Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 731: Grim tidings

As it turned out, the Inquisitors had some fairly strong spatial mages. Even with the key leading back to Moxie’s room in Arbitage destroyed, it only took them a short while to form a portal to the bastion and send Noah and Fuyin packing.

It seemed they didn’t want them sticking around for long. Noah couldn’t imagine why.

Neither he nor Fuyin so much as looked at each other until the Inquisitor’s portal had snapped shut behind them. The sun had continued on its merry way through the sky in their absence and was now already starting to dip below the horizon.

After standing in still silence for a moment, Noah wordlessly started off for the T building with Fuyin in his wake. Grim felt like a millstone on his back. The weight of the answers the book had stolen felt like it was begging him to open it up — but he didn’t know if the Inquisitors were still watching them.

Judging by the fact that Fuyin hadn’t said a word, she might have been thinking the same thing. The two of them made their way all the way back over to the building and through the halls until they stood before Moxie’s door without a single word. They may as well have been two statues grinding along the streets.

Noah knocked on the door. It opened a moment later. Moxie stood behind it, a tired expression on her face. There wasn’t really any surprise in her eyes. She held a cup of something that smelled rather sharp in one hand.

“Ah,” Moxie said. “You’re back.”

“I’m sorry. This is my fault. My plans were already known to our enemies. You must have been incredibly concerned,” Fuyin said, finally breaking the silence.

“Not particularly,” Moxie said.

“I did not expect things to go so awry,” Fuyin said as Moxie stepped aside to allow the two of them to enter.

“I did,” Moxie said. She poured the entirety of her cup’s contents down her throat, then closed the door behind them and made her way over to the bedside table, where a black glass bottle sat in wait. She grabbed the bottle and poured herself another glass.

“Things were far worse than I imagined,” Fuyin said. “Far, far worse. The entirety of the archives is gone. Destroyed.”

“Is that all?” Moxie asked. She took a more conservative sip of her drink, then nodded to the bottle. “Want some?”

Something tells me that Fuyin isn’t the type to—

“Absolutely,” Fuyin said, her tone as deadpan as ever.

Noah blinked.

Moxie didn’t. She just grabbed another glass and filled it to the brim before handing it to the other woman, who downed the entire thing in one go.

Fuyin’s expression didn’t even flicker. It looked like she’d chugged a glass of water more than… well, whatever it was that Moxie was drinking. Given the fact that Noah could smell it from a few feet away, it was pretty damn strong.

“Is this room safe?” Fuyin asked.

“Basic anti-scrying imbuements,” Moxie said. “Nothing crazy. But I’m fairly certain nobody is here. I’m fairly certain the Inquisitors don’t know how to conceal their presence well enough to hide from my domain. Unless…”

She sent a glance to Noah.

He shook his head.

“I don’t think they do. They certainly didn’t indicate otherwise, and they’ve never used the ability.”

“Conceal our presence?” Fuyin tilted her head to the side. “Unless you mean binding my magic down to make it less noticeable, no. We don’t have a way to completely hide ourselves from someone’s senses.”

“Then it’s safe,” Moxie said. “Want another drink?”

She was pouring before Fuyin had started to nod.

“Thank you,” Fuyin said. She looked down into the glass, then back up at Moxie. “Is this a common occurrence?”

“No. I only break this one out on special occasions,” Moxie said.

“Not the alcohol. The… you know.”

“Oh, getting kidnapped?” Moxie asked. “Yes. Incredibly so. It’s almost a habit at this point.”

“Hey,” Noah protested. “I was not kidnapped. There was a trap. Tren was waiting for us in the archives. He smashed the key the moment we got in. Hardly my fault.”

“Just as I said.” Moxie arched an eyebrow and crossed her hands in front of her chest. “Vermil has a problem with getting kidnapped. He’s a repeat offender.”

“Vermil…” Fuyin’s lips pressed thin. “Spider.”

Moxie glanced at Noah. He shrugged in response. There was no point trying to convince Fuyin otherwise. It was a futile task. The woman wasn’t an idiot. Once the connection had been drawn, there was no way to erase it.

“He has a few names,” Moxie said noncommittally. “But given the fact that both of you have returned alive, I assume things actually went pretty well.”

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“Well?” Fuyin threw her glass back and swallowed with a grimace. “Hundreds of years of history are destroyed. The Inquisition’s core is rotted beyond repair. Demons run amok in the Mortal Plane — and you are courting one of the most powerful ones seen in recent years. One whose book ate the only proof that the council is corrupt. A book which, I might also add, is full of… carnal drawings.”

“Again?” Moxie asked, sending an exasperated look at Grim. “Seriously?”

“He has a problem,” Noah said. “I think my reputation might have taken a bit of a hit.”

Moxie pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, but Noah could have sworn he saw a flicker of a grin dance across her lips before it vanished once more. “Your Grimoire ate the entirety of the Inquisitor’s archives?”

“I didn’t ask him to. It kind of just happened,” Noah said.

“It… may not matter,” Fuyin said wearily. She glanced back at the bed, then to Moxie. “May I sit?”

“Feel free. I can just grow a new sheet if I need to,” Moxie said with a wave of her hand.

