Illusory Education

Primal Wizardry: Book 1

Peter J. Lee

Copyright © 2025 by Peter J. Lee

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

Acknowledgment

1. Invisible

2. Uncle

3. Competent Guards

4. Castaway

5. Stowaway

6. Understanding

7. Passage

8. Lift

9. Admissions

10. Grand Master

11. Bursar

12. More Rats

13. The Library

14. Commencement

15. Introduction to Alchemy

16. Martial Combat 101

17. Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry

18. Goblin-Rats

19. Friends

20. The Room

21. PREVENT

22. Teammates

23. The Dungeon

24. Goblins

25. Blasting Rod

26. Griffin’s Roost

27. Hardball

28. Study Group

29. The Weekend

30. Monday

31. Chase

32. Theral

33. Sticky Runes

34. Rune Library

35. Alive

36. Doug

37. Round Two

38. Rescue

39. Escape

40. Recover

41. Weirdity

42. The Forsaken

43. Vaults

44. Grink

45. Ice

46. Fire

47. Family

48. Pathing

49. Follow the Squirrel

50. The Glade

51. The Mixer

52. Shopping

53. Wasted

54. Morning After

55. The Workshop

56. Old Book, New Tricks

57. Lost Fonts

58. Good Luck

59. Blizzard

60. Ensouled Artifact

61. Forgiveness

62. Elemental

63. Back to Reality

64. Grades

65. On Voidlings

66. Tal of Storms

67. Atrophy

68. Offset Gates

69. Swimming Lessons

70. Two-ish Months

Epilogue

Author's Notes

Acknowledgment

Thank you to my family for putting up with my writing.

CHAPTER 1

Invisible

[A robed man, with fire and lightning arcing over his body shaped like serpentine dragons.]

W is for wizards, the masters of magic. They have a history both storied and tragic. While now noble scholars with deep understanding, they once ruled the Basin from Lake Side to Landing.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Kohlyn spent the last day of his old life the same way he had most of those before it: studying. While the magistrate was declaring his parents dead in absentia, placing him under the stewardship of his uncle, he was digging through the deep archives in the hopes that some antiquated spellbook would be the key to his magical troubles.

Kole—as he preferred to be called yet no one ever seemed to—was a wizard. Or at least, he wanted to be one. He was close. As far as being a wizard went, he checked most of the boxes and even excelled at quite a few. Unfortunately for him, he struggled with the whole “spell casting” thing.

Today, he left the library earlier than usual. He vaguely recalled there was something important he needed to do but couldn’t remember what.

It must not be that important if I can’t remember, he told himself.

As he left, eyes on his spellbook before him as he tried to glean some last insights from his notes, a fish struck him in the head.

Now, in most regions of Kaltis this would be an immediate cause for concern, but in Illandrios the raining of fish was a common occurrence and a not insignificant source of a family’s meals. Kole looked down at the fish and then up to the ocean suspended above.

Seeing that the fish was dead, and no others fell with it, Kole sighed and looked around. Nearby three boys of similar age stood laughing and pointing. This was not the first time people had thrown fish at Kole, but unbeknownst to him, it would be the last—at least in this specific situation. Fish were everywhere, after all.

Corbyn Oldhill led this particular hunting party. He led most, in fact, recruiting from the wide pool of volunteers that was Kole’s classmates.

Due to his particular confluence of magical heritages and single-minded dedication to becoming a wizard, Kole had been hailed as a prodigy at an early age.

Children—and adults, for that matter—don’t take well to being shown up by their peers, and when Kole began to fall behind due to that same heritage and single-minded born stubbornness, his classmates were more than eager to wave mockingly at him as they passed.

When he’d completed his mental vault at the age of nine and his bridge at the unheard-of age of ten, he’d been put into classes with children four years his senior. His understanding of magic was nothing special, but he leveraged his massive pool of Will to practice three times as long as his new older peers.

At first, his work had paid off. He constructed his first cantrip on pace with his classmates—the most basic expression of wizardry that can’t properly be called a spell. But then he hit a wall. The simple first-tier spells that ought to have taken minimal mental effort completely exhausted his Will whenever he attempted to cast them. He agonized over the constructions in his mind, but they were flawless.

The problem was in him.

Not willing to give up, he’d continued to study cantrips while those around him moved on to first-tier spells. He tried cantrips of every Font, hoping he’d discover an affinity for any of them. But every Font he tried was the same. He could draw upon the power of the Font, but doing so left him completely and utterly spent. When no cantrip worked, he went back to first-tier spells. He tried every one he could get his hands on, but none worked. Where the cantrips took all his Will to cast, he ran out of Will entirely before he could finish casting the first-tier spells.

Fruitlessly, he’d kept at it until eventually he was only three years ahead. Then two, and then one, and then he was learning alongside students his own age. Now Kole was at risk of falling behind even them if he couldn’t master first-tier wizardry.

His classmates, who had grown up in the shadow of the so-called-prodigy, constantly compared to him by their parents and teachers, took no small amount of pleasure in his stagnation. They harassed him endlessly, and by this fateful day he had long since given up fighting back.

So when Kole realized the dead fish had not fallen from the ocean above, but had been thrown at him by a classmate, he used his singular sorcerous spell and turned invisible. Now unseen, he continued on toward his home at a casual pace. Until, that is, another fish struck him in the head.

For while Kole wanted to learn the magic of wizards, he was an inborn sorcerer—one with an inherent ability to cast spells, though with no control over which spells they can learn. Normally this magical heritage was a boon for any who wished to be wizards, giving them more Will with which to pursue wizardry while granting a narrow set of flexible spells. For Kole, he’d only ever manifested a single spell: Invisibility. A useful one for sure, but far less useful when those pursuing you knew you could do it.

Surprised by the unexpected blow, he stumbled, dropping his book. The three boys approached, Corbyn leading the rest with a basket of fish and wearing strange glasses that, by their ornate nature, Kole suspected were magically piercing his spell.

“Flood,” he cursed.

This was not the first time others had learned to circumvent his invisibility. When the class had learned Color Spray, they’d continually hunted him, painting him with conjured pigments. But his uniquely large pool of Will, and incredibly efficient Invisibility spell, meant that he could recast his spell more than his classmates could theirs, even if they worked together. He was forced to pay for magical cleaning each day he escaped, but he did always manage to escape.

These magical glasses, however, were another matter.

Kole picked up his book—now smelling of fish—and ran, clutching it close. He’d been caught before, and the bruises he bore for the weeks that followed may as well have been invisible for all the sympathy they evoked from the adults in his life. He ran through the market square hoping to lose them in the crowd. His invisibility, however, was to his disadvantage, as no one could see him barreling towards them and step out of his way. When he finally failed to dodge someone, crashing into them hard, the spell failed on him. After that, running got much easier as people stepped out of his way and cursed him as they did so.

On the far side of the market, he entered the town square. Behind him Corbyn’s gang tracked him through the crowd, restocking on ammunition in the process. The square was broad and open, leaving him room to turn invisible without risking being trodden over. Kole darted around the plinth that dominated the square, hiding behind the statues of Tal of Storms and the other heroes who’d liberated their home before turning invisible.

Once unseen, Kole made for an alley that opened up on the square. Normally this area would be packed with stalls, shoppers, and wagons, but it was the eve of the migration. Those present were working to erect the barriers that would guide the deep whales through the city while others cleared the street of anything that might cause the giant crustaceans to linger.

The workers shouted in frustration as the three teenagers ran past them in pursuit of something they couldn’t see.

“He turned left at the baker!” Corbyn shouted to his cronies when he saw Kole try to escape.

Kole had indeed turned off there and quickly came to regret it. The stalls that normally lined the thoroughfare had been packed up in anticipation of the migration, and this road—to Kole’s Riloth-cursed luck—was where they’d all ended up. A barrier of stacked panels met him, which he immediately climbed hoping to reach a roof.

Halfway up another fish struck him, followed by some fruit and then a rock. The first two were more embarrassing than painful, but the third caught him by surprise, and he lost his footing. He fell back from the steep stack of timbers, crashing hard on the street, where his concentration lapsed on his invisibility once more.

“There he is!” Corbyn shouted with feigned joviality. “We were looking for you! We heard your parents were officially dead and wanted to give our condolences.”

Oh, that’s what I forgot, Kole realized as he lay on the stone, looking up at the Globe of Day, high above him in the dome, beginning to dim as night approached.

The words didn’t sadden him in the way Corbyn probably intended, but they did cause him distress.

Uncle Jaryn’s going to be mad.

CHAPTER 2

Uncle

[An image of a sky filled with stars and multicolored lights. The lights and stars form the shape of Kaltis.]

F is for Fonts, the pillars of reality. They embody concepts from thought to gravity. Starting with creation, refining from there, they govern the world from the seas to your hair.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

The three boys stood over Kole, unsure what to actually do now that they’d caught him. Like a dog that had finally caught its own tail, they hadn’t thought their plan through beyond the chase. While none of them liked Kole, they didn’t exactly want to hurt him. Chasing and teasing were one thing, assault was quite another.

One of the reasons so many were willing to join Corbyn in his hunts was that in the end, Kole always escaped any actual harm. Rare were the bullies who could inflict actual physical harm, but the jagged timber in Corbyn’s hand suggested he might be among their number.

The other two watched with uncertainty as he brought the improvised club down on Kole, striking him in the thigh and eliciting a cry of pain.

“Come on!” Corbyn encouraged. “Kick him!”

His two followers exchanged looks of reluctance as Kole struggled to his feet. Corbyn, ever the patient leader, struck Kole again with his club, sending him back to his knees, giving the pair time to work themselves up to the assault.

Kole didn’t plan on waiting. While the other boys knew it took nearly all of Kole’s Will to cast even a single cantrip, they didn’t know that Kole had been diligently exhausting his Will each day to ensure that already large capacity continued to grow.

The problem with Kole’s magic wasn’t that he didn’t know how to cast first-tier spells, it was that his magical heritage made them cost so much Will that he couldn’t cast them.

Until now.

Kole’s efforts delving into the forgotten depths of the library had recently borne fruit.

As Corbyn’s club came down for Kole’s shoulder, Kole was fighting a battle inside himself. He’d constructed the spell in his mind, tracing the pattern stored there. This had never been his issue. He was fighting with the portal to the Arcane Realm that resided in the mind of every wizard. As usual, his bridge—as the portal was called—refused to open to the specific part of the Arcane Realm the spell needed to function.

He poured all his remaining Will into the act until eventually, the portal flickered and reopened to his seemingly random patch of the magical Realm. All that happened in less than a moment in the Material Realm, but the battle within had felt like an eternity to Kole. He sent the spell through, brought his hand up before him, and uttered a single word.

“Bo.”

A translucent barrier appeared before his palm like a distortion of the air, deflecting the club harmlessly to the side.

Kole didn’t stop with the spell, though, and took advantage of Corbyn’s surprise to punch his tormentor in the face, shattering the magical glasses that made this pursuit possible, and his nose for good measure.

Corbyn dropped to the ground, clutching his face and screaming in pain. His friends stared from him to each other in terror before turning and fleeing.

Kole didn’t wait around, pausing just long enough to kick Corbyn in the ribs before running away. Once safe in an alley, he pulled a small vial of a clear blue liquid from his bag and downed it. The potion tasted terrible—it was literally made from crustacean feces—but the effect was immediate, and Kole recovered enough Will to turn invisible once more.

He ran home, reflecting on what had felt an awful lot like an attempted murder. Corbyn had chased Kole before, and had even beaten him, but something about the boy this time had been different. Corbyn had seemed intent on causing lasting harm.

When he got home hours later, after taking a circuitous route that led in and out of the city’s sewers, he found his family’s home under siege by an army of laborers pulling out crate after crate of his belongings.

“What are you doing?” he shouted at them.

“There you are, Kohlyn,” came a familiar, disapproving voice.

Kohlyn—Kole—turned to see the disappointed face of his uncle Jaryn.

Many people would mistake Kole and his uncle for brothers, not uncle and nephew. At twenty-two, Jaryn was only six years older than Kole and much closer in age to his nephew than his sister who bore him. Kole’s mother had left home at a young age, and only returned to Illandrios at her parents’ death to take on her role as heir to the house and take on her much younger brother as a ward.

“You missed the hearing,” his uncle said.

“Yeah, I knew there was something today, but I got a little held up,” Kole explained, gesturing to his torn clothes and bloodied everything.

His uncle shook his head with only a bit of sympathy.

“If you’d relented years ago, you would be able to properly deal with these miscreants.”

“So what now?” Kole asked, ignoring the suggestion.

“Now,” his uncle said as if repeating himself for the hundredth time, which was impressive because they’d definitely had this conversation at least twice that number, “the choice is no longer yours. You are now officially my ward, and your creditors have called in their debts. You will live with me, and I will see that you are educated properly. You will be trained as a Mirage Knight like your mother would have wanted. We’ll put these fancies of being a wizard away, and you can go about continuing in the footsteps of our family.”

“No,” Kole said simply and walked inside.

While Kole was a sorcerer with dreams of being a wizard, there was one thing holding him back, the source of all his magical troubles. He was a primal—one born with an innate connection to one of the Fonts of the Arcane Realm.

Sort of.

As far as anyone knew, Kole was the first to be born both a primal and a sorcerer. It was thought to be impossible, but since Kole was both, he had long ago stopped believing it when those around him said something was impossible.

A sorcerer was born with the potential to cast spells from any Font, lacking the ability to choose which spells came to them in moments of great need, while primals could wield magic from but the single Font connected to them, and could use the power in any way they could imagine—with enough practice. Being both, Kole had the limitations of both, and the flexibility of neither.

Though Kole was a primal of the Font of Illusions like his mother and uncle, he had no desire to be a Mirage Knight—and wouldn’t have even if his primal magic functioned as it should. Despite his primal nature, it was not mandated that he become one. Many in Illandrios manifested that same power and continued on to become bakers, artists, lawyers, or whatever they dreamed of, leaving their primal abilities as a neat little hobby and party trick.

Anything they wanted—so long as what they wanted wasn’t to be a wizard, as a primal could only ever learn wizardry from the Font of arcane power they were connected to, and for them, doing so through primal means was far easier than wizardry.

Unfortunately for Kole, that was all he’d ever dreamed of becoming. His parents had been adventurers—and still were, if you asked him. At a young age, his mother had gone missing while exploring a pocket realm they’d discovered. She’d been—or still was, depending on who you asked—a Mirage Knight. Kole’s father had been—or still was, again, depending on the source of the information—a wizard. He’d survived the encounter that had taken his wife from him, and he’d vowed to return and rescue her. Unfortunately, the pocket realm vanished on his exit, but he’d held out hope that she still lived.

Kole’s father had dedicated himself to discovering the location of his wife. He’d taken the not insignificant wealth they’d acquired in their adventuring career and set it all towards the effort. He’d traveled the world recruiting experts and learning whatever he could of divination and Spatial magics, leaving his son at home alone, with just the company of his uncle and tutors for long stretches of time. Kole grew up alone, intermittently alongside his father, and he grew to share the same obsession. And then, when Kole was nine, his father claimed to have found her. He left his son at home yet again, gathered up his old team, and set out to retrieve his wife.

He’d never returned.

And so Kole remained alone, in the care of his uncle, nannies, and tutors. He dedicated himself to becoming a wizard. His mother had been a Mirage Knight, but at the age of eight he’d manifested the sorcerous ability to blend into his surroundings while being chased through the sewers by kobolds that had breached the caverns beneath his home. His father had been overjoyed with the discovery that his son was a sorcerer, and Kole had been relieved he wouldn’t have to train to be a Mirage Knight.

Kole was not the first child born of a primal and a sorcerer, but for whatever reason, all the rest were sorcerers, or more likely without any innate magic whatsoever.

He had no desire to follow in his mother’s arcane tradition. It had let her down, broken up his family, and he believed it would be his father’s magic that would reunite them. The fact that his father’s magic ultimately let him down as well was not one Kole liked to dwell on.

Jaryn followed him inside.

“It’s time you give up on this nonsense. Your parents are dead. You need to stop living in the past and—”

Kole cut his uncle’s rant off when he slammed the front door in his face.

That may have been a mistake, he thought as he heard his ever-patient uncle struggling to control his anger beyond the door.

Kole ran up the stairs and into his parents’ rooms to find that they had not yet been ransacked. Quickly, he gathered his mother’s locket and his father’s old blasting rod and then went to his own room to grab a bag prepared for this eventuality.

He’d long since planned for this day. He knew it would come. Once his parents were declared dead, all their possessions would be auctioned off to pay their—and more significantly his—debts, leaving Kole with whatever remained. There would be nothing left, he knew this. His father had spent everything in search of his mother, and Kole had been living on borrowed time—and money—since his disappearance.

Lord Oldhill, Corbyn’s father, had been all too happy to loan money for Kole to continue to live in the absence of his parents. He had been an acquaintance of both of his parents, but Kole always wondered why, if he cared enough to loan him money, he never cared enough to rein in his own son.

Well, I guess he’s about to get all his money back, he reflected as he watched all his possessions be loaded onto carts.

Kole would not consent to giving up on wizardry. If he couldn’t learn here—something he’d long since realized to be the case—he would go to the Academy of Illunia and learn there. His condition was not as hopeless as everyone had told him and he’d almost started to believe. He had learned to cast Shield, after all. He’d been hesitant to leave everything behind, but now that he’d seen real progress, it suddenly became less daunting.

The door to his room burst open once his uncle picked the lock. Mirage Knights, being masters of illusions, were trained in the arts of infiltration as well as combat. On top of his disdain for Illusion magic, Kole had little desire to be a spy.

“Stop being a child!” he shouted, no longer able to conceal his frustration. “I’ve given you five years to try to learn magic, and you failed. Now, let’s get you help before it’s too late.”

Uncle Jaryn was speaking to an empty room. At the approaching footsteps, Kole had used his sole sorcerous ability to turn invisible. His access to the spell was another side effect of being both a primal and a sorcerer. Not only was he unable to cast wizard spells, but the sorcerous spells he could innately learn were restricted entirely to the Font of Illusions.

This could have been manageable, there were plenty of stories of Illusion specialists having success as adventurers, but he had the misfortune of learning a weak form of invisibility as his first spell. Sorcery worked via instincts. Instincts that sought the easiest way to resolve a situation, taking into account what one could already do. If a sorcerer needed to save themself from drowning, they might manifest a spell to breathe underwater—or they might just drown, so it was best not to put too much faith in one’s potential sorcerous abilities. If, however, that same sorcerer had a powerful affinity for the Font of Space, they might instead manifest the ability to teleport out of the water—or they might just drown. As mentioned previously, sorcery was fickle.

Why was this unfortunate for Kole? Well, in all situations where he might manifest a new ability, he simply turned invisible and got away. Invisibility was far too effective at getting disobedient children out of danger, and he never really needed more once his camouflage spell evolved to that state. He’d considered trying something drastic, like stepping out through the dome and into the depths of the ocean, but again, sorcery was not to be relied on.

So it was to a visibly empty room that Kole’s uncle lectured. He blocked the door, waiting for his disobedient nephew to reveal himself. He waited and waited and waited until a tapestry on the wall fluttered in a breeze. Kole, as mentioned, had been prepared for this day. As his uncle soon discovered, he’d cut a secret passage into the wall leading to the servants’ quarters, down the back stairs, and out into the city.

CHAPTER 3

Competent Guards

[A painting of classically styled depictions of Waas, Torc, Faust, and Aurial kneeling before a glowing white featureless Oan.]

G is for gods, the children of Oan, whom he made before leaving for reaches unknown. They created the Fonts with each other’s assistance and used them to build our very existence.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Kole ran from his home’s secret entrance out into the city and into the sewers. It wasn’t bad as sewers went. Like many of the isolated cities that survived in odd niches in the aftermath of the Flood, Illandrios had adapted to the sudden isolation and lack of resources by getting creative. It developed countless ways to reuse everything from timbers to paper, found magical solutions to mundane problems, enslaved a kraken and forced it to pull ships to the depths, collected poop for composting, and much more.

Because of this, the sewers built before the Flood to manage rain and waste now sat empty and unused in this subaquatic city. If water were to have gotten in the city, their problems would have been a lot bigger than a muddy street. After a few incursions from forsaken, the surviving subterranean neighbors desperate to find refuge in the wake of the Flood, the city sealed itself off to better defend itself.

As a social outcast, Kole had found plenty of opportunities to explore these sewers alone, and with a constant need to hide, he eventually discovered a few entrances that remained open.

Kole had prepared for this exact eventuality—sort of. He’d expected to have to flee from his uncle one day to go to the surface, and he’d even expected the need to travel light. He hadn’t, however, foreseen that he’d be forced to flee wounded. So, he sat in the not-so-bad sewers, ripping up his clothes to form bandages as he contemplated his next move.

He stumbled through by the light of a small glow orb. The objects were cheap and plentiful in Illandrios, and Kole had taken a few on his way out of the house.

It was by the light of this globe that Kole saw the dozens of rats hissing at him, blocking his path.

Mirror rats, Kole thought, stopping short of the posturing creatures.

The humans and halflings who made up the majority of Illandrios’s pre-Flood population weren’t the only ones to develop a connection to the Font of Illusions following the emergence of the Primordial of Illusions in their midst. As with all over Kaltis, wherever people lived, rats lived as well. While the people of Illandrios had gone through many times of famine during their isolation beneath the sea, they’d never quite been able to rid themselves of all the rats in the city—no matter how many they hunted for food.

As such, when the Illandrians had discovered their innate Illusion magic a little over a hundred years prior, the rats had as well. Mirror rats, as they called them, could create illusory copies of themselves, and used the ability to evade and intimidate.

Neither would work on Kole, however. He pulled out his father’s blasting rod and focused on the rats in front of him. Despite being a broken primal with limited control over his magic, Kole was still a primal of Illusions, and that came with some perks, one being the ability to sense illusions—and as Kole had learned with his own Invisibility, an illusion’s power vanished when it was known to be one.

Kole couldn’t say how exactly he could tell, but the “dozens” of rats in front of him were really only six, each with three or more copies. He pointed his blasting rod at the nearest real rat and filled the gem within with his Will. A purple bolt of force shot out of the tip and right for the rat. The bolt, meant for defending against monsters, left nothing behind of the creature. Realizing their illusions would not protect them, the others fled.

Holding his light up to the rod, Kole examined it. The rod had been left behind by his father for a reason: the gem which served as a reservoir for the Will needed to fire it was damaged. One of these days when Kole fired it, it would break, leaving behind a very expensive stick of alchemically treated metals etched with runes that did nothing without the gem.

The rod would continue to function without diminished capacity until one day it would fail when charged. Kole thought back to his father pointing the flaw out to him, explaining why he no longer used it.

It isn’t broken until it breaks, but a tool that can’t be relied upon isn’t a tool to take adventuring.

His father had left the device behind, and Kole had taken to training with it. He might not have been able to cast any offensive magic, but with his ridiculously large Will capacity for his age, he could activate the rod six times back-to-back and still have Will to spare. Each activation of the rod was approximately equal to a first-tier spell. Other students his age would be lucky to cast a first-tier spell four times in a day.

So, as long as Kole had the rod, he was far from defenseless. He’d often considered carrying it around with him to deter Corbyn and his minions, but as much as he despised the other boy, he wasn’t willing to risk killing him. He didn’t know what would be worse, killing him and being imprisoned, or failing to do so and giving him a real reason to hate Kole.

He made his way through the tunnel after making sure the rats wouldn’t return. He’d run into them before, and each time he proved immune to their illusions, they’d left him alone until their simple minds forgot his scent—though in the past, he’d only thrown rocks at the rats to scare them away, so he figured the memory might last just a bit longer this time.

He made his way to a wide chamber with a turnoff that had become a common haunt for him. In the darkness of the tunnels, he fell asleep, only to be woken by the clattering echoes of armored men stumbling through a tiny passage.

Kole turned invisible out of reflex and looked around. The tunnel was strewn with supplies he’d left here when preparing to run away from home. Potions, clothes and the remnants of food—the rats had quickly taught him not to store such items here. There was no way he could hide all the evidence of his presence. He had to run.

But why are they here? How did they find me?

There was no time for questions. Kole gathered his bag, shoved what food he could fit in it, and ran.

“What was that?” a voice asked from behind, but Kole wasn’t concerned.

In the sewers, the armored guards couldn’t keep pace with his smaller, less encumbered frame, even if they could see him. After a few minutes, he was out in the dim light of the Globe of Day, just in time to see it shift from night to early morning.

His plan for escaping was simple: he’d run through the caves to the tower lifts that led to the floating city above, book passage with a ship clan to the Basin, and make his way to the Academy of Illunia where he would find the solution to his magical problems.

There were a lot of steps between getting to the Academy and finding the solutions to his problem, steps he tried not to dwell too much on. Hope stayed afloat best when you didn’t poke holes in it with questions like “how?” and “why?”.

He soon lost the guards, distantly hearing the echoes of their voices when they discovered his hiding spot.

After escaping the sewers, Kole’s mood began to lift as he walked through the meadows that lay between the city and the caves, but when the gate came into sight, his rising hopes were dashed. A heavy guard stood outside the gate to the caverns, only opening it when people arrived. They inspected the bed of each cart, physically waving their hands above it even if nothing could be seen. They even sprinkled white powder on the ground and watched it closely for signs of movement. In short, they were guarding against an invisible escapee.

“Flood,” Kole cursed to himself. “I probably shouldn’t have broken those glasses. They must have cost a fortune.”

While a respected Mirage Knight, it was unlikely Kole’s uncle had the political capital to rouse such a response from the guard. He expected that this was Lord Oldhill’s doing.

There was no other reason he could think of that Oldhill would pull strings to muster such a response to his leaving. He’d not taken anything of real value from his home. It could have been retribution for harming Corbyn, but Kole never got the sense that Lord Tybil Oldhill cared much for his son.

As he thought on the why of his pursuit, he recalled the how. His plan had been shared with no one, and whenever he fled to the sewers, it was always after losing his tail. He had, however, written his plan down in a notebook, which he’d left behind.

Idiot, he told himself.

Kole sat in the field of wheat, hiding low in the grass, contemplating his options and eating a small breakfast of dried meat when the great migration began. The first of the deep whales made its appearance near the caves, where the undersea mountain met the barrier of the dome. Its massive black claws passed through the barrier first, and the rest of its ten-foot chitinous form followed. The creatures were essentially massive lobsters but with more legs and proportionally longer bodies. More followed after the first, until eventually the meadow between Kole and the cave was a sea of black.

The creatures were called deep whales, but Kole had always thought it too majestic a name for the awkward skittering behemoths.

The frustratingly competent guards closed the door at the migration and waited for the first wave to pass. The great migration happened every 417 days and spanned a week. Deep whales roamed the ocean floor in a very specific circuit, a circuit that led directly through Illandrios. Records from the early days of the Flood were lost, resource scarcity rendering things as trivial as history superfluous. Some records may have remained if not for the small issue of a tyrannical brainwashing overlord from beyond the Realm taking over and purging them of their memories of the Flood. But, despite the lack of history or memories, eventually the migration became a holiday for the city. The beasts roamed in dozens of herds, and each herd took hours to pass, leaving gaps of hours in between groups.

Once a herd had passed, the townspeople descended on the roads with buckets, wheelbarrows, pots, and anything else they had at hand to collect the excrement left behind. This particular “tradition” was relatively new. The lack of resources had left the bubble city bereft of skilled alchemists only a generation after the Flood, and eventually, the art was lost. When contact was regained with the surface world, they were pleasantly surprised to discover that the filth left behind by their giant crustacean visitors was far more valuable as an alchemical reagent than as a fertilizer.

An industry had risen up to collect and process the waste, and some even began to capture and pen the creatures in the waters just beyond the bubble.

Watching his neighbors scramble over the dark gold gave Kole a terrible idea.

Typically, the only way to the surface was through the caves, but during the migration, there was one other way. The quantity of deep whale excrement was so great during this time that it was sealed into giant, magically reinforced steel cylinders and pushed past the barriers, where they shot up to the surface. Up above, ships collected the barrels, dumped the contents in their holds, and sent the now empty containers back down.

“This is a terrible idea,” he muttered to himself, just as he ignored his own good judgment.

CHAPTER 4

Castaway

[A man shooting fire from his hands, with the flames forming a wispy dragon.]

S is for sorcerers. Magicians by blood, they’ve been shunned and feared since after the Flood. From dragons, or gods, or fairies or mysteries, sorcerers of all origins have long storied histories.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Ten minutes later, Kole was sitting in a barrel marked “Clear Bottom Extraction” waiting for the lid to be sealed above him. Sneaking in while invisible had been no trouble. The guard had been raised about the exits, not the farms shoveling lobster manure.

He held his cloak above him, having smeared it with excrement to give the appearance of a full load. The smell was horrible, which may have been why no one looked too closely before sealing each container. He was rather proud of himself for the idea. Lord Oldhill was a partial owner of the company that sold deep whale manure to the surface, and Kole was using the man’s own business to escape him. With a series of deafening bangs, Kole was sealed in, and a moment later, he was on his side, rolling down the rail towards the barrier.

“This is a terrible idea,” he said to himself before he began retching at the smell, barely able to keep it down.

Mouth shut, he decided.

His mad spinning stopped as he hit the barrier, but it was followed by the sensation of his stomach dropping from under him as the buoyancy of the barrel hurtled it to the surface. Time was impossible to gauge in that dark and terrible ascent, and if asked later he would have claimed it took an hour, but in reality, it was closer to a minute. Eventually, the speed reached an equilibrium, and the stomach-dropping feeling was replaced with an unstable tumbling that culminated in a moment of free fall as the barrel breached the surface and shot into the air before crashing back down into the water.

Muffled around him, Kole heard other barrels breaching and splashing down, but his focus was solely fixed on trying to keep his breakfast of dried meat down. He couldn’t imagine the smell getting any worse than it was, but he didn’t think adding his own excretions to the situation would help either. Casting the cantrip for the Font of Air, and using most of his Will to do so, he held his palm up to his face and breathed in the clean, fresh air.

The wait was actually long this time as he sat there in the barrel praying to Riloth that he be plucked from the sea. He bobbed slowly in the waves, occasionally violently interrupted as a barrel from below crashed into him. But, after an eternity of Fauell, Kole heard a rope hit the side of his prison, followed eventually by a jolt as the barrel struck the side of a ship and was lifted.

There were many more bangs to follow, but eventually, the last one was on top as the lid was removed.

“It’s a flooding kid!” a voice said. “Where’s the shit?”

“I’m a castaway requesting passage!” Kole shouted from his very undignified position.

“Ah, Flood,” the man cursed, resigned.

Kole’s father had taught him much about the ship clans, being from one himself. One very important teaching was: don’t stow away on a ship clan’s ship. Stowaways were as likely to be killed as thrown back into the sea. Castaways, however, were rescued. The ship clans lived on the sea and knew its dangers more than any other group not of Aurial, the goddess of the sea, and they took mercy on any who suffered the wraith of Riloth’s storms.

While Kole wasn’t actually a castaway, his claim spoke volumes of his knowledge of the people. And, while they weren’t particularly a rule-following people, Kole did check all the boxes of a castaway if they really pressed the issue. He was fished from the sea, floating in a makeshift vessel he’d boarded under desperate circumstances.

“Get up out of there,” the man continued. “What are you? Some sander’s kid?”

“Yes,” Kole answered as he climbed out. “My father was—is—a Stormcaller.”

The man let out a whistle and reassessed Kole. Due to the odorous nature of his job, the two of them were alone on this particular section of deck.

“We better get you washed up before you go see the Grand Master, then,” he said, gesturing to a bucket of water to the side.

Kole obliged and began to rinse himself off.

“I hope you weren’t too attached to those clothes, boy, because you’re going to need to toss them overboard.”

Kole looked down and agreed. They hadn’t exactly been in pristine condition before being covered with filth, and even if he’d known both Mend and Clean, it was unlikely they would have been salvageable. There was only so much magic could do.

Kole stripped down and cleaned up a bit more before putting on the canvas clothing his new acquaintance handed him.

“I’m Meech, by the by, and this is the Willowboom,” the man introduced, gesturing to the ship.

“I’m Kole, Kole Highridge,” he said, giving his mother’s family name, “but my father was of the ship clan Teak.”

When his father had left the clan to be with his mother, he’d had to give up the name of his clan and had adopted that of the Highridge house.

Meech let out another whistle. His father’s clan had been an old one, as evidenced by the simple name. As new ships were built and clans grew and splintered, they took on names of their own, but they were usually derived from their old clans.

“Alright, let’s go see the Master,” Meech said, leading Kole up a ladder.

Kole winced as each rung reminded him of his tender ribs.

The ship was massive, the heartship of the Willowboom clan whose name it bore on the rear. Many vessels made up each ship clan, from galleons to sloops, but each clan had a heartship that served as the core of the fleet, their sizes nearing small cities. These ships were constructed with the aid of magically enhanced materials and took constant magical maintenance to keep going. They were home to all the centralized services that smaller ships could not support, such as schools, blacksmiths, and other tradesmen. Each also served as the seat for the highest-ranking Stormcaller amongst the fleet.

While not the highest-ranking member of a ship clan—that would be the High Captain—the Grand Master quite literally answered to no man. The High Captain could be replaced with a vote, but the Grand Master position lasted for life or until voluntary retirement.

Needless to say, Kole was very nervous.

“Why do I need to see him?” he asked, managing to keep a tremble from his voice.

“Trust me, you’d rather see him than the captain.”

They ascended many levels and passed over the top deck to the aftcastle, where they climbed a grand staircase, past the captain’s quarters, and higher still to the quarters of the Grand Master. The ship was largely free of artistic flourishes in the woodworking, the wood all sculpted for purpose and painted less for decoration than for protection from the elements. But up here, some liberties had been taken, and the doors and panels that made up the living quarters of the ranking members of the clan were covered in ornate scrollwork.

Meech pulled a small cord hanging next to the door, and a bell rang faintly through the thick wood. A moment later, the door opened, revealing a man in his early forties wearing a loose-fitting canvas outfit similar to what the rest of the clan wore, with cords tied around his wrists to keep the fabric from interfering with his spellcasting. He wore no visible insignia of rank, but his clothing did seem to be of a higher quality than Meech’s.

“Good morning, sir,” Meech said with an overly dramatic bow. “We got a castaway requesting passage.”

“Why not take him to Meerim?” the Stormcaller asked, looking Kole up and down.

“Well, he seems to be more of a fugitive than a real castaway, but he said his father was a Stormcaller.”

Kole shrank a little at Meech’s accurate assessment and managed to restrain his urge to correct the implication that his father was deceased. He wouldn’t say he was a fugitive—he was fairly certain he’d done nothing wrong. He hadn’t expected to keep the fact he was on the run a secret, but he had hoped his situation wouldn’t have been so glaringly obvious.

“Well, in that case, he better come in,” the Grand Master said, gesturing for Kole to enter, but stopping Meech from doing the same. “You better go get cleaned up. You have three more days of dung duty.”

“Aw, come on,” Meech said. “Can you just, you know…”

He gestured wildly at his filthy self with his hands.

“That would defeat the purpose of a punishment detail, wouldn’t it?”

Meech relented and bid Kole goodbye before leaving.

Once inside, the mage directed Kole to a seat at a table.

“I’m Grand Master Stormcaller Jorin, but please, call me Jorin. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” Kole said, realizing that despite it feeling like years since he embarked on his stinky journey, it had only been two hours since he’d eaten.

“So,” Jorin said as he went about preparing some tea, “tell me how you became a castaway while we were docked at a floating city.”

The room had no stove, and Kole watched as his host caused the teapot in his hand to whistle. He’d placed his free hand on the side and spoken the verbal components of a spell.

“I’m not a fugitive—probably,” Kole amended. “I struck a classmate in the face, but it was self-defense. Hardly grounds for the search party they sent out after me.”

He sensed Jorin’s skepticism as the man paused his tea preparation to look at him.

“Well… he was wearing enchanted glasses, which may have broken when I punched him in the face, but he’d already struck me with a club by then, so it was clearly self-defense.”

“Why flee, then?”

“I’d already been planning my departure before this whole incident. I’m going to the Academy of Illunia to become a proper wizard. My uncle… doesn’t approve.”

“That raises more questions than it answers,” Jorin observed. “Why would the child of a Stormcaller, raised in the magical hub that is Illandrios, need to go so far to become a ‘proper’ wizard?”

Kole didn’t want to answer at first out of instinct but realized that this man wouldn’t care. He’d kept his primal nature a secret from as many as he could. When others found out, they inevitably told him he was a fool for trying to be a wizard. No primal had ever been a wizard, after all. But neither had anyone been a primal and a sorcerer before.

“I’m a primal,” Kole said as if admitting some great sin.

Jorin’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“I know, I know,” Kole said, forestalling a lecture. “They say primals can’t be wizards, but that’s wrong. I can cast wizard spells, it’s just extremely difficult. I think I can figure it out if I can just find the right spells.”

Jorin took a glass orb from his pocket and held it out to Kole.

“As interesting as that is—and I’ll be honest, I think you’re probably going to fail—that’s not why you are in my quarters. Swear on this truth orb that you aren’t actually a fugitive, and I will cover for you to the captain. You must have Riloth’s own luck, the deep whale product you stowed away in was due for Edgewater for the Academy itself.”

Kole touched the orb with an outstretched finger and spoke, infusing the orb with his Will, which he imbued with honest intentions.

“I swear I’m not a fugitive.”

“Great,” Jorin said, smiling. “Let’s go see about getting you a bunk, and you can explain how in the seas you are a primal and a sorcerer.”

Kole’s heart stopped.

He’d been found out already.

CHAPTER 5

Stowaway

[A mountaintop with a cutout showing the city of Hollow Peak within. Above the city floats a black orb symbolizing the Primordial of Space that resides there.]

P is for Primordials, Fonts manifest in the Realm. Some exist in harmony while others overwhelm. If you live alongside them for years or decades, then primals may be your children someday.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

“How did you know that?!”

Kole ran back through his conversation, certain that he hadn’t let his sorcerous nature slip.

“I get to keep my secrets,” Jorin said with a sly grin. “I’m not the one seeking passage under dubious pretenses.”

He looked at Kole expectantly.

I really don’t want to be thrown overboard, Kole thought as he wrestled internally. But… can I tell him my secrets?

Kole realized that he couldn’t find a reason not to tell the man.

He’d soon found that once people knew you could turn invisible, the power of the ability was greatly reduced, and as such he’d vowed to keep the specifics of his abilities to himself if he ever left his home. But here he was in front of a figure of authority who wasn’t telling him his very existence was impossible.

Kole had trust issues, but he also had abandonment issues. So while his conscious mind was grappling with whether or not to tell the truth, his subconscious mind couldn’t help but connect this Stormcaller before him with his father, making him want to unburden himself before the pseudo-familiar figure. Kole hadn’t met another person with a ship clan accent in years, let alone another Stormcaller.

In the end, he decided to open up. His fate was in this man’s hands already, and he’d already proved benevolent. The similarity to his father just pushed Kole over the edge.

On their way back down the levels, he explained his magical situation to Jorin.

Kole told Jorin about how his yet unknown primal and sorcerous nature gave him a large Will capacity, allowing him to build his vault at an early age, and how upon finding no evidence of the Font of Illusions within, he’d dove into wizardry headfirst. On the creation of his wizard’s bridge, he’d found it opened up beside the Font of Illusions, marking him as a primal—a defective one, but one nonetheless.

Normal primals’ bridges opened up within Fonts, granting them some level of magical understanding, while nonprimals’ bridges opened up in random locations in the ineffable vastness that was the Arcane Realm. Kole’s opened right next to the Font. He was a primal, only without any of the instincts needed to harness the abilities.

He told him of how he kept it secret and his struggles in learning magic, spotted as they were with hints of success. The master mage seemed not to be paying attention, greeting people as they passed and occasionally casting some spells to entertain a child. But he would ask questions and ask for clarification at times, proving he was following the tale.

“Let me get this straight, then,” Jorin said, stopping in the storage hold. “You could have trained to become a powerful Mirage Knight, using your sorcerous Will pool, but you chose to hide the power on the off chance that the last hundred years of magical study into primals were somehow wrong?”

“Yeah, but when you put it that way, it sounds really crabheaded,” Kole defended. He didn’t think his decision was that crazy. “That same hundred years of study said that someone couldn’t be both a sorcerer and a primal. And… something’s wrong with my primal instincts. I can’t see my Font from my vault, and I never gained a primal’s ability to intuit the magic.”

“Very curious. Does your primal connection hinder your sorcery?”

In response to that, Kole turned invisible.

“Sort of,” he explained, still unseen. “I can only cast this spell. It tends to solve most of my problems, so no others have manifested for me.”

Jorin let out a whistle. “Well, well. I didn’t sense you drawing on the Fonts until the spell was completed.”

Kole took a step to the side—a habit whenever he turned invisible, to hide his location—and was unnerved when Jorin’s eyes followed him, maintaining eye contact.

Kole let out a frustrated sigh when he realized Jorin could see him. It appeared Illandrians weren’t the only people accustomed to dealing with the invisible.

Jorin performed an arcane gesture and spoke another word, and suddenly Kole was visible once more. “Hmm, that is impressive. That was truly a second-tier spell, not some weird primal shortcut. How much Will did it cost you?”

“Around 3,” Kole confessed.

Jorin shook his head. “I don’t know if you’re a fool or a prodigy, but if you have time between your duties, I’d be interested in talking about your situation more—the magical one, not the fugitive state. This is your bunk, you’ll get your duty assignment at breakfast in the on-duty mess. Be there at five a.m.”

At that, Jorin vanished, having teleported away.

“I guess he didn’t like all the stairs,” Kole said to himself, finally taking in his surroundings.

What he’d first taken to be a storage hold was—in fact—an actual storage hold. A hammock hung tied between the nets securing bundles of cargo to the walls. Kole stood in a small, illuminated area, darkness on all sides. Light runes carved into the ceiling had lit before them as they’d approached and gone off in their wake.

Kole’s eyes were drawn to the runic symbol for the Font of Light briefly, but he wasn’t sure why. After a moment, the light went out, and he was forced to navigate his way to the hammock in the dark. He could cast the Glow cantrip, but it would take all the Will he had for the day, and he was hoping not to spend the rest of it with a Will drain-induced headache.

With nowhere else to be for nearly eighteen hours and having most recently slept in a sewer—even if it was a clean one—Kole decided to take a nap.

***

Thud.

“Ow!”

The sudden noise broke Kole from his sleep, and he turned invisible out of instinct.

He stood slowly and crept, barefoot, out of his alcove between crates. A dim glow came from a small opening a few bays down the hold, and Kole could hear indistinct whispering.

He crept closer, careful to remain silent using well-honed skills gained from an adolescence spent hiding. When he had only covered half the distance, the light went out, and the whispering stopped. Kole froze, afraid he’d somehow been spotted, but he knew he hadn’t made a sound. Eventually, when no challenge came, he moved close, ready to cast Shield or Magic Missile if the need arose, though afterward he’d be defenseless.

I should have grabbed the blasting rod!

He wasn’t used to carrying it around and had forgotten about it until too late.

“Stop right there or I’ll blast you!” a very nervous girl’s voice called out.

As threats of murder came, it was probably the worst that had ever been thrown at Kole. Not that he’d been threatened with murder often, but it had happened enough times for him to make that assessment. So lame was the threat that it took him a moment to realize the speaker had somehow spotted him. He examined himself, but to his relief—and mild confusion—he was still invisible.

Maybe it’s a bluff? he thought.

He stood still, focusing on calming his breathing lest it give him away.

“I know you are there,” the voice called again, somehow sounding nervous and irritated simultaneously. “I’m pointing a blasting rod at you, so show yourself before I use it.”

The light returned, and Kole could see a backlit rod protruding from between stacks of crates.

“Fine,” Kole relented, letting his spell lapse. He held his hands out to his sides, in a gesture that gave an impression of harmlessness, but kept his hands ready in case he needed to cast a spell.

“Why are you here?” the voice demanded, gaining confidence. “Were you looking for me?”

“I don’t even know who you are. I was asleep over there and heard you fall.”

“Oh,” the voice said, sounding almost disappointed. “Why are you down here, then?”

“They assigned me a bunk down here. I’m trading work for passage to Edgewater. What are you doing down here?”

There was no answer for a moment.

“That’s none of your business. Turn around, go back to your bunk, and forget you ever found me.”

Kole ignored the demands and asked, “Are you a stowaway? You know the ship clans throw stowaways overboard, right?”

He knew the ship had set sail some time ago, and the window for this girl to come clean had likely ended. Ship clans didn’t usually throw stowaways overboard anymore, but… the conversation with Jorin strongly suggested that their captain wouldn’t be so lenient.

“I… didn’t know that,” she said, all hints of surety now gone from her voice. “Is it true?”

Kole nodded. Though she had detected him, he wasn’t sure if she could see the movement in the dim light.

“I’m Kole. Can you come out, or at least stop pointing that at me?”

There was a clattering, and Kole saw the stick fall to the ground. She’d dropped it and begun to move crates around. When the crack was wide enough, the girl crawled out, bringing her light with her and illuminating the space. The light was a short stone cylinder, runed to emit light from the top like a stubby torch. She looked to be around Kole’s age but was short and thin. She had pale skin and short, messy blond hair tied up in a bird nest of a bun, and her ears had shallow tips marking her as a half-elf and calling her age into question.

“I’m Amara,” she said, looking at Kole’s feet as she spoke. “That was just a stick. Please don’t turn me in.”

Kole let out a heavy sigh.

“I won’t, just…” He looked around at the empty rows of cargo. “I have to go, I lost track of time and need to be somewhere.”

Amara pulled something from her pocket and said, “It’s 4:47.”

“Flood, I’m going to be late. Stay hidden. I’ll see if I can bring you something to eat. I have to report in.”

Amara’s uncertain face lit up at the mention of food.

“Okay. I’ll stay,” she said, and then added in a whisper, “Please don’t turn me in.”

Kole made his way up the levels of the ship, berating himself.

He really should turn this Amara girl in. He’d lucked into getting passage himself, and now he was putting that passage—and his very future by extension—at risk, by helping a girl he’d not only just met, but been introduced to with a threat. But how could he turn her in? She had looked quite pathetic, and he could very well have been in her situation if his barrel had surfaced by a different ship.

He wrestled with what to do until he found the mess hall he’d been assigned to. He ate a standard ship clan meal of fish and bread and then found Meech waiting for him outside.

“Good morning, Kole. It looks like I’m going to have some help with my dung duty.”

***

Several odorous hours later, Kole left the “stink hold,” as the crew call it, and began to head to the mess.

“Not that way,” Meech called after him. “My brother wants to see you.”

Brother? Who? Kole wondered who he could be referring to, then realized it could only be one person. That explains it.

Kole looked himself over, noticing he’d done a very poor job keeping himself clean through the transferring of the “product” into the holding tanks.

“Don’t worry about that,” Meech said as if reading his mind. “Jorin will take care of that. You’re not being punished, and he’s not a fan of the smell.”

Kole found his way back up to the master mage’s quarters and knocked.

Jorin opened the door and—before Kole could voice a greeting—cast Clean on him. The filth flaked off of Kole’s skin and clothing, disintegrating into a cloud of black dust that then vanished.

“Much better,” Jorin said, and then gestured for Kole to come in.

A meal for two was set inside, and Jorin invited Kole to take a seat. Jorin asked about his particular condition, and he was more than happy to share. Very few back home seemed to have any interest in his attempts to learn wizardry. They’d marked him as mad, and his recent successes hadn’t served to change their opinion of him, not that he’d stuck around long enough to hear what they thought.

Kole told Jorin how he’d struggled to cast even a cantrip, how he’d pored over the library trying any version he could find until eventually, he’d found ones that worked. He explained how he’d discovered that the older spells were easier to cast. Those spells used simpler gate components and compensated with more complex paths. Working his way into the past, he’d gradually learned the oldest spellforms the great library back home had that were still intact. He’d learned every cantrip he could, noticing some Fonts were marginally easier to connect to than others, but so great was his connection to the Font of Illusions that opening his bridge anywhere else in the Arcane Realm took an immense deal of Will.

“After that, I taught myself spellform construction theory and began to repair the damaged ones. By the time I left, the only spellforms I’d yet to try had been completely devoid of Will and beyond my ability to restore.”

“So, what can you do now?” Jorin asked.

“I can cast Shield and Magic Missile, but each costs me nearly 40 Will.”

At that, Jorin’s brow rose, and he let out another surprised whistle.

“That… is a lot. You have that much?”

“I know and I do,” Kole said, a little embarrassed. “But I can still do it, which is more than any other primal wizard ever could. It means there’s hope I can figure it out.”

“That there is,” Jorin agreed.

Kole looked up into Jorin’s eyes and didn’t know what to say. Never before had he encountered a wizard who thought him anything but crazy.

Before he could think of how to respond, Jorin held up a hand to stop him and continued, “You have a lot of work ahead of you, and there’s still the rather large possibility you will fail, but… I believe there’s a chance you won’t.”

Despite his hedging, the words still filled Kole with hope, for they were validation.

They talked after that about less serious matters. Eventually the discussion came around to Kole’s stowaway status.

“So…” Kole began. “How do you think the captain would respond if they found a stowaway mid-journey?”

Jorin’s face became serious, and he examined Kole closely before asking, “Why?”

Flood, Kole thought.

“Umm… I was just curious, you know? Like, what would have happened if I’d not announced myself?”

“You’re not a good liar. Tell me the real reason you are asking.”

“Flood,” Kole said, this time aloud. “Let’s say—hypothetically—there was a stowaway on the ship. What would the captain do?”

“Hypothetically, the captain would rouse the entire crew to search for them and throw them overboard when found.”

“That seems… harsh,” Kole said.

He knew the ship clans had strict laws about stowaways, but he also knew they’d grown more lax on the issue in the last couple hundred years and were more than likely to bend the rules away from capital punishment.

“Yes, it is. The previous high captain Durant was killed by a stowaway that he happened upon by chance. High Captain Meerim had been the commander of the ship and quartermaster of the fleet at the time, and High Captain Durant had been her mentor. When Meerim was elected High Captain in the wake of the murder, she made an example of the stowaway, binding him before throwing him over the edge. If there was a new stowaway found, she’d likely not bind them, but she’d certainly throw them overboard.”

Kole didn’t say anything after that, and Jorin continued after a moment’s pause, “She’d throw anyone caught aiding the stowaway overboard as well.”

Flood…

Kole considered Jorin’s tone and past actions and was fairly certain he didn’t share the captain’s opinions of the matter.

I might as well ask.

“How would you suggest getting food for a stowaway if one wanted to remain undetected and unejected?”

Jorin let out a heavy sigh and began to rub his forehead.

“Hypothetically, of course,” Kole amended.

“Of course,” Jorin agreed. “Hypothetically, I’d suggest one not steal food from the mess. Ideally—in this hypothetical situation—it would be best to find a member of the crew sufficiently high-ranking to have their own private pantry, and to steal food from there. Now, if you will excuse me, it is very late, and I must go to bed. Please clean this meal up.”

Kole was taken aback at the sudden turn.

Jorin stood and walked out of the small dining room, toward the door in the back. “Please place the uneaten bread back in the pantry in the kitchen. Just through that door, the first cabinet on the right. I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner at the same time.”

And then Jorin left, and Kole sat at the table looking over the small heel of the loaf that remained.

Oh! I see… Am I actually supposed to clean up?

CHAPTER 6

Understanding

An eternal being of fire roamed the world destroying nations, and in men’s pursuit to kill it, they destroyed the world instead.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Kole decided it best not to risk Jorin’s displeasure and cleared the table before collecting the food. He brought all the plates into the kitchen in a large pile near where a very surprised pair of servants sat playing cards.

After an awkward encounter, Kole stood waiting as they cleaned up. One servant went to the dining room with a rag, and the other began to tidy up in the kitchen. Before he could tell if the pair would let him take food, a small bell rang in the corner triggered by some unseen magical effect, and the remaining servant left, but not before giving Kole another confused look.

As soon as he was alone, Kole pulled the cabinet door open, grabbed an empty sack from within, and filled it with a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a few small green fruits he’d never seen before. He then turned invisible, only for a floating bag to remain visible in his unseen hands.

“Flood,” he cursed.

He’d forgotten that he couldn’t turn things invisible that hadn’t been on his person for at least a little while. He knew why, of course. It was a common phenomenon with magic meant to affect the self. The caster had to suffuse the objects with their own Will so that the magic knew what to bring along, a process that naturally occurred while someone carried an object or used it. Kole had tried to infuse objects before to speed up the results but hadn’t ever had success, though it had been a while since he tried.

Turning visible again, he looked at the bag in his hands and focused on it. Tapping into the well of energy that felt like it resided in the crown of his head, he pictured it going into the bag. He felt his Will drain very slightly and, excited by success, turned invisible. The bag vanished along with Kole, leaving the stolen food for all to see, floating in the air.

“Hmmm,” Kole said, considering.

That actually might be useful, he realized, not disappointed by the partial success.

He repeated the process, picturing the objects in the bag along with the bag itself, and then vanished again, this time taking everything with him.

The trip back down to the hold went without issue, and he made the trip buoyed by his second significant magical progression in as many days. No one saw him as he traveled, though he did have to hide in corners and stairwells to avoid running into passersby—an aspect of invisible skulking he was well acquainted with. He banished his spell as soon as he was safe in the hold.

When Kole got close to Amara’s crate cave, he called out, “It’s me. I brought you food.”

The side of a crate opened up. When no one emerged, Kole sighed and crawled in. Within was a surprisingly spacious opening that reminded Kole of the times he’d built forts with his friends out of discarded planks, before his mother’s disappearance and the emergence of the power that had made him a social outcast.

Amara sat in one corner, examining her stick from before.

“Close the door,” she said without looking up from her work.

Kole complied and made himself comfortable. The girl sat cross-legged, fiddling with the wooden rod in one hand and scratching the head of a rather large rat beside her.

“I brought food…” Kole said, staring at the rat in bewilderment.

Finally, she looked up. She was still visibly nervous, but her eyes locked onto the bag. Kole broke his own gaze away from the rat.

“I will give you this, but you need to tell me what possessed you to stow away on a ship clan vessel.”

She didn’t answer at first, only staring at the bag, eating it with her gaze.

“Okay,” she said, grabbing the bag from Kole before he could react.

Amara dug through it, finding the cheese and breaking a chunk off for her rodent friend, then sticking another in her gourd before eating herself. Kole spotted tiny black bugs on the gourd in the dim light.

“I’m looking for my sister,” she said as if that answered all Kole’s questions.

“I’m going to need more than that if you want me to steal for you for the next week.”

Kole felt no need to inform her that the ship’s—no, the clan’s—highest-ranking wizard was helping him in the endeavor.

The girl looked from Kole to the food, and then to the rat and the strange gourd beside her, before deciding.

“Alright. I’m from Stone Haven. My sister went to the Academy of Illunia to bring Understandings back home. But… she never came back. I’m going to enroll and find her.”

“Stone Haven? Like, the hive mind place? With the giant ants?”

“It’s not a hive mind,” Amara said defensively. “We are all individuals, we just share parts of our knowledge.”

“Wait, so you’re a…” Kole stopped, only derogatory terms for the people of Stone Haven coming to mind. “Primal of Community?”

Now it was Amara’s turn to let out a sigh.

“Grandmother was very wrong when she chose that name. We call it the Font of Understanding now.”

“Grandmother?” Kole asked, confused, but then saw the pointed tips of the girl’s ears. “Lidian Oakcrest is your grandmother?”

Lidian Oakcrest was—or possibly still was, Kole wasn’t sure if she’d died—a famous elven naturalist. During the Flood, she’d stumbled on an island of giant symbiotic ants, written of them, and then quietly removed all mention of it from subsequent editions or her works. While she was certainly a genius, her talents didn’t lie in subterfuge, and the omission only highlighted the place instead of hiding it.

During the Last Dragon War, the island joined in the fighting, revealing the reason for her sudden secrecy. People had become part of the magical symbiosis. The descendants of the settlers of Stone Haven had become primals as well as part of the island collective. They’d been terrifying fighters, despite their lack of a formal army. Flocks of seagulls and swarms of rats served as eyes, ears, and noses for the forces battling the dragon cults. They quickly learned the art of war, and when together in large groups, the people were nearly unstoppable. Kole had read an account of an ant swarm devouring a kobold warren alive. It had been horrifying, and recalling the passage, Kole scooted away from the gourd slightly.

He had read all Lidian’s work relating to primals he could get his hands on, hoping to find some bit of knowledge to aid in his own pursuits. He’d found no actionable information—though he’d grown a bit jealous of the abilities of full primals who gained the intuition needed to wield their magics.

“Yes,” Amara said, embarrassed. Though she had yet to make eye contact with Kole, he could tell by the flush of her pale skin. “I’m a quarter-elf.”

“Quarter-elf?” Kole couldn’t help but ask, despite knowing he just kept repeating Amara’s words. “That’s not—” He stopped himself from saying “that’s not possible.” He’d been told that enough times in his life about his own pursuits, and he tried to keep an open mind.

“Those are possible?” he asked instead.

“Rare, but yes,” Amara answered, not noticing the slipup. “It’s believed that when the Illusian races crossbreed, the children are infertile, but that’s not true. It’s possible, only exceedingly rare. My mother is human, and my father is Lidian’s son. I’m Amara Oakcrest, and my sister is Amintha Oakcrest.”

“If it’s so rare, how do you have a sister?”

“We’re twins. She left to go see the world and convinced our father to let her go to the Academy of Illunia, but she’s since disappeared. She may have run off for adventure, but I’m afraid something happened to her.”

“Oh…” Kole said weakly, at a loss for words of support for this strange girl.

“Why are you heading there?” Amara asked after a long silence.

“I want to be a wizard,” Kole answered without a moment’s pause to reflect.

“Why do you want to be a wizard? Why the Academy? There are other places.”

Kole thought about how much he wanted to share. He hardly knew this girl, but she’d been kinder to him than all his peers back home combined, and they all knew his ambitions.

Why keep it from her?

“I want to be an adventurer. My parents were, and they’re missing. I’m going to find them. The Academy trains wizards, but they also train them to become adventurers. I’ll need more than just magical knowledge to rescue them when I find them. And…” He paused, embarrassed about this last part despite the decision to be honest. “I can’t really do magic.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised. “Turning invisible seemed pretty magical to me.”

“Yeah, I can do that, but little else. It’s complicated, but I think the answers to my problem may lie in the Dahn’s library. I’ll need to catch the attention of a Journeyman or Master Wizard to sponsor me into the adventuring program, but that might never happen if I can’t progress further on my own. My abilities are lacking currently, but there are a few oddities about my magic I hope will attract someone’s interest. If I can find a way to cast spells for a reasonable cost, I’ll definitely stand out with my Will capacity.”

To prevent further questions, Kole went on the conversational offensive and asked, “Are you planning on enrolling? Or just staking out in town and searching for your sister?”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” she said, excitement creeping into her quiet voice for the first time. “I can’t afford to not enroll.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need a scholarship or patron if I want to have any hope of staying. I lost all of my money in the floating city we just left. That’s why I’m hiding in this crate. I hope to train under a runesmith.”

“Oh, a runesmith? Are you one? I’m not very familiar with runes.”

For the first time, Kole saw genuine joy spark in the girl’s eyes.

“Oh yes!” she said, full of fervor. “I’ve been looking into applying the secondary Font of Life to wood. Normally wood can’t be used for runes long-term because it decays so quickly under the magical forces, but I’ve had a lot of success.”

Kole sat patiently as the girl inundated him with far more information about runes than his brain had room or context for. He wanted to change topics, but… she seemed so happy. He let her continue, trying to follow as best he could.

As the pair talked late into the night, eventually Kole was able to change the subject. They spoke about their homes. Amara told of the giant towers that dominated her rocky home and the animals that lived alongside them, while Kole told her about his subaquatic dome.

The conversation was a little awkward. For his part, this was the longest conversation Kole had had with someone his own age in years, and Amara seemed unable to understand the sarcasm Kole attempted to cut through the tension. She apologized, explaining that she was used to having a close magical understanding of those she interacted with back home and wasn’t very good at reading social cues.

“Is everyone from your home like that?” Kole asked.

“No,” Amara said, not providing any more explanation, and she began fiddling with her stick more aggressively.

Eventually, they separated, and Kole went to sleep in his hammock while Amara curled up in a pile of thin-stranded nets.

CHAPTER 7

Passage

For centuries after the Flood, the fate of the Avatar of Faust was unknown. The great water elemental summoned to defeat it failed, and with its destruction came the Flooding of the world.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

The next week was spent in drudgery. While Meech was only needed to work in the stink hold for two more days, Kole was not so lucky, and he toiled away the remainder of the voyage working with the regular laborers, who were far worse conversationalists than Meech had been. Either the work addled the brain, or only the brain-addled were willing to sign up for this duty full-time. After the product had been loaded into the hold, it required constant stirring and watering, lest it lose its magical potency. Magical potency which Kole believed was directly related to the smell, for each time they wet it, the smell seemed to grow worse.

Kole spent as much free time as he could on deck, marveling at the sky and the sea. He’d left Illandrios once as a child when both his parents had still been around, but the distant memories of childhood couldn’t compete with the reality of the sight before him. At first the great open expanse above had been terrifying, but once he’d gotten over the worry, he truly began to appreciate the sight.

Each night, Kole would return to Jorin’s quarters, where they’d eat, and discuss magic, and then the master mage would look the other way as Kole helped himself to the pantry. Jorin had no specific knowledge to assist Kole in his situation, but having a master mage as a sounding board helped Kole focus his plans for the immediate future at the Dahn.

Kole continued to keep Amara company each night as she ate her pilfered meals. She explained to him more about how the magic of her Font worked, though she was far less interested in the topic than in runes. The Font of Understanding was one of the secondary Fonts and controlled—well—understanding. All the primals of the Font, no matter their race or species, had an innate understanding of one another. This understanding ranged from emotions to skills, but not knowledge. The line between knowledge and skills was vague, but Amara described it for Kole with an example.

She held up the stick she’d bluffed Kole with previously. It wasn’t a blasting rod yet, but it was on its way there. Ants crawled over it, gnawing at the wood, causing Kole to jump back in surprise.

“I’m a runesmith. If I were around a master runesmith from my home, I wouldn’t be able to draw runes from his memory for my own task. But, if I were working with him on a project, I would know which runes he wanted me to craft, and I could draw the shape, understanding not its function or purpose, but only his desire. Similarly, these ants don’t understand runes, but they understand my desire for them to carve shapes into this piece of wood, so they do it. I can learn the runes through practice, and eventually retain the knowledge if I ask questions and intentionally learn, but if I don’t, I forget.”

“That…” Kole began, “…doesn’t make any sense. How is that not just knowledge?”

“It’s hard to explain when you lack Understanding.”

“That is such a cop-out.”

Amara shrugged.

“While the connection between fellow Understanding primals is a lot stronger, I can still use my Font to better understand others. If you spoke a different language than me, I could understand your meaning by drawing on the Font, and eventually learn the language myself.”

“How is that not knowledge?” Kole asked again.

“How is altering an individual’s perception of reality an ‘illusion’?” Amara shot back.

“That’s literally the definition of an illusion!” Kole yelled, exasperated.

“Oh… It is?” Amara asked, quieter. “I thought it had to do with light.”

Kole calmed as well and explained, “An illusion is causing someone’s senses to falsely interpret reality. Before the Font of Illusions formed, Illusion magic was primarily an application of Light and Sound.”

Both young primals were connected to the so-called “secondary” Fonts. The ones that came into existence at some point after the Flood, millennia after the gods had created the originals. As they were rather recent developments, the nuances of their magic were not as clearly known as those of the original Fonts from the creation of the Realm. And being primals, Kole and Amara were uniquely positioned to have in-depth knowledge of these relatively unknown Fonts.

“The Font of Illusions was made from the connection of Mind, Light, and Sound, and magic using the Font contains elements of all three.”

“Hmm,” Amara intoned. “Understanding was formed from Mind, Bonds, and Identity.”

“Identity? That seems odd.”

“The Font of Identity is closely tied to understanding. The identity of an object is the culminated intent of people’s understanding of that object.”

“If you say so,” Kole said with a shrug, not wanting to get back into it.

“Both of our Fonts are formed of three others. Do you think all the secondary Fonts are?”

“No. The Wind Font is just Air and Force, and that’s only two. People thought it was connected to the Font of Pressure, but that was also a secondary Font formed from Force and Barrier. They’re simply close in the Arcane Realm because they’re both close to Force.”

Despite the horror of the day’s labors, Kole found he enjoyed his passage. With both Amara and Jorin, he had interesting conversations each night. After the first day off, Meech even came by from time to time to keep Kole company.

Kole noted Amara didn’t seem to notice or care that she was confined to a dark hold in the bowels of a ship.

I guess she’s the shut-in type who gets lost in her work, he reflected somewhat judgmentally, without the self-awareness to note that he too wouldn’t have minded being locked in the dark bowels of a ship if it had a library.

With the aid of Jorin, Amara remained undetected for the remainder of the journey. The night before their arrival at the port city of Hawk’s Nest, Meech came down to the hold at Jorin’s request to help “repack some cargo.”

“Flood!” Meech cursed when he saw Amara. “And he had the audacity to assign me dung duty when he was helping aid and abet a stowaway!”

Despite his cursing, Meech was more than happy to help pack Amara back into a crate and mark it so that she’d be unloaded first.

Kole felt a little uncertain about leaving Amara in the hands of the crew, helpless in a box, but Meech assured him that he would handle the unloading himself. Kole still wasn’t exactly sure what Meech’s role was on the ship, but he seemed to do whatever he felt like—so long as it was related to the operations of the ship and he wasn’t on punishment detail. Not everyone in a ship clan actively partook in the sailing of the ships, but those who did had specific roles. In this way, Meech was an anomaly.

The next morning found Kole at the prow of the ship, eagerly waiting for landfall. A few minutes after the call of “land ho!” from the crow’s nest, Kole caught sight of the tips of the mountains that held the waters of the ocean at bay. A few hours later, he could see the city of Hawk’s Nest, or at least its port. Formerly a secret base for the infamous pirate ship the Sparrowhawk, the city was hidden behind a mountain, out of sight from the sea. The port itself was a bay formed from where the two mountains met and was surrounded by the jagged peaks of shorter mountains.

At first glance, the bay seemed impassable, but illusory lights guided ships through the rocky spikes to their berths once they’d made contact with the port master via magic, flags, or prearranged papers. Kole tried to sense the lights with his connection to the Font, but either they were too far away, or his senses too weak. He wasn’t discouraged, though, as sensing magical effects was a talent of older wizards than he, and he’d already shown some signs of the talent.

Meech, whose ineffable responsibilities saw him free to watch the approach with Kole, explained that the city shifted the obstacles around on a regular basis, preventing unauthorized entry or exit of the port. The former pirate’s cove had a surprisingly strong stance against smuggling. Something Meech found quite amusing.

Lights guided the Willowboom to a dock beneath a series of large crane constructions specifically sized for the massive clan ships. The remainder of the fleet stayed out beyond the protected bay, sending people to shore on smaller vessels. The flagship dwarfed all others in the harbor, and crew swarmed the deck, casting lines out to bring the enormous ship alongside the dock cut into the mountain’s edge.

Before it had even stopped, the hatches to the hold burst open, and the crew began raising the cargo via magically powered lifts. Kole watched as the crates were methodically lined up on deck and subsequently removed by the port’s cranes.

Meech gave Kole a nudge when a particular crate was unloaded, and they moved to disembark. A port official stood at the end of the ramp, discussing the manifest with the ship’s quartermaster. No one else had dared disembark, but both men simply nodded at Meech as he passed, paying the still-visible Kole no mind.

They went to the fenced-in area the cargo was being unloaded into, and once more Meech was ushered through a very serious-looking checkpoint without question.

“What in Fauell is your job?!” Kole asked, not able to make any sense of the man.

“Whatever needs doing,” Meech answered with a sly grin as they walked through aisles of stacked crates.

“That’s not really an answer.”

“That’s true,” Meech said with a laugh, “but neither is my answer. I’ll tell you this on account of your dad and how my brother seems to trust you. In the clan, the high captain commands the fleet and acts as the overall leader. The Grand Master controls the Stormcallers, and together they lead us in peace and war. Each ship has a captain of its own, which act as a sort of local governor, leading and ruling each vessel.

“Now, sometimes, the captain or my brother needs something done, but none of their crew have the skill set to do it. When that happens, they ask me, and I take care of it.”

“So you’re, what, a smuggler? Spy? Assassin?” Kole asked.

Meech maintained eye contact and lifted his eyebrows in what could be interpreted as a confirmation.

“Your lady friend should be right here,” he said, stopping and emphasizing his words by slapping his palm on a crate labeled “LIVE PUS BEETLES.”

“That’s one way to keep people away, I suppose,” Kole said, hoping that label truly was a ruse.

Together they pried open the side of the crate, and a frazzled Amara fell out along with a rat, which landed on top of her.

“Rat!” Meech shouted, reaching for a club at his waist.

“No!” Amara screamed in panic as she covered the rat with her arms.

“I think it’s sort of her familiar,” Kole said.

Meech looked between the two teenagers and then holstered his club.

“Kids these days,” he muttered under his breath. Louder he said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you get some horrible disease from the thing.”

Once Amara had gathered her few belongings, Meech walked them out the gate, where the guards literally looked the other way at their passing.

“Well, this is where I say my goodbye,” Meech said. “My brother sends his regards and said he’ll ask after word of the pocket realm you spoke of. Once you get settled, send him your address.”

“Thank you! I will!”

The sailor left the pair, and they looked around to get their bearings.

“We need to take the lifts down to Edgewater,” Kole said, with confidence he didn’t feel.

“I know where to go,” Amara said, with a confidence that was certainly not feigned.

Kole took note of the stark change in her demeanor and decided to trust her. She had trusted him with her own life after all—though he supposed that could have been a sign of poor judgment and not trustworthiness.

“Lead the way, then.”

CHAPTER 8

Lift

All around Kaltis, the seas rose, and still the Avatar roamed destroying whatever lay in its path. Nations fell, even those not in the direct path of the destruction, trapped as they were between the rising seas and the raging wildfire.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Amara began walking down the streets of the warehouse district, oblivious to the dangers such parts of town were known for. It was early morning, but that wouldn’t stop an opportunistic thief who caught a young girl unawares.

“How do you know where to go?” Kole asked some time after she’d made another turn.

She pointed up.

Kole followed her finger, squinting against the sun.

“I just see a bunch of gulls.”

“One of them is with me,” she said.

“How are directions ‘understanding’?!” Kole started, but then stopped himself, adding, “Never mind.”

They continued like this a while longer until they found a line of carts and wagons loaded with supplies. The noise got louder, and the crowds grew, and Amara lost some of her confidence, becoming agitated by the noise. Far ahead they spotted a large stone construction of dwarven build, perfectly square and free of adornments that served no function, only runes giving it any semblance of decoration. Groups of cargo were loaded onto a large rectangular platform, which then slid to the side to make room for the next one.

“I don’t think we have to wait in this,” he told Amara when he spotted another line ahead.

They walked along the line until they reached the much shorter one up front of passengers without cargo. A dozen people waited as one stood on a runed plate in front of a clerk’s window.

Behind the window, a dwarf woman said, “Two hundred and three pounds. That’ll be 6 Will or six bits.”

“Could you have said it any louder?” the human woman who’d just been publicly weighed hissed. “Will, I suppose.”

The dwarf laughed at the irritation, and Kole guessed that public shaming was seen as a small perk of the job to the toll keeper.

She handed the woman a small glass sphere, and the woman tapped it before the dwarf took it away satisfied.

When it became Kole and Amara’s turn, they collectively owed 11 Will.

“What if we offer more Will?” Kole asked.

He knew the Will tax helped power the runes of the great lift, but if you could pay instead, that implied it had value beyond that.

“Then you get paid. One bit for each 1 Will extra,” the dwarf explained.

“I can give 25,” Amara said, eagerly.

She was handed a gemstone this time. A small ruby but wonderfully cut. She held the stone in her hand, focused, and handed it to the dwarf, who inspected it and gave Amara a copper coin and five bits.

“Just the 6 for me,” Kole said.

He had plenty of Will, but he’d require all of it if he needed to cast anything but Invisibility. He had enough money to see him through the coming months if he was careful, and if it came to it, he could come back and sell more Will. All his Will capacity for the day could earn him 40 bits—equal to two copper coins—but that was worthless next to a lost day of magic progress.

Plus, he hated the headaches caused by Will drain. He looked to Amara, who was already rubbing her forehead and shielding her eyes from the light.

He was impressed by her capacity, which was confirmed by the dwarf on payment. If Amara wasn’t lying about her age, having 25 Will at sixteen was impressive even for primals who got a head start. Will capacity increased as Will was used, and it took dedication to use up every last ounce of Will each day.

From what little Kole had seen of Amara, he didn’t doubt she had dedication to her craft.

They were ushered through a gate and onto the giant platform. The platform itself was a thirty-foot square, with eight-foot-tall sides. The floor and walls were made of wood, but they were simply a platform secured to the metal runed plate that the elevator rested on.

“What are you doing?” Kole asked Amara, who was attempting to pry up a board.

“I want to see the runes!” she said with focused determination, forgetting the pain of her Will-drained state.

“Stop it! You’re going to get us kicked off.”

Amara stopped her desperate clawing and looked around to see if she’d been spotted.

“They’d do that?”

“Yes. The dwarves are rather protective of their runes,” Kole explained.

Amara was disappointed for a moment but then smiled as a rat climbed out of her bag and onto the floor, where it quickly found a hole and squeezed through. As soon as it was through, she pulled out a notebook and sat down on the floor, drawing out a series of runes.

Kole watched her work, nervously looking to see if anyone was paying attention to them. The dwarves who ran the lift were busy directing the passengers and cargo, evenly distributing the weight, and paid no heed to the meager weight of the pair of teenagers. Due to all the heavy carts, the lift was closed to new entrants before it grew too crowded, and the two of them had a large area to themselves with carts blocking them from view.

Once sure they were unobserved, he watched Amara draw. Kole didn’t know much about runes, but in many ways, they were similar to the spellforms he’d studied endlessly. The lines in each magical art had no decipherable meaning, but were instead shapes that resonated with the Fonts and the Arcane Realm in ways that allowed Will to draw upon them.

“How are you doing that?” Kole asked, despite knowing he wouldn’t be happy with the answer.

“Gus wants me to write them down, so I can understand his desires and do it,” she explained, as if that made perfect sense.

Kole stopped himself from engaging and instead focused on something else. “Gus? The rat’s name is Gus? Like from the children’s story?”

Amara just nodded in response as she continued to work.

“Why?”

“I like the story. He likes the story.”

“He likes the—”

“Shhh!”

“Sorry,” Kole whispered, planning on bringing this topic up later.

The rat likes stories?

Amara spent the entire hour-long descent drawing and annotating the drawings until she had a dozen pages of seemingly random shapes.

“Bottom!” came a shout from one of the dwarves shortly before the platform came to a grinding halt.

The gate on the platform opposite their entry opened, and the wagons began to off-load in an orderly fashion. In all the movement, Gus squirmed out from under the platform and crawled back up into Amara’s bag.

Kole eyed the rodent with new eyes in light of the revelation of its opinions on fiction.

“Hide the journal,” Kole whispered to Amara, who was looking through the pages as they walked.

She looked up, confused for a moment before remembering his previous warning, and then slammed the book closed.

The platform came down alongside a lake, one formed where water exited from an underwater cave from the ocean. The lake now served as a secondary port to handle the cargo from the lifts. Sailors and dockworkers were busy loading and unloading freight. A small town had formed around the lake, but with Hawk’s Nest just up the mountain and Edgewater a day’s travel south, it was only a waystation.

“Let’s take a ferry,” Kole suggested before leading the way.

The road to Edgewater was a safe and easy journey, but it took a whole day, and they wanted to reach the city before nightfall. Enrollment for the new year of study was open for another day, but they felt no need to risk it.

They boarded a ferry with some of their fellow light travelers and sat for the six-hour journey, taking in the sights of the forest that lined the river. Kole had hardly ever left Illandrios, and Amara’s home was rocky, devoid of any trees. The sight of the ancient, towering forest awed the pair.

Kole knew from his prior studies that the forest hadn’t always been this impressive. In the wake of the blight druid who had corrupted the area in the lead-up to the Last Dragon War, Assuine’s followers had descended on the region, repairing the damage and then some. Now those followers stayed as Assuine’s representatives at the Academy.

Suddenly, the trees ended, and a city came into view. The tree line didn’t fade or grow sparse over time. Instead, there was a clear delineation between the forest and the farmland that surrounded the city. The former logging village still partook in the trade, but the druids now dictated from which regions trees should be felled.

