back. I’m going to go use the Fragment of Renewal and see if I managed to pull this shit off or not.”

Moxie inclined her head and Noah let his eyes drift shut again. He drew in a slow breath and exhaled through his mouth, pushing past the headache to sink back into his soul.

Darkness bloomed all around him, but it was far from absolute. Pale, glowing cracks covered the edges of his soul like the web of a massive spider, climbing all the way up to the Fragment of Renewal and Sunder.

It wasn’t the worst soul damage he’d ever found himself with — and Noah could barely even bring himself to pay any attention to it. His eyes were fixated on something new. Something that hadn’t been in his soul when he’d last left it.

A jagged gray rune floated across from him, equidistant from Crumbling Space and Natural Disaster. Ripples of pale energy pulsated within the sharp edges that made it up. It definitely didn’t feel like a flawless rune, but it would have been a fantastic first attempt if it hadn’t been for one small issue.

Ribbons of thick inky darkness hung from the rune like someone had dumped a bucket of sludge over it. They wove through the holes in the rune and formed a shadowed mass behind the it, running down and merging into the floor of his soul. He couldn’t read the rune at all.

Noah swallowed. A headache still pulsed in the back of his head. A quick summon of the Fragment of Renewal would have purged it, but he couldn’t pull his eyes from the rune before him.

It wasn’t possible. Every component that had gone into the rune had been a normal one. The runes he’d broken to make it were readable, but there was no denying what his eyes told him. The rune floating before him looked eerily similar to the ones that he had seen lodged in Lee’s soul.

Did I just make a Demon Rune?