A sharp rap on the door broke Noah from his research. He dropped his book and dove to the ground in preparation for a crazed monkey to come swinging at him. It took him several moments to realize that he wasn’t in the forest anymore.

“Hello?” Noah asked, slowly standing back up and grabbing his book on the way up.

“Vermil! I heard you were back,” a deep male voice called. “What happened out there?”

“I took a pretty bad hit,” Noah replied. “Sorry. I’ve got a little memory loss. I’m not feeling too well right now, but I’m sure I’ll be good again soon.”

“Idiot,” the man on the other side of the door said with a chuckle. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Just how bad is that memory loss, Vermil? You’ve got a class in a few hours. If it’s serious enough that you can’t teach it, we’re going to need to find someone to take over.”

“That sounds like a gr–”

“And we’ll send for a mage who can really take a look at what happened and see if we can get that damage repaired. The Linwicks are going to be furious if they find out you got seriously injured and didn’t get proper treatment.”

Noah paled. He wasn’t sure who the Linwicks were, but the absolute last thing he needed was a mage taking a closer look at him and finding out that he wasn’t Vermil at all.

“I actually don’t think there’s any need for that,” Noah said, trying to force a casual tone into his voice. “I can handle myself. It’s just a little bit of memory loss. Details and the like, but I’ve still got the important stuff. When’s my class again?”

“Gods, has it been that long since you actually taught? Building G, room 100. You’ve got an hour until it starts.”

“Right. Thanks. I’ll be there.”

“Make sure,” the man rumbled.

An hour. Okay. It’s been so long since time mattered to me in the slightest, but that’s not too long. Not too short either, though.  

The man’s heavy footsteps echoed away and Noah let out a sigh of relief. He leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his long hair, bunching his hands up in it as he slid down into a seated position.

 Okay. I’ve just got to convince people that I’m actually Vermil, just with some memory loss. From the way Richard treated me, I don’t think Vermil had too many friends. That should make things easier.

Noah pulled his hands out from his hair. He blinked, then rubbed his fingers together. Grimacing, he stood and headed back to the restroom. “But first, I’m going to need a shower. I feel disgusting.”

The knobs on the sink looked fairly similar to the ones back on earth, and a quick twist proved they worked the same way as well. Water poured out of the curved faucet and Noah dunked his head into it, scrubbing at his hair as hard as he could.

He finished a few minutes later, grabbing a towel from a hook on the wall and furiously drying his head off. Noah found a spare set of Vermil’s clothes in the closet and changed into them before heading back into the main room and sitting down on the bed.

Noah picked the leatherbound book up and flipped through the pages again. His time reading had lent him far more information than he’d hoped for, but far less than he suspected he needed. It was like trying to learn math by starting at derivatives instead of addition.

Despite that, Noah had managed to pick up a few key facts. He walked over to the desk and plucked a mostly blank page from the piles next to it. Using a quill that Vermil had kindly left sitting in a pool of ink that Noah had cleaned, he started to write what he’d put together.

1. Runes let you cast magic. Already knew that.
2. People can have more than one rune, since Vermil had a whole bunch of them in his book. I am unsure as to if there is a limit to how many you can have.
3. There are probably variations in the runes. I’m unsure as to how this actually changes their function, if it does at all. Vermil placed more importance on the complicated looking runes, though. That probably means they’re better somehow.
4.  

Noah stared at the paper, tapping the quill impatiently against his thumb as he tried to think of something to put down for the fourth point. Nothing came to mind. Sure, the book was stuffed full of research on runes and where they’d come from, but none of that actually told Noah how they worked.

Luckily, I think I’ve got the perfect strategy to figure out some more without actually giving anything too important away and I can help make a cover story at the same time. Two birds with one stone, as it were.