The farmland itself wasn’t typical either. Farms filled the region beyond the river, but the ones directly around the city were run by the school. Many grew reagents and ingredients needed for the study of alchemy and other arts, while others still were used to research the newly developing science of horticulture—something the Assuine worshipers were still coming to grips with. They didn’t dislike the art, far from it, but the methodical approach to rearing nature was at odds with their goddess’s more instinctive and whimsical ways, and efforts were being made to bridge the divide.

The ferry stopped near one of these farms and ushered all the passengers off on a small rickety dock.

“Can you take us closer?” Amara asked, pointing towards the others further away.

“Trust me,” the ferryman said as he unloaded his mules, preparing to haul the ferry back up north. “You don’t want to get dropped off in the docks. Nothing good happens in the docks.”

Looking down the river, Kole saw a line of ships waiting at anchor in the middle of it. The thought of their unwieldy ferry passing through that gave him an appreciation for the unstable dock.

They followed a road through the farms and the outer city until they found the main northern route that would bring them through the gates to the city proper. Once a small logging town, Edgewater had experienced a boom with the influx of citizens from the Fall of Landing, quickly becoming the major city of the region. A wall was constructed at that time as part of the war effort. The city had long since outgrown that region, but the wall remained, now more of an inconvenience to its inhabitants than it would be a hindrance to any invading army.

No one challenged their entry at the gate, and once through, they noticed a marked improvement in the quality of the building construction. While the area outside the walls was far from a slum, the buildings had all been constructed by humans, orcs, and halflings. Those races surely had their own skills and techniques for constructing buildings of quality, but the inner city had been constructed with the aid of the dwarves, and it showed. The vast majority of the buildings were crafted from stone, some of which was quarried from the nearby mountain. Others were drawn from down below by Stoneweavers and Torc’s Blessed and then molded into shape.

Every surface of the buildings was polished so that the patterns in the stone were brilliant in the sun. But they were free of adornments—save for runes, that was. While it was just past noon when the pair arrived, the unpowered Light runes could be made out on the corners and doorframes of every building.

The simple aesthetic of the dwarven craft was marred slightly by the later additions the city’s non-dwarven residences had added over the decades. Most of the buildings now bore additional levels built directly atop the originals, but the combination gave Edgewater an aesthetic matched nowhere else on Kaltis.

The Dahn—the central tower of the Academy of Illunia—could be seen from anywhere in the city, and Kole and Amara took advantage of this to guide their feet toward the campus. They forewent stopping for a meal, instead eating from a bag of travel rations Meech had given Kole before his departure. The city was packed with a diverse mix of humans, orcs, halflings, and dwarves, and Kole even caught sight of the occasional gnome and the rare demonkin. There was a small population of elves in the city, but they stuck to the district they’d constructed for themselves and the campus.

As they got closer to the school, the demographic changed. The races were still diverse, but the ambling crowd was replaced with young potential students all heading toward the school. The mass eventually formed into a line that began on the outskirts of the wide expanse of the campus green.

“Do you think this is the line for admissions?” Amara asked, looking around at the crowds with apprehension.

“I think that’s a safe bet,” Kole answered.

They got in the line, which was moving along at a reasonable if intermittently halting pace. Kole took the time to take in his surroundings. The tower of the Dahn dominated the view, but it was surrounded by other more mundane buildings, all constructed to match its white stone. Statues and greenery lined the paths, and Kole recognized only a few without reading the plaques. One was the knightly form of Daulf, the Chosen of Illunia, hero of the Last Dragon War, and co-founder of the Academy. He was depicted as an older bald man, with a scarred and weathered face, but along with the scars of battle were the laugh lines of a kindhearted man.

They moved steadily onward together until Kole and Amara found themselves just outside the entrance to the Dahn. Ahead, signs would appear, and the lines would split.

CHAPTER 9

Admissions

The coastal nations took to the seas early, taking with them the knowledge of shipbuilding and naval navigation.

The landlocked nations moved inward as the ocean came to their shores, and brutal battles ensued as dry land became more and more scarce.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

As the line took Kole and Amara into a large building, they heard a crier shouting out instructions.

“Read the signs! Follow the path for the primary curriculum you wish to enroll in! If you can’t read, follow the path marked with an X to be enrolled in the remedial program!”

The man repeated the instructions every minute, and had a few dozen times by the time Kole and Amara saw the first signs. The path branched into six, each associated with one of the major schools of the Academy. Signs read “Academia,” “Art,” “War,” “Magic,” “Craft,” and “Nature.” Beyond each, the paths branched further, some splitting seemingly without end. Kole noticed the Nature path simply split into Assuine and Horticulture before the latter led into a building while the former led to a large tree in the center of the art school’s green.

At the crossroads where they would part, Amara stopped and looked to Kole as she marshaled her courage to speak.

“Let’s meet under that tree after all of this,” she rattled off as if spitting the words out would lessen the chance of Kole saying no.

“Sure,” Kole said, having been about to suggest something similar.

Amara perked up and then pulled something from a pouch at her belt.

“Take this! If you imbue Will into it, it will point to mine.”

Kole examined the object. It was a set of small circular stone disks set atop one another. The top of one disk was subtly shaped into a cone, while the other’s bottom was slightly concave. Their features allowed the top disk to spin on the bottom freely. Faint runes that meant nothing to Kole covered the objects, and following Amara’s words, he held the object in his palm and imbued it with Will. The tiniest flake of a red gem sat fixed in the center of the runes, serving as the reservoir for the Will.

Immediately, a small white light began to glow on the edge of the top disk and snapped around to point directly at Amara.

“The light will glow brighter the closer you get. It should work so long as we’re both in town, but don’t use it too much. It’s just made of pewter, so it won’t last forever.”

“You made this?” he asked, impressed.

He’d seen Amara tinker with that rod and draw runes in her book, so intellectually he knew she was a runesmith, but aside from the light disks she’d had below deck—which were extremely common—this was the first thing he’d seen her use.

Amara—as she still occasionally did after a week of interactions—grossly misread Kole’s state of mind as he inspected the tracking device.

“I know, I should have used a better material, but I used the pewter cups on the ship, and it was all that I had at hand. I can—”

“You made this on the ship?!” Kole interrupted. “That’s amazing!”

Kole didn’t know much about making things, but the fine detail done on these devices was impressive even to him.

“I don’t think you will need to worry about a scholarship.”

Amara beamed, finally understanding that he was impressed.

“Thank you.”

After testing the device a little more, they separated. Amara went down the crafting line, then runesmithing, and then out of sight towards the crafting quarter of the school. Kole went down the path of magic and then followed signs for wizardry. He kept an eye out for any signs of the adventuring program, but didn’t see any.

Kole walked among a large group of prospective students. Their path continued straight towards the central tower of the Dahn, passing branches for enchanting, medical magic, construction, war and more, but Kole continued on until he saw a sign posted in front of the entrance which read, “General Wizardry.”

That might not sound as exciting as some he’d passed, but general wizardry was the track most common for those who wished to be adventurers. While a war wizard would learn magics useful on campaigns and on large battlefields, they had few skills useful in a small team setting and little theoretical magical knowledge. The needs of war, and the best methods for killing large groups of men and monsters with magic, had long since been settled, and the field was not for one seeking innovation in the art.

General wizardry was much like the curriculum taught at the Tower of Illunia of old, the ignoble predecessor of the Academy long since disavowed by the Chosen of the goddess who they’d claimed to serve. It was structured to give a solid magical understanding so that the students could then pursue their own goals. While the other curricula were each capable of producing Master Wizards, very few reached the rank of Grand Master following those paths.

Up close, the Dahn was impressive. The stone was solid marble, devoid of seams or cracks as if it were raised from the ground as a single white piece of stone. Large stained-glass windows adorned its surface, evenly spaced, and set all the way to the top. The windows depicted important scenes dating back to the battle between the Wardens and Faust, which resulted in the creation of Kaltis. Unconsciously, Kole looked down at his feet. It always made him uncomfortable knowing that the god of hatred, fire, and destruction resided at the core of the planet, and he didn’t understand how more people didn’t worry about it.

The crowd passed by him as he admired the scene. The tower was the tallest building he’d ever seen, and he was trying to judge if it would even fit within the dome of his home. Eventually gathering his wits about him, he headed into the massive black stone double doors that were held open.

Within, the tip of a massive crystal shard hung from a large hole in the fifty-foot ceiling, down to a dozen feet above the ground. The crystal was white and gave off a magical light that illuminated the room without producing shadows. The grand foyer lacked any furnishings, save for the ropes guiding the students clockwise. The room was a great circle, with doors set evenly apart. A door to the right was open, and Kole could see the library within, which was very odd because if he looked up through the large central hole, he could see the library above.

I’d heard this was disorienting, but that doesn’t do it justice, Kole thought, looking back and forth between the two.

Kole was not the only one to stop and stare. Many of his peers paused with him at the tip of the crystal shard, then through the door, where part of its middle could be seen.

Eventually, the gawkers built up to the point of forming a blockage, and Kole moved along. The door opposite the entry was closed, and grand staircases started to either side of it and met well above it. Oddly, the staircases led to nothing. There was a landing over the closed door, but no door or hall.

The Dahn was sometimes called the “Flightless Tower,” needing none due to the magic doors, but here was a flight of stairs leading nowhere.

He didn’t have time to reflect, as his group was ushered into the next door. This room was far less impressive: a smaller foyer, with halls branching out in three directions. From the central path, one could access all the lecture halls, while the left and right paths led around the perimeter to smaller classes.

The applicants were all directed into a lecture hall at the very center. The room was a massive pie shape that seemed to take up a fourth of the floor. They entered at the top and saw nearly a hundred terraced rows of seats leading to the bottom, where there was a large slate set in the wall. Before the slate was a long table, with dozens of young adult wizards sitting, looking over papers. As far away as the slate was, Kole found he could read it as if it were much closer, some magical effect of the Dahn magnifying his vision when he looked at the board.

The slate said, “Take a seat and begin.”

Many prospective students were already doing so, so Kole found an open desk in the middle with a stack of paper on it and made himself comfortable.

The top sheet of paper had a list of fields one could study with brief descriptions and checkboxes for “major” and “minor” beside each.

Kole was prepared and quickly found the ones he needed. He’d long since researched the class requirements to enter the adventuring track.

He checked “major” next to general magic and combat magic.

He then checked “minor” next to martial combat, alchemy and history, then wrote “Pre-Flood Basin” below where a focus was needed.

Finally Kole saw mention of the adventuring program: a simple checkbox with “Pre-Adventuring Program” written beside it. He marked that one as well.

Then he filled out a few fields about himself. He listed his name, age, race, and gender, and stopped when it asked him to list any innate magical abilities.

He considered lying, but he knew that they would ask him if his answers were honest under some sort of truth detection effect before he could formally enroll.

But then he recalled how he left his home, and Meech’s assumption that he was a fugitive.

I didn’t do anything wrong, but… maybe Lord Oldhill disagrees.

He wrote “Kole Teak” down as his name. Not a lie, he figured, just a different truth. If pressed, he could explain that he wanted to use his father’s ship clan name. If his mother had never returned home to take over her family’s holdings after her parents’ deaths, it would have been his name.

Not a lie, he told himself.

Under Magical Heritage, he wrote “primal” and left it at that. The form didn’t ask where he was from, and if Oldhill came looking and had access to the records, “Illusion primal” would be a dead giveaway.

With that thought came the realization that Kole should hide his homeland should anyone ask. It would be a matter of record that he was a primal, and if anyone wanted to discover of which Font, they’d only have to inquire after his home. While nothing was stopping a primal from leaving their homeland and its proximity to a Primordial, it was not often they did so, and when they did, the odds of their children becoming primals after them were essentially zero.

The Illandrian accent was not one well known, but having grown up with mostly just his father and few friends to converse with, Kole had always sounded more like a ship clansman than an Illandrian. While he was terrible at acting and lying, he thought he could keep the hints of his origin out of his accent with a little effort.

Next to “primal,” he also wrote in “unpacted dragon blood sorcerer,” which was common enough and completely true—though he doubted anyone who read this form would believe it, as primal sorcerers were “impossible.” Long ago he might have needed to hide the origin of his sorcerous powers, but the corrupting influence of the evil god Faust had been suppressed the last hundred years, and the prejudice against the sorcerers he’d once driven mad had faded from memory. Though not all those who’d once been prey to his influence were so forgiven.

Then it asked him to list all the wizardry he could cast. He listed Shield and Magic Missile—the second of which he’d confirmed he could cast one night on the ship, sending the spell into the ocean. He then listed the long litany of cantrips he’d learned over the years.

Once he was done, he flipped to the next page, which was blank.

He looked around the room confused, but when he looked back at his page, it was covered with print.

Magic paper!

Kole smiled. He’d already seen many wonders, but this had really hammered home the nature of this place. The potential of magic paper to clear some of the tedium of his studying excited him.

I wonder if they sell it, Kole thought.

But then he recalled his limited funds. He’d likely not be able to afford it even if they did.

The text on the magical paper excited him far less. It began with a multiple-choice reading comprehension test, which was frankly insulting in its simplicity. When he finished a page, his correct answers turned green. He assumed the incorrect ones turned red, but he never got any wrong and never got to see. Then the print vanished and was replaced with another test. This repeated for math, but the math questions were far more in-depth. Kole was quite good at math, as the field was necessary to accurately reproduce the strange shapes integral to spellforms.

Once he’d cleared those fields, the questions moved on to alchemy. He did far less well on that test and got to confirm his theory that the wrong answers did in fact turn red. He failed to identify plants by their descriptions or sketches, and didn’t remember many common safe potion combinations. He didn’t feel too bad about it, though. To get accepted into the adventuring track, only a passing knowledge of alchemy was required—and he was here to learn.

The martial combat test was very short. It simply asked him to judge his combat prowess accurately and list any weapons he was proficient in. He wrote “poor” and “none,” and the page went blank.

It’s probably fine…

For the history exam, he had to answer some basic questions about the pre- and post-Flood history of the Basin. After that, he was asked an essay question about the aspects he’d been most knowledgeable on.

He wrote a dry essay on the lost civilizations of the pre-Flood Basin, but he thought he did pretty well. His father had always told him knowledge of history was key for any adventurer. Half the battle of adventuring was finding lost places to explore, while the other half was—well—battle.

For combat magic, he was asked questions about various common, and some less common, monsters. He did okay in that, having done some research on magical beasts and other typical adventuring foes, but it hadn’t been his focus.

And then the magic test began. Well, the first. It started with the basics. Spellforms appeared on his paper, and Kole had to identify them.

No way…

He marveled at the spellform that had appeared before him.

Could it be?

Tentatively he touched the swirling shapes and found that it was imbued with Will.

How?

Copying spellforms was something that had to be done by hand. Attempts had been made to use printing presses to copy the shapes, but they never held the Will long or even accurately once imbued. Even less progress has been made in finding a method to copy the Will within. Imbuing the Will after was the challenging and skill-intensive part of the processes, so automating the drawing didn’t remove the bottleneck.

But here, before Kole, a spellform had appeared. He looked at the pages of the students around him and saw that many of them too had spellforms.

“Keep your eyes on your own paper!” a proctor shouted.

Kole’s eyes darted back to his sheet, and he got to work.

The spellform before him was a Firebolt. He knew without even needing to read the Will, only looking at the ineffable squiggles. It wasn’t a variant he’d ever learned, but the basic components of most spells at the lower tiers varied little. He identified ten more spells in this manner before he had to slow down and start reading the Will and examining it in his mind. His pursuit of lost spells had taught him far more about spellforms and their components than was typical for a wizard of his age—or really any age—and he could identify the most common spellform components by sight.

Then the second-tier spells came. At first, Kole could recognize these on sight as well, but they increased in difficulty faster, and he had to resort to reading the Will within to piece out their functions. When he saw the first third-tier spell, he didn’t even try to figure it out by sight.

Kole made it through three of those before he got stuck. He knew he was close to figuring out the Barrier spellform in front of him, but he couldn’t recall all of the details. Looking up to clear his mind, he noticed that others around him had books out and were using them.

“Keep your eyes on your own papers!” a voice shouted again.

Kole raised his hand, and the shouter came over to him.

“Yes?” he asked, irritated.

“Can we use our spellbooks as a reference?”

“Yes,” the proctor said, still irritated, and then left.

Kole pulled his spellbook out from his bag and set it next to his test. Then he got to work. In his pursuit of old spells, he’d begun to catalog spellform components meticulously. Books existed in the library with their descriptions and shapes. They referenced areas of common forms readers could copy the Will from. Readers would then have to find that spell in a spellbook, but Kole had found that tedious when repeatedly building spellforms. Instead, he’d copied the individual components into his own spellbook and imbued them with the proper intent, creating a library he could use to quickly repair the old spells he found.

The cost of such a convenience was rather absurd, the ink required to scribe spellforms being very expensive—though cheaper than it had been even a few decades past. While Kole hadn’t known why Lord Oldhill had supported him and his studies financially, he’d not refrained from taking advantage of it, and he’d spent an obscene sum of money to create this reference.

With his spellbook, Kole’s progress picked up again. He made it through the third tier and then the fourth before the spellforms stopped appearing. He obviously couldn’t cast any of these spells, but it didn’t take a master musician to hum some sheet music and identify a song. It was all about finding the key parts of the spell and putting them together with the Font to determine a purpose.

Once the spells stopped appearing, individual effect components appeared. These were devoid of intent, and Kole figured he was supposed to fill them, so he did. Again and again, squiggles and shapes appeared. He couldn’t do them all from memory, but between what he had stored in his vault and his spellbook, there weren’t any he couldn’t replicate.

Then something strange happened. A black dot of ink appeared. Kole touched it and sensed the intent of a spell component within.

How?

The whole point of a spellform was that it was constructed of shapes that stably held the spell’s intent without degradation. A random dot shouldn’t be able to contain the intent he sensed now. The answer became clear as he watched the intent fade into magical noise and then nothing, but then the dot dissipated, and an identical one appeared with the same intent.

Kole got straight to work, sketching out the shape that was needed to hold the Will. He repeated this for an hour, students around him coming and going as they completed their own testing.

After completing a particularly obscure component Kole had only ever seen once on a very old Light spell, words appeared on the page.

“Please come to the front.”

Oh no…

CHAPTER 10

Grand Master

Some cities took creative measures to survive. The Hollow Peak sealed themselves into a mountain top cavern, enlarged within by the Spatial magics they were known for.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Kole looked up to see a group of the young test proctors standing around an old and slightly rotund man with a long gray beard that would fit perfectly on the stereotypical robed wizard. He sat with a quill in hand and a single sheet of paper before him.

He caught sight of Kole looking at him, and he smiled.

Nervously, Kole gathered his things and his papers, then walked to the front of the room.

The older man rose from his seat to meet him.

“Kole Teak, I presume?”

Kole nodded, unable to speak.

Am I in trouble? Was I not supposed to use my spellbook after all?

“Let’s go somewhere more private,” the man said, ushering him out a door.

The room had grown silent, as the constant scratching of quills on paper had died when the professor said Kole’s name.

Kole nodded and allowed himself to be guided through a door, down a hall, and into a small room with a desk.

All the way, his mind went over everything he’d said or done since entering campus. But no matter how he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of what he might have done wrong.

You could say that Kole had confidence issues, and you would be right. While he knew he was a dedicated student, he’d long since stopped hoping for recognition.

The man sat behind the desk and gestured for Kole to take a seat.

Kole obliged and then couldn’t keep from asking, “Am I in trouble?”

The man laughed, “Gods no! You performed outstandingly!”

Kole started to relax at that. It hadn’t even occurred to him that his performance might be of note. He had, after all, been thoroughly ignored by his teachers back home after the hopelessness of his situation had been discovered.

“I’m Grand Master Lonin, but you can call me Professor Lonin or Master Lonin if you prefer. You, my boy, are remarkable.”

“I am?”

“You are. It’s not common that a prospective student of your age can identify up to fourth-tier spells, but it does occur. Never have I seen a first-year student identify all the fourth-tier spells in the standard test. In the end, I threw in some older, lesser-known spells, and you still figured them out. One I’d developed myself, and it didn’t even work properly, but still you deduced its intended purpose!”

The man had been serious, but his excitement was getting to him, and his voice had grown more animated.

“And then the components! Who of your age knows that many? Half the proctors couldn’t have done a third as well as you had with those. In the end, I just wanted to see what you could do, and I laid out intent for you to copy.”

“I’m sorry about those,” Kole interrupted. “I didn’t have my scribing tools with me, so it was hard to do freehand.”

Professor Lonin laughed.

“Sorry? You did wonderfully! Yes, they will fade, but that was not the point of the test. Tell me, what drove someone such as you to learn so much about the construction of spellforms?”

The professor leaned forward, eager to hear Kole’s answer.

Is this it? Kole wondered. Was it that easy? Could this professor be interested in mentoring me?

He steadied himself, handed him the first sheet he’d filled out upon entering, and pointed to the Innate Magical Talent section.

“I’m a primal, sir,” Kole said and then hastily added, “And a sorcerer.”

Professor Lonin looked at the sheet, then back to Kole.

“That’s not possible?” he said, more a question than a statement.

Kole just shrugged. “That’s what people keep telling me.”

He felt relieved. The man didn’t seem to care about the omission of his Font—though he doubted he’d make it through the conversation with that secret withheld. He didn’t want the nature of his primal abilities widely known, but he’d done a poor job keeping it a secret so far.

“Amazing. But why would a primal know all of this? They can’t cast wizardry.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Kole corrected. “May I?”

He had used too much Will during the test to cast Shield, but he could still cast a cantrip if he used up all he had left.

With a nod of approval from the now fascinated wizard, Kole cast the Air cantrip, creating a well of air in his palm.

Lonin waved his hand through it, amazed.

“This is wizardry! How?!”

“Primals can cast spells. It just costs a lot of Will. That cantrip cost me about 30. Being a primal and a sorcerer, my Will capacity was enough to just barely do so when I first started out.”

“30 Will…” Lonin whispered. “How so much?”

“I think it has to do with the gates and paths modern wizardry uses. It costs a lot of Will for me to open my bridge to the gates required for spells. Older spells are easier, though. Spells with the latest offset gate techniques are impossible for me to even attempt. If you go back far enough, the complexity is balanced between the spell itself and the gate and path components. I found I could cast the oldest versions of Shield and Magic Missile I could salvage from the libraries back home.”

The older wizard’s eyes lit up as he connected the dots.

“That explains it. You learned all this spellform theory to delve into the depths of obsolete spells and used your massive Will capacity to work at it longer than any other Apprentice could.”

Kole nodded. He was only vaguely familiar with the wizard ranks the Academy had adopted from the Tower, but he knew that the rank of Apprentice was for wizards able to cast second-tier spells, usually attained around age eighteen. Kole would be considered a Novice, though he knew if he could actually cast all the spells he was capable of crafting, he might be considered an Apprentice—as Apprentice was simply a rank, and had nothing to do with whether or not one was in an apprenticeship to a Master.

“What would drive a child to such depths?”

“I want to be a wizard,” Kole explained. “I’ve wanted it my whole life. When my mother was lost, it gave my desire a purpose. When I first exhibited a sorcerous ability, I thought I’d been cleared of the possibility of being a primal like my mother. I didn’t have the innate sense for the Font other primals did, so I carried on with my studies. When I built my vault, the Font’s presence was absent, further relieving my worries about any latent primal abilities. But… when I opened my bridge, it was beside the Font of…”

Flood, he cursed internally. He’d walked into revealing the secret he’d just decided to keep.

He looked up at Lonin, who was waiting expectantly.

“Don’t worry, son,” the professor said. “I can keep a secret. Whatever you tell me will be kept in confidence. I didn’t miss that you chose to omit the Font on your form, though I already have an idea what it is.”

Kole reflected on what he’d said to tip him off but was at a loss.

Maybe he recognizes my accent?

He was trying to hide it, but he knew he was slipping. The accent of Illandrios was unique, subtle and rare enough that people struggled to place it. A Grand Master Wizard likely had enough dealings with people from Kole’s home to recognize it.

“Font of Illusions,” Kole finished with a sigh. “My bridge was essentially attached to the outside of the Font. Making it open anywhere else costs more Will than a normal primal could muster at the age one decides to be a wizard. I kept this a secret, though, and worked at it until my Will capacity grew enough to allow it.”

“Simply fascinating,” Lonin said and then began to leaf through the copies of Kole’s test papers before him.

One page caught his eye, and he pulled it to the top, brow furrowing as he read.

“Why did you choose these courses?” he asked with a wariness he’d not shown up until that point.

Kole peeked over and saw the combat classes he’d chosen.

“Those are the standard classes required for wizards on the adventuring track,” Kole answered uncertainly.

Was I wrong? Are they not? Kole thought, trying to see where he might have made a mistake.

“Oh,” Lonin said, dropping the sheets as if they were dirty. “I see the marking.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Yes—well, no. I’m simply disappointed in such wasted potential. I thought I might offer you an apprenticeship, but I see now that you are not the pure wizard I’d taken you to be. Your desire to be a wizard is not for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of fame, glory, and adventure.”

Kole was crushed by the dual realization that the very thing he needed to reach his dream was being offered and then rescinded just as quickly. With a master to guide him, especially one with Lonin’s expertise, he’d finally become a wizard. He just had to give up on his parents.

“You won’t take me as an apprentice because I want to be an adventurer?”

Kole knew the answer but had to ask on the off chance he’d misunderstood.

“Yes. I will not invest my time into a student who’d squander their talent fighting trolls to find some lost trinket and gain the renown of some villagers. To be a wizard is to wield the tools of the gods, the very building blocks of reality. It’s our responsibility to use that power to improve the world and usher the Illusian races into a brighter future.”

“That’s not fair!” Kole couldn’t help but blurt out. “I only want to be an adventurer so I can gain the skills to save my parents. But even still, there would be no world left for wizards to improve if not for the adventurers of the past. The Last Dragon War was won by adventurers, not armies. A wizard chief among them. And that’s only the most recent occurrence we know of. How many more adventurers averted disaster and we never knew?”

Lonin let out a sigh and rubbed his forehead.

“I’m sorry, I may have judged too harshly. Not all adventurers are as I described. Many are true heroes, and that wizard adventurer you speak of was a co-founder of this very school. Admission season always makes me bitter. I see so much potential all pursuing the wrong goals. Brilliant young minds striving to master simple spells of destruction, when they could instead learn to bend reality to their will.”

“Does that mean you will take me on as an apprentice?” Kole asked, not daring to hope.

“No, I’m sorry, but I won’t reconsider that. I’m very demanding of my apprentices. I put much of my time and focus into each one, and I expect they meet my efforts with equal focus.”

“I think you will be—”

“No,” Lonin interrupted. “I won’t reconsider, but I will leave my offer standing. If you come to your senses, come to me and I will take you as an apprentice.”

Crestfallen, Kole didn’t know what to say. He’d been so close.

After a moment of silence, Lonin continued. “If, however, you don’t change your mind, I recommend you find your way to my classes on spellcrafting. I won’t take you as an apprentice, but I think you will excel at the art.”

“What do I need to take that?” Kole asked, eagerly.

Lonin handed Kole a piece of paper.

“You scored incredibly well on your placement.”

The page showed all the classes he had tested out of. His alchemy grades were poor, but he’d skipped some of the introductory history classes. He’d tested out of all the first-, second-, and third-tier math and spellform theory, leaving only the advanced classed for those who enrolled in the graduate program. His applied spellcraft scores were another matter, and he only qualified for applied magics classes of the first tier, something his ability to cast Magic Missile and Shield should have tested him out of.

“You have tested out of all of the theoretical classes required for spellcrafting, but you must be able to cast tier-two magic to take them. Also, to enter the class as an undergraduate, you require a sponsor of some sort.”

“A sponsor?” Kole asked.

“Yes. To take advanced classes outside your major or level, you need a faculty member or respected alumnus to vouch for you. Generally, this is through a formal apprenticeship of some sort.”

“Oh,” Kole said, disappointed.

Lonin was probably the only person in the school likely to be impressed with his particular brand of knowledge, and he’d already rejected him.

“Don’t be so disappointed. If you get a mentor for the adventuring track—as you seem so set on—they will sponsor you. And,” he added, mischievously, “if you don’t, my offer still stands.”

Kole shook Lonin’s hand before leaving with the record of his scores. He traveled out of the office and back through the lecture hall, where the eyes of the entire room bored into him.

Don’t turn invisible.

Don’t turn invisible.

Don’t turn invisible.

He fought the urge until he got to the main hall, where the pressure lessened, and followed signs to the bursar’s office.

CHAPTER 11

Bursar

Illandrios, the center for magical learning outside the Midlian Empire, created a great dome around their city, able to hold back the seas.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

The signs led Kole into a series of stalls set out on the green. As with the testing line, the setup was well organized, and it all moved fast. After only a few minutes of halting steps, Kole found himself in front of an elderly woman with thick spectacles and long gray hair tied up in a bun.

“Let me see what you have there, dearie,” she said, reaching for his paperwork.

Kole handed it to her, and she looked it over quickly, squinting and staring down her nose.

“Tsk. Magic paper and they still make the writing so small,” she muttered to herself and then looked Kole over.

She gestured to a glass sphere four inches in diameter and said, “Place your hand here on this truth orb.”

Kole obliged, resting his right palm on the object as he tried to still his mind. The device was identical to the one Jorin had used. Truth orbs were made of a type of alchemically treated glass that darkened when imbued with Will. A steady trickle of Will caused them to become foggy, and the fog turned orange when infused with deception.

He was familiar with the objects from even before this journey, though he’d never used them as frequently. They were expensive but not unheard of. They weren’t foolproof, but they were close enough for most things, especially a task like vetting an adolescent’s test results.

“Answer everything with a simple yes or no. Do you understand?”

Kole nodded.

“Clearly you didn’t, dearie, use your words.”

Embarrassed, Kole answered, “Yes.”

The orb turned foggy, and the questions began.

“Is your name Kole Teak?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kole said, and the orb turned orange.

The woman let out a long-suffering sigh.

With his hand still on the orb, Kole explained hurriedly.

“My given name is Kohlyn Highridge, but I go by Kole. My father was of the ship clan Teak but gave up the name when he married my mother and left the clan. I want to use his name.”

She looked from the orb, which had returned to its uncolored fogginess, to Kole’s face. Then she shrugged.

“Fine by me,” she said, and then began to ask Kole a series of questions about his tests, about whether or not he’d cheated, and about everything else that’d happened over the last few hours. Through it all, Kole fed a trickle of Will into the orb, which maintained a milky fog throughout.

“So let me get this straight. You are a primal and a sorcerer, and you want to be a wizard.”

“Yes,” Kole answered, exasperated at this point.

The woman hadn’t believed him when he’d said he could cast first-tier magic, despite the orb.

“And you’ve never been diagnosed with any mental disorders that might alter your perception of reality?” she asked, not for the first time.

“Yes—I mean no, I haven’t.”

She stared at him for a moment, but didn’t continue along that line of questioning. She proceeded to ask him about his financial situation, which also seemed to beggar her belief.

“So let me get this straight,” she said, again not for the first time. “Your parents are legally declared dead, but you don’t believe they are. You have no wealth, save for what is on your person. All your family’s possessions were taken to pay off the debts you accrued in the absence of your parents, and you are not wanted for any crimes financial or otherwise. And you have no income and no marketable skills that you can use to support yourself.”

“Yes,” Kole said, not liking her tone one bit. “But… my scribing and drafting is probably a marketable skill.”

“Alright, one last part. Do you wish this school, its faculty, or any of its students harm?”

“No.”

“Are you, or have you ever been, a member of a dragon cult?”

“No.”

“Do you worship Faust, Erebog, Bilieth, or any of the demigods aligned with them?”

“No.”

“Great! That’s that. Your test results and legal orphan status qualify you for free tuition, but you don’t qualify for free campus housing due to a lack of academic prospects. If you go south of campus, you can find rooms for reasonable rates of around six silver a month.”

Kole’s elation at the news of free tuition was crushed by the cost of a room. He could afford that if he stretched his savings, but not for more than ten months, and he’d be unable to purchase any spellform materials in that time—or food.

He had roughly six gold worth of coins in a mix of gold, silver, and copper. He’d estimated he could live off four silver worth of food a month. Together with the room rate he’d just learned, that was a gold coin a month to eat and sleep.

“Are there any cheaper options?”

“Well, if you aren’t too picky, you can rent a bed in one of the hostels. Those go for about five copper a week.”

Kole mentally did the math. It was eight silver a month to exist, which would last him just over seven months.

“I see here you are signing up for the pre-adventurer program,” she said, interrupting Kole’s math. “You’ll need to take an additional test to qualify. You can do it now or any time during the weekend. I suggest now, however. It can be a bit taxing, and you’ll want time to recover before class.”

Kole decided to go meet with Amara before heading for the final test. He preferred to get it out of the way so he could spend the weekend studying before classes and the inevitable additional schoolwork began.

He asked for directions to the test and then headed out to the tree, sitting to wait.

It took another hour before the strange quarter-elf primal girl found him.

“How did it go?” Kole asked, already knowing the answer from the smile plastered on the generally reserved girl’s face.

“I got an apprenticeship with Nabid Donglefore!”

“Who?”

Amara paused her excitement to study Kole’s face.

“Is that a joke?” she asked, legitimately unable to tell. “He’s the head of the college of crafting! He’s one of the premier alchemists and runesmiths outside the Torack, and he is on the cutting edge of research in combining the two arts to produce more stable runes.”

“Oh. That Nabid Donglefore,” Kole said, knowing Amara wouldn’t pick up on the terrible attempt to brush off his ignorance. He didn’t care so much that he didn’t know the name, but he sensed the girl would be a little hurt if he truly hadn’t heard of a person she so clearly admired.

He added, “That’s great news!”

She outlined her experience, telling Kole how she’d passed the written curriculum and then been pulled aside by Nabid to demonstrate her skills.

“He was fascinated by my use of the ants to carve runes. Already he’s asked me to help him with a number of projects he’s been stuck on!”

She must have realized she’d been talking nonstop for nearly twenty minutes, for she stopped abruptly and asked, “How did your admissions go?”

“I had a similar experience, though with different results.”

Kole explained his encounter with Grand Master Lonin, and his interest in his abilities but refusal to take him as an apprentice.

“I’m sorry,” Amara said when he’d finished the recounting. “But… at least you have free tuition, right? I’m sure you’ll find a mentor when you figure out your spell problem.”

From anyone else, he would have thought the words empty encouragement, but he knew Amara lacked the social awareness or guile to pull that off.

“I have to go meet one of Professor Donglefore’s senior apprentices for a tour. Can I meet you at the commencement ceremony tomorrow morning?”

“Sure,” Kole agreed. “I have to do some sort of qualification test for the adventuring program. Then I’ll see if I can get into the library.”

“Great! See you tomorrow!”

CHAPTER 12

More Rats

Assuine’s Conclaves took the forests that they loved and wove them into great mats that still float to this day across the ocean.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Kole followed the directions the bursar had provided back to the Dahn. The line for the entrance exams was much shorter by now. His destination was elsewhere, and he followed posted signs to the lecture hall floor, his route avoiding the congestion.

The door to this test chamber sat innocuously between two small lecture halls, with doors ten feet to either side. When Kole stepped in, however, he found himself in an enormous circular room equipped with everything from sand pits for sparring to a chalkboard and desks. A line of students was along one wall. Everyone in line wore the same loose-fitting brown uniform, but some wore armor over it.

Kole stepped out of the room back into the hall and looked at the doors on either side, then stepped back in. The room was far larger on the inside than the outside would allow for. He knew the Dahn was a magical artifact of immense power, but knowing a thing and experiencing it firsthand were not the same.

Someone came to enter the room behind Kole, and he broke out of his examination of the doorway, embarrassed for blocking the way. His embarrassment was banished, however, as the boy following him was similarly awestruck.

“You can change into Academy-provided clothes through these doors here if you wish,” a wizardly looking halfling said, magically amplifying his voice to the new entries. He gestured to a door within the room. “Or don’t. I’m not your parent.”

A line had formed within the chamber leading to a separate door. Some of the students in line rolled their eyes at the joke, and Kole suspected they’d heard the same comment or something similar a few times already.

“If you don’t have what gear you need for a combat scenario, go and get it. This will be a test of both your resolve and your combat abilities. But don’t be afraid, you will be in no actual danger—though it might hurt.”

By his smile, Kole suspected the halfling was being vague and cryptic to make the students uncomfortable. Not wanting to risk ruining another pair of clothes, Kole went into the changing room and got dressed in the clothing provided.

The line moved steadily. Whenever a student came out of the door, another would enter. Each student was in the room for roughly a minute, but you wouldn’t have guessed by their state before they entered and after they exited. Not a single person came out with a smile. All bore wounds and were splattered with mud and blood. Some were nearly completely covered in mud, and the halfling professor often giggled quietly to himself when these emerged. If Kole hadn’t been told to expect combat, he would have put the pieces together rather quickly.

Each student approached the professor after exiting, and he asked, “Would you still like to enroll in the pre-adventuring program?”

Most said no.

With each student who left, the halfling reminded the room, “Do not discuss your trial with those in line, or you will be barred from the program. We’ll check under truth orb at the first class to make sure you didn’t.”

When it was Kole’s turn, he pulled out his blasting rod, expecting to be ambushed the second he entered. What he saw instead upon was a small square room with a lectern. On it was a piece of paper. It read:

Clear the sewers of rats.

Kole looked around for signs of a sewer, but all he saw was another door and a rack of unlit torches. He’d never actually seen a torch before, let alone used one. Magical lighting was so ubiquitous back home, and resources such as fuel so scarce, that the idea of burning something just for light was absurd.

He pulled one of his light orbs from his bag but took a torch with him just in case.

Bracing himself once more, Kole stepped through the door, out into a sewer.

Now, when Kole had read the task, he’d thought he had a good idea of what to expect. He had, after all, fought rats in sewers semiregularly. In fact, on reading the task, Kole had thought it would be a breeze.

He, however, was at heart a sheltered boy with little idea of the greater world around him.

Sewers—with the stark exception of the ones he was familiar with—were dirty.

The smell hit him first, and he had to fight not to retch. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself, and once he was fairly certain he wouldn’t vomit, he lit his light. The door had opened onto a narrow ledge of a few feet. Just beyond, a stream of dark liquid flowed past, and ten feet beyond that, there was another ledge.

Not mud, Kole realized, recalling the brown stains covering those he’d seen exit.

He moved along the edge, holding his light down and out of his line of sight to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The need for a light meant his invisibility would be useless, as a big glowing orb would remove any element of surprise he’d gain, and as Amara had told him down in the hold, a rat could still smell a human, even if it couldn’t see them.

He went along three bends before it occurred to Kole that he’d been in the tunnel far longer than he’d seen anyone else.

Did I do something wrong? Or is time different here?

Kole wasn’t sure what he could have done wrong already, but he also wasn’t certain how time could be different. Still, he continued on until he heard his first rats. He turned the corner to find three waiting for him. While the rats back home had often used their illusion of large numbers to scare away intruders, these rats had no such advantage. They were, however, much larger than the rats back home, the size of house cats.

They didn’t waste time threatening Kole before they attacked.

Pointing his blasting rod at the first rat, Kole turned it into a red stain on the floor, the blast working just as well on these larger animals as it had on the mirror rats back home. The second two slowed at the sudden disappearance of the leader, but still came on.

Kole used the time to stow his blasting rod and pull out the unlit torch he’d taken. His rod, he figured, was overkill.

He kicked the first rat that came at him, sending it out into the flowing filth, the current taking it away. For the second, he brought the torch down like a club. One blow stunned the creature, and Kole was unpleasantly surprised to learn it took many strikes to kill a giant rat.

“That was pretty horrible,” he said aloud and immediately regretted opening his mouth.

The air tasted far worse than it smelled.

Kole took out three more groups of rats in a similar manner. His arm began to tire from his exertions, and after a single attempt to stomp a rat to death resulted in the horrible sensation of—well—crushing a rat to death, he forwent that method. Each rat he killed with his improvised club let out awful sounds he tried to block out. He relied on his blasting rod more and more, despite his draining reserves of Will.

As he roamed the sewers, growing filthier with blood and sewage the further he went, he grew ever more certain that some sort of time nonsense was going on. He encountered rats in ones and twos, taking the smaller groups out with relative ease despite his growing fatigue. Eventually, the rats he found fled from him when they saw him, warned of the intruder by the death throes of their fellows.

Comrades? Brood mates? No, that’s lizards.

Kole was busy mulling over the term to use for rat relations when he rounded another corner and saw a sight that took a moment to process.

At first, he thought it was a pile of sewage backed up and flowing over the narrow ledges of the tunnel, but then it began to move towards him with a torrent of rage-filled squeaks. The ground was covered in rats, and they ran at him, climbing over their—whatever rats called each other—to kill the interloper.

Kole kept his wits about him, even as his mind tried to catch up, and he sent a bolt into the oncoming tide, taking out nearly a dozen in a line. But that opening filled in, the swarm expanding to fill the gap.

Then Kole ran. Behind him, he heard the patter of hundreds of tiny paws, somehow audible over the cacophony of angry squeaks.

He was faster than the rats at first, but as he ran, trying to retrace his steps, he grew tired. Up until very recently, Kole had spent most of his life studying in a library. An activity that—with the exception of the occasional evacuation due to a poorly cast spell from one of his peers—had very little running.

Several minutes in, he rounded a corner, expecting another branch, but saw a dead end. He still entered and turned around, brandishing his blasting rod. He had two shots left in him before running out of Will, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough. Slowly backing up to the end of the tunnel, Kole waited for the rats. When they came, he waited a moment longer, then fired a blast, taking out ten in a line, but they kept coming on. He looked around, seeing no way out.

No, he realized. One way out.

There was no path, but the sewage was flowing away down a tunnel, and through it Kole saw the distant glow of daylight.

He sent another blast at the rats, considering the professor’s words before he’d entered.

You will be in no actual danger.

Kole wanted to believe that, he really did, but as the rat swarm was about to swarm him and likely devour him alive, he made a decision and jumped into the water.

As his foot touched the surface of the horrible flowing sludge, the world around him shifted, and he was back in the room with the lectern and torches. The sudden shift from chaos to silence was disorienting, and Kole fell, his body having been primed for a splash.

He lay there on the ground for a few moments, collecting his thoughts, half expecting someone to knock on the door and check on him.

What just happened? Was it real?

The stench he smelled on him still and the pain in his feet from kicking all those vermin suggested it had been.

Eventually, he realized that no one was going to enter and that he’d find no answers lying there. Kole got up and took himself in. He was filthy, and that thought drove him out the door, back into the room with all the other students. Kole walked briskly to the halfling professor.

“Are you quitting too?” he said, looking him up and down—but mostly up, since he was a halfling.

Kole shook his head and said “No!” as he moved passed him towards the changing room, where a shower and his clean clothes awaited.

To Kole’s surprise, by the time he moved to get undressed, the blood and filth all over him had begun to fade. He was still dirty, and bloodstains remained, but as he examined them, he found all the blood that failed to vanish had been his own. The small wounds that rats had inflicted on him had rapidly healed, leaving the cut and stained fabric the only sign that any injuries had occurred.

“So weird,” Kole said, trying to piece together how this had all worked.

On his way out, Kole asked the halfling overseeing the test a question, keeping it vague to avoid getting kicked out.

“How did this work?”

The halfling smiled and spread his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers as he said, “Magic.”

CHAPTER 13

The Library

Though it is still unknown and heavily debated how the dwarves knew to prepare Basin for the Flood, it is universally accepted that without that action, the Illusian races would have been lost to the Flood.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

After the “test,” Kole went down to the green to find a place to collect his thoughts. He found a spot in the grass and sat to eat the last of the food Meech had provided him as he thought through his next steps. First, he’d go to the library, but after that, he’d need to find lodging.

Sleeping in the sewer hadn’t been that bad. He considered but then discounted the idea, vivid memories of the test sewer jumping to mind, immediately banishing the thought.

Illandrian sewers are likely an anomaly, he realized.

Faced with problems he’d rather not deal with at the moment, Kole did what he always did: he ignored his troubles and went to the library.

Kole lacked the self-awareness to see the pattern, but he was only sixteen.

The Academy of Illunia had many, many, many libraries, but when one spoke of the library, they always referred to a particular one.

The Dahn—or “tower” in Torcish, for those unfamiliar with the language of the dwarves and gnomes—stood in the center of the campus and housed the largest collection of magical texts on Kaltis. Well, the largest collection of magical texts not drowned by the Flood, but those weren’t exactly accessible.

The library in the Dahn took up four floors of the building, and the same magic of the tower that allowed doors to open to far-flung areas of the building also made the area much, much, much bigger on the inside than out. The scale of the tower and its library was so large, however, that Kole hadn’t realized this was at work, unlike with the testing room, which very clearly could not fit where it had been.

When Kole had left Amara, he went straight back to the building where he’d taken his entrance exam. He fought the urge to run but then gave up any semblance of propriety and broke into a jog.

The Dahn. I’m here! he thought as he smiled in anticipation.

The distance wasn’t far, but neither was Kole the fittest specimen, and he was breathing heavily and beginning to sweat when he reached the foyer. Part of that he chalked up to being tired from his test, but that was just him soothing his own ego. All his pains and exhaustion from the sewer test had vanished unnaturally fast, along with the stains and gore. His Will, on the other hand, had not recovered.

There was still a line of students streaming through to enroll, but the line no longer snaked across the campus. This time upon entering, he turned right and walked through the great double doors into the library.

He paused in the doorway to take it in. While the building lacked stairs—save for the staircase that led nowhere—the center of the tower was open, and one could make out which “floor” one was on by looking over the edge, or by looking at the width of the section of the crystal shard visible to them.

Kole walked through the door and continued to the railing to see the entryway he’d just walked through down below.

“Wow.”

Bookshelves stood all along the perimeter of the central chamber, with gaps between them leading deeper into the magically expanded library. Looking up, he saw the shard continue hundreds of feet into the ceiling far above.

After he got over the wonder of the sight, he remembered the true majesty of the place—the books. Desks sat on either side of the entryway he stood in, manned by half a dozen library attendants each. He walked to the nearest one and gestured to the lower wooden gate that barred his path.

“Can I go in?” he asked, nervous excitement in his voice.

“Are you a student or library card holder?” the bored attended asked, looking up from his own studies.

“I just enrolled… like an hour ago.”

The student worker sighed and pulled out a familiar device from under the desk. He placed the glass orb on the desk in front of him, and Kole placed his hand on it.

Briefly, Kole considered if operating a truth orb caused someone to sigh excessively.

Jobs that require evaluating the veracity of adolescents’ statements probably aren’t the most mentally stimulating, he decided.

“Are you an enrolled student in good standing with the library with no outstanding fines?”

“Yes!” Kole said, a little too enthusiastically.

“Great, you can go in,” the attendant said in the same bored monotone. “Make sure to get your student ID. You’ll need it to enter after the commencement.”

“Thanks!” Kole said, already walking through the gate.

The great circular chamber had a large well-like opening in the middle, and around it sat the bookshelves. Tables and private booths filled the space between. The place was only lightly populated at this time of the year. Kole made his way through the study area, going directly to one of the information desks that dotted the library.

While the attendants at the entrance had been bored students, the librarian at this desk was diligently at work inspecting a stack of books for damage before placing them on a nearby cart.

As Kole approached her at a brisk pace, she looked up to him with a warm smile. “Welcome! If that’s not the gait of an eager new student, I don’t know what it is. What can I help you find?”

The librarian was a middle-aged woman with chestnut hair tied into a bun and small glasses that—if the slight iridescent sheen meant anything—were enchanted in some manner.

“I’m looking for the spellbooks,” Kole said.

“Oh good, an easy one. The first-tier spellbooks can be found between layers one and two, five o’clock. Do you need directions?”

“No, thanks!” Kole said as he took off to the region.

The door he’d entered from had been at nine o’clock, and he made his way around the circle until he reached his destination. Doors to the other floors of the library sat at three, six, nine, and twelve o’clock, and he passed the door to the second floor on his way. Beyond the door stood another admittance area manned by older and slightly more attentive students.

Once in the correct region, Kole went through a gap in the stacks and stopped, eyes wide. Before him stood shelves packed to the ceiling. As far as he could see down the curved shelved aisle. Emblazoned on the end of each shelf was the word “Spellbooks.”

He ran to the nearest one, pulled the first book he saw, and began flipping through its pages. He immediately recognized a first-tier Firebolt spell, and he flipped to the next… another first-tier Firebolt spell. He flipped to the next and found another first-tier Firebolt spell.

“What in the world?” he asked himself as he turned the book over.

The spine read, “Firebolt Tier 1, 775–800AF.”

He saw from the shelves that each book was clearly labeled in such a fashion, with a spell name and dates. Looking back at the book before him, he finally understood.

Each spellform was labeled with a number, creator, and brief description of how it differed from the standard. These were not spellbooks—books in which a wizard kept all his spells—in the traditional sense. Instead, they were compilations of all the developed versions of a singular spell over the years. He’d heard of such a thing but had never seen one.

Back home, all the spellbooks he’d ever had access to had been those made for the training of new wizards, or the personal ones left behind by wizards of the past. To find a specific version of a spell, he’d have to browse the index, find the spellbooks that had them, and hope that the book was still there and the spellforms hadn’t decayed beyond his ability to restore.

Spellbooks were extremely expensive. The materials required to store intent-imbued Will while also keeping out the influence of ambient Will were made of rare and costly ingredients. The cost of reorganizing spellforms into books like this when one could simply catalog them seemed an enormous waste. None of that accounted for what it took to keep the books from decaying in the long term.

Except…

Kole recalled the test he had just taken. Each spellform that had appeared had done so instantly, with intent imbued into it.

They must have developed a means of copying spellforms! Why is this not widely known? Or is it?

Kole, admittedly, was not very up-to-date on the latest comings and goings of advancement in wizardry. His particular abilities—and disabilities—had forced him to delve into the past to find answers. This method could be in use back in Illandrios, and he wouldn’t have known.

He vowed to investigate this, but first, he had a lot of spells to look through.

Two hours later, a frustrated Kole sat at a table surrounded by piles of spellbooks.

Back home, he’d settled into a method of searching for and learning spells. Originally, he had sought out any spell he could find to learn, but after some time he discovered a pattern: older spells were generally easier for him to cast—or at least, attempt to cast.

Once he’d discovered that, he’d immediately gone for the oldest spellbooks he could find but had found the spells within them too deteriorated for him, at his skill level, to repair. He could piece a spell back together with just the Will-devoid spellform patterns, but only if he had other spellforms to copy the patterns from. Since spells were improved with only small modifications with each version, he was able to work his way back through time, tracing modern spells to their simpler origins. Eventually, he’d reached the oldest spells in Illandrios, and still been short of finding spells he could cast easily.

From the first spellbook in the Dahn, Kole had found these spellforms to be recognizably modern, and he’d flipped through the pages to the oldest in the very back before casting it aside in frustration. Even the oldest spells here were all far too new for his needs. He browsed the shelves, pulling any book with a date prior to 775, but the oldest he found was 760. Still, he kept at it, until he was surrounded by unshelved books.

“Can I help you find something?”

Kole looked up from his fortress of failure to see the librarian from before placing a stack of books on the table next to his and eyeing the pile around him.

“Are these all the spellbooks with first-tier magic you have?”

The librarian let out a laugh.

“Illunia no, these are just the compendiums of the most recent versions. The original spellbooks are in the older sections.”

Kole perked up.

“Where can I find the oldest spellbooks?!”

The librarian pulled a small stone sphere covered in runes with a tiny gem set in it from her pocket and handed it to Kole.

“You need to go to layer thirty-three,” she told him.

“Will this guide me there?” Kole asked, examining the orb.

The librarian laughed once more. “No, that’s a light. You’ll find that the shelves back there lack the runic lighting of the newer sections. That will hover over your shoulder and glow, lest you be tempted to create a light of your own in a less-than-sanctioned manner.”

Kole thanked the librarian again and apologized for the mess before heading into the depths of the library. After twenty layers, the light runes that had been on the tops of the shelves stopped, and the darkness grew with each step. He imbued the orb with Will, and it hovered above his shoulder, illuminating the area around him. Deeper and deeper he traveled, reading the signs on the shelves as he went. Many were dedicated to the countless older versions of Lidian Oakcrest’s Manual of Magical Fauna. All these books would have been discarded, had they not resided in a magical library that could create space as needed.

Finally, the path he’d been walking down ended, and he reached the outermost layer of the floor. He traveled along the perimeter until he saw a shelf labeled, “Spellbooks, unrestricted.”

The books on this shelf were much more in line with what he’d expected. The compendiums had all been uniformly bound books of the same size, only differing in the color of their binding, which signified the Font from which the spell was drawn. These books, however, were all entirely unique. Tomes small, large, ancient, and seemingly new filled the shelves, and not a single one bore a title or any label on its spine.

“Beautiful,” he whispered to himself.

Kole got right to work, pulling spellbooks off the shelf and working his way through them. After an hour of searching, it occurred to him to search for a catalog or index of spells, and he found one at the end of a row. Focusing on the spell Magic Missile, he pulled ten books off the shelf that were listed as containing it. The spellforms inside were degraded, but judging by the age of the books, they were in far better condition than books of similar vintage would have been back home. Of those ten, only four were new enough that he knew all the components and could repair them. The remaining six were beyond him, but that was why he was here.

He emptied his mental vault of all the spell constructs he’d been working on back home and began learning the Magic Missile spells, copying the damaged components from his own spellbook, or others from nearby shelves when needed. He worked right on the floor in front of the shelf, and it wasn’t until his stomach let out a loud cry of protest that he began to wonder how much time had passed.

Judging by the amount of Will he had remaining, he estimated it to be eight at night. Kole had recovered a small amount of Will after his test, and studying the spells cost him very little. He didn’t think the library closed, but he wasn’t willing to risk not being allowed back in if it did. He ate the remains of the food Meech had packed him, which was just scraps by then, and continued working until the last dregs of his Will had been consumed. Out of instinct, he reached for his bag to take a clarity potion, but he stopped himself.

No, you can’t afford to waste those, he told himself.

Money would be tight this year, and clarity potions should be saved for when time was of the essence. Today was only his first day, and he could afford to end early.

Well, less late… he corrected himself.

It must have been past midnight by then. He stood up to stretch as he prepared to go find a place to sleep in town, and the thought of spending his little coin on a bed made him grumpy.

Will I even be able to find a room this late? I ought to just sleep on the green. It wouldn’t be the worst place I’ve slept. I’ve fallen asleep in the library back home plenty of times…

He looked around again at the seemingly forgotten space. It had been hours, and he hadn’t seen a soul since he’d gone past the eighth layer. It didn’t take him long to decide, and he lay down on the stone floor, using his bag as a pillow to get comfortable.

As he drifted off to sleep, he told himself a weak lie. Just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll get a room.

Kole had found what he was looking for, and he had no intention of wasting a minute.

CHAPTER 14

Commencement

While many took to the seas and thrived for decades, a slow decline in the quality of life set in as resources such as metals became scarcer and scarcer. With each shipwreck, or floating mat sunken to incurable disease, countless irreplaceable treasures were lost. Trade with the seafolk was not enough to combat the loss. The often-aloof people had little need for the metals so vital to life above the waves.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Kole woke, briefly confused as to where he was. The room was pitch black, and he smelled the distinct odor of books—musty paper with a hint of leather.

Slowly, his memories of the previous night returned along with the realization he was supposed to meet Amara at the commencement. He rose quickly and fumbled around in search of the light orb he’d been given. Just as he was about to give up and spend all his Will for the day on a Light cantrip, he found the smooth object and flooded it with his Will.

The light was momentarily blinding as he overloaded it. Then his eyes adjusted, and he looked over the ground to gather the books he’d been studying.

They were gone. Panic took hold of him as he wondered why someone would have stolen them, but he then noticed that the shelves around him were completely full once again.

Did the librarian shelve these around my sleeping body?

Thinking back to his interactions with the librarian, he realized he’d never seen her or any others shelve a book. Books had been piled up on the ends of tables, and afterward they had paid them no heed. He didn’t even recall seeing a collection area for students to place them for their eventual reshelving.

He put the mystery aside and ran out of the hall. When he saw the light of the newer section ahead, he turned off his own light and turned invisible. He didn’t know the rules about spending the night in the library and decided to learn those before risking exposure.

Kole navigated the sparsely populated library, slipping out the wooden gate as quietly as possible. The inattentive attendants didn’t even glance up at the quiet rattle of the gate. Once out of the tower, Kole found a secluded bush and became visible once more. He took the device Amara had made for him from his pocket and began to follow its lead. The campus was full of students and adults milling about, and by the sun’s position, he’d certainly missed the morning’s events.

He picked up the pace, not sure how Amara would react to being stood up. He suspected she would be understanding of someone getting lost in their work, but he didn’t know her well enough to be sure. The device led Kole towards the crafting quarter of the campus, to a large white tent set up just outside the front entrance. Kole moved to enter when a server with a tray of food stepped in his way.

“I’m sorry, this area is invite-only,” the man said apologetically.

“I’m looking for my friend. She’s inside, could you tell her I’m here? She’s a new apprentice to Professor… Dopple—no. She’s part elven, has a rat familiar. She’s hard to miss.”

The server nodded in recognition, and he left to deliver the message.

Dongledoor! Kole thought, proud to have remembered the name.

Amara came out shortly after.

“I’m sorry!” Kole said before she could speak. “I fell asleep in the library and lost track of time.”

Amara’s expression had been reserved, waiting to decide if she was mad or not, and at his words, it settled on “not.”

“That’s alright. I sat with Professor Donglefore’s other students. It was fun, we talked about runes. You look hungry, do you need to eat?”

Donglefore…

“Um, yeah. But I can’t come in.”

“That’s alright, I can come out,” Amara said.

She went back inside and returned shortly with a plate of food, the small hors d’oeuvres that one would serve at a party before a meal.

They found a tree and sat, Gus climbing out of his hiding spot on Amara’s back to inspect Kole’s meal. He handed the rat a piece of cheese, but the creature ignored it and grabbed a sausage wrapped in bacon off his plate.

“Is he… clean?” Kole asked, very aware that a rat had just touched his plate, but not wanting to be rude.

He’d never really thought about how dirty rats really were until his recent run-in.

Gus gave an affronted squeak.

Did I offend the rat? Can rats be offended?

“He’s clean,” Amara assured Kole. “I carry him everywhere. He hardly ever walks on the ground, let alone traverses a sewer. I also make sure to wash him. We had a stint of ratborne diseases back home a few decades past, and rat hygiene became a major concern.”

“Oh, good,” Kole said, because how else was one supposed to react to an answer like that.

“You missed quite the event,” Amara said. “They set up this wonderful tent on the green, suspended by runes! It floated and covered enough area to seat all the new students. There were hundreds! Humans, elves, half-elves, halflings, dwarves and seafolk! I even saw a few demonkin and a voidling—I think.

“The heads of each college stood on a stage and talked, but there was an empty chair for the Chancellor in the center. Apparently, they are some ancient adventurer, who rarely makes an appearance. The speeches were a little dull—except for Professor Donglefore’s, of course—but it got a little exciting at the end. The head of the martial college is a giant man from the Iron Vein Tribe named Tigereye, covered in tattoos! He spoke about how academics are a form of Contest sanctioned by the demigod Ganik, and how he was in charge of academic integrity and spoke at length about the punishments for cheating—I don’t recommend it.”

“That doesn’t sound exciting,” Kole said, giving more food to Gus.

“That wasn’t it. The exciting part was when the head of the art college, a small human woman, pushed the giant man aside and interrupted his speech. I think she was intoxicated, and she told everyone that they should all make sure to have fun this year. She also made a lot of comments about Professor Tigereye’s physique. She went on and on until Professor Donglefore canceled the runes that were amplifying her voice. Then while we ate, they projected a hardball match in the air above for us to watch. Two alumni adventuring teams competed out in some desert. I’d never seen anything like it!”

As she described the events of the match, Kole had to admit a little regret at missing out. Not on the speeches, obviously, but the hardball match had sounded exciting. It was a popular activity amongst adventuring teams, a form of training and a relatively safe source of income, but his parents had never been involved in the orc tradition-turned-sport. He was aware that it was played back in his home, but he only knew the simple children’s version of the sport, not the magical variety.

They talked for a while longer, Kole telling her about his test—which fascinated Amara, and she asked him a barrage of questions about the room he had no answers to. Once he pressed upon her his lack of knowledge, he shared his luck in the library. Amara gushed about all the exciting projects Donglefore had in store for her, none of which sounded the slightest bit exciting to Kole.

It’s fine. I’m sure my library story was dull to her, he reflected. She’d been very interested in the magical time-dilated sewer, though.

They parted when Amara’s mentor left the gathering and gestured for her to follow. Kole told Amara he’d head back to the library, and they made plans to meet up once they’d gotten settled. She promised to have an updated version of the locater device the next time they met, one that could send a simple signal.

Before heading back to the library, Kole had a few errands to run.

A few hours later saw Kole back at the library a few silver poorer with an extra bag bulging with supplies. The same bored attendant from before let him through with a reminder to go by the office of student affairs to get his student ID before tomorrow.

No one seemed to notice the large bag Kole carried over his shoulder. While he was not a trained primal by any stretch of the imagination, there was one small primal ability he did have.

Primal talent generally manifested at an early age with a simple application of the core principle of the Font. Spatial primals found themselves able to conjure nearby items to hand, Bond primals found they could stick items together, and Air primals learned to conjure wells of air. These abilities were on par with the power level of a wizard’s or sorcerer’s cantrip, but much more flexible in their application. While a wizard might be able to replicate any specific feat with a spell, the primals could modify their magic on the fly. For instance, an Air primal could conjure air anywhere the chose near their body, while a wizard could only do so in their hand, unless they made a new spell to summon it elsewhere.

The first ability any Illusion primal developed was the ability to make others ignore something. They could then use this ability as a starting point to experiment with their powers, forming it into something more broadly useful.

While normal primals learned the ability upon gaining access to their Font, Kole had struggled for years to figure it out. He hadn’t dedicated a lot of time to learning the skill, but he’d tried in an attempt to see if his knowledge of wizardry could aid him in using his Font, and vice versa. His uncle had helped him through the learning process during his leave from the Illandrian military, but even with his coaching it had taken Kole years to learn the most basic skill. Though Kole had seen the time it took as a sign he was a defective primal, his uncle had only been encouraged to get him to abandon his goals.

After learning the skill, he’d still been uncertain whether or not wizardry and primal magic had any overlap. It had taken him ages to learn, but how long would it have taken if he’d not pursued wizardry? The application of Will to control the Fonts worked the same mental muscles, running and lifting things used the same leg muscles, and being faster didn’t necessarily make your legs stronger. Or at least that was how Kole saw it. Like with many things with little application to wizardry, he was not very experienced with anatomy. In any case, he’d hoped that a deeper understanding of magic as a whole would have helped him develop his primal abilities.

The skill was very limited in its nascent state, and Kole had never had the intuition or instincts other primals did to improve it. Without that improvement, it wouldn’t work on anybody who knew to look out for the ability. Illandrios being the home of the Primordial of Illusions, everyone knew of the ability, and so Kole never had the opportunity to use it.

Here, however, it could prove quite useful. Before entering the library, he’d focused on his bag and drawn upon the power of his Font, Willing others to disregard the object. As he passed people, most paid him no head, but a few performed a double take, looking back at him and then seeming confused before looking away once more.

Most people don’t pay attention to strangers passing by in their periphery, and to those people, the magic did nothing and cost Kole no Will. But each time someone’s focus was drawn to the bag, Kole would feel a Will drain. Thankfully, a bag—even an overstuffed one—was not a strange sight in a library, and it took little effort to avert people’s attention. If, however, he’d tried to sneak a battleaxe in, he doubted the skill would have worked.

He made it back to his corner of the library without challenge and dropped his bag. Unpacking, he set up a small bedroll he’d purchased, along with a change of clothes, some travel rations, and additional writing supplies. Next, he went back toward the center of the library in search of some furnishings. Each lit ring of the library had regular study areas spaced throughout. The furniture within ranged from large tables that could seat eight to single study desks and upholstered armchairs. It didn’t take Kole long to find an empty area and a small desk that he figured he could carry.

The desk was heavier than he expected, but no one saw him as he moved it deeper into the library. As with sleeping in the library, he wasn’t sure that moving furniture was against the rules, but it seemed better to avoid the issue altogether.

In talking to Amara, he’d learned the secret to his self-shelving books. The library of the Dahn had a powerful enchantment woven throughout it—well, it had a lot of powerful enchantments woven throughout it, but specifically one that reshelved books. Every night invisible servants combed the library, returning any unattended book to its shelf. Reassured that no one had found him in his sleep, he’d settled on his plan to move into the library.

It wasn’t his best idea, but it was far from his worst. His uncle had complained endlessly that he’d practically lived in the library back home, so when thinking of ways to save money, it seemed a natural solution.

After getting his secret corner of the library set up, he returned to his studies. He was hopeful that the oldest of the ten spells would be a large improvement on his current barely castable Magic Missile, but repairing and learning the spell would take him weeks—assuming his classwork didn’t take too much of his time and Will. He studied late into the night and fell asleep in a book, an unfortunately familiar occurrence.

CHAPTER 15

Introduction to Alchemy

Mountains on distant planets—when viewed with the aid of magic—appear in patterned ranges that extend across their surfaces. The mountains of Kaltis differ from all that we have observed. They are the remnants of the chaotic battle between the Wardens, Torc, Waas, and Aurial. The land that would become the Basin was once a large ring of mountains formed in the conflict.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

Kole woke to a high-pitched whine. Groggily he groped around the desk his face rested on until he found the source and silenced it. The previous morning had highlighted one major flaw in his plan to sleep in the library—which had through the day solidified itself in his mind as the obvious course of action. There were no windows in the section he decided to squat in, so unless he invested in something to wake himself up, it was unlikely he would make his classes on time.

Thinking of classes, Kole leapt to his feet and threw his supplies into his bag before turning invisible and running out. As far as he could tell, no one took count of people entering and leaving the library, but if he left early in the morning every day, someone would catch on.

The bursar had given him a packet with a class schedule that he’d glanced at before losing himself in study. His first class would be alchemy, over in the crafting quarter. He had little idea where he was going, but the school had ample signage to see him to his destination.

While the Dahn lay in the center of the campus, four L-shaped buildings surrounded it, making a square and outlining the campus green. The crafting college took up the northeastern corner, its green filled with gardens of alchemical value. Like the central tower, the crafting building had a mix of small classrooms, lecture halls, libraries, and offices. It was to one of the larger lecture halls that he was headed for his Introduction to Alchemy class.

To Kole’s surprise, he was on time, and the hall was only half-filled when he found a seat in the middle of the room. Some diligent students liked to sit in the front of the class to gain a perceived advantage, but the way Kole saw it, that was dumb.

In the front, it was difficult to read the whole board. Sitting there also set the bar high for the professor’s expectations of you. Slackers didn’t sit in the front, only the exceptional and the suck-ups. Kole had no illusions about his own skill in alchemy. He knew if he sat in the first row, he’d be seen as the latter of the two. No, if one wanted to impress a teacher, all one had to do was be impressive. And if one wasn’t impressive and didn’t want to suck up, it was best to blend in.

The room filled shortly after Kole sat, and right at nine o’clock, a familiar diminutive figure walked in.

Professor Nimblefore!

Without addressing the class, he approached the wall with the blackboard and pulled open a drawer. The drawer was not in fact a drawer, but an elevated walkway that pressed into the wall for the more vertically challenged races of Kaltis. Once the steps were all out, he climbed up, wrote his name on the board, and underlined it.

“PROFESSOR DONGLEFORE”

Kole decided then that it would be in his best interest to write this particular name down.

“Good morning, class,” came the gnome’s high-pitched yet dignified voice. “You may be asking yourself, ’Why is the head of the college teaching an introductory course.’ I could lie to you and say I value each and every student and want to ensure you all start with a strong foundation, but that would be both a disservice to your original professor—and an easily provable lie. Your scheduled professor had an adverse reaction to a new potion she’d been developing and won’t be able to teach for some time. I have agreed to fill in for her.”

Murmurs broke out throughout the class.

“Now, I will not have it thought that Professor Cowlin was lax in her technique or methods. Adverse reactions are common when at the forefront of alchemy, and even the most cautious can still suffer injuries. Let that be a lesson to you all. Many would count temporary paralysis as a lucky outcome. Which, incidentally, is a great segue into this course. This class is titled “Introduction to Alchemy,” known amongst my apprentices as “Alchemy for Adventurers.” This is a required course for any who wish to enroll in the adventurer program and is not the best choice for anyone else. Other intro courses are more focused and address the aspects of the field one is more likely to encounter in day-to-day life.”

Kole looked around the massive room at all his fellow aspirant adventurers. He hadn’t realized the track was that popular.

“As adventurers, you will interact with alchemy outside the supervision of an alchemist. You may be tempted to mix separate potions against the advisement of a certified alchemist. This class will teach you why that is a terrible idea. That large book is a list of all the terrible results of the uneducated dabbling in things beyond their understanding.”

He pointed to a book on the desk, “book” being a very generous term for the massive stack of paper.

“This year we will touch on a large number of topics, hopefully giving you enough understanding to realize how little you know. You will not learn to brew potions, you will not learn to transmute material. You will learn how to safely consume potions, to handle the adverse reactions that your less educated adventuring peers may suffer, and to harvest alchemical ingredients you find in the field without completely destroying them.”

This speech, which seemed meant to douse hope, made Kole feel much better about the class. He had little interest in alchemy and feared he’d be forced to learn the craft. The curriculum outlined seemed actually helpful for him and his own pursuits.

The remainder of the class saw Donglefore reading some particularly gruesome accounts from the tome Pains and Deaths Recorded, 32nd Abridged Edition. Before dismissing the class, he tasked them with creating a list of three potions for use in an adventuring kit that had minimal adverse reactions with one another.

At the end, the professor informed them future lectures would be handled by his apprentices and guest lecturers, as “he didn’t have time to babysit.” Kole was a little disappointed at that. He liked his attitude and thought he’d be an interesting teacher.

Kole had a few hours free before his next class and decided to spend it back in the library.

While he’d arrived early for his first class, he wasn’t so lucky for his second. He’d gotten a bit carried away in his studies and was five minutes late to his history lecture. Running down the hall, he slammed into the lecture hall door, bouncing off with a resounding thud as he realized that the door pulled open.

Red with embarrassment, he pulled the door to see a sea of faces staring at him and hear stifled laughter.

Don’t turn invisible, he told himself, restraining the instinct.

Eyes downcast, he moved to the nearest seat.

“As I was saying,” the wizened voice of the graying orc said from the front of the room. “It is commonly said that history is written by the winners. I choose rather to believe that history is written by the survivors. Oftentimes in history, there are no victors. In this course, we will be looking at the pre-Flood history of Basin. We will primarily examine the orcish and dwarven accounts but will also reference some of the records of the lost civilizations of the region.

“While only orcs and dwarves dwelled on Basin by the time it was settled by the Flood-displaced denizens of Kaltis, the history of the world is long, and it is littered with civilizations lost to time.”

The rest of the class was a brief overview of Basin history, details Kole was already familiar with. The class was dismissed, and no mention of his tardiness was made. He’d heard that orcs weren’t exactly big on rules, but he vowed not to test his luck any further.

After completing his two classes for the day, Kole went looking for Amara, but his tracking device led him to the crafting building, and he gave up, assuming she was busy. He spent the remainder of the night back in his secret corner of the library. When he returned to his improvised room, he was met with a surprise.

Rounding the corner to the aisle he’d made his home in, he heard a rustling noise. Instinctively he turned invisible, chastising himself for the futility of the effort while a glowing orb hovered over his shoulder. On his desk, rummaging through his pack of provisions, sat a rather large rat. Not as large as the sewer rats, but bigger than the mirror rats from back home.

“Scram!” Kole shouted, but the rat only tilted its head at the disembodied voice.

He bent over, picked up his pillow from his sleeping roll, and tossed it at the rodent. Just before the fluffy projectile struck, the creature vanished and the pillow bounced off the desk, taking the remains of the rat’s meal with it.

“What in the world…”

A moment later, the rat reappeared in the same spot, and jumped off the desk and onto the bookshelf, disappearing behind the rows of books.

Kole went to his food and salvaged what he could. The rat he’d found must have been a straggler, because most of his food had been eaten, every bag and container destroyed.

“I guess I need a better solution.”

But… that was a problem for tomorrow’s Kole. Tonight’s Kole had some work to do. Hungry as he might be, it wouldn’t be the first time he ignored the pangs as he worked late into the night.

CHAPTER 16

Martial Combat 101

This ring of mountains was not complete, however. Decades before the Avatar even escaped, the dwarves—led by the Hardune—began their work of filling the low points along the circular mountain range. As the waters rose, the dwarves continued their work, keeping just ahead of the rising water at times.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

The next morning, Kole used some of his limited funds to eat at one of the campus’s many cafeterias. Today was what he’d mentally dubbed his “practical day.” Mondays and Wednesdays he had his history and alchemy classes, while Tuesdays and Thursdays held “WAR 101: Martial Combat” and “WIZ 204: Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry.” Friday would be reserved for his class with the lengthy title “AV 101: Pre-Adventuring Track Battle Training.” He had some idea of what to expect from that after the test in the sewers. While the test had been meant to scare away the faint of heart, he suspected the class itself would, like the rest of his curriculum, be practical.

With a full belly and stuffed pockets—he’d decided he should get his money’s worth if he was going to pay for a meal on campus—he arrived at the green of the martial college uncertain what to expect. Of the two outfits he owned after discarding the soiled one on the ship, he wore the one more suited for physical exertions. His father had continued to dress in the style of the Stormcallers long after his departure from the clans. Kole wore such an outfit now: a loose-fitting tunic and pants tied tight at the wrist and ankles to keep them from interfering with magic or shipborne tasks. His other outfit he’d bought cheaply upon arriving in Edgewater along with the supplies for his library camping.

Calling the outside area of the martial college’s quarter a “green” really stretched the meaning of the word. Where the other colleges had nice park areas for study and leisure, the martial college had instead turned its own into a training ground. Absent were the pleasant grassy fields and shade-giving trees, replaced with hard-packed dirt, sand pits, an obstacle course, and more tools for training warriors and soldiers.

Kole walked past the areas of older, clearly trained students until he came to a mass of people he deemed his peers. They stood around, loosely grouped and chatting idly, all equally unsure of what to do. He recognized a few faces from his previous classes and a few from the line for what he’d begun to think of as the adventuring track’s weed-out exam. Part of him was tempted to insert himself into one of the gatherings and get to know his peers, but a larger—much, much, larger—part remembered all the peer interactions from back home, and he decided to stay on the periphery.

“Hey! You’re the tardy boy!” a female voice called from behind.

Kole fought the urge to turn invisible and realized his instincts to do so might be on a little bit of a hair trigger.

If Kole were more self-aware, he’d have reflected that maybe turning invisible in the face of any conflict was an unhealthy coping mechanism, but his internal monologue was more often busy working over whatever his current magical dilemma was on any given day than working on reflection.

Marshaling his embarrassment, he turned towards the voice, prepared to face whatever torment he was about to endure.

The face he saw didn’t match the voice he’d heard. The loud voice had painted a picture in Kole’s mind of a tall girl, with a cruel face that took joy in tormenting others. A few specific faces had come to mind, in fact, from back home, but this was not like those.

The face was certainly joyful, a sincere and friendly smile that made Kole reevaluate the greeting. The overall appearance of the stranger, though, said anything but “joyful.”

At first glance, he took the girl to be a voidling, one of the strange other-Realmly creatures that had entered Kaltis during the Last Dragon War. She stood just under six feet tall and wore padded armor that looked to belong under plate. Like a voidling, she had impossibly pale white skin. But where the voidlings’ skin seemed like foggy windows into a void of nothingness, hers was mundane flesh, complete with beads of sweat from the early morning sun. Her hair was pitch black, again like the voidlings’, but where theirs floated around their heads in chaotic swirls, fading in and out of existence, hers sat still, tied into a braid and subject to the whims of gravity.

The hair of the voidlings wasn’t really hair, but some strange distortion field that gave a glimpse into the space between realms. This girl’s hair was just hair, though it drank in the light more deeply than any material Kole had ever seen.

“I’m Zale,” the girl said, sticking her hand out to greet the frozen Kole.

While there hadn’t exactly been a crowd around Kole before, the few who had been nearby had fled at the arrival of this strange girl.

“I… ummm, are you a voidling?” Kole couldn’t help but blurt out.

“Only a little bit,” the girl answered, hand still outstretched and voice still cheery but now with a hint of remorse, as if her heritage were something she thought she needed to apologize for.

Kole reached out and shook her hand, surprised to find it felt like any other. His people had a bad history with denizens from beyond the known Realms, but the voidlings specifically had not been a part of it, and Illandrians generally lacked the prejudice present in the surface world and Basin at large.

