Return of the Runebound Professor

His plan decided, Noah smoothed out his wrinkled robes and approached the door. He rested his hand against the knob, fingers wrapping around cold metal as he paused. He touched the gourd hanging from his waist.

On the off chance that something happened, people would see what happened if he revived. Then again, leaving it in his room hardly felt safe. Noah let his hand drop, leaving it at his waist.

The door clicked open, and Noah stepped into a narrow stone corridor. It swung shut behind him with a click. He jiggled the handle, then grimaced. It was locked.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to make sure the only way out is forward,” Noah said with a dry chuckle. He glanced down both ends of the corridor, but they looked the same. Greyish-black stone made up the floor and walls, coming to an arch just above his head.

Doors lined the walls to the right, while open windows ran along the left. Noah approached one of the windows and his eyes widened in awe. A beautiful garden stretched out before him, winding brick paths weaving through the exotic foliage.

Horse-sized flowers dotted vines the width of Noah’s waist, their petals a rainbow of colors. They glistened with liquid pollen that dripped like rain, falling to large clusters of pink and bright yellow bushes below them.

Trees warped and twisted in ways that Noah had never seen. Leaves of gold and silver shimmered like a sea of riches within their branches, rustling in the faint wind. Everywhere Noah looked, the majesty of completely foreign nature sprawled out.

Beyond the gardens, spires pierced the clouds. Tall towers rose between them, and stone bridges linked everything together. Noah could just barely make out the forms of other people walking along the bridges, but a large wall at the edge of the garden kept him from seeing the bases of the buildings.

He shook his head, pulling back from the window.

I’ll have time to admire the world later. I need to focus on not getting killed again.  

“I wish I had a coin to flip,” Noah muttered.

He chose a direction at random and strode off through the halls. To his delight, after turning down several corridors, he came across a small metal board hanging from the wall. It had a miniature map of the building he was in, including a small gemstone that presumably marked where he currently was. Above the map, printed in what Noah was starting to suspect to be the common language of this world, was the letter T.

There were a dozen other buildings, all labeled with letters. A small key at the bottom of the map identified the meaning of each one and, the more Noah read, the less it sounded like a school and the more it seemed like a fortress.

Distributed throughout the multitude of normal school buildings was an Armory, a Transport Cannon, Drill Fields, and a multitude of other locations that he didn’t recognize.

I wonder if every letter has an equivalent to English, or if I’m just somehow translating everything to the closest thing to it. I bet it’s the latter, since human brains are fantastic at making things up to adapt to new visual information.

After memorizing the map, Noah set off once more. Even with the path in mind, the building was surprisingly difficult to navigate. He’d never considered himself to have either a good or a bad directional sense, but whoever had built this building clearly hadn’t been a fan of straight paths.

He finally reached an exit after several minutes of walking and more than a few mistaken turns that ended in dead ends. Noah stepped through it and into the beautiful garden, letting out a relieved sigh.

His nose twitched as a myriad of sugary, warm scents entered his nostrils. It was like a bakery that had been mashed with the essence of every fruit in the world and condensed down into a single smell.

He ran his tongue along his lips.

Food. I want to eat something.

He took a step toward the garden, then paused. Food could wait. He was pretty sure his hour was going to run out fairly soon – or had that already happened? Noah pursed his lips, then shrugged. He was probably fine.  

 Noah started down the path, keeping close to the building’s wall to avoid getting lost in the thick garden. Especially from ground level, some parts of it were so thick that they might as well have been a forest.

Through no small amount of luck, the path he’d chosen led straight up to a large stone circle in the ground. At its center was an obsidian pillar, bearing yet another map. It depicted an eagle’s eye view of dozens of buildings, along with another small red gemstone just above a building marked T.

His eyes darted around the map before landing on his target – the G building. It was just two buildings behind him, opposite the garden. Noah studied the path for a few more moments to make sure he wouldn’t get lost, then set off.

Just around twenty minutes later, he found himself standing in front of a stout stone building. Heavy vines wound around it like the embrace of a kraken and the wooden entry doors were worn and weathered by years of exposure to the elements. One of them hung slightly askew, and the other was heavily rotted. In the stone just above them protruded the letter G. The top half of the letter was chipped away, but he could just barely make out the pale area where it had once been.

“Looks like they had just as big of a budget as I did,” Noah grumbled, tugging on the door. It ground open, scraping across the ground. Once it was large enough for him to fit through, he squeezed inside.