Fuyin flopped down on the bed. She blew out a heavy sigh and ran a hand through her hair. Stress pulled at her features, tightening them to a worried scowl. “Even if the proof hadn’t been destroyed, I don’t know who I would have shown it to. The council was rotted beyond belief. They were all in on it.”

“I did kind of pick up on that as well,” Noah said. “I don’t know if the Inquisition can even be called that anymore. I’m pretty sure the council wanted the archives destroyed. They certainly weren’t very bothered about it.”

“So I saw,” Fuyin said. She blew out another sigh and shook her head. Then she looked down at her empty cup. Moxie wordlessly refilled it. Fuyin gave her an appreciative nod. “I don’t know what to do from here. I never could have imagined things were this bad. I thought one or two members of the council were corrupt… not all of them. Who knows how deep the damage spreads.”

“Eh. You get used to it,” Moxie said with a one-shouldered shrug. “And it could be worse. The Inquisitors were always kind of a giant pain in the ass. No offense. But this doesn’t really change much.”

“I can see why you’d think that,” Fuyin said. “You are allied with demons.”

“And demons aren’t what you think they are,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “The Inquisition might have served a purpose once, but demons aren’t as evil as you believe them to be. The nature of their creation forces them to become something many of them do not want to be, but there are solutions to that beyond just killing them.”

“So says the demon,” Fuyin observed.

Noah waggled a hand in the air. “Really, I’m not a demon. I just… took a bite out of one, I guess.”

Sorry, Revin. I’m stealing your line.

Fuyin stared at him. Then she just shook her head. “No matter. At this point, we have already lost.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Really, this was a victory,” Noah said. “We got everything we came for. Honestly, that went great.”

“What part of what just happened was great?” Fuyin exclaimed. “Are you insane? Do you not realize the extent of the damage that was done today? Or do you simply not care because the Inquisition is your enemy? Can you not comprehend the importance of such ancient information? I—”

Noah raised a hand. He slung Grim off his shoulder and thunked the book down before Fuyin, bracing its back against his leg. “Grim, if you please?”

Grim snapped open. Pages whipped through the air before falling still — and Fuyin’s eyes went as wide as saucers. Her lips parted slightly in disbelief.

A horrifying thought struck Noah.

I swear to god, if I see a single dick drawn—

He jerked forward to lean over his grimoire and vet the contents of its pages. Mercifully, there wasn’t so much as a single naked bit or bob upon the book’s pages. There were just lines upon lines of flowing script.

“This… this is from one of the records,” Fuyin whispered. She leaned forward, extending a hand toward Grim before she caught herself. “How?”

“Grim is a special grimoire,” Noah said. “Aside from a few terrible habits, he also happens to be particularly useful at storing information he eats.”

“How much?” Fuyin’s eyes snapped back up to Noah. “How much is here?”

That probably depends how hungry Grim was.

“Most of it,” Noah replied, sending a sharp look down at his grimoire. “I’m certain that Grim wouldn’t go eating anything too important since there’s definitely a lot of useless trash that should be more than enough to sate his hunger. Am I right?”

“You didn’t destroy the archives,” Fuyin whispered. It barely even seemed like she’d heard his words. Her gaze burned into Grim’s pages reverently. “You stole them. Do you have the faintest idea as to how valuable they were? Of the ancient rune combinations and secrets hidden in their pages?”

Moxie quietly poured herself another drink.

“Not really,” Noah admitted. “Grim? Example?”

The book’s page rippled. The words vanished as new ones took their place. But, strangely enough, they were completely illegible. Little more than random scribbles.

“Wow,” Noah said. “That’s… useful.”

“A cypher,” Fuyin whispered. “The core of the archives. You really do have all of them. Not even I know how to read this. But if you dedicate a few years, we might be able to—”

The words on the page rippled. Then they re-arranged themselves. Pieces of the letters moved to connect with one another in a new pattern until what had been illegible just moments before became a perfectly normal sentence describing some ancient hall.

Fuyin’s words died in her mouth. She stared at the book for several long seconds. Then she swallowed.

“Your book decoded the cypher? Impossible.”

New words scrawled across the face of Grim’s pages.

Very possible.

“It… talks?” Fuyin asked warily, staring at Grim like he was about to try and eat her as well.

Feed me, Seymour.

Fuyin’s brow furrowed. “Who is—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Noah said hurriedly. The last thing he needed Grim doing was spouting off random Earth references. “Grim, did you actually manage to translate everything?”

Not yet. There are several different encoding techniques here. Some are much harder than others. I’ll break them soon enough.

“Ridiculous,” Fuyin whispered. Her eyes snapped up to Noah. “I want access to this. What do I have to give you for it?”

“You can’t have my grimoire,” Noah said. “But I don’t mind lending him to you if you feed him some runes for your time. Toss in some advice as to exactly what it is we should be looking for in these archives. I don’t want to sift through everything myself.”

“Deal,” Fuyin said instantly. “The archives have information on almost everything the Inquisition has seen since the Long Night. It’s focused on demonic activities, but it’s more accurate than almost any other—”

“Wait,” Noah said, his eyes widening as a realization struck him. “Does it have information about the Long Night?”

“It should,” Fuyin said.

Noah looked down to Grim.

I have found some. What are you looking for? I am in a helpful mood today.

“The Night’s Shadow,” Noah said, his hands clenching into fists. “I want you to tell me everything you know about the Night’s Shadow.”