“I’m Kole. Sorry about—”

“Oh no, don’t worry about it,” Zale interrupted, waving away Kole’s apology. “I get it all the time, and I probably could have gotten your attention in a nicer way.”

Kole looked from the girl to the crowd that had given them a wide berth.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Oh, no. I just wanted to introduce myself. I recognized you from Professor Gromck’s class and thought you looked a bit… alone.”

At the mention of the orc professor, Kole asked, “Do you think I’m in trouble, being late like that?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t care. He may be an academic orc, but he’s still an orc. Just don’t insult him and you’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Kole asked.

Zale nodded.

“I’ve known him for years.”

Seeing the confusion of Kole’s face, Zale explained further, “I’m a first-year student, but I grew up on campus.”

Kole knew the Dahn boasted a large orphanage, taking in any and all children they could, and suddenly was even more uncomfortable, unsure how to express remorse to this girl he’d just—barely—met.

“Oh! No, no, no,” Zale said hurriedly, seeing Kole’s reaction. “Wow, this is going really poorly. I’m not an orphan, my mother…” She paused, looking anywhere but Kole’s eyes as she sought the words. “…works here in the art department. So, I grew up on campus.”

Kole was confident that even Amara could tell this girl was being evasive with that answer.

Before Kole could ask more, a whistle blew, silencing the mingling students.

“Form up!” a voice boomed in the distinct cadence and accent of the Iron Vein Tribe.

Kole turned to the voice, and then back to Zale, but found her pushing her way to the front of the crowd. Unsure of what to do, he followed her confident strides.

Around him, the students bumbled about trying to figure out how to “form up.” Some older students, dressed in the uniform of the martial wing of the school, began directing the younger ones into lines, and Kole lost sight of Zale as he was put into a rank.

“Miserable performance,” the same voice shouted. “But… you are here to learn. Tomorrow you will form up before I arrive.”

Kole could now see the man speaking. He was at least seven feet tall and covered in black swirling tattoos reminiscent of spellforms. They poked out from the sleeves of his uniform and covered his neck and shaved scalp. He had a single stone ax on his belt that seemed like a great ax to Kole but was probably nothing more than a hatchet in the giant’s hand.

“I am Tigereye,” he continued. “I am not ’professor’ or ’master’ or ’general.’ Many of you are here because you want to be adventurers. Others are her to learn how to defend yourselves. In this class, we will assess your martial skills and determine which path is for you. All of you will learn at least one weapon through the course of this class. No matter your skill set, you will never regret finding a weapon that suits you. Whatever your path, you will find yourself in situations beyond imagining, and every edge can save your life. Battles are more often won by a hair’s breadth than by a Fireball’s explosion.”

He paused to let the words sink in and then shouted, “Now, run eight laps around the yard!”

The crowd of students looked at each other in bewilderment until the older students prodded them all into a jog.

Thirty minutes later, Kole lay in the grass gasping for breath alongside a hundred others.

“It’s best if you stay standing,” a still-cheery and definitely not out-of-breath voice called to him. “Keep your hands on your head, and it will prevent cramping.”

“Too late,” Kole moaned from the ground where he clutched his sides.

Kole wasn’t in the worst condition—some people had shown up wearing armor and others were fairly overweight—but he was confidently in the lower half of the physical fitness curve. His skinny frame was a result of neglected meals, not regular physical activity.

Zale helped Kole to his feet, and he took a waterskin from a station.

“Small sips,” Zale advised.

“Why… are you… so… in shape?” Kole asked between pants.

“I exercise,” she said with a smile. “Don’t worry, Tigereye will have you whipped into shape in no time.”

“Great,” Kole deadpanned.

“Form up!” Tigereye shouted again, ending the short reprieve.

In a very slightly improved manner, the students formed into ranks, and Kole lost sight of his new pale friend once more.

“We will start each class with conditioning. I recommend each of you practice the same on the off days. You will not be able to pass this class if you do not put in work outside of it. Those of you with prior weapon experience, go to the left, find your preferred weapon, and prepare to be evaluated. Those without, or who wish to be advised, go to the right and form a line in front of each of my assistants.”

Over half the class moved to the left, towards racks of practice weapons supervised by older students in uniform. Kole moved to the right with the other less physically impressive students. As they sorted into five lines in front of racks of practice weapons, Kale caught sight of Zale again, sitting at one rack alongside the other student aides. Her rack had no one. The students in the lines all tried to look as if they weren’t sneaking glances at the strange girl who was “only a little bit” of a voidling.

Kole ditched the line he’d been herded into by the mass of the crowd and went over to hers.

“You’re an assistant in the class?” he asked.

She looked away from the weapon rack she’d been busying herself with, and Kole saw a flicker of sadness vanish as she saw him.

“No. I’m in the class, but I’m in the martial college, and Tigereye asked that I help out, since I’m a bit beyond the curriculum. The teaching assistants are all older students in the martial college.”

Neither acknowledged the lack of other students in her line, and when the other groups started to work, Zale remembered herself.

“Let me guess. You’re studying to be a wizard.”

Kole nodded.

“Any experience at all with a weapon?”

Kole shook his head.

“Best we go with a staff, then,” she said, grabbing one from the rack.

“Why a staff?” Kole asked, surprising himself with the disappointment he felt.

He explicitly didn’t want to be a Mirage Knight or a warrior, but he’d been a child, and as all children did, he’d pretended to be a valiant swordsman before the others had started to shun him. Swords were the adventurer’s weapon.

Of all the great adventuring wizards, Tal of Storms had been his favorite. Like himself, he’d been a child of a Stormcaller who had left the seas behind and been forced to learn magic largely on his own, without the aid of the Tower or a master. While their situations weren’t exactly the same, the idea that Tal had done so gave him hope. Not that he thought himself as great as the wizard who had saved his home from its outsider overlords.

Tal of Storms, Kilroth the Troll Blight, Halkin of the Bridge, and every other famous wizard he could recall offhand all used swords in some capacity. Though in those three cases they had magic swords that could fly, could shoot fire, were made of fire, or could otherwise devastate a battlefield without actually being held in their wielders’ hands.

“Staffs are great!” Zale said, back to her happy self. “Perfect for the general caster. If you aren’t planning on dedicating yourself to the training, they’re a great option that will prevent you from harming yourself or others. You can develop a basic proficiency with a lot less effort than with a sword. A sword is more dangerous to yourself than a foe if you don’t know how to wield it. Plus, staffs can be runed and enchanted to cast spells much easier than swords or other weapons.”

“That… makes a lot of sense,” Kole admitted, taking the staff.

Zale instructed Kole in performing a few practice swings against a wooden dummy. After a couple minutes of this, he turned to Zale, who was failing to hide the amusement on her face.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m sorry, you’re just really bad at this.”

“I’ve never done this before!”

“I know. I said I was sorry. Today was supposed to just have everyone select a weapon but… you’re going to need the head start.”

Kole’s face grew red, but he fought back the urge to say something out of anger. She’d been helpful and friendly, and he probably was terrible. Unable to say anything without further embarrassment, he just nodded.

While the rest of the class waited their turn to be evaluated for a weapon before being dismissed, Kole performed repetitive swings with his staff under Zale’s close supervision. He was used to throwing himself into his work to reach his goal of becoming an adventurer, but these last few days were revealing his focus had been too narrow. Yes, wizardry would be his most powerful tool, but it shouldn’t be his only tool.

Long after the rest of the class had departed, Zale and Kole continued to train.

“Alright, we should stop,” Zale said, about an hour after Kole’s stomach had begun to say the same thing. “I have a private lesson I need to go to.”

“Thank the gods. I’m exhausted,” Kole said, dropping the staff.

“Why didn’t you call it earlier? We could have stopped whenever.”

“I…” He paused, trying to recall why he hadn’t stopped.

He was used to working long hours into the night on his wizardry or his dabbling research into pocket realms. He’d thought that he simply got carried away with his studies, but this exercise had elicited that same tunnel vision in him. He hadn’t even considered stopping as an option.

How long would I have kept that up for? he thought, dipping his toes into the waters of reflection.

He’d never been good at time management, and he’d always chalked it up to a lack of self-control when doing something he enjoyed. But he’d been miserable this entire session and still pushed through it.

“I don’t know,” he finished. “But thanks for all the help—and for not making fun of my incompetence.”

“It’s the least I can do for you, since you saved me from being all alone over here. Seriously, thank you. It means a lot.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kole said, becoming a little uncomfortable with the shift in conversation.

“I’ll be here tomorrow at six to get in some morning exercise. Want to join me?”

“I’ll pass,” Kole answered, unable to think of something he’d want to do less than that. “But I’ll save you a seat tomorrow in Gromck’s class.”

Zale began putting away the weapons they’d used. “I think it’s more likely I’ll be saving you a seat.”

The two new friends parted, and Kole sniffed himself. He smelled. He started to do some math in his head.

How am I going to afford daily baths? Maybe I can sneak back into that room with the sewer door.

CHAPTER 17

Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry

The Scar was formed when the Avatar broke through the barrier range, and the Hardune enlisted the aid of the scattered remnants of the Imperial Coterie to seal the gap with a great work of Barrier magic.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

In the end, Kole found a simple solution to his sweaty problem. The martial college had a shower facility that—while less magical than the one in the Dahn—was perfectly adequate and free for students. Training clothes were available as well, matching those he’d worn in the sewer. You could pick up a clean set in the morning, go to class, bathe, trade them in, and run off to your next class tidy as a freshly Cleaned wizard.

This removed a critical barrier that might come between a student and their learning. No one wanted to sit next to a stinky student in a lecture hall, and fewer still wanted to be the stinky one. This resolved one of the problems remaining from Kole’s library squatting.

After sorting the bathing situation out, a reluctant but clean Kole handed over the entry fee to the dining hall in the martial college. He’d yet to restock after his rat problem, and the morning’s training had left him ravenous. He ate his fill and then stuck some extra rolls and fruit into his bag for good measure before running off to the next class.

He didn’t want to be late to “WIZ 204: Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry.”

The name was a mouthful, but Kole was both excited and nervous. Excited for the opportunity to learn, but nervous his deficiency would be found out and he’d fall behind yet again. Though the curriculum would be demanding, he had high hopes he could keep pace with the new spells he’d found.

Conflicted, Kole sat waiting early as students filed into one of the smaller rooms of the lecture floor of the Dahn.

“Hey, you’re the guy Professor Lonin pulled aside during admissions, right?”

Kole turned to the voice. While most of his classmates were a year or two older than him, the speaker looked to be around his own age and size. Where Kole was a bit scrawny, this student had a bit of muscle on his frame. He reminded him of the students who took up fencing back home. It was only after that thought that he noticed the rapier hilt at the boy’s hip, proving his initial hunch. The boy had sandy blond hair, cut short, and he looked at Kole with eager interest.

Embarrassed yet again, Kole simply answered, “Yeah…”

“You’re going for the adventuring track. Right? That’s why he passed on you.”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Kole asked, the embarrassment at being called out subsiding.

“I saw you in Martial 101. Now you’re here. That combination is the curriculum of someone who wants to be an adventurer. I’m Gray.”

The eager young man had moved to a closer desk and extended his hand out for a shake, which Kole reciprocated.

“I’m Kole, and yeah, you’re right.”

“Well, I’m glad to meet you. There aren’t a whole lot of us—wizards seeking to be adventurers, that is. There are a lot less risky ways to become rich and powerful.”

Kole just nodded. He felt this was an invitation to volunteer his own motivations, but he wasn’t interested in opening up to yet another stranger about his parents.

Thankfully, he was saved by the arrival of the professor.

In one moment the front of the room was empty, and in the next a familiar middle-aged halfling stood addressing the class, causing everyone to jump.

“Welcome to Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry. I’m Master Underbrook, but I won’t take offense if addressed as ’professor.’ I will be teaching this class, so let’s get right to it.”

The professor was the same halfling who had overseen the sewer test, and seeing him sent a shudder through Kole at the thought of those rats.

“This is advanced first-tier wizardry, so look around at your peers.”

He waited in silence until the students looked at each other awkwardly. Kole did too and noticed that aside from Gray, everyone looked older than himself.

“Each of you is exceptional. To be in this class, you must be under eighteen and able to cast two first-tier wizardry spells. The average wizard doesn’t learn their first spell until sixteen, but you all know that.”

Kole was surprised to hear that, as fifteen was the age most wizards learned their first spells back home. He wondered why that was.

Maybe proximity to the Primordial of Illusions?

Then he recalled his urge to use a clarity potion the other day, and suspected that to be the case. The potions were plentiful back home, due to Illandrios being the main producer of deep whale excrement, the primary ingredient in the foul concoctions. He didn’t know the exact cost on the surface, but he knew it to be higher, as they were only used in emergencies.

“Each of you has some advantage. Sorcery, Blessings, alchemical enhancements, or pure and simple genius. But that will not be enough. At the upper ranks of mages, everyone is exceptional. If you wish to excel, you can’t let your advantages make you complacent.

“The syllabus had all the requirements for the class, so I won’t waste our time going over that now. You can go over that boring nonsense on your own. You are all here because you wish to learn the basic tools for magical combat, and I am here because I get paid.”

The professor paused for laughter, looking at the class expectantly, and the class obliged. He was far less serious than Kole had expected the teacher of this class to be, but the odd behavior he’d noticed outside the sewer trial now made sense.

This professor was not a serious person.

“Some of you may be aspiring siege wizards or adventurers, while others may simply wish to learn self-defense. No matter the motivation, you are about to embark on a tradition as old as magic itself. Sorcerers were the first of the Illusian races to wield the power of the Fonts, and as is the nature of their powers, those abilities manifested in times of life-threatening need. Now, thousands of years later, we will continue that tradition—with a lot more refinement and less torture.”

Professor Underbrook continued the lecture, speaking the whole time and not wasting a moment as promised. He went over the pros and cons of each Font and their uses both offensively and defensively. The first week, each student was to select the spells they wished to learn this semester and write an essay explaining the justification. They needed to know three combat spells by the end of the semester, and with Magic Missile and Shield, Kole was already two-thirds of the way there—if you ignored the small detail that he couldn’t practically cast those in combat without exhausting all his Will.

Kole was hopeful he’d be able to resolve that issue, so he listened attentively as the professor spoke, making a list of pros and cons for each Font. He wanted something that could disable or move his enemies, or something that would improve his mobility, but he couldn’t settle on which would be better.

When the class ended, Professor Underbrook simply vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared.

“I’m going to the spell range, would you care to join me?”

Kole turned to see Gray behind him. He ran through the interaction again in his head, skeptical of outward signs of friendship from a life as a pariah. But, in the end, he realized he was being overly suspicious. No one knew of him here, and unless this student had very strong opinions about punctuality, it was unlikely he was harboring some secret grudge.

“Sure,” Kole said, gesturing for Gray to lead the way.

Together they walked through the hall that ringed the teaching floor of the Dahn, discussing the day’s lesson and spells they wanted to learn. Gray was fairly set on his selection for the class and acted as a sounding board for Kole. Kole had always been so desperate to find any spell that he could cast that he’d long ago put aside thoughts of effective combinations, so the exercise was new for him.

The door to the practice range at first appeared to be just like any other door to a lecture hall, but it opened instead to another hallway which seemed to go on forever, far beyond the exterior wall of the tower itself. It was lined on both sides with doors and large floor-to-ceiling windows. Some of the windows were opaque, fogged to obscure the view inside, but through others, Kole saw students of all ages casting magic out down long halls.

“Some of the rooms at the far end are larger,” Gray explained. “For practicing larger spells. There’s even one that can open into the void, but they don’t let just anyone use it. Activating it can cause the occasional outsider attack from aberrations… and it’s said it can drive people insane—but that’s probably not true.”

Kole shuddered at the mention. While voidlings were technically outsiders, he held no particular fear or animosity towards the humanoid beings from beyond the known Realms. The aberrations, however, had left a deep scar on the collective consciousness of the people of Illandrios.

Gray noticed the subtle motion and stopped his explanation.

“Don’t worry. That stuff hardly ever happens, and the Dahn is able to repel them even without the intervention of the Masters… usually.”

None of what Gray was saying relieved any of Kole’s concerns.

“Here we are,” Gray said, sensing he’d failed to be reassuring and dropping the thread as he opened a vacant door.

The room was simple, basically a long narrow hall with a stone dummy at the end.

“So far I’ve learned Mage Armor,” Gray began. “I’m a sorcerer as well, and I can cast Ice Bolt.”

“Is that common?” Kole asked, jumping on the change in topic.

“Being a sorcerer? Not so much in general, but like the professor said, as you get to the higher levels, we become more common.”

At that moment, Kole realized he’d made a huge mistake.

Thus far—aside from Jorin and Amara… and Lonin—he’d kept his abilities private.

Flood, did I tell Zale? No.

Alright, he’d tried to keep his abilities private. But, once more, he’d put himself in a position where he had to reveal some part of himself. He weighed his options. The ridicule he’d suffered back home hadn’t specifically been about his primal nature. His original fear about his secret coming out here was that he wouldn’t be admitted, but Lonin hadn’t stopped him.

As if tracking Kole’s train of thought—or at least part of it, he’d fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole in that moment—Gray asked, “What about you?”

“A sorcerer? Yes, I am.”

“I thought so!” Gray said, proud of his deduction. “What spells do you know?”

“I know Magic Missile and Shield, and a lot of cantrips,” Kole said, hoping to at least deflect.

“Wow, those are useful. Ice Bolt is useful, but not so great when fighting armored foes. I hope one day I’ll manifest Cone of Cold. Which one is from your sorcery?”

Flood.

“Neither… I have another spell, but… I’d rather not share it, if it’s alright with you.”

Gray looked a little disappointed, but this wasn’t the most uncommon request. Many adventurers kept some aspect of their abilities secret. It was only strange for someone as young as Kole to have something worthy of secrecy.

Then Gray decided it was time to do what they came for, and began to send Ice Bolts downrange, where they stuck the golem and exploded into shards of ice which vanished into a fog.

Gray continued firing down the range until he’d cast the spell five times. Kole was impressed by the other young wizard’s Will reserves. He had to have around 25, which was just over half Kole’s, but easily double that of any other nonsorcerous wizard of his age.

“I’m tapped out,” Gray said, breathing a little heavily. “Your turn.”

Letting out a sigh, Kole walked to the front of the room.

Kole turned back to Gray, looking slightly abashed, before starting to cast the spell. Just then, a scream broke out from the hall. They both turned toward the window to see students running for the exit. Without a second thought or glance to Kole, Gray bolted for the door. Kole followed.

CHAPTER 18

Goblin-Rats

The native Illusian population of Basin was predominantly orcs in the east. The center of the Basin had been arid scrubland. A great chasm sat at the center, and the few small rivers that formed from the accumulated rainfall disappeared into its depths. Once the ocean levels rose enough to flow over the low points left in the mountains, great rivers formed, quickly rejuvenating the land. The chasm filled with water, creating the Great Plume Lake at the center. The Great Plume, a mystery until only recently, formed by the Avatar itself, was trapped deep in the bowels of the chasm by the Hardune.

—Moonsuckle, Albert. A Brief History of the Flood, 3rd ed.

The hall was filled with fleeing students, most yelling in panic but some stopping to fire spells back down the hallway before running on further. Between the bodies of students, Kole could make out the huddled brown forms of some diminutive creatures adding to the chaos with their chasing and chattering.

Gray didn’t hesitate and ran towards the threat. Kole paused for a moment, but then he too followed. As they pushed through the bodies, they got a better look at the monsters, which had stopped to feast on one of their fallen comrades. They were the same size and general shape of goblins, a couple feet tall each, but they stood hunched over. Their greenish-brown skin was covered in patchy tufts of coarse fur, and their faces elongated into ratlike noses. There was a dozen of the creatures, and three older students had formed a wall blocking their advance.

The light flickered, and Kole felt a pulse of something deep in his soul. A connection to the Arcane Realm he couldn’t articulate. Some powerful magic had to be at work for a wizard of Kole’s limited level of experience to sense it at all. The students looked at the rat creatures expectantly, but the monsters seemed wholly unconcerned.

“Gods!” Gray cursed. He fell in line with the other three with his rapier drawn. “They aren’t void creatures, the defenses didn’t do anything.”

At Gray’s words, the creatures charged. The older students each sent a blast of some elemental magic, fire, ice, and lightning, at the oncoming beast. Each took out one or more, but the distance was short, and eight chattering goblin creatures reached them, clawing over each other in the narrow hall. Gray stabbed one in the chest, kicking another aside. Two of the students next to him had weapons of their own, one a quarterstaff and the other a short sword, but the third had nothing.

The unarmed student shot another bolt of fire at the goblin-rat closing in, but he missed, and the creature leapt on him. The student fell, taking rakes to the chest. No one but Kole was free to help him. Kole had left his blasting rod in his bag in the room he’d just left, and there was no time to go back for it.

Remembering the effectiveness of a good kick on other ratlike beings, Kole ran at the student. He kicked the creature in its rat face before it could dig into its victim’s neck. He felt a familiar, sickening crack as the rodent face shattered under the impact. Gray broke free of his own foe in time to stab Kole’s, keeping it down. Kole risked a glance to the fallen student and saw he was alive, but he’d taken a deep slash on his chest, and he’d not be helping any further.

When he turned back to Gray, a goblin-rat had broken away from the sword-wielding student and was lunging for Gray’s side.

Kole reacted on instinct, his hand shooting up as he built the construct for the spell in his mind. It took all his mental effort to open up his bridge to the proper location, but he pushed through, pouring nearly all his Will to the effort. Focusing on both his hand and his lungs, he said, “Roh-Ka,” infusing Will into both the sounds and his hand as he flicked his fingers forward and sent the spell into the Arcane Realm.

Three bolts shot out from his hand, striking the lunging monstrosity in the chest and only visible as shimmers in the air on the way. Each hit made a small thump and left a coin-sized hole, which quickly pooled with blood as the goblin-rat lay dying.

The spell drained nearly all of Kole’s Will, and he fought through the headache as he filled the gap the fallen student had left. The goblin-rats were wary now, and only four remained, looking from their fallen kin to the students. It seemed that everyone was out of Will, for no bolts of magic flew. There was a brief staredown before the last four broke into a charge. One ran at each of the other students, but two headed for Gray. Kole moved in to help, even if only with a kick or shove, but before he could reach the goblins, four shimmers flew by Kole, and the heads of the creatures exploded into geysers of blood.

Kole whipped around to see the source of the spells. Professor Underbrook stood, floating on a force disk moving toward them, hand still extended from the spell he’d just cast.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked, looking at the older staff-wielding student, who gave a nod.

The professor continued down the hall on his disk, firing magic into any body that twitched.

“That was crazy!” Gray shouted, both hands on his head, grasping his hair.

“Yeah…” Kole replied in a bit of a daze.

His adrenaline was beginning to fade, the heartbeat in his ears quieting, and the stench of the blood sinking in. He surveyed the scene and found he only felt a bit of disgust at the remnants of the creatures, but no regret in helping create it.

“What in Fauell are these things?” Kole asked.

“They kind of look like goblins,” Gray said and gave a sniff, then winced. “And they definitely smell like goblins.”

The oldest student able to stand was treating the wound of the fallen one, so Kole walked over to the wall and leaned against it, suddenly exhausted.

“Why didn’t you keep firing?” Gray asked Kole.

Flood.

“I, uh… I’m out of Will.”

“Oh, wow, already? Were you practicing earlier?”

“No…” Kole started. He could lie and take the out presented, but that would only cause more issues later on when Gray inevitably found out the truth. “That took up all my Will.”

Gray cocked his head sideways, processing the words, but they didn’t seem to make any sense.

“How?” he asked after coming up with nothing.

“I’m not only a sorcerer, I’m a primal too. It makes wizardry… difficult.”

A series of emotions flickered across Gray’s face. Surprise to confusion and then curiosity.

“How?” he asked again, his tone this time packing a lot of questions into the single syllable.

Kole gave Gray a brief rundown of his particular magical “talents” and the limitations they brought.

“So you can only cast one spell?” Gray asked.

Kole nodded.

“So… how are you going to be an adventurer? Are you going to learn a martial art? Be a spellsword? Or is your primal ability that powerful?”

“No to all of that. I plan to be a wizard, I just have to figure a way through this problem.”

Gray’s face grew less friendly as Kole explained all his difficulties, only growing kinder at the end when he asked Kole about a secondary talent. Now he looked angry.

“That’s… a terrible idea,” he said. He’d chosen his words carefully at first, but now he yelled, “You’re going to get people killed! You could have just gotten us killed!”

“What?” Kole asked, taken aback.

“How do you expect to be an adventuring wizard if you can only cast a spell a day? You’re basically a magical cripple!”

“I told you, I’m going to work through this. Everyone said primals can’t even cast wizard spells, and you just saw me do it. And I think I handled myself well enough just now. Better than all those other students who fled.”

“You think you can figure out what no one in the last hundred years could? You’ve learned some spells, but you can cast one spell a day. You’ll be useless in a battle! If you somehow eke your way into the adventuring program, you’ll just convince some group that you’re competent and then get them killed!”

Kole didn’t know what to say. A large part of him always feared social interactions at the Academy would take a turn for the worse, but this was nowhere close to what he’d expected. Gray had a lot of anger built up, as if Kole’s words had struck a bone. What that underlying issue might be, Kole had no idea and no clue how he could defend himself against whatever prejudice Gray harbored. He stood there, unsure what to say, and before he could think of anything, Gray stormed off in anger.

Kole looked at all the other students they’d fought with to see them staring from him to the leaving Gray.

That could have gone better… Though I’m not sure what I did wrong.

Underbrook came back a while later and interrogated those who remained about what had happened before dismissing them. The injured student had recovered enough to stand by them.

“You all handled yourselves brilliantly,” he said, making eye contact with each. “While it isn’t common, these types of occurrences are known to—well—occur in a magical structure such as the Dahn. Don’t worry, we will investigate this and make sure this particular breach doesn’t happen again.”

Kole was then left to his own devices, which felt odd to him. They’d just been attacked by strange goblin monsters, and no one seemed to be too concerned about it after making sure all the injured had been taken care of. The older students were even joking as they left. Reflecting on his actions, he was proud to know he hadn’t hesitated. He’d been nervous, but that hadn’t stopped him from doing what needed doing. The sewer test had been one thing. This time, there had been no reassurances, and Kole had still run in to help.

That in itself was a huge relief. A large part of being an adventurer was the temperament. Many of the most skilled wizards and fighters were not suited for the life, unable to put themselves into dangers that could be avoided by pursuing other professions. The thought buoyed him and allowed him to ignore the whole ordeal with Gray in the aftermath—for a while, at least.

CHAPTER 19

Friends

It was long theorized that extradimensional spaces, also known as pocket realms, could be created using the power of the Fonts. The Fonts, after all, were used by the gods to create the Realm as we know it, and the Illusian races had full access to these tools of arcane might. The primary difference, in this context at least, between the gods and men was simply a matter of scale. Prior to the First Dragon War, extradimensional spaces were objects of theory. Even the Spatial master of the Hollow Peak, formerly known as Altian, could only compress space, never create it. Their crowning achievement, the hollowed-out mountain cave in which they’d crammed a city, had only expanded the region within.

—Sigimas, Yalian. Pocket Realms: From Theory to Fact, 1st ed.

Kole slunk off out of the training hall a short while later. He’d yet to buy food to replenish his stores in the library and ate the extra fruit he’d take at lunch as he went back. He had assignments due in both alchemy and history and hoped to get a few hours of magical study in.

The thought of practicing magic sent a throb of pain through his Will-drained head, and his body seemed to weigh four hundred pounds now that the adrenaline of battle had faded.

Maybe I skip that tonight.

He’d studied magic while Will-drained in the past, but even he could recognize sleep would be a far more productive use of his time under the current circumstances.

But first, exhibiting levels of responsibility and self-restraint usually foreign to him, Kole went to the library, set up at a well-lit study table near the center, and got started on his classwork.

The work for alchemy required him to read through some dull reference books, and the history assignment too was just reading. Kole found the required books on the shelves and powered through them. He’d been happy to discover there were dozens of copies of the books required. The librarian had explained that the required readings were well-stocked so students wouldn’t need to purchase the potentially expensive texts.

When he finished, he placed his books on the end of the table as everyone else seemed to do and stepped behind a shelf, turned invisible, and ran off to his secret spot.

The next morning, Kole woke up with plenty of time to get to his alchemy class. Weighing the rumble in his stomach against the dwindling weight of his coin purse, he decided he could hold out until lunch.

“Kole!”

He looked up to see a familiar face waiting in front of the lecture hall door.

“Hey Amara, what are you doing here?”

“I’ve been trying to find you since Sunday. Where have you been? I went to that hostel you mentioned, but you weren’t there. Then I realized you must be in this class.”

Kole hadn’t exactly forgotten about Amara, but finding her again had been low on his list of priorities after his first failed attempt. He’d checked the runed tracking device, but it’d always pointed towards the main building of the crafting college.

“Oh… yeah… I found someplace else to stay. Somewhere cheaper.”

“Oh, good!” she said, happy for him and once more oblivious to his awkward answer. “I wanted to set a time to meet, so I don’t have to track you down again. I haven’t had time to make a new tracker with an indicator on it. Professor Donglefore has kept me quite busy.”

They settled on meeting up after Kole’s history class. He had to go out and buy more food—and possibly a rat trap—and Amara agreed to go with him. She was surprisingly okay with the thought of killing a magical rat despite her relationship with Gus.

As Kole made his way to his seat, he noticed that some of his classmates were watching him.

Am I late? he thought. No. Maybe they recognize me from Gromck’s class.

The assignments were collected by one of Donglefore’s teaching assistants, who then proceeded to teach the class. He was a human, a few years older than Kole. Despite his age, he spoke confidently on the topic and bored them all with the most common side effects of low-level alchemical interference. The man had a talent to make even the most horrible flesh-wasting disease sound boring and tedious.

After class, he paid to eat in one of the dining halls, stocking up on extra fruit and bread, and then went back to the library to work through the spells he’d found. Intellectually he knew he’d made the right choice getting sleep the night before, but it still felt like wasted time.

While he wasn’t late to his history class, Zale’s prediction proved accurate, and he made it just in time to grab an open seat beside his new friend as the professor entered.

As Kole scrambled in, he’d noticed even more eyes following him.

Maybe it is because I was late last time? he thought as he sat down.

Zale watched him, looking less cheery than he expected her to. He sat just as the professor began to talk and spent the rest of the lecture taking notes. At the end of the class, more reading was assigned.

“I wasn’t late,” Kole said once they could talk.

“Yeah, but you certainly weren’t early,” Zale answered, once more her smiling self, though her eyes darted around the room as she spoke.

“You grew up on campus, right?” Kole asked. When Zale nodded, he said, “I have some questions.”

He told her about his run-in with the disappearing rat as they left the lecture hall.

“Oh, that’s just a pack rat. They’re a nuisance, but largely harmless. They eradicated them from the campus as a whole, but they never seemed able to root them out of the tower.”

“Can’t the magic of the Dahn eradicate them? I’ve noticed everything in the library is spotless, even in the old and forgotten parts of the library. Surely they could do something to remove some rats.”

Kole knew of pack rats, having read about them in his research into primal creatures. He’d hoped reading about primals at large would give him insights on his own problems, but all it had ended up being was a big distraction. Pack rats were primals of the Font of Time, and they used they ability to repeatedly travel back in time to help their past selves in battle.

“Yeah, they tried that. The Dahn got rid of all the bugs and other pests, but it didn’t seem to want to remove the pack rats.”

Before Kole could ask about the Dahn having an opinion on the matter, Zale forestalled his question.

“I don’t know the details, that’s just what my mother told me.”

Moving on to the next topic he had in mind, he asked, “Do you know a guy named Gray? I didn’t catch his last name, but he seemed really familiar with the campus.”

Zale was hesitant to answer, looking around nervously again at the mention of the name.

“Yeah… I know him. Why?”

“We were talking after class yesterday, and there were these crazy goblin-rat things, and when he found out…”

Flood, I guess I’m telling Zale too, Kole thought. For a primal of the Font of Illusions, I suck at deception.

“I told him that I’m a primal, and that my wizardry is stunted because of it. He didn’t take it well.”

The nervousness left Zale, replaced by relief and then excitement.

“You fought those?! I’m jealous!” Zale nearly squealed. “I heard about that. Tell me all about it.”

Kole reluctantly recounted the event, complete with Gray’s reaction at the end.

“You’re a primal?” she asked when he was finished. “That’s great!”

“It is?”

Kole had expected a reaction, but not that.

“Yeah! My mother is organizing a sort of… guided study program for primal students. There are a few other primal students here who weren’t properly trained in their abilities for one reason or another.”

“Your mother’s a professor? You made it sound like she wasn’t. What does she teach?”

“Art!” Zale declared proudly.

“Art? Why’s an art professor organizing a magical study group? Is she qualified to assist in any way?”

“Not really, no, but she kind of just does whatever she wants. But… my uncle recently returned to…”

She paused, biting her lip.

“Town,” she said, finally choosing a word. “And he was helping me with a particular issue related to my”—she gestured to her deep black hair and pale skin—“voidiness, and he suggested we invite others in a similar situation.”

“Voidiness? What does that have to do with primals?”

Zale’s face dropped as she realized she may have said too much. A battle similar to the one Kole had just fought warred on her face for a heartbeat before she looked around cautiously, then answered in a whisper.

“I’m sort of a primal too. But… we can talk about that later. Also, where are we going?”

Kole had been walking to the crafting college’s dining hall as they spoke.

“I’m meeting a friend for dinner. Want to come?”

Zale hesitated before agreeing, and they chatted more about class and the monsters for the rest of the walk.

At the entrance the dining hall, Zale walked past the counter without even a glance.

“Aren’t you going to pay?” Kole asked after her.

She looked from Kole to the cashier at the counter, who didn’t seem to mind her blazing past.

“Ummm… No, it’s fine.” Turning to the cashier, she said, “He’s with me.”

Kole followed her through, despite his reservations. Zale hadn’t struck him as the type to break the rules. The cashier clearly didn’t care. Unlike the inattentive attendants at the library, the cafeteria staff were constantly on the lookout for students sneaking themselves in or food out. Kole hadn’t risked turning invisible to get inside, but using his abilities to divert attention from his bag bulging with food hadn’t been beneath him.

“What was that about?” he asked once they were through.

He never got an answer, though, as Amara showed up just then. She looked uncomfortable in the crowded room and was holding the tracker in her hand, clearly having been waiting for their arrival.

“Hey Amara, this is Zale. Were—”

“Are you a voidling?” Amara blurted out, showing her typical lack of tact.

Though Kole reflected that he’d essentially reacted the same way upon meeting Zale, so maybe he shouldn’t judge.

“Sorry! That was probably rude!”

“It’s okay. I’m half-voidling.” Zale answered, taking the question in stride.

Kole proceeded to introduce the girls to each other, and they sat to eat and talk about their first few days of classes. Donglefore, it seemed, was a very demanding master, and aside from meals, Amara was busy every waking moment of the day, though, from the way she told it, she was quite happy with the arrangement.

“He has me working on a few projects,” she explained. “He wants to see how my ants’ carvings can improve the stability of some of the harder-to-carve mundane materials. There are a lot of materials that hold up to runes quite well but are too difficult to etch reliably. He’s intrigued about my work with the Life Font but is still deciding how best to pursue it.”

“Have you made any progress on your… other project?” Kole asked ambiguously, not sure how open she was about the issue.

“No,” she answered, deflating slightly, but then she turned to Zale, perking up. “You live here, right? Have you heard of a female quarter-elf student who went missing last year? My sister was here, but she vanished.”

Zale hummed, thinking it over.

“Not specifically. Students regularly leave without giving any sort of notice, and the school doesn’t track them down unless there’s evidence of foul play. A quarter-elf is quite rare. My mother is a half-elf, so I guess that kind of makes me a quarter-elf as well, but the circumstances of my birth are… odd. Do you have anything else that might cause her to stick out?”

“She was a primal. Does the school track that?”

That surprised Zale. “Another one?” she said, gesturing to Amara. “Do you think she’d be interested in the study group?”

Kole shrugged.

“You can ask.”

Zale gave Amara the same slightly vague offer. She thought about it briefly, weighing some choices, and then agreed somewhat reluctantly.

“I can give it a try. Part of the reason I’m here—officially—is to bring some understandings back home. If I can bring new understandings of Understanding, that would be great.”

“Well, the school does track who’s a primal,” Zale said, getting back on topic. “Have you asked the administration office about her yet?”

Amara nodded.

“They said there was nothing to suggest her departure was suspicious,” she said sullenly.

“Were her belongings left behind?” Kole asked.

“No, I asked about that. She might have left, but I don’t think she’d do that without sending a letter.”

They spent the rest of the time talking about less consequential things, and Kole was happy to discover his two new friends got along well. Zale’s outgoing personality meshed well with Amara’s general awkwardness.

Gus made himself known near the end of the meal, climbing out of Amara’s jacket to eat the leftovers.

“Shouldn’t you be hiding him?” Kole asked, scanning the room for anyone who may have noticed the rat.

“It’s okay. He’s registered as my familiar now, so I can pretty much take him anywhere.”

“He’s cute!” Zale exclaimed. “Can I hold him?”

Without Amara’s intervention, the rat walked across the table into Zale’s open hand. The sight of the rat brought Kole’s mind back the previous conversation.

“You never told me about Gray,” Kole asked, suspecting Zale might have dodged the question intentionally. “Why did he react so strongly?”

“Oh him. He’s one of the students brought up through the Dahn’s orphanage. His parents were adventurers. They died exploring some underground ruin. The wizard in their group was a new addition. He’d inflated his resume when joining their team, and Gray blames their death on him. What exactly did you tell him?”

Hearing that, Kole had a little sympathy for the other boy’s reaction.

Maybe I can patch things up?

“My… primalness”—Kole mimicked Zale’s gesture from before—“makes casting spells difficult. I can only cast a single spell a day.”

Instead of being disappointed by the news—or mad, like in Gray’s case—Zale grew even more animated.

“My uncle will really want to talk to you. You have to come on Saturday.”

CHAPTER 20

The Room

The Dahn, or Tower in Torcish, was the first proof we had of extradimensional spaces. The ensouled artifact was created by the silver dragon Tomvian as a place to facilitate education and the pursuit of knowledge. Tomvian was a white dragon, turned silver after accepting the Pact of Bild. He created the Dahn and gifted it to the dwarves who later died in battle against the Avatar.

The Dahn surfaced in the early days of the Last Dragon War after being discovered and Bonded by Daulf Dragon Slayer, Chosen of Illunia. Since then, largely theorized to be due to the events of the war itself, pocket realms of more varieties have made themselves known.

—Sigimas, Yalian. Pocket Realms: From Theory to Fact, 1st ed.

Kole stayed up late that night working on the first of the Magic Missiles he knew enough spell components to repair, but he didn’t manage to finish it that night. The next morning he woke to find that he had visitors in the night, and the food he’d taken from the dining hall was missing.

“Flood!”

***

Kole arrived at Martial Combat 101 already dressed in the rented clothes provided by the martial college. The clothes were far from fashionable and a little itchy, but they were light and comfortable and more than half of his classmates were wearing them. He found Zale standing alone by her weapon rack, the other students giving her a wide berth and sneaking glances.

“Good morning! Late night?” she called when she saw him.

Before he could answer, Tigereye’s voice called out, “Form up!”

“At least you’re not late,” she added. “Tigereye isn’t Gromck. If you’re late, he’ll make you run extra.”

***

Kole didn’t see much of Zale the rest of that practice. When they ran laps around the yard, Zale was out in front, while Kole was near the back. She waved whenever she lapped him, which could have felt condescending, but she gave an earnest smile when she did so, and he didn’t sense any malice in it.

Later, the actual training began, and Kole was grouped up with the rest learning the quarterstaff, while Zale assisted in the bastard sword training group. When his group had to pair up for sparring, everyone near him soon turned away from him to find someone else to practice with. After the bustling settled, there was a single student left unpaired aside from Kole. When the boy saw Kole alone, he let out an audible groan.

Kole was quite familiar being a social outcast from his time back home, but at least back then he’d known why everyone had hated him.

What did I do now? he thought, wracking his mind to think of something until it occurred to him to just ask. What is he going to do? Ignore me?

Smiling at the thought, Kole asked his reluctant partner, “What’s everyone’s problem with me?”

His partner, who’d not introduced himself or spoken a single word aside from the groan, looked surprised at the words, as if Kole were some sort of talking bear.

“You were talking to the ‘half-voidling girl,’” he said, as if that explained it, and then swung at Kole’s head.

“So?” Kole answered, ducking the blow and swinging back.

The drill had them swinging in a set pattern to get used to the motions and comfortable blocking and dodging.

“So? There’s no such thing. Haven’t you heard about the outsiders in Illandrios that turned people into aberrations? I heard she used to be a half-elf a year ago. Look at her now. She must be one of them, and if you spend too much time with her, you’ll be one too.”

Kole knew the boy to be very mistaken.

“That’s not at all what happened in Illandrios,” he said.

He began to explain Illandrios’s history with the outsider who had infiltrated and suborned his home, but the boy wasn’t listening. Kole had seen paintings and illusionary images of the aberrations the outsider had created, and they looked nothing like the pale and cheery girl.

They’d become sickly pale monstrosities, human only in shape, with black stains all over their bodies.

“What do you know of Illandrian history?” the boy asked, condescendingly. “You’re from a ship clan, right? Do you even have history books?”

This statement stirred a large mix of emotions inside of Kole. On one hand, it was rather insulting, but on the other, the boy mistook him for a ship clan member, which was what he was going for. The insult itself didn’t offend Kole, having not actually been a member of a clan, but the intention to insult angered him.

In the end, Kole let it go. He’d let this boy live in ignorance. He didn’t respond, letting the insult be the last word they shared, and they repeated the drills in silence until they broke for the day.

“I’m sorry.” Zale’s voice came from behind when Kole was returning his equipment, remorse clear in her tone. “I should have told you this would happen if you stuck around with me.”

Kole turned to see Zale with downcast eyes, fiddling with the training sword on her belt. He wasn’t exactly in the best mood, but he understood. He’d been in Zale’s exact situation before—well, not exactly: she had at least one friend, and now he did too. At the thought of that, he realized how much better off he was now than before. Sure, he was ostracized again, but he was used to that.

“Don’t worry about it. Really. I wasn’t exactly popular back home. This is nothing new.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, smiling a bit more. “We could get in a big pretend fight right now and make it clear I don’t have my voidy hooks in you.”

“Voidy hooks?”

“Yes, they are very powerful.”

They joked as they walked back to the changing rooms, where each of them had stored their clothes. Once both were more presentable, they met out front and headed to the mess hall together.

“I think you owe me a little bit more of an explanation,” Kole said as they walked past the cashier. “Why do they just let you in? Everyone else has to pay or show a pass. Is it your ‘voidy hooks’?”

Zale looked uncomfortable, but guilt opened her lips, without a smile at the attempted humor.

“My mother isn’t exactly just an art professor. She’s the head of the college of art. As you’ve noticed, I stand out a bit and am easily recognized.”

Kole let out a slow whistle.

“That is a lot higher up the ladder than you first let on when you said she worked here.”

“I don’t like to stand out…” Zale said, recognizing the ridiculousness of what she said as people scurried out of her way to avoid her “voidiness.”

Kole continued his line of inquiry after they sat with their food. Food that tasted all the better to him when he knew it was free.

“How does she feel about you pursuing adventuring? She doesn’t want you to follow in her footsteps?”

Zale let out a laugh.

“I’m following as best as I can, actually. She was an adventurer too. I grew up hearing stories about my ‘aunt,’ ’uncles’ and father and all the crazy things they did.”

She punctuated “aunt” and “uncles” with air quotes, but her voice carried the same implication when she said “father.” Kole noticed, but let it go.

“My mother was the team’s… acquisitions expert.”

“Rogue?” Kole asked.

“Yeah, but she claims she didn’t steal things. People gave her what she needed when she asked.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Actually, I do. Mostly. She exaggerates, but she doesn’t lie—to me, at least. If she doesn’t want to tell me something, she just says as much. She tried to teach me her skills, but my appearance made half of what she knew less than exactly useful. It was a little irrelevant, though, because I wanted to be a knight like Uncle D—” She cut herself off mid-sentence and corrected, “My uncle.”

Kole reflected that despite claiming to owe him answers, she was very clearly keeping a lot back. But her secrets were her own, and he was starting to see why she might have made a terrible rogue—aside from her eye-catching appearance.

“So, what can you tell me about this uncle who’s helping in this study group? He’s not a knight, is he?”

Zale relaxed a little when Kole didn’t press her on her fumble, appreciating the change of topic.

“No. Different uncle. This one’s a very powerful mage. He would show up here and there as I grew up, but it seems like he’s here to stay now—we think. That’s part of the reason we’re doing this class, actually. He has a particular interest in primals. He had an experience with a Primordial which left him with a bit of a magical disability, and he’s been trying to learn how to manage it. It got better as he grew older, but it’s still causing him issues occasionally.”

Zale’s vague mentionings had been piquing Kole’s interest, but the mention of her Primordial-touched mage uncle, “mage” being a title which had been reclaimed by sorcerous wizards in the last hundred years, had him hooked. He was definitely going to that study group on Saturday.

***

Kole found that it wasn’t only his interaction with Zale that marked him as an outcast. Gray, it seemed, had spread the word about his deficiency, and his classmates had a similar opinion to Gray. Kole hadn’t thought the older classmates—who were mostly training to be siege or court wizards—would care, but he was wrong.

When he got to class—the last one to arrive—the room grew quiet as he entered. And so began another school year as a social outcast.

After class let out, Professor Underbrook stayed behind to answer any questions his students might have about their assignment: refining their spell list selection for the year. Kole waited until the last student had left before approaching.

“Professor,” Kole greeted.

“Hello, Kole. How can I help you?”

“I wanted to talk to you and make sure we won’t have a problem.”

Professor Underbrook interrupted him, forestalling Kole’s imminent awkward confession. “Grand Master Lonin already told me of your situation. I won’t grant you any extra leeway, but as long as you complete the work and pass the tests, I have no problem with you.”

Kole thanked him and then ran a few ideas for what spell to pair with Magic Missile and Shield by him before the halfling excused himself and teleported away.

He’d wanted to ask the professor if he was looking for an apprentice but restrained the urge. Better he waited until he actually had some results to show before asking.

Exhausted from the day, Kole skipped dinner and went back to his nook in the library. Zale had gotten him extra food to take with him at lunch. It really did seem like everyone knew her.

She’d offered to get him into breakfast any day he woke early enough to train with her before class—a topic he’d done his best to ignore until Tigereye had reminded them they should be exercising in their off time.

Kole admitted that he really would need to start working out on his off days, and the monetary benefits of doing so in the morning with Zale’s guidance made the decision more palatable, so today he had plans to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Well, go to floor, he corrected sullenly. He’d purchased a bedroll, but there was only so much it could do to make the stone floor comfortable.

Around eleven at night—a full hour past when Kole had told himself he’d sleep—a squeak interrupted his studies. Then a rat appeared on his desk running away into the shelves. He looked under the desk to see the originator of the squeak and saw another digging through his bag of food. When he moved to kick the rat, it jumped out of the way before scurrying up the shelves and onto the desktop.

With nothing else to hand with any weight, Kole threw his notebook at the creature, but it vanished just before impact. The book knocked over his inkwell and they both fell to the floor.

“Stupid time-traveling rats,” Kole muttered to himself as he picked up his notebook, finding it completely covered in ink.

As if taunting him, the rat let out a squeak from somewhere in the darkness.

Kole hadn’t had the best day. It had been far from the worst in his life, but it had certainly been the worst of this new life. He’d tried to tell himself that it hadn’t been a sign of things to come, only a minor dip in the road… but the last strand of optimism in his body snapped at that sound.

He charged through the stacks after the rodent, grabbing the light from his desk and banishing the darkness in his pursuit. The rat’s sounds grew frantic, and the chattering was replaced with scratching.

Kole ran towards the sound and caught sight of the rat’s wormy tail sticking out from where two shelves met before disappearing.

“Flood!” he said, both angry and a little relieved.

He’d chased the creature out of frustration but was unsure of what he’d have done if he’d actually caught it. Rat was a common meal in Illandrios before they reunited with the surface. Nowadays only the elders ate the nostalgic delicacy everyone else had long since abandoned to history. He’d killed a lot of rats without a weapon of late, and the experience had only made him more loath to do so again.

Closer to the shelves, his light illuminated the narrow gap between them. He expected to see the white stone wall of the Dahn just a foot back, but instead, he found a line out into a dark opening beyond.

Cautiously he crept forward toward the opening, afraid the rat might jump out at any moment. As his light got closer, it lit more of the cavity between the shelves, showing a chamber beyond.

He contemplated his find. On the one hand, it was very late, and he was supposed to have fallen asleep an hour ago, but on the other, he may have just found a secret room in a magical tower library.

There was no competition.

He placed his light on the ground and got to work trying to shift the shelves, but they were far too heavy for him to budge. Then he began to remove books from the lowest shelf, stacking them in a pile. In this lost corner of the library, the books were items of dubious academic value. This shelf here was filled with tax codes from pre-Flood nations that had somehow found their way to Basin in the Flood’s aftermath.

Once the books were clear, he examined the back wall of that shelf. While most of the shelves in the Dahn’s library were crafted magically from stone, the older ones in the dark forgotten corners were made of mundanely crafted wood. With a few kicks, he knocked a back panel out, creating an opening just wide enough for him to crawl through.

He pushed the light in ahead of him and saw a short hallway with an ajar stone door at the end. He pulled himself through quickly, certain that this would be the moment someone came to this neglected section of the library.

It was but a few steps before he stood outside the door. No sound emanated from the room, but he turned invisible before peeking through the crack just in case. When he saw no lights inside, he risked bringing his own to the crack. The runed device illuminated a small bedroom furnished with two small beds and a writing desk. The walls were made of the same stone as the rest of the Dahn, and one wall was covered with bookshelves. An earthenware jug and a worn book sat on the desk.

Seeing the room empty, he pulled the door open and stepped in. The place was clear of dust, but that meant little. Even these abandoned corners of the library were covered by the cleaning spells that kept the school tidy. Despite that, the room smelled old.

Kole couldn’t put his finger on what exactly made him think so, but he got the sense this place was older than the section he’d just left. The library as a whole smelled of books, the mix of paper mustiness and leather, but this room had that and something more.

By then he’d forgotten about that rat that had drawn him here and went to the bookshelf. The majority of the spines were unlabeled, and he gingerly took books down, laying them out on the bed and leafing through their pages. Many were in Torcish, a language Kole had little knowledge of, but enough were in Rilith for him to understand what was in front of him. The shelf was full of spellbooks—traditional spellbooks, not the spellform-filled tomes he usually thought of. Mixed in were some outdated texts on various magical theories that had long since been improved upon.

Each spellbook was filled with the author’s attempts to record the ineffable. Pages upon pages instructed future wizards on how to build the spell constructs required to harness the powers of the Fonts. The words within made sense to Kole individually, but as a whole, they were utter nonsense. He read a section aloud as he scanned the pages.

“Create a closed loop linked with a quarter twirl in the lower quadrant of the previous section.”

He stood in awe of the complexity of it all, wondering how anyone could have learned wizardry in this manner. Some of the descriptions resonated with his own understanding of spell construction, but even with his particular interest in component study, he couldn’t believe anyone could create a spell template in their vault following this nonsense.

Eventually, he pulled himself away to look at the rest of the room. Two stone cups sat next to the jug, and he looked inside to find no liquid within. Curious, he lifted it and turned it over to see if something was hidden within. He dropped the jug leaping back in surprise as a white goo plopped out onto the floor.

The jug landed in the goo without breaking, and Kole recovered enough to go inspect it. He gave the mess a sniff and then cautiously poked it. The smell was familiar. Finally, he licked his finger and then stared at it in surprise.

“Mayonnaise? Who makes a magical jug that makes mayonnaise?”

Putting the seemingly wasteful application of magic aside, he inspected the rest of the desk. It had no drawers and a simple board top, making secret compartments unlikely. When nothing of note turned up, he flipped through the old worn book on top and found it to be completely blank inside.

Odd, he observed. The cover was extremely worn by age and use, but the paper within was pristine and of high quality.

Did someone take an old binding and replace the pages? he wondered.

As he thought of a possible explanation for the book, he looked over the rest of the room, checking under the mattresses for anything else. His father had always told him to check hidden rooms thoroughly: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s one hidden door, there’s probably another where the real good stuff is.”

But Kole’s search turned up nothing.

He looked at the books, the jug, and the journal. While the books would likely have been a massive find a hundred or so years ago, to him, with access to the Dahn’s library, it was nothing. The jug was weird, but he suspected it could be made to create something besides mayonnaise. The journal was a timely find, with him having just destroyed his old one, but as secret rooms went, his adventuring career was off to a rather disappointing start.

Briefly, he considered moving his belongings into this room, but he didn’t want to risk discovery. While the room seemed abandoned, he couldn’t be sure as of yet. It did, however, suggest that living in the library wasn’t an entirely original idea, which was both promising and worrying.

Carefully he remade the bed, making note of a few distinct folds he placed. He’d come back in a few days and see if they’d been disturbed. If they hadn’t been, he’d consider moving in.

Before leaving to go sleep on his bedroll, he looked back at the bed longingly.

Maybe if I just took a little nap…

CHAPTER 21

PREVENT

If the Material Realm were a bubble, pocket realms could be thought of as smaller bubbles clinging to its side. Their contents are separate from the larger bubble but made of the same air. As they are separated from the environment beyond, they are also separated from the air within the larger bubble. Much like with bubbles, if the surface of a pocket realm were to be pierced, it could pop, releasing its contents into the void. If, however, the membrane between the smaller bubble and the larger were to be destroyed, the contents of the realm would vomit forth into the Material Realm.

—Sigimas, Yalian. Pocket Realms: From Theory to Fact, 1st ed.

A very sore and sleepy Kole arrived at the training yard just after six to find Zale going through sword forms with a wooden practice weapon. His better judgment had won out the night before, and he’d returned to his bedroll to sleep.

“You’re getting less late,” she said cheerily when she spotted him.

“It’s way too early to be that happy,” Kole observed, trying to stifle a yawn, but failing.

While he recognized that exercising outside of his martial class was necessary to pass and achieve his long-term goals, he still hated it. If it weren’t for Zale holding a free breakfast hostage, he wasn’t sure if he’d be here.

“Light training today,” Zale said, lifting Kole’s spirits. “We’ll want to be fresh for PREVENT.”

“PREVENT?”

“’Pre-Adventurer Battle Training.’ We call it PREVENT. The professor likes to joke that the class is meant to ’prevent’ us from dying.”

“That’s a pretty terrible pun.”

Zale shrugged.

“Even Tigereye uses it, it’s ubiquitous at this point.”

Kole and Zale sparred lightly for an hour, Zale correcting Kole’s mistakes after exploiting them to “bonk” him on the head.

“The bonk helps reinforce the lesson,” she explained at Kole’s protestation.

Not that Zale needed him to make a mistake to get through his guard. She had been training alongside the students of the martial college her whole life and was easily the most skilled in the class. While Zale was tall for a girl, her athletic frame wasn’t large enough to justify the strength she exhibited during practice, but Kole refrained from asking if that was an aspect of her “voidiness.”

At seven, the pair broke off their practice to wash up and eat before going to their only class of the day.

Zale met Kole outside the changing room of the martial college fully clad in armor. She wore a fresh pair of the college’s training cloths, but atop that, she wore a bright steel breastplate, along with pauldrons, gauntlets, and faulds. She had greaves over her thick leather boots, and a helmet was hanging from a clip on her shoulder.

“You’re going to wear that to breakfast?” Kole asked, looking her up and down.

Zale held up her articulated metal fingers and wiggled them all individually.

“It’s good training. I need to work on my fine motor skills with these. The armor was a gift from my mother for enrolling in the Academy, and I’m not exactly used to it yet.”

Kole assessed the armor again. He knew very little about armor, only that it was expensive to get even a simple functional set made. Some of the Mirage Knights back home wore it, but he’d done all he could to avoid their attention.

While Zale’s wasn’t ornate, the craftsmanship seemed exceptional even to his eye. The plate shone brilliantly in the sun and had a near-mirror finish, with no visible defects or irregularities on its immaculate surface.

“It looks expensive,” Kole said, not sure what else to say about it.

Zale beamed.

“It is. My mother bought it from the dwarves as a surprise and as an apology. She’d not been very supportive of my desire to be a knight over the years, and she likes to apologize without actually saying ’I’m sorry.’”

Zale garnered more looks than usual as they ate in the mess of the martial college. Normally people saw her and moved far away from the strange voidling girl. Now as they sat eating their breakfast, people kept sneaking glances at the armor-clad pale-skinned girl who kept dropping her spoon.

“Flood!” she cried after it slipped from her grasp for the fourth time.

Surprised by her own foul language, she covered her mouth as if to bring the words back.

“Sorry!” she whispered.

“Why don’t you give it a rest and eat?”

“I can’t. Mom said I need to be able to use chopsticks with these on by the end of the month.”

“What happens if you can’t?”

Zale looked up from her porridge with dread.

“She’s going to take me to a ball in New Lakeside during the semester break.”

Kole could think of many reasons why he’d hate to do that, but he was unsure of the source of Zale’s trepidation.

“How bad is that?”

“The first time we went wasn’t so bad. I enjoyed dressing up. No one got close to me, and I stood bored for a few hours. The second time she let me use a magical bracelet that disguised my appearance. I thought it would be more fun. I’d get to dress up and dance, eat good food, but it was far worse,” she groaned. “The nobility are the worst. I had to dance with an endless line of these wastrel children. They would tell me all about how important their father was, or how many horses they owned.”

Then she smiled at a memory. “One tried to impress me, boasting that he was a dueling champion. I challenged him to a friendly duel on the spot. He refused, but then I called him a coward, and he did not like that. He wasn’t actually half bad, but I still beat him.”

“Dueling? Isn’t that with rapiers? I thought you used a bastard sword.”

“I’ve trained with pretty much every weapon. I prefer the bastard sword. I’m stronger than I look, and my speed with it takes people by surprise. But my mother prefers the rapier and trained me in it most of my life. Bastard swords are hard to come by in polite society, but rapiers are more acceptable to bring to court.”

“Are you expecting to be in courts much?”

“Waas above, I hope not, but it’s best to be prepared.”

Zale eventually gave up trying to be refined with her gauntlets and grasped the spoon in a fist like a toddler would to shovel the food down.

They arrived to class on time, which was early by Kole’s estimates and late by Zale’s. The class was taught in the Dahn proper on the lecture floor, in the same room where the sewer test had been administered.

Despite having been in the room previously, Kole had to do a double take and stepped back out.

Zale sighed, amused.

“We have magical doorways that take you up to other levels, and people are still shocked when they open a door to a room that’s just a little bigger inside than it should be.”

“This is more than ‘a little bigger,’” Kole defended.

Zale only shook her head, and they continued in, Kole looking all around trying to drink it all in.

The idle chatter of students ended when they noticed their arrival. Kole looked to Zale to see how she was taking the ostracization. She was smiling, but he was starting to recognize the difference between her real smile and the one she put on for show.

He’d been elated to find himself accepted when he first arrived, but he was finding he didn’t actually mind everyone ignoring him. In fact, it was kind of nice.

In a rare instance of reflection on his social standing, Kole thought about that.

I hated this isolation back home. What’s different now?

Was it that he had a few friends? Or did he always prefer isolation, without realizing it until he’d been forced into idle small talk for weeks on the boat and the few normal days he’d had here? He wasn’t sure which it was.

Maybe a little of both?

In either case, he was worried that his presence might be causing Zale to experience more shunning than was usual.

“Sorry,” they whispered to each other at the same time.

And then Kole saw Zale’s false smile turn genuine.

“Thanks,” she said, and they walked into class together.

The conversations picked up briefly before one of the many doors that lined the room opened. Professor Underbrook walked in with the looming figure of Tigereye close behind.

“Good morning, class!” Underbook greeted them as they all grew silent. “Welcome to Pre-Adventurer Track Battle Training. I’m Professor Underbrook. I’ve met most of you already. I’m glad to see you all were not put off by the initial trial. I can’t promise you won’t face more rats in this class, but going forward you will be given more of a heads-up on what you will face. The giant behind me is Tigereye. Together, we’ll be teaching you all enough to realize how incompetent you currently are. But don’t worry, if you make it through the year, we’ll correct your inadequacies.”

Tigereye took over from there.

“The time you spend in this room will be spent training and learning. We will teach you to function as a valuable and reliable member of an adventuring team.”

Kole looked at Gray just as the boy turned away.

“Outside of class,” Underbrook continued, “you will research. Knowing how to fight does you no good if you find yourself up against a foe immune to your attacks.”

In what was clearly a well-rehearsed introduction, Tigereye took over again, and the juxtaposition of the deep, serious, halting voice next to the excited halfling almost made Kole laugh.

“The key to being a successful adventurer is preparation. All you have when you enter a pocket realm or monster lair is what you bring with you. You must know what to bring and when to use it.”

“So,” Underbrook shouted, “to make it abundantly clear from the start how little you all know, let’s enter the dungeon! For most of you, this will be your first real taste of battle—ignoring rat-filled sewers. This will be an important moment to prove you have what it takes to pursue this path.”

Professor Underbrook looked at Kole and Gray as he spoke this last part, giving them each a nod.

Murmurs broke out across the room. All the other students clearly knew what “the dungeon” meant.

Zale had been expecting this and whispered to Kole, “It’s a magical simulation. They can configure it into any environment and fill it with creatures.”

In any other situation, Kole would have been fixated on the magical sewer he’d entered, but he’d been distracted. The Dahn’s library and its opportunities had occupied all of his thought since arriving.

“How does it work?” Kole asked.

“I don’t know.” Zale shrugged. “Magic?’

She thought about it a moment longer and then added, “It’s probably one of the Dahn’s abilities. Chosen Daulf’s connection with Illunia unlocked a lot of amazing powers in the Dahn tailored towards education. The dragon that created the Dahn and gifted it to the Hardune had a passion for teaching, and I guess the artifact found a kindred soul in Daulf.”

“Form up into adventuring groups!” Tigereye shouted, interrupting Kole’s inquires.

CHAPTER 22

Teammates

When Faust’s influence originally began to corrupt the dragons, shortly after their births, the dragons fled to the far reaches of the world to protect the Illusian races from their newfound covetous desires. Many dragons returned to the world of men after mastering their urges, but many more did not. Some that disappeared had discovered a way to pierce the veil of the realm and hide in the void beyond. Those that did brought the Material Realm with them and pocket realms grew around them, even persisting long after their deaths. Most dragons who embarked on these endeavors are thought to have perished in battles against the denizens of the void.

—Sigimas, Yalian. Pocket Realms: From Theory to Fact, 1st ed.

“Four to five in a group!” Underbrook shouted after Tigereye’s less-than-detailed instructions. “If you aren’t already in a group, come to the front of the room, and we will form balanced groups for the day.”

Kole looked at Zale, looking for guidance, and saw her already looking at him, biting her lip.

“So… you know anyone we can use as a third or fourth?”

Zale’s nervousness vanished as she let out a breath at Kole’s implied agreement to group with her.

“Well, I’m not exactly popular, but my cousin should be around here somewhere. He was going to group with me.”

Cousin? Kole hadn’t seen anyone else with Zale’s distinct features, though he supposed they could be from her mother’s side.

“Zale!” a deep voice shouted from behind, sounding both happy and angry at the same time.

Kole turned and saw a dwarf pushing his way out of the crowd. He was tall for a dwarf, around five feet, only half a foot shorter than Kole. His skin was darker than most dwarves, a deep olive that looked like it wouldn’t immediately burn in the sun. He wore a loose shirt and wide pants, both made of thin linen, and bore no weapons or accessories save a metal weave bracelet. He had a head of close-cropped hair, uncommon for a dwarf but not unheard of. His beard, however, was only a few inches long, something Kole had never seen on one—not that he’d seen many.

“Hey, Rakin!” Zale said, waving him over. Then she teased, “Couldn’t find another group, huh?”

He glowered at the jab.

“I didn’t look. Who’s yer friend? Ye found us a third?”

“Yep! This is Kole, he’s a wizard, and I’ve invited him to Mom’s study group. He’s one of the students who fought that weird incursion in the target range. Kole, this is my cousin Rakinar.”

“Cousin?” Kole asked, very confused.

“He’s the ward of my mother’s former teammate,” Zale explained.

“That was ye?” Rakin asked, reassessing Kole with a once-over. “Nice. Zale, ye don’t need to give him my life story. Let’s go to the front and get assigned a fourth.”

The group made their way towards the front, where Underbrook was sorting the magically inclined students, giving each a different-colored stick to categorize them in some way. Tigereye did the same for the martial ones. From observation, Kole thought the latter was giving red sticks to the more heavily built and armored students and green sticks to the ones with bows and lighter melee weapons. People grew visibly nervous when they saw Kole and Zale approach.

“Well, this isn’t going to be super awkward,” Kole whispered, to which Rakin snorted in amusement.

Zale got a red stick, Rakin a green, and Kole a white. Most of Underbrook’s charges received white or black, except for a few Kole didn’t recognize from class that had yellow sticks. Most with a yellow or green stick also had a second.

“Form groups! Try not to have two people of the same color in a group. Red sticks are heavy fighters while green are light. White sticks are generalist wizards, black are utility specialists, yellow are Blessed, and orange are primals!”

Kole saw that he, Zale, and Rakin didn’t have orange-colored sticks. He assumed Rakin was a primal as well, since Zale had suggested that he’d be in the study group.

“Why did he only give us one stick each?” Kole asked his companions.

Rakin spoke up. “They only make public what we wish to make public. The first-year student hardball league opens up next semester. A lot of the students from PREVENT participate, and most teams try to keep their specific skills close to the chest to get an early advantage. Students that don’t have a team need to disclose any advantage they have so they get picked up by a good one.”

The trio stood talking idly about class as the students mingled around them. They decided they needed someone with a Blessing—preferably a healing one—but no one was exactly jumping to join them. Their initial overtures of invitation were all met with about-faces and quick retreats, and in the end, they resigned themselves to picking up one of the leftovers.

“Hopefully they aren’t a glindock,” Rakin muttered.

“A what?” Kole asked, not familiar with the presumably dwarven curse.

“Oh, nothing,” Rakin evaded. “Let’s just hope they pull their weight.”

During the hubbub, Kole caught sight of Gray, who was among those who came with a group. He was talking with a tall man with dark skin, who was clad in plate armor similar to Zale’s in form, but much bulkier and less brilliant. He had a large sword behind his back, along with a shorter one at his side and a shield.

Two girls stood with them, who couldn’t have been any more different. One was small and could best be described as mousy. She had short hair and a round face and chin, with a small but pointed nose. She stood with a nervous awareness, her eyes jumping around the room constantly as if expecting something to attack at any moment.

The second girl was—without exaggeration—the most beautiful girl Kole had ever seen. She was athletic, with impractically long brown hair down to her waist. She looked fit, but not as built as most of the martial warriors and wore leather armor. While most students were wearing cheap but durable clothing provided by the school, her own outfit looked practical, tasteful, and expensive. While she was beautiful to Kole’s eyes, he felt like there was something else drawing him to her. If he were thinking clearer, he may have noticed the effect, but instead, he simply stared. He marveled at her face, the perfect—

“Looks like yer friend found Esme,” Rakin said, breaking Kole from his trance.

Zale let out a sigh.

“Who? What?” Kole said, turning to the pair.

“The girl yer ogling. She’s a bi—I mean, Esme,” Rakin said.

Zale cut in, more diplomatically, “She’s Blessed by Esther, one of the many demigods of beauty. She’s a part of Gray’s team, along with Mouse and Harold. And she’s not as bad as Rakin makes her out to be.”

“You know them? And the mousy girl is actually called Mouse?” Kole asked. His head became clearer after he’d turned away, only then noticing that he may have been under the effects of a Blessing.

“Yeah…”

“Zale’s sweet on Harold,” Rakin cut in, cheerful at Zale’s expense.

Her cheeks started to darken, but instead of turning red, they grew black, drinking in the light in the same manner her hair did.

“I—no… it’s not like that!” she sputtered, proving to Rakin and Kole that it was very much like that.

“Those three—minus Mouse—grew up in the school’s orphanage. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I went to school with them, explored with them…”

Zale trailed off with a wistful look in her eyes.

“Did I…” Kole began, but Zale shook her head adamantly, snapping out of her revery.

“We did everything together, but… we had a falling-out. I didn’t use to walk around like this”—she gestured to her complexion—“until the beginning of summer. Up until this year, I hid my voidling heritage. I always wore an enchanted bracelet to disguise myself—I only every took it off at home. People around here… don’t like voidlings.”

She stopped talking, and Kole gave her time to gather herself.

“We used to be friends—still are friends? Last year we were exploring some of the… restricted areas of the Dahn, and my bracelet got dispelled. They didn’t see it happen and thought I was a voidling. They attacked me by mistake. I was able to convince them I was me, but…”

Zale tried to gather her words and settled on, “They didn’t take it well. They felt like I’d lied to them our whole lives—which is true, I guess. They said they didn’t care I was part-voidling, but that I should have felt able to tell them. I was afraid they’d abandon me. Joke’s on me, right? Not telling them is what made them leave.”

She forced a laugh, and Kole forced a smile. Her smile faded and she shrugged, finishing the story.

“After they found out, I stopped hiding it. It was more isolating than I expected.”

“Oh,” Kole said, unsure of what else to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Rot ’em,” Rakin spat. “Racist fools. She’s better off without ’em.”

“They didn’t like Rakin at all when he showed up late last year,” Zale added, a little cheer creeping back into her voice.

“Racist fools,” he repeated, and the mood lightened.

“How could they ever have issue with this pile of joy?” Kole said in mock disbelief.

There was a pause in which Kole regretted the jab. He was certain the surly dwarf would react poorly.

“Bah ha ha!” Rakin said after a moment, laughing at the jibe.

Kole relaxed, glad he’d not put his foot in his mouth so soon after meeting Rakin.

As they talked, idly now about lighter things, the rest of the groups formed up around them, leaving not a single student to spare.

Underbrook came over to them and gave them a sad shake of his head.

“It looks like you will have to go in as a trio,” he said apologetically.

“It’s alright,” Zale said, putting on a brave face. “It’s better to have two people you can trust than three people you can’t.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Underbrook left them and made his way to the front of the room, where he sent a bolt of lightning into the ceiling without warning. The crack echoed in the stone room, and the students reacted in a range of ways, from cowering in fear to drawing weapons and turning to the threat.

“Now that I have your attention,” he said over the silence that followed his spell, “we can begin.”

CHAPTER 23

The Dungeon

With great care and an equalization of pressure, it is possible to pierce the membrane of a bubble to gain access to its contents. Likewise, pocket realms—and the Material Realm itself—can be accessed by beings beyond our Realms. The membrane of the Material Realm is strong, the great dragons of old only just able to break out in their flight. As such, the Material Realm is largely protected from outside invasion. The voidling incursions of the Last Dragon War being an exception, as they were aided by the fel dragons within in service to Faust. Now without this aid, most incursions into the Material Realm are made first through pocket realms with their weaker membranes.

—Sigimas, Yalian. Pocket Realms: From Theory to Fact, 1st ed.

Professor Underbrook outlined the task that would follow.

“A living adventurer is a prepared adventurer—though not all prepared adventurers survive. Some of you may think that simply means acquiring the proper combat skills, but preparation comes in many forms. This class will hammer that home.

“Today, each of your groups will delve into the dungeon. Once you’ve all embarrassed yourselves, you’ll have until next week to prepare for your reattempt where you will face this same challenge again. Established parties will enter first. Parties with new members will go next, followed by the groups that were formed today. Once you have completed your attempt, you must leave the classroom. No sharing any details! Remember, there is no shame in retreat. As an adventurer, if you face a foe you cannot beat, falling back is often an option. But beware, for your foes won’t stay idle in your absence.”

He went on to further explain that while they wouldn’t actually be in danger, everything within would feel quite real. Then he called Gray’s team into the dungeon first. He directed them to the supply racks, and they were allowed to outfit themselves however they thought best.

The room was furnished with all the mundane gear an adventuring team could need, along with some magical equipment. Students were allowed to bring in anything they owned, but they could only borrow a set budget’s worth of equipment. Simple mundane gear such as ropes and torches hardly cost anything, but items like blasting rods, armor, runic devices, and the like quickly ate into a team’s budget. Preparation was key, but resources—and pack capacity—were limited. Unless one had a bag of holding and a pile of gold, choosing what to bring was key.

Gray’s team collected some rope and torches, but took little else—save for Mouse, who shoved her bag full of whatever trinkets and food she could get her hands on before Esme pulled her away.

The party of four was led through a very mundane-looking door, and Underbrook returned a moment later alone.

Kole and his team examined the gear.

“I have a blasting rod, but it’s breaking, and I’d like to not use it if I can rent one,” Kole said, putting his cards on the table. “I can cast Magic Missile or Shield once and…” He looked around nervously, contemplating revealing his secret. “Something else we can talk about through the door.”

Underbrook had explained enough to tell them they wouldn’t be immediately ambushed once they went through, and that no one would see what occurred within except for Tigereye and himself. Kole vowed to reveal his primal talents once they had the privacy of the dungeon. It wasn’t that it was the biggest secret, but the more people knew what an Illusion primal could do, the less effective they were. Those abilities were his primary asset at the moment, though, and he couldn’t expect to hide them from his allies and be very effective.

He also feared people outside of his group distrusting him if they found out the nature of his magic. Mirage Knights, being warriors with a specialty in infiltration, were not well regarded outside of Illandrios, but Kole didn’t think these two would hold it against him from what little he knew of them already.

“I could use a few throwing darts, but I’m good,” Rakin put in.

Zale held her sword and looked over the other equipment.

“What do you have in your bag?”

Kole looked through it and saw his light orb, his new-to-him journal, some quills, some ink, one of his clarity potions, and some pilfered food.

“I have a light source—which might be stolen from the library, I’m actually not sure if I was allowed to keep it—and a clarity potion, but nothing else of use.”

Rakin let out an impressed whistle.

“What?” Kole asked.

In response, the dwarf pointed to the price list, where the same potion was listed for fifty points. Each point was roughly a gold coin.

“That’s so much,” Kole said. Back home, clarity potions were the cheapest potions around.

“Giant crab shit’s expens—ow!”

Zale had slapped Rakin’s thigh with the flat of her sword.

“Language,” she said. “Don’t waste that potion today. Did you bring that from home? Do you have more?”

Kole nodded to both. He hadn’t realized they were quite that expensive, but it made sense. Illandrios only exported the excrement of the deep whales in large quantities during the migrations. It took a lot of work to keep it fresh, but the bubble city always had some from the farms supplying the alchemists. Wizard and primal students there were even provided rations of the potions to facilitate their learning, boosting their Will higher than average.

That also explained why Illandrios still had a reputation for creating powerful wizards even after falling behind the rest of the world during their subaquatic isolation. Will capacity increased as Will was spent. Recovering it faster meant you could grow faster. Kole had been taking multiple clarity potions a week, which drastically increased the rate of growth. His own Will capacity was around 40, which was obscene for someone his age, but Corbyn’s had been 15, and he wasn’t even a sorcerer. The average new wizard student at the Academy had maybe 12 if they started young, while an adult sorcerer or primal from the surface could have up to 20. Kole’s sorcerous peers had had Will capacities from 20 to 30 by the time he left.

When reconnected to the surface world, Illandrios discovered their isolation—and outsider psychic overlords—had caused their magical development to stagnate, but they had done an amazing job in the last hundred years catching up, clarity potion access being one major factor.

“I have more,” Kole answered.

“Good. Save them… or consider selling them if you need the money. You can use them in the dungeon, but you shouldn’t. Especially not today, since we seem destined to fail.”

In the end, they decided to get the blasting rod for Kole, spending all five hundred points on it. The device likely cost hundreds of gold, something he could never afford on his own, but without it he’d be pretty useless. It was very similar to his own—only not broken—a foot long and less than an inch in diameter, made of some strange metallic material that didn’t look like any Kole could name, and covered in intricate runes all radiating out from its inset gemstone.

Kole practiced, imbuing the gem and Willing a bolt to fly. At a thought—and a drain of 4 Will—a bolt of purple energy shot towards his target. His first shot missed, crashing harmlessly into the magical stone of the Dahn, but after two more shots, Kole had the trick of it. This one was subtly different from his father’s and was more efficient, costing only 4 Will to his own 6.

“I’m ready,” Kole decided, deciding that further practice wouldn’t be worth the Will.

Kole’s large Will capacity would give him an advantage for now, since being able to shoot ten bolts would be more useful than having the two or three spells his classmates could manage, even if they had greater variety.

After they’d collected all their gear, the door burst open, and a haggard group of students tumbled out.

“They failed already?” Kole said in surprise, with more than a little joy.

“Remember the sewer trial?” Zale said, shaking her head. “Time doesn’t work the same in the dungeon. They could have been in there for a minute or a week.”

Gray’s party was ushered out of the room by Underbrook while Tigereye stared down the other students, daring them to try to ask a question.

Obviously, no one did.

***

Kole stood in front of the door, nervous. The last group that had exited had been rushed to the healers with broken limbs. One had even smelled distinctly of the latrine.

He braced himself as Underbrook opened the door, then stepped into a room. A very plain and familiar room. It was the same as the one prior to his entry into the sewer. A door sat at the other end of the small rectangular and unadorned space, a lectern with a piece of paper on top sitting in the middle.

Zale approached the page and read it aloud. “Goblins have taken two children from a nearby village. You have tracked them to their cave. Rescue the children.”

“That seems simple enough,” Rakin observed.

“So, what’s the big secret before we go in?”

In response, Kole turned invisible—he knew it to be a waste of Will, but it wasn’t every day he got to surprise people with the ability.

Rakin stepped back warily but kept his eyes on Kole’s location—though he was eyeing the ground where he stood. Zale’s brows rose in surprise, but she too stared at him. Experimentally, he took a step back, and both Zale’s and Rakin’s eyes tracked him.

He waved, and Zale waved back with a big smile. Rakin, however, didn’t seem to notice.

“Fauell,” Kole cursed. “That’s no fun. How can you see me?”

“I can sense yer steps on the stone. If ye stepped back any further, I’d lose ye,” Rakin answered.

Zale looked embarrassed, looking away from his eyes—which she shouldn’t have been able to see.

“I have the Willsight of the voidlings.”

“Wow. That’s useful.”

Kole hadn’t known much about the voidlings before meeting Zale, but he had spent some time researching them since then. Their Willsight was very powerful. As beings from the void between realms, they didn’t interact with Will the same way the denizens of Kaltis did. They could manipulate it but couldn’t wield it. They had no Will capacity, but they could harness and control Will external to them, while the natives of the Material Realm couldn’t.

Part of this ability allowed them to see it. They didn’t see light—or even heat, as the subterranean races could. While a human eye could see the colors of light refracted and reflected off an object, voidlings saw the Will that made up that object and the Will of the light reflected—everything in the Realm was Will, after all.

“I can see light like normal,” Zale explained, “but I can also see an overlay of Will over everything.”

With nothing left to share, they gathered around the door. Kole stayed invisible, and Zale drew her weapon.

“Ready?” Rakin asked.

The others nodded, and he pulled the door open to reveal a forest clearing.

Zale jumped out first, scanning the surroundings for threats. Kole followed after and jumped to the side, and Rakin did the same.

The door they’d come through sat in the middle of a field of grass, which in turn was surrounded by trees. The doorway was a freestanding black stone frame, through which they could see the room they’d just left. When nothing came out after them, they all relaxed.

“Flood!” Rakin cursed. Kole jumped, scanning the trees once more.

“What? Where?”

“He hates the forest,” Zale explained.

“Ye say that like it’s unjustified,” Rakin shot back defensively.

“So, I guess he’s not going to serve as our scout,” Kole said. He turned to Zale. “How’s your woodcraft? I grew up in a subaquatic bubble city with, like, eight trees.”

“Not good.”

Together they looked around the clearing. Zale found a path beaten through the woods.

“So… what do we do?” Kole asked.

After a moment of silence, each looking at the others for guidance, Zale spoke up.

“We all seem to be equally poorly suited for the task, so Kole should scout ahead invisible. If something hears him, at least they won’t see him. Rakin and I will follow. If you stay within thirty feet or so, I’ll be able to keep track of you.”

Plan settled, Kole turned invisible and went ahead. He soon found that his well-honed ability to walk silently through a city or building didn’t translate to the forest. He’d learned early on the importance of a soft step to avoid detection, but here, it took more than simple grace to be silent.

Branches smacked him in the face, twigs broke beneath his feet, and birds flew loudly away from his approach as he pushed through the woods.

Distantly behind him, he heard Rakin’s constant stream of curses, along with Zale’s insistent shushings and the clanging of her armor.

After a few minutes, Kole saw the trees begin to thin ahead, and he signaled back to Zale with an upraised fist. The worn path widened, and he could now move with some semblance of stealth. As the trees cleared, he spied a rock face beyond the forest’s edge. He slowed his approach further, hardly daring to breathe until he finally caught sight of their target.

A cave opening sat a dozen yards back from where the path met the clearing. Two goblins with bows sat lazily atop two large boulders that straddled its entrance. While they sat in relaxed positions, their eyes continually scanned the forest around them.

Carefully, Kole crept back down the path to report his findings to the group.

“Goblins.”

CHAPTER 24

Goblins

While the specifics of their creation are lost to the waves, we know that to make an ensouled artifact, the creator must use their own soul stone. Reports from before the Flood tell us that ensouled artifacts grow in power alongside their creators. With this magical growth comes physical growth as the item becomes more magnificent in the eyes of its creator.

—Deckard, Arcum. Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts, 9th ed.

“Goblins, ye say?” Rakin asked, a smile on the dwarf’s usually surly face.

“Yeah. Two on guard atop some rocks,” Kole said and then described the rest of the scene to his party members.

“Can you shoot them with how they’re positioned?” Zale asked.

“Probably not. Certainly not both.”

They discussed it further and eventually worked out a plan.

Zale and Rakin left the path, traveling deeper into the forest, looking to get closer to the goblins while remaining hidden. Still invisible, Kole returned to where he’d been hiding and waited.

The goblins chatted as they stood watch, but Kole didn’t know the language spoken by the diminutive feralkin. Kole stopped ten paces from the boulders with a clear line of sight down the cave and waited. It didn’t take long before the poorly hidden stomping of Rakin and Zale caught his attention—and the goblins’ along with it.

They hadn’t wanted to get their attention, but they’d known their odds of getting close without doing so were low and planned for the occasion. The goblins stood in unison, nocking arrows to strings and scanning the forest. They immediately spotted the pair and sent a volley into the forest.

As soon as they moved to fire, Zale and Rakin broke from cover, charging at the goblins. Rakin’s height belied surprising speed, and his short legs quickly outpaced his “cousin.” In his wake, Kole spotted raised pillars of earth wherever he’d stepped, and looking closer, he saw that the ground rose up with each of Rakin’s steps, propelling him forward.

When they saw how fast Rakin covered ground, one of the goblins broke off and began to scramble down the boulder to alert their kin within.

Brood? Kole wondered, once more getting distracted by a fixation on the nomenclature for groups of foes.

He didn’t let the thoughts distract him too long, however. Just before the creature touched the ground, Kole pointed his blasting rod at it, sending his Will into the device and a purple bolt of energy at the goblin.

Kole felt and saw his invisibility vanish the moment he created the bolt, the spell breaking at the surge of Will he’d expelled. The bolt struck true, hitting the goblin in the back, and eliciting a scream reminiscent of an animal’s yelp.

The second, seeing his companion’s fall, moved to run as well, but Rakin reached the boulder, scaling the sheer stone surface as if he were a spider. Not expecting the dwarf to climb so high so fast, the goblin was not prepared for the fist that struck it in the back of the head.

The goblin collapsed, the force of the punch sending it flying off the boulder to the ground next to his companion. The first downed goblin tried to rise, but Kole sent another bolt into it, and this time it lay still on the ground.

Zale arrived after the battle had ended, not even winded from the brief sprint. Kole, on the other hand, was already panting, his heart pounding in his chest and ears from the combination of exertion and adrenaline.

Maybe I need to take physical conditioning more seriously.

He looked at the dead goblin, reflecting on what he’d just done. It looked like he’d just slain a goblin, but was any of this even real? The goblin-rat creatures the day before had been real—he thought—but they’d almost seemed like animals. The sewer rats had certainly felt real as he crushed them with his feet, but how could they have been?

Examining his emotions, he found that he didn’t much care. The goblins might have gained some higher degree of sapience once Faust’s influence on the world was reduced at the end of the Last Dragon War, but they were still vile creatures. Having been set on the path of an adventurer from childhood, he’d always known he’d have to kill. This was just the first time among many… probably. This could all be real, or some sort of mental illusion—though being a primal of the Font of Illusions, he thought he’d have been able to see some flaws if it were. In either case, Kole didn’t regret his actions. If this was real, these creatures had kidnapped two girls, and if it wasn’t, well, then it didn’t matter at all.

While Kole reflected, Rakin dropped to the ground, placing his ear on the stone of the cavern entrance’s floor. After a moment, he stood.

“We’re alright, I don’t think anything heard us within.”

“Should I scout ahead invisible?” Kole offered.

Rakin and Zale both shook their heads, and Zale said, “You can’t see in the dark. We’ll move forward as a group. If you stay behind Rakin, he can clear the ground of anything you might trip on. Have your light at the ready.”

They fell in line. Zale went first trying her best to stop her armor from clanging, but each step elicited a small sound. Luckily, once within, the rush of a stream somewhere beyond grew louder. Far beyond and above, Kole saw the faint glow of an orange light: enough for him to walk toward, but not enough for him to navigate safely on his own.

The cave was spacious for a goblin, comfortable for a dwarf, but tight for a human—or human-sized void person. Rakin let out a sigh of relief once they went further in. The tunnel forked after forty feet, one path leading up, the other down, though Kole saw none of it.

Rakin sniffed the air experimentally.

“Something smells foul down that way,” he said, pointing to the right.

“Agreed. Let’s go up,” Zale decided, moving in that direction.

The path narrowed as they went up, and after a few steps, the gentle incline ended, replaced with a near-vertical stone wall covered in handholds and loose stones.

“I got this,” Rakin whispered, taking the lead.

He placed his hands gently on the stone, closed his eyes, and listened. Eyes still shut, his hands roved all over the surface, leaving behind a smooth face with firmly secured protrusions of stone to serve as steps. He climbed as he worked, and soon Kole heard his voice from above.

“Come on! The water’s louder up here, so ye should be fine.”

Zale went next, the rattle of her armor deafening to Kole. Once she grew silent, signifying she’d reached the top, Kole fumbled towards the wall and scaled it blindly.

The climb in the dark was surprisingly easy with the Stoneweaver-crafted holds.

“That woulda collapsed under our weight if I’d not secured it. I doubt many other groups’ll have made it this far without alerting the goblins,” Rakin whispered as they continued on.

The roar of a river was much louder up here. The cave continued in a semicircle, but a cliff lined the right side, and the sound of water came from the depths below. Kole could now see the light up ahead was from a series of crude torches propped against the cave irregularly on the cliffside path.

Zale took charge once more, and Kole followed, hand on the left wall to ensure he didn’t wander off the edge.

“There’s an opening ahead,” Rakin whispered to Kole. “Ready your light.”

Zale’s armor quieted as she slowed further. Kole squinted into the dark but couldn’t make out whatever Rakin had referred to.

“Stop!” Rakin shouted, but it was too late.

Kole activated his light device in time to see stones fall onto Zale as she stepped into the branching tunnel. Just as the stone struck her head, she vanished, taken from the dungeon by its magic.

“Krool!” Rakin shouted another curse Kole didn’t know.

The shrill voices of goblins screamed in reply, and Kole retreated back to the entrance, blasting rod ready.

“There’s two in there and more coming from further down,” Rakin said, planting himself between Kole and the oncoming goblins.

The first climbed over the rubble of the first chamber, and Kole shot a bolt at it, which flew wide, striking the wall. Kole’s Will was low, and a headache was building to distracting levels.

While Kole had attacked, Rakin had pulled a rock out from the wall, the stone rippling into an orb in his hand. He threw it at the goblin Kole had missed. It flew with far more speed than the throw itself could account for, hitting the target in the chest with a sickening crack. The second goblin climbed over its fallen ally, and more ran toward Kole’s orb of light.

Kole judged he had three more bolts left in him, and it was then he saw the true value of his training with the quarterstaff—which he hadn’t brought.

Once the goblins were close, he’d need something to hold them at bay, and he doubted he’d find the time to point the rod and channel Will into it before something bit or cut his arm off.

He sent another bolt into the mass of oncoming goblins, hoping that even a miss would hit another target. His purple bolt flew true and struck the lead enemy, destroying its diminutive leg. Five goblins climbed over the crippled one—one of which was very clearly not wearing any pants.

At the same time, the first goblin had reached Rakin with a pitted sword drawn. The dwarf batted the first wild jab aside with his bare palm, then stepped in past the goblin’s guard, sending his knee into the shorter creature’s face and then pushing it over the ledge with his free hand.

“Archers!” Kole yelled to Rakin. He saw two goblins in the light of a dim torch, bows in hand.

Kole spent half his remaining Will and fired at one of the archers before he could loose. The other got its shot off, and Rakin let out another unknown curse as the arrow struck his thigh.

Three goblins with crude swords reached Rakin together, and the dwarf fell back, focusing all his attention on dodging and deflecting their attacks with his bare hands. Another arrow flew past, narrowly missing Kole. When he looked up, he saw the remaining archer had ducked back into an alcove.

“Flood!”

He couldn’t hit a target that small and scanned the ground for options. The sword of the first to fall lay near his feet. He dropped his light and, remembering his mistake with the bag of food, sent a trickle of Will into the sword. That done, he used the last of his Will to vanish. A wave of vertigo went through him as he suffered the full effects of Will drain.

“Let me through!” Kole yelled.

Rakin complied, stepping back to dodge an attack. The goblin stumbled forward, opening a small gap. Kole ran through the opening and heard Rakin hiss in pain as another blow landed. The archer now stood out in the open, seeing that Kole had disappeared but not realizing where he’d gone. It strained to hold the bow drawn, looking for a gap between its allies to strike Rakin, but didn’t find one, as the dwarf focused solely on keeping his enemies between them.

Kole ran right up to the goblin and swung his sword at its neck. His invisibility faded as soon as his sword made contact—the Will of his target disrupting the delicate balance of the spell—but by then it was too late. The creature didn’t even have time to register the sudden appearance of the human before him as its head fell off—well, partially off. Goblins might be smart enough to wield swords, but they were not skilled at maintaining an edge, and Kole lacked the strength for a proper beheading. But… a partial beheading was good enough in most cases.

There was a lot of general knowledge in Kole’s mind about adventuring, but he realized then he’d forgotten a very important one. Goblin blood smelled terrible—worse still than the goblin rat blood the day before. Blood geysered from the goblin’s neck, covering Kole’s face and sending him to his knees retching.

Distantly behind him, he heard Rakin’s curse cut short as the dungeon whisked him off to safety. The goblins turned to Kole, not seeming to see anything strange about their foe disappearing.

“I give up?” Kole said hopefully, holding his hands above his head. Then he too vanished.

CHAPTER 25

Blasting Rod

When the owner of an ensouled artifact dies, the item can be Bound only by someone who has a connection of some type with the creator. Famously the Sword of Iganhas been passed down by the Chosen of Waas.

—Deckard, Arcum. Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts, 9th ed.

Kole blinked. He was no longer in the cave, but back in the ready room.

“Gravel-munching ditch diggers!” Rakin shouted in what context—and Kole’s albeit-brief experience with the angry dwarf—suggested was almost certainly a curse.

Zale, who looked disoriented but otherwise unharmed, let the curse slide without reprimand. Rakin, however, was covered in cuts and had a pretty bad arrow wound in his leg, sans arrow.

“What happened?” Zale asked the others.

They updated her on the events that followed the trap.

“Weird,” Zale said. “You guys showed up almost immediately after me.”

“Ye just surrendered?” Rakin shouted, outraged.

“What was I supposed to do?” Kole defended, “let them stab me?”

“Yes!”

“Don’t listen to him,” Zale said. “He’s just a grouch. He’s mad he got beaten by some goblins.”

“Bah! Ye did too!”

“Nope. I got crushed by a trap.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Kole suggested, not sure of the dynamic between the two, but hoping to head off any possible conflict. Zale seemed incapable of anger, but Rakin could muster up enough for two.

“Good idea. I’m starving.”

“Wait,” Kole yelled, “the rod!”

He’d lost track of it when he’d run out of Will. He felt his belt and pockets but didn’t find it.

Will I need to pay for it? he wondered, terrified at what the consequences would be, for he couldn’t hope to afford to replace it.

“Don’t worry,” Zale said, walking over to the wall. Against it sat a blasting rod and Kole’s light orb.

“Thank Riloth,” Kole said, calling upon the god of his father’s people, more out of habit than any devotion.

If Kole had room in his mind to give to the worship of a god, he’d likely have chosen Illunia, the goddess of knowledge and learning, but he had far too much tunnel vision for such things.

“Even if you’d broken it, you wouldn’t have had to pay for it,” Zale explained.

Kole gathered his orb and rod, and they left the room. Underbrook greeted them outside and led them across the lecture hall to another pair of doors.

“We won’t do a full debrief today,” he explained. “But, if you walk through those doors, you can get cleaned up. In the future, we will have class after each run, but it’s best if you have some time to digest your experience. Violence isn’t for everyone, and the first exposure to it can be traumatic—well, not rat exposure. Enjoy your evening and reach out through the week if you find you need help processing what occurred.”

From what Kole had seen of Professor Underbrook, he didn’t think that his support in processing would be of much use, though it might be entertaining.

“There you are!” Amara’s voice shouted from behind Kole as he ate with Zale and Rakin.

He greeted her, and Zale introduced her to her “cousin.”

“Cousin?” Amara asked. “How?”

Zale sighed.

“I have a lot of uncles and aunts, none of whom are related to me by blood.”

“So, why were you looking for me?” Kole asked Amara after she’d joined them. “We were going to meet tomorrow for Zale’s ’uncle’s’ class, right?”

“Oh yeah!” Amara said, pulling her tracker out of her pocket, excited now that the topic was runes. “This was on my desk, and it started spinning. I thought it was broken, but I made a new one and transferred the stone, and it did the same thing.”

“Oh,” Kole said. “We were in the dungeon in the adventuring room for a few minutes. It’s probably that.”

Amara shook her head.

“No, it was spinning erratically for at least an hour, like you were teleporting all around me. I came here as soon as it stopped.”

Zale jumped in. “That’s probably related to the Dahn. Tracking spells have… difficulties finding the paths to people within it.”

They described the events of the dungeon, and Amara was enthralled—though not by the parts that the other three thought were exciting.

She asked endless questions about the function of the dungeon itself, questions none of the trio knew. Eventually, she gave up, resigning herself to asking her mentor about it.

“Any ideas on how we can do better next time?” Kole asked. “Aside from looking for traps, that is.”

Rakin and Zale had been a little down since their exit. Kole sensed that both had thought they’d perform better than they had, and they were processing their failures in their own ways. Kole hadn’t had any expectations and was largely okay with their failure. He’d come here to learn, after all. He knew where his skills lay, and none were in combat—yet.

“You need to bring a weapon,” Zale said, pointing at him.

“Rakin doesn’t have one,” Kole said defensively out of reflex, though he agreed with the sentiment.

“Rakin is a weapon,” Zale said, causing the dwarf to smile smugly. “He trains with the Order of the Resounding Silence.”

Kole was impressed. It explained his prowess in hand-to-hand combat and confidence in walking into the dungeon unarmed. Even Kole, the isolated recluse that he was, knew of the Order. The monks had long ago found a way to use their own Will to harness the energy that Assuine left in her creations. Normally, this power could only be drawn upon by her Blessed—and even they could only draw it from the energy in nature around them—but the monks learned that they could use the energy in their own bodies to enhance those bodies.

After giving Rakin ample time to dig a hole with his smile, Zale added, “My aunt sent him there to work on his anger issues.”

The smile vanished, replaced with a scowl.

“Can I bring a weapon from the martial class?” Kole asked. “I don’t have the money to buy one, and the blasting rod is taking up all our points.”

Zale thought it over.

“I can lend you one of mine, but what we really need to do is get you a blasting rod that won’t break. The budget for the class is meant to allow us to switch out gear and weapons to suit each dungeon, and using it all on that rod is going to harm us. If we can get one for you somehow, you could get a weapon from class.”

“That doesn’t help,” Kole said. “I can’t afford a quarterstaff. How am I going to buy a blasting rod? Could we get the gem in my father’s repaired?”

Rakin shook his head. “Ye can’t repair gems and expect them to function as Will wells.”

“I could make you one,” Amara volunteered, causing everyone to turn to her. “Um, what did I say?”

“How would you afford the materials?” Kole asked.

“Oh, that,” she replied, unconcerned. “If my idea pans out, I could make one out of mundane materials, but I’d need two gems. My idea involves using organic materials, not the alchemically enhanced ones normally used for the rods.”

“Two gems? Why? That’s more expensive, not less. Fixing my father’s would only take one.”

“The regenerative runes I have in mind need a dedicated gem to store the pattern of the blasting rune,” Amara explained. “The overall cost would actually be lower than one gem and magical materials.”

“Why do you even need gems?” Kole asked, frustrated. She’d given him hope and them immediately dashed it.

“The gems store the Will intent needed to activate the runes. That way, anyone can feed the device raw unfocused Will, and the runes mold it into a copy of the intent in the gem.”

“Oh, kind of like a mental vault holds a spell construct template,” Kole said, connecting the unknown magical field to one he knew deeply.

“Exactly like that,” Amara agreed.

“Why can’t I just store the pattern in my vault?”

It seemed too obvious to Kole now that he’d connected the two magics, but there had to be a reason it wasn’t done. He knew little of runes, aside from the extreme basics. Like the spellforms he studied daily, runes were ineffable patterns that resonated with and stored Will of certain intent. The Will within runes was shaped in the same way spells were. If spellforms and runes were both different languages, they both at least used the same sounds and alphabet. While Kole couldn’t tell you what any of the patterns did, if given a reference, he’d have little trouble copying it, just as any literate person could copy down a string of nonsense letters without knowing their meaning.

“You could do that—some master runesmiths do—but then why use a rod at all? Aside from a master runesmith, only a wizard would have the skill to shape the Will, and it would take valuable vault space that would serve the wizard better as storage for spells. You’d need to focus to channel it in combat—which is difficult. It removes all the benefits of a blasting rod. You might as well cast the spell.”

Kole began to get excited and saw it in her face when Amara connected the dots.

“You can’t cast spells!” she blurted out.

“Yeah…” Kole agreed, with the phrasing of her revelation stealing some of his joy. “How can I learn the rune intent?”

“The school has a library for them!” Amara shouted, with the enthusiasm she only displayed for runes. “You could come by and copy them into your vault! What Font should we choose? Force? Fire? Lightning? What could get you through the dungeon? Some of the patterns—”

“Amara,” Zale interrupted diplomatically, forestalling an incoming lecture. “Why don’t you get something to eat and join us.”

Amara looked around as if only then noticing where she was.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Then I can tell you about the regenerative internal matrix.”

Then she hurried off to gather food, excited to return and share her plans.

“So” Rakin began. “Are we going to leave before she comes—OW!”

Zale struck him on the back of the head before he could finish the sentence.

CHAPTER 26

Griffin’s Roost

Ensouled artifacts, for lack of a better word, choose whom they shall Bond. Those taken through murder rarely Bond with their new owners, unless the creator was of particularly unsavory character. It Is however common for items taken in battle to accept their new owners if the creator was martially inclined.

—Deckard, Arcum. Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts, 9th ed.

When Amara returned to the table, Zale preempted further explanations of runes with a question.

“So, who wants to watch the hardball match tonight?”

“No,” Rakin said, still sour.

“Oh, come on.” Zale pouted. “Kole’s coming. Right?”

“I was going to go back to the libr—”

“See, he doesn’t have plans. He’s coming. Amara, how about you?”

Kole wanted to defend himself. Plans to spend time with oneself were perfectly valid, but he sensed Zale would disagree.

“Where are you going to watch it?” Amara asked, concerned. “The convocation was rather loud.”

“There’s a tavern a few blocks from campus that shows the matches. It does get rowdy, but we could get a private booth.”

Amara looked at Kole and then back to Zale.

“I suppose if Kole is going, but I’ll need to prepare something.”

“But I never—”

“Great!” Zale exclaimed. “So all three of you are in. I’ll meet you outside the southern door to the martial college at five! I’m going to get cleaned up.”

Then she left the dining hall before anyone could disagree further.

“What just happened?” Kole asked.

“That’s Zale,” Rakin said, resigned. “I guess I’ll see ye two later.”

Rakin left, and Amara followed, excusing herself.

“I have to go prepare something if we are going to go to a tavern.”

Kole shamelessly stuffed the least chewed leftovers they’d abandoned into his bag for later.

Judging he could take three hours to study and still make it to the meeting point, and he too ran out of the dining hall, with excitement that rivaled Zale’s, though for very different reasons.

***

Kole sat in his corner of the library frustrated. He’d exhausted all of his Will during class that day and had little left to study. While in the dungeon, Rakin had sustained a fairly serious injury to his leg, but when they exited, it had already begun to heal. By the time they’d reached the dining hall, he’d completely recovered. Zale had explained that the injuries sustained in the dungeon were less real and somehow faded. Will drain, however, seemed to be very real.

The “somehow” left a lot to be desired in the way of explanation.

He’d almost mastered the first version of Magic Missile he’d reconstructed, and he might have done so today if he’d had the Will to try. He’d debated taking a clarity potion, but its cost stayed his hand. Instead, he took out the reading for his history class and got to work.

***

Kole slammed the book shut and checked the time. The reading about the wars between the dwarves and orcs on the pre-Flood Basin had been more interesting than he’d expected. The Will drain had made it a chore, but he’d powered through. Eagerly, he ran through the library, taking a route that would bring him by the secret door. A quick crawl and a peek inside showed that the bed was still undisturbed.

Soon… he thought, staring longingly at the soft bed. The floor of the library was somehow less comfortable than the sewers, which was no small achievement.

Zale, Amara, and Rakin all stood waiting under a tree near the southern door to the martial college. Rakin wore a clean version of the monk’s clothes he’d worn to class. Amara was dressed in the same stained overalls she’d been wearing, only now she wore two small silvery earrings that looked to be runecraft. As usual, she held a half formed blasting rod and fiddled with it as she spoke, and Gus lay draped comfortably on her shoulder.

But Zale stood out. She wore a red leather jacket that was cut short on her long torso, beneath which was a dress of dark emerald green that stopped just below the knee concealing the tops of riding boots. The dress was simple, free of ornamentation but made of a fine fabric and tightly tailored to her frame. Her deep black hair was up in a nest of a thing above her head, which gave Kole the feeling she’d gone to great lengths to make it look just the right amount of messy.

“You’re late,” Rakin said by way of greeting.

“He’s always late,” Zale said in a tone that suggested the habitual nature of the act excused the offense.

“You look nice,” Kole said to Zale before his brain caught up to his mouth. “I mean, uh, you all look nice.”

“Bah!” Rakin laughed, looking at his simple clothes and bare feet.

“Thanks,” Zale and Amara said in unison, Zale with amusement and Amara with oblivious gratitude.

Fumbling, Kole tried to recover.

“I just mean, normally you don’t look nice—I mean you’re dressed for training.”

Zale’s amusement grew, and Rakin bent over in laughter.

“How about we just head to the tavern?” Zale suggested, saving Kole from further embarrassment.

Red-faced, Kole quickly took the lifeline. “Yeah, let’s just do that.”

Zale led the group west, away from campus. While the northern district housed most of the industry and servants that provided for the school itself, the western district served the student body, selling everything they could need—from boots to paper and quill—and some things they only wanted.

Amara wasn’t enjoying the walk. At the campus’ edge, she stopped, pensively rolling her current crafting project in her hand as she and the others watched the milling masses. Finally, after adjusting her new earrings, she nodded at Zale, and the group kept making their way through the streets.

Whatever Amara had prepared for this trip made her deaf to the world. She followed them, eyes fixed on Kole’s soon-to-be blasting rod as a small swarm of ants diligently crawled across it. As oblivious as she was to her surroundings, she seemed to navigate just fine, Gus on her shoulder diligently watching and somehow making her “understand” where to go and what to avoid.

The city on a Friday night was a chaotic hive of young academics racing to start on their weekend. Kole was used to crowds from back home, but the variety of the people he saw still amazed him. Illandrios was primarily a human city before the Flood, with a modest population of halflings who sought refuge there as the water began to rise. Any other races hadn’t been present in large enough numbers to support a population over seven hundred years. Unfortunately, Kole wasn’t the only one enthralled by the exotic humanoids about, and the citizens of Edgewater all gawked and stared at Zale as she passed.

On campus, Zale only brooked stares and a wide berth, the majority of the student population being at least somewhat educated. Many of them were from places that had less fraught histories with the voidlings. The student body also spread rumors like a dragon’s flame to a—well, anything—so the whole campus knew Zale existed and that she probably hadn’t corrupted anyone into a soulless husk—yet.

Edgewater was the town hit hardest when the voidlings arrived, and its citizens remembered, even if most of them weren’t actually alive when it happened.

Zale did her best to hide her appearance without resorting to a magical disguise, flipping the collar up on her jacket, looking down and struggling to keep her ever-present smile in place.

The tavern she brought them to was called the Griffin’s Roost. Its wooden sign was carved to depict a nested griffin, asleep. It wasn’t particularly grand-looking, but it was large, taking up twice the length of the street as either tavern beside it.

Zale went up to the door, and Kole heard her say a faint “finally” as she pushed it open.

The door opened to a big room with a bar on the far wall and a balcony overhead. The walls were lined with booths, and the thick sturdy wooden tables typical to all drinking establishments prone to brawls filled the space between. The place was busy, but not packed. Most of the tables were occupied by the most diverse group Kole had seen since coming to Edgewater—and by extension in his life. Half-elves, orcs, halflings, dwarves, gnomes, Iron Vein giants, and humans filled the place. He spotted a booth in the corner with a horned man who had to be a demonkin sitting next to a genuine full-blooded elf.

As varied as the races were, the outfits were on another level. Almost everyone had a weapon at hand, and most were wearing armor—and not the simple suits you commonly saw issued to city guards and armies, but custom work, ranging from dull steel to colorful enameled pieces that wouldn’t look out of place on a king. Others were dressed in expensive outfits more at home at court than in this seemingly mundane inn.

“Welcome to the Griffin’s Roost,” Zale said, with wonder in her voice. “The best adventurer’s bar in all of Basin.”

CHAPTER 27

Hardball

It is said that the process of creating ensouled artifacts is lost, but that is not strictly true. Many accounts of creating ensouled artifacts still exist. It is simply that following those procedures today doesn’t result in the creation of an ensouled artifact.

—Deckard, Arcum. Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts, 9th ed.

Zale directed the group to a booth and explained once they were seated.

“This place is strictly for adventurers, but they let the prospective adventuring students in so those looking to become mentors get to know the new batch. Any graduate of the Academy’s adventuring program can become a mentor, even if they aren’t faculty. They don’t advertise that students are welcome, though, so best we don’t spread it around.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, no one talks to us anyway,” Kole said, trying to inject some cheer into the comment but failing.

“Speak for yerselves,” Rakin said, “I’m plenty popular.”

Kole hadn’t known that any former graduate could serve as a mentor. Which was a relief. It’d only been a week, but he’d failed to impress any faculty members save for one, who’d categorically refused to mentor an adventurer. It was good to discover there were more options.

“Do we need to show credentials or anything?” Kole asked. He’d gotten his paperwork, but no one had asked for it after his first attempt to enter the library.

“No, it’s fine, the owner used to work with my mother,” Zale answered and then gave a wave to a man behind the bar.

The bartender and proprietor was a man in his sixties with a face that Kole felt he wouldn’t be able to pick out of a lineup if his life depended on it. He was neither ugly nor handsome, striking nor pudgy, he just was.

“He worked in the art department?” Kole asked, eliciting a giggle from Zale.

“You could say that,” she said, then in a whisper continued, “He was—or probably still is—a fence.”

The aforementioned fence noticed Zale and excused himself from the bar to come greet them.

“Who’re your friends?” he asked, without greeting them.

He didn’t sound mad. Instead, he asked the question as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation with him.

“Gimble, this is my team this year at the Academy,” Zale said, gesturing to Kole and Rakin. Hastily she added, “And Amara.”

Zale introduced each one, and after a bit of small talk, Gimble asked them for their orders. Amara and Zale ordered alcoholic drinks Kole had never heard of, and Rakin ordered a blended mushroom beverage that sounded terrible.

When it came to Kole, he said, “I’ll just have some water. I’m not ordering.”

“You ate before you came?” Zale asked, hurt.

“No, I uh—I’d rather not spend the coin,” Kole said.

“Oh, that’s dumb. I’ll cover you.”

Kole debated accepting, but then his stomach growled, making the decision for him.

“Okay, I’ll have whatever ale you have from the floating mats.” He didn’t have much experience drinking, but what little he’d tried came from the druid groves that spotted the ocean, and it hadn’t been too bad.

Better not risk ordering something I can’t handle, he thought.

Zale then ordered food for the whole table, and Gimble left to fetch their drinks. When he’d gone, Zale turned to Kole.

“So, how little money do you have?”

“Just enough to finish out the year—if don’t have to pay for food, at least.”

“Where are you staying? I bet I could find a room for rent on the cheap for you,” Zale offered.

“That’s alright. I’m pretty happy with my accommodations,” Kole deflected. “And I doubt I’ll find anywhere cheaper that I’d be willing to live in.”

The food and drinks came shortly, and they talked amiably while they ate.

“How’s the food?” Zale asked the table.

“Much better than the food back on Stone Haven,” Amara said between bites. Gus was sitting next to her in the booth, out of sight of the other patrons, and she was sneaking him bites. “Rat is still a staple of the island’s diet—not the Understanding kind.”

“Same,” Kole agreed. “We mostly eat fish back home… and the occasional rat, but that’s falling out of fashion now that livestock can be imported from the surface.”

Rakin said, “Aye, I never ate a rat, but monks aren’t exactly known for their indulgences.”

“How angry do you get?” Amara asked suddenly. “It must be bad if you got sent up a mountain to deal with it.”

“Very,” Rakin said and then downed his gross mushroom sludge.

“Rakin also needed help training his primal ability,” Zale interjected. “The monks have historically had great insight into the abilities of the primals, and my aunt thought it would help.”

That seemed odd to Kole. Dimly, he remembered something about stoneweavers that didn’t mesh with that explanation, but the drink was already starting to affect him.

The conversation turned, and Kole told the others more about his own home and all of the apparent wonders of it that seemed mundane to him.

Just as Amara was about to delve into the specifics of how her new earrings canceled out sound, the door opened loudly, and Gray walked in.

“We made it!” he shouted in triumph.

Some of the patrons recognized the group and walked up to shake his hand.

His team had taken a page from Zale’s book and dressed up for the occasion. Gray had donned a black vest with silver buttons over a plain white shirt. Harold wore an outfit like a formal military uniform but without the frills or insignias. Esme’s outfit looked like it cost more than Zale’s armor, with a maroon dress identical in color to Zale’s own but embroidered with fine details and cut to be much more revealing. Mouse, on the other hand, seemed not to have changed after class.

“Crabs,” Kole cursed, taking a long drink and looking away before he got distracted by Esme’s aura.

He saw Zale chewing her lower lip as she watched the newcomers’ interactions, all while Amara continued on about her earrings.

“Looks like your boyfriend is here,” Rakin teased.

“Shut up!” Zale said at the same time Kole asked, “Boyfriend?”

Kole had known from Rakin that Zale had liked the other boy, but the word “boyfriend” was new. He felt his stomach sink and then looked at his drink as if it might be the source.

“Aye, Zale’s had a crush on Harold forever,” Rakin explained.

“Oh,” Kole said simply, understanding then that he was just teasing.

I think it’s safe to assume Rakin is always teasing, Kole noted to himself.

Zale stared at Rakin, nervousness gone and murder in her eyes. Rakin lifted his hands up, signifying he was dropping it. Soon Gray’s party was seated across the room from them. Kole caught Harold looking away quickly.

“Weren’t we going to watch the hardball match?” Amara asked, into the silence.

As if on cue, Gimble rang a bell above the bar and shouted, “Shut your ale holes! It’s starting!”

All eyes turned to the bar as an illusion appeared in the air above it showing a forest floating in the ocean. It was difficult to tell the scale of it, but if the trees were normal-sized and not the behemoths the druids were wont to nurture, the floating island was at least a mile across.

“What in Torc’s name is that?” Rakin asked.

“It’s a floating mat,” Kole supplied. “Assuine’s followers made them during the Flood. They had all the trees of entire forests pull their roots together and then dug moats around them. When the floods came, they eroded away the dirt not bound to the trees and the mats floated off.”

“Oh,” Rakin said, losing interest. “I always pictured them less foresty and more mossy.”

The view circled the island before closing in on the center, where a stone sphere sat in a clearing. Then, the view split, showing two groups of four, each standing on a ship a way off from the island. The first group consisted of four humans—if you considered the two members of the Iron Vein Tribe to be human. The male giant held a heavy stone ax while the female was covered in belts and bandoleers of throwing darts. The two smaller humans were worshipers of Assuine by their garb of plant fibers elegantly grown into clothing. One wielded a bow while the other held a simple tree branch.

The other group was more eclectic. They had an older human male who couldn’t have looked more like a wizard if he’d been wearing a pointed hat and waving a wand. He stood frantically searching through his spellbook as soon as he’d seen the island. With him stood a female archer, who would have passed for a mundane human if not for her sky-blue skin and a constant breeze that blew from her, marking her as an Air primal. A gray-skinned orc and a gnome, each wearing leather armor under a thick overcoat, finished the group.

Murmurs broke out in the tavern as the adventurers recognized some of the contestants. Kole looked at Zale for commentary on who they were, but she was looking over at Gray’s table with a vacant expression.

A light flashed into the sky above the island, and the human with the staff in the first group dove into the water. Moments later, a wave surged as an enormous whale surfaced. The remaining three jumped on its back, and the dart wielder went to her teammates, touched their hands, and knelt with them. Then the whale dove and began to swim for the island at a breakneck pace. The source of the illusionary vision followed the group into the water, showing the three adventurers magically bonded to the whale’s back by their hands, legs floating and dangling behind them.

The other group used a different tactic. As soon as the flare shone, the wizard began casting a spell. It had no visible effect, but after only a few seconds, he shouted something to his team, and they set off. The two overcoated members each pulled a small stone from their jackets and threw them into the ocean even as they began to cast spells. From the orc’s stone, the water surged into a column that shaped itself into a platform large enough to hold the orc. The green-scaled equine head of a hippocamp rose from the gnome’s stone, and the small adventurer jumped onto the back of the aquatic steed. The wizard cast a second spell and took to the sky, the Air primal following under the power of her own innate magic.

The fliers reached the island first and continued on towards the center over the trees. When the whale reached the floating island, its passengers jumped off its back onto the tangle of roots and moss that made up the ground, and then it swam back underwater, disappearing from view. The three broke out into a sprint, the archer leading the way and the trees parting before them as they ran.

The two summoners reached the island last, the gnome dismissing his mount in a cloud of black smoke, while the orc directed his water elemental to follow below. They ran through the forest with much greater difficulty.

When the fliers arrived in the clearing in the center, the primal archer remained in the air, bow drawn and scanning the forest, while the wizard landed to recover the stone hardball. Just as he touched down, the roots of the island itself rose up to grab him. He lunged to the side but only found more roots waiting.

An arrow shot out of the trees towards the hovering archer, and she vanished, turning into air. Reappearing an instant later, she loosed her arrow as soon as she was corporeal.

The captured wizard vanished from his fetters, now in the air with a ball of fire forming in his hand. While the archers exchanged fire, the two tribespeople found the clearing and ran for the stone in the center. The wizard threw the ball of fire to the ground, but the man with the ax bellowed, his tattoos glowing orange as he pushed his ally down on the ground and dove atop her.

The clearing lit up in an eruption. Though the blaze failed to spread to the forest around them, the trees that were hit continued to burn. As soon as the explosion itself vanished, a steel dart flew out of the field, striking the wizard in the shoulder. His means of flight failed him, and he fell to the ground. His ally vanished again but didn’t immediately reappear. Instead, the wizard’s descent slowed.

The dart-wielding primal crawled out from under her scorched teammate and ran to the soot-darkened stone. As she reached for it, water seeped up through the ground, and the cresting wave of a water elemental formed around the stone and the woman who sought to take it.

Rising slowly, his back a mess of burns to which he paid no mind, the giant then charged at the water elemental, only to be tackled to the side by a panther. The two people of the Iron Veins battled their conjured foes, the conjurers themselves nowhere to be seen and their archer ally seemingly taken out by the Fireball.

From within the water elemental, the giantess fought to swim towards that stone, which swirled around her, always just out of her grasp. While she made no progress toward the stone, she sunk to the bottom of the watery creature as she struggled. Just as her feet found purchase, her own tattoos lit up blue, and she jumped, sailing through the water and grabbing the stone as she continued on into the sky.

While she was still airborne, an arrow came from the forest, striking her in the ribs. She disappeared, taken out of the competition by the magic that supported the event. The stone continued upward and then began to shift, moving to the source of the arrow on invisible strings.

The barbarian in the battle with the panther had lost his ax but had his arm around the feline’s neck, choking the beast as it tried to rake him with its back claws. The panther went still before it too vanished into a black mist. But the beast summoner had anticipated the loss of his minion, and as soon as the panther had disappeared, another stone flew toward the giant, growing and expanding into a massive octopus that completely engulfed him. The water elemental moved to aid his fellow conjured ally, and he subsumed them both, giving the octopus a watery environment where it had the edge over the giant. The captured adventurer thrashed futilely, but eventually he went still and vanished as well.

With all her foes down, the Air primal landed with the stone, headed back to her boat with her allies. They ran through the forest, until without warning the ground parted beneath them, and water surged to fill the void. The Air primal took to the air to avoid falling, but the conjurers weren’t so lucky. Before she could depart, however, a whale breached the roiling surface, mouth agape, swallowing the flier whole.

The mat parted before the whale’s breach, allowing it to fall through the vegetation and back into the ocean below. The view followed the whale back to its boat, where it breached once more, turning back into a man with a stone ball in one palm and a staff in the other. He landed on the deck with a bit of a stumble, but once there, focused on the stone in his hand, willing it to shatter, ending the match.

The tavern broke out into cheers of victory and wails of defeat as the adventurers set out to settle their wagers.

***

“I totally forgot about the whale,” Kole admitted on their slightly inebriated walk back to campus. They’d stayed a few hours after the conclusion of the match to carouse with the adventurers—and avoid their fellow classmates—and were making their way back just before the campus curfew of midnight.

“How’d you forget about the flooding whale?” an entirely sober Rakin chastised him.

“Why aren’t you drunk?” a less-than-sober Kole shot back. “Isn’t that a thing with dwarves?”

Kole’s brain caught up to his mouth too late, and he covered his mouth with a hand. To his surprise, Rakin laughed.

“Bah! Dwarves do love their drink, but they don’t often actually get drunk. I don’t drink, though. It’s part of my training. It damages the body and disrupts the flow of ki.”

“Key? Key to what?”

Rakin sighed.

“Ask me tomorrow—if you remember.”

“I think we’re lost,” Zale—also drunk—said from the front.

Far too loudly, Kole shouted, “Oh! I know! Amara! Where’s your bird?”

“She went home with a letter,” Amara said and then let out a big yawn. “Can we just sleep here?”

“Bah! Children!” Rakin grumbled. “Follow me.”

He took the lead and tried to maze his way through the unfamiliar city. Rakin knew he had to travel east to return to campus. He only had to figure out which way that was.

CHAPTER 28

Study Group

While ensouled artifacts can no longer be created, soul stones can be used to enhance and empower enchantments, but the secret to this process is closely guarded by enchanters, and this author will not risk their ire by publicizing their secrets.

—Deckard, Arcum. Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts, 9th ed.

Eight o’clock in the morning found three hungover students mushing food around their plates in silence and one gloating dwarf, seated in the dining hall of the art college. Rakin had navigated them back to campus, where Kole had said goodbye, then run around a building before turning invisible and running to the library. His food stash had been disturbed by his rodent friend once more, but he’d passed out without noticing.

Kole stared at his breakfast unable to eat and contemplated taking one of his clarity potions to at least banish the headache. Only the recent revelation about their apparent price stayed his hand.

“I’m never drinking again,” Amara moaned.

Gus sat in her lap, somehow looking as pathetic as his master.

“Is Gus hungover too?” Zale asked, voice full of concern.

“No, he just understands the pain I’m in and feels bad.”

They eventually forced down their food and drank extra cups of coffee—or tea, in Rakin’s case. While he wasn’t hungover, they’d gotten back quite late, and the dwarf was as tired as any of them. Coffee, it seemed, was also on the list of foods and drinks the monks of his order avoided.

***

“Just this way. We’re almost there,” Zale told the group for at least the third time. They were navigating the bowels of the art college, passing room after room of statues and paintings collecting dust.

“Here it is!” She walked into a room filled with musical instruments. Kole eyed several seafolk instruments that only worked underwater.

“Finally,” groaned Rakin.

They made their way through to a door on the far end of the room, one hidden from view behind a freestanding dressing mirror covered in a sheet.

“Why the secrecy?” Kole asked when Zale scanned the room before opening it.

“Um, no reason,” she lied, terribly.

“I think she’s lying,” Amara whispered loudly to Kole.

“We know,” Rakin and Kole said in unison.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Zale said and walked in, ending the discussion.

While clearly there was a reason for the secrecy, still they could tell she was truthful when she said there was nothing to fear.

The room beyond was certainly not in the basement of the art college. It was similar to the adventuring class training room, but both smaller and more ornate. Where the walls of the other classroom were bare, this circular wall was set with stained-glass windows of battles and scenes of the gods from the creation of Kaltis. One portion was covered by a slate and had a dozen or so desks in front of it, while the rest were dedicated to training, with sand pits, target dummies, weapons, and anything one might need to train in combat martial or magical.

“Woah,” Kole and Amara said together.

Rakin let out an exasperated sigh.

“Why’d ye put the door all the way down here?! We coulda gotten here from anywhere!”

“Wait, what?” Kole asked. “What do you mean? Where are we?”

“We’re in the Dahn,” Zale said with a grin. “Not all of it is open to the public.”

“You can move the—”

“Azalea, dear! You brought new friends!”

All eyes turned to a woman standing in the center of the room—a spot that had been empty a moment before.

“Azalea?” Kole whispered.

Zale’s—or “Azalea’s”—face began to darken in embarrassment.

“This is my mother. Mom, these are my friends Kole and Amara that I told you about.”

“That’s the woman from the convocation who spoke of butts,” Amara whispered to Kole.

“So nice to finally meet you all! My darling Zale has told me very little about you. I’m Headmistress Shalia, but you can all call me Lia.”

“Please don’t,” Zale whispered, with her hand rubbing her forehead.

Zale’s mother sighed and added in a bored tone, “Or ’Professor Shalia,’ I suppose, if you don’t want to be that casual—but none of that ‘headmistress’ nonsense. Come sit, and let’s get to know each other. We are waiting for two more students, but one seems to have gotten lost on his way to the city, so he may not make it today.”

Before they reached the desks, another door burst open and was slammed shut. A tall, athletic girl stood, back pushed against the door, holding it shut as something banged on the back.

“What the flood, Lia?!” the newcomer cursed as she gasped for breath.

“Ah, there she is now,” Shalia said. “I would like to introduce you all to my apprentice Runt.”

The banging grew quiet, and Runt cautiously took her back off the door and walked over to the group.

“You never said anything about shadow hounds.”

“True,” Shalia replied, “but I never said anything about there not being shadow hounds. You really need to learn to ask more questions.”

“You never answer my questions!”

“Well then, you should also learn to ask better ones,” Shalia said offhandedly.

Up close, Kole saw that “Runt” was six feet tall and looked to be stronger than Zale’s unnatural voidy strength. She had long brown hair tied into a braid down her back, wearing black leather pants and a matching sleeveless tunic with the top few toggles undone. Her arms and the area below her neck bore the black outlines of a half-finished tattoo.

“Ehem.” Runt gave an exaggerated cough. “My eyes are up here.”

“I—um,” Kole sputtered, turning red. “I was looking at your tattoos.”

“Fah, another one,” Runt said, disappointed, looking at Zale, whose own unique blushing had only grown deeper.

“Well, let’s get started, then,” Shalia told the group.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Uncle?” Zale asked.

“You know what it’s like to wait for that man,” Shalia answered with a heavy meaning Zale seemed to pick up on.

She continued, “You’re all here because you’re primals who, for some reason or other, have not received proper training in your Font. This group will be a time for you all to experiment with your abilities in a safe and supervised environment—if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I think it’s more fun to learn on the job. Anyway, my… colleague—who will show up at some point, I’m sure—is something of an expert on Illusion primals. He’ll be here as a resource and guide for you all to better learn to wield your abilities.”

She directed each student to a desk, where papers sat with questions about them.

“I know, I know, this is hardly exciting, but if you would all be so kind as to fill out the details of your abilities, your history of training, what you can do, and what you think you might be able to learn, this will make things easier for whenever he actually arrives.”

Rakin and Runt let out groans, but the rest got to work without complaint—save for Zale, who took her mother to the side for some harsh, frustrated words. Kole watched as her mother simply took it with a smile and a nod.

Kole filled out the paper truthfully, giving a rundown of all that he could do and all that he had tried. Most of his writing revolved around his trouble with wizardry, but he did mention his ability to turn invisible, and his other ability to make others ignore items. He felt he would need to trust Zale’s uncle with these details to get any help—he just wished he could have met the man before sharing them.

Afterward, the group was given time to talk alone while Professor Shalia went to “find that bookish moron.”

“So, what’s your uncle like?” Kole asked and then added, “Or, I don’t know, his name?”

Zale had a lot of “aunts” and “uncles” she spoke of frequently, but she wasn’t equally open about them, and Kole had never gotten the names of most.

Zale gave an overly large smile, signaling to Kole that she was about to dodge the question.

“He’s pretty bookish, but I wouldn’t call him a moron.”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if you’d seen him try to talk a town into abandoning their homes in advance of a coming horde of trolls,” the professor called from across the room, entering from a door she’d not left through.

Behind her walked a man of average height, dressed in a less formal version of the loose-fitting clothing the Stormcaller of a ship clan wore. He wore an open front tunic, but instead of being tied with toggles, one side of it tucked inside the other, and a belt held it all shut. While the Stormcallers wore long, tied sleeves, his were cut short at the elbows. Kole guessed him to be in his late thirties or early forties, but for some reason, he was having difficulty getting a sense of his age. He looked healthy and fit, in a not-particularly-muscular way, but had streaks of gray in his brown hair.

The man sighed and then said with the air of an oft-repeated excuse, “Burning the town down with the trolls trapped was a good idea!”

“Class, this is…” Shalia gestured to the man and trailed off.

“Mage Tallen,” he finished for her. “I’m going to be popping in from time to time to assist you kids.”

Both Zale and her mother let out a small chuckle at his comment, though Kole couldn’t see the humor in it. The laughs drew a wide smile from the mage. Kole could tell he was missing some context for all of these interactions, and it was beginning to annoy him.

“Well, your daughter thinks I’m funny, at least.”

“Mage Tallen?” Amara asked uncertainly.

“Yes? And you are…”

“Oh! Amara, um, Understanding primal Amara? I mean…” she sputtered, flustered by having all the attention of even this small gathering. “Are you a professor? A master?”

“Oh, that. No problem, Amara—can I just call you Amara?”

He asked the last with a small grin. When she nodded, he continued.

“I’m not a professor at the Academy, but I’m—you could say—affiliated with the Academy. I prefer the title of mage. You know, the first to call themselves mages were the sorcerers who discovered the art of wizardry. It was reserved for only the most powerful of casters. After the Flood, the title got appropriated by the Tower, and it came to refer to any wizard. As something of a ’traditionalist,’ I prefer to use that title. Honorifics like ’Grand Master’ and ’Archmage’ just feel so pretentious, don’t you think?”

Kole was a bit taken aback by the explanation. The titles of wizards were earned through years of study and toil. For this “mage” to just cast them aside for the antiquated and now general-use term was odd.

Among mainland wizards, the ranks started with Initiate, for a wizard who’d opened their bridge and learned their first cantrip. Once a wizard learned a first-tier spell, they were elevated to Novice until they mastered second-tier magic, where they gained the rank of Apprentice. Generally at this point, a master would take them on for specialized study.

If the wizard was able to then learn third-tier magic, they achieved the rank of Adept, where most wizards ended their advancement. The rank of Master required a wizard to master sixth-tier magic, and many never advanced beyond the third.

The Stormcallers had their own ranks with similar criteria for advancement, but the competence both expected from a Master was comparable.

Is he weak? Ashamed of only being an Adept at the age of somewhere-over-forty? Or… could he be humble?

Kole had learned that Grand Master Lonin was the most powerful mage of the Dahn, and one of the most powerful of Basin. He’d not heard of this Tallen in his research into potential mentors, but from what Zale said, he was a new arrival. How strong was he?

“So, let’s get introduced, and you can show me what you can do.”

While he asked to be shown what everyone could do, Mage Tallen seemed to already know. All their papers still sat uncollected on the desks where they’d left them.

Was he spying on us?

Amara went first and demonstrated her ability to guide her ants to carve patterns. She also introduced him to Gus and showed her how they could work together without communicating.

“Fascinating,” he said as Amara drew something that Gus was looking at. Somehow he didn’t sound surprised.

Tallen turned to Zale and asked, “That reminds, me, did you ever get rid of those pack rats?”

“No,” Kole found himself answering before he realized it.

“Oh, good. They began to grow on me. You must be Kole. Why don’t you demonstrate what you can do next.”

“Alright,” Kole agreed.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a quill, holding it out in his palm for everyone to see, but Willing them not to notice it with his primal abilities. He stood there still for a few moments until everyone began to wonder what was happening. At that point, he could sense their attention trying to fix itself on the hidden quill, and his Will began to drain slowly from him. Then he let the ability lapse, and all their eyes locked onto the quill.

“Where did that come from?” Zale asked. “Did you Conjure it?”

“No, I pulled it from my pocket, but I used the Font of Illusions to make you not notice it.”

“I could find a use or two for that,” Runt said. “What else can you do?”

Kole turned the quill invisible this time, before turning invisible himself.

Runt cursed.

“Well, that’s not flooding fair. Mage Tallen, do you think there’s a way to trade primal abilities? I think I want his.”

Finally, someone that can’t see me, Kole thought, satisfied.

“Don’t get distracted by the shiny magic, dear,” Shalia interjected. “The real magic is convincing people they want to give you the things you take from them.”

“Anything else?” Tallen asked, bringing them back on topic.

“I can cast a few spells, but it’s difficult. I struggle to open gates.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, not asking any of the follow-ups that Kole anticipated. “Who’s next?”

They each went in turn, showing what they could do. As they went on, Kole felt a little cheated. To everyone else, Tallen gave some advice on ways to proceed, offered tips, provided feedback on their current plans, and asked for elaborations, but when Kole had gone, he’d hardly seemed interested.

“Each of you should begin to work on building your mental vault if you have not done so already,” he said after Runt had walked up a wall, hands and feet adhering to the surfaces as she drew upon the Font of Bonds. “The mental vault is extremely useful, even for those with no magic to their name. For you all, it will be invaluable. If you do have a vault, we will discuss next week how you can use it. For now, work on what we discussed, and I’ll see you all next week.”

What? That’s it?

Kole opened his mouth to protest, but then the man vanished, teleporting away. He stood, mouth agape, wondering what had just happened. He’d thought this man, this alleged primal expert would steer him toward exactly what he needed. But instead, he’d basically ignored him and then left without giving him any aid.

He collected himself—closing his mouth—and turned to Zale.

“That wasn’t very helpful.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low tone. While the rest of the group was working on Tallen’s suggestions, Zale was standing by Kole, having not received any feedback either. “I don’t know why he ignored you like that. He’s usually very helpful. He loves teaching.”

“You know that makes me feel worse, not better, right?”

“Sorry!” she repeated. “I’m sure next week will be better.”

“Class dismissed!” Professor Shalia shouted. “Girls, come along. I have a weekend trip planned for us.”

Zale and Runt let out a simultaneous groan and whoop of excitement, respectively.

“I’m sorry, Kole. Really. I’ll see you Monday. I have to go embarrass myself, or help Runt do something stupid.”

“Stay as long as you like,” Shalia told the others as she ushered her daughter and student out.

They left through a door that opened to a nondescript hall, Zale giving an apologetic wave as she closed it behind her and mouthed “sorry” yet again.

CHAPTER 29

The Weekend

Of the Bladed Knights of Illandrios, the Mirage Knights are the ones most widely known. Many outside of Illandrios could be forgiven for thinking the city’s connection to the Font of Illusions was the origin of this order, but the Mirage Knights are the inheritors of a legacy that predates the discovery of the Font of Illusions.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

After Zale left, Kole, Rakin and Amara stayed in the training hall a while longer. Rakin was focusing on expanding the range of his stone sense while Amara was trying to glean “understandings” from mundane objects.

Kole was reading a book, angrily trying to forget about Tallen’s lack of advice.

“Can we get out of here?” Kole asked, slamming the book down.

“Okay.” Amara set her quill down on the desk.

“Nah,” Rakin, said, eyes still closed in concentration. “I’m staying.”

Kole asked Amara, “What do you have planned for today?”

“Well…” she began, looking at the ground as she twirled her toe, tracing a circle. “I was going to go look for my sister.”

“Alright, let’s go, then.”

“Really?! You’ll help?” She almost made eye contact in the excitement.

“Yeah. I said I would. Didn’t I?”

I said that, right? I’m was pretty sure I did.

Amara pulled a familiar-looking device out of her pocket.

“This is a tracker I built to find my sister, like the paired ones we have. It uses the Font of Understanding as a conduit and filters out…” She trailed off, looking at the small stone object. “It’s broken. It was working before. I swear!”

The stack of disks was moving erratically, pointing in one direction, then spinning for a while before stopping, pointing in another direction, and spinning randomly once more.

“Well, it was sort of working before. It would jump around a little, but nothing like this.”

Amara continued to stare at the device, chewing her lip.

“Do you want to go fix it?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks, see you later!” she said in a breath, running out of the room.

Kole smiled, watching her go. He’d been willing to help her search, but he hadn’t exactly been excited about it. His study into the new version of Shield had almost reached a breaking point. If he could focus this weekend, he’d be able to learn the new version of the spell.

Then he recalled his assignments for the week, and his smile faded. He knew himself well enough to know that if he let himself start working on spells, he’d wake up Monday morning with nothing else accomplished.

Kole left the strange basement room to make his way to the college proper. The sun was high in the sky, and he took a moment to marvel at it. The Globe of Day, the great orb of light at the apex of the dome back home, had been a magical wonder, but it paled in comparison to the natural beauty of the sun. Though Kole supposed the sun itself was a magical wonder, created by the gods using the Fonts just as man had created the light in Illandrios, only, much, much grander.

Since he had the time, he went out into the city to buy some food for the weekend. He didn’t plan on leaving the library once he’d entered, and he hoped his presence would keep any time-traveling rats away—not that it had the last time.

His judgment was compromised in his rush to get through the chore of shopping.

Kole eventually made his way back to his corner of the library with a bag full of food, and slightly lighter on coin.

The first assignment to get out of the way was for WIZ 204. He had already settled on two of the spells he would learn for the year: Shield and Magic Missile. The third he was still uncertain of, and if he was being honest with himself, he had no prospects.

But, as with most of Kole’s problems, he was ignoring it, trusting in his future self to deal with it.

For the purposes of the assignment, he wrote down Sleep. As a nonlethal spell that could deal with large numbers of smaller enemies, it filled two large holes in his repertoire. No matter what he discovered, he doubted that he’d ever suffer from a preponderance of spell options, so it would be wise if he picked up spells useful in multiple situations instead of highly specialized ones.

It took him half an hour to write up his reasoning for his spell selection, and then he moved on to his alchemy and history. These assignments were just reading, which was simple but time-consuming.

As soon as he finished his last chapter on the ill-fated Midlian expedition to the pre-Flood Basin, he slammed the book down and pulled out the old spellbook from the library he’d been working on. He’d nearly finished copying the spellform into his own spellbook. The process was arduous and required him to reconstruct the faded and damaged components by referencing other available spellforms, both in his spellbook and elsewhere, but once he’d done that, he could move on to the hopefully easier phase.

His supply of Will-conductive ink was running dangerously low, but he expected that he had enough to finish this one spell. Though the ink was expensive back home, he hoped the cost would be more affordable in the city. If not, at least he wouldn’t be any more homeless than he already was if he ran out of funds.

Getting by on only Zale’s breakfasts wouldn’t be easy, but he wouldn’t starve—unless these weekend trips were a regular thing. He resolved to ask about that as soon as he could think of a way to do so without sounding like a desperate beggar.

After hours of hunch-backed toil, he was just about to finish, but Kole couldn’t ignore the rumble in his stomach any longer. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew it to be late. His desire to continue wrestled with his hunger, but his hunger won out.

“I should probably take a break,” he said to himself.

Grabbing a block of cheese and apple as his meal, Kole took a stroll through the stacks, intending to check on the hidden room. Walking around helped clear his head, and he often connected the dots to problems in these mid-study strolls, though getting himself to remember to take one was always a challenge.

In the hidden room, the bed he’d made looked just as he’d left it after his first visit, but the mayonnaise had been cleaned up. That in itself meant nothing, since the Dahn had self-cleaning magic at work.

He sat on the bed to eat and looked at the wall. At some point he couldn’t recall, his sitting turned to lying, and that in turn became sleep.

The first thing Kole noticed upon waking was the lack of pain. If a bedroll existed that could make the stone floor of the Dahn’s library comfortable, it was out of Kole’s price range, and he’d woken up stiff and sore every day of the past week. Today he felt refreshed. Eventually, his brain caught up with him, and he realized he must have fallen asleep in the possibly occupied room.

Kole jumped to his feet, casting Invisibility as he did, but a quick scan showed the room to be empty. Quickly—and still invisible—he made the bed, putting in his marking folds, and snuck out the door into the library. As he was crawling through the small hole in the shelf he’d created, arms spread out ahead of him, he noticed something else. His clothes were clean.

They hadn’t exactly been filthy before, but he was a teenage boy, and that came with certain odors he lacked the magics or funds to mitigate. Bathing at the martial college every day helped a lot, but his three sets of clothing had been in need of a thorough washing.

Now, armpit in his own face, he realized it didn’t smell too bad.

Did the Dahn’s enchantments clean my clothes while I slept?

He really hoped no one was using that room and he could move in.

“Flood!” he shouted to himself when his nook came back into view. He saw three rats digging through his bag of food. They scurried away as he ran, disappearing into the books on the shelves, but the damage was done. He took what he could salvage out of the chewed-up bag and threw the rest back into the destroyed satchel.

Angry, frustrated, and hungry—but not sleepy, stinky, or sore—Kole got back to work.

Some unknowable amount of time later—but not a small amount judging by the sleepiness, stink, and back pain Kole had regained—he finished his task.

Before him sat a completed spellform, but more than that, each little painstakingly scribed swirl and squiggle was filled with Will. He’d checked, double-checked, and then triple-checked, found a mistake, fixed it, and checked it all again, but now he’d done it.

The spellform was finished. The spell was imbued into it, and most importantly, stored in Kole’s mind. Now all he had to do was test it. What he wouldn’t do for a rat at that moment.

Thinking of rats, Kole turned to his pile of ruined food scraps and pulled out an apple core. He shifted his desk into the middle of the racks, placed the apple core on it, and walked back a dozen paces.

Without further ado, Kole filled the mental spell template with his Will, recreating the spell in an instant, and then tried to move his bridge so it would open at the requisite gate. This was the tricky part.

The Will cost of a spell was a complicated interplay of spell and path complexity: one could be sacrificed for the other, but the end cost was multiplicative, not additive, making it an art to balance. Unfortunately for Kole, the Will cost for him to move his bridge was exorbitant, and making it so much as budge was like fighting with reality itself. But budge it did.

Will flowed from him, into the Arcane Realm, returning just as it left. He spoke the verbal component of the spell, infusing this too with Will, preparing the Material Realm to accept the magic of the Arcane more easily.

“Roh-Ka!”

Three faint shimmers of light shot from his outstretched hand toward the apple core in the blink of an eye. The first obliterated the core, and the next two shot past it, thankfully striking the ground harmlessly.

“Oops,” he said to himself. “Maybe I don’t test spells here again… Offensive ones, at least.”

He thought back to the Will he’d just expended. It had definitely been less than his old version, which cost him 40 Will. But only by a little, maybe 10 or 20 percent, putting it in the range of 32 to 36 Will. He was a little disappointed, but at the same time, it gave him hope. Coming to the Dahn had been the right choice. This place held the keys to his problems, he just had to find them. Even if no one seemed willing to help.

Just then, the high-pitched whine of his alarm went off, signaling it was time to wake up and meet Zale for training.

“Flood,” he said.

Either he’d slept much longer than he realized, or he’d truly been lost in his work. Probably a combination of the two, he reflected, but in either case, this day was going to be unpleasant.

He ran off to meet Zale, dread for the weary day ahead tempered by his recent success.

CHAPTER 30

Monday

The military of Illandrios always had a strong basis in magic. While no successful military on Kaltis could protect its home long without magical support, Illandrios formed their armed forces around their magical units, whereas most nations used their magic to support their larger mundane armies.

The Arch Mages of Illandrios were the flashiest and more memorable assets, each supported by armies of lesser mages and soldiers, but they were not their only core magical force. While the means of crafting ensouled artifacts have been lost, many nations integrated the items into their society in the century between the discovery and loss of the art.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

“You look like Runt after a bender,” Zale told Kole by way of greeting when he arrived at the training yard. “Rough weekend?”

“I lost track of time working on a spell,” Kole said, rubbing his eyes and internally cursing the sun. “How was your trip?”

Zale’s amused smile dropped.

“Awful. Mom had us compete to see who could collect more money panhandling. She left us in New Lakeside with some filthy sackcloth and then disappeared.”

“Did you do it?”

“My mother’s training trips aren’t exactly optional.”

“…Did you at least win?”

“Only technically. Runt got more money, but she started picking pockets and got disqualified.”

“I’m sure she resorted to cheating because she knew you were winning,” Kole said, trying to cheer her up.

“Maybe,” Zale said, “but she tends to cheat just to see if she can get away with it. I think that’s actually a large part of Mom’s training. If it hadn’t been clear that Runt had cheated by the gold coins in her sack, she probably would have gotten away with it.”

“What did you win?”

Excitement returned to Zale’s face.

“A new sword!” she shouted. “I almost forgot. It’s nothing exciting or special, but it’s solid, and my old one was from the Academy’s stores, which means some student made it as a project. Which reminds me.”

She walked over to the weapon rack and lifted a quarterstaff from amongst the rest.

“You can have this,” Zale said, tossing him the weapon. “I never use it anymore, except for ’bonks,’ but I can just borrow one for that.”

Kole caught the thick wooden rod and gave it a few practice twirls. He hardly had the skills or knowledge to judge the heft and balance of even a weapon as simple as this, but it seemed sturdy enough.

“Thanks!” he said, but then added, “For this, not for the ’bonks.’”

“Don’t mention it. Now if Amara comes through with that blasting rod, we’ll be in good shape to take out those goblins. Let’s try out your new staff.”

The two proceeded to spar, but Kole’s sleep deprivation soon became apparent.

“You’re way too tired for this. You’re almost asleep on your feet,” Zale said after disarming him for the third time.

“Thank the gods,” he said in relief. “Breakfast?”

Zale smiled. Channeling her mother, she said, “A good run should wake you up.”

A half-hour later, Kole lay in the grass, gasping for air, exhausted, but no longer sleepy.

“I. Hate. You,” he rasped between breaths.

***

During breakfast, Zale gave Kole more details on the various trips her mother took her on.

“I thought you weren’t training with her anymore,” Kole asked.

“I wish,” Zale said, wistfully. “I’m not her apprentice, but she still makes me act as a sort of training rival for Runt. She has me use the disguise bracelet and uses me to goad Runt on. Runt… has a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She doesn’t like losing. It’s not not useful training, but it’s not something I’m passionate about. I don’t like the underhandedness of it all.”

Kole felt this was the perfect opportunity to inquire about his weekend meal plans without sounding too much like a leech.

“So… are these, like, every weekend?”

“Thank Waas not,” Zale said, swearing by the goddess of art and air.

“Oh, good,” Kole said, feeling more relief than he expected.

“So, what did you all get up to while we were gone?”

“Amara and I tried to search for her sister, but the tracker she’d built wasn’t working. She went to fix it, and I worked on finishing my latest spell.”

“Oh yeah! You mentioned that. How did it turn out?”

Kole shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but couldn’t hide his smile.

“It was an improvement. It means I’m on the right track, but it’s not going to let me pass WIZ 204 this semester unless I keep improving it. I was hoping your uncle would have been more helpful.”

“Sorry about that,” Zale said. “He usually won’t stop explaining things and trying to teach. My mom hates it. I don’t know why he didn’t have anything for you.”

“It’s fine, I guess,” Kole said solemnly. “No one’s helped me so far, and I’ve been doing alright.”

“Don’t be like that, I’m sure he’ll come around.”

***

Kole and Zale talked on the way to class, trying to ignore the way people avoided them, but Kole was beginning to tell when Zale was hiding her sadness and couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“Is my talking to you making all this worse?” Kole asked, gesturing to the people scrambling to get out of their way.

“Ha! No. Not at all,” Zale said with a genuine laugh. “If anything, I’m more likely the reason people are avoiding you than any rumor Gray might have spread—though…” She grew worried. “He might have been harsher on the rumor when he found out we were friends. Oh, Wardens, I’m sorry. I’m ruining everything.”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault!” Kole rushed to reassure her. “No one liked me back home anyway. I’m probably just—you know—super unlikable.”

“That’s kind of you to suggest, but it’s not true,” Zale said, kindly, but then added, “You’re only, like, a little unlikable.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

“Yeah, it’s the tardiness and overall cheapness that really do it,” she explained amenably.

“Not the body odor?” Kole asked, playing along.

“Well, now that you mention it, maybe you’re just very unlikeable—but definitely not ’super unlikable.’”

They continued trying to own the blame for the other’s pariah-ship until they made it to alchemy, whereupon they sat in a pair of empty seats, only for the people seated on either side of them to move away. This time they both laughed.

Kole supposed that having a small group of friends went a long way in helping him cope with this, and he wondered briefly how life could have been back home if he’d just become a Mirage Knight. His primal instincts didn’t work right, but if he’d worked at it as hard as he had at his wizardry, he likely would have figured it out—and received help in doing so.

Alchemy class for the day was a pop quiz based on the reading, and Kole did his best to remember all the horrible, bone-melting side effects of mixing certain alchemical ingredients.

One of Professor Donglefore’s teaching assistants came out after the papers had been collected and continued hammering home the dangers of alchemy with paintings of some of the worse maladies it could impart.

“This is terrible,” Kole whispered.

“Don’t worry,” Zale whispered back, “it’s only the first two weeks, to hammer home the caution. Later on, we’ll actually start to learn things.”

By the end of the hour, Kole’s mind was occupied with dozens of images he’d rather not remember, and he made a note to read up on mental vault exercises. Many peoples’ mental vaults preserved mundane memories. It stood to reason one could use the same vault to muddy the details of an unpleasant one, or maybe even seal it away.

With an hour between classes, the pair went to study hall to work on the homework they’d just been given.

***

The energy Kole had regained from the morning’s activities was gone by the time he sat down for Professor Gromck’s lecture. He tried to hold strong, but after only five minutes of theories on the disappearance of the pre-Flood humans of Basin, Kole was asleep, face down on his desk.

***

Kole and Zale went to the library after class to start planning a way to defeat the goblins that coming Friday. He stopped himself—barely—from heading through the stacks to his secret corner.

“So…” he said awkwardly, “…can I copy your notes from today?”

Rolling her eyes, Zale plunked her notes down onto the table and then went to find a book. It was a lot of notes.

***

Kole’s hand was cramping by the time he’d finished copying the notes into the new-to-him but very much not new journal he’d found. Sleeping through history class had at least given him enough rest to make it through the remainder of the day.

“You done?” Zale asked, looking up from her book when she saw him stretching his hand.

“Yeah,” Kole answered.

She handed him a book.

“Good, now read this.”

Another hour later, Kole put down the book about goblins.

“This is pretty dry,” Kole said, with a sigh.

“Did you at least learn anything?” Zale asked, putting her own book about woodcraft down.

“Actually yeah. Did you know that before the Last Dragon War, goblins were nothing more than tool-using feral dogs? The dragons did something to them, made them smarter, but didn’t give them any sort of empathy.”

“I did know that, actually. I did grow up dreaming to be an adventurer listening to my mother’s tales of that…” Zale trailed off, as had become a pattern when she mentioned something she hadn’t intended to, though Kole had no idea what she was so poorly concealing.

“…sort of thing,” she finished.

Zale threw a balled-up piece of paper, striking Kole on the nose to distract him from her blunder.

“Sorry,” she said, “carry on.”

“So kind of you. Well, they are cunning. They lay traps—”

“We knew that,” Zale pointed out, sharply, having become intimately familiar with said traps. “Sorry, continue.”

“They lay traps,” he repeated, “But not as well as kobolds. They rely mostly on trip wires and rockfalls—which we knew already.”

“So, nothing new?”

“I’m getting to that! At their hearts, they are cowards. Their lairs usually have a rear entrance they use to escape if their traps fail them. If we can find that, we can get the jump on them.”

“That could be useful… if any of us had any skill in tracking.”

“Do you think Rakin can figure it out?” Kole asked. “It is in a cave, after all.”

They spent another hour looking over the books Zale had gathered and learned a little bit more. Some goblin clans manifested sorcery, though they never grew particularly powerful due to their short lifespans. However, they could grow quite magically powerful if they received the Blessing of the trickster god Jester.

Jester, whose real name was lost to time, was a court jester who traveled from kingdom to kingdom, killing nobles and royals alike through elaborate traps and tricks.

Those Blessed by the chaotic god could perform a whole host of magics, such as forcing their foes to fall into fits of laughter and sowing magical confusion.

Once the books started to repeat themselves, they called it a night.

“Dinner?” Zale asked.

As Kole began shoving his belongings back into his torn-up bag, she no doubt wondered why she even bothered to ask.

***

An hour later, an overly stuffed Kole parted ways with Zale as they left the dining hall. They’d gone to the martial college to eat, the staff at that facility being the least put off by Zale thanks to her frequent visits and the evident lack of anyone becoming a mindless husk as a result.

As Kole walked back to the library, holding his satchel awkwardly to prevent his “leftovers” from falling out, he heard the tone of a lecturer on the green.

“—can be used to find pocket realms. The spatial disruptions they create aren’t noticeable to the naked eye, but if one has accurate star charts, the presence of a pocket realm will be noticeable by the distortion of the stars’ light. The Dahn itself exhibits this effect.”

Kole looked around to ensure he was alone, then turned invisible and snuck close to the class. He’d never heard of this method of detecting pocket realms. Finding them was important for his eventual long-term plans, but he had enough magical problems, and that one had seemed less urgent.

The professor was an old human woman who looked like she’d been around when the stars were formed. Kole sat, listening to her lecture—which he judged to be for at least Apprentice wizards in at least their second or third year—and was fascinated. The professor eventually dismissed the class and instructed them to return Wednesday at the same time to learn other ways the stars could be used for divination.

Kole vowed to be here. He had a lot on his plate, but he’d definitely make time for this.

CHAPTER 31

Chase

Soul stones, when used to create an ensouled item, use the affinities and skills of the creator, and the intent of the object they are crafted in, to create an ensouled artifact with a purpose. The less focused the purpose an object has, the more nebulous and tailored towards the maker’s need the artifact becomes. This also has the effect of making the artifact pickier about who it Bonds.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

The next day, Kole was much more well-rested for his training with Zale. They kept sparring, keeping themselves fresh for the conditioning they’d have in class.

Martial 101 was much the same as it had been the week before with one notable exception.

It happened outside the locker rooms. Kole and Zale stayed after class for extra practice, then went to change.

“So, this one’s with you?” a booming voice said from behind Kole.

Kole froze, recognizing the distinct tone and accent of the giant teacher.

“He’s not so bad,” Zale joked, looking up above Kole’s head to the man behind him.

“He looks pretty bad—no offense.”

“None taken,” Kole said, lowering his weapon and turning around to face Tigereye. “I am pretty bad.”

“That is the purpose of the class. But I heard you fared well against that goblin creature attack. Bravery is harder to learn than combat. If Zale does not give up on you, you will figure it out. Carry on.”

When the Iron Vein tribesman had left, Kole whirled on Zale.

“What was that all about?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Zale asked, biting her lip.

“Tell me what?”

“Oh, well, he trained me. My mom wouldn’t, so I asked him to. He hates deception and tricks and took it as a point of pride to help rid me of her ‘dishonorable ways.’”

Before Kole could follow up, their conversation was interrupted again.

“Zale!” Harold shouted.

He and Gray were making their way towards them.

That was a training rapier on Gray’s hip, not the staff typical to wizards. Harold had training versions of the large and short sword he’d had at class on Friday.

“Ugh, I don’t want to deal with this today,” Zale whispered to Kole and then shouted louder, “What do you want?”

“You’ve been avoiding us,” Gray accused while Harold stood beside him looking hurt.

“Ha!” Zale laughed, a little manically. “Me? Avoiding you? You’ve been avoiding me for months!”

“We haven’t been avoiding you,” Gray said, some of his righteous anger deflated while for his part, Harold’s piteous look turned mournful. “It’s just taking us a while to come to grips with the revelation of… what you are.”

Harold finally grew frustrated enough to jump in.

“We were just surprised,” he said, gesturing for Gray to shut up. “It’s a big secret to hide for so long, and we just didn’t handle it well and… stayed away while we processed it.”

“That sounds a lot like avoiding,” Kole interjected.

“Shut up,” Gray snapped at him, jumping back in. Harold winced as his friend dug a deeper hole for themselves. “You’re why I’m here. You are going to get our friend Zale killed with your incompetence, and I won’t sit around and let it happen.”

“Oh, we’re ’friends’?” Zale asked, feigning cheer. “You hear that, Kole? We’re all ‘friends.’ I thought Kole was my only friend, since, you know, he’s spoken to me, and not shunned me, and stood up to my old ’friend’ when they came back trying to tell me how to live my life.”

“He can’t even do magic!” Gray shouted, not willing to let Zale change the topic. “I heard you were knocked out first on Friday. If he were a real wizard, that wouldn’t have happened. You’re too good for that. He’s dragging you down.”

“He’s the only one besides Rakin in this whole flooding school that will talk to me. Except of course for you, who will only talk to me when no one else is around, and only because you want to tell me how to live my life.”

“That’s not f—”

“I think that’s pretty fair. Harold, what do you think? Should I listen to Gray? Ditch Kole? Can I come back and hang out with you guys then? Or will I have to wear the illusion bracelet for you all to allow that? Did you know Gray told me to just put it on and keep pretending?”

Harold opened his mouth to speak but found no words. He looked down, ashamed.

“Yeah, I knew,” he said eventually. “We thought it would just make everything easier. You know, if things just went back to how they were.”

“Well, maybe things weren’t as great as we all remember them. Let’s go, Kole.”

Zale threw her training sword at the rack, where it bounced off and fell to the side, and then stormed off to the locker room.

Kole followed, but Zale outpaced him. He rushed to change and waited for her outside, but she never emerged.

He paid for lunch and killed time doing classwork until WIZ 204, which he entered just in time for lecture to begin, not risking running into Gray.

***

The next morning, Zale wasn’t at the martial training yard, and Kole jogged around the field for a while before giving up and sitting down.

She didn’t show up for either class that day, and Kole went back to the library alone. He’d lived most of his life alone and had thought he’d grown numb to it. He’d been wrong. But, he mused, his sadness wasn’t for himself, but for Zale.

He’d been betrayed by kids before. Occasionally his classmates would try to befriend him, but they always gave up and joined in with Corbyn and his pack of bullies, or just avoided him to save themselves from becoming a target. He never expected those friendships to last and was never that surprised when they ended. Zale, though… she’d been friends with those people for years. He couldn’t imagine being betrayed like that. Though he supposed Gray and Harold and the rest must have felt a bit betrayed too. Finding out your friend had kept such a big secret must have been tough.

No, he chastised himself. Don’t show sympathy for them. Their initial reaction could be excused, but they had months to make it up to her.

Kole spent the evening working on the next version of Shield, only stopping to go sit in on the divination class.

He arrived a few minutes late, with the professor mid-lecture.

“—are useful for much, but not for rapidly changing divinations.” She paused and smiled. “Oh, good. Today I hoped we’d get a more hands-on exercise, and it looks like we’ll have the chance. We have a guest.”

The professor waved at Kole where he sat invisible.

Oh no…

“Someone is spying on this class under a veil. Whoever can find and capture them will get to skip the midterm.”

The students, second- and third-year students all, looked around at each other confused. The professor let out a sigh.

“Find the invisible boy and catch him!” she shouted, spurring Kole into motion.

“Flood!” he cursed aloud.

He ran, not sparing a glance behind him, hearing the beginnings of spells being cast.

Suddenly, he was visible once more, but it only took a quick effort of Will to recast, resulting in curses from those he fled.

He ran on not sure where to go, but his feet led him back to the library.

While running, he reflected that sneaking into a divination class probably wasn’t his smartest move.

I probably could have just asked to audit the class, he realized belatedly.

Once inside, he fled into the depths, though he had the presence of mind not to head towards his home within it.

Sometime later, Kole lay in a forgotten corner of the library panting for breath. He’d found a section of shelves that formed a sort of maze. As one went deeper, the place lost the neat concentric rings of shelves and became a bit of a mess.

After removing all of their books, he’d taken the boards that served as shelves, propped them up over the entrance of this section to disguise it, and then infused it with some of his primal magic in the hope eyes would bounce off the strange makeshift wall. Then he’d retreated deeper in, where now he lay resting in the middle. Eventually he dozed off into sleep, using the contents of his torn bag as a pillow.

CHAPTER 32

Theral

An ensouled ring may greatly enhance the wizardry of its creator, but that same ring may never find a bearer to awaken its magic once its creator dies. Weapons and armor however have clear purposes and are far more likely to Bond new wielders after the passing of their creators. Once this fact was discovered, the Arch Mages of Illandrios became more intentional with their artifacts.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

Kole’s unintended sleep was interrupted by a subtle whoosh, and he opened his eyes to see darkness. He fumbled for his light.

“Ow,” the interloper said as he rose unsteadily to his feet. He summoned an orb of light in his hand as he did so, illuminating the shelves.

He was dressed in light leather armor and covered in dirt and blood in various stages of dryness.

Goblin blood, by the odor that was newly familiar to Kole.

Kole panicked, but instantly realized this man was not a part of the students pursuing him.

Mustering his courage, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who are you? Where am I?” the man answered, now stable and looking around the hideout.

When eyes landed on the contents of Kole’s bag, which had spilled out on the floor, his demeanor changed. His posture tightened, and he brought his hands up to his waist as if ready to grab something… or cast a spell.

“And where did you get that?” he demanded, pointing to the journal.

Kole grabbed the journal and clutched it possessively. He wasn’t particularly fond of the ratty thing, but he’d already had to recreate his notes in it once, and he was loath to do it again—though it hadn’t been as difficult as he’d expected to fill with notes from memory.

The man reached his right hand out, palm raised expectantly, and a similarly aged book appeared in his hand. His eyes briefly lost focus. Then he looked from Kole to the journal and his brow rose in surprise.

“Oh,” he said, mournfully, before he collapsed to the ground unconscious.

Worried that it was a trick, Kole turned invisible before approaching. “Approach” being a generous term in the small confines of the corner he was hiding in.

When the stranger didn’t move, Kole kicked him and was rewarded with a painful groan.

“What in Fauell was that for?” the man asked.

“Why are you in my hideout? Who are you?” Kole demanded again, no longer scared.

The man opened his eyes and looked directly in Kole’s own despite the invisibility.

“I wouldn’t call this a hideout,” the man observed.

“I wouldn’t say you’re in a position to be judgmental,” Kole retorted, no longer afraid of this intruder.

“Can you get me some water?”

“No,” Kole said, both because he wanted to be firm and because he realized then he had none himself. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

“Fair enough,” the man laughed and said seemingly to himself, “I suppose I should trust it.”

He continued, looking at Kole once more. “You can call me Theral. What year is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I would like to know what the current year is.”

“820,” Kole answered.

“820 of what calendar?” Theral said, a little exasperated. “AF? Dome? Midlian? Canton? Arbith?”

Looking at him now, Kole realized he was only a handful of years older than himself, though his attitude suggested he was older still. Then Kole considered the question. AF was the current calendar, with the first year of the Flood as year 1, while Dome was the calendar used in Illandrios, which started year 1 with the day the Dome went up—sometime afterward. Midlian was the calendar used prior to the Flood, but Kole was unfamiliar with the other two.

“AF,” Kole said, now much more curious than anything he’d been feeling prior.

“Oh. Well, then I got here via magic.”

“Magic?”

“If we are just going to keep repeating each other back and forth, this is going to take a while. Can I please have something to drink?”

Distantly in the hall beyond the plank hiding the “room,” voices shouted, “I heard someone back here!”

“Is this bad?” Theral asked Kole.

Kole shrugged.

“It’s not good,” he said.

He doubted he’d actually get in trouble if he was caught, but his ability to turn invisible would be known.

The stranger sat up with great effort and stuck out his hand before him, but then stopped himself, asking, “’You’re going to die’ bad, or ‘you’re going to get in trouble’ bad?”

“Probably the second.” Kole hadn’t wanted to admit he’d probably be okay and lose the help he suspected he was about to receive.

Theral relaxed slightly and began casting a different spell. “Grab anything that’s important to you.”

Kole complied, picking up his torn bag and throwing his scant belongings into it.

“All done? Great. Try to just go with it.”

Kole felt a grip on his arm and then the world falling out from under him. He felt that he could resist but remembered the stranger’s words and gave in.

And then he found himself back in the room where he’d found the journal.

“Are we safe here?” Kole asked, still panicked. “They’re tracking me somehow.”

Theral cast a spell with a rather long verbal component and thrust his open palm towards Kole.

“There,” he said, “that should break the tracking.”

It only then sunk in that they’d just teleported from his hideout to this dark room.

“How did you do that?!”

“Magic, obviously. Did you hit your head?”

“No, I mean, how did we get here?”

Slower, Theral repeated, “Magic. Obviously. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“No, that must be at least a fourth-tier spell. How old are you, eighteen? There’s no way you could do that.”

“Sure, let’s go with eighteen. It’s technically correct, which is the best kind of correct and often the only kind that will keep you sane. Listen, why don’t you tell me how you found that journal while I drink this entire jug of water, and then I’ll explain some things.”

Theral picked up the pitcher that Kole recalled contained mayonnaise and began to drink out of it, still wincing from the pain of whatever had befallen him.

Not sure what to do, Kole complied and told the young man of how he’d stumbled across the hideout while fleeing the class. As Kole spoke, the other boy began casting Clean on himself, causing the goblin remnants to disappear into a black mist before vanishing.

“You’re one to talk,” he said, interrupting. “You’re what, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Kole said reflexively.

“Okay, sixteen. Invisibility is at least a second-tier. Maybe a chameleon spell could be done at the first.”

Kole signed internally, having revealed his secret abilities to yet another person.

With some embarrassment, he admitted, “Actually, sir, I’m a primal.”

“Sir”? Why did I call him “sir”? he asked himself.

The man was barely his senior, but he did exude an air of authority and used magic in such a casual way that it brought to mind wizards like Jorin and Professor Underbrook.

“Really?!” Theral said, with eager excitement. “Which Font?”

Taken aback by the sudden interest, Kole was at a loss for words.

Theral misunderstood the silence. “Oh, is that private? I know another primal wizard.”

“Another?” Kole asked, full of hope. “You’ve met one before? Who? Where? Can I meet him?”

“Well,” Theral answered, his turn to feel embarrassed. “It’s a bit of a special case, but I’m sort of a primal wizard.”

“How?! “Sort of”? How do you create gates? How do you escape the pull of your Font?”

Theral cocked his head for a moment, but then seemed to understand.

“Oh, that makes sense,” he said apparently to himself. “With a bridge opening in a Font, it could anchor it to that spot in the Arcane, much like a Primordial does to anchor a gate. Wait… does your bridge open near a Font or in a Font?”

“Yeah… the first one.” Kole said, confused even further.

This young prodigy was outlining common knowledge as if he’d just pieced it together. Was he dumb? Or sheltered? Who didn’t know why primals couldn’t be wizards? But… he’d correctly guessed that Kole’s bridge opened next to his Font and not inside, and he’d never heard anyone else even suggest that as possibility.

“Well, that would make things easier. So you are what? A Light primal?” Theral asked. “Sorry if that’s rude.”

Theral cast a first-tier Light spell as he spoke, fully illuminating the room, his other one having not followed them when they teleported.

“Illusion,” Kole corrected and then pointing to the light asked, “How’d you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a Spatial primal, right? From the Hollow Peak? How’d you cast Light?”

“Oh, I see. Holl—” He cut himself off, then said to himself, “No, better not to ask.”

Back to Kole, he said, “How about you tell me about what your specific issue is, and we’ll see if we can help.”

“We”? Kole thought, looking around the room.

He weighed the risks of sharing his not-so-secret secret with the stranger, but as he thought about it, he had nothing to lose—except for his life, but that seemed unlikely.

So Kole told the man about himself. How his mother was a Mirage Knight, how his father was a Stormcaller, and how he’d chosen to pursue wizardry at a young age. He then went on to tell of how he’d unlocked his vault at nine and opened a bridge at ten, outside of the Font of Illusions.

The man seemed to grasp the significance of that and then asked a bunch of questions.

Kole explained, “I can cast any cantrip, but… it takes about 15 to 20 Will for me to even open my bridge to a gate, which makes anything beyond a cantrip cost more than I could afford until recently.”

“15 Will, as in Will grains?” Theral asked.

Kole nodded, and Theral gave a gesture to carry on.

“So, I can cast spells, but they all cost too much. I’m a sorcerer too, but I unlocked Invisibility first. There aren’t a lot of problems turning invisible doesn’t fix, and my sorcery doesn’t seem inclined to branch out to new Fonts.”

“Have you tried tying yourself to a tree? Drowning? Smoke inhalation?” Theral asked, entirely serious.

Kole laughed, but then realized it wasn’t a joke and said, “No. No one does that barbaric nonsense anymore.”

Theral seemed to look disappointed by the answer, but then smiled and asked, “Have you tried learning Illusion spells and casting them without a gate or path?”

Kole sighed. He’d been asked this before and had considered it himself.

“I’d have to make the spells from scratch—which is far beyond me,” he said.

“Why?” Theral asked, hesitantly, then added, “Why won’t they work, not why can’t you. Obviously creating spells from scratch is something even most Journeyman wizards can’t do.”

Kole picked up on the mention of the Stormcaller rank of Journeyman as opposed to the mainland equivalent of Adept.

A Stormcaller? Not from the Hollow Peak?

“All the spells for the Illusion Font use spell construction techniques optimized and dependent on the gate component. If I removed the gate, the spells wouldn’t work at all.”

Theral looked surprised by the answer, but then gained a contemplative look before asking, “Why not cast from your bridge to your non-Illusion affinities?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had those,” Kole said. “The tests all just showed I had an Illusion affinity.”

“They would,” Theral said, nodding along. “The tests work by looking at the comparative connection to each Font. Measured against your affinity to Illusions, everything else is nothing. I imagine you have affinities to the Fonts connected to Illusions—likely as strong or stronger than any highly attuned sorcerer’s.” He paused to think. “Sound, Light, maybe Mind?

“Here,” he continued, pulling out a rather ornamented golden spellbook from a satchel that still smelled new but looked as if it had already been in countless battles.

Without looking, he pulled two sheets out of the book and handed them to Kole.

“Take these, learn the spell component and ignore the gate and path. Once you have the spell, you can just path it.”

“How do I ‘just path it’?“ Kole asked as he looked at the spellforms he’d just been handed.

He knew what pathing was, but it was an advanced technique used in spell design, something that, as Theral just said, was beyond even most wizards twice his age.

Kole could recognize most modern and many antiquated spellform patterns by sight—as Grand Master Lonin had been impressed by—but he couldn’t recognize anything but the most basic of forms before him. He could, however, tell that they were far less complicated than the ones he was used to learning. These spellforms lacked the dependencies on gates he was used to seeing present in every spell from the last hundred years.

Positively archaic, Kole thought. Exactly what he needed.

Theral looked at the bookshelf and moved to grab a book, but winced in pain. Instead, he flipped his spellbook to a different page without looking and pulled a handful of sheets out, the sheets parting from the book without a sound.

Kole winced at the casual disrespect for the book, but when he looked closer, it didn’t look to have lost any pages.

“Flood, I’m heading back. These will help with the path,” Theral said, dropping the stack of pages by the bed beside him. “Leave this on the door,” he added as another page flew out of his spellbook into Kole’s hand.

Kole looked up to the door Theral had gestured to. The room now held a second door on the back wall.

He read the note:

He can stay.

—T

CHAPTER 33

Sticky Runes

The greatest Arch Mages of Illandrios, near the ends of their lives, destroyed the ensouled artifacts they’d used for decades, forging them instead into swords. These swords were held in trust by the city, and whenever a warrior reached knighthood, they were allowed to present themselves to the hall of blades. The means by which the early Illandrian knights tested their suitability is lost, but each sword that Bonded a knight granted them great magical powers of the Font for which their creators had the greatest affinity.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

While he read the short note, Kole felt a strange sensation at the back of his skull, then heard a small whoosh of air. He looked up to find Theral gone.

Wizards and sorcerers eventually gained the ability to sense when others drew upon the Fonts to cast magic. Kole was far from acquiring such a skill, but it was said that the most powerful magics could be sensed even by those without an ounce of magical talent.

Could this teleportation effect have been that strong? he wondered.

Kole had been around teleporting mages before—or wizards, he supposed, if Tallen was right about that—but he’d never sensed their magic.

How far did he just travel?

He set the thoughts aside and looked up at the door where he was supposed to leave the note. Cautiously, he cracked it slightly. Beyond it stood another library, though this one was not so grand in scale as the one in the Dahn. An illusionary depiction of Kaltis sat in the middle, and tables and chairs were arrayed around it.

Beyond that, bookshelves lined the walls of the circular room. It was hard to tell from just their spines, but Kole sensed that these books were quite valuable. These lacked any uniformity, reminding him of the assorted spellbooks around where he’d camped. Each book here was entirely unique, from a worn and battered journal to a spine of pure gold etched with silver lettering.

I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.

Unlike the room—which was apparently Theral’s, and Kole supposed now his as well—this place looked very lived-in. While there was no mess, the trappings of everyday life could be seen: a shirt on a couch, a cup on an end table, and other things not quite in their proper place.

Kole looked down at the note. Whoever it was written to, it was probably best he listened to Theral, posted it on the door, and then left. He moved to do just that, but realized the door was stone and he had nothing to use to adhere it. It was then that he noticed the back of the page had runes all over it. He didn’t recognize most of it, but the symbol for the Font of Bonds was clear. While the spellforms and runes looked similar, no shape or symbol worked for both forms of magic—none except the symbols for the Fonts themselves.

“Sticky runes?” he questioned aloud.

Not sure what else to do, he pressed the page against the door, where it stuck.

“Weird.” He wondered why that young wizard—or mage—had a preprepared adhesive-backed rune in his spellbook ready to stick to a door. From what little he knew of runes, that shouldn’t work—or at least not for very long.

And when did he have a chance to write the note?

As he stood contemplating the mysteries and the possibility of asking Amara to prepare some runed pages for himself, he heard a door open somewhere in the private library.

Flood! he thought, turning invisible.

He considered opening the door but ruled against it. It hadn’t been silent when he’d come in, and he doubted he could make it so now.

He heard a voice next, half singing, half humming an unfamiliar tune with evident musical talent, growing closer. Afraid to even breathe, Kole didn’t, waiting for the unseen singer to move on.

The humming continued as Kole felt his lungs begin to burn. Holding his breath had been a terrible idea, as now he felt the urge to gulp in more. As if taunting him, a slight breeze blew past his face. He would’ve considered making a run for it if his heaving wouldn’t give him away.

Before he could make a decision, he felt an icy cold pinprick at the back of his neck.

“How did you get in here?” the beautiful unseen voice asked from behind.

As soon as the blade had touched his neck, Kole’s invisibility dropped. Slowly, he raised his hands above his head in surrender, one still holding the book, but before he could conjure some sort of explanation or plead for the mysterious woman to look at the note he’d just placed on the door, she let out a sigh.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, disappointed.

In a much less menacing and much more annoyed tone, she asked, “How did you get in here? Zale didn’t let you in here, did she? No, she wouldn’t after the last time, but Runt might have.”

The names provided context for the voice, and suddenly Kole recognized it as Zale’s mother. Thoughts of his imminent death fled, only to come back as he recalled Zale’s mention of her mother’s sadistic nature.

“N-n-no,” Kole stammered.

“Oh, put your hands down, I’m not going to kill you—probably…” She finally noticed the book in Kole’s hand. “How’d you… where’d you…”

She stopped talking, sounding uncertain for the first time since he’d met her.

“It is? He did?” Shalia asked, disbelieving and talking to someone Kole couldn’t see or hear.

He relaxed slightly when he heard her sheathing the blade.

“Turn around. I’m not going to kill you. Did you meet someone in there?” she asked, gesturing to the door behind her.

No longer fearing death but still quite worried, Kole pointed to the note.

When Zale’s mother read it, she broke out into manic laughter.

“I’m going to kill that little bastard. You’re the kid? I was wondering why he was being so cold. I thought that might have been because of where you’re from.”

“What?” Kole asked, confused.

“Oh, nothing. You can calm down now, I don’t bite,” she said, then added with a wink, “Not students, at least. Now, tell me what happened.”

The words didn’t help alleviate Kole’s anxiety.

He explained how Theral had appeared, and how he’d teleported them to the room he’d previously discovered.

“Now, why did he need to do that?” Shalia asked, knowingly.

“I, uh… was being chased by some divination students.”

She let out a laugh.

“I thought that was you. Those are the type you don’t want to go sneaking around using magic. They are always on the lookout for it. Now, mundane sneaking, on the other hand, tends to surprise them, as they never expect it.”

How did she even hear about that? It hadn’t been that long ago.

“Feel free to stick around in that room. I take it you’re living in the library?” she said, after he’d finished the short tale.

Kole nodded, shamefaced.

“Don’t worry, I don’t care about that. You’re not the first to do so, or even the first to find that room. You will be, however, the first I allow to stay. As a general rule, if a door opens for you in this place, you’re allowed to go through it.”

He perked up at that, and his eyes glanced towards the books.

Shalia caught the look and added, “But that doesn’t mean you should, nor does it give you a right to the things found behind the door. There’s a reason these books aren’t in the library proper. Do you think I’m reading all these? No. If you touch any of these, I won’t have to kill you—you’ll probably just die in a horrible magical accident or kill yourself from the horror of what you learned.”

Kole wasn’t sure what to say after that. He’d been tempted to inspect the books, but now thought better of it.

“Any questions?” Shalia asked after an uncomfortably long pause.

After a brief internal struggle, he asked, “Is Zale okay? She’s been a little upset after a run-in with Harold and Gray.”

Kole thought he’d been scared of Zale’s mother before, but the steel that entered her eyes at the mention of her daughter made him view the rest of this scene as a pleasant chat.

“So that’s what happened,” she said. “She’ll be fine. She’s a tough girl. She’ll learn she’s too good for that idiot one of these days. Speaking of my daughter, you should probably get some rest. You only have a few hours until you’re supposed to meet her for breakfast.”

“Flood,” Kole cursed, realizing how late it was and that he’d not had the most restful night.

“Thank you,” he added as he turned to leave, though he wasn’t sure what exactly he was thanking her for, only that it felt appropriate.

“One last thing,” Shalia said as Kole reached for the door. “Don’t tell Theral that you met me. And don’t tell anyone you met him. And I mean anyone.”

When Kole turned around to ask why, he found Zale’s mother was gone. He was pretty sure that whatever she’d done to vanish, she was still somewhere in the room, so he bit back a comment on her being overly dramatic and simply left to his new room. He lay down on the bed and was asleep in an instant.

Twenty minutes later, his alarm went off from where it’d landed on the floor after the teleportation.

CHAPTER 34

Rune Library

While the wizards were the backbone of the Illandrian military, the Bladed Knights were their elite units, serving in much the same capacity state-sponsored adventuring parties do today. Many of these groups were formed by combining whatever blades were currently Bonded with compatible groups, but some groups never changed, the swords always finding a new host at the loss of their previous to keep the group whole.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

Kole fell out of bed as he reached for the buzzing magical device. When he’d fallen asleep, the room had gone dark of its own volition, and as soon as he’d woken, it had been filled with a gentle light. He’d forgotten where he was and rolled over to find his alarm, only to find no more bed or floor to roll over to.

“Ow,” he groaned from the floor, shielding his eyes.

***

Zale was waiting for him outside the dining hall, Amara standing with her clutching something protectively. To Kole’s eyes, Zale seemed back to normal, amused as always by his tardiness.

“Long night of adventure?” she joked.

“You’d be surprised,” Kole answered. Though he was tempted to tell her about at least being chased by the divination class, he wouldn’t be able to deflect any of her follow-up questions. He wanted to ask her how she was feeling but didn’t want to dredge up bad memories.

“Is that the blasting rod?” Kole asked instead, turning to Amara with forced excitement.

She beamed, holding it up like a proud parent.

“It is! Can you come by the rune library after breakfast to start learning the intent?”

Kole agreed, and Amara went on to explain the process she’d gone through to make this first prototype. It only contained the blasting runes and not the self-repair ones. She was still working on those. Still, this would last him through a few battles before failing.

As Amara chattered on, her friends trying to follow out of politeness but failing to keep up, Zale stepped next to Kole and whispered, “Sorry about ditching you yesterday.”

“It’s okay. I understand. Do you want to talk about it?”

She considered briefly, biting her lip.

“Maybe later, but… probably not.”

Rakin was waiting inside when the trio entered, having already eaten his simple breakfast of boiled oats.

“Yer late,” he grumbled.

“You just need to accept that Kole’s always going to be late and plan accordingly,” Zale said. “We were waiting for him outside.”

Rakin only grunted in response, not giving Kole a read on where his mind was at on the matter, as Kole vowed to prove Zale wrong. He had a bed now, and hopefully, that would translate into better rest—though if he hadn’t literally fallen out of it this morning, it would have been difficult to coax himself out.

Best if I keep the alarm out of reach, he told himself.

The adventurers-in-training discussed plans for the next day’s class over breakfast. They’d identified what they’d done wrong in the first attempt, and at this point there wasn’t much more to go over, but the failure had stung Rakin’s pride, and he refused to let the topic die, no matter how repetitive it grew.

“I have to go learn to use this thing,” Kole said to Rakin, seeing an opportunity to get out of the conversation.

***

Amara led Kole to a library in the crafting college. It did have books and scrolls, but they weren’t here for that. They passed that section and continued on to something more akin to a warehouse. Chests of drawers filled the entire space, going up towards the ceiling. Most of the drawers were tiny, like the catalogs in the more primitive libraries, but others were large enough to fit a person.

Amara went up to the attendant at the desk, and after a quick conversation Kole couldn’t follow beyond the greeting, she led Kole deep into the racks.

“Here,” she said, gesturing to a drawer.

Kole pulled it open to find a tiny purple marble. He closed his eyes and tried to get a picture of the Will within, as he would while reading a spellform, and a complicated mess of intent appeared in his mind.

***

Thirty minutes later, Kole ran from the library with the intent to power a blasting rod nestled in his mental vault. He’d surprised Amara and himself with how easily he’d copied it. He had no doubt that with his massive Will capacity and particular struggle with magic, he had more experience copying unknown intent-imbued Will than anyone his age.

He’d not expected to be able to copy the spell before Martial 101, and he’d been right. Hence the running.

The security screening upon leaving the library hadn’t helped things either. A library full of gemstones required strict protocols to prevent students from taking off with wealth accidentally in their pockets—or intentionally. Kole wouldn’t say he was tempted to steal the gem, but the thought had definitely crossed his mind. For a kid who grew up with the ability to turn invisible, he’d partaken in a shockingly small amount of crime.

He reflected on that on his way to class. He’d never really needed to steal. Despite allowing his son to be a delinquent, Lord Underhill had provided Kole with whatever funds he’d needed to continue to live in his family’s home. Kole hadn’t been above sneaking into restricted areas of the library and had taken a book home a time or two, but he’d always returned them.

Would I steal if it was needed? he asked himself.

Thoughts of the dying goblins flickered through his mind, and the lack of remorse he’d felt.

Probably…

He made it to class just as the morning warm-ups began and fell in line running around the practice yard. It had only been a week of training, but he thought that maybe now it was just slightly less awful.

After conditioning, Kole trained with Zale as usual. But unlike usual, Tigereye watched them as they sparred, checking on them throughout the class without comment. At the end of the hour, he finally spoke,

“Great job, Zale,” he complimented her. “I am impressed with the improvement you have knocked into his head.”

Kole smiled despite himself.

“That does not mean you are not terrible,” Tigereye was quick to add, seeing his expression. “Most others in this class trained one-on-one by Zale would have progressed much further.”

Kole’s smile vanished, though he knew that Tigereye’s words hadn’t been intended to be cruel, only to give him an accurate assessment of his own abilities. Tigereye was always very clear about wanting each student to leave with an accurate assessment of their abilities. He’d said that knowing when to run was a better survival trait than being able to fight. But still, it stung.

Tigereye left them, and driven by the words, Kole and Zale continued their training beyond the end of the class.

***

An hour later, the two sat in the cafeteria. Zale had gotten him lunch after they’d cleaned up after class, and he’d stayed in the cafeteria studying the spellform Theral had given him.

Like with the rune intent, copying the spell into his vault was rather easy, and he did it in less than half an hour.

It sure is nice just copying a spell into my vault instead of painstakingly recreating it, he reflected.

He copied in Thunderwave, a first-tier Sound spell that created a deafening boom, throwing people back as it hit them with a high-pressure sound wave. The other spell Theral had given him was Radiant Bolt, which shot a beam of light, burning its target and illuminating it temporarily. Radiant Bolt was similar enough to Magic Missile, which he still held out hope for figuring out, but Thunderwave had been on his short list of potential spells to complement his current arsenal.

While he didn’t expect the spell to work without the gate or path components copied over, he’d refrained from testing it in the dining hall.

When he’d finished, he found he still had some time.

“So… do you want to talk about it?” he asked Zale.

“No,” she said, then shot back with a malicious grin, “But what about you? Any secrets you’d like to share? I don’t really know anything about you. You met my mom and know about my childhood trauma. That’s not exactly fair.”

“I walked into that, didn’t I?”

Zale nodded.

“You’re right. It’s not really a secret,” he admitted. “I just want to keep my… ability private, because it’s less useful if people know you can… you know? And if people know where I’m from, it’s not too hard to figure out what I can do.”

Zale nodded.

He told her about his parents, how they’d been adventurers—or still were, according to him—and his dream to be one too. He told her about them being declared dead, and his flight from his home.

“Eww…” Zale said, leaning away from him when he got to the part about the barrels.

He sighed.

“That was weeks ago.”

He explained how he met Amara and their semifugitive state aboard the ship.

“Why do you think that Oldhill guy was after you?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea. My best guess is that he’s mad I broke the glasses—or maybe because I hit his son.”

“You owed him a bunch of money, right?”

“Yeah…” Kole said, thinking it over. “But he probably got it all back and made a profit when he took the house.”

Zale pondered that a moment before asking, “Did you take anything?”

Kole shook his head.

“Nothing worth a manhunt. Just my notes, my spellbook—which isn’t anything special—and my mother’s locket.”

He pulled the locket out from beneath his shirt.

Zale looked at it, then cocked her head slightly. Examining it closer, her eyes grew wide.

“That’s an ensouled artifact!” she gasped.

CHAPTER 35

Alive

The Mirage Knights originally were three: Light, Sound, and Mind. This grouping always reformed, and even when a bearer died, the survivors would choose successors until the orphaned blade chose someone to Bond. It never took more than a dozen. Vowyn’s Blade granted the ability to control Light; Kylical’s Blade granted the ability to control Sound. Both blades bent their Fonts to obscure or distract and could focus them for destruction. Synalia’s Blade granted the power of the Font of Mind, and together the three slew kings.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

“What?” Kole asked, staring at his locket as if he’d never seen it before.

It was a simple brass pendant, the size of his thumb, but nothing special or of any visible worth.

“How do you know?”

She tapped her head above her eye.

“Voidiness. It’s got two auras in it, so it’s still Bonded to someone.”

“She is alive,” Kole whispered to himself.

He’d always believed, but he’d never known. His father had always insisted he knew she was alive, but when pressed for a reason, he never shared. He’d escaped the pocket realm the first time with only the locket to show for it, yet he’d never told Kole it had been ensouled. Everyone knew that ensouled items were Bound to their wielders for life, and if Zale could somehow detect the presence of the Bond, then his mother was still alive.

Had he known? Is this why he’d been so certain?

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“I have no idea, but I think I might have a lead on finding them—finally.”

Zale looked at a clock on the wall.

“Not to ruin this moment, but don’t you have class?”

“Flood,” Kole cursed.

He snatched up his things and ran across campus, mind racing over the possibilities his mother’s locket offered. He arrived at class winded—but not too late.

Gray gave him a hostile look, angrier than usual, but otherwise left him alone. Kole tried to listen, keeping notes as best he could, but he was very distracted. Between thoughts of his mother actually being alive and his new spell progress, he kept zoning out and imagining finding his parents, and then getting distracted again when he slipped into his vault to examine the two new additions he’d made.

His vault had been empty of actual spells until recently. To cast a spell, a wizard had to store the template of it in their vault, so that they could power it and send it into the Arcane Realm as soon as the need arose. The number of spells a wizard could ready in this way increased as they trained. Typically, a wizard capable of casting first-tier spells could store one to three such spells—the ability to store three being a requirement for passing WIZ 204. Due to his arcane nature, Kole had always been able to store one or two extra spells than those of similar age, but he’d never actually been able to cast them, so instead he’d filled his vault with cantrips.

Wizards cast cantrips by partially casting the gate and path portions of the spells they already had prepared, leaving out the spell effect. Since Kole couldn’t cast the full spells, he’d simply filled his vault with the components of the Fonts he thought might be useful in cantrip form. Utilizing the less complex components of the oldest spells he could find, he had access to half a dozen cantrips, an unheard-of amount for any wizard, let alone one his age. He could have fit more, but the work to discover and recreate the pared-down versions of old spells had not been worth it.

Now, however, he’d had to abandon many of those cantrips in place of these new additions. In his mental library, he looked at the forms of Magic Missile, Shield, Thunderwave, and the blasting rod’s force blast. His cantrips had been reduced to only Light and Air, and then, of course, Force and Barrier, derived from Magic Missile and Shield.

Lost in his vault, he didn’t notice class had ended until the lights turned off.

Shaken from his thoughts, he went to the spell range to test out his new toy.

***

Alone in a long room, Kole stared down the stone mannequin at the far end, pointing a stick at it experimentally. He was trying to find the best way to aim the blasting rod before firing it, but after a few minutes, realized he was just procrastinating. Just as the rod from PREVENT was like his father’s, this one was like both of those. There weren’t too many ways one could make a rod.

Learning the intent for the blasting rod had been far too easy, and he feared he’d missed something. If he never tried to use it, he wouldn’t have to face the failure he feared.

Pushing his down pessimism, he reached into his vault, shaped his Will to match the template stored there. Instead of pushing it out his bridge into the Arcane Realm as he would a spell, he sent it into the rod. A bolt of purple energy shot out and hit the wall a few feet to the side of the mannequin.

Kole stared at the rod in awe.

“It worked,” he whispered to himself, still not believing it had been that simple.

He fired the rod a few more times until he was able to hit the target twice in a row. Each blast cost him around 5 Will, a little more than the rod from class but less than the one his father had left behind. And Amara had assured him that she could make it more efficient if given the chance to tinker with it.

Kole examined the runes, looking for signs of damage. As runecraft of mundane wood, tied as it was to the Fonts of Earth, Water, and whatever else life drew upon to exist, the pure power of the Font of Force was destructive to it. There were other reasons beyond Kole’s understanding that also led to rune degradation, but Amara had told him that the runes should hold up for at least twenty blasts. If it did fail, the failure would be explosive.

It looked to him like the clean lines Amara’s ants had carved into the rod had grown a little fuzzy after five casts, but he hadn’t looked too closely at the start. Satisfied with his results, he stowed the rod and turned his attention to his vault once more.

This time he examined the spell he’d copied from the spellform Theral had provided. Unlike the spells used by modern wizards, its effect component—sometimes confusingly referred to as the “spell” component—and path components were equally complex, whereas modern spells had simplified effect components dependent on complex paths. Wizards had discovered that if they made one aspect of a spell very lean and the other complex, they could produce similar effects for less Will. Unfortunately for Kole, the part they made complex was the part his primal nature amplified the cost of.

Theral’s spell, like those Kole delved the depths of libraries for, had a path and effect of similar complexities. Wizards used to tailor effects and paths to fit together, increasing the complexity of both until a working spell was formed, later improving the efficiency where they could.

From the spell construct Kole held in his mind—one lacking a gate and path component—he estimated the cost for this spell would be 1 to 2 Will if it could be cast as is. If he did the same to another modern spell, stripping out the path and gate, the remaining component would hardly cost a measurable fraction of Will—but it would also not do anything.

So, hope further buoyed by his last success and the revelation about his mother, Kole stood in the training hall and sent the spell through his bridge into the Arcane Realm.

Nothing happened.

Inside his vault, he felt the spell leave him, seeking the Font of Sound. Undirected by a path, it was swiftly torn apart by the forces of the Arcane Realm.

“Flood,” he said, but he wasn’t particularly surprised.

While his pessimism had been a little overblown before, he’d known that this wouldn’t work on the first try.

He tried a few more times, trying to get a feel for the failure, and quickly realized he had no idea how to construct a path from scratch. But he knew who did.

Professor Lonin could teach me this if I took his offer, he reflected, knowing the knowledge to be of no use. Maybe Zale’s uncle will help this time.

Kole left the training hall before incurring too bad of a Will headache. He had a lot of reading to do on a whole new topic. As he walked, he tried to push thoughts of the locket to the side. He would need to pursue that, but right now was not the time. Wherever his mother was, she’d survived this long. He needed to learn so he could help her when he found her.

CHAPTER 36

Doug

The Arctic Knight was the name given to the bearer of Iyckel’s Blade. Arch Mage Iyckel the Arctic Storm had a great affinity for the Font of Ice. Iyckel’s Blade has been lost to Illandrios and its whereabouts are unknown.

—Kysin the 195th High Librarian. Bladed Knights, 5th ed.

Kole wasn’t late to meet Zale and Rakin for breakfast the next morning, though he was very tired. His new bed alleviated some of the soreness he’d been feeling each morning from sleeping on the ground, but he still felt the pains from his exercises with Zale. The bed had also done nothing to make him go to sleep at a more reasonable hour.

“Ye look like shite,” Rakin said.

“Good morning to you too,” Kole replied.

“Late night?” Zale asked.

“Always.”

They ate a light breakfast, talking over last-minute plans, but the plans were not complicated and had long been talked to death.

***

They entered the training hall of class to find the other students already huddled, whispering conspiratorially to each other. The class was smaller, down to around ninety from the original hundred and ten. Many students had dropped out after their first experience with the goblins, having confronted the realities of the adventuring life and realized they were not cut out for it. The rat exam had drastically cut down on the number of applicants, but killing rats and killing goblins were two entirely different experiences.

Following the direction of all the poorly hidden furtive glances, they found the new object of the collective’s disdain. A young man stood talking to the professors at the front of the room. He was dressed in forest greens and browns made of the impossible fabrics of an Assuine worshiper, and his skin was tanned from long days in the sun. What made him stand out, and drew the attention of all the other students, were the long serpentine tail swaying energetically behind him and the pair of antlers protruding from his hairline. The antlers looked to be those of a young buck—though Kole didn’t know this, never having seen a deer.

“A demonkin,” Kole whispered.

“A primal too,” Zale observed, watching as Underbrook passed him an orange stick to accompany the green and yellow he already had.

Rakin let out a whistle.

“Blessed and a primal,” Rakin observed. “If he weren’t a demonkin, groups would be fighting over him.”

Kole had never met a demonkin and—as with most things—his people had lost their fear and hatred of the Faust-spawned creatures in their hundreds of years of isolation.

He knew that they’d been a menace before the Flood, slaves of the demon lords who made their way to the Material Realm. Whenever a demon lord arose, they brought—or created—more demonkin. As slaves, they were pitiful creatures, used as fodder in the insane wars of the cults that worshiped the demons. When their demon lords were inevitably banished and their followers killed, some few demonkin always escaped, striking out alone in the world to find their own way.

When the Avatar had arisen, the demonkin became beholden to the same feral insanity that took hold of the sorcerers of old. They followed in the wake of the Avatar and in doing so found their way to Basin where the Avatar was trapped. From then until the Last Dragon War they lived on the fringes, considered another race of the forsaken.

But, after the corruption of the Avatar was sealed, they regained their sanity. Some had even broken free of the corruption before that final sealing and fought against their kin on the side of the Illusian races. Since then, they still existed on the fringes. Tolerated but not accepted.

As the students watched, the demonkin student finished his conversation with the professors and turned to join his classmates. In doing so, his tail hit a weapon rack behind him, knocking over a row of glaives. He froze, eyes growing wide as he watched the long blades fall towards him. Then he vanished and the weapons crashed loudly onto the ground.

Everyone looked around in confusion, but it didn’t take long to find the antlers protruding over a group.

“Sorry,” the new student said from the crowd in a soft, defeated tone.

***

“Class, welcome to your second week of PREVENT!” Underbrook called happily to the gathered students after the mess was sorted. “Today you will be facing off once more against the goblins. You’ve had a week to reflect on your mistakes and plan your next assault, but… so have they. Keep that in mind as you prepare to embark. We’ll pull lots to determine the order, so each team should send a representative to the front.”

“The sneaky weasel,” Rakin grumbled. “He never told us the goblins would remember our assault.”

“He sort of did,” Kole said, recalling what Professor Underbrook had said before they had entered last week. “He said there was no shame in retreating but warned that the enemy would prepare in our absence.”

“Bah. That’s stupid. We didn’t retreat. We died fighting.”

Kole, who had retreated, thought it best not to point out that dying in battle was hardly an improvement on fleeing.

“We’re last,” Zale said, rejoining the pair after going to draw a lot. “Underbrook asked us to come see him as well. He said a few students didn’t show up today who hadn’t formally dropped. He’s going to combine some groups and fit the new guy into one.”

“Who dropped out late?” Rakin asked.

“Shalin and Drupin,” Zale said, listing two people Kole didn’t know. “But Shalin’s group members claim she didn’t drop. They said she went missing over the weekend. Left all her stuff in her room, even.”

“Odd. She was the Space primal from the Hollow Peak, right?”

Zale nodded.

“I’ll ask Mom if she knows anything later.”

They gathered at the front of the room with two other groups of three students. One group looked irritated, the other somewhat distraught. Kole guessed Shalin was from the second group.

“This is Doug,” Underbrook introduced. “Yes, he is a demonkin, and no, he is not enthralled by the will of Faust. He is a skilled ranger, Blessed by Assuine, with semilatent primal talent, as you saw briefly on display. Who would like to extend him an offer for their group?”

An awkward silence followed, the other groups looking at their members, no one wanting to draw attention to themself.

Doug, who was already uncomfortable as the center of attention, began to wilt under the weight of the silence.

Zale stepped forward angrily.

“You can join us!”

“Hurray,” Rakin muttered, so only Kole could hear. “Now we’re going to be even more popular.”

***

“This is Kole,” Zale said once they’d stepped to the side of the room to get acquainted with Doug. “He is a wizard. This is Rakin, who’s a pugilist training with the Order of the Resounding Silence, and I’m Zale. I swing swords.”

Doug hadn’t spoken since Underbrook had left. He’d only gaped at Zale.

When he didn’t respond, she added, “And yes, I’m part voidling.”

At that, Doug’s senses returned to him. He grew visibly embarrassed and then ashamed, perhaps realizing he’d been treating Zale much the same way others treated him.

“Sorry! I’m Doug, but you already know that.”

“First day with the tail?” Rakin asked, pointing as Doug’s tail waved about and smacked him in the leg.

“What? No. Oh! No! Sorry! This place is weird,” he said, gesturing to the room. “Assuine’s power is lacking here, and with all the people, I’m a bit nervous. I’m used to the forest, where I’m alone and can sense my surroundings through my Blessing. It’s uncomfortable to only feel her power from other people, but… I can’t sense you.”

“Aye,” Rakin said. “I would be. I’ve claimed Assuine’s power in me body for meself.”

They moved from introductions to the plan for the trial of the day. Doug only listened, not asking questions.

“Just stay in the back and shoot the green vermin,” Rakin advised.

“Got it,” Doug said, oblivious to—or choosing to ignore—Rakin’s rude tone.

“So, you’re a Spatial primal?” Kole asked when no one else seemed willing to.

“Sort of.”

“How are you sort of a primal?” Kole asked, causing Rakin to laugh.

“Just like ye are,” Rakin said, chuckling to himself and earning a swat on the shoulder from Zale.

“I can’t always control my abilities,” Doug said. “Sometimes they help me, like you just saw. And other times they are… less than helpful.”

That ended the line of inquiry. They made their way to the wall of equipment to get the gear they’d discussed.

Rakin collected some throwing darts while Zale gathered some rope and a bow with a quiver full of arrows. Kole took a clarity potion for himself and a dagger. Doug took some extra arrows, inspecting each carefully, and a hatchet he put on his belt that joined another.

“How do they afford to pass these out?” Kole asked, holding up the potion.

“It’s basically blue water,” Zale answered. “The dungeon makes them real, and don’t ask. I don’t understand how it works.”

“How?” Kole asked, dumbly.

Rakin sighed, Zale smiled, and then Tigereye’s voice boomed from just behind them.

“You are up.”

CHAPTER 37

Round Two

I do not like to boast of my accomplishments. Intellectually, I am aware that I contributed greatly to the Last Dragon War. I will not suffer the false modesty I’ve seen many espouse and claim that the war effort would have gone just as well without me. I am a genius, yes, but I am no hero. There are more books written about the Last Dragon War than I care to read—which is saying something. So, I only seek to add my unique perspective—and correct some often-cited falsehoods. Many books are written about the heroes of this war, but I want to write about the men, women, and other beings behind the legends.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

The door opened to the same clearing it had the week before, but unlike last time, they immediately heard a rustle at the forest’s edge.

“Go!” Zale barked, and she and Rakin broke off into a sprint towards the sound.

Rakin’s small legs outpaced Zale’s, as the earth rose beneath his feet to propel him forward.

Kole drew his blasting rod while scanning the woods for the source of the sound but couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, it was running through the undergrowth away from them.

Doug collected himself before following after Rakin. The dwarf disappeared into the woods, and a moment later came the sounds of violence as he caught up to his quarry.

“Goblins!” Rakin shouted. “Two more are getting away.”

Kole ran into the woods behind Zale futilely, knowing he’d never be able to catch up. The goblins had taken a small game trail. Zale ran ahead of him cutting the branches out of their way as they tried to catch up.

After nearly a minute of chase, they came across a gory scene. Two goblins lay face down in the dirt, one with an arrow through its neck, the wound still pumping blood.

“Who did—” Zale began to ask when Doug stepped out into the path, the branches parting silently around him as he walked.

“Sorry I let them get away,” he said. “I was just overwhelmed for a second by the sudden return of Assuine’s power.”

Zale and Kole looked at each other and then laughed, remembering their fumbling through the forest on their first attempt.

“No need to apologize,” Kole said. “You did great.”

Rakin joined them a moment later, and as Doug scouted ahead, the three devised a new plan in light of their new companion’s skills.

Ten minutes later, Doug returned.

“The cave is where you said it would be. There are five goblins guarding the mouth on top of those boulders, and they have another patrolling the forest’s edge with a dog. I asked around, and there are a few more goblins with dogs throughout the woods.”

“You asked around?” Kole asked, looking around. “Who’d you run into?”

“Birds, a squirrel, and a chipmunk,” Doug said as if it were an entirely reasonable answer.

“Can we take them out?” Zale asked, taking the sources of the information in stride.

Doug shook his head.

“That’d be tough. They’re patrolling very close to the cave. We’d risk them raising the alarm.”

In the end, they decided to skirt the perimeter, outside the range of the patrols. Once on the far side of the hill away from the cave entrance, they could close in with less risk.

Doug led the way, and Kole marveled at how the branches parted before him as he walked. He walked almost casually and made no sound, the leaves above dodging out of the way of his antlers, and his feet always seeming to find spots to land free of leaves and sticks. The grace with which he traveled through the woods contrasted greatly with the clumsiness he’d shown back in the Dahn. As Kole watched Doug’s tail swaying behind him, he even noticed the plants parted before it as easily as they did around his antlers.

He doesn’t need to be careful out here, Kole realized.

While Doug’s passage was effortless, he was alone in that. The branches only parted for Doug and returned to block the path in his wake. Rakin cursed the whole way, while Zale’s armor rattled and clanked, causing Kole to constantly scan the surroundings for an ambush and thus make his own noise as he failed to watch his step—not that he needed any help to make noise.

Doug seemed unconcerned by their blundering, and after a ten-minute trek punctuated by brief chats with birds, he said, “We’re here. The birds told me the goblins seem to appear in this area by magic. But they think everything is magic, so it’s probably a secret passage.”

“Great,” Zale said, taking charge. “Rakin, can you detect the secret entrance anywhere?”

“Not yet. But if we walk around, I should be able ta find it.”

Doug led them through the woods, seeking signs of the goblin’s passage.

“Stop,” Rakin said, closing his eyes. “There’s a cave below us.”

The group looked around, scanning the surroundings for any possible entrance.

“Someone’s coming,” Rakin added in an urgent whisper.

At the hollow thud of a hatch being thrown open, they turned to see a small goblin head sticking up from the undergrowth, facing away from them.

Doug drew his bow while Kole held out his rod, but Zale held her hand up, signaling them to wait.

Cursing in the goblin tongue, the small creature squeezed out of the tight hole. Once free, it reached its arm back in and pulled up a mangy mongrel of a dog behind by the scruff of its neck.

Zale lowered her hand, and they all broke into motion.

Doug vanished as Kole sent his Will into his rod. Before he registered Doug’s absence, Doug’s arrow came flying over Kole’s shoulder, hurtling forward into the trees.

“Assuine’s mercy,” the demonkin cursed.

Kole’s purple bolt of force struck the goblin in the chest, making a much messier hole than the neat coin holes of his Magic Missile. With the front of its chest missing, the goblin died before it even knew they were under attack. The dog, which had begun to sniff the air as soon as it’d surfaced, saw its master fall and snarled at them, hackles raised. But it turned to flee as it saw Rakin and Zale charging after it.

“Wait,” Doug shouted to them, appearing behind Kole, but they didn’t listen.

The pair made short work of the dog and turned back to Doug.

“You didn’t need to do that,” he said, defeated.

“Yes, we did,” Zale said, not without sympathy. “We killed its master. There was nothing you could have said to it to make it trust us.”

“We could have tried,” Doug defended.

“And we would have failed, and it would have howled and given us away,” Zale finished for him. “Rakin, make that entrance wide enough for us. And Doug, what in the Realms happened just now?”

Rakin moved to the hatch the goblin had come through and listened with his primal senses while Doug stammered.

“I, uh… might have suggested I have more control over my primal abilities than I really do,” Doug confessed.

“Bah! Great choice, Zale,” Rakin shouted in frustration. “It’s clear, by the way. Gab later.”

Rakin threw the hatch open and jumped in.

He got stuck almost immediately, but the dirt seemed to fall away around him as if it were ice and he were a hot iron. Slowly, he descended into the tunnel, widening it as he went.

“Clear!” came Rakin’s hiss once he’d disappeared out of sight.

Zale looked at Doug and asked, “You good?”

He nodded, though he still looked upset.

“I’m good, I’ll go last.”

Kole went down the hole, blind in the darkness.

He continued downward until Rakin whispered, “Stop.”

Kole, who’d thought himself to still be in the narrow tunnel, nearly screamed in surprise but choked down the reflex. He felt the dwarf’s hands on him guiding him out.

Below, he heard the running of water echoing through the cave and smelled the overwhelming aroma of sewage.

“Gods, I thought their blood smelled bad,” Kole said, holding his nose.

Zale came down next, and they were lucky for the sound of the water to drown out the sound of her armor.

Once Doug was down, Rakin took charge.

“Follow me. Zale, guide the blind human. No talking.”

They waded into the filthy water that rose to their knees. The subterranean river was only a few feet across, but the rough edges of the cavern and frequent large blocks resulted in a disproportionately loud flow.

As they traveled, the riverbed rose upward and widened out. As it did, it grew quieter, and they began to hear Zale’s armor over the rapids.

At Rakin’s signal, the group came to a halt. Kole, being blind in the darkness, walked into Zale’s back. Only Zale’s reflexes in catching him kept him from falling into the water.

“Yer too loud,” Rakin whispered to Zale. “Ye need to ditch the armor.”

Zale shook her head, which Kole felt as her hair whipped his face.

“Let me try something I’ve been working on.”

Everyone paused to let Zale focus.

“What’re you doing?” Doug asked.

“What is she doing?” Kole echoed, still unable to see.

“She’s just flapping her gums,” Rakin explained. “Now I think she’s calling out.”

Despite that, she made no sound.

“Ye blocked the sound?” Rakin asked.

After a pause, Doug explained to Kole, “She can’t hear us, and we can’t even hear her armor.”

“Alright,” Rakin said, satisfied with the solution. “Let’s go. Keep it quiet. We’re close to the right elevation, so we should be close.”

The tunnel continued to widen as they waded upstream, the ceiling rising higher. By the time the stream was only a few inches of running water, they came to a small subterranean beach of gravel.

Rakin motioned for a stop and crept ahead of the group, his Earth primal abilities making his steps on the loose rock silent. He returned a few moments later.

“This is the right-hand tunnel we didn’t take last time. If we keep going upstream, we will be below the ridge we fought on. There’s at least a dozen goblins walking around up there,” Rakin whispered.

“Let’s keep going. Maybe there’s another way up,” Zale decided before going silent again.

Rakin led the blind human, deaf voidling, and demonkin up the river, and shortly they were below the crescent-shaped chamber they’d fought in before. Torches were lit up top, finally giving Kole some light, though it didn’t extend far enough down to illuminate them. Slowly, they crept upstream, all while goblins milled about above, joking and laughing in their shrill, cruel tongue.

Rakin stopped them silently and pointed up the ridge. Faintly, Kole made out the silhouette of logs, backlit by the torches.

“Traps,” the dwarf whispered.

They slowed their pace then, scanning the riverbed for any trip wires, but whatever triggered the trap wasn’t down below. They made it through the large chamber without exposure and continued on in the dark until Rakin cursed in a sharp whisper.

“Flood.”

“What?” Kole asked.

“The river ends, it goes under the stone,” he explained.

“Can you widen it?”

“No, there’s no cavity beyond,” Rakin said after putting his hand to the stone wall and closing his eyes.

“What should we do?” Doug asked.

As if in answer to the question, they heard the light splash of drops hitting the water.

“Is there a path up?” Kole asked, looking up into the darkness.

Plop.

Something struck Kole in the face.

Plop, Plop, shlop.

Three more projectiles, each progressively less solid, landed before he could react to the first, and with them came the overwhelming—and now familiar—odor of goblin shit.

Zale threw her silence field up once more just as she broke out into laughter.

Before Kole could fully react, Rakin pulled him down into the water, shoving his head under.

Because of Rakin’s quick thinking, when Kole began to retch uncontrollably, the sound of it was lost under the surface. The urge to vomit fought with the urge to scream, but the more physical of the two reactions won out, and Kole expelled his breakfast into the already filthy stream. He tried not to gasp for breath after, but failed, choking in some water before clamping his mouth shut. Though he fought to stand, Rakin held him under until suddenly another hand grabbed his neck.

Zale pulled Kole up by the collar and hugged his face tight to her chest. He tried to hold it in but couldn’t help coughing up the water he’d inhaled before desperately gulping in breath.

To his surprise, no sound came from his mouth. He could still hear the cave around him, but nothing came from him. Once he’d stopped coughing, struggling, and generally being a panicked animal, Zale’s grasp loosened as she let him go.

When his mouth got more than an inch away from Zale’s chest, the sound of his own ragged breathing returned.

“Thanks,” he whispered to Rakin, whose quick thinking likely saved them.

“Rakin’s gone,” Doug answered. “He started climbing up the poop shaft as soon as Zale had you.”

As if on cue, a small body fell into the water next to them, splashing them all with the filthy vomit-strewn water.

Reacting fast, Zale chopped at the figure with her sword, and the smell of goblin blood joined with the rest.

“Come up!” Rakin’s voice echoed from above.

CHAPTER 38

Rescue

I have known many heroes and had the great privilege to call some friends. While my efforts helped in these wars, the deeds of my friends and other heroes like them are what led us to victory. They put their lives on the line, when all I had to do was solve problems from the comfort of a magical tower in another realm.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Kole climbed up first, turning on his runic light at its lowest setting when Rakin gave him the okay. The lamp was surprisingly high-quality, and the more he used it, the more he was sure he wasn’t supposed to have kept it. Despite the low level of light, Kole had to squint after being in darkness for so long.

The climb was simple if not necessarily easy. Rakin had molded steps and handholds into the wall as he climbed. Kole tried to ignore the shaft’s intended purpose.

“Kill the light,” Rakin whispered as he neared the top.

Kole complied, and the dwarf helped him up into a circular room lit by a crude torch. The room was largely empty, save of course for the hole, and the two young girls tied up in the corner, passed out but still breathing. The entrance to the chamber, covered by a filthy sheet, was so small Kole would have had to crouch to fit through.

“Are they okay?” Kole asked and saw Rakin’s curt nod in reply.

Zale surfaced next, silent once more through some application of her primal magic or “voidiness” that Kole really wanted to ask about.

Doug surfaced last and scanned the room.

“No one’s coming,” Rakin told the group, hand to the ground.

“How long does it normally take a goblin to do his business?” Kole asked, in jest. “I think we have at least that long before somebody comes in to see what happened to this room’s last occupant.”

Rakin looked around. “No clue, there’s not exactly reading material in here.”

“I can make one more silence aura,” Zale told the group. “I think we should try sneaking out. I’ll wake the girls with a silenced hand over their mouths, and you can explain the situation. Then we go down the hole and sneak out the back.”

No one objected, and Zale walked over to the girls, gently placing her hand over their already gagged mouths.

As one would do when woken from an uncomfortable sleep that way, they freaked out.

“Calm down, ye idiots,” Rakin scolded the girls in a harsh whisper.

Kole quickly stepped in, realizing maybe he was better suited for this task.

“We’re here to rescue you. We’re adventurers sent by the…” He paused, realizing the actual answer to the situation wouldn’t make sense to the two girls, who were possibly magical constructs.

“Mayor,” he finished with the first thing that came to his mind.

The pair relaxed slightly at that and stopped squirming, allowing Zale to remove her hands and cut their bonds.

“Can you climb down a ladder?” Kole asked them, realizing now that they were about his age.

“I think so,” one said weakly.

“Take this.” He handed the speaker his light. “My friend Rakin will descend before you. He can catch you if you slip. But try not to, he can be a grump.”

Rakin grunted in response, eliciting a small smile from the girls despite the situation.

Zale positioned herself at the edge of the door flap while Doug stood at the far side of the room with his bow at the ready.

“I’ll stand watch outside,” Kole volunteered, turning invisible and ducking through the flap.

The opening beyond took a tight turn to the right before widening out into the large crescent chamber the river passed through. The chamber was dark, save for the torches that stood outside each of the entrances to the other two-chamber openings. He saw light emanating from the tunnel they’d used to enter on their first attempt. As he watched, a goblin ran out of the entrance tunnel squealing in its own tongue. He ran past the first chamber where Zale died last time and into the second they’d never seen.

Kole ducked back into the prison latrine room and whispered to the team, “I think someone found our victims outside. Hurry up.”

He moved back outside to see a group of goblins walking towards his location with purpose. The lead goblin stood a head taller than the rest, wearing an elaborate headdress of bone, marking it as a shaman or sorcerer.

“They’re coming!” Kole rasped as he jumped back in, just in time to see the second girl’s head dip beneath the surface.

“I’ll cover the door,” Zale said, keeping her position. “Don’t shoot me.”

“I’ll try,” Kole said as Doug said, “I won’t.”

Kole drew his blasting rod and held his breath as he heard the group approach. The first to enter was short even for a goblin, and Zale cut it in half from shoulder to hip before it even noticed her.

The next walked through the flap, tripping on its dead comrade’s body, and taking an arrow to the chest. This goblin gasped at the blow and let out a wet scream, alerting the shaman to the ambush.

Kole heard the arcane mutterings of goblin magic from beyond the flap, and dove to the side shouting, “Spell!”

The room filled with thunder, and a wave of pressure hit him. Sharp pain lanced each ear as the sound ruptured his eardrums, leaving behind only a high-pitched whine. Kole’s teammates were struck by the full brunt of the attack, Zale thrown back towards the hole in the center of the room and Doug slammed into the rough cave wall he’d stood against. The spell threw the dead and dying goblins on the floor toward the hole in a tangled heap.

Kole recovered first, having received only a fraction of the attack’s power, and pointed his rod at the entry, expecting the shaman to enter at any moment. But nothing came. He saw blood dripping down the ears of Zale and Doug as they regained their footing, and he felt the same on himself.

Then in the subjective silence, a pair of goblins charged into the room, crude short swords drawn, eyes casting about wildly. Kole struck one with a bolt, while Doug took down the other with an arrow. When a third didn’t come, Zale motioned for the boys to watch the door as she picked up the small goblin bodies and pushed them to the entryway to form a barrier. Once that was done, Kole stuck his head down the hole, where he saw his light shining clearly from the bottom.

Waving wildly, Kole got Doug’s attention and pointed for him to go down the hole. The demonkin obliged and was halfway in when a thick smoke began to fill the chamber. Zale backed away from the entryway, cutting a still-wet piece of her shirt and placing it over her mouth. She tried to push Kole toward the hole, but he shook his head, pushing her to it instead. Unsure of his plan but trusting he had one, she sheathed her sword and began to descend.

The smoke grew thick rapidly, stinging Kole’s eyes and driving him to a wracking cough. Between gasps, he focused his mind and used the remainder of his Will to cast the Air cantrip, creating a well of fresh air in his palm just as he had to survive the stench of the deep whale barrel. Compared to the burning in his lungs and stinging in his eyes, he hardly noticed the side effects of being Will-drained. He fought through the pain of his existence and pulled a clarity potion from his belt, downing it in one go.

Ugh, he thought, fighting back another bout of vomiting. These somehow taste worse than back home.

The spell had banished the smoke directly in front of his face, and he watched as Zale descended slowly, armor getting caught as she fumbled blindly for footholds below. A goblin came through the smoke just as her head disappeared beneath the surface, and Kole struck it in the head with his quarterstaff before it noticed his presence.

He was surprised how easy this defeat had been as the creature collapsed before him, and he looked at the wooden stick with new appreciation.

Before more could come from the smoke, Kole took a deep breath and turned invisible. As soon as he cast the spell, his Air cantrip failed, as he couldn’t maintain both spells at once, even if one was only a cantrip.

Flood, he cursed inwardly, noticing that he looked like a human-shaped void in the smoke.

Luckily, the smoke was thick enough that anyone who could see his outline would be within striking distance of his staff. No goblin followed the first, and Kole watched the door nervously, waiting for what the crafty creatures would try next.

He moved to the side of the hole opposite the entrance and lay on the ground where the air was clear enough to breathe, blasting rod extended before him. He fought the urge to descend through the hole. If he could keep the goblins focused on him up here, his friends had a chance to escape.

After what felt to Kole like days but was in reality a few minutes, the smoke began to clear. By then Kole had been forced to breathe through his own clothes, his dunk in the water before providing ample wet material to use as a filter. The flow of the stream meant the water itself was fairly fresh, but Kole couldn’t help but recall the smell.

When it cleared, Kole froze as a single scrawny goblin flew into the room, as if thrown. The wretched creature landed inches from the hole, and immediately jumped to its feet, scanning the room.

Finding it empty, the creature looked down the hole. While Kole still couldn’t hear anything, the goblin clearly began to shout.

Deciding it was worth the risk, Kole reached across the hole, grabbed the goblin by the ankle, and pulled it in. His invisibility vanished as soon as he touched the enemy, and the goblin’s eyes grew wide in recognition before it fell screaming to its death below.

Kole recast Invisibility as soon as he was free of contact with the goblin and disappeared just as two more ran in, weapons drawn. They scanned the room, looking for their companion.

He held still as they searched the room, holding back the urge to shove them down the hole when they grew close. The pair soon realized their escape path and ran out of the chamber shouting.

Kole followed, careful to stay back far enough to be unheard. Outside the latrine room, he saw the goblins gathering weapons while those that were already armed were running to the entrance and others descended the cliff face down to the stream below.

He couldn’t see his friends but expected that they were trapped in the cavern that joined the beach to the larger chamber. He crept along the ridge, careful to keep his distance from the enemy. As he made his way towards the entrance, he thought he could hear the sounds of battle despite the damage to his ears—though he knew it to be just a figment of his imagination. When a group of the crudely armed creatures ran past, he ducked into a side chamber. When he came out, the only foes remaining stood over the log traps Rakin had spotted below.

Kole ran down the incline towards the entrance, stumbling in the low torchlight. When he neared the bottom, by the entrance, he knew a battle was ahead. The occasional spark lit the darkness as blades met, and somewhere in the blackness below, his friends held back a swarm of goblins as they fought to enter the cave.

Three crossbowmen stood above the logs, looking down the stocks of their scavenged weapons into the darkness.

Should I? Kole asked himself, eyeing the crude ropes holding the logs up.

He weighed his options. If he was wrong, and they weren’t in the cave, they would die. But, if he did nothing, they would likely die anyway.

Making up his mind—comforted by the fact that they wouldn’t actually die, even if he was wrong—he drew his dagger and slashed.

CHAPTER 39

Escape

Tal of Storms, Daulf the Dragonslayer, the Queen of Ice, Bearskin, Dagmar Ken’Tokar, and Roland of the Wood. There were many heroes in the war, but these were those I called friends.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Kole’s blade cleanly sliced the first ropes of the trap. The log they had held back only shifted slightly at first, but the goblin leaning against it jumped back in surprise, giving it the extra push it needed to tip over the edge. It tumbled and rolled, kicking up stones and sending splinters all over as it picked up speed.

With Kole still invisible, nobody had caught him doing it. The other two goblins stared at the first in shock, shouting something to it. The one by Kole raised its hands in denial, shaking its head, but the other two were not convinced by its pleas, and they each fired their weapons into its diminutive body.

When the murderous pair moved to reload, Kole ran behind them both. He landed a kick on the side of the nearest one, breaking his invisibility but sending the clueless goblin over the edge. The third dropped his unloaded crossbow and reached for a dagger from his belt, but Kole was ready, and he blasted the creature in the chest with a bolt of purple energy.

Moving quickly, he cut the ropes on the remaining two logs, sending each down to finish off any that remained below. Then he took a torch from the wall and threw it over the edge. Briefly, before it extinguished itself in the water, Kole saw that while some of the goblins remained fighting to push his teammates out of the cave, the logs had stacked near the cave mouth, restricting the entrance enough that his friends could hold the opening with ease.

Kole turned invisible again and continued down. He felt his way along the wall as he navigated the now torchless section back toward the steep rock face they’d climbed on their first visit. Goblins filled the entry chamber where it split to the beach and the ridge. The shaman stood, backlit by the entrance, and watched as its followers flooded toward Kole’s friends.

Looking for anything he could use, he scanned the chamber. The rocky footholds remained as Rakin had fixed them on their first climb, but Kole spotted something they had—thankfully—missed on their original attempt. A small wooden board lay on the ground, with a taut string coming out from under it and leading up into the ceiling above the cave entrance. Kole couldn’t see what it did, but he could make an educated guess. He slammed his foot down on the pressure plate and felt a snap as the string came off and flew up into the darkness.

Rocks and boulders fell from the ceiling onto the goblins below, and Kole felt the ground shake with each impact, deaf as he still was. Dust pillowed up from the impacts, and the cave became obscured in an instant, the only thing Kole could see being the light of its entrance.

Carefully he climbed down the stone wall, groping blindly through the debris-strewn entrance, over the dead and dying goblins, until suddenly he was outside in the light.

Kole rose from all fours to run but was struck in the back with a blunt object. Falling to his knees, he soon recovered enough sense to roll forward and turn, facing his attacker. The goblin shaman stood behind him with a skull-topped club raised for another attack, murder and hate in its eyes.

He raised his hands and saw that a gray dust had completely covered him, revealing him despite his invisibility. He groped for his quarterstaff but realized he’d dropped it back by the log trap.

Stupid!

Instead, he held up his blasting rod and fired a bolt wildly at the oncoming attacker. The magic went wide, and the goblin came on, swinging its club at Kole’s chest. Kole jumped back, dodging the swing, and came back with another blast of his rod, tapping the goblin on the arm before unleashing his Will through the weapon.

The purple energy exploded into the goblin’s arm, severing it below the elbow and sending it sprawling back.

The anger in the goblin’s eyes turned to madness as Kole lined up a shot to finish it off, but the shaman closed its eyes, and Kole began to feel a deep connection forming to the Arcane Realm at the back of its head.

Death spell! he realized and turned to run.

He made it only ten steps before he was thrown across the field by an overwhelming wave of sound.

***

Kole came to sometime later, though he didn’t know how long it had been. At first, he was confused, but the pain in his everything jogged his memory. Cautiously he opened his eyes to find himself near the forest’s edge, far closer than he had been when he was struck by the shaman’s death spell. The shaman had killed itself, drawing uncontrolled power from the Font of Sound in an attempt to take Kole with it.

He rolled onto his back, letting out a gasp of pain when he tried to use his left arm.

That’s definitely broken.

With a great effort, he sat up and looked around. He was back in the clearing around the entrance to the cave they’d charged during their first attempt. A few diminutive shapes were milling about in the darkness of the cave, but no goblins were around him. Kole forced himself to his feet and took a few unsteady steps into the woods, holding onto trees for support.

Painfully, he made his way through the woods, not even remembering to turn invisible.

Still deaf, his head spun around manically, looking for any sign of an ambush he couldn’t hear. He soon came to realize that he had no idea where he was.

What happens if I stay lost? Will I be pulled from this place? Will I wander around until I die of thirst and the dungeon spits me out?

Lost in thoughts of his potential modes of failure, he didn’t at first notice the bluebird on the branch in front of him, waving its wings as if to get his attention.

After the third time the bird repositioned itself in his path, the oddity finally struck home in Kole’s concussed brain. He stopped, looking at the bird. It seemed to know it had been noticed and flew off to Kole’s left a few yards before stopping on a branch.

Weird… Kole thought, but then recalled what Doug had said before about “asking around.”

He followed the bird through the woods, still paranoid of ambush but trusting the bird to flee if any goblins were near. After ten minutes of this, the bird flew up, landing on a high branch. Kole began to look for a path to the bird when he noticed the group of goblins gathered beneath the tree, standing in a circle with weapons drawn. The surroundings fell into focus, and he realized where he was. They were gathered around the hatch they’d use to enter the caves.

Kole dove behind a large tree, winced in pain, and drew his blasting rod, inspecting it for damage as Amara had advised him to do after battle. As far as he could tell, it had survived the Thunderwave far better than he had. He risked a glimpse around the tree and counted four goblins with crude bows drawn and trained on the hatch.

Elaborate plans of ambush flickered through Kole’s mind, but he threw them all out. He still couldn’t hear, and who knew what was happening through the hatch. He lined up his blasting rod at the lone goblin facing his direction and fired a bolt at its chest. As soon as the projectile had fired, he ducked behind the tree, turning invisible again.

He didn’t wait for them to find him and ran around the group to another tree. His passage was clumsy and loud, and he saw three remaining goblins look right toward him, though they couldn’t see the source of the terrible stealth attempt. One goblin fired blindly, and the arrows streaked right in front of Kole’s path, forcing him to fall back behind a large oak.

Pausing to gather his breath and steady his hand, Kole stuck his head out and aimed at the nearest goblin. All three had abandoned their ambush and were moving to find him.

Once more his bolt struck true, but this time the goblins were ready. The remaining two loosed arrows at him as soon as he appeared, and one landed a lucky shot, grazing Kole’s ribs and fouling his attempt to turn invisible.

Kole fired another bolt, missing terribly but driving the goblins behind cover. His Will was dangerously low. He judged he could send one more bolt, but that wouldn’t be enough.

He sat there debating whether to use his Will to turn invisible and flee or to take out one more goblin. Above him, the bluebird flew away, and Kole made his decision.

Rolling around the tree, he found the goblins advancing with swords drawn. He forced the last bit of his Will into his rod and sent a bolt into a tree beside them. They both dove out of the way but quickly recovered and ran at him. Kole pointed his now useless rod at the closest of the two in a bluff, causing it to dive behind cover, but the other continued on toward him.

Then Kole raised the thin rod back to throw at his attacker, just as it stopped, stumbled, and fell to the ground, an arrow sticking from its back. Kole spun to the other goblin, to find that it had never recovered from its dodge, having been struck in the head by one of Rakin’s darts.

The exhausted wizard looked up and found Rakin and Doug standing with weapons drawn as Zale carried an unconscious girl, another following behind, eyes wide in terror.

CHAPTER 40

Recover

Tal and I remember our first meeting very differently. To me, he was a powerful mage by that time. To ask him, he was a scared young boy looking for something to read, who didn’t know a spellform from a child’s scribblings. It sounds crazy to write this now after all these years, that Tal of Storms, the man who returned wizardry to the masses, once didn’t even know how to read a spellform. It was my pleasure to watch him grow from a young man to the hero the world remembers him as, but in my eyes, he was always a hero. He just didn’t know it yet.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Outside the dungeon in the ready room, Kole felt his hearing return to him. He and his team stood around looking at each other with mixed expressions of triumph and relief, waiting until they could hear each other. Kole was pleased to find his discarded quarterstaff and blasting rod leaning against the wall of the room, right next to a small pile of shattered glass. The others each had some of their own discarded equipment alongside it, Doug’s pile of arrows being the largest.

He inspected the glass and found a familiar cork stopper beside it.

The potion bottle? he wondered.

“Everything we take in comes out with us,” Zale said from behind.

It sounded to Kole like she was speaking softly at the end of a long hall, the sound barely reaching him.

“You can leave the garbage here,” she added.

“What happens to it then?” Kole asked, his loud voice sounding like a whisper even to himself.

Zale just shrugged, then collected some of her lost belongings alongside him.

By the time they’d returned the equipment he’d borrowed and laid themselves on the ground in exhaustion, Doug was asking in bafflement where the two girls had disappeared to. The others explained as best they could.

While Kole’s hearing recovered fast, his arm still felt very broken.

“What happened to you guys?” he asked as he lay with his eyes closed.

“We got to the cave before they raised the alarm,” Zale explained. “But there were already goblins in it following our trail in. We were fighting our way out while defending our rear when the log trap fell. That was you, right?”

Kole gave an exhausted grunt of affirmation.

“Once we only had one battlefront we pushed through and escaped in the confusion. Rakin collapsed it behind us. When we got to the trap door, he stopped us, sensing the ambush above. We mustered the courage for a blind charge, but when we surfaced, the goblins had begun to chase you.”

“Did the girls survive?” Kole asked.

“Yep,” Zale declared proudly. “I bet we’re the first group to pass with full marks.”

“Weren’t we only the third group?”

“It still counts,” Zale defended and then changed the topic. “So Doug, what’s your deal?”

“Me?” Doug asked, surprised at the sudden turn. “Oh, I just wanted to be an adventurer to see more of Assuine’s creation. I must say, though, cities have really left a lot to be desired.”

“Not that, you dob,” Rakin said, “the teleporting business.”

“Oh, that.” Kole saw a smile on Doug’s face, one that showed he knew Zale’s intent from the start. “I’m a Spatial primal, but the only primal in my family was my great-grandfather, and he’s been dead a long while. I can’t exactly control my magic.”

Zale’s eyes grew wide.

“Oh! You’re you!”

“Excuse me?” Doug asked.

“My mother told me about you. You were supposed to be here last week for a primal study group she put together. Why were you late?”

“Your mother? Professor Shalia?”

Zale nodded, and Doug continued, now more embarrassed than he was during his confession about his magic.

“I got to the region alright, but people were quite rude to me,” he said, gesturing to his antlers. “I asked for directions along the road, and the first person who would speak to me said I was on the wrong road. He seemed friendly, and I listened. He lied. Sent me all the way to the ruins of Landing, and I had to backtrack just to get here yesterday.”

Rakin’s sour mood softened at the tale.

“Aye,” he said in agreement. “People can suck.”

Zale, Doug, and Kole all nodded silently.

“Well, aren’t we just a bunch of positive ponies,” Zale said, breaking the solemn mood.

“Positive ponies?” Kole asked.

“Yeah. It’s a phrase,” Zale said. “Ask anyone.”

“It’s really not,” Rakin said.

“How would you know?” Zale teased. “You grew up underground and then spent ten years in a monastery on top of a mountain.”

“Bah,” Rakin grunted, waving his hand at Zale, done with the frivolous debate.

Zale smiled, and Kole was fairly certain she’d just won the little exchange—but he was also fairly certain she’d made that saying up.

They exited the ready room and found a place to sit away from teams yet to take their turn. They sat resting and telling Doug about the study group before the topic went back to their performance. Kole tried to listen, but the sensation of his arm healing kept distracting him. It was as if his bones were itching.

While they talked, other groups shuffled past them and through the dungeon. Where last week it had taken nearly the whole three hours to get through the class, this time it took less than one.

“Why is it going faster?” Kole asked.

“Magic?” Zale suggested, less than helpfully.

“Bah!” Kole shouted, which earned him a flick on the head from the dwarf.

The professors showed the group to a locker room attached to the lecture hall, with shower stalls and fresh sets of martial college training uniforms. They all took the opportunity to rid themselves of the accumulated filth, though the grime of the dungeon had already begun to vanish from them, leaving only the remnants of their own blood.

***

After everyone had finished, Underbrook gathered the class to the center. Kole was gratified to see that other groups were in far worse condition than their own, and the latest group to exit still hadn’t recovered their hearing. They were looking at each other with panic, cupping their ears to try to catch the professor’s words.

“I hope you all enjoyed today’s lesson,” Underbrook began. “But it was not all about fun. It was a lesson, after all.”

“That was supposed to be fun?” someone asked their neighbor behind Kole.

Actually, he realized, it was fun. Terrifying, horrifying, and disgusting, but also fun.

Underbrook pulled a crystal out of his hand and placed it on a pedestal, forming an illusion in the air above the class.

“Normally each group will receive one-on-one feedback from me or my stoic counterpart, but today, we will just do the group debrief.”

The illusion showed Kole and his group all gathered in the latrine room, frozen midair as they were thrown back by the goblin shaman’s spell. Dread went through Kole at being put on the spot in such a way.

“While Zale and her group were the first to complete the mission without losing a member, they did make some mistakes we can all learn from. They had the clever idea of climbing up the goblin’s waste shaft to get to the captives.” Underbrook raised an eyebrow at the word “clever.” “But, once inside, they stayed grouped together, even when they knew a spellcaster was coming.”

To Kole’s relief, the professor quickly moved on to other groups. Gray’s team had succeeded as well but had opted for a different strategy. They’d sent Mouse, their Assuine Blessed, in as a—well—mouse to find the hostages and free them. Then the group created a large distraction out front, allowing Mouse to bring the girls to safety through the river. They hadn’t gotten out without their own failures, though, and their battle against the shaman outside had set the forest ablaze.

Other groups had failed spectacularly, and those failures were shown in all their glory. Nothing, though, rivaled Kole’s embarrassment at being shat on, and he was extremely grateful the professors seemed to be exercising restraint in what he shared.

As the class wound down, Underbrook gave one last announcement.

“Details on next week’s dungeon will be passed out at your next class with Tigereye. Don’t miss it.”

“Why can’t you just tell us now?” an entitled voice Kole didn’t recognize asked.

Underbrook smiled mischievously before answering, “I have no idea what it will be. As soon as you leave, Tigereye will reset the dungeon and see what’s in store for the lot of you.”

As if emphasizing the point, Tigereye came out of some back room, wearing a well-patched and unadorned version of his normal uniform and carrying a backpack stuffed to the brim.

“Class dismissed!” Underbrook yelled, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Now it’s our turn to go in and see what you’ll be up against next week.”

CHAPTER 41

Weirdity

While I cannot say for certain, I do not think Trishalia killed any kings. She often claimed she “didn’t steal things,” only that people tended to give her whatever she wanted. In my experience, this was mostly true. She did steal things—though notably the two ensouled blades in her possession were not acquired through theft despite claims by the Church of Waas and the city of Illandrios to the contrary.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Doug joined the group for lunch, and they headed over together discussing the possibilities of their next week’s mission.

“Did you know that about the dungeon?” Kole asked Zale.

“Sort of?” she answered. “I knew it wasn’t something the professors could control completely, but I didn’t realize it was completely unknown. In the past, professors have tried to use it for things besides teaching, but it never seemed to do what they wanted. They tried hosting a hardball match inside once.”

“What happened?” Doug asked.

“The Dahn seemed… irritated. They got it to create the environment they wanted, but the trees were all the wrong color, the animals made strange sounds, and the whole place smelled like old cheese. Despite all that, they ran the match, and when they tried to review the recording, they found the illusory record followed the progress of an ant colony inside slowly deconstructing a loaf of bread. The ball did appear in the view for about three seconds when someone dropped it near the bread.”

“Bwa!” Rakin laughed, rubbing his hand affectionately along the wall as he walked. “I hadn’t heard about that. I think this place is starting to grow on me.”

***

“Blasting rod!” Amara demanded, hand outstretched as they came upon her outside the dining hall.

Kole handed it over, proud he’d not completely destroyed it. Amara carefully examined the runes on the rod, rubbing her fingers over it, holding it up to her eye, and even smelling the wood.

“Hmm,” was all she said as she put it in her belt. “You need to come learn the repair rune pattern this week.”

Kole nodded.

Amara finally noticed the presence of the demonkin boy, and her eyes grew wide as they locked onto his antlers.

“That’s Doug,” Zale introduced. “He’s a part of our team now and will be in the study group too.”

“Your horns are beautiful,” Amara said breathlessly.

Doug flushed, embarrassed. Idly he touched the tip of one with his finger.

“Antlers, actually,” he corrected.

“Oh! I’m sorry! Is that rude?” Amara held her hand over her mouth, looking from Zale to Kole for guidance.

Doug answered, “I don’t think so. What’s rude is when people throw rocks at them.”

“They look like they’d hold runes wonderfully,” she continued.

“That might be a little rude,” Zale stage-whispered to Amara.

“Oh! Sorry!” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

“It’s fine,” Doug reassured her. “Just… maybe don’t say that to another demonkin, they might think you mean to kill them for their antlers.”

They were in the martial college’s cafeteria again, as it was the one with staff least put off by Zale’s presence, but the addition of the demonkin foiled that plan, and once again they attracted stares.

“So, anyone up for hardball again tonight?” Zale asked.

“No,” Rakin grunted.

“Sure,” Doug said. “What’s that?”

“You don’t know what hardball is?!” Zale gasped.

She excitedly described the game, which didn’t take too long, since there were hardly any rules. She spent most of the time describing the teams that would play that night and how they would watch.

“Sure, sounds fun. I have to go out to the Glade for a while, but I can come by after.”

“Great! Let’s all meet on campus at six,” Zale said, glaring at Rakin when she said “all.”

***

After lunch, Kole went back to the library to rest in his new bed. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow and woke to the sound of ruffling pages.

Opening his eyes, he saw Theral at work at the desk.

“Welcome back,” Kole said groggily.

“Sorry,” Theral said, looking up from his books. “I thought I was being quiet.”

“It’s alright. I spent a few hours deaf today after getting hit by a Thunderwave, and sound is a novelty.”

Theral let out a laugh.

“I can understand that. I was chased through the forest deaf a few times. It was terrifying.”

A few times? How does that happen more than once? Kole thought to ask but was interrupted.

“So you figure out Thunderwave?” Theral asked.

“No. It hasn’t even been a week,” Kole said, moving to sit up. “I was hit by the same spell from a goblin sorcerer—or shaman? I copied the spellform over but have no idea how to begin making the path.”

“Only a week?” Theral was still smiling. “It seemed longer.”

Kole was already getting annoyed with how Theral thought this whole situation was funny. Like he knew some small secret behind each sentence that lent it a deeper hilarious meaning.

“You should find the book Arcane Path Finding by Trandrid Hobble,” Theral suggested, ignoring the mention of the goblin.

“You mean that book?” Kole pointed to one on the shelf.

Theral turned, spotted it, then laughed harder.

“Yeah, that one. And while you’re at it, you should probably read Unknowable Geographies and Bridges to Power right next to it. They won’t teach you how to make the paths, but… the Arcane Realm is weird, and they give you some perspective to comprehend the weirdity of it all.”

“Weirdity?” Kole asked, repeating the made-up word.

“Exactly.”

Just as with their last meeting, Kole got the sense that this young wizard had a lot more knowledge than one of his age ought to possess, yet he was very clearly not some ancient dragon in disguise—which was not unheard of. In the Last Dragon War, it had been revealed that some of the dragons who had survived the corruption of the Avatar had taken on the guise of members of an Illusian race and lived amongst them. Now people were suspicious of anyone who seemed more than they ought to be, even if the number of dragons was staggeringly small.

What self-respecting dragon would say “weirdity”?

“Thanks for the advice. Do you mind me asking why you keep showing up here?”

“Nope, not at all,” Theral answered, turning back to his studies.

Kole let out a groan when he realized what he was doing.

“Why do you keep showing up here?” Kole repeated, not amused.

“I had a run-in with a Primordial, and now I randomly channel the Font and appear here and a few other places.”

“Huh… I actually just met a guy with a similar problem. He’s a Spatial primal, and he can’t stop himself from teleporting.”

Kole saw the humor leave Theral’s face, replaced with rabid curiosity. But, instead of asking the questions Kole expected, Theral bit his lower lip, as if the act physically held them in.

“So why here?” Kole asked. “Were you a student at the Academy or something?”

Thermal took a moment to think over the question and then replied, “A student? No, but I spent a lot of time learning in this building on my own. I think that’s why I come here. I don’t have conscious control over the ability, but subconsciously my Will pushes me somewhere safe. I’ve never shown up anywhere in danger—so far, at least.”

The shift to primal-adjacent issues piqued Kole’s interest.

“Do you have any ideas on how to stop it?”

“Plenty,” Theral answered, holding up his book to show a long bullet-pointed list, “but none I’m confident will work. Right now I’m working on building a bridge near the problematic Font.”

“I thought you were already a wizard,” Kole asked. “You can’t have two bridges.”

“Says who?” Theral asked, in a very teacherly “are-you-sure?” manner.

“Everyone? No one? You just can’t do it. That’s like asking, ‘Who says you can’t touch the sun?’ If someone did do it, they’re dead, but more likely no one has. It’s impossible, or deadly enough that it makes no difference.”

“That’s a fair point,” Theral conceded, “but I think I’m onto something. Possible and impossible are just matters of perspective.”

Kole was taken aback by those words.

He’s right. I’m always trying to convince people that I can be a wizard. They just don’t see the issue the way I do and assume that it can’t happen because it hasn’t happened.

“How does it work?”

“I’ll tell you if it works,” Theral said, stretching. “I was about to get some sleep.”

Kole looked at the clock and saw that he’d overslept.

“Bah!” he shouted, channeling his inner Rakin. “I’m late again!”

CHAPTER 42

The Forsaken

Daulf had the nickname Dragon Slayer when I met him, but he claimed he’d not really killed that first dragon. He later earned the name in earnest.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Everyone but Amara was waiting for Kole as he arrived at the meeting place.

“Sorry!” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to sleep so long. Will drain wiped me out.”

“It’s fine,” Rakin answered. “No one expected you to be on time. Let’s get this outing done with.”

“Amara’s not coming?”

“No, she wanted to examine your wand longer. She sent a messenger,” Doug said, pointing to a rat perched in his antlers.

“Blasting rod, actually,” Kole corrected and then immediately regretted it.

No one likes a know-it-all, he told himself.

“Oh,” Doug said, “what’s the difference?”

To Kole’s relief, Doug didn’t seem offended and genuinely wanted to know.

“A blasting rod is a runic device, and the wielder uses their own Will to power whatever offensive runes were put on it. A wand is an enchanted item that has one or more spells imbued into it. Casting doesn’t take any Will from the wielder.”

Doug asked more questions on the topic as the group headed over to the Griffin’s Roost, garnering even more attention now that a demonkin was in their midst.

“We just need to find a dark elf and a duergar to complete the look,” Kole joked. “We can call ourselves ‘The Forsaken.’”

Doug laughed, but Zale and Rakin shared a worried look.

“The voidlings weren’t one of the forsaken races,” Zale said when she saw Kole had caught the look. “But… you bring up a good point. We will need a name for class. Maybe we go with Dragon Cultists? Sorcerers, demonkin, and voidlings all fought alongside the dragons in the Last Dragon War.”

“Pass,” Rakin shouted. “I like ‘The Forsaken.’ It’s short and to the point.”

“For real?” Kole asked. “I was only joking…”

“No, it’s clever. Let’s do it,” Zale said, now free of any hesitation.

“The Forsaken it is, then,” Kole declared.

The hardball match had already started when the groups arrived. The place was crowded, but their table from before had a sign marking it as reserved.

“Perks of having a delinquent as a mother,” Zale said, grabbing a seat.

“I’m gonna tell her ye said that,” Rakin said.

“That’s fine, but I’ve got a thing or two to tell Dagmar next time I see her.”

Rakin’s face turned pale, and his eyes grew wide.

“Ye wouldn’t!”

Zale only shrugged and waved to the bartender.

The group watched the match without incident. Gray’s team was present, and everyone made an effort to avert their gazes from their corner of the room—but not from Doug.

“Why is everyone at that table staring at us?” Doug whispered, pointing to the rival team.

“It’s a long story,” Zale equivocated.

“No, it’s not,” Rakin said. “Zale had a crush on the big one, but he’s a wee bit racist—”

“They aren’t racist,” Zale defended them weakly.

Rakin continued talking over her.

“—The big one still kind of likes Zale, despite the racism, and the pretty one is pissed because she likes the big one and he doesn’t like her back. The skinny one hates Kole because Kole is a phony wizard who can’t use magic and he expects Kole will get us all killed someday.”

After the confrontation with Gray and Harold, he was willing to believe that they weren’t racist—just stupid teenagers handling a situation poorly—but that didn’t soften his opinion of the pair. Whatever their motivation, the way they’d treated Zale was inexcusable.

“That was kind of long,” Doug replied. “Are you sure about the pretty one? She seems the only one to be in a good mood.”

Kole risked a glance over and saw Mouse smiling, taking sips of her drink and then looking at the cup as if she didn’t believe it to be real.

Rakin snorted. “I think ye tall folk all look like deformed mutant children, and even I can tell Esme’s the pretty one. The happy one is Mouse.”

“If you say so,” Doug said wistfully as he watched Mouse drink.

“Oh great. Another avenue for drama,” Kole whispered to Rakin.

“Can I offer you kids another round?” Gimble, the proprietor, asked after the match ended.

Everyone declined and thanked him for the evening.

“Alright, have a good night. Don’t forget about the mixer Sunday.”

“Mixer?” Kole asked, but Gimble was already at the next table.

“It’s an opportunity for adventurer graduates of the Dahn to meet prospective mentees,” Zale answered. “You don’t need to be on the staff to mentor a student, but if you aren’t, there aren’t many other chances to evaluate potential students. You should go. I can introduce you around.”

“That would be great!” Kole said, more excited for a mixer than he thought possible. “I was kind of hoping your uncle would be interested in me, but…”

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping for that too,” Zale admitted. “But he’s always been flakey. This might be better for you in the long run. Some of the hardball teams will be there too, and they are always on the lookout for new talent.”

The group left together and parted ways on campus, where Kole took a roundabout way to the library. Walking by the librarian’s desk, he was struck by a pang of guilt.

I really should ask about returning that rune light… but I need it. Best if I ask Amara for a new one first.

Kole walked through the stacks, on a circuitous route, before closing in on the entrance to his new room. Since gaining permission to stay here, Kole had widened the opening he’d made in the bookshelf and then dragged his previously borrowed desk in front of the hole to hide it. When he came in sight of the desk, he found a rat waiting patiently atop it.

“Scram!” Kole shouted at it.

The rat only stood there on its two hind legs, little ratty paws held out as if begging for coins.

Kole threw the cork from an empty potion vial at it. The rat vanished the moment before the cork struck, only to reappear in the same spot and resume its pose.

“Do you need something?” Kole asked. “Why am I talking to a rat… actually, most of my friends talk to rats now. Now I’m talking to myself.”

The rat cocked its head sideways as if listening.

“He’s hungry!” Theral’s voice came muffled from the opening.

“Oh,” Kole said to himself.

He contemplated whether or not he’d wanted to feed the rat. The pack rat had made his first week miserable, but… it had led him to this room. His fortune had turned for the better since their first run-in. Of all the rats he’d interacted with in the last month—including the goblin-rats and excluding Gus—this was the least awful one. He didn’t realize the ridiculousness of that thought as he had it. Somewhere along the way, he’d just accepted the abundance of magical rats in his life.

He gave the rat a heel of bread, tossing it on the ground. When the rat dove for the morsel, Kole moved the desk out of the way and ducked behind the cover.

“You’re still here?” Kole asked.

That’s stupid. Obviously he’s still here.

“It would seem so,” Theral replied. “I don’t much get to pick when I leave.”

“Couldn’t you get back to where you were by other means?”

“Not so far as I know. I tried, but I am very, very, very far from where I was.”

When Theral didn’t elaborate, Kole dropped the issue.

If he wants to be vague and cryptic, I’ll not indulge it.

“You can take the desk,” Theral volunteered, standing up and stretching. “I should probably get some rest. I can get a little carried away.”

“Thanks, I know the feeling. How’s your impossible task going?”

“I’m still working on the perspective,” Theral answered with a grin.

Theral let out a long yawn and then moved to get in his bed. Kole saw that he’d left all his work strewn across the desk.

“Umm…” Kole began, unsure how to ask him to clean up his mess without being rude.

“Oh, sorry!” Theral apologized. “I’m not used to sharing space anymore.”

Theral held his palm up before him, and his golden-scaled spellbook appeared in his palm, vanishing from the table. When Kole looked back at the desk, all the pages on it disintegrated into black smoke, which then vanished.

He stared, mouth agape.

“Goodnight,” Theral said. “Wait, it is night? Right?”

Kole nodded.

“Great, don’t worry about keeping me up. I could sleep through the end of the world.”

Kole took out his own far less magical spellbook, his worn notebook, and the spellbook that contained Shield and made himself at home. He’d learned two new versions of Magic Missile and in doing so managed to get the Will cost down to 32 from 40, but he was struggling to rebuild the third. He’d switch over to Shield now, giving his mind a break to process those barriers while working on the other spell.

He worked on the spell until the early signs of Will drain made themselves known. He paused, rubbing his temple, and reached for one of the books Theral had recommended with plans to study through the night, but then thought better of it.

He had the study group in the morning. While he’d failed to make an impression on Mage Tallen the first time, being a tired mess wouldn’t improve his chances. He looked over to Theral sleeping, a paper blindfold wrapped around his face, and decided to call it a night.

Kole crept into bed, not sure which of his two roommates was weirder: the time-traveling rat, or the displaced mage with magic paper.

CHAPTER 43

Vaults

Roland is a private man, and he asked I not include any details about his personal life in this story.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Saturday at breakfast with Zale and Rakin—Amara hadn’t shown, and they’d forgotten to invite Doug—Kole finally got around to asking Zale about the specifics of her silence aura.

“It’s something my uncle helped me with,” she explained. “My mother had me tested for magical affinities when I was young, since I was such an… interesting child. They found I had a connection to a Font, but it wasn’t one anyone had knew of. Through some testing with Uncle Tallen, we named it the Void Font.”

“You discovered a Font?” Kole asked, amazed. “It’s a secondary one. Right?”

Zale grew embarrassed.

“Yes, and maybe,” she said, shrugging.

“That’s huge! What do you mean, maybe? Why haven’t I heard of this? It’s always huge news when a new secondary Font is discovered.”

Zale looked around, growing more uncomfortable as Kole’s excitement grew.

“We didn’t tell anyone,” she said, voice quiet but pressing the point of discretion.

“Oh, sorry!” Kole said, more subdued.

He looked around, but everyone was ignoring them as much as usual.

“Uncle Tallen is doing a lot of research at the moment, but he hasn’t made any of it public yet.”

“Why not?” Kole asked.

“He’s trying to avoid attention until he can sort out a problem he’s been having,” she explained.

Kole could tell Zale was trying to talk around something she didn’t want to or couldn’t share—which wasn’t hard.

“So that silence aura is the first ability you manifested?” Kole asked instead, moving back to the topic at hand.

Zale shook her head, her eyes locked on the chopsticks in her gauntleted hands.

“Flood!” she cried as her finger slipped and the sticks flew from her hands. “Sorry!”

“No one flooding cares if ye godsdamn curse,” Rakin said, exasperated.

“I care,” Zale said, lifting her chin and looking down her nose at Rakin. “It’s not ladylike.”

Rakin and Kole broke into laughter at that.

“Why is that funny?” Zale demanded.

“Sorry,” Kole gasped between laughs as he tried to control himself.

“Forgiven,” she said, nodding at Kole, and then gave Rakin a death glare. “But you’re not. Anyway, no it wasn’t my first ability. My first ability put me into some liminal nonspace. I can’t even begin to explain what it’s like. Uncle worked with me to build a mental vault, and once I had… things got murkier.”

“I thought voidlings can’t build vaults,” Kole said.

“They can’t, which is probably why mine is all weird. Voidlings don’t have Will capacities like you all, but they can manipulate Will external to them—which you can’t. If I try to channel Will into something, my Will interacts destructively with the object like a failing rune.”

As a demonstration, Zale took off a gauntlet and picked up a grape. Holding it in her palm, she closed her eyes to focus, and black particles started floating up from the grape until its skin had vanished.

“That seems useful,” Kole observed.

“It would be if that hadn’t taken all my Will. Unfocused like that, it’s very ineffective. But back to my weird voidy vault. My vault formed, but it had the aspect of the liminal space. I couldn’t use it to preserve memories or store Will constructs. He tried to have me build a bridge so I could view the Arcane Realm, but as soon as I tried, I found I could already see it. So, we worked over the summer at finding my Font in the Arcane Realm. Without a bridge, I just kind of showed up in there wherever.

“We failed, but I found the Font of Sound through dumb luck. Through a lot of experiments, we discovered I could connect to it and negate sound in an area around me. This was way more Will-efficient than what I just showed you. At first, I could only make myself deaf, but we’ve been working to expand my range, and now I can do about an inch around me.”

“Wow,” Kole said, unsure what else to say.

He’d fought back the urge to ask questions through the explanation and didn’t even know where to begin now.

“We get it,” Rakin complained. “Yer a very special magic girl. Can we go now?”

Just then, the leg on Rakin’s chair gave out, and he fell back.

“I lied,” Zale said to Kole, beaming. “The grape skin didn’t take all my Will. While I was talking, I used the rest dissolving his chair leg.”

***

“I believe you have all met our newest student, Doug,” Shalia said to the class, holding onto the demonkin’s shoulders as she stood beside him.

Everyone nodded.

“Great. His great-grandfather was a friend, and he’s actually the reason we started this group.” She paused, then turned to Zale, her voice taking on an affectionate tone. “Him and my little Azalea, of course.”

Zale’s face flushed black as all eyes turned to her.

“Stop embarrassing her,” Tallen admonished Shalia.

“You don’t tell me how to parent, and I won’t tell you how to… I don’t know… study? Bungle diplomatic liaisons? Burn down forests?”

Tallen clapped his hands and turned to the students.

“Why don’t we start?”

He went around to each member of the group, getting an update on their progress and giving feedback.

For Rakin, he had set him on a path toward creating a vault but had also given him a text to read by the Enlightened Master Monk Oas, a long-dead member of the Order of the Resounding Silence. He was to learn to make a soul stone. Kole wasn’t sure why that was necessary, but Rakin wasn’t sharing, and he didn’t want to pry.

Well—actually—he very badly wanted to pry but didn’t want to get yelled at for prying.

Zale told her uncle about her application of sound nullification, and he beamed with pride.

“That’s great!” he said. “I heard you got hit by a Thunderwave. I wonder… do you think you could have canceled out the spell itself?”

“How’d you hear that?” Zale asked, glaring at her mother, who lifted her hands up.

“No, not her. I have my sources,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” she said, then paused to think. “Maybe? I kind of sensed something before the spell was cast, but I didn’t think much of it.”

“Let’s work on that today, then,” Tallen said.

For Doug, Tallen tasked him with building a mental vault, but also requested he ask his Grovekeeper for guidance in creating a soul stone using the methods employed by Assuine’s Blessed.

There were myriad ways to create soul stones, and Tallen was tailoring everyone’s path to their skills. Kole knew a spell existed to create them by force for others, but the origins and effects of that particular spell were steeped in necromancy.

Runt was just told to keep working on her vault and given some advice. She both hated and appreciated that. From what Zale told Kole, she’d not been deemed worthy of her clan’s training in wielding the Font of Bonds. That training would have started with the construction of a mental vault, or “The Boundary,” as her people called it. The hate came from the fact the work itself was mind-achingly dull—literally. It led to Will drain.

Amara talked to Tallen a little about her “understandings,” but they discussed her blasting rod far longer. He never ended up giving her a primal-related assignment.

“That’s fascinating,” he said when she’d explained her application of the Font of Life to maintain wooden wands. “I look forward to seeing your progress.”

“So, what are you working on?” Tallen asked Kole, looking over his shoulder as he read Unknowable Geographies.

Kole explained his plan to cast Sound magic through his bridge from its default location, and how he had the effect component already in his vault but needed to learn to map it.

“That’s a solid plan,” Tallen advised. “In fact, it’s what I would have suggested myself. Keep it up. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Then he walked away to cast Sound spells at Zale.

Kole sat conflicted. He felt both validated and robbed simultaneously.

Was he brushing me off? Or was this the plan he really would have given? Or is he a fraud and just claiming Theral’s idea is good because he doesn’t know any better? No… from what Zale explained, he isn’t a fraud, but… why isn’t he being more helpful?

Unsure of Tallen’s credentials—and whether he even had any motivation to help him—Kole resolved to at least make the most of his offer to answer questions and pulled his notebook out.

He began to write down all the unanswered questions he could think of that were lost when his old notebook was destroyed. They flowed back into his memory with surprising ease. A few hours later when Tallen came back, sweating from the exertion of casting Sound spells, Kole was ready.

“You should spend more time with Zale,” Tallen said in place of a greeting.

“Excuse me?” Kole said when his brain couldn’t come up with a way to interpret that.

“When you practice your spells,” Tallen clarified, but he had a knowing smile that hinted that wasn’t all he meant. “It will be good for her to be near you as you practice pathing your Thunderwave spell. She can practice sensing when a wizard connects to a Font.”

“Oh!” Kole said with relief. “I thought you meant something else.”

“What did you think I meant?” Tallen asked with a straight face.

Kole felt the blood rush to his face, and he fought the urge to turn invisible.

That is definitely not a healthy coping method for awkward social interactions, he reflected. I really need to work on that impulse.

“Isn’t sensing those connections an advanced wizard technique?” Kole asked, changing the topic.

“It is,” Tallen agreed. “Most wizards don’t develop the ability to a useful level until their thirties, but I learned it around eighteen after a… magical mishap. I suspect that Zale’s nature as a voidling will let her develop it even sooner.”

Tallen seemed to be in a talkative mood, and Kole took the opportunity to go through his list of questions. He monopolized Tallen’s attention for the rest of the session. And for the first time since their last brief interaction had dashed it all, Kole now felt some hope he might have found a potential mentor. Though he couldn’t help but feel some resentment towards Theral. If Kole had been a little more desperate, Tallen might have been more forthcoming with his advice.

Don’t be stupid, he told the childish pouting part of himself. Theral’s been nothing but helpful, unlike some other flaky mages.

CHAPTER 44

Grink

Dagmar was not always the confident general she’s remembered as being. She was a broken woman when we first met, but it was her failures that drove her to become the hero she is now.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Everyone—minus Runt plus Doug—left class and headed for a late lunch after the study session.

“Are you going to look for your sister today? Or work on the rod?” Kole asked her, hoping for the latter. Not because he wanted the rod—though he did—but because he was running through his conversation with Tallen and he really needed to go think through some new perspectives.

“Sister,” Amara said. “I need to do something different for a while. Tallen gave me some ideas, and I need to let them ruminate.”

“Was his rune knowledge that extensive?” Kole asked.

It was extremely rare for a wizard to dabble in runes. Both took the same limited resource of Will to study, with marginal cross-applicable gains.

“No,” Amara answered quickly. “He was familiar with the craft beyond the average wizard, but his ideas were very peculiar. Most wouldn’t work, but some just might. I wouldn’t be surprised if the runesmith that taught him about runes died in a tragic accident of ill-advised experimentation.”

“Yer not half wrong,” Rakin said. “My ma taught him some, but they both worked closely with an eccentric crafter. He had some peculiar ideas, or so Ma says.”

“You should hear my mom’s stories about that crafter,” Zale laughed. “She once convinced him that someone had polymorphed Tallen into a chicken, and he spent a week carrying it around with him until Tallen returned. In trying to cure ‘Tallen,’ the man invented a potion that formed psychic links with animals, mimicking what Assuine’s Blessed can do to some degree—though it didn’t boost the animal’s intelligence. Then, of course, he realized he’d been tricked.”

“Wait…” Amara said, interrupting. “Levar?

Zale nodded while Rakin grunted in affirmation, but then Zale winced slightly as if she’d made a mistake.

All the excitement and adoration Kole had seen in Amara when she spoke of Professor Donglefore was nothing compared to what followed.

“Tell me everything you ever heard about the man!” she demanded as she pulled out a notepad and began to write.

Rakin and Zale then took turns through lunch telling tales of the long-dead eccentric alchemist-cum-runesmith their parents had once traveled with.

***

After that lunch-turned-interrogation session, Zale excused herself.

“I have to go do a thing for my mom,” she said, gathering her things. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow for the group mixer, right?”

“No,” Rakin answered. “I got a mentor. Ye couldn’t pay me to go to a ‘mixer.’”

“I have a mentor too, but I can’t go either,” Doug said apologetically. “I’d like to. But I have work in the Glade.”

“I will also not be going,” Amara said, feeling no need to make an excuse.

With each rejection, Zale deflated a little.

“I’ll be there,” Kole said, “It’s not my idea of a fun time, but I don’t really have an abundance of choices.”

“Okay, see you then,” Zale said.

Everyone finished up, and they talked for a little while. Through it all, Kole kept seeing Amara look up to him, as if working up the courage to say something.

“Shall we?” Kole asked Amara when he realized she wasn’t going to bring up the topic of the search herself.

She smiled in relief and gave a big nod.

“I’ll go too,” Rakin volunteered, causing Kole to double-take.

Slowly, Kole moved his finger to poke Rakin on the cheek, but the dwarf swatted his hand away.

“What’re you doing?” he demanded.

“Seeing if it’s really you.”

“How would poking me in the face prove that?”

“I don’t know,” Kole said, shrugging. “It was the first step in a multiphase investigation. After that, I might have poured water on you.”

“On second thought, maybe I have better things to do,” he grunted.

“I’m sorry! Please come. I was just surprised you volunteered to help,” Kole said.

“Family is important,” Rakin said in explanation. “Don’t poke me again or I’m keeping the finger.”

“Noted,” Kole said, then turned to Doug. “You in?”

Doug shook his head, his antlers magnifying the gesture.

“I can’t. I have duties at the Glade.”

***

“This way,” Amara said with more certainty than Kole felt was justified.

Following her latest version of the tracking device, they were delving deep into the library. They’d gone past the well-lit and populated sections into the outer areas rarely visited by the students—save for those on deep research projects. The pointer on the device had bounced around erratically, only leading them generally to the library at first, but it had swiveled less and less as they explored… until now. Since they’d arrived in this section, it had seemingly led in a circle.

While the innermost stacks of the library were clearly a series of concentric circles, the layout of the outer rings was less clear. They were far beyond what could even generously be considered a ring, and Kole had begun to think the space they explored now was warped by the Dahn’s odd Spatial magic.

“Ye think yer sister’s hiding in a book?” Rakin asked.

“Do you think that’s possible?” Amara asked earnestly.

Rakin sighed.

“No. I was joking.”

Kole was certain they weren’t in the section of the library that held his door, but the scenery in the unlit sections was familiar enough that he constantly expected to stumble across it. As if on cue, as soon as he thought this, a rat jumped off a shelf to the floor in front them before escaping between two others.

“Wait,” Kole told the group. He brought his light closer to the shelf the rat had escaped from.

Peering through the cracks, he saw that the light extended far beyond the shelf.

“There’s a passage back there.”

Gus jumped off Amara’s shoulder and ran through the path the other rat had taken.

“There’s a door!” Amara shouted.

“It looks like someone pushed these shelves over to block a passage,” Rakin said, pointing to the gaps between them on either side.

Together they—but mostly Rakin—pulled one of the shelves to the side just enough to allow them to squeeze past.

Beyond they found a narrow hallway that ended in a door.

“I knew it!” Kole exclaimed before squeezing past the shelves and running through the stacks until he reached where he estimated the space of the secret hall to occupy. Instead of finding a wall or other indicator that a room ought to lie there, there just stood more rows of books.

“Knew what?” Amara asked when he returned.

“This part of the library isn’t fully on the Material Realm. Or it is using a lot of Space magic to bend it.”

“Hurray. Yer smart,” Rakin said, deadpan. “Let’s open the door.”

“Should we?” Amara asked with concern. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

“Professor Shalia told me that if you can open a door in the Dahn, you’re allowed to go through it,” Kole said, recalling the conversation with Zale’s mother. “I thought that was weird at the time.”

“That’s because the Dahn was originally used by the Hardune,” Rakin explained. “They made great use of runic oath wards to grant access to their facilities. The Dahn learned from that and decides who it allows in.”

“That seems like a flimsy defense if we get caught being somewhere the faculty would rather not find us,” Kole said. “Or if we die in some hidden hole.”

“Don’t be such a grink,” Rakin gibed. “I thought ye wanted to be an adventurer. Where’s yer sense of adventure?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t go. Also, what in the realms is a grink?”

Rakin ignored the question and walked to the door. The door looked identical to the door of the dungeon: black stone with a shining steel vertical handle. He placed his hand on it, gingerly pausing for a second before pushing.

The door didn’t budge.

Next, he grabbed the handle and pulled.

Still nothing.

“Maybe it’s stuck?” Kole suggested, moving up to help.

They both braced on the door, ready to push on the count of three.

“One, two, three,” they said together, and on three they pushed. The door flew open as if it had never been stuck.

“Ow,” Kole said from the floor where Rakin lay atop him.

“It didn’t look stuck to me,” Amara observed.

“I must have loosened it,” Rakin defended.

“That must have been it,” Kole agreed, giving the dwarf the out, though it really hadn’t felt stuck at all.

CHAPTER 45

Ice

Bearskin, as he is often described, is a force of nature. But his fearsome appearance on and off the battlefield belies the gentle and loyal soul within.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Kole’s light had followed him behind the shelves and revealed a long hall spotted with doors. The floor was the same white stone as the rest of the Dahn, while the doors were all made of plain unadorned wood. They opened the first few cautiously but found them all empty. Each was a small dormitory meant for two students. With the self-cleaning magic of the Dahn, it was impossible to tell the age of the place.

“This must be one of the old dormitories,” Amara said.

“Students used to live in the Dahn?” Kole asked.

Amara nodded.

“Early on, before the void creature incursions started and they had to pull more of the building into the Material Realm to prevent incursions, all the students were given the option to live in the Dahn.”

“If it was so dangerous, why do these places still exist?” Kole asked. “Is it still dangerous?”

“I don’t know,” Amara said simply, refraining from speculation.

They looked through a few more rooms but found them all equally bare. They continued toward the end, passing over a hundred rooms before the hall opened into a large room.

“Can you make the light brighter?” Amara asked.

As soon as she said “light,” the room brightened with a soft white glow that had no apparent source. It came from all sides and cast no shadows. Dozens of tables filled the space, identical to those used in the dining halls throughout campus. The place was completely abandoned as if it had been closed one night and simply never reopened.

Rakin and Kole both jumped at the sudden magical lighting. Kole reached for his blasting rod, which Amara still had, and Rakin brought his fists up and spun around searching the room. When nothing jumped out at them, they relaxed.

“Here,” Amara said, handing the rod to Kole. “The tracker points to the kitchens.”

Together they walked through toward the kitchen, hopping over the serving counters instead of taking the nearby but out-of-the-way doors.

The area beyond was what Kole imagined all kitchens looked like—not that he’d been in many. Pots and pans hung all over and large counters ran the length of the room along the walls, with another down the center.

“It’s cold back here,” Kole noted as he felt a cool breeze.

“Over there.” Rakin pointed.

In the back of the kitchen, a stone door was cracked open, with banks of snow pouring out of it. The snow was melting, creating a puddle that constantly drained into a grate below one of the sinks.

“The chill runes are still active!” Amara said with excitement Kole thought the statement didn’t warrant.

A shadow flickered through the crack of the door.

Rakin snapped his fist up to quiet the group. Kole froze, looking for what alerted the dwarf, but Amara wasn’t as conditioned to this kind of situation.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Rakin shot a glance back at Amara and held a finger to his lips, then turned to Kole, who was on alert. He pointed to Kole, covered his eyes, and then pointed to the far corner of the kitchen opposite the open door, and then took off himself towards the door.

Kole understood Rakin’s meaning—or at least thought he did—and turned invisible before running around the food prep tables to flank the entryway to the cold storage room. He’d used about half his Will in the study session today but had recovered up to almost three-fourths.

He saw Amara back away from the kitchen, eyes wide in terror.

Rakin was beating Kole to the door, having run straight for it. When he was ten steps away, a blizzard of snow shot out the opening, throwing the door wide. Rakin dove behind a counter as the wall of white met him, sending metal pans sailing to the ground in clangs.

The snow began to spiral, filling the area around the door, and a haughty nasally voice yelled through, “Come out, rebel. Submit yourself, and you might get to keep your hands until your trial.”

Kole had never heard someone speak with this strange accent. They were clearly speaking Rilith, but it sounded closer to the old speech used in the classical pre-Flood plays than anything he’d ever heard in conversation.

Before Kole could decide what to do, Rakin made the choice for him.

“I’ll give ye my hands, alright! Right up yer arse!”

Kole fought the urge to laugh at Rakin’s awful attempt at a comeback.

Terrible threat or not, Rakin backed his words up, dove over the counter, and charged into the snow, eliciting shouts of alarm from within.

Before he reached the white cloud, a shard of ice shot out at him, but he dove underneath the projectile, rolled, and regained his footing to keep up his charge. Kole stood in the billowing cold, holding his blasting rod out, searching the snow. From within, he heard Rakin’s angry grunts, punctuated by the decidedly more terrified cries of those he fought, but Kole couldn’t see anything and dared not risk shooting Rakin.

Kole stood helpless as the battle raged, until slowly the sounds of conflict faded and the snow began to disperse.

Two figures lay unconscious on the floor, partially covered in snow, while two more stood over Rakin. The dwarf was encased in ice up to his chest with his arms each trapped in a spike of ice reaching up from the floor to hold him. Snow caked his hair and beard and formed a mask over his mouth preventing him from speaking.

He fought against the restraints, screaming muffled shouts beneath the ice which Kole was certain were curses.

The figures standing over him were human-shaped beings with icy blue skin. In place of clothing, armor of ice and cloth made of snow adorned their bodies. Of the two still standing, one was a man, lightly clad in the armor and wielding a spear made of ice.

The other was a woman with long white hair dressed in a gown of the purest white. She held an icicle staff and was pointing it at Rakin to maintain the prison against his struggles.

Both possessed an otherworldly beauty that rivaled Esme’s enchantment—though Kole was certain no such magic was at play here.

The two on the ground were similarly adorned, but they were stained all over with the deep blue of their strange alien blood. Whether or not these two had been beauties was impossible to know, as their faces were destroyed.

“What is this slave doing in this mad place?” the armored creature asked in disgust.

He looked around the now snow-covered kitchen. Before, a small drift spilled out of the cold storage room, but now ice coated everything out to the dining room.

“There was another! Chase after it!” the woman commanded, pointing at Amara, who had stood frozen in indecision through the whole conflict.

The warrior complied and ran after Amara. Kole acted on instinct and regretted the choice immediately.

The smart thing to do would have been to wait for the warrior to get a distance away before ambushing the woman, and then take the warrior out before he could return.

What he actually did was stupid.

While the armored one was still in the circle of snow surrounding the cold storage room, Kole broke his invisibility as he sent a bolt of force at him. The magical projectile struck one of the armor plates, causing it to shatter into shards and fly in all directions. Some of the shards flew back at Kole, striking him in the arms and sending him stumbling back in surprised pain.

It occurred to him in that moment that this was real. Whatever these creatures were, they could kill him and his friends, and no professor or magical dungeon magic would save him. His already pounding heart quickened at the realization.

He clutched his blasting rod as he fell and sent another bolt blindly at the ice man who was now charging him. This bolt struck true, and the creature stumbled.

Kole landed hard on his butt and turned invisible before pulling himself to his feet on a counter with his good blasting rod-wielding arm.

The woman looked over at Kole, but quickly turned her attention back to Rakin as he fought the restraints.

The ice man got back to his feet, using his spear as a crutch, and then waved his hand in Kole’s general direction. This conjured a cloud of wet snow that clung to Kole, revealing him.

The ice stung where it touched flesh, and he let out a frustrated snarl as he sent his Will back into the blasting rod. He felt the magic channel itself through the device and watched the bolt fly out of its tip just as the rod crumbled to bits in his hand. His opponent dodged and jabbed at Kole’s chest with his ice spear. With little thought, Kole constructed Shield and wrenched all of his mental might into forcing his bridge to open to accept the spell.

The shimmering Barrier appeared before him, and the spear shattered on impact. Kole let the spell collapse as he tried to turn invisible once more and flee, but the man continued his lunge and tackled Kole to the ground, where he pummeled him with his fist.

Before the pain, the first thing Kole noticed was how cold the body of the man on top of him was. It was as if there were a yawning portal to a frigid wasteland atop him, hungrily sucking up all his body heat.

Then he felt the pain. Each blow to his face sent pulses of agony through his skull, and he threw his arms up to protect his head against the assault.

Distantly Kole heard a roar and saw the world turn red—and as it turned out, it wasn’t just his vision.

The pummeling ended, and the weight atop Kole vanished. The warrior rolled off Kole and rose, pulling a new ice spear out of the melting snow around him. The water rose and froze at his command. He turned to face the foe behind him and saw a raging inferno.

Rakin stood over the melting corpse of his jailor, his body wreathed in flames, his eyes glowing red and his face twisted in a rictus of rage. He screamed incoherently and charged the spearman. As he ran, the bodies of the other two melted around him.

The spearman ran to meet Rakin, but the flaming fist of the dwarf turned the spear to steam and continued through its wielder’s chest.

The ice man staggered for a moment and then rapidly melted into a bright-blue liquid, starting from the gaping hole in his chest.

Kole watched all of this in awe. Awe that turned to terror when Rakin turned his rage-filled eyes on him, and he saw no sign of recognition.

Kole ran.

CHAPTER 46

Fire

At her birth, Illunia knew little but possessed a burning desire to learn. Knowledge became her domain, and she sought to experience all that existed. While the other gods were born into the void that became the Arcane Realm, Illunia was born into a world rich with wonders to explore. She traveled throughout the Realm, exploring planets, stars, and moon before returning to Kaltis, for here the gods still labored, creating new wonders each day as they kept the Wardens company.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole scrambled and dove behind a counter just as a tongue of fire flew past him.

“Rakin! It’s me! Kole! Stop!” he pleaded.

No response came save for hissing as Rakin walked slowly through the wet floor, turning the water to steam with each step.

Once he thought he had a chance, Kole broke for the dormitory. He leapt over another counter and fell beyond it as flames flew overhead once more.

I’m dead! I’m dead! I’m dead! What in the Realms?!

Kole had been scared and a little nervous in the fight before, but now he was terrified. In the dungeon, he knew he was safe, which limited how much terror he could experience. And besides that, the goblins weren’t very imposing. But this was not some man or monster he could potentially defeat. This was a force of nature. He felt the malice of Faust radiating out from the flames, calling to the sorcerous blood within him and promising power.

He’d read about the evil god’s call, about the time before the Last Dragon War when its power had finally been sealed away, but he never thought he’d experience it.

Kole dashed for the hall, not turning back to see if he was followed.

“Amara, run!” he shouted ahead, hoping she had fled.

He ran down the hall and heard Rakin following. If the dwarf had been in his right mind, there Kole would have been caught immediately, but whatever magics allowed Rakin to run so fast wasn’t possible in his current state. Doorways passed, and the hallway seemed to go on forever as Rakin’s footsteps grew louder. Then Kole began to feel the heat of Rakin’s flames.

Even without Rakin’s monk advantage, Kole was still too slow.

With no hope of outrunning the inferno behind him, Kole dove into the next open door and slammed it shut behind him. Taking his dagger off his belt, he wedged it under the door the instant before Rakin crashed into it. There was only a single bang, and then silence. He had little hope that the thick wooden door would hold for long, but little hope was better than none.

Kole threw everything in the room in front of the door, first tipping a bookshelf and then pushing both beds. While he worked, the orange of Rakin’s flames glowed through the cracks around the edges of the door. Eventually, the doorknob and his dagger took on a red glow. The room began to smell of burning wood, and Kole heard the lapping of flickering flames.

A single bang and the latch broke, weakened by the heat. The door opened two inches before being stopped by the barrier. Flames licked around the door, and smoke filled the room.

Before a second bang came, there was a loud crack from beyond, followed by the roar of rushing wind. The fire dimmed rapidly, dying down to glowing embers that in turn winked out.

“Rakin?” Kole called tentatively from where he hid behind a nightstand.

“No—” Amara broke out into a coughing fit from the smoke. “It’s me.”

Kole hurried to deconstruct the barrier, and the door fell to the floor as soon as he removed the bookshelf that had been holding it up. The outside of the door had been completely blackened by the flames, and its hinges had fallen loose at Rakin’s resumed assault.

Rakin lay unconscious—and naked save for his metal bracelet—on the floor beyond the door. He was covered in bruises and cuts, all still leaking blood on the floor, where it sizzled. The knuckles on his hands were completely torn up as if he’d been punching gravel. Well, as if a regular person had been punching gravel. Kole had seen Rakin punch gravel, and whether it was his primal Earth magic or his monk abilities, the dwarf’s hands had been unharmed.

“How did you do that?” Kole asked.

Amara looked proud for a moment before suddenly growing stricken.

“Oh no! I’m going to be in trouble…”

“Why?”

“I took something from the lab to study, a runed device meant to contain fires in the labs. It creates a barrier against air in a region, allowing—”

“Why are you going to be in trouble?” Kole asked, interrupting what would likely be a long explanation of the merits of such a device and the secrets she’d intended to glean from it.

“They are very expensive, and you can only use them once. As a safety device, they use very high-quality gems to ensure reliability. I was going to give it back after I studied the runes, but now…”

Amara slumped against a wall and slid down it to sit on the floor.

“Am I going to be expelled?” she asked Kole.

Kole gingerly touched the ground outside the door with his toe and found it bearably cooled before leaping out of the room. He didn’t dare get close to Rakin, but he watched him closely to confirm he was still breathing.

“I think you’ll be fine,” Kole reassured her. “I don’t know who—or what—those ice people were, but the school is going to want to know about it, and they may forgive a little accidental theft.”

I hope. Kole reflected that they were about to find out if there was any truth to Professor Shalia’s claims about permission.

The two sat for a while, wondering what had happened to Rakin as they waited for the floor around him to cool off enough for them to move him.

“It felt… evil. Like…” Kole struggled to place what he had experienced. “It felt like there was a voice in my head, calling me to destroy. It was easy to block out, but a part of me wanted to listen.”

“That sounds like Faust’s influence,” Amara said, “But they sealed that away during the war. Levar himself did it! How could you feel that now?”

“I don’t know.”

***

When they’d rested and the ground had cooled, they tried to lift Rakin but found the short dwarf was incredibly dense. He was too heavy to drag and too short for them to drape across their shoulders without lifting him up off the ground. They dragged him a few feet before giving up entirely.

“The door’s too far,” Kole complained. “We need to find Professor Shalia.”

As if summoned by magic—because, well, it was—the room through the doorway beside Kole vanished and was replaced with a large and well-appointed sitting room. The walls were the white stone of the Dahn, but they were covered with paintings of people and natural vistas. In the center of the room, Professor Shalia stood in front of an easel. Zale stood before her, wearing a very expensive ornate gown covered in lace and gold fit for a noblewoman, not a student or adventurer.

Kole collapsed next to Rakin on the ground in surprise and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

The painting Shalia was working on depicted not Zale, but some unknown human woman. Zale was facing the door, and her eyes grew wide at their sudden appearance. Without turning around, Shalia acted on her daughter’s expression, and the silver paintbrush she held grew into a long knife. Mist formed around her, coalescing into plates of icy armor. By the time Professor Shalia had turned around—in the span of a blink—she was holding the long knife in one hand and an icy white rapier in the other.

When the professor recognized the students, her posture lost some of its lethal menace, but she remained alert.

“What’s happened?” she demanded, her playful mischief gone.

Behind her, Zale fought to get out of the ridiculous gown and resorted to cutting it down the side.

“We fought some ice men in an abandoned dining hall,” Kole explained, once he registered what had happened. “Rakin got trapped and burst into flames, then went mad and tried to kill us!”

“Zale, alert Tigereye and go get a healer!” Shalia commanded as she ran to the doorway.

Zale took off through another without hesitation, looking back at her friends as she did.

Kole thought Shalia was going to attack him as she ran toward him, and he flinched back. But each of her steps landed on air, slightly higher than the one before, and she ran over his head in a banking turn down the hall. A gale began to blow down towards the site of their battle, propelling her on.

Amara and Kole watched after her, awestruck. They’d known their friend’s mother had been an adventurer, but knowing and being the target of her murderous ire were two very different things, and it shocked Kole every time.

Once she was out of sight, they dragged the unconscious dwarf into the room, still marveling at the appearance of the door and the opulence of the place. Rich carpets covered the floor, and once he was inside, Kole realized that life-size marble statues of naked men and women now lined the wall where the doorway had appeared.

When Rakin was through, Kole collapsed in exhaustion, laying on his back with his eyes closed.

“Ow,” he moaned, aware of the pain now that the adrenaline was fading. “I think I broke my face.”

“At least you got ice on it right away,” Amara said from where she stood, staring at the craftsmanship of the sculptures.

Kole broke out into laughter despite the pain.

Amara looked at him confused.

“What did I say?”

Zale returned before Kole could explain, with the hulking form of Tigereye behind her. He disappeared back through the doorway, large stone ax in hand, without giving the other students a second glance. Zale knelt down by Rakin, placed a yellow berry the size of a thumb in his mouth, and moved his jaw to force him to chew it.

“Eat this,” she said, almost pleading.

The wounds on Rakin’s body slowly closed before Kole’s eyes.

“Here,” Zale said to Kole, handing him a berry of his own.

He looked at it closely before eating it. Up close, the berry had a spiral pattern all along it in alternating shades of yellow, unlike any fruit he’d ever seen. He threw it into his mouth and nearly choked it up, so bad was the taste.

“Ugh,” he said through a gag. “It tastes like moldy feet.”

“Sorry!” Zale said. “They don’t always taste good, but they will make you feel better. I promise.”

Zale walked over to a cart nearby that had glass bottles filled with liquids of varying hues of amber and red, and then grabbed a bucket and scooped up a glass of melted ice out of it.

“Here you go,” she said as she gave it to him. “Tell me what happened. Are you okay?”

Kole explained how they’d found the secret door and the fight inside, describing the ice men in as much detail as he could.

Professor Shalia and Tigereye returned shortly after Kole finished. Zale’s mother nodded in approval when she saw that Rakin had been seen to and then turned back to the open door. She placed her hand on the frame and closed her eyes. A moment later, the hallway outside began to drift away, as if the Dahn were splitting in two. As it drifted down and away, Kole briefly glimpsed the black void of nothingness the extradimensional sections of the Dahn resided in. Then the doorway vanished, and Professor Shalia slid something into her artist’s smock.

Her eyes then fixed on Kole, and she said, “Tell me everything.”

The two faculty members stood listening as Kole told the story again. When he got to the part where Rakin turned into an insane fire monster, he paused, looking to Zale for permission to reveal that secret. He’d sensed the Rakin had been hiding something from him, but he’d never suspected it was that he was a Fire primal.

A Fire primal and an Earth primal? he realized. Is that even possible? Well, I supposed a primal sorcerer wizard isn’t supposed to be possible either.

Zale nodded, and so Kole continued, leaving nothing out. When he explained how Amara had stopped Rakin with the extinguisher rune, the skinny quarter-elf shrunk in on herself as if he’d just explained how they’d burned down a house.

“You kids did good,” Professor Shalia said when Kole was done, and Tigereye nodded in agreement.

“We aren’t in trouble?” Kole asked.

“No, but you really should have run instead of investigating.”

She kicked Rakin’s sleeping form gently and added, “But I’ll talk to Rakin about that when he wakes up.”

“Are you sure we aren’t in trouble?” Amara asked. “For anything?”

Professor Shalia sighed, “Yes. The Dahn must have led you to that hallway for this purpose.”

Looking up at the ceiling, she added in a louder, irritated voice, “But there were better ways it could have gone about alerting the faculty to the presence of interlopers.”

“The Dahn is self-aware?” Amara asked in amazement, following Professor Shalia’s eyes upward.

“As much as any ensouled artifact can be. Which is to say, selectively.”

Kole was trying to reconcile the fact that the Dahn was self-aware when Professor Shalia walked over to the shreds of the dress her daughter had destroyed.

Tigereye lifted Rakin as a parent would lift their toddler and carried him out of the room, stopping briefly to talk to Zale on the way. The professors left together, rushing off to inform others.

As Amara turned to the doorframe they’d entered from, looking curiously at the handle, Kole noticed then that Zale was only wearing a shift. His face grew red, and he decided that it was his turn to inspect the ceiling. When Zale turned, she must have noticed his expression and then noticed her own immodest dress, because a few moments later, she vanished, leaving a cloud of black particles behind that drifted up into the air briefly before disappearing.

“Zale!” Kole shouted, looking around the room frantically for his friend, alerting Amara to her disappearance.

Before either could descend into further panic, black motes manifested as if flowing from a hole in reality and grew into Zale in an instant. She reappeared behind the easel and picked up the painting, clutching it protectively against herself.

“Get out!”

CHAPTER 47

Family

Intrigued by the creatures that Assuine created on Kaltis, Illunia asked if she could assist in birthing more. While Assuine had created the plants and animals of Kaltis all on her own, with the aid of Illunia, she was able to create something great and more powerful. Illunia was new to creation and, in her excitement, put a portion of herself into the creature.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

“Did you know she could do that?” Amara asked when she and Kole were outside the art-filled room.

At Zale’s insistence, they’d run out, and she’d slammed the door behind them. The room they’d fled to was one familiar to Kole. It was the library he’d entered at Theral’s direction, where he’d run into Zale’s mother.

Kole looked to where the door to his room should have been and saw it was there, despite the door no longer functioning on his side. He ran over to the door and pulled it open, revealing a small kitchen equipped in the manner of the dining hall kitchen he’d just battled in, only smaller in scale.

“Kole?” Amara said.

“Oh, sorry,” he answered, remembering the question. “I was distracted. No, I didn’t know she could do that.”

“I don’t think Professor Shalia understood the gravity of what I used to disable Rakinar. Do you think I should clarify what I meant about being in trouble?”

Opening and closing the door to the kitchen, Kole absentmindedly said, “No.

“Open to my room,” he whispered, and reopened the door, but still the kitchen remained.

“Why is there a kitchen in a library?” Amara asked.

“Because Uncle Levar and Tal—len basically lived here,” Zale answered from the open door to the gallery. She spoke quietly, still recovering from the embarrassment, and her voice caught oddly when saying her uncle’s name. “There’s a dining hall at the other end of the room. They moved it all to the same floor after a few incidents of falling down the stairs while reading.”

Zale was out of her shift and dressed in a paint-speckled linen outfit. She walked across the library towards a third door.

“I’ll be right back,” she excused, leaving the pair to explore.

Zale returned shortly wearing a tunic in the style she often wore to training when she didn’t don the uniform, only this one was a pleasant sky blue with white embroidery, not a plain tan.

“So… Do you want a tour?”

Both agreed, and Zale led them around.

“My room’s in there.” Zale gestured to a door as she walked past.

Amara walked in, not aware that the pointing wasn’t an invitation to enter.

“No…” Zale said, but it was too late.

If Kole had been told a kobold had lived in the room, he would have believed it and been worried it had died somewhere beneath a mound of clothes, trapped under an avalanche of fabric. The room was large, but clothing completely covered the floor. The only surfaces free of it were the desk and bed along the far wall.

Wooden armoires, ornately engraved with flowers and leaves filled the left wall, and clothing spilled out of those as well. The wall on the right was instead covered in paintings, and an easel and stand of paints were in a small clearing in the clutter. A suit of armor stand stood next to the easel in its one little clearing, and Zale’s armor stood next to it, her sword and a few other weapons mounted on a rack behind it.

“Hmm,” Amara said, looking around. “Smells like flowers.”

Zale’s face had turned almost completely black in her odd manner of blushing, and Kole thought she would disappear again at any moment.

“That’s… kind of a disaster,” Kole said, not knowing any other way to put it.

“I know,” she admitted, her skin starting to return to its regular white. “I never have anyone over.”

“That’s not really an excuse to live like that.”

“I, uh…” The black returned, and Zale confessed. “I really like clothes. That and art are the only two things my mother and I really have in common. And I think I mentioned before that she apologizes with gifts.”

“Still…”

“I know! Moving on. Amara, please put that down.”

Amara almost dropped the dagger she was examining. It was made of black glass and glowed faintly with an inner light.

“This is the library,” Zale said, leading them back outside. “Lots of books my mother and her friends gathered over the years. Most they put in the public sections, but they kept a collection. Lots of these are original prints while copies are out in the library, but many of them have knowledge too dangerous for a school library.”

Zale’s distraction worked, and Kole completely forgot about the mess as his eyes roamed the shelves. He’d not had long to look the last time he’d been here. Shelves lined the walls of the circular room, and the illusory globe still sat in the middle. A smaller version of the massive crystalline stalactite from the grand foyer came down from the ceiling here, bathing the room in a gentle white light.

“That’s my mother’s suite,” Zale said, pointing to the fourth and final door. Hastily she added, “Don’t go in there.”

It wasn’t necessary, though, for Amara’s gaze was transfixed on the illusion in the room’s center.

“That’s a scrying map of the world. It’s very out-of-date. Let’s go back to the gallery. We can go through to the dining room and get something to eat.”

“Why do you live here?” Amara asked as they walked through the gallery.

“What do you mean? Lots of faculty live in the Dahn.”

Kole could tell she didn’t want to answer the question, but Amara as always was oblivious to the nonverbal cues.

“I’ve been to Professor Donglefore’s residence. This is much nicer and much larger. Your bedroom was as big as his, and he only had three rooms total. We didn’t even see your mother’s suite.”

“My mother’s the headmistress of the art college,” Zale said, but it came out more like a question than as a convincing explanation.

“He’s the head of the crafting college.”

As Amara poked holes in Zale’s explanation, Zale began looking around the room nervously. Amara seemed offended that her mentor and idol didn’t have comparably sized accommodations and was seeking the reason for the discrepancy. Kole followed her eyes thinking some danger might be at hand, but he realized she was just looking at some paintings.

“Let’s go get some food!” Zale said cheerily, ignoring Amara’s question.

Kole was about to let her get away with it when he spotted a familiar face in one of the paintings. A portrait of an armored dark-skinned man with a bald head, face wrinkled with smile lines, riding a horse and bearing the mark of Illunia on his pauldrons.

He’d seen that face before.

“Did your mom paint all of these?” Kole asked.

“Umm, yes?”

“Did your mom know all these people?”

Zale was squirming now and was looking right at the same painting. She nodded.

“How exactly did your mother know Daulf Tutor, Chosen of Illunia, Dragonslayer, and founder of the Academy of Illunia?”

Zale winced, and then she seemed to deflate, all the nervous energy fleeing in defeat.

“He… was one of my uncles,” she said in a lower voice, and then let out a groan. “Mom’s going to kill me.”

Now it was Kole’s turn to interrogate Zale.

***

“So,” Kole said, after a thorough round of questioning, “not only is your mother secretly the mysteriously absent chancellor of the whole flooding academy, she’s also the inheritor of the Dahn’s Bond after Daulf passed, and she controls the whole flooding place? And her name is actually Trish, as in Trishalia the Ice Queen? Another hero of the Last Dragon War? Didn’t she murder a bunch of kings? How is she alive?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Zale admitted. “I kind of thought you might have figured it out when I let slip Levar’s name the other day. And for the record, she denies the king-murdering thing.”

Amara was about to explode, wanting to ask more questions about Levar, but Kole had already convinced her to table that line of inquiry for later.

Kole sat in a chair, just trying to process it all, and stared at the other paintings.

I should have recognized the name “Levar,” he’s famous. Kole beat himself up internally. He traveled with Tal of Storms!

“Wait,” he said, halting his reflection in its tracks. “If your mother traveled with Daulf, that means she also did with Tal of Storms. Right?”

Zale nodded.

“But… he hates that title, so don’t use it.”

“Don’t use it?” he asked, confused until it clicked into place.

Tallen is Tal. Tal Tal. Tal who I grew up idolizing. Who saved Illandrios from the outsiders controlling it. Whose father was one of the first Illusion primals and escaped with Iyckel’s Blade.

“How in the Realms is he still alive? He died, didn’t he?” Kole asked the biggest thing that came to mind, though many, many thoughts banged at the door to be let out. “He must be over a hundred.”

“He likes to say that he has died a few times, it just never stuck—so far,” Zale offered as a very nonanswer.

“That’s the opposite of an explanation.”

Zale shrugged. “You’ll need to ask him. It’s his secret to tell, not mine. I wasn’t supposed to let any of this slip.”

A thought struck Kole. He’d never put much thought beyond frustration toward Zale’s uncle, but now he knew him to be as powerful as she proclaimed.

“Is he going to be mad I know?”

“It’s probably fine,” Zale said after thinking it over briefly. “Just don’t tell anyone else. He’s trying to keep a low profile.”

“Why is that?”

“The magical affliction he suffers. He’s trying to learn to control or cure it. Until then, he doesn’t want people to know where he is and rely on him because he won’t always be around to help. Also, he doesn’t seem to like being famous.”

Kole sat to digest the information, and Amara filled the void with more questions about Levar.

Once Amara’s line of inquiry died down, mostly at Zale’s insistence that Rakin had more knowledge of the man, Kole asked, “Who’s that?”

He pointed to a painting of a brown-haired man dressed in forest-tone leather with a wolf at his side.

While he’d recognized Daulf from the statue on campus and some paintings throughout, this man was unfamiliar. But the painting stood out with the amount of detail that was put into it.

“That’s my dad,” she said with pride. “Roland.”

“Your dad? Are you adopted?” Amara asked.

Zale turned to Amara, who was beginning to try even her patience, and firmly said, “No.”

“But… he’s a human,” Amara said as if Zale could possibly not have known. “And your mother is a half-elf, and you are a half-voidling.”

“I am aware,” Zale said firmly, no longer nervous but clearly not wanting to continue the line of inquiry.

Kole looked at Zale and then the painting. They did look related if you discounted the whole voidling-human thing.

“Amara,” Kole said, “I think you should drop—”

“No, it’s fine,” Zale said with a heavy sigh, which suggested it was not in fact fine. “I can explain. I never met him, my dad. He died long before I was born. After that, Mom moved around for a few years, doing odd jobs and helping out where needed. Eventually, she found herself living with the voidlings, and one day she found herself pregnant, and a few days later I was born.”

“That’s… I have a lot of questions.”

“Me too,” Amara added.

“Voidlings aren’t really beings of our Realm. They reproduce when they and their partner desire to have a child, and then one becomes pregnant, and a baby voidling follows that’s a combination of the parents. My mother and father had wanted children, they’d even picked out names, but quarter-elves are rare.”

She nodded at Amara at that.

“We don’t know how, but the same thing happened to Mom. She gave birth to me alone in the night and immediately knew I was Roland’s, despite him having been gone for decades…”

Zale had grown somber as she spoke, but then smiled.

“Mom says I had his nose and ‘same respect for authority.’ She took me to the dwarves and raised me with them for a while before coming back to the Dahn with me disguised as a quarter-elf.”

Kole had a lot more questions but held them back. Zale had shared far more than she needed to, and he didn’t want to push her further.

“Thank you for sharing all of this,” he said, looking at Amara and holding his hand up to tell her to drop whatever questions she had.

CHAPTER 48

Pathing

What was meant to be a simple but beautiful beast grew to be what we now call a dragon. Instead of being distraught by her mistake and loss of power, as small as it was, she was thrilled. For the creatures she had helped create had something that no others save the gods yet possessed. The dragons had intelligence and could speak.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Amara, Zale, and Kole were in the gallery dining hall eating a light lunch Zale put together with what they had in the kitchen—which was very little—as they discussed less historically significant events.

“I need to put more thought into my own self-defense,” Amara volunteered out of the blue, interrupting a conversation about the other two’s alchemy homework.

“What do you mean?” Kole asked.

“‘I’m not an adventurer, but when has adventure cared whose path it comes across?’ It’s a quote from Levar’s biography. He wasn’t an adventurer, but he prepared for eventualities all his life, and when he got involved in the Last Dragon War, he was pivotal. I think I need to shift the focus of some of my projects, but we’ll see what Professor Donglefore thinks.”

“I suspect he will be very in favor of such a decision,” Professor Shalia—Trishalia, the famous adventurer—said from the entrance to the dining hall. “I see my little Azalea has spilled the family secrets.”

“Only the small ones,” Zale joked—or at least, Kole thought she was joking.

“It’s fine. I’m honestly surprised Tal made it two weeks without blowing it himself, but don’t tell Doug or Runt. One doesn’t have an ounce of guile in his antlered body, and the other has too much. She’d probably try to blackmail him, and then Tal would do something stupid like try to erase her memory and cause her to forget who she is even though that failed miserably the last time he tried that.”

Kole stood awkwardly when Zale’s mother had entered, suddenly extremely self-conscious. He bowed. “It’s an honor—”

“Nope,” she said, and a gust of wind blew Kole’s chair in, forcing him to sit. “None of that. We don’t have time. I need you to go over everything again, in greater detail. This is the second time something like this has happened around you, and I want to know if you’re somehow causing this.”

She held a stack of fine white paper in her hands and passed pages out to Kole and Amara.

“Write down everything you remember.”

Embarrassment and relief filled Kole—and a little pain, the push into the chair hadn’t been gentle. He’d been nervous at meeting Zale’s mother again and was largely happy with how this had gone. He didn’t do well with formality and was pretty sure that Trishalia Mason had some sort of noble title.

Does that make Zale a princess? he thought as he began to write down his account.

To his surprise, the words flowed from his mind out onto the page. He didn’t need to struggle to recall anything. It all came back in perfect clarity. Better than perfect, he found. When writing about the cloud of snow Rakin had battled within, he could now recall some of the details of the fight he’d been unable—or too distracted—to notice at the time. The girl—for he now saw that his foes had been around his age—had summoned ice projectiles to fight. Of the two who Rakin had slain, one had been the source of the blizzard, and the other had been in the process of covering his body with an icy exoskeleton when Rakin had broken his face in.

“What emperor could they be speaking of?” Professor Shalia said to Tigereye as they read over both accounts.

Tigereye had returned during the writing and waited patiently for them to finish.

“I do not know. There are no more empires. Could these creatures be the source of the missing students?”

“Missing students?!” Amara asked, jumping to her feet.

Neither Kole nor Amara had hidden that they’d been searching for her sister in the recounting of events, but until then no one had made mention of it.

“The fact that we had interlopers in the school and that your tracker led you to them is pretty damning evidence the missing students are related to this,” Professor Shalia said. “I know you sent letters last year asking after your sister. We did look, but it is common for students to simply leave. She’d even cleared out all her belongings from where she’d been staying by the time we went about looking for her. It wasn’t until this week we started to see a pattern in some of the missing students.”

“What pattern?!” Amara asked hungrily.

“They were all primals,” Shalia said.

“How many?”

“Including your sister? Three. Your sister was the first. Then one of Tigereye’s primal students from his homeland. This year we lost a Spatial primal from the Hollow Peak. Students leaving is common, but to lose three primals in a year can’t be a coincidence. We don’t have that many.”

The pair of college heads asked a few more questions before dismissing them.

“You two can go,” Zale’s mother said. “Don’t spread what you learned today around. We’ll be acting on this, I promise, but we don’t need to start a panic.”

She walked them to a door that Kole was certain had led to the kitchen but, when it opened, was a random passage in the library.

“One last thing,” she said before closing the door. “I know you are unlikely to listen, but please leave searching for your sister to us. You got lucky that the creatures you faced were within your means to defeat—barely—but the Realms are a large and scary place.”

***

Kole’s friends had abandoned him shortly after they were dismissed. Zale ran out before her mother closed the door to go check on Rakin, and Amara went to get started on a new blasting rod.

“With the first destroyed, I’ll probably not be able to get the self-repairing one done this week,” she’d said before leaving.

Which was fine by Kole. He hadn’t been able to copy the intent for the rune yet.

Alone, Kole wandered the library until he gathered his bearings and found his way back to the door to his room. Inside he found Theral at work at the desk.

“Welcome back,” Theral greeted.

“Same to you,” Kole returned.

Theral had been gone when he’d woken up, though Kole hadn’t heard him leave.

“How’s your reading coming along?” Theral asked.

“It’s only been a day,” Kole answered. “But I can see it will help, and a, uh, respected mage I consulted with seemed to think your suggestions were good.”

Flood, Professor Shalia said don’t talk about Theral, and she also said don’t talk about Tal. So, she’d probably be really mad if I talked about one to the other.

“Oh yeah,” Theral said with a forced laugh. “I only just suggested those books, didn’t I? Do you need the desk?”

“No, I’m going to read and then work on pathing Thunderwave for a bit,” Kole said, walking over to his poorly repaired bag, which contained the copies of Unknowable Geographies and Bridges to Power.

Kole paused first and looked up to the newly manifested second door in the room next to the desk. He walked over and opened it, revealing a stone wall.

“That happened an hour or so back,” Theral said without looking up from his book.

Professor Shalia must have closed it with the other doors. But… an hour ago I was in Zale’s home, and that didn’t open to here. So where had it opened?

He considered asking Theral, but he wasn’t supposed to tell Theral about meeting Professor Shalia, and mentioning having been in her home would invite questions.

Kole dove into his studies, drowning out the chaos of the day with mind-bending descriptions of the Arcane Realm. He read for a few hours, then moved to more practical applications of his education.

Lying in his bed, Kole entered his mental vault. Everyone’s vault took on its own form when created, though most were some manner of house. Kole’s was a library—which he supposed currently was his home. The library of his mental vault was a square room with books endlessly expanding up into the sky above. Most of the books were simply facades, but some were not.

As with anyone’s mental vault, Kole could access his memories within, and if he chose to, he could enhance them to preserve them. Books were a very common visualization for information stored in vaults. Inside them, Kole had a few choice memories of his parents, preserved perfectly and regularly maintained with small infusions of Will, though he never dared to view them. He didn’t think he could handle that.

His spellform templates too stood preserved in books, but he ignored all that as he mentally walked to his bridge, a freestanding doorway in the center of the chamber.

He threw the bridge open with just a thought and looked out into the Arcane Realm. Beyond the vault, everyone’s mind overlaid some sort of familiar landscape leading to the undefinable realm of power used by the gods to craft the world. Kole had heard of forests, cities, floating orbs in empty voids, and more, but his was simple. It was another library.

At first, he’d been a little disappointed to discover his mind had conjured a library within another library, but that had quickly faded, replaced with the dread of the realization that he was in fact a primal. In anyone’s representation of the Arcane Realm, the Fonts stood out as imposing beacons of power. For a primal, their Font was visible in even a bridgeless vault as some sort of defining feature of the space.

Kole’s vault had been free of any such feature when he’d created it, granting him the false sense of relief that he wasn’t an Illusion primal. But upon creating a bridge, he’d found his door opened right alongside the towering monolith of a bookshelf that was the Font of Illusions. He glanced briefly at this Font now before looking out into the expanse of the larger library before him.

Bookshelves of impossible proportions spread out as far as the eye could see, curving over the horizon as if he were walking on the inside surface of a massive sphere. Describing it like that vastly simplified the true mind-contorting geometry of the place, but Kole often left the description at that, lest he get a headache or lose the attention of his audience. If he had to describe it further, he’d explain how the sphere seemed to be more than three-dimensional, but even with his recent readings he didn’t have the words to describe the place.

The vast majority of the bookshelves were not actually Fonts, but other oddities the gods created in their pursuit of persisting beauty and function. Some overambitious—or undercautious—wizards had tried to draw power from these eldritch wells of power, but at best they had died, and at worst went insane and took others with them.

Standing in his doorway, Kole conjured a book to appear in his hand from his vault’s shelves. He accessed its contents and began to copy the spell template for Thunderwave from it, empowering it with his Will as he traced it in his mind. Once the spell was formed—a matter of a breath in the outside world, but seemingly the act of hours with his skewed perspective of time in a place in which time did not really exist—he sent it out.

The magic left him, flying straight for the Font of Sound somewhere off in the unseen distance, where it immediately crashed into a nearby bookshelf and fell apart. Kole let out a mental sigh and tried again, this time leaving his vault to draw on his vast notes of spellforms and find a way to navigate around the first bend.

***

Three hours later, Kole had a spell that could dodge the first two obstacles in its path to the Font of Sound. Two out of how many, he didn’t know. Being in an ineffable and mind-bending space, he couldn’t easily wander around looking for the Font of Sound to chart a course. That would be suicidal. He could follow the path of the spell he cast, as the Font of Sound component built into it homed in on its destination, but if he tried to follow that same path without the spell to guide him, he’d soon become lost, slipping into some other dimension.

Luckily for him, the spell—free of any sort of need to open his bridge to a new location, and only having a small fraction of a true path built in so far—took hardly any Will to cast, and he was able to work for hours before Will drain set in. Unfortunately, this task was the work of weeks or months, and he’d reached his limit.

“Done?” Theral asked from the desk.

“I think so,” Kole answered without opening his eyes. “I’m getting a headache, and I can’t find any components that work.”

Kole pulled out his spellbook, ready to record his findings and ink the spellform for what he’d built so far, but when he opened to the last page of his book, he found it already filled.

“Flood,” he said. “I’m out of spellform paper. I’ll need to get some more this week.”

While it would be nice to store the spell’s progress each day, it wasn’t necessary. Spells decayed over time in vaults, but they should last long enough for him to buy more paper in the next day or two, and he could always repair them if he didn’t get paper anytime soon.

The thought triggered something in Kole’s memory.

Spell decay…

He looked at his other spells in his vault, the cantrips he’d neglected to maintain since coming to the school. Wizards needed to check their spell construct templates regularly to ensure they’d not unraveled. Small flaws appeared over time, reducing the spell’s efficiency until it simply stopped working. It was a regular practice to review your spells anywhere from nightly to once a week, but Kole had forgotten to do so for the cantrips he still had. If one let them lapse, it wasn’t a huge task to recopy them from one’s spellbook, but it was annoying.

He briefly looked them over and found them to be fine.

Weird, he thought, mentally examining each. Did I review these? I must have.

It wasn’t like him to forget having done that, but it was equally unlike him to have completely forgotten to maintain his spells, so he set the thought aside.

Kole moved on to his other schoolwork, deciding he’d best get it all done this weekend so he could dive into his other spellwork with all his attention on Sunday.

Theral offered Kole the desk, seeing him done with his spellform pathing—a task often done in a comfy chair or bed, at least until the spell was almost complete and at risk of doing something destructive.

The first thing Kole had to do was write an essay on the differences in Riloth worship between the lost pre-Flood humans of Basin and their surviving orc counterparts. It wasn’t until Kole had finished the entire essay without referencing one of the required readings that he realized something was amiss.

“What in the Realms?” he asked aloud, flipping back through the five pages he’d written complete with citations referencing specific page numbers.

“What’s happened?” Theral asked, sitting up from his own wizardly work—or possibly a nap. Kole had noticed Theral tended to bundle up under the covers when exploring the Arcane Realm.

“I just wrote a whole essay without looking at any reference material,” Kole said.

“That doesn’t seem like the best way to write an essay,” Theral observed.

Kole handed it over and Theral glanced over the references.

“You just recalled these from memory?” he asked.

Kole nodded.

Theral waved his hand in front of him as if casting a spell, and then looked at the paper more closely.

“This is magic paper,” he said, confidently.

“This is the notebook I found on this desk when I first found this room,” Kole explained, realizing he’d never actually asked if it was Theral’s. “Was it yours?”

“I didn’t put it here,” Theral said, flipping it over to review the spine and recognizing it for seemingly the first time. “It was here when I found the room myself, but I didn’t need it. I have my own magic spellbook.”

“Magic spellbook?” Kole asked.

Theral nodded.

“I have a magic spellbook. This is a magic book.” Theral lifted Kole’s journal up for emphasis. “If you write spells in it, you’d have a magic spellbook too.”

Kole took the book back and examined the paper with a new eye. The paper was the same high-quality paper he’d seen all over the Dahn, all of it exhibiting magical potential.

“This is used all over the Academy!” Kole said. “What else can it do?”

“I think that’s for you to find out,” Theral said, with a grin that bordered on malicious.

Theral fell asleep shortly thereafter, suggesting that he hadn’t been working on wizardry in his blanket cocoon. Later on at some point in the night, he vanished in a rush of power. Kole once more felt the connection to the Arcane Realm as his roommate disappeared.

He checked the time. It was late, but it wasn’t too late, and he had no plans for the morning. With the knowledge that his journal had magical paper within, he’d been at work seeing what it could do.

Kole began by recording his most recent progress in Thunderwave. He first copied the spellform Theral had provided, then filled in the new path components around it. Two hours later he was finished, and a quick check showed the paper perfectly suitable for storing spells.

“I guess I don’t need to buy more paper,” he said to himself. “For a while, at least.”

But, as he was packing up his scribing kit and preparing for bed, he found the vial of magical—and very expensive—ink he’d just exhausted had been his last one.

“Flood.”

CHAPTER 49

Follow the Squirrel

This breakthrough showed the gods the key to the creation of sapient races, and they continued on to create the Illusian races, including humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, halflings, and seafolk—but that is a different story.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole slept late and was woken by his second roommate rummaging through his bag.

“Scram!” he shouted, throwing his pillow at the creature, which vanished. The pillow passed through its unoccupied spot before the rat returned an instant later. Then, as if mocking him, it leapt off the desk and walked lazily out the door with a hunk of bread in its jaws.

“That was my breakfast,” Kole said weakly.

Before leaving, he checked the door to Zale’s home and confirmed it still led nowhere.

He closed the door and said, “Zale’s home.”

When he reopened it, the wall remained.

“Breakfast,” he said, trying again to no avail.

***

With the frequent free meals from Zale, and the free room and board in the form of a magical bedroom in the library, Kole didn’t feel as bad splurging on breakfast that day. Except it wasn’t breakfast, at best it was brunch, and the kitchen staff shot him rude looks as he walked in just as they were switching the food over from one meal to the other. He shilled out the copper and a half—three times the per-meal cost he’d budgeted for when he’d begun to save for this adventure. In hindsight, his estimates had been extremely off.

After the short meal, Kole set out to find Rakin. He planned to spend the day studying but wanted to check in on his friend before he lost himself in his work. There were a few infirmaries in the school, and he had no idea which one would have Rakin.

First, he made his way to the martial college’s infirmary. This one mostly dealt with cuts and broken bones, but with Tigereye having been present at the incident, it was possible he was here. Kole asked at the front desk.

“I’m sorry, patient records are not available to the public,” the female halfling student working the desk said.

Kole sighed and was planning how to sneak in invisible when the student continued.

“But I can tell you there is no one by that name here.”

He checked with the infirmary in the crafting college next. This one specialized in alchemical remedies—both in treating alchemical mishaps and using alchemy to treat everything from infections to chronic illness. A male gnome student worked the desk here, so busy in his own studies that Kole had to check to see if he was invisible when the student didn’t respond to his presence.

“Excuse me,” Kole said louder.

“Oh, sorry! I was reading this fascinating account of a man whose skin turned into glass. How can I help you today?”

Fascinating… Kole thought, repressing a shudder.

“I’m looking for my friend Rakin—Rakinar. I don’t actually know his last name. He was in an accident, but I don’t know where he went.”

“I’m sorry…” the gnome began, but then stared closer at Kole, squinting in his face.

In a lower tone, he asked, “Wait, you’re Amara’s friend, right?”

Kole nodded.

“I thought so, but all you tall folk look the same. I’ll check if he’s here.”

The gnome exited through a door behind the desk, and Kole took the opportunity to turn invisible and run around the counter. He skimmed the list of entries for the last day. It was full of students with horrific alchemically induced traumas, such as missing skin or dissolved bones, but no mention of Rakin.

Kole returned to the other side of the counter and turned visible just as he heard the gnome’s soft footsteps approaching the door.

“I’m sorry, your friend’s not here,” he said as he stepped out.

“I checked the martial infirmary. Do you know where else he might be?”

The gnome thought about it for a moment and said, “There’s the temple on campus, but that only takes the most grievous injuries, mostly tending to the townsfolk free of charge. You could check the Glade.”

“The Glade?” Kole asked, “Where is that? I’ve heard it mentioned, but never seen it.”

“The big tree on the green. You just walk through it and bam, you’re in the Glade.”

Kole examined his face for signs of deception, but he seemed to be in earnest.

“Walk? Through a tree?”

The gnome waved his hands in front of his face, wiggling his fingers, and said, “Magic!”

***

Twenty minutes and two corroborating conversations later, Kole stood in front of the massive oak tree that dominated the green. Plenty of people lay and played games in its shade, but no one attempted to step through it while he watched. Working up the courage in front of this potential embarrassment, Kole walked to the tree.

He wanted to turn invisible, but he couldn’t exactly hide that ability out in the open like this. And if he did step through, he would be outed at once as having the spell. As he’d learned growing up in a town full of Mirage Knights and Illusion primals, the usefulness of invisibility is inversely proportional to the number of people who know about it. Every shop and store back home had means of detecting the invisible, and the spell had only been selectively useful.

Instead, he tried something new. His conversation with Zale about her Sound-canceling aura got him thinking about his own primal abilities—well, ability. He could make people ignore the presence of an object without making it invisible.

Could I do the same with myself? he wondered.

He’d never considered it. He’d never needed such an ability.

Suddenly vanishing in a crowd could garner undue attention, but simply becoming hard to focus on? By definition, no one would notice. He’d tried hiding objects in the palm of his hand with Zale. If she wasn’t expecting it, her eyes would lose focus briefly before seeing it again. Out in public, with lots of things to distract, he should just disappear from everyone’s awareness.

Kole reached out to his seldom-used primal connection to the Font of Illusions.

When casting Invisibility, which was a sorcerous spell, he would manifest part of his mind in the Arcane Realm, just outside the Font, and reach within that Font to draw power out into him and then out to the world. Drawing on the Font through his primal abilities was different. It was like waving an arm he didn’t always remember he had.

No, Kole reflected. It’s like using a gangly tail I don’t know how to control and can’t see moving because it’s behind me.

Groping blindly with his primal appendage, Kole grabbed the power and pulled some into him. Instead of pushing it into an object as his instincts dictated, he let the power build up in him. Like water flowing into bowl, the power filled his body. Once it was full, he dropped the connection.

He looked around. No one was looking at him, but no one had been looking at him before either. Testing the ability out, Kole approached a couple eating a meal on a blanket nearby. He felt the slight draw of Will as the magic drew on the Font to divert the attention of the girl. She looked up, right at him, and then looked away, then right back at him. At the second glance, Kole felt the magic fail, and the girl saw him.

She squinted, but before she could say anything, Kole waved awkwardly and left.

Maybe I’ll try actually blending in, he thought.

He walked through the grassy area with the magic active, acting like he belonged. He felt a constant drain on his Will that spiked whenever anyone looked at him, but no one seemed to notice him unless he got too close or did something worthy of attention—like sneezing.

With each double take someone made, the drain grew exponentially, until the magic failed. If anyone noticed him at all, the effect vanished, revealing him to all. While he was ”revealed” when the spell failed, that only really meant people then suddenly noticed him. It wasn’t as dramatic as appearing in plain view where he’d once been invisible. Those who saw him had a peculiar look for but a moment, then moved on with their lives.

The Will drain had been intense the instant before failure. Walking to the students sitting unseen had cost nearly nothing, but once they started looking, it had been as if he were casting Invisibility constantly. The whole exercise had drained nearly all his Will.

I did it! he realized.

After years of neglecting his primal magic following a series of early failures, he’d finally done something with it. The something in question was small, a minor modification of an existing ability, but it was small progress where there had long been no hope of any.

His thoughts raced. Had he always been this close, or had something changed recently? Had his understanding of Illusions improved? Or had he simply given up a foot away from the finish line?

Thinking back to his early attempts, he was fairly certain it wasn’t the latter. He’d never felt close to making any progress before. Something had changed about him, and he’d come back to the long-ignored primal magic with new eyes and new skills, finding the problems weren’t as daunting as before. He was far from a true primal with instinctive understanding of his Font’s magic, but that didn’t appear to be the mark of inevitable failure he’d too often seen it to be.

Bolstered by his new discovery, and confident that he at least wouldn’t embarrass himself, Kole prepared to walk through the tree. He touched the trunk lightly, preparing to enter, but as soon as he touched the bark, he was sucked in. His concentration on his primal spell vanished as he felt squeezed all over, and then suddenly he was in a brightly lit forest grove, being menaced by a pair of bark-armored dryads wielding vine whips and wooden spears.

“What is your business in the Glade?” they asked in gentle tones that didn’t match the raised weapons.

“I’m looking for Rakin,” Kole said, hands held out in front of him to show they were empty—which he reflected was not exactly a reassuring posture for a wizard. He knew of at least a dozen spells that began casting from that pose, not that he could cast any of them.

The two relaxed.

“Welcome, friend of Doug. Please follow the squirrel.”

CHAPTER 50

The Glade

The dragons spread out over the world, exploring the wonders the gods had made, and when the gods followed the creation of dragons with the creation of the Illusian races, the dragons acted as shepherds and guides.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole looked from the two wooden women to his surroundings in awe. He was in a large, shaded forest clearing. He’d never really been in a forest before, discounting the dungeon and the river trip to Edgewater a few weeks past. The manicured greens of the Academy’s campus were familiar to him, as those existed all through Illandrios as well, but a wild forest, even one as cultivated as this one, was something completely different.

The massive oak he’d stepped through had a twin here in the woods, and it covered just as large an area here as it did on the college green. Not a single tree grew below its canopy, an ankle-deep lawn of flowers and grasses filling the space. Groups of people and animals sat scattered throughout, in conversation, lessons, and games.

A chattering caught Kole’s attention, and he recalled the dryad’s words.

Follow the squirrel?

Sure enough, a very impatient-looking squirrel looked at him on the worn path before him.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Lead the way.”

The squirrel took off without even a chitter of acknowledgment, which Kole thought was rude, but who was to say what squirrel guide etiquette dictated?

I should ask Doug.

Kole was led out of the clearing and into the forest. The trees were still massive, though they seemed normal in comparison to the monstrosity he’d left. Much like under the canopy of the great oak, people and animals congregated in smaller clearings. He watched as a group of students examined a young deer under the direction of a wizened old halfling, the deer patiently complying with the prodding of the students.

The squirrel led Kole down a few turns to a large wooden building. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been this.

Maybe beds of roses laid out under a tree? he reflected. No, those have thorns.

When Kole looked back down to the squirrel for guidance, it was gone. He walked up the stairs, noting that the wood of the building was like nothing he’d ever seen.

Many in his home were constructed largely from the salvaged wood remnants of ships that their long-dead guardian had dragged beneath the waves. The wooden buildings of Edgewater he’d seen were of superb quality, all carved neat and square where they weren’t embellished with carvings. This building, however, hadn’t seen a single blade set to it.

What Kole had first taken to be alternating lines of painted wavy lines were actually oddly shaped logs of different woods. The wall looked as if someone had taken trunks of a dozen different varieties, stripped them of their bark, and turned them into clay before stacking them together, smoothing out the seams, and then firing them in place.

Inside, the place looked much like any other infirmary. Beds with clean white linens lined the walls, with partitions giving each patient privacy—though the partitions were made of green leaves instead of sheets, giant green leaves dangling from vines that grew across the room. Lights glowed on the vines, bathing the room in a soft white light, and when Kole looked closer at one, he saw that it was a giant glowing fruit.

“Don’t eat them,” a familiar voice said from beside Kole. “They taste like old milk.”

Kole turned to see Zale next to the door, dressed in the same embroidered tunic as the night before. Her hair was a mess, and her white face was growing black around the eyes.

“Zale! You look, um… tired,” Kole said and then mentally kicked himself.

Idiot.

Zale laughed, taking no offense.

“I am. I’ve been here all night. He woke up a little while ago.”

“Is he okay?”

After a pause, Zale answered, “I don’t know. He’s mad, but I think it’s all directed at himself.”

“Should I talk to him? Or would that just make it worse?”

Zale shrugged.

“It could help. It depends on what you’re planning on saying.”

They sat talking a little before Kole ultimately decided to stop procrastinating and go check on Rakin.

“Hello?” Kole said, knocking on one of the thicker vines making up the partition.

“Aye, come in.”

At Rakin’s words, the leaves blocking Kole’s path parted, and he saw the dwarf sitting up in his bed with a stone in his hand, the edges of it warping and rippling as he used his primal magic to contort it.

“How are you doing?” Kole asked after a brief awkward silence.

“Fine, I just suffocated a wee bit,” Rakin answered and then gestured around. “Nothing worth all this nonsense. I should be asking how yer doing. I could have killed ye.”

“I’m fine—so is Amara.”

Another pause and Rakin eventually cursed under his breath.

“I should probably explain what happened.”

Kole waited patiently as Rakin garnered his courage.

In a whisper, he continued, “I’m not just an Earth primal. I’m…”

He stopped again, looking around nervously.

“A Fire primal too.”

Even though Kole had figured it was something like that, he hadn’t been certain. Now that he had confirmation of his theory, the weight of it sunk in.

“That’s not supposed to be possible?” Kole asked more than stated.

“Aye,” Rakin said, “I can’t really go into the details, but it’s true. Faust’s madness calls to me through my connection to the Font of Fire. The new runes around the prison don’t do a damned thing to stop that avenue of its influence. Torc shields me some, through my connection to Earth, but if I draw upon Fire, I lose control.”

“So that’s what Zale meant when she said you had ‘anger issues,’” Kole observed, connecting the dots.

“Aye. The Hardune didn’t exactly leap at the chance to train a Fire primal, so I was sent to the Order of the Resounding Silence to learn control. Ye saw how well that worked out.”

“You saved our lives. Without you, those ice people would have killed us all.”

Rakin’s guilt-ridden face scowled further. Kole’s words didn’t have the intended effect—which, if he was being honest, was typically the case.

“If ye ask Aunty, if I hadn’t run in, ye wouldn’t’a needed my help.”

“Wallow if you want, but we—you—stopped those… people. The Dahn sent us there. It must have known we could handle it, and because we did, we found what happened to Amara’s sister.”

Rakin snapped his attention to Kole. He’d been looking away and avoiding eye contact.

“What do ye mean? They found her?”

“No,” Kole quickly corrected. “They didn’t, but Tigereye said that three primals have gone missing in the last year, and they now suspect it to be a pattern. Maybe those people are Ice primals? Maybe they’re the result of experimenting on primals? I don’t know. We were looking for Amara’s sister, and we found these people. It must be connected.”

Rakin nodded to himself as if he were forcing himself to accept that they hadn’t almost killed his friends for nothing.

He looked back to Kole and then asked in almost a whisper, “Do ye still trust me?”

Kole was taken aback by the question.

“What do you mean?”

The vulnerability in Rakin’s face vanished, replaced with irritation.

“I almost killed ye, ye clod! I kept a secret from ye that coulda gotten ye killed!”

“Oh, that!” Kole said, now following. “No, it’s fine.”

“Bah, yer a moron,” Rakin said, waving dismissively at Kole, and they both started laughing.

Zale came in once she heard the laughter, and the two stuck around talking while Kole ate the lunch delivered to Rakin, which he refused, calling it “leafy nonsense.”

As they were leaving, Zale turned to Rakin and asked, “Are you sure you didn’t do all of this to get out of the mixer tonight?”

“You caught me.”

CHAPTER 51

The Mixer

As the races grew and prospered, the dragons grew in knowledge and power alongside them. Like their mother Illunia, the dragons had an innate hunger, a remnant of their connection to Faust through her. Some hungered for knowledge, like her, others for power or wealth.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

“So, what’s your plan for today?” Zale asked Kole as they walked through the Glade back to campus.

“I ran out of spellform ink, I need to get some. Then back to studying.”

Zale sighed.

“Of course.”

“Well, let me guess. You’re planning on running twelve miles and then sparring until you’ve broken three practice swords?”

“No, actually. I have nothing to wear to the mixer, so I’m going shopping.”

Kole—who had very recently seen her room and knew her statement to be extremely false—cocked his head slightly.

“Fine,” she admitted, “I have nothing I want to wear. What about you? What are you going to wear?”

Kole hadn’t considered it.

“I have a…”

He’d arrived with three sets of clothes, and all had been damaged at one point or another. The clothes he’d been wearing on Saturday had been his good pair, but they’d gotten a bit singed.

“I think I need to buy an outfit.”

Zale smiled wide and maliciously.

***

“His father is a Stormcaller, so it should evocate thoughts of their garb, but his mother was a Mirage Knight, so the muted tones and broken patterns they used can be incorporated as well.”

“I’d like to not actually highlight my mother,” Kole said, correcting Zale.

He was trying to keep his Illusory magic a secret, and he feared that would only highlight it.

“Fine,” Zale said. “So, let’s just do an homage on the Stormcallers’ garb to pay tribute to his father. That should be suitably impressive while not causing issue with the clans.”

Zale spoke animatedly with a tailor with whom she was clearly well acquainted. The elderly woman had dropped everything when Zale entered and given her a hug. Kole realized then that it was the first time he’d seen someone touch Zale aside from Rakin or her mother.

Any feelings of sympathy were soon squashed as the woman, led by Zale, interrogated him fiercely and began to measure him all over.

Sometime later, Kole sat in a chair, mind in the Arcane Realm trying to cast Thunderwave as Zale and Miranda the tailor fretted over what would be his formal clothing.

The training did well to distract him from the matter at hand but had the unintended side effect of making the time stretch out as his mind was extended into the other Realm.

By the time Zale threw a sock at his head, breaking him from his concentration, he’d made no progress, but he judged at least an hour had passed.

“We can come back in an hour and your clothes will be ready,” Zale said.

“Great. Do I want to know what I owe?”

“Fifteen silver,” Zale said proudly.

“Fifteen?!”

“Yeah!” Zale said, again proudly. “I got you a discount.”

“Discount? What was the full price?” Kole asked, stunned.

He hadn’t ever had to buy his own clothing, but he could have sworn it wasn’t this expensive.

“Forty-five.”

Fifteen silver was fully one-fourth of the money he’d brought with him to Edgewater. Yes, he’d found ways out of actually having to spend it for most of the expenses he’d anticipated, but that was still a large sum.

He wanted to refuse, to ask her to pick something else out, but he found he couldn’t get the words out.

“Alright,” he said sullenly.

“Great,” Zale said, some of her joy gone as she noticed Kole’s attitude. “We can go look for your ink now.”

As they searched for a store that sold spellform ink, Kole asked, “I’ve been meaning to ask. Why are you going to this mixer? Tigereye’s your mentor, right?”

“I’m going as Mom’s representative. She’s supposed to go, but she has no intention of picking anyone, so she just sends me to mingle.”

“Any tips?”

“Be yourself?”

“Great…”

A few wrong turns later, Zale stopped confidently at a storefront. The windows were plastered with sheets of paper covered in text, giving the shop the appearance of a vacant establishment.

“Here!”

“Are you sure?” Kole asked. “It looks closed.”

Zale double-checked the sign.

“This is it.”

Kole backed up and looked at the basic, black-on-white sign of “Ink & Sundries.”

Wait…

As Kole watched, the black seemed to grow deeper, briefly evoking the emptiness he felt when looking into the void in the Dahn. That feeling vanished, replaced with a subtle Will drain as the ink took on a kaleidoscope pattern of swirling colors.

“What are you staring at?” Zale asked, looking from Kole to the sign and back.

“The sign, it’s magic.”

Zale squinted back at the sign, cocking her head.

“There’s a little Will in it, I guess. What do you see?”

“It’s… I don’t know. I’d say it was an illusion, but I’d sense it if it were. It just looks… magical.”

The pair entered the store, and a bell attached to the door rang.

“One moment!” a deep voice shouted from the back in a not-particularly-welcoming tone.

Kole and Zale waited, examining the goods. With the paper coating the windows, Kole expected the inside to be dark, but light runes were etched into the ceiling, filling the place with soft white light.

Racks filled the store, themselves filled with ink, and well, sundries.

“The name’s accurate, at least,” Kole whispered to Zale.

Rows of empty vials, reams of paper, quills, ink chisels, brushes, and a dozen other types of writing, drafting, and scribing implements Kole had only ever heard of crammed the walls.

“Is that a slide rule?!” Kole asked excitedly, running over to a shelf of the things.

Zale sighed heavily and muttered under her breath.

“Nerd.”

“What?” Kole asked, fixated on the fine print written onto the devices.

“Nothing!”

“Alright,” the gruff voice called, coming out of the back room. “What can I—what in the Wardens are you?”

Kole and Zale both looked to the counter—a very low counter—and the ink-stained dwarf behind it. He wore clothes that might have at one time not been black but now were, the color uneven and blotchy. The dwarf’s hair and beard were gray, save of course for where they were stained deep black. His species surprised Kole, for the man’s voice lacked any sort of Torcish accent, which was odd for a dwarf as old as this one seemed to be.

“She’s a half-voidling,” Kole answered for Zale, before she herself could do so.

She turned to him and gave him a grateful smile.

“Oh, her,” he said, not apologizing for the question or its tone. “I heard of you. What do you want?”

“Ink?” Kole suggested.

“I don’t sell just any ‘ink’ here. I sell the medium on which civilization is being built! Go a block down the road for the stationery store if you want to fill up on school supplies. I don’t got time for children.”

“I need spellform ink,” Kole explained. “I’m a wizard.”

The dwarf laughed.

“Drafting spellforms is a costly hobby. Why don’t you come back when you have a few more hairs on your chin and coins in your purse.”

Before Kole could think of a response, Zale pulled his bag off his shoulder and walked up to the counter. She slammed down his old, and now completely full, spellbook.

“Stop being a danar,” Zale said, “he did all this.”

The dwarf reached for the glasses hanging on a chain around his neck and perched them on his nose. He turned the book around and flipped through the pages with practiced ease.

“Hmm,” he said, without looking up. “Did you just call me a ‘stink head’?“

“Did I?” Zale asked, confidence gone. “I thought it meant stubborn-headed.”

“Nope, that’s ‘kanar,’” the dwarf answered, still flipping through the pages with genuine interest.

“Head hole?”

“Yep. So, you did all this?” he asked.

Kole nodded.

“Good work. You can buy ink.”

“Thanks?” Kole said.

The words had been complimentary, but nothing about the man’s tone or bearing had been.

“I’ll take some spellform ink, please—and this slide rule,” Kole said, putting the ruler on the counter.

“Which point quill do you use?” the dwarf asked.

“Excuse me?” Kole asked.

The dwarf sighed and then, speaking slower, answered, “What is the point size of your quill tip? Eight? Nine? It’s hard to tell from your work.”

“I… um… didn’t know that was a thing.”

The dwarf seemed like he was going to yell, but he caught himself and looked through Kole’s spellbook again. He reached under the counter and pulled out some metal sticks.

“I don’t know how you learned enough to do all this without knowing what a quill point is, and I don’t want to hear your life story. These are nibs, they are a hybrid of the quills you Waatin use and the chisels the dwarves use. Try it out.”

Kole grabbed one and examined it closer. The metal tube was larger in diameter than a quill and fit more comfortably in his hand. The tip looked like a quill’s and had a small hole in it. He dipped it in a vial of ink offered to him and drew a few lines on a well-scribbled piece of paper on the countertop.

“Impressed?” the dwarf asked.

“Very!” Kole said, finding the nib lasted far longer than any quill would have on a single dip.

“Great. I’ll throw one in with the ink if you buy a vial. That’s an eight-point tip. Judging by the scale of your work, this should be the best fit for you.”

“Thanks!” He was still marveling at the nib. “Why does the point size matter?”

“I tailor the viscosity of the ink to the tip to minimize running.”

Kole nodded appreciatively.

“How much for a vial?”

“Two gold,” the dwarf said as if it were an entirely reasonable cost.

“Excuse me? Two gold? For a vial? Like, a vial, not a vat.”

“Yep.”

“That’s absurd! It costs, like, a quarter that!”

“Look, kid. I don’t have time for this. Buy the ink or don’t, but you’re not going to find a better price. If you bought it for cheaper, it was probably made out of some poor murdered sorcerer’s bones. Deep whale shit ain’t cheap, and it’s a real danar to work with.”

The mention of deep whales revealed the source of Kole’s disconnect on price. Like with clarity potions, a potential primary ingredient of spellform ink was deep whale excrement—something Kole hadn’t been aware of until that moment. And, like clarity potions, it seemed that Kole’s sense of value was skewed.

“Oh” was all Kole could say.

He pulled out his coin purse from inside his shirt, fished out two of his three remaining gold coins, and placed them on the counter.

The dwarf went behind the counter and pulled down a vial of black ink that seemed to glow despite drinking in the light.

“The slide rule is two silver,” he added.

Kole fished out the coins and placed them woodenly on the counter.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” the dwarf said happily, collecting Kole’s coins.

As Kole gathered his purchases into his pack, the dwarf asked, “Are you by chance a student of Grand Master Lonin?”

Kole shook his head.

“He doesn’t take adventuring track students as apprentices, and I haven’t tested into his classes yet.”

The dwarf scoffed.

“Adventuring, such a waste of a wonderful penmanship. Come show me what you can do with that nib in a few weeks, and I might have some work for you. If you haven’t lost a hand by then.”

“What kind of work?” Kole asked.

On coming to Edgewater, he’d resolved not to work, focusing fully on his studies, and with the finds of Zale’s free meals and the free room in the library, it had looked like that would be possible. But now, after visiting only two stores, he was down to a single gold.

“Testing inks, doing some copy work for customers, sweeping, and things like that. I’m Turwo, Turwo Randin.”

“I’m Kole, this is Zale. I’ll consider it. I could use the money, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time.”

They left the shop. Outside Kole stopped and asked, “Danar?”

“Rakin curses a lot. My Torcish is bad, and I mix words up. How about some lunch while we wait for our outfits?”

Kole hesitated, thinking of the fifteen silver he’d have to pay after the meal.

“I’ll pay,” she added.

Kole reddened, embarrassed at his transparency.

“If you insist.”

CHAPTER 52

Shopping

Eventually, this led to strife amongst themselves and between the dragons and men. The dragons did not seek to do harm, but they could not remain with the mortal races without doing so. With heavy hearts, they retreated to the far reaches of Kaltis to live in isolation and conquer these strange new urges.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole and Zale bought a meat-stuffed bread roll from a cart and ate in a park, killing time. Once they were done, they sat in the grass, watching some children play a game of hardball.

Well, Zale was, at least.

“Are you working on your spell right now?” Zale asked disapprovingly.

With his mind in his vault, it took Kole a moment to register the words.

“Umm… no?”

“I think I could feel it,” Zale said, ignoring his clumsy line. “Do it again.”

Zale closed her eyes and entered her own weird voidling version of the mental vault.

Kole obliged, lay down, and sent the modified Thunderwave he’d been building through his bridge.

“There!” Zale shouted.

“You found the Font of Sound?” Kole asked, remembering that Tallen had suggested they train together.

“No, but I could sense you casting the spell, which is the first step.”

Kole tried casting the spell a few more times over the next hour before he stopped to make a note of what he’d done. He sat up in the grass, but Zale sat cross-legged in a meditative pose.

He wrote some notes down in the margin of his spellbook, wishing he’d thought to bring the journal of magic paper with him so he could try the new ink. He did use the new nib, however, and found it was worlds better than a quill.

“What’s your mental vault like?” Zale asked, still inside her own.

Kole explained it and his perception of the Arcane Realm, eliciting a laugh from Zale.

“A library in a library? That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?”

Kole shrugged.

“I like libraries. What about you?”

Zale hesitated, gathering her thoughts.

“I don’t exactly have a mental vault,” she explained. “Voidlings can’t form them, and what I can do isn’t exactly what you can do. When I vanish—like you saw before when I… uh…”

Zale blanched—as much as a bone-white woman could blanch—at the thought of her scene the day before.

“When I vanish,” she repeated, “I’m actually leaving the Material Realm, going to that place between Realms the voidlings came from. But I keep a mental hold on the Material Realm and can reappear nearby.”

“What does this have to do with your vault?”

“I’m getting to that. When I’m in this place, it feels like I’m hanging from a cliff, and down below I can see for miles. I can see the Arcane Realm from there. It’s like a forest of light beams. Staying there, in that place, is hard. It takes strain to hold onto the Material, and I don’t want to know what happens if I drop.

“When I created my mental vault, my mind entered this same place, but I wasn’t hanging. I was just floating in the void between Realms, able to see them both. There’s no representation of memories or places to store information like spell construct templates. Just the void and view of the Realms from afar.”

Kole hung on every word, fascinated by the ability to step out of the Realm. Immediately his thoughts went to the possibility of using the ability to enter sealed pocket realms, but he figured Tallen would be a better person to ask. He voiced his next thought.

“What happens if you try to make a bridge?”

“I can’t. My Will doesn’t really work the way it’s supposed to, but that’s a whole other thing. What I can do, though, is move where I am in that void. To find the Font of Sound, I homed in on Uncle Tal’s spells until I found the Font. And, while I can’t store spells, paths, or gates in my mind like you can, I can remember locations and open my vault to them at will.”

“So that’s how you learned your silence aura?” Kole asked.

Zale nodded.

“I was trying to do the same with you today. Your spell was harder to detect than the ones Uncle used, but I could just barely sense them. I think it will help train my senses, then maybe it’ll be easier to find other Fonts.”

“That will have to be another time. If I keep going, I’ll be stuck with a headache all day.”

The two gathered their things and headed back to the tailor’s shop, where Kole handed over the coins with a clenched fist.

“Changing room is in the back if you need it,” the tailor said, cupping Kole’s hand in her own and taking the coins.

He took his new clothes to the back.

Maybe I did need new clothes, he reflected as his sleeve fell off his shirt when removing it. A closer inspection showed he’d been burned on the back shoulder while fleeing Rakin.

His new clothes were nice, but he didn’t think they were fifteen silver nice.

I doubt anything in this store is. He sulked over his remaining funds.

He examined himself in the mirror. The outfit was very similar to the Stormcaller outfits he was familiar with, but it had silver embroidered accents on the trim. The fabrics were various shades of dark blue, and the cords that bound his sleeves tight at his wrists were spider silk cord instead of leather. The cords had been made from a single massively thick strand that had been treated to not be sticky.

When Kole left the dressing room, he could still hear Zale fretting about inside her own changing stall. He sat down and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Hours? Days? Maybe weeks later, the door opened, and Zale stepped out.

Her outfit was tailored in the style of the school’s martial school uniforms, but only if one squinted and took liberties with the term “style.” She wore a high-collared emerald green jacket, with the offset buttons standard to the uniforms. Silver embroidery covered the jacket, branching out from each button at sharp angles giving the impression she was covered in the crystals of a snowflake. The jacket had a long coattail which hung low to the floor and flared out, making it look somewhere between a cloak and dress. The hilt of a dress sword poked out from the jacket. Her pants were ruby-red leather that matched her boots.

Maybe something is worth fifteen silver here, Kole thought.

“How do I look?” Zale asked, spinning around.

Kole noticed then that her hair was now in a tight braid, and it looked like a rift of darkness splitting her back down the center.

“Fifteen silver,” Kole muttered before he caught himself.

“What?”

“Uh… You look good?”

“That’s the right answer. Let’s go.”

***

The “mentor-student introductory gathering,” or mentor mixer, as everyone actually called it, was held at the Griffin’s Roost. Several were held throughout the year, but the first was always the most populated. As the year went on, the attendees tended to grow more desperate, both the students and adventurers.

Students needed mentors to join the program, but adventurers needed students as well. The school strongly encouraged its alumni to take on mentees. There was no hard rule on numbers, but the school kept count, and those who flouted the program often received visits from the Academy’s staff.

“Mom loves scaring deadbeat adventurers into being mentors,” Zale said as she explained this all to Kole.

The trip from the tailor to the tavern was short, but their fancy dress drew more attention than was usual—which was saying something, because people generally fled or froze in fear when they saw Zale, ever-present smile or not.

A large man in a blue enameled breastplate stood outside the door of the Roost.

“Papers,” he said to a nervous student Kole vaguely recognized from class.

The student fumbled through his pocket and pulled out a small card.

“Flood,” Kole muttered. “I forgot my school ID.”

Zale sighed and patted Kole on the back.

“What would you do without me?”

“I’d have more gold,” Kole observed.

“Nah, you’d have to pay for food. Remember?”

“Ho, Zale!” the guard greeted amicably.

“Hi, Mink!” Zale waved. “This guy’s with me. He forgot his ID.”

“No problem. How’s your mom?”

“Busy… There was an incident.”

“I heard.” The man nodded towards the tavern. “It’s a full house. They put out a request for extra security. Can you tell me what happened?”

Zale looked from Mink to Kole, who was trying to not draw any attention to himself.

Is it good or bad that I caused the events that put the school on high alert? Kole thought, weighing the benefits of speaking up.

“If Mom didn’t say,” Zale told Mink, “I shouldn’t either.”

“Fair enough. Go on in—Oh I forgot, Harold’s inside. He asked if you were here yet. He told me not to tell you he asked.”

Zale grew nervous and began to chew her lip, but she soon banished the look and walked in with a smile.

“Thanks!”

***

Kole learned an important lesson that day: he hated mixers. The place was packed with students and adventurers alike. Thankfully, no one was armed or armored. With the tight press, Kole was certain there would have been countless injuries.

Immediately upon entering, Zale was whisked away by people asking after her mother. She tried to introduce Kole to potential mentors, but he was quickly edged out of the conversation by the strong personalities of the adventurers trading stories of “Shalia’s” exploits.

Kole noted that while it was semipublic knowledge that Zale’s mother was an adventurer, it was not public that she was the famous adventurer Trish Mason. She tried a few more times to introduce Kole to someone, but eventually, he just waved her off and let her talk. It was nice seeing her in a crowd, he reflected. She looked truly happy listening to the stories of those around her, and he couldn’t remember ever seeing her this accepted anywhere else.

That didn’t mean everyone in the Roost looked past her voidling heritage, though. There were a few who kept staring daggers at Zale from across the room. Knowing her mother, Kole suspected some were people wronged by her, but others were the familiar looks of hate and fear.

He saw a group of adults who were all varying flavors of wizard, judging by their clothes. Two human men wore formal dress robes, and they looked old enough to have bought them back when they’d actually been in style. Another wore a Stormcaller outfit similar to Kole’s own, and the last was an orc wearing the traditional dress of a clan shaman. She wore heavy white furs spotted all over with the fangs, claws, and horns of various creatures sticking out, like some horribly disfigured porcupine.

He didn’t want to walk up to a group of strangers and introduce himself. In fact, he could think of a lot of very recent and very unpleasant things he’d done recently which he’d rather go through again.

As he stood there, ranking his recent experiences from most to least horrible, debating whether or not the sewers were worse than the goblin cave, he caught Zale looking at him from across the room with a disapproving stare.

He sighed.

“Here goes nothing,” Kole muttered to himself and walked up to the group of wizards.

“Hi, I’m Kole.”

CHAPTER 53

Wasted

The gods eventually fled Kaltis to the newly created Celestial Realm. They learned that their presence thinned the barrier between the Realms, allowing Faust’s minions to flood the Material Realm from the Realm of Fauell, which Faust had created in secret with the aid of Bilieth and Erebog.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

The conversation didn’t go as terribly as Kole had feared—it was a complete failure as far as getting a mentor went, but as far as general conversations went, it was fine.

The Stormcaller recognized both Kole’s garb and greeted him warmly. The wizard didn’t seem to have the resentment some ship clan members did for “sanders”—that is, clan members who left to live on land. Or, in Kole’s father’s case, deep beneath the sea.

The robed wizards picked up the hints of his Illandrian accent despite Kole’s attempts to disguise it and asked endless questions about his home.

“I hear the clarity potions actually taste good if the deep whale excrement is fresh. Is it true?” one asked.

Kole grimaced and shook his head.

“If anything, it’s worse.”

Eventually, the chat came around to the topic of mentors, and while they were all very interested in hearing about Kole’s particular magical struggles, they weren’t looking for a project. The Stormcaller was recruiting for his clan as part of a school-sponsored exchange program where adventuring students could live at sea for the semester. The orc shaman was looking for a student pursuing summoning magic, and the two elderly wizards were retired and just here for the free drinks.

When it became clear he would find no mentor here, he excused himself politely and sought out a drink of his own while he scanned the room.

Across the room, he spotted Gray’s team all chatting with a group of adventurers. Gray was animatedly telling a story, holding the attention of the other team, while Mouse was stuffing her face with the little sandwiches going around. Harold kept looking across the room, and following his eyes, Kole found Zale was the object of his attention. Esme, in turn, kept glancing over her large mug from Gray’s story to Harold, growing more sullen and drunk each time.

Kole scanned the room looking for anyone giving off a wizardy vibe and spotted a familiar old human man. He, a blue-skinned female Air primal, a gray-skinned orc, and a gnome all sat talking amongst themselves. They were the hardball team he’d watched lose to the team with the druid.

Come on, Kole, it wasn’t so terrible last time, he told himself, working up the courage to approach.

Thoughts of being left without a mentor and returning home a failure at the end of the year spurred him onward. Everywhere he looked students approached teams, introducing themselves. So long as he didn’t do anything ridiculous, he wouldn’t stand out in anyone’s memory.

Before he could decide, the old wizard waved at him and beckoned him over.

Kole looked behind himself and, finding no one, realized the gesture was for him.

“I was worried you’d been petrified,” the wizard joked. “I was about to call for a Blessed.”

“Socially petrified, maybe,” Kole said, extending his hand. “Hi, I’m Kole Teak.”

After the previous wizard had placed his accent, he decided to lead with his father’s last name.

“Teak?” the wizard asked with a brow raised. “And that’s a Stormcaller’s outfit you wear. But you don’t strike me as one.”

“My father was a Stormcaller, clan Teak, but he left it when he met my mother,” Kole explained.

“Teak, now that’s a strong ship clan name,” the wizard said, shaking his hand. “I’m Master Karl Miller, and this is my team, the Blue Dragons.”

The rest of the party raised their glasses in salute.

“That’s an… interesting name,” Kole said, as countless theories ran through his mind as to how they could have earned such a name.

He was certain if there was a group alive that had slain a blue dragon, he’d have known of them.

The wizard chucked.

“We let my grandson pick the name. He wanted to call it the Blue Ninja Dragons, but that was a bit much.”

Of all the theories Kole had had, that hadn’t been one of them.

“I didn’t know adventuring parties picked their own names,” Kole said. “I thought they had to earn them.”

“That is true, but we aren’t an adventuring party. We’re a hardball team. I retired from adventuring years ago, and the rest of these aren’t regular members of any parties. Are you interested in the sport?”

Kole thought about his answer. He enjoyed watching the matches, but did he want to play?

No. That would only take time away from my goals. Any Will spent in a match is Will that could be spent refining a spell.

He decided on a more diplomatic response.

“I enjoy watching, but I have a rather full plate with my studies at the moment. Are you looking to mentor a student?”

The wizard gave a very unwizardly shrug.

“We are always open to recruiting junior members. We watch the student league each year and offer the winning teams spots, but so does everyone else.”

Kole filed that knowledge away. He wasn’t interested in pursuing hardball as a career like this team, but he’d entertain the idea if it could get him a mentor and allow him to stay in the Academy. Better that he got to stay at the cost of some of his study time if the alternative was not being admitted to the program.

He excused himself politely and looked for more potential mentors.

Movement caught his eye as Harold pushed his way awkwardly through the crowd. Kole followed him with his eyes as he caught Zale’s attention and drew her away from her group. He tried to get close enough to overhear but couldn’t push his way through the crowd fast enough. When Kole reached Zale, Harold was gone, and she had an uncertain smile on her face.

“Did you tell him off again?” Kole asked.

“No,” she said, her smile growing. “He apologized. We’re going on a date. In public.”

“Oh… great,” Kole said, not at all feeling great about it.

***

Kole found he suddenly lacked the energy to motivate himself to talk to strangers. He walked around aimlessly, taking advantage of the free food and drinks—but mostly the drinks—and never working up the courage to approach anyone else. As the event began to wind down, Zale found him.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Definitely.”

The pair left, heading back towards campus with various degrees of inebriation.

“I used to have a magic doorknob,” Zale lamented.

“What?” Kole asked, unsure if his own thoughts were addled or if Zale’s words made no sense.

“I had. A magic. Doorknob,” she repeated slower. “I could open a door to my room from anywhere. It was nice.”

“What happened to it?” Kole asked, agreeing that it would be very nice at the moment as he watched the buildings sway around him.

“I lent it to Harold… Mom didn’t like that,” Zale said, then quickly amended, “But it wasn’t like that! He was going on a trip, and it was so he could return quickly. Mom didn’t believe me.”

“Why?”

“Because she thinks everyone is as obsessed with butts as her,” Zale said, and began to laugh.

“No. I meant why did you forgive him.”

“Oh… I don’t know. He seemed genuinely sorry. Don’t listen to Rakin, he hates everyone. Harold and Gray are solid. Esme is… fine. Harold admitted he handled it badly. And I still kind of like him—even if I know I probably shouldn’t.”

The conversation died after that, and Kole couldn’t get his mind off the idea of a magic doorknob, and all the possibilities it could bring.

“Hey! Look at the void monster!” a gruff voice slurred from an alley as they passed.

Kole and Zale spun around lazily to see the threat.

A group of four human men walked out into the dim lighting of the street, each holding a glass bottle in one hand and some sort of improvised bludgeon in the other.

“I thought all of you were all off on yer little island,” a slightly less drunk voice called out. “Looks like we are going to teach you lot to stay away all over again.”

Before Kole or Zale could register what was happening, the lead man charged at them with his club raised. He swung down at Zale, and she sidestepped. The club hit the cobblestone road and rang out a loud clunk. Zale gave the overbalanced man a shove, and he fell onto his butt, shattering his bottle.

“Oh, that was a mistake!” the man yelled from the ground.

Kole laughed, and Zale giggled.

“Weren’t you going to kill her?” Kole asked the man.

Dimly he realized that was probably not the smartest thing to have said.

The other three ran at them as the first regained his feet. Zale kicked him in the face before he could stand and drew her dress sword, pointing it at the approaching men. Her hand was steady, though she was swaying a bit.

The men paused, but then all at once they threw their bottles at her. When Zale flinched, trying to block the projectiles, one of them ran at her and tackled her to the ground. She hit the stones hard, and her sword flew from her grasp. The man atop her tried to bring his fist down on her head, but she vanished into a cloud of black dust, and reappeared a moment later a few feet away, still lying on the ground. The fist hit the stones, and Kole heard bones break before the man let out a howl of pain.

“She is a monster!” one of them called.

If Kole had been more sober, he would have reflected that the violence they’d thus far threatened was rather extreme for a young girl they had only suspected to be a voidling.

The remaining two had been approaching him, but both turned to look at Zale where she reappeared. Kole took advantage of the distraction and turned invisible.

“Huh? Where’d her boyfriend go?”

The two heading for Kole looked around wildly. He picked up the club that the first had dropped. That man still lay moaning, holding his face, and blood was pooling around him.

“He ran! Let’s get the voidling!”

All three turned to Zale and began to close in on her. By then she’d regained her feet, but her sword was out of reach. Her eyes locked onto Kole where he stood invisible, but she didn’t need Willsight to see him, for the club he’d picked up was clearly floating in the air. He’d tried to extend the invisibility to the weapon, but his drunk mind couldn’t focus on the already difficult task.

Zale backed up, arms raised in a martial defense pose Kole had seen her practice.

All three charged her at once, and she vanished to smoke again, causing them to run through her and into each other. She reappeared a few feet away. One man reacted fast and grabbed her wrist. She twisted out of the grip, bending the man’s arm in a direction it wasn’t meant to go. As she retreated and another one moved to swing his club, Kole swung his own stolen weapon at the man’s head.

Kole’s target was taller than him, and the blow lacked leverage, but anyone would fall when struck in the head from behind. The man staggered and then toppled as Kole’s invisibility lapsed.

“Argh!” the fourth man yelled as he swung at a suddenly present Kole.

Warned by the shout, Kole turned just in time to block the swing at his head with a club he now realized was a table leg. The assailant kept up his attack, overhead swing after overhead swing coming down. Kole held his club up over his head, but the man was much stronger than him, and eventually the club flew from his hands, sending Kole to the ground.

Nearby, Zale’s assailant had somehow gotten her in a headlock, and for whatever reason she wasn’t vanishing. Reaching into his vault, Kole built the construct for Magic Missile. His drunk mind struggled to open the bridge, but he threw all his remaining Will at the task, and three darts of distorted air shot from his hand into the back of the man holding Zale.

The man who’d beaten Kole to the ground stopped short, eyes wide in horror at the act of magic. He looked to his companions and then back at Kole before turning and fleeing.

When Kole turned to find Zale, she was tending to the man he’d just shot. She’d cut the back of his shirt open and was applying pressure to the large hole Kole had made in his back.

“Help these morons!” she shouted.

Kole looked at the two men lying beside him. Both seemed to be breathing, but there was a lot of blood. He noticed then that he was wet. Frantically he checked himself over for wounds but found none. He held his hands up to the light and saw them coated in an oily black liquid.

Oh no…

He stood up and walked more into the light. His expensive ink vial had broken in the fight and spilled all over his equally expensive clothes, completely ruining both.

“Flood.”

CHAPTER 54

Morning After

Ensouled artifacts are the rarest and most powerful of all magic items. While they were once prolific and the most common of all magical items, the secrets of their creation were lost during the Flood.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

The rest of the night after the ambush went by in a blur. The city watch showed up, the screams of the thugs having drawn their attention, though Kole didn’t recall any screams, as focused as he had been on not dying.

At Zale’s insistence, he’d helped staunch the wound on the man he’d shot, and they were covered in his blood when the first pair of guards arrived. They were almost arrested for attempted murder, but one of the guards recognized Zale and sent the pair home with a promise to check in on them the next day for a statement.

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill any of these men,” one of the guards scolded.

Kole was about to shout something at the guard, but Zale pulled him away.

“Let’s just go.”

When they were away from the guards, Kole asked, “Why did you let them treat you like this was your fault? Those men are the lucky ones.”

He’d come very close to killing two men tonight and, on reflection, didn’t feel bad about it in the slightest. Much like with the goblins and the ice people, this was another first for him, and he found he didn’t much mind the violence.

Is this because they were going to kill us? Or am I just some amoral psycho?

“But it is my fault,” Zale said, looking at the blood that was still all over her hands. “I knew this would happen someday if I went out in public without a disguise. It was only a matter of time.”

“Stop,” Kole said, halting.

Zale took a few more steps before she turned to Kole.

“This is not your fault,” he said. “Anyone who says so is an idiot.”

Kole didn’t know what reaction he’d been hoping for, but Zale turning away from him towards campus wasn’t it.

He jogged to catch up and they went back to school in silence. Zale disappeared into the art college building, and Kole made his way to the martial college, hoping the showers were open at this late hour. They weren’t, but the doors were unlocked, and it was quite easy for an invisible teenager to sneak into an unguarded bathroom at night.

As he showered, he marveled at how the black ink and blood seemed to swirl together, refusing to mix as they ran down the drain. He made an attempt to rinse the ink and blood from his new clothes, but it was futile. The fabric itself wasn’t badly damaged, but the sleeves were stained dark brown up to the elbows, and the left side was completely black from the ink.

Dressed in a borrowed sparring outfit, Kole made his way back to the library and his secret room within. His occasional roommates—both mage and rat—were absent, and he collapsed into bed, asleep as soon as he landed.

A persistent buzz woke Kole up what felt like a minute later. He disabled the alarm and began to get ready for his morning run when the events of the night before caught up to him. In the light of the day, he felt a little more remorse for what he’d almost done, but then he pictured Zale’s defeated expression on the way home, and that vanished.

Those men were monsters looking for an excuse to kill someone. If it hadn’t been Zale, it would have been someone else. Maybe a demonkin, or just a dwarf with darker skin they mistook for a duergar.

He wasn’t sure if Zale was going to be at the training yard that day, but he didn’t want to leave her alone if she was. Kole arrived on time for once and saw that the field had a lot more occupants than the week before. Many of his students from PREVENT were there, running laps around the field.

Looks like the goblin cave served as a bit of a wake-up call.

Kole couldn’t say his two weeks of training had produced any measurable results yet, but after running through that goblin cave, he needed no more convincing of the value of physical conditioning. He scanned the surroundings, looking for Zale, but didn’t see her. He did, however, spot the familiar antlered head of Doug running alongside an olive-skinned, brown-haired girl wearing Zale’s armor.

Wait a minute…

“Zale?” Kole asked, waving uncertainly.

Zale’s eyes widened when she spotted him, but then she smiled and waved back uncertainly herself.

The pair ran up to Kole, and looking at Kole’s feet, Zale said, “Good morning.”

“Are you okay?” Kole asked, not sure what else to say.

She looked up into his eyes.

“Yes. Drop your bag and run. Ten laps!”

Zale didn’t give Kole the opportunity to ask any more probing questions that morning. Any time he broached a topic outside training, a new training exercise occurred to her.

Along with Doug, Rakin was also out training. He too was motivated to push himself from the weekend’s events. To Kole’s surprise, the dwarf was one of the fastest runners there, even without using his Earth abilities to catapult him forward with the ground.

“He’s using Assuine’s power within his body to fuel himself,” Doug explained to Kole, noticing him staring at the speeding dwarf. “The monks call it ‘ki.’ They’ve learned to claim the power inside of them that druids draw out of nature.”

“Isn’t that, like… blasphemy or something?” Kole asked, eliciting a laugh from Doug.

“No. Life is Assuine’s gift, and her power is simply a part of life most do not fully utilize.”

Rakin eventually slowed and ran alongside Kole, matching his pace.

“What happened last night?” he said, hardly panting even after maintaining his blistering pace for half an hour while Kole alternated between sparring and laps.

“We… got…. attacked… racist… thugs,” Kole said between breaths.

“Oh,” Rakin said. “That explains the bracelet. She blames herself?”

“Yup.”

“Stupid girl.”

“If you have breath enough to talk, you could be running faster,” Zale barked at Kole as she ran by him.

***

They all met outside the showers before heading to breakfast together.

Kole tried one last time to bring up the night before.

“Stop. Please,” Zale said. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just drop it. Thank you for what you did. I truly appreciate it, and I will replace the ink and clothes, but drop it.”

“Alright,” Kole agreed reluctantly.

He was about to say she didn’t need to replace anything, but something told him he should just let her do so.

“So,” Doug asked into the awkward silence once the four of them sat down with food. Amara wasn’t present that day. “How was everyone’s weekend?”

Rakin burst into laughter, and Zale ignored the question, focusing instead on her gauntleted chopstick skills.

“We got attacked by some weird frost people in an abandoned section of the Dahn,” Kole said.

“Oh. That sounds interesting,” Doug said. “Is that a normal weekend activity for you?”

That broke through even Zale’s resolve, and they all laughed at Doug’s question.

“I don’t get it. What did I say?”

After they settled down, Kole explained elemental humanoid attacks were not in fact commonplace occurrences in city life.

“Oh,” Doug said. “I thought maybe it might be. Monster attacks happen all the time back home in the mountains.”

After breakfast, Kole and Zale headed to their alchemy lesson in a tense silence, neither knowing how to break it.

They arrived early and sat down in an open area expecting no one to sit beside them. To Kole’s surprise, as the class filled, students took the seats around them. A few performed a double take, recognizing Zale’s features if not her coloring, but no one got up to sit somewhere else.

Kole saw that Zale had a mournful smile, happy to not be shunned, but feeling the sting of what it cost her to be accepted.

“Today, we have a guest speaker,” Professor Donglefore said, gesturing to a dryad, a diminutive woman with green leafy hair and skin the color of pale gray oak bark. “This is… well, she doesn’t have a name we can say, but she goes by Pale Oak. As promised, we will soon leave the classroom to get some more practical experience.”

Zale leaned over to Kole, whispering in his ear, “She’s bark naked!”

Kole let out an audible groan as Zale broke out into a giggling fit. The students who’d risked sitting near them all stared daggers at them and scooted away to make it clear they were not associated with the pair.

“Is there a problem, Miss Wood?” Professor Donglefore asked from the front.

“No! Sorry! Carry on!” Zale answered, stifling her laughs.

“Thank you for your permission,” the professor said dryly before continuing.

Kole leaned in close to Zale when the professor’s eyes were gone and asked, “Your last name is Wood?”

“It was my dad’s,” she whispered back, a sad smile replaced with a real one. “It took Mom years to figure out what it was. He never told her. He was weirdly private. She has more than a few enemies and decided it best if I didn’t have her last name.”

Kole didn’t appreciate the attention from the professor, but he was glad the silence between them had finally been broken.

The guest lecturer—the dryad who gave a name no one in the room could pronounce, let alone spell—taught on the proper methods of picking broadleaf alchemical ingredients and of preservation. Wednesday’s class would meet in one of the crafting college’s gardens, and they would practice on some of the less expensive plants.

The class was dismissed, with instructions to practice the techniques discussed on the bushes and clover throughout campus in preparation for Wednesday.

“Do you think Doug could give us tips on this?” Kole asked Zale on the way out.

“You can’t just assume an Assuine worshiper knows how to pick plants. It’s rude,” Zale said. “But… probably. Yeah. He doesn’t seem to know anything about life in a city, so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows everything about the wilds.”

“You know, with a name like Azalea Wood, you could probably pass for a dryad yourself,” Kole joked.

Looking back towards the naked woodland teacher, Zale said, “I don’t know, I think I’d get cold.”

They both stifled their laughter as they left the room, and Kole tried not to blush at the thought.

CHAPTER 55

The Workshop

[Lightning striking the tip of an island mountain in a storm.]

B is for Bond primals, their isle so remote, they share their home with a Bond primal goat. The Iron Vein tribe is a warrior folk, and to them, honor and courage are no joke.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

While the mood between Kole and Zale had improved slightly, they didn’t hang out after history class. She made a weak excuse, and he didn’t press her on it. Kole spent some time in the crafting hall trying to track Amara down before he relented and asked after her at the front desk of the runesmithing building.

“Oh, the girl with all the bugs?” an attendant said. “She’s in room 141.”

Kole found the room in question buried at the end of a long hallway that felt more bunker than school. All the rooms had thick metal reinforced doors and no windows. Kole knocked on the door labeled “141.” When no one answered, he kicked it with his boot—which he noticed was still stained with blood and ink.

I should get these cleaned… or maybe replaced.

The door opened, and Amara’s face poked out, covered in grime. Her short hair was matted to one side of her head as if she’d slept on it and only just woken. Kole could also make out the faint lines of runes on her cheek, but they looked reversed.

“Kole!” she shouted in greeting.

“Did you stay in here all weekend?” Kole asked.

“That depends… what day is it?”

“Monday.”

“Yes, I did. Is it Monday morning?”

“No, it’s afternoon.”

“Termites. I missed a couple of classes.”

“Are you okay? Do you need to eat? Bathe? You definitely need sleep.”

“There’s no time for sleep, and I ate yesterday,” Amara said as she threw open the door. “I think.”

Kole followed her in and was immediately mystified by how space could be both organized and chaotic. There were neatly labeled piles of random materials everywhere. The room was not very large, about the size of Kole’s room in the library. Workbenches lined the walls, and the walls were covered in tools of far more types than he could name.

There was a cleared workspace on one desk, but some sort of tool or project material covered every other surface in the room. Bundles of wooden planks, labeled by type, age, and moisture content level. Boxes of rocks, similarly labeled by stone type. Jars of sawdust with trial numbers. Dozens of prototypes of as many different projects, each neatly named by a white tag. Books of research notes stacked high. It was a mess, but an extremely organized one.

Amara noticed Kole gaping at the room.

“Welcome to my lab,” she said, her arms out wide in an awkward gesture.

Squeak.

Kole turned and saw Gus’s head sticking out of a tiny wooden house perched on a stack of wooden crates labeled, “Danger! Flammable!”

“Oh, and Gus’s house,” Amara added.

“It’s very… full,” Kole said diplomatically.

“Thank you. I have something for you!”

Amara walked over to a chest of drawers, opened one, and pulled out a small emerald.

“Here,” she said, handing it to Kole. “The pattern for the repair runes is in this. Memorize it and give the gem back as soon as you can.”

Kole held the gem up to the rune light in the ceiling.

“Wow… this must be worth—”

“Six hundred fourteen gold, three silver, two copper, and eight bits,” Amara interrupted. “At least, that’s what the school will charge me if I don’t return it or provide evidence of its accidental destruction in the genuine pursuit of my studies.”

Kole, who was going to say a much smaller number than that—or something vague like “a fortune”—gaped.

“It was a real pain proving I didn’t mean to break the last one, so please be careful with that.”

“You already destroyed one of these?!”

“Yeah,” Amara said far too casually.

“I think maybe I will study this here with you—if that’s okay. I don’t really want responsibility for this thing.”

“Sure. Make yourself at home, but there’s only one chair.”

Before Kole could do that, though, Amara gave him a thorough tour of her workshop, including the latest version of her sister’s tracker. She suspected her sister might be in some other place, one connected to the Dahn through random openings of doorways. This would explain why the tracker had been so erratic. If doors were opening and closing to places near her sister, the tracker would point to whichever one was closest at any given time, since Amara was building trackers that could only lock onto a single source.

She had ideas, none of which Kole could follow. Nonetheless, he could appreciate the complexity and her talents.

“Trackers like this were some of the first runed devices I ever made,” Amara said, wistfully looking at the project in her hand.

Her words and tone took Kole off guard.

“Amintha used to hide from me and our family,” she continued. “I would make a game of finding her. She’d always find new places to stay, and eventually I couldn’t find her. I snuck into the runesmithing labs at night and made a crude tracker.”

“That sounds… nice,” Kole said, not sure how else to respond to the story.

Amara had begun to talk about her sister more of late, and none of the stories seemed very… happy. This one, about her sister hiding from her, and Amara not getting the hint and searching anyway, fit alongside the rest.

“What’s that?” Kole asked, changing the subject by pointing to an in-progress blasting rod.

Amara’s ants were busily carving the runes into the surface.

“This one should be slightly more Will-efficient,” she explained, animated once more. “But you’ll need to tweak the pattern slightly.

“And these,” she continued, moving on to the next item, “are going to be sending stones. Without gems, they won’t last more than a week or be able to do anything but send a single signal, but I think can make improvements over time.”

Then she showed him her personal self-defense project inspired by their near-death experience. The device was currently a small river stone with black ink markings all over it.

“It’s a portable ward,” she explained, “it will be able to create something similar to the Shield spell on command, but that’s only the first step. Next—”

“That’s a great idea!” Kole interrupted, forestalling a lengthy lecture he’d follow less than half of. “I can’t wait to see it. Is it alright if I sit over there in the corner and work on this?”

He held up the emerald.

“Of course! Let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure, but after I’m done, we are going to get something to eat, and you’re going to take a shower.”

“I don’t…” Amara began to protest, but then looked at Gus, who was comically covering his nose with his tiny paws. “Oh… I guess I do smell a little—”

SQUEAK!

“Okay, more than a little.”

“How about you bathe, change, and then we meet for dinner?” Kole suggested.

“Alright,” she conceded with a sigh. “But I still have a few hours, right?”

Kole nodded and headed to the corner to get to work.

While Kole had transferred the knowledge of the blasting rod’s force bolt runes in a single sitting, he could tell that this one would take more work. He’d never attempted to learn a second-tier spell before, but he was familiar with them from his extensive research on spellforms. A single glance at this pattern confirmed that this rune had a level of complexity on par with a second-tier spell.

Don’t panic. You can do this. You’re a smart, capable wizard who may not be able to cast spells that well, but sure knows how to learn them.

Kole sighed at his own embarrassing attempt to motivate himself. The first thing he needed to do was clear space in his mental vault. He’d already considered the decision and decided to abandon the Light cantrip. He had the light rune device from the library—which he still needed Amara to replace so he could return it, lest some consequence arise—and light sources were easy to come by. The Air cantrip, however, could save his life in a tight—or stinky—spot.

With a wave of his imagined hand, the book that represented the light cantrip Glow in his mental vault exploded into a cloud of paper before fading away. Then he got to work, meticulously copying the rune intent. As Kole was learning in his pursuit of Thunderwave, there were a lot of ways learning a spell—or a rune’s intent—could be difficult. The task of copying rune intent of second-tier-spell complexity was a different kind of difficult than creating a first-tier spell from scratch.

All the components Kole needed to add to Thunderwave to make it work were things he was capable of creating, he just needed to put the right ones in the right place. A simple yet time-consuming task.

It was like he was writing letters in a language he knew, trying to spell out a word he’d only heard spoken, except… the word was about a thousand letters long, and if any of them were incorrect, nothing would happen. Occasionally he’d need to look up new components, but he ignored that, since it ruined the metaphor. No individual part was difficult, but there was a lot to do, and no margin for error.

Copying spells of higher tiers—or in this case, complicated rune intent—was different. While most of the mental Will constructions that made up a rune’s intent were simple shapes within the realm of his ability to create, some were more complex. Not only that, there were simply more. The scope of the construct was massive, and he didn't know if he could fit the whole thing in his mind.

When he’d first started learning wizardry, he’d struggled to fit cantrips in his vault. Then once those had been mastered, he’d pushed the bounds of his vault to fit first-tier spells—for all the good it did him.

He made quick progress in the beginning as he began copying it, but as the construct approached the bounds of his mind, he had to slow down to keep from popping the whole thing like a balloon.

Kole lost himself in the work, only stopping when he felt the onset of a headache from the Will drain. He let his awareness return to the world around him. Amara still worked, stooped over her workbench, and Gus slept in his little house, and the ants poured over the new blasting rod. There was no clock or window, but the progress the little creatures had made suggested that it had been a while. That and the rumble in Kole’s stomach.

“Time’s up,” Kole said, standing and stretching.

Gus jumped up and ran across the tables to Amara’s bench, where she continued to work. It wasn’t until the rat had climbed onto her head that she realized Kole was standing.

“What?” Amara asked, looking around bleary-eyed.

“You need a break,” Kole said.

“I’m fin—” Her protestation was interrupted by a large yawn. “Alright, fine. But let me just—ouch!”

Gus had bitten her lightly on the ear, drawing a spot of blood.

“I think he wants you to stop too.”

“He always wants me to stop,” she said dismissively. “But… he doesn’t usually resort to biting. I guess we can go.”

“Great, where do you shower on campus?” Kole asked.

“Shower?” Amara asked. “I… uh… haven’t thought to check.”

Kole only shook his head, at a loss for words. He knew he had the tendency to get wrapped up in his work, but he’d not forgotten to bathe, only eat.

Actually… would I know where the showers were if it weren’t for the martial college classes?

He dismissed the thought.

Of course I would… right?

CHAPTER 56

Old Book, New Tricks

[A wizard putting a worm on a fishing hook using magic.]

C is for caster, a general term, from men who cast magic to fishers with worms.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Kole escorted Amara back to her dorm elsewhere in the crafting college. He asked a female student exiting the building where the girl’s bathroom was, which almost saw him slapped. But once the girl in question spotted Amara and her obvious need for a shower, the student held back and provided instructions. Kole walked Amara to her room, then to the bathroom and sat outside while she got cleaned up, and afterward they went to the crafting dining hall for a very late dinner.

Ten bits down. Kole mourned as he paid the entry fee.

He’d counted his money as he’d waited for Amara and was down to twenty silver, eighty-five copper, and now two bits.

That’s… 280.1 copper, or 560.2 meals, or 1.867 more vials of ink.

He stopped himself before his math could lead him to the inevitable conclusion that he would need to find a job. He knew he would need to work eventually, but for now, he could focus on his studies.

They sat with their meals, and Kole let Amara speak about her projects the entire time. He tried to follow, but it was far beyond him.

Later that night, after seeing Amara back to her room and getting Gus to promise to bite her if she left without sleeping, Kole returned to his own room in the library. On his way back, he reflected on the absurdity of having just made a rat promise to keep watch over his friend.

I still don’t understand how the Font of “Understanding” could make that rat so smart, he mused as he made his way back.

Theral was gone when he arrived, but the other rat was there, waiting for Kole’s return. He threw the rodent a bread crust, and it took it with it as it vanished into thin air.

“Well, at least he’s not eating…” Kole trailed off as he noticed a mess of bed crumbs on his bed. “Now…”

The rat had gone into the past to eat on his bed, free from Kole’s presence.

Kole brushed the crumbs off before setting up at his desk. With his focus on Thunderwave, he’d been slacking on his work to improve Magic Missile and Shield, but he felt he was just starting to make progress.

“One more night…” he told himself.

Two hours later, Kole’s study was broken as Theral appeared in the room in a seated position, hand held up to his mouth as if he were about to eat from an invisible fork. He immediately fell on his butt.

“Flood,” he cursed from the ground.

“Welcome back,” Kole said from his desk.

“Thanks, but I can’t say I’m glad to be here. I was about to eat dinner.”

Theral then walked to the corner of the room where the magical jug lay. He picked it up and waved his hand over his bed before placing the jug on the magical floating disk he’d summoned. Kole watched, mesmerized by the absurdity of it all as Theral pulled out his spellbook and casually pulled a page out. The page folded itself into a bowl, black lines drawing themselves over its surface. He then tipped the jug over the bowl, and a blob of oatmeal poured out, followed shortly by a splash of honey.

“That jug could do that the whole time?!” Kole asked, bewildered.

Theral turned to Kole, a paper spoon of oatmeal already on its way to his mouth.

“Yeah… did you need some?”

Kole sighed.

“What else can it make?”

“Lamp oil, mayonnaise, vinegar, wine that tastes like vinegar, water, beer that tastes like water, honey, and oatmeal. It might be able to do more. You need to think about something to make it appear, but if it can’t make what you want, it just produces this gross black sludge. And if you don’t eat something, it goes away after a day.”

“Can I use it when you’re gone?”

“Go for it, but don’t take it out of the room.”

Kole let Theral return to his very magical meal and returned to his studying. He’d been about to test a new component of Thunderwave when Theral had arrived.

He sent the construct through his bridge and felt the spell swerve around the strange non-Font that it had crashed into on his last dozen attempts. Allowing himself a small self-satisfied smile, Kole reached for his ink vial to record his latest addition to the spell.

“Flood,” Kole cursed.

“What’s wrong?” Theral asked.

The young wizard was done with his meal, and Kole watched as the paper cutlery vanished into black motes.

“I’m out of spellform ink.”

“Oh,” Theral said, looking around the room. “I don’t have any, but… have you tried using regular ink?”

Kole stared at the wizard who was clearly a prodigy as if he were an idiot.

“It’s not that strange. You have magic paper in that book, right?”

Kole nodded.

“Maybe it can store spellforms with regular ink,” Theral said. “I can’t think of a lot of reasons to make magic paper if not for creating spellforms.”

“You mean you can’t think of any reason besides making magic paper bowls and utensils,” Kole said with a laugh.

“Good point, but that was more of a side project of a friend. I had the magical spellbook way before we found that use for it.”

Kole wondered how long this young wizard could have possibly owned that magical book.

With no better option, he gave it a shot. He drew the simplest spell component he knew, using his new nib and old ink. Once that was done—the work of a few minutes—he filled it with the intent that matched its shape, borrowing it from one of the spell constructs in his mind.

He then held his hand on it and focused, watching to see if the intent decayed. Theral watched too, with eager eyes as if he could somehow see what was happening on the page. A minute passed, then two, but the intent Kole had imparted into the Will remained the same.

“It worked!” Kole exclaimed, not sure if he was more excited by the financial or magical implications of the discovery. “Do you think there are more of these books around the school?”

Before Kole finished the question, he felt the strong magical force that heralded Theral’s departure, and by the time he finished turning to face him, the other wizard was gone. Kole returned to the journal. The cover was old and worn, whatever had been written on it long gone. Claw marks marred the surface, though there was so much damage to the cover it was hard to make them out.

Flicking through the blank pages, he immediately began to regret using it for something as simple as note taking—though that had saved him precious hours while doing homework, with the information flooding back into him as he wrote. The book was thick and had a large number of pages, but that didn’t mean he could be frivolous with them. In the past, he’d kept a detailed catalog of the components he’d needed to do his work of spell reconstruction, but he’d been judicious in his selection due to the cost of recording them. Now, however, he could afford to be a little more… thorough.

Several hours later, Kole lay passed out at his desk where he’d fallen asleep copying his latest revisions of Magic Missile and Shield over to his new spellbook.

Some time after that, he stirred as he heard something. He shot up, lifting his face from the pages and taking some of the ink with him, and scanned the room.

His new and ruined clothes—which, now that he considered it, he was pretty sure had been missing when he’d returned—were lying on his bed, folded into a neat bundle with an envelope attached. He spent a moment making sure this wasn’t a dream before examining it closer. He undid the ties holding the garment together and held out the shirt. Instead of having been cleaned, the blue fabric had been dyed black all over, the multihued blue of the original cloth showing through slightly and resulting in a look that reminded Kole of a cloudy night sky, full of different shades of deep black. The silver accents from before were left silver, replaced where they’d been stained. The pants too had been stained black, and the spider silk cords had been replaced with fresh silvery ones free of stains.

“That’s a bit menacing,” he said to himself, unsure if he liked it.

He reflected that it would pair nicely with his voidling and demonkin companions. He just needed to get Rakin something so they could really live up to the name “The Forsaken.”

Next he reached for the envelope and was surprised by its weight. Turning it over made two gold coins fall out onto the bed.

He read the note, which was written in elegantly scrawled lettering that was perfectly legible despite the flair.

Kole,

Thank you for helping my daughter—though I expect she would have fared just as well by herself and come home with less blood on her. I cleared up the issue with the guards, and the men will recover nicely in jail, so you don’t have to worry about being a murderer. Though I would have still cleared it up if they had died. Don’t make a habit of assaulting people on the street, but also don’t hold back when your life is on the line.

I hope you don’t mind the new color. I understand that you don’t actually need the ink you lost, so I decided to return the money you spent on it instead of replacing it.

—Trish

P.S. The door will not open to my home without my say so. Stop trying.

Also, this note will self-immolate once you’ve read it.

“What?” Kole said, rereading the last line.

Before he could finish, however, the paper vanished in a flash of white flames. The heat was intense but was so fast, it didn’t leave any lasting damage on Kole’s skin.

“Whoa,” he said, blinking to recover his vision.

Once he could see, Kole scanned the room again. Someone, presumably Zale’s mother, had snuck in while he’d slept. He didn’t know how he felt about that. She could enter his room at any moment, and from what Zale said, she wasn’t above murder.

Flood, she kind of just condoned it in the note.

Not that Kole had ever planned to, but he decided then and there to never hurt Zale in any way that could garner her mother’s ire.

He placed his new clothes under his bed and got ready to go back to sleep—in the bed this time—but stopped himself. He moved the desk, pushing it a foot over so that it was partially blocking the door to Zale’s home. It wouldn’t keep out a determined intruder, but it’d make a lot of noise.

Kole’s last thought as he drifted back to sleep was the realization that Zale’s mother could turn into a breeze and likely slip through any crack.

Maybe I should move.

CHAPTER 57

Lost Fonts

[Two dwarves dancing, with ribbons of stone flowing around them.]

E is for Earth primals, dwarves call them Stoneweavers. These primals are Torc’s most devout believers.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Minus the changes to Zale’s complexion and the associated reduction in public shunning, things mostly returned to how they were before the eventful weekend, with of course the addition of Doug.

Doug joined their martial class and practiced with the archers and those learning to fight with hand axes. Zale continued to coach Kole one-on-one, but now with her disguised coloring, people stopped giving the pair so much distance. Some even waved as they walked past.

“Do they think I’m just, like, not part voidling anymore because they can’t see it?” Zale asked Kole, flummoxed when someone gave her a nod of hello as they were cleaning up at the end of class.

“I don’t know,” Kole said. “The ignorant aren’t particularly gifted at critical thinking. They were dumb to fear you before, and they are equally dumb to think you’re suddenly ‘safe’ now that you look different—even if they are now technically right to not fear you. They’re right for the wrong reasons, which is still wrong… Right?”

Zale laughed.

“I think you’re right. They didn’t really know why they avoided me before, and now it’s easy to forget it ever happened.”

Her smile faded.

“For them, at least,” she added.

On the way out of class, Tigereye gave all the students an update on that week’s dungeon trial. Every group would find itself in a village on the floating ice sheet of the arctic circle on the third of Erebog. He told the class to “prepare for the stay”, and no further details were provided.

“Slaggin’ Faust-cursed gopher balls!” Rakin cursed at the news.

“What’s wrong?” Kole asked.

“There’s no stone or earth on the arctic circle,” Zale answered for Rakin, who’d stomped off.

“Oh…” Kole said, seeing how that could make the Earth primal a bit upset.

Hours later in WIZ 204, Kole half listened to a lecture as he reviewed his notes on Magic Missile and Shield. He’d neglected his work on them and needed to get back up to speed before returning to them.

Eventually, Professor Underbrook’s lecture topic wandered into an interesting category, and he focused on the class.

“The two lost Fonts,” Underbrook said, letting the words hang. “Creation and Time.”

Time! Kole grabbed his mother’s locket under his shirt.

He had studied the Font some. Based on what they knew of his mother’s disappearance, he and his father had always suspected the pocket realm she’d been lost in had been connected to the Font of Time in some way. The time his father had spent there hadn’t aligned with the time that passed outside, and he’d written of other odd time shenanigans within. It wasn’t unheard of for time to pass differently within a pocket realm, but the difference was usually constant and small. According to Kole’s father, there were zones of different time within. He would be walking with the party, and suddenly the person ahead would slow down, or speed up visibly, as they walked into a zone that was slower or faster.

“Both are considered lost, but for different reasons. The Font of Creation is more of a mystery. While both Fonts were lost to us around the time of the Flood, the mechanisms of those losses are not the same. Traditional wizards with affinities to Time were rare even before the Flood. If any survived wars, the flooding, or battles with dragons, forsaken, and the Avatar, they did not live long enough to see the discovery of the Halkin method of Arcane exploration, gates, and spellforms.”

Kole was familiar with the Halkin method, all wizards were, and Professor Underbrook didn’t elaborate on it. It was the means by which most Fonts had been located in the era after the Flood, involving finding a Primordial in the Material Realm and exploring the Arcane Realm while in close proximity to it. It allowed wizards to not only find Fonts, but also gates near them to use as a basis for casting spells. This method was discovered near the time spellforms were invented, and together the two innovations led to the ability for wizards to share their knowledge.

“That might not have been the end, though. Many Fonts were lost in this way but later rediscovered through exploration of the Arcane Realm in the proximity of the Primordial of that Font. Unfortunately—or possibly fortunately—the Primordial of Time has never ravaged our planet. Wherever it might reside, it is quite content to stay there and not make its presence known.”

A student raised a hand and was called on.

“How do we know the Primordial of Time is on Kaltis at all?”

“That’s a good question. Does anyone know?”

“Pack rats,” Kole said without thinking.

He’d looked into them after his first run-in to make sure they weren’t too dangerous.

“Very good!” Underbrook said. “Yes. Master Wizard Marcus Travin of the Tower of Illunia famously discovered that pack rats drew upon the Font of Time shortly before the repudiation of the Tower by Chosen Daulf. Afterward, many of their secrets were leaked out, and we learned of this. Wherever or whenever the Primordial of Time resides, the pack rats know and are not telling. The pack rat’s continued ability to travel through time, and the few sorcerers born with Time magic, both prove that while wizards are unable to locate the Font of Time, it is still very much still accessible from the Material Realm.”

He smiled and winked at the class.

“Moving on. The Font of Creation is lost by wholly different means. Early reports claim that sometime after the Flood, and before the discovery of the Basin, wizards could no longer access the Font. They reported experiencing something unknown at the time, but that now we see is akin to what wizards experience in a runic ward meant to block sections of the Arcane Realm. No one is sure how this occurred. But current evidence suggests that somehow this Font was blocked from us. Was it the gods? Outsiders? Powerful beings? The Primordial of Creation itself? We don’t know, but every wizard has a theory or two if you ask over a drink. I myself am not so conspiracy-minded and suspect it is a result of Creation’s uniqueness as the first Font.”

Professor Underbrook then went on to talk about the spells lost with the Fonts, but Kole quickly returned to his review. The knowledge of spells he would never learn or even see held no interest for him.

As Kole was packing up his things, he sensed someone standing over him. He turned to see Gray looking from the elevated row of desks behind his own.

“What do you want?” Kole asked in an uninterested tone.

“I heard you almost got Rakinar killed over the weekend because you can’t do magic and rely on trinkets. Zale too.” He said it casually, but the words stung.

“Where’d did you hear something like that?” Kole asked.

How does he know? Kole wondered.

He wasn’t supposed to talk about the specifics of what had occurred and hadn’t told anyone. The fact his blasting rod had failed, leaving him helpless, was an awfully specific detail for Gray to have picked up.

“Your friend Amara TAs my Alchemical Materials class. She talked about a ‘friend’ of hers who was using a prototype of her design when it disintegrated mid-battle. She tried to be subtle, but…” Gray trailed off, seemingly reluctant to say something insulting about Amara.

“She doesn’t do subtle,” Kole finished for him.

“Yeah… and Mouse saw Rakinar in the Glade’s infirmary. It didn’t take a genius to put it together, though I don’t know what you fought.”

“Rakin was fine,” Kole defended. “He hurt himself… Mostly. And I helped Zale. Why don’t you just mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine?”

“Look, it’s not personal. I don’t hate you. In fact, I really appreciate how you’ve helped Zale through all the recent… difficulties. It’s just that I know you will get people killed, and I want you to realize it too before it’s too late. You’ve been lucky so far, but even the luck of Riloth’s Blessed runs out.”

Kole stopped loading his bag and took a deep breath to steady himself. The repeated claims that he was doomed to failure were starting to get to him, especially since he felt Gray was kind of right—for now.

“We are at a school. A place to learn. I know I have my limitations, but I’m working on them. If I can’t overcome them, then I’ll get kicked out. The things that happened this weekend? If I hadn’t been there, Rakin and Zale might have died. I’m not trying to fool anyone. I’ve been very upfront about my abilities and struggles and I’m doing what I can to eliminate them.”

“Have you, though? Been upfront?” Gray asked. “You say you’re a primal and a sorcerer, but I’ve never seen you use any magic from either. Are you even a primal, or are you as broken of a primal as you are a wizard?”

Kole didn’t know what to say. Gray was kind of right—again. It was quite infuriating.

“I don’t owe you anything. And, if anyone is going to be hurting Zale, it’s your friend Harold.”

Things gathered, Kole left, both to hide his embarrassed face at his last statement and avoid any more of Gray’s sort-of-accurate points about his shortcomings.

Kole spent the rest of the evening working on Magic Missile until he’d spent a fourth of his Will. Then he moved on to his less magical coursework. His massive pool of Will was his biggest asset. With it, he could train himself in wizardry two to three times as long as his classmates with their smaller, nonprimal or sorcerer-enhanced pools. But even with that advantage, Kole sought to maximize his Will usage. So long as he was never full up, he’d always be generating more.

It took about six hours of sleep to recover one’s whole Will capacity—no matter its size—and people naturally recovered anywhere from a quarter to a half of it throughout the day if they started it with none. Kole himself could recover nearly half his Will through the day, even more if he napped—though recovery while sleeping wasn’t linear, and short naps had only a small benefit.

With a capacity of just over 40, if Kole started each morning with some sort of Will expenditure and ensured he never capped, he had effectively 65 Will to train with through a day. To put that in perspective, other wizards Kole’s age were lucky to have a capacity of 15 by the time they’d learned first-tier spells, increased to 25 if they had some sort of innate magic. If these wizards tried to capitalize on their daily regeneration to increase their available Will, they wouldn’t even be able to match Kole’s base capacity.

His home of Illandrios instilled the importance of efficient Will usage from an early age. Capacity increased as you used your Will, so the more you spent, the more you gained. As your capacity grew, the rate of return slowed, but as they say, “the rich get richer.” Though Kole left his home behind to seek the secrets he needed to unlock his potential, he kept its lessons with him.

He took a break from his study to meet Zale, Doug, and Rakin for dinner to discuss their plans for the upcoming dungeon run, but Kole’s mind wasn’t in it, and he let the others work out the plan. His conversation with Gray had lit a fire under him, and he was resolved to prove the other student wrong.

CHAPTER 58

Good Luck

For ages untold, the gods worked across Kaltis, creating wonders great and small. Even the presence of Faust’s creations, Erebogand Bilieth, was tolerated in those happy days following the battle. After Illunia and Assuine created the first dragons, the other gods desired to create a thinking race of their own, but they quickly found that without Illunia and Assuine’s aid, the creations failed. It was in these trials that many dangers that still roam Kaltis today were created.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

After departing dinner on Wednesday night, Kole fell into a fugue state of narrow focus, but a familiar voice pulled him out of it.

“Come on, Esme, please, let’s go.” Harold’s voice came from around the corner of the building.

“Fine, but I get to pick the place.”

Kole turned invisible without even thinking about it, just before the pair turned the corner. Esme was looking at Harold with a mischievous grin, and Harold looked nervous.

What’s this about?

He stood and watched them walk past him, only realizing he was following a few moments later.

Is this a date? On a Wednesday?

Kole wasn’t familiar with courtship on the surface—or in Illandrios, if he was being honest—but he didn’t think Wednesdays were ideal for dates.

Anger flared inside him at the idea that Harold might be going out with Esme, so shortly after asking Zale out. Anger, and weirdly relief.

Kole didn’t have the presence of mind to examine that secondary emotion, instead focusing on following the couple.

He went off campus and into the shopping district, at which point he could no longer hear what they were talking about. Once in the crowd, Kole let his invisibility drop and kept a distance away, lest people run into his unseen self.

Esme grabbed Harold by the hand and dragged him into a bakery, where he reluctantly followed. A short while later they came out with little bags, Esme snacking from hers and encouraging Harold to do the same. After he took a single bite, she grabbed his hand and dragged him on. He halted as they passed an alley, said something to Esme and went in, returning shortly without his bag.

This is starting to look like a date… but Harold looks pretty bored.

Esme rolled her eyes, and Harold smiled, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

When Kole passed the alley, he saw a gaunt stray dog devouring the contents of the bag Harold had given it.

For some reason Kole couldn’t place—not that that he was in an introspective mood—he was irritated at the kind act.

They continued on, and Esme pulled Harold into a tailor, where a familiar scene unfolded. Esme spoke to the proprietor as Harold stood helplessly watching the two examine fabric. Occasionally he’d try to interject an opinion, but it was clear from the body language of the other two that his opinion was neither wanted nor heeded. Kole sat watching as Harold was measured and then handed a piece of paper. Harold winced when he saw its contents, and Kole thought Zale and Esme might have more in common than either would admit.

The pair left the store, and Esme grabbed onto Harold’s arm possessively. Harold tensed up, freezing before eventually gently pulling her arm from his. A one-sided argument ensued: Esme spoke to Harold full of emotion while he stood there quietly shaking his head, only speaking occasionally. The discussion culminated in Esme storming off, face red with anger.

Harold waited for her to gain some ground on him and then headed back towards campus, sullenly taking his time.

So… not a date. A shopping trip?

Then Kole understood and grew frustrated that he just wasted the past hour.

He’s shopping for an outfit for his date with Zale. But… Esme clearly had less than altruistic motives in helping. Rakin was right about her liking Harold, it seems. Does that mean he’s also right about them all being racist?

Kole thought it over as he headed back to campus. He wasn’t even sure why he’d followed the two. If he’d seen something to prove Rakin right, he would have decided to tell Zale, or at least tell Rakin so he could tell Zale. But now he just felt bad when he ought to have felt—well, he wasn’t sure what he should have felt at finding out his friend’s boyfriend wasn’t cheating on her.

Before he knew it, he was back in his room, and he pushed all thoughts of teenage drama from his mind. He had work to do.

He worked late into the night on his wizardry. He started with Magic Missile, piecing together the pieces of a dozen spells to rebuild the next version. Whenever he’d hit a wall, he’d take a break—well, sort of. If he was frustrated with Magic Missile, he’d work on Shield, and if he couldn’t find the piece he needed for either, he’d clear his mind with a nice relaxing jaunt through the mind-boggling nonspace that was the Arcane Realm. He worked until his Will was exhausted, only then letting himself sleep.

The next morning, he jumped right up at the first sound of his alarm and got right back into his work, sending a few incomplete Thunderwaves into the void to sap himself of some Will.

Alchemy class went poorly. Zale did great at harvesting the faerie clover they were assigned to pick and turn in as the day’s examination.

Kole did not.

He’d forgotten to practice the technique they’d been shown on Monday, and even with Zale’s coaching, he knew he’d be lucky if the dryad didn’t give him a tongue lashing for how he’d ravaged the herbs.

Someone had knocked over a potted plant at the beginning of the class, and the guest instructor had screamed at him in fury until the student ran away.

“Do dryads have tongues?” Kole asked Zale as he was collecting his harvest.

He couldn’t recall seeing one in her mouth as she spoke and didn’t really see any rhyme or reason behind human anatomy that they had or lacked.

She stopped her own work and stared at him bemused before saying, “That’s a really weird question. Why do you want to know?”

“Umm… I just… forget I said anything.”

***

With brief breaks for tedious tasks such as attending classes and using the privy, Kole lived in his room for the next two days, living off the oatmeal output of the magical jug.

There was one brief attempt to produce something other than oatmeal, but the black sludge that came out filled the room with such an awful stench that the oatmeal with honey was divine in comparison. He skipped his morning trainings with Zale through this time, needing the time for sleep to make up for his late nights. All his efforts culminated in a very late-night trip to the Dahn’s spell range.

The place was deserted at that hour, and Kole was a little surprised it had even been open. He had just finished what he thought to be the last missing component of Magic Missile and run out of his room to the place immediately, without any thought to the time.

He noted that the hall of rooms was shorter than it had been on his last visit with Gray. The far end of the hall ended in a stone wall where before it had seemed to go on forever.

I suppose this is a result of the heightened security Zale’s mother spoke of, Kole thought as he stepped into the first room.

He was rather low on Will, but in anticipation of a breakthrough, he’d rationed his Will usage to leave him enough for a single attempt.

In the training room, Kole focused on the dummy at the other end and sent a portion of his mind to his mental vault. He infused the template he’d spent days constructing with his Will and braced himself for the next step. Connecting the spell to his bridge, he felt the sudden drain as the spell fought against his connection to the Font of Illusions to pull his bridge to some far-flung gate. The Will drained from him, both rapidly and agonizingly slowly—depending on what portion of his mind he focused on. Just as he feared he’d not have enough, the connection snapped into place, and the spell went through his bridge.

So stunned was he at the success that he almost forgot to perform the verbal component of the spell, shouting out “Roh Ka” a little louder than was appropriate.

The force bolts flew out of his hand to dissipate a few feet away, but despite that Kole jumped in celebration. The failure had been due to his fumbling with the verbal component, but the spell itself had worked just fine. Judging by the Will he’d had remaining when he came here, and the fact he’d used almost every last bit of it, he’d reduced the cost to around 25 Will. If he could keep up his pace, he’d be able to cast at least two spells in a single battle by semester end. Not an impressive feat in and of itself—for a wizard, at least—but even the one he could cast now was a monumental accomplishment.

***

“Where have you been?” Zale asked Kole. He’d run into the pre-adventurer battle training class just as Tigereye and Professor Underbrook entered from their own side of the room.

Kole stifled a yawn. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, but it hadn’t been enough, and he’d not recovered all his Will.

“I had a breakthrough with Magic Missile last night. I cast it for 26 Will.”

Zale bonked Kole on the head with the quarterstaff she’d brought for him.

“Ow!”

“That was stupid,” she chastised him. “That’s hardly going to help us today, but you being exhausted will definitely harm us.”

“Sorry…” Kole said. “I get a little carried away.”

“We’ll get you a clarity potion you can take inside, but you need to be more careful the night before a dungeon run.” Her face softened a little and she added, “Congratulations, though. That is good news. Also, Amara gave me this.”

Zale handed Kole a long plain wooden box. Inside he found a blasting rod identical to the one he’d destroyed the week before.

“She said you need to learn the repairing rune by next week because she’s not going to make another of these just for you to break.”

“Got it,” Kole said, looking over the runed rod.

He was pretty sure he could figure it out by next week, but he decided to make sure this one didn’t break—just in case.

Kole’s team had already picked out the gear they needed for their arctic adventure. They didn’t know what they’d be up against, but they knew it would be cold.

Everyone had thick fur-lined coats, except for Zale, who had extra layers under her armor and a fur cloak. She was already beginning to sweat.

“I hope we go first,” she said, fanning herself with a small wooden paddle she’d found in the equipment stores.

Kole changed into his own cold-weather gear and soon began to empathize with Zale.

“Class, before we begin, I would like to speak to you all for a moment,” Professor Underbrook said, magically projecting his voice to the room. Usually, he just yelled, but on this occasion he spoke softly, using magic to ensure his words reached all ears. “It has come to the school’s attention of late that there have been some disappearances amongst the student body.”

A murmur broke out, centered around the team of the missing primal that had insisted their team member hadn’t dropped out.

“We have identified three students that we believe have gone missing. You may have noticed, but we have enacted stricter security protocols over the past week. Extraneous wings of the Dahn have been closed, and we are working to relocate as many of the extradimensional wings to suitable locations in the Material Realm. You may notice the tower grow taller and wider in the weeks to come. Do not be alarmed, this is normal. A formal announcement will go out today, but I wanted to speak to you all particularly.”

He paused to let his words sink in before continuing in an uncharacteristically serious tone.

“You are all training to be adventurers. You have bravery, spirit, skill, and the will to risk yourselves for others—or coin and glory. This, however, is not your fight. Of all the students in the school, the first years in this class always cause the most trouble. You are not here to prove that you are heroes. You are here to learn to be them. The time will come to prove yourselves, but this is not that time. Do not investigate this. We have the matter well in hand.”

There was a scoff from the murmurers. Underbrook went on to explain more of the security measures, such as the increased adventurer presence on campus.

“In less depressing news,” he continued, once more with his typical wry tone. “We will begin to have postdungeon lectures. Students formerly in the adventuring program and guest adventurers will be stopping by to assist while Tigereye and I debrief you all. We will then have a group debrief of the dungeon run once everyone has had their turn.

“Do. Not. Discuss,” he said, emphasizing each word and looking over the class, “your time in the dungeon with those yet to attempt it. Doing so will result in both groups failing the attempt.

“Alright, now on to the exciting part!” Underbrook shouted. He forgot to disable the magical enhancement, however, and everyone grabbed their ears in pain.

“Sorry!” he shouted again, sans magical amplification. “The first group to enter the dungeon today is also the first group to formally submit a party name. Forsaken, please make your way into the dungeon.”

Underbrook squinted at a piece of paper he held up, and then turned it sideways.

“Or is it ‘The Forsaken’?” he asked, jokingly.

More murmurs broke out when the name was called, and all eyes shot to Kole and his friends.

“I guess it was obvious,” Doug muttered to himself.

Doug had been on board with the name but seemed to be having second thoughts now as he glanced from the students staring at him to Zale, who was decidedly normal-looking today.

Zale shrank a little from the attention as well.

“What? The ‘the’?“ Kole asked, intentionally misinterpreting Doug’s words to lighten the mood. “I do always wonder if the creatures of Faust are the forsaken or the forsaken.”

Kole succeeded, as Rakin joined in questioning the name, distracting Zale with the inane topic.

They made their way to the door, each carrying a large backpack stuffed with goods and supplies, and hurried in to avoid the attention.

“Well, that was awkward,” Rakin said, as soon as the door had shut.

Zale turned to Doug, “I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine,” Doug said, holding up his hand. “I’m not upset, and I get it.”

She nodded, letting the issue drop.

“Good luck,’” Rakin said, drawing everyone’s attention.

“What?” Kole asked.

Rakin held up a sheet of paper he’d taken off the podium. It had “good luck” written in Tigereye’s large script.

“Flood,” Zale cursed, not even apologizing for it as she usually did. “This isn’t going to be good.”

CHAPTER 59

Blizzard

Learning that their involvement was required, Assuine and Illunia approached each of their siblings and, with them, created the Illusian races. The two goddesses worked with Torc, deep in his earthen shell, and created the race of dwarves. The dwarves were made to be a strong and enduring race, like their progenitor.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Everyone donned their coats and cloaks—except for Rakin, who instead began to take off the thick woolen clothes he’d been wearing, returning to his normal loose-fitting robe.

“What are you doing?” Doug asked.

“I, uh…” Rakin stumbled, looking from Zale to Kole. “I don’t need those things…”

“Oh, okay,” Doug said as if that were a sufficient explanation.

Rakin relaxed but looked a little surprised at how easily Doug dropped the issue.

Zale walked up to the door, and everyone pulled their hoods tight, bracing for the cold.

She pushed the door open and jumped through—into a warmly lit tavern. The wooden building had a few sparsely populated tables with a mix of human and halfling guests, and a bar in the back.

“Welcome, travelers!” a voice called from behind it. “Close the door quick! You’re letting in all the snow!”

Zale walked in and turned around to face the group, her mouth dropping in surprise. Kole ran through next and turned to see what had happened to the door he’d stepped through. It now opened up to a snow-filled village square. The ground was covered in snow where it wasn’t hard-packed into rough ice. A wall of white surrounded their view, the red sun setting just above it. The Dahn was gone.

Doug and Rakin stepped through next, appearing as if out of nowhere.

“The door!” the innkeeper shouted again.

Kole too gaped, more at the sight of snow than the magical door—that was almost trivial to him at this point. He hadn’t even seen rain yet since his time on the surface and hadn’t even hoped to get to see snow. Having lived under a dome specifically designed to keep out water, the idea of water falling from the sky had a special place in his childhood nightmares.

The climate of Basin was very warm, with its location on the equator and, of course, the giant Fire Primordial-turned-corrupted murder machine trapped in the center. Things had cooled slightly when the prison runes had been upgraded during the Last Dragon War, but it still only snowed on the mountains west of the elven lands, and few nonelves were lucky enough to see that.

Doug and Rakin both looked on in awe at the white vista.

“Close the Faust-damned door!” the innkeeper shouted, much less welcoming now.

Zale shoved it closed, not as enraptured as the boys.

“It’s beautiful,” Doug whispered.

“Aye,” Rakin agreed soberly.

Even the grumpy arctic-circle-hating dwarf could appreciate the beauty of the place.

“You should see the snow on the mountains,” Zale said. “Mom took me there a few times. The views are great, the people, not so much. Let’s get to work. Everyone, eyes open.”

That snapped everyone out of their reverence, and they dropped their heavy bags.

“Sorry about the door,” Zale said, approaching the bar. “We just got into town. We’re an adventuring party. We heard there might be work here.”

The innkeeper chuckled but then stopped, confused when he noticed Zale’s own confusion at his laughter.

“Oh, you’re serious?”

Zale nodded.

“The whiteout starts tonight. Everyone’s going to be stuck in their homes for the next couple months. It’s going to be as boring as a monastery.”

The four huddled in the corner of the inn, garnering stares from the few patrons.

“What do we do?” Doug asked.

“Let’s scout out the perimeter,” Zale suggested. “Something has to be going on. They wouldn’t send us here to do nothing.”

The group left the inn and began to canvas the town.

“It’s freezing!” Kole whined after only a few minutes.

He kept looking over at Rakin, amazed that the dwarf was completely unconcerned with the cold.

“It’s not as bad as I expected,” Zale said, pulling her scarf down and inhaling the crisp air.

The village was small, with maybe enough homes for a few hundred people. A wall of compacted ice surrounded the place, and there were nearly as many glass greenhouses as there were houses. The few people outside were busy performing last-minute preparations for the coming storm. Despite the impending “whiteout,” no one much seemed concerned.

There were no monster tracks outside the walls. There weren’t even guards. When asked why they had an unguarded wall, an old man laughed and told them that even the monsters hid during the whiteout.

So, eventually, when the snow began to fall and visibility began to drop, the party returned to the inn, cold and confused.

“Welcome—Oh, you’re back,” the innkeeper greeted, not exactly happy to see the odd group.

“We would like some rooms,” Zale said, false cheer in her voice. “And sorry about before.”

Doug was last to enter, and he slammed the door shut behind him. Zale haggled for the room, and Kole couldn’t tell if the prices were exorbitant because they’d been a bit rude, or because the innkeeper really had them over a barrel with the whole impending blizzard thing. In the end, they paid three copper a night, but they had to turn over all their provisions toward the inn’s whiteout stores.

“Does anyone actually have money?” Kole whispered outside the innkeeper’s earshot.

Zale fished a sack of coins out from inside her cloak.

“Unspent credits turn into coins inside,” she said, hefting the rather full pouch.

They’d selected a lot of mundane provisions for the trip, but without the blasting rod, they’d had plenty left over. By now, they were starving and dug into the mystery stew that the innkeeper provided them as they planned for the night.

After they’d eaten, they all headed upstairs to the singular room they’d rented. Kole and Doug had tried to insist Zale get her own room, but she shot them down.

“Never split up when you suspect danger,” she explained. “And besides, we couldn’t afford it.”

She did relent to taking the bed, however, and the boys all set up their sleeping rolls on the floor.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Kole volunteered.

Per their discussion, they’d keep watch all night and start to interview people in the inn the next day for any hint at what was going on.

The night passed without incident, and the next morning came and went without any leads. The party had tried starting conversations with the other patrons, but all inquiries into interesting comings and goings were met with blank stares. Interesting things, it seemed, neither came nor went in the arctic circle.

“So, what do we actually know about this place?” Kole asked his gathered team.

“We know quite a lot,” Rakin said, pointing to himself, Doug, and Zale. “You were distracted all day.”

Kole grew red.

“Yeah… Sorry about that.”

“There’s not a whole lot,” Zale volunteered. “This ‘whiteout’ thing usually takes up most of the months of Erebog and Bild. It’s something the ice elementals do every year. The towns and cities of the arctic just wait it out. The winds aren’t bad, there’s just zero visibility. The Ice primal tribes treat the event as some sort of holiday.”

“It’s not Erebog, though,” Kole said, “it’s Bilieth.”

Zale shrugged. “Time is different here.”

“So what’s the test?” Kole asked, wanting to ask Zale more but knowing she didn’t have any answers. “Waiting?”

Three days later, it did in fact seem like waiting was the test. They’d continued to rotate watches, but nothing happened besides the visibility outside dropping to zero as the whiteout started in force. On the fourth morning, however, they woke to new arrivals at the inn.

When asked, they revealed they were locals, and that they’d entered the inn through the tunnels that connected all the buildings. As soon as Doug realized he could still get to the greenhouses he’d spotted, he disappeared to study the life cultivated on this barren landscape.

The ice tunnels opened a new avenue for them to explore for adventure, but that too turned up no leads. Zale was disappointed in them all—herself included—because their previous scouting hadn’t turned up the existence of the passages. That seemed to make Rakin even more unhappy with the situation, as subterranean tunnels were sort of his specialty, and his inability to find them here highlighted how out of place he was.

In exploring the tunnels, they found a large open chamber the village’s children and adults used for sport, and they adopted it as their own training area.

“If we are going to be here a while, we might as well make some use of the time,” Zale said and led them in weapons practice.

Out of a desire to maintain a state of readiness, she went easy on the physical conditioning and “bonks.”

Later that night in their room, Kole dug through his bag for something he could put on his many, many bruises and found his new spellbook. He’d forgotten he had brought it with him. In fact, he was fairly sure he hadn’t. He typically left it behind when going to classes where he wouldn’t have use for it, but since the discovery of his new spellbook’s magical properties, he’d begun to carry it more often.

Hmm, I guess I did bring it, he thought.

In the time before the Last Dragon War, a wizard wouldn’t go anywhere without his spellbook on his person. Now, with the dissemination of spellforms, the spellbook was less sacrosanct. Wizards generally kept them at home if going out for the day. Kole hadn’t thought to bring his on this adventure, him only having two spells, both being already prepared in his mind.

“How long do you think we will be here?” Kole asked the room.

The question was met with shrugs.

“The two months, maybe?” Zale answered. “Either something is going to happen at the end, or waiting is the test.”

In the days that followed, Kole shifted his mindset. He’d been spending his free time trying to puzzle out what could be the purpose of this mission.

Maybe I need to just treat this like real life, he considered. Maybe that’s the point of all of this.

If he were an adventurer, he’d have situations like this aplenty. Downtime between activities in which he’d need to stay alert to danger, but with no active pressing threat. He considered how best to approach this. Constant readiness was important, and Zale had already incorporated that into her own training methods, keeping the sessions lighter.

How can I apply that same mindset?

The more he considered it, the more he saw similarities to his regular day-to-day life. He already made sure to optimize his Will usage, while striving to stay at a high level of Will to prevent headaches. If he did the same here, only using it up entirely at the end of the day, he would constantly be ready for battle.

Sleeping, however, was risky. If they were attacked at night, he’d be empty, but he could use his clarity potion. He’d avoided using them to further his studies since leaving Illandrios, but this was the ideal situation for one—plus, the one he had here would only work in the dungeon, so there was no need to save it. If he kept it near him when he slept, he could quickly recover any missing Will should he be woken in the night.

So, with his blasting rod and clarity potion positioned next to him on his bedroll, Kole dove back into his studies.

CHAPTER 60

Ensouled Artifact

Torc was happy with his creations and allowed them to reside within the earth he’d become, but he felt that something was missing. While the dwarves embodied his enduring nature and passion for building, Torc saw that they did not share his passion for progress. The dwarves could plan and build, but they never strove to innovate beyond improving their crafts.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Over the next week, the whiteout conditions became so bad that they could hardly tell if it was night or day, only the innkeeper’s clock letting them know the true passage of time. The inn, they discovered in their first ten days, was a marvel that would have fascinated Amara. Runes served to provide lighting, along with heating, throughout the whole place. Alchemically treated metal runes were inlaid in the ceilings and floors to provide this, and a central gem behind the bar powered the whole thing. The gem was massive, the size of Kole’s fist, but Rakin didn’t seem nearly as impressed as Kole when he saw it.

“You should see what the dwarves use,” he’d said.

The innkeeper and his staff pushed their excess Will into the reservoir each night. There was a standard rate guests could sell their Will for, though the meager coins were not as valuable to Kole as the potential training time the Will represented—not that the money was real. If this had been outside the dungeon and his life depended on affording a room, he might have reconsidered.

Kole fell back into his tunnel-vision state normally reserved for weekends, only Zale making him go to sleep and wake up at reasonable times. Each morning after breakfast he’d retire to his room and get to work on repairing the next version of Shield. Thus far, he’d created two new versions of Magic Missile using the initial ten he’d discovered, but in the process had ruled out another two as unworkable. He was on his second version of Shield, a bit further behind.

He started each morning with an attempt to path Thunderwave, expending a small amount of Will, before moving on to Zale’s group training and then breakfast. He spent the rest of the morning performing the lower-Will-intensity task of combing through his spellforms for pieces he could transfer over to the newest version of Magic Missile. After lunch, he’d return to Magic Missile until dinner, after which he’d devote his night fully to pathing Thunderwave.

This neat schedule was, of course, constantly disrupted by life. Zale got into the habit of meditating next to him when he worked on Thunderwave, in her own odd mental vault, in an attempt to sense the Font he was reaching for. Her mentality, however, was not suited for this task, and she’d often distract Kole with conversations or get up randomly and start exercising.

Doug spent all his free time in the greenhouses, becoming quite popular amongst the locals for his abilities with the plants. They themselves had their own Assuine Blessed, but their Blessing was not as strong as Doug’s.

Rakin… was irritable.

“I thought monks were supposed to be patient,” Kole whispered to Zale after Rakin had walked off in a huff after complaining about Doug’s body odor—which, in Rakin’s defense, Kole agreed was pretty bad by then.

“Not everyone excels at everything,” Zale said, but then added, “There’s a reason he isn’t actually training at the monastery anymore. He couldn’t handle the isolation. Once he’d learned some control, he was allowed to continue his training here under Master Ahm.”

When Doug wasn’t on watch or in the greenhouse, he was diligent in his own training. His uncontrolled primal magic manifested as spontaneous transportation, typically occurring during times of stress. In the unexciting environment of the whiteout, Kole had yet to witness it until their second week. While sparring in the large ice chamber, Doug vanished as he was about to block a blow from Rakin’s fist. The demonkin boy reappeared on the other side of the room, facing the icy wall.

“Can ye do that on purpose?” Rakin asked.

Doug sighed and shook his head.

“It’s occasionally useful, but I think that’s more luck than anything deliberate. I can’t sense anything happening until it’s too late to do anything about it.”

The task Mage Tallen—Tal, which Kole was still trying to wrap his head around—had given Doug was to create a soul stone. Doug had researched the Assuine Blessed method and spent a few hours each day meditating on the process.

Rakin too had been tasked to create a soul stone. And since the monk Oas—founding member and Enlightened Master of the Order of the Resounding Silence—was also the first person to create a soul stone and discover the practice, Rakin had his own path to the same objective. A path that also included meditating for hours a day.

Kole had interrogated the two separately, and while he hadn’t understood most of the exercises they’d said they were doing, he was fairly certain both processes were wholly unique, even if both utilized Assuine’s energy to produce results.

When he found a moment alone with Rakin, Kole told him about his experience following Harold and Esme.

“Bah!” he shouted triumphantly, sour mood briefly gone. “I knew it.”

“Yeah, but Harold clearly wasn’t interested.”

“For now. She’s a persistent one. Give it time and that racist glindock’ll be eating out of her hand.”

Kole wasn’t so sure but kept that to himself.

Zale spent most of her time training and, having not actually brought any study materials, found her own ways to keep up with her schoolwork. She’d occasionally accompany Doug to the greenhouses to practice her harvesting technique—something Kole kept telling himself he’d join, but never seemed to get around to. She would also discuss the recent coursework for the alchemy and history classes so they wouldn’t forget it all by the time they left.

“Here, try this,” Kole said, handing her his spellbook.

“Try what?” She examined the book, bemused.

“It’s full of the magic paper from the school,” Kole explained.

He watched Zale’s face grow serious. Her eyes lost focus briefly before she examined the book again, closer.

“This is not the paper the school uses,” she said, flipping through the pages and squinting at each one.

“How can you tell?”

“Most of the paper the school uses has the same aura as the Dahn itself—and my mom, I suppose, since she’s Bound to it. This paper has a blueish-green aura,” Zale explained.

She brought it up to her face and closed her eyes, smelling it.

“Hmm, it smells like a book.”

“It’s a book…”

“Sorry,” Zale said, darkening in embarrassment. “I can get a sense for auras by smell as well, like how Willsight shows colors. The presence of this book smells like a book. That’s odd.”

“What did you mean by ‘most paper the school uses has the same aura as the Dahn’?” Kole asked.

“Some of it has no aura,” she said, now holding the book up to the light as she turned the pages.

“How is that possible?”

“Beats me. Uncle Tal…len—” she finished awkwardly, looking around the room to confirm they were alone “—can hide his and his ensouled artifact’s aura. Some of the paper the school uses must be his. The school can only produce magic paper because of some crazy enchanting nonsense Levar did with Tal’s spellbook.”

“Tal has a magic spellbook too?!” Kole cried. It seemed like they were far more common than he’d thought after his conversation with Theral.

“What do you mean ‘too’?” Zale asked, finally looking up at Kole, her eyes opening wide. “You bonded this!” she shouted, thrusting the book at him. “It’s ensouled!”

“What?!” Kole asked, looking at the book as if something had changed.

“Your aura! It’s normally green, but it has lines of blue in it, the same blue as that book. Where did you find this?” she demanded.

“I… uh…” Kole fumbled, not wanting to explain anything that might expose Theral and risk her mother’s wrath, but also not wanting to lie. “I found a secret room in the library. It was in there.”

Zale chewed on her lower lip.

“You found the room on your own?”

Kole nodded.

“Does the door move around the Dahn?”

Kole shook his head.

She thought a little longer before saying, “It’s… probably fine, then—wait. Are you living in this room in the library?!”

Kole’s face grew red, and he looked away, answering the question for Zale, who then broke out into laughter.

“Don’t tell Rakin,” Kole pleaded, knowing the dwarf would find a way to tease him.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. It explains a lot, though.”

The pair talked about the topic of ensouled artifacts longer, Kole still trying to wrap his head around the idea that he had one, and Zale guessing what else it might do. He’d let her use some pages to recall some important notes for class, but the paper had been mundane for her.

They looked all over the book but couldn’t find the soul stone that ought to have been set in it if it were an ensouled item. Despite that, Zale was confident in her assessment.

“I’ll ask my uncle about it when I see him,” Zale suggested when they ran out of ideas. “Some ensouled artifacts have a shape-changing aspect to them and can hide their soul stones.”

Which reminded Kole he’d have to meet with the legendary mage soon—if they ever got out of this dungeon trial. He’d sort of forgotten about it during the last week of intensive study, but he was going to speak to Tal of Storms, one of his childhood heroes, the liberator of Illandrios.

Flood, I’ve already talked to him… and been frustrated with him. Oh no. Did he notice?

Kole tried to distract himself from the thought.

I have an ensouled artifact!

He’d always hoped to find one. What aspiring adventurer didn’t? But to find one now, so soon? It was beyond his wildest hopes and dreams. It only did a few tricks now, but they were extremely useful already.

What more could it do? Was Theral’s ensouled too?

Ensouled artifacts were items whose crafters had somehow bound their soul stones to them, granting incredible powers. The art of creating them was lost to the Flood, though the art of soul stone creation remained known. After the deaths of the original owners, ensouled artifacts became dormant, losing any outward appearance of power or magical adornment until they were found and Bonded by one with a similar temperament, values, or goal to their creators’. Each had amazing potential, and wars had been fought over them.

Kole stared at the book in his hands.

“Who made you?” he asked it. “And what else can you do?”

CHAPTER 61

Forgiveness

Trying once more, Torc created the gnomes. In them, Torc found the capacity for invention that the dwarves lacked. Where the dwarves were stout and strong, the gnomes were nimble and weak. The two races, ever pragmatic like their god, found they complemented each other and together filled Torc’s body with wonders of strength and cunning.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Despite Kole’s efforts, he found little new that his ensouled artifact spellbook could do. He used it plenty over the two months trapped beneath the snow, but whatever additional secrets it held stayed hidden from him.

Not that he was complaining.

He was extremely grateful for the magical book, and while he was eager to learn what else it did, he was quite happy with what he’d learned so far. Ensouled artifacts grew with those they Bonded to, and he was still young. The possibilities were endless.

His time with the ensouled artifact was not how he imagined owning one would be. As a child he’d dreamed of having an ensouled staff, wand, robe, or other such wizard-appropriate artifact. He’d even considered what it would be like to become one of the Bladed Knights—though only in his younger years before he knew better.

Instead of facing hordes of monsters, defending his home from the forsaken, or reversing the effects of the Flood as he’d dreamed, he was sitting quietly in a room, making steady progress on his magical studies.

In this, he realized that his childhood dreams had been just that—childish. This was the type of ensouled artifact he’d have dreamed of if he’d but known they existed.

As time went on, he spent more and more time in his room, doing all he could to get out of Zale’s training so he could go back to his spellwork.

His carefully laid-out schedule of alternating between Magic Missile, Shield, and Thunderwave fell apart the more frustrated he grew with the new Sound spell.

He thought he was making progress on Thunderwave, but it was hard to tell. He’d added a lot of pieces to the path component that all seemed to be moving it close to the Font of Sound, but he’d eventually hit a wall. No matter how he modified the spell, he couldn’t get it any closer to the destination, and the more he tried, the more the spell’s Will cost increased with no added functionality.

The spell had started below 5 Will and continued to grow as he added components to the path, inching ever onward toward the Font of Sound. As the cost increased, so did his frustration and determination. Soon he was skipping his work on Magic Missile and Shield altogether to focus on pathing.

He forwent using his Will for anything but pathing, and in doing so devoted himself to the activity day and night.

Until, one night as he lay on his bedroll on the floor of their room, he had it.

Unfortunately for Kole and the rest of the inhabitants of the inn, Thunderwave was not a subtle spell.

Crack!

The sound that typically accompanied a bolt of lightning erupted forth from the hands lying open at his sides, palms facing the ceiling, followed shortly by the sound of falling wood and plaster as parts of that ceiling fell down around and on top of Kole—though he didn’t hear that too clearly. The deafening sound of the spell was highly directional, originating from his hands, and he was supposed to thrust them forward. Having not done so, he suffered some of the spell’s effects.

The part of Kole’s mind that was still slightly disconnected after time in his vault recognized and reveled in his success, but that was short-lived. The pain ripped his concentration from his vault and brought his mind back to reality.

He opened his eyes to see an angry Rakin silently screaming, the world filled with dust and a high-pitched ring. Zale, dressed in a pair of travel clothes she’d assigned as her pajamas to preserve her modesty, was holding the dwarf back as he tried to get at Kole. Doug looked around in confusion, as if looking for the source of the sound.

Kole sat up, suddenly aware that the pain of the blast was in his whole body. This wasn’t the first time he’d suffered the effects of Thunderwave, and he could tell that even though he’d been hurt, he’d always be safe from the majority of the spell’s power by virtue of being its origin point.

These were the things he thought about so he wouldn’t dwell on how stupid casting the complete spell had been. Usually when pathing, a minor part of the effect was altered. Not enough to make the pathing process invalid, but enough to keep the Will cost down and cause any successful path to fail to manifest an effect. In Kole’s frustration, he’d repaired the altered section of the spell. He’d thought that maybe his change had been a source of his difficulties.

Having succeeded, he now knew that not to be the case. The problem had just been himself.

Eventually Rakin calmed down enough that Zale let him go. By then, some of Kole’s hearing had returned. Rakin glared at him as Zale just shook her head in amused disappointment.

“I… uh… learned a new spell,” Kole said.

“We noticed,” the two cousins said in unison.

“Congratulations!” Doug said, shortly after.

***

The innkeeper was not impressed by the fact that Kole, a wizard, sorcerer, and a primal, had just learned his first traditional wizardry spell in his inn. In fact, he was quite angry about it. While Kole acknowledged that not everyone had the magical contextual knowledge to know how significant the feat was, he still thought he’d be a little impressed.

Zale, for the second time that day, stopped someone from thrashing Kole, and negotiated the terms of his continued existence.

Kole spent the remainder of the month learning a valuable lesson. Not the one Zale and the innkeeper hoped he would, however. He discovered that menial activities such as washing dishes and scrubbing the floor were great opportunities to path spells.

During his menial labor, he reflected on his progress. His initial joy, while brief, had come back after Rakin had settled down and the pain had subsided, but now it had waned slightly. The cost of his new Thunderwave had settled at 20 Will. The equivalent cost of a fourth-tier spell for any other wizard. This, however, was not some new quirk of his primal nature, but simply the result of a young wizard’s first attempt to path a spell with minimal guidance. Instead of being discouraged, Kole was eager to improve it.

He now knew three wizard spells, one of the requirements to pass WIZ 204. Unfortunately for Kole, he also needed to demonstrate that he could cast all three in a single sitting, and while his Will pool was massive for his age, all his spells were far too expensive. He needed to improve his efficiency. For every spell, but Thunderwave most of all.

The problem was, he hated to admit to himself that his path was a bit of a mess, and he was struggling to find anywhere to improve it that didn’t simply break the spell.

***

“This is the longest two months of my life!” Rakin shouted to no one in particular sometime into the eighth week.

Kole disagreed but kept the opinion to himself. On top of his success with Thunderwave, he’d made good progress on his other magical studies, free of responsibilities and the burdens of other classwork. Despite his efforts, his spellbook had failed to reveal any new abilities, but Zale had assured him that was to be expected.

By looking at his aura, she could gauge how closely he was Bonded with the book, and at this point, there was hardly any evidence of a Bond at all.

“It will grow,” she assured him, but then added, “Probably.”

He was not reassured.

Of the four, Kole was the only one to have any measurable progress to show when the end of the whiteout celebration came around. Two days before the feast that would mark the impending end of the storm, he’d mastered a new version of Shield that cost him 25 Will. In the process, he’d ruled out another version of the spell as unworkable, leaving only seven more variants to study.

Kole could have worked even longer, but shortly after the Thunderwave discovery, the runes in the inn began to experience issues. At random times the Will would deplete completely from the gem, and the building would plunge into darkness while the cold seeped back in.

The first time this happened, the innkeeper Gregory—a generally friendly man with whom they’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and then angered once more just after he’d forgiven them—stomped up to their room and banged on the door.

“What did you snow-blasted fools do to my runes?!” he shouted between bangs.

Kole was alone in the room at the time, darkness now illuminated by his borrowed rune light which he still definitely planned to give back—eventually.

Probably.

It took Kole a while to convince the man he’d not done anything, but it wasn’t until he agreed to help refill the Will reservoir gem that the innkeeper relented.

After the Thunderwave incident, Gregory had done a thorough inspection of the runes in the room and confirmed they’d not been harmed by the spell.

The runes went out every day or so for the rest of their stay, and the staff eventually resorted to keeping the reservoir gem at a low level to prevent excess from being drained. Everyone except for Zale chipped in without getting paid, as per some local law about emergencies.

Kole was tempted to ask to see proof of the law’s existence, but he really didn’t want to have to sleep in the ice tunnels, and he sensed Gregory had lost all patience with him.

The whiteout was expected to last the whole sixty days, but they occasionally ran longer if a natural blizzard coincided with the end of the magical one. The tradition was for a feast to be held on the sixtieth day to celebrate making it through the confined conditions and to grant an opportunity for people to reconcile if any bad blood had developed during the prolonged confinement.

The day before the scheduled feast, Zale called the team together for a meeting.

“Listen. If anything is going to happen, it’s going to be tonight, or tomorrow during the feast,” she explained.

“Why’s that?” Doug asked.

Rakin let out an exasperated sigh and cut himself off from saying something cruel. He’d been short with everyone since they entered the dungeon and accepted the reality of the trial—“short with” being an expression Kole was certain he would never use again while referring to an ill-tempered dwarf. In Rakin’s defense, Kole acknowledged he’d made attempts to hold his tongue, but in the last few days he’d grown even more irritable.

“Chaos always seems to strike when you least expect it,” Zale explained.

“But… we are expecting it,” Doug countered, still confused.

“I think what Zale means,” Kole said, jumping in, “is that the feast is supposed to be a point where everyone’s guard is let down? If I was planning some nefarious business, I’d plan for it to happen during a party while everyone’s distracted.”

Doug seemed to understand then, so Zale continued.

“So, no training today. Get rest and stay armed at all times.”

Zale had already taken to remaining armed at all times, so the warning was not for her.

There was constant debate among the students of the adventuring program as to whether the events of the dungeon were real or not. Some things, like the sheer depth of details in the whole situation, pointed to the dungeons being real. Others, like the fading of wounds and the odd behavior of the intelligent beings inside, left doubt.

As a general rule, the people encountered in a dungeon treated everyone largely the same, regardless of their race. Doug, and Zale when she was undisguised, were treated the same as Kole and Rakin. If pressed, the people would acknowledge Doug’s demonkin race, but they didn’t react as one would expect. Similarly, in real life, if someone walked around in full armor carrying weapons in an inn, they’d probably be asked to leave. No one seemed to notice or care when Zale did so, however.

So, after a long night of no surprises, the four prepared for the Whiteout’s End feast with the town’s full population—fully armed and dressed for battle.

“That’s a lovely dress you have, Marium!” Zale said excitedly to one of the younger women she’d met amongst the townsfolk.

She’d gotten to know quite a few of them in her patrols and general wanderlust.

“You too, Zale! Where did you get that? Is it new?” Marium pointed to Zale’s sword belt as if it were some fashion item.

Zale’s smile faded a bit at the reminder that this person she was interacting with might not be real. She quickly excused herself and returned to her friends.

“That was weird,” Kole observed, to which Zale nodded.

“I hope we get out of here today. Anything amiss?”

“Nope,” Rakin said.

He’d gone around the perimeter of the town’s tunnels. His primal magic was mostly useless here, but he was still the fastest runner.

“Same here. Nothing new,” Doug said, having interrogated some rodents he’d bribed to keep an eye out for anything strange.

The group was called to order as the innkeeper came out and made a speech. They were all to travel to a large ice cavern where a table had been set up, and everyone would bring a meal from their own homes to contribute.

They all made their way down through the tunnels. The tunnels were spacious, ten feet across which almost made one forget they were deep beneath the ice. They took the path to the large room, now decorated with rugs and tapestries, which gave the once-barren chamber a very homey—if still cavernous—feel. The four stayed on edge as they found their seats, but the meal continued without any apparent disaster.

When it got to the time of reconciliation, they all listened uncomfortably as the people of the town apologized for what they’d done over the past two months and asked for forgiveness in return.

“I’m sorry I cheated on you, Debra!” one halfling begged after a lull. “Please! Let me come home!”

He climbed up on the table and prostrated himself before a hulking human woman.

The woman only stared at him until he slunk back to his chair.

As if the over-the-top display were a cue, more private one-on-one apologies followed.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around the last few weeks,” a man near Kole’s group said to the woman next to him, “I was mighty ill. I was cooped up in a room at the inn. Couldn’t keep anything down.”

“He’s lying,” Zale whispered to her friends.

“How do you know?” Kole asked.

He used his primal magic to make himself unnoticeable, immediately feeling the Will drain as Zale tried to fix her attention on him. Ignoring the drain, he looked at the man speaking, examining him closely. The man didn’t exactly look well. He seemed pale and malnourished, and he had a bandage on his left hand up to his forearm.

Zale realized what Kole had done and stopped trying to look at him.

“I saw him enter the inn three days ago—from outside. He had a big bag and rented a room. He’s a local, I’d seen him before in the tunnels early on but not recently. I thought it was odd that he came in from the outside, but I’d seen others step out before.”

They listened as the woman forgave the man, and then they began to flirt.

“Do you think this is it?” Kole asked. “The mission?”

“Gods, I hope so,” Rakin griped. “I need to get out of this ice-blasted Fauell-spawned place.”

“I’ll check out his room,” Kole whispered, activating his magic once more to slip out unnoticed. Once clear of the large chamber, he turned fully invisible and made his way back to the inn. A few villagers passed him on the way, carrying items for the feast—mostly fish dishes supplemented with items grown in their greenhouses. Some of the tunnels led deep beneath the ice, opening to caverns through which the ocean below seeped in, allowing the locals to fish.

Kole hadn’t ever seen the man enter a room in the inn, but of the six rooms, he knew the occupants of three others, leaving only two to check. One door he found unlocked and empty, and the other was locked tight. A quick rummage behind the bar turned up a second set of keys.

Gingerly, Kole pressed the door open, mind ready to cast Shield as he listened for the click of a trap. When the door opened enough for him to slip through, he ducked his head in. The room was smaller than the one he shared with his friends, but the largest difference by far was the metal cage in the far corner containing a baby fox made of clear shards of ice.

“Well… that’s something,” Kole said aloud.

The fox creature snapped its head toward the noise, and its blue marble eyes fixed right on him. It cocked its head curiously at him, its tongue lolling out just as any other canine’s would.

On close examination, Kole saw the cage was covered in runes, and they were similar to the heating runes on the floor. The fox jumped up to lean against the bars and examine Kole closer, but reeled with a yelp of pain when it made contact and the bars flared red. This made the lights of the inn flicker as their Will was diverted to the cage. It was only then Kole noticed how cold the room was.

“I’ll be back!” Kole told the fox as he closed the door and ran to find his friends.

He was racing through a tunnel when the ground shook and cracks appeared along the tunnel walls.

CHAPTER 62

Elemental

With Aurial, deep in her waters, Assuine and Illunia created the race of seafolk. The seafolk were a people content, like their god. They did not long for wealth or power like the races that were to come after but lived simple lives beneath the sea, which provided for all their needs.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole had to fight his way upstream, pushing through the villagers fleeing down the tunnel. An icy wind blew in the caves, carrying the sound of chaos even over the screams.

When he reached the opening to the large feast cavern, he found his friends standing at the opening facing a twenty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid creature made of ice. The proportions were generally human, but much thicker, and it was made of the same blue-tinged ice crystals of the fox he’d just found.

The ceiling of the cavern had caved in, flooding it with snow. The elemental rampaged about, flipping tables in search of something and ignoring all the people who fled.

“I found an ice elemental fox thing in that guy’s room!” Kole shouted out.

“Hah!” Rakin shouted back. “That’s it!”

“What ‘it’?” Zale asked him, sword drawn ready for the elemental’s attack, should it ever come.

“I’ve been pissed off all week, and I couldn’t place why,” Rakin growled. He pointed to the elemental. “And this thing is making me feel the same way! It’s like its presence is attacking my soul.”

Kole could feel the dwarf radiate heat. The ice of the tunnel floor was melting beneath him.

As if it heard them, the head of the giant ice elemental turned.

“Run!” Zale commanded, moving to flee down the tunnel as the creature came for them. “It must be looking for the fox!”

They ran, heading back to the inn at full tilt.

While normally the fastest, Rakin’s uncontrolled heat melted the ground beneath his feet, causing him to slip and fall behind. The ice behemoth lumbered after them, each step shaking the cave, sending cracks along the tunnels, and bringing chunks of the ceiling down on them. It charged, seemingly unconcerned that it was twice the size of the opening it ran toward.

When it reached the tunnel mouth, there was no crash or crack as one would expect from the collision of two masses of ice. Instead, the creature seemed to meld into the walls and floor around it, causing that end of the tunnel to narrow. The dirty white ice walls closed in on themselves until the mouth itself was gone, leaving a translucent blue ice wall that continued toward them.

“Run faster!” Zale shouted, risking a glance back.

She was out front, followed by Doug, with Kole a few strides behind.

Kole drew his blasting rod and looked backward. Rakin was only steps behind him while the wall was twenty yards back. Pointing his blasting rod back over his shoulder as he ran, he sent a bolt of energy down the tunnel at the wall. As he watched, Doug suddenly appeared several paces behind them all, Kole’s bolt nearly striking him as it flew.

“Prickle burs!” Doug cursed—or at least, Kole was fairly certain it was a curse—as surprised by his appearance as Kole.

Behind Doug the bolt hit with a satisfying crack barely audible over the rumbling of the approaching wall, but when Kole risked another look, he saw no evidence of any damage, and Doug had already overtaken Rakin.

“Turn!” Zale shouted from ahead, and she turned left at the next intersection towards the inn.

Kole slowed as he approached the turn, the floor slick from the mad dash of those who fled before him. As he rounded the corner, he looked at the encroaching wall with horror as it merged with the ice of the tunnel, disappearing and heading straight towards the inn.

“It’s going through the ice!” Kole called ahead.

Zale, sensing something Kole didn’t, dove to the ground, just as jagged icicles grew from the wall, aiming for her head. Doug slid under the obstacles and helped Zale to her feet as they continued. Icicles burst from the left wall, following them as they ran. Doug hid behind Zale, her armor protecting her from the fragile ice spears, but the assault slowed them enough that Kole and Rakin were able to catch up.

Rakin charged through the ice, shattering them with his fists, empowered by both the control of his ki and the heat from his uncontrolled fury. The elemental didn’t take kindly to Rakin’s presence, and the tunnel began to close in around him, clear blue ice seeping out of the walls and engulfing him as it sealed the way.

“I’ll be back!” Zale shouted as she ran for Rakin.

Just as she was about to reach him, she vanished into a cloud of black, only to reappear a moment later, dimly visible through the ice running on. Rakin was soon completely swallowed by the ice, but Kole and Doug watched as he fought back within. The dwarf gave up any semblance of control over his fire abilities, and flames began to wreathe off him, melting the ice around him and creating a pocket of water. The elemental seemed to panic, trying to retreat into the walls, blue spikes reaching out in all directions.

“Run!” Kole shouted, but it was too late.

The water within the elemental rapidly turned to steam, and then it exploded, sending a shockwave of icy shards everywhere.

Rapidly constructing his newest spell, Kole extended his hands before him and stepped out in front of Doug.

The shards flying toward them shattered into snow, the larger ones breaking into rough, fist-sized chunks that crashed into them harmlessly as the force of the spell robbed them of speed. The walls and ceiling collapsed partially from the spell, falling atop the snow and fragments that were the elemental. These pieces melted into the floor around them, merging with the ice.

The spell also sent Rakin flying back—something Kole had fully intended. He’d seen that the dwarf had lost control and had wanted to put as much distance between himself and his momentarily mad friend.

The dwarf had flown back a dozen feet and continued sliding as he landed, his body’s flames melting the ice below him and making the ground slick. Once he’d stopped, he fought to recover his footing, battling the melting floor beneath him. Through the haze of pulverized ice, a fiery Rakin emerged, turning the snow to steam, no sanity left in his eyes.

“What in—” Doug began, but Kole pulled him along down the hall.

“Run!”

Rakin began to chase them, but the ice elemental wasn’t done. The tunnel above him collapsed, and he was crushed under a mountain of ice.

Kole and Doug stopped, looking around for signs of attack.

“Is he…” Doug once more began, bow drawn uselessly pointing at the walls around him.

He trailed off when he saw the steam rising from the pile of icy rubble as it collapsed in on itself. Kole and Doug watched on in awe and terror as Rakin burst from the pile, only to be struck down by yet another chunk of ice from above.

“Who do we shoot?” Doug asked Kole, who was pointing his blasting rod around uncertainly.

Seemingly forgotten, they watched as the Fire primal fought against the malicious tunnel. With each strike of ice he took, Rakin’s flames dimmed a little, but the malice in his eyes stayed hot.

Through the chaos, they heard Zale’s shouting.

“I have it!”

Rakin paused in his rage against the elemental, turning toward the familiar voice, but his calm vanished when he spotted the smaller creature in her arms.

“Argh!” he screamed and ran at his cousin, seeing an icy target he stood a chance of destroying.

The larger ice elemental too noticed Zale, and the attacks on Rakin ceased. A clear streak, much diminished from what Kole originally fled from, slid into the wall in pursuit and dashed to Zale through the ice. It soon outpaced Rakin, whose traction had only worsened after the battle and his burst of heat. A frozen claw reached out of the ceiling above Zale, but didn’t attack. The fox climbed up her arm, yipping happily as it jumped into the appendage and then disappeared into the ceiling.

“Rakin! Calm down!” Zale shouted, drawing her sword.

The dwarf didn’t listen and continued to lurch toward Zale. Steam rose, filling the tunnel as the water boiled in the pools of Rakin’s feet.

“Sorry!” Kole shouted as he sent his Will into the rod.

A bolt flew across the tunnel, striking Rakin in the back and causing him to stumble again. Where he fell, the ground melted further, creating a pit several inches deep. Kole sent another bolt at him as he tried to rise, toppling him once more. By then, the steam was too thick for Kole to see anything but a red glow. Zale took the opportunity of the first two falls to close in on Rakin, and using her Willsight to see through the steam, she struck her cousin on the side of his head with the flat of her sword.

“I think he’s out!” Zale called through the steam, and shortly after, the red glow began to die down.

Doug and Zale moved in cautiously. Up close, they found Rakin lying in a small pool of rapidly cooling water on the tunnel floor.

“We need to find a better solution for this if it’s going to keep happening,” Kole said as he examined Rakin.

The water was tinged red with the blood of dozens of wounds, from both Kole and the elemental.

“What the Fauell was that?!” Doug demanded. “I know that’s not a normal dwarven thing… right?”

CHAPTER 63

Back to Reality

Riloth, with the help of his sisters, created the humans, who embodied the storms of Kaltis that Riloth created and loved. They had the capacity for great power but left destruction in the wake of their passions. Eager to see what else he could create, Riloth asked his sisters for another try, and this time the orcs were born. Like humans, the orcs were a people ruled by their passion, but the orcs were not as covetous of wealth as their siblings. Instead, the orcs hungered for glory, driving them ever toward conflict.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

With Doug’s help, Zale dragged the unconscious Rakin through the tunnel up to the inn. A crowd had formed there, people cowering in the corner furthest from the stairs to the tunnels.

Sighs of relief, and one noticeable groan, broke out through the huddled mass as the four young adventurers climbed the steps.

“Is it gone?” a woman asked, desperation clear in her tone as she clung to the man next to her—the man whose room had held a captive elemental.

He squirmed under the glare Zale and the others shot him.

“Yes,” Zale said curtly.

The man looked from Zale to the woman and back, hope growing in his eyes that he might have escaped.

“Phillip stole a baby ice elemental,” Zale said with a small, evil smile.

Everyone’s eyes snapped to the man.

“I… uh…” he stammered. “No! She’s lying!”

The door to the inn suddenly shifted. Where previously it had been a simple wood door, covered in wool tapestries to add insulation, now the black stone of the Dahn took its place.

“Looks like we can leave,” Kole said, but none of them moved to the door.

Zale sighed and shook her head.

“One second.”

She walked to the crowd that was in the process of forming a mob around the man.

“Don’t kill him!” Zale shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. “We’ll take him out of town, exile him.”

Phillip, who had begun to calm down at Zale’s pronouncement, blanched at the end.

“But the storm!” he protested.

“It’ll be fine,” Zale said, dismissing his very legitimate concerns. “You stole that fox through the storm. You’ll manage. Let’s go.”

“My coat!” he shouted as the crowd pushed him to the door.

Zale grabbed the stumbling man by his collar and dragged him out of the inn. Someone threw a thick coat at the man as they disappeared into the Dahn. Kole and Doug followed, dragging Rakin behind them.

When they entered the Dahn, the door closed behind them. Kole looked around the room, seeing that their belongings had been transferred out into this ready area.

“Where’d the guy go?” Kole asked.

“He… uh…” Zale began, not making eye contact. “He vanished as I dragged him through the door.”

“Oh…”

“I thought I should save him from the mob, but… did I just kill him?” she asked.

“I… don’t know. Was he even real?”

“They have to be!” Doug asserted, but then less certainly asked, “Right?”

They sat, talking over their experiences with the people inside the dungeon—mostly Doug and Zale, since Kole had just studied the whole time. After a short while, Rakin stirred.

“Rakin?” Zale whispered.

“Aye,” he moaned. “It’s me.”

“I think the flaming murdery guy before was you too,” Kole observed, earning a weak swat from the dwarf.

“Let’s get the Fauell out of here,” Rakin said.

“Wait!” Kole said, remembering something.

He pulled a potion from his bag and drank it, only wincing slightly at the taste.

“It wouldn’t work outside,” he said. “Do you want to change?”

All eyes turned to Rakin, whose gray monk robes were stained red with blood. His beard, which was normally neatly combed and trimmed, was a mess, and he was covered in bruises.

“Nah,” he said.

They limped out of the room, not sure what to expect. They’d been gone two whole months.

Could time really have passed so differently? Kole thought, fully expecting the classroom to be either deserted or full of wizards probing the door to try to find the missing students.

Professor Underbrook stood outside waiting, all the students beyond turning to look at their exit.

“Shhh,” the halfling teacher said, holding a finger to his lips. “Let’s go talk about your experience.”

He led them to one of the side rooms while Tigereye let another group of students in. Kole didn’t know any of the students, but he recognized one of the girls in the group as being a primal from the first session. Their eyes grew wide as they took in Rakin and his bloodstained robes. They weren’t alone, and the whole class was trying to glean some hint from their appearance.

They were led to a small, comfortable sitting room away from prying eyes, furnished with a few large, overstuffed leather couches. A colored glass sphere sat on the coffee table in the center.

“There are refreshments over there if you’d like. I’m sure you’re all a bit chilled,” Underbrook said, gesturing to a cart of rune-heated carafes.

Doug ran right over and made himself a cup of tea while everyone else relaxed on the couches.

“We have about ten minutes to discuss your results, but before we do, do you have any questions for me?”

“Lots,” Kole said, getting a chuckle from the professor. “Did you watch us somehow?”

“In a way. When you return to the ready room, the Dahn produces a crystal. Anyone with a bit of training and a mental vault can review the events in a matter of moments.”

The friends looked uncomfortably at each other, each trying to recall if they’d done anything they wouldn’t have wanted to see. Rakin had told Kole that all his professors were aware of his particular magical affliction, so they weren’t worried about that secret. But privacy is a blessing for impulse-driven teenagers, prone to rash decisions as they are.

“Don’t look like that,” the professor said, “The Dahn only shows us the bits relevant to your education. Trust me, we don’t want to watch everything a bunch of teenagers do for months.”

The awkward energy vanished, and Kole felt that maybe he’d save any further questions for later.

“No more questions? Great. Let’s move on to your performance. You all scored a 4 out of 5.” He held up his hand to forestall any replies. “Before you protest, a 4 is a great score. 5s are reserved for only the most spectacular performances. We didn’t grade the goblin cave, but if we had, no one would have earned a 5 in either attempt. A 5 really requires a team to go above and beyond, for instance, convincing the goblins to release the captives freely and then getting them to move out of the region.”

“Has something like that happened?” Zale asked.

“That specific example? No, the Dahn doesn’t repeat dungeons. But you all did quite well. You used your downtime productively while staying vigilant—for the most part.”

Underbrook stared at Kole on the last statement.

“Sometimes one can focus too much on their studies.

“You also handled the conflict with the elemental well,” he continued. “Save for Rakin’s, ahem, hidden talents, your group was poorly suited for this particular foe, but you all did well in investigating the falsehood. Great job Zale for getting to know the locals. That’s an invaluable skill. Never underestimate the locals. Just because they need your help doesn’t mean they can’t help you.”

Zale beamed at the praise.

“Doug, you did well to help in the greenhouses. Had that been a real situation, your aid would have left them with great surpluses in the coming harvest.

“Rakin, you did well, especially in such a hostile environment. I know you lost control in the end, but sometimes it’s necessary to go all out when other’s lives are on the line.

Rakin only gave a nod, acknowledging the praise, but he didn’t seem to believe it. Underbrook turned to Kole last.

“And you… I must say, I’m impressed. Congratulations, Kole, on pathing your first spell. That is really an achievement to be proud of. But you should have tried using it directly on the elemental, it would have been very effective. I confess I didn’t truly understand the full weight of your condition. May I see your spellbook?”

Kole handed it over, reluctantly, as if the professor intended to steal it.

He flipped through the worn journal, looking at the items Kole had copied over from his old book and his new additions. The professor only seemed concerned with the book’s contents, not the book itself, and Kole judged he hadn’t seen the revelation that it was an ensouled artifact.

“Such work! I know Lonin hates adventurers, but how could he pass you up? How many spells have you reconstructed and learned these past eight weeks on top of your work on Thunderwave?”

Kole didn’t know how to react to such outward praise. He counted on his fingers as he thought through the weeks.

“Five? Six? It’s hard to say, since I didn’t finish them all.”

“Six?! That’s wonderful. The most we expect to learn in the first semester in WIZ 204 is two, but in practice, it’s usually only one, since they enter with two. You really have a gift for spellforms and spell theory.”

Could this be it? Kole thought, but didn’t dare to hope.

“You have a real uphill battle, but I think you might just get there.”

Underbrook stopped the praise there and abruptly changed the topic, crushing Kole’s burgeoning hopes of being offered a mentorship.

“So what did you do wrong?” he asked.

The students looked from him to each other, unsure.

He proceeded to outline where they could have done better, such as helping the townspeople evacuate more before fleeing the elemental. He also told Rakin that he ought to have investigated his odd sensation more when the fox elemental had appeared.

“Your magical senses shouldn’t be ignored. If you see smoke, there’s probably fire. Always investigate anything beyond the norm.”

Underbrook gave some minor suggestions to wrap up and then excused himself to get the next group. The class had twenty groups of four to five members each for a class total of around ninety. Each group would be inside for five minutes, and the professors would alternate their debriefs, giving a small window to talk over each student’s performance in the immediate aftermath.

After the debrief, Kole’s group went over to the showers to get cleaned up. They weren’t as dirty as after the goblin adventure and its sewer tunnel jaunt, but they were very sweaty and covered in cuts from the ice. The wounds had already begun to heal, leaving only the crusted blood and sweat.

Then they sat at one of the clusters of desks and waited for others to join them. Gray’s group had gone in during their debrief, and by the time Kole’s group had showered, they saw them leaving Tigereye’s debrief. Zale and Harold exchanged shy waves, while Gray and Kole avoided eye contact.

After twenty minutes, the desks had begun to fill up with students who both had and hadn’t gone through their dungeon run. An older student came in to begin a discussion. He looked to be around eighteen, and he already bore scars on his face from some clawed creature. The discussion was interesting and unstructured. Many people were still exhausted from their dungeon run—the wizards and primals most of all, as bodily stamina rapidly recovered after the dungeon while Will did not.

The student teaching the session posed combat scenarios to the class, asking what tactics would be best to handle them. Zale was one of the primary contributors to the discussion, and she seemed to be competing with Harold to get the best answers.

When Kole realized that no one was enforcing engagement with the lesson, he put his head down on his desk and fell asleep. He was exhausted and really didn’t want to consider the best way to light trolls on fire when in a wet swamp.

Though, as he fell asleep, he admitted the information would probably be useful someday.

CHAPTER 64

Grades

Waas created the elves, who shared her love of crafting beautiful works. However, the elves were too serious for her liking, and she asked if she could create once more. With her sisters’ aid, she created the halflings, a whimsical folk who better embodied her playful nature. The elves, a prideful people, felt betrayed by this, though she had meant no offense. Believing their god had spurned them, the elves turned their back on their mother and worshipped Assuine instead.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

“Gather ‘round!” Underbrook’s magically amplified voice boomed, waking Kole from his nap.

He bolted up, looking around for danger, though no one noticed, as everyone was congregating around the two professors.

“This week, we are doing something else new!” Underbrook announced with cheer. “I’d like to give my dear Ganik-worshiping colleague Tigereye here the privilege to share this wondrous addition.”

Tigereye looked on as Underbrook spoke, unamused by his theatrics.

“You were all graded,” Tigereye said, meeting Underbrook’s volume without magical aid, though lacking the showmanship. “We made a leaderboard. Here are the results.”

A burst of colored lights flew from Underbrook’s hands, into the air, accompanied by whistles and pops. Distantly, Kole sensed the lights and sounds drawing on the Arcane Realm, a brief flicker that was gone as quickly as he felt it.

It felt similar to what he’d sensed whenever Theral vanished, only more familiar. The magic was clearly not powerful like Theral’s teleportation spell, so why could he sense it?

Illusion? he thought but discounted that. Few wizards had created spells that drew upon that Font, all instead still using the Illusion spells of the past that drew on the Fonts of Mind, Light, and Sound, in different combinations to get the desired result.

Light and Sound, he decided. Those Fonts were connected to Illusion. He had sensed the weak spell through his connection to the Font of Illusions. Yet Kole shouldn’t be able to sense spells as minor as these at his age.

As he thought this, everyone else was whispering amongst themselves. Behind the illusion, up on the wall, a formerly bare section of stone was now replaced with a list of names and numbers.

1. Ice Picks 9

2. The Forsaken 8

3. Risen Dahn 7

After the top three were a large number of teams with 6s, and then a handful of teams with lower scores.

“This is the leaderboard,” Underbrook said. “We have included your grades from the week prior, though we didn’t share those with you then.”

Kole looked around his classmates to see that all those around him were looking at him and his friends.

“Second place!” Zale said, trying to muster some excitement from a distracted Kole, grumpy Rakin, and aloof Doug.

One of the other groups getting attention was Gray’s.

Great… Kole thought. He didn’t think beating Gray publicly would help their dynamic any.

“I bet the Ice Picks are Sleet’s team,” Zale mused, getting a “hmmph” of agreement from Rakin.

“Sleet?” Kole asked.

“Yeah, she’s an Ice primal. I bet they got a five today and a four last week.”

As if listening in, Underbrook continued, “The Ice Pick group, led by Sleet Icecliff, received the class’s first 5. Sleet, using her knowledge of the local environment and local customs, immediately caught the elemental thief as he returned to town and returned the baby elemental to its blizzard.”

Sleet Icecliff? Kole thought, stifling a laugh at the name. The clan name of Icecliff on top of the already strange Sleet was a little too on the nose.

“That’s not fair,” someone whined in the crowd.

“You’re right!” Underbrook agreed enthusiastically. “And neither is life. Sometimes a party specializing in fire magic fights a group of trolls, and other times those same trolls eat a purely martial group. You’re all unique. How you choose to apply your talents is as important as what those talents actually are. Don’t pursue missions you are incapable of completing.”

“But we didn’t get to choose,” someone complained.

“Yeah…” Underbrook said. “You don’t always get to choose. So, if there’s no further adolescent whining, I will continue.”

He paused as if inviting another complaint.

“The Forsaken and Risen Dahn teams both received 4s, for both using their ample free time effectively and finding a solution to the elemental problem. The Forsaken, led by Zale Wood—”

Rakin and Kole shared confused looks behind Zale as she beamed, but both shrugged, not really wanting to be considered the team lead.

“—didn’t realize the threat the young elemental posed, but due to their familiarity with the population, they quickly found the target of its rampage and reunited them, battling the elemental quite capably as they sought out the fox.”

Murmurs broke out among the students, and all eyes turned to Zale’s team at the claim they’d fought the elemental with any degree of success.

“The Risen Dahn, led by Gray Holder, found the elemental fox when it entered the tavern, bringing it to the town’s attention. When the elemental attacked, the target was clear, and they turned the creature over, preventing any large disasters.”

Underbook continued on, highlighting deeds of particular merit other lower-scoring teams achieved, and used a crystal to project scenes from the event, though none showed Rakin in his battle against the elemental. Many of the groups completely failed to halt the elemental’s rampage before it found the fox in the inn, but they were still able to earn up to a three from how they handled themselves prior to the failure.

Kole had known the elemental to be terrifying, but watching it destroy the inn with hardly any effort really highlighted why all the other teams were impressed by Underbrook’s pronouncement of their success.

When Underbrook dismissed the class, they all headed to the dining hall for a much-delayed lunch.

***

Amara met them at the dining hall with gifts in hand, but on learning they’d experienced two whole months in the dungeon in a single morning, she immediately forgot about that.

“Did you notice any seams in reality? Did you all experience the time dilation at an equal rate—wait, was your rate of Will recovery any different than usual?”

She pummeled them with questions, not even waiting for an answer before thinking of a new one. They answered as best they could between bites, but it had all seemed rather ordinary from their perspective.

“Actually…” Zale said, interrupting one of Amara’s questions, “I did experience something strange.”

All eyes turned to her.

“When I shifted into the void there, it felt different. Normally it feels like I’m hanging from a cliff over a bottomless pit, with the Arcane Realm away in the distance, but this time I felt like I was floating. I could see the Arcane Realm and the Material Realm out there, but I wasn’t really near either or at risk of falling away.”

“What, so we were, like, already in the void?” Kole asked. “The Ethereal Realm?”

“I don’t know,” Zale said with a shrug. “I’ll talk to Uncle Tallen about it tomorrow, but it wasn’t the Ethereal. I’ve been there and used my ability, and it felt different from that.”

This admission to having been to the Ethereal Realm invited another barrage of questions from Amara, to which Zale knew very few of the answers. In the end, Amara wrote down all her questions in a notebook, intending to ask Mage Tallen the next day.

The prospect of asking the companion of her own hero, the master runesmith Levar, seemed to invigorate her.

“I’m out of here,” Rakin said, once he’d finished his meal and grown tired of the interrogation.

“I should go too,” Doug said more politely, “I have to get back to the Glade. That frozen wasteland was exhausting, being so detached from Assuine’s power.”

“You’re going to let them leave?” Kole asked Zale, surprised she wasn’t trying to push them all into another social outing.

Rakin shot Kole a threatening glare.

“Yep!” Zale said, cheer wiping away the interrogation-born weariness. “I need to get ready for a date.”

“Oh,” Kole said, remembering now about Harold. It had been two months.

He hadn’t wanted to go do anything, so he was uncertain why he felt so disappointed. In fact, he was very eager to return to his room and review his old spellbook. He’d made a lot of progress the last two months, only he hadn’t had access to all his spellform samples and notes. If he pushed it, he thought he could knock out another version of Magic Missile tonight. He also had to do some research into Thunderwave before his chance to talk to Mage Tallen the next day.

“Good,” he said, after a pause. “I have to do some spellwork tonight anyway.”

Zale shook her head.

“You just spent two months doing that! Don’t you want to, I don’t know, go outside?”

Kole glanced out the window.

“No, I need to get back to the library.”

“Don’t forget to study the runes,” Amara reminded Kole. “I think I’ll have the new repairable version ready this week.”

Kole made a note to get around to her workshop before the end of the weekend.

“Oh wait!” Amara added. “I almost forgot!”

She pulled out her bag and produced four stone disks.

“I made these,” she said, passing them out.

Kole examined his closely and noticed similarities to the tracking device Amara had made. The disk was divided into four pieces by simple lines. Each section had a light rune on it, but as for all the runes beyond that, Kole was lost.

“I got a hold of some very small gem fragments by proposing this design as a class project and fashioned these with them.”

At the mention of the gem, Kole saw that the disk did indeed have a very tiny flake of a ruby set in the center, one so small it was hardly visible.

Holding her own up, Amara explained the function.

“It took me all week, but I was able to get the runes simple enough to fit the intent in those gems. If you put a finger onto any of the sections and imbue it with Will, the corresponding rune will light up on everyone else’s device. I’ve established a code using all sixteen possible binary permutations—”

Rakin held up his hand, stopping her.

“Nope, too complicated,” he said.

His tone was brusque, but he was inspecting the device with obvious interest.

“Ignore him,” Zale said, giving Amara the courage to continue.

“Sixteen possible combinations to signal different messages.”

She passed out a slip of paper with a chart and a cleverly laid-out system. There were messages for places to meet—the library, dining hall, Roost, and the study group hall—as well as indicators for how urgent the request was, from “immediate-life-threateningly dangerous” to “whenever you get the chance.”

“They will only last a couple weeks if we don’t use them every day and try to prearrange things as we have. I couldn’t afford any alchemically treated materials for a side project like this,” Amara explained, looking down sullenly as if the durability were a great failing on her part.

“These are great!” Kole encouraged. “That’s plenty of time, and it’ll be great in emergencies.”

“Yeah, this is amazing!” Zale added.

Amara looked up, her remorse disappearing at the praise. Rakin even nodded in noncommittal approval.

They talked about their plans for the devices a while before breaking up to go about their Friday afternoon plans.

“Just so everyone knows,” Zale said before they all left, holding up her device, “I can’t actually power runes, so I can’t send messages with this.”

At the pronouncement, Amara’s head jerked to Zale, questions seemingly about to burst forth from her mouth.

Zale held a hand up, a gesture that proved very effective at forestalling Amara’s tirades.

“You can ask me about it tomorrow. I have to go get ready.”

Amara deflated, but sullenly agreed to add the questions to the list she’d already started.

As he left, Kole was beginning to feel bad for Mage Tallen and the interrogation he was in for.

CHAPTER 65

On Voidlings

Bilieth and Erebog, while tolerated, were not loved. Not approached to make a race of their own, they performed experiments in secret to uncover the missing piece of creation. They created many horrors in their pursuit before realizing their goal was beyond their abilities. From these experiments, the feralkin were born. Learning from their own creation, they captured the races of the other gods and began to warp them. Through these defilements, many more horrors were brought into the world. However, what came next was even worse. The siblings finally succeeded in their goal and created the races collectively known as the forsaken.

—Unnamed Dwarven Text

Kole spent the remainder of that Friday holed away in his room, alone. With the time dilation of the dungeon, it felt like ages since he’d seen Theral. He had a lot of questions for the other young wizard after two months’ work, and he expected he would surprise the older boy with all the progress he’d made in such a short time and his completed—if inefficient Thunderwave.

Saturday next morning, Kole arrived at the basement of the art college early—partially because he feared getting lost, but mostly because he was worried about being late for a study session led by Tal of Storms.

Gods, Tal of Storms.

Kole still couldn’t believe it and spent a lot of time rerunning all his past interactions with the man through his mind, afraid he’d done something to offend the famous wizard thought to be dead.

It once again took Kole longer than he expected to find the instrument-strewn room once in the basement, but he arrived at the study group just on time. Thankfully, Tal of Storms seemed to be as punctual as Kole of the Library. When Kole entered, Zale was talking excitedly with Runt while the rest of the group were waiting at desks. Amara was furiously reviewing a few pages of notes he knew to be questions for Tal.

Kole walked up to Amara and whispered, “Remember, Doug and Runt can’t know who Tallen is.”

“Oh yeah…” she said, clearly having forgotten.

“Did you give it away already?”

“Umm… I don’t think so.”

Kole got comfortable at a desk nearby and tried to lose himself in reviewing his own questions for the day, trying to not listen as Zale told Runt all about her picnic date with Harold.

A subtle whoosh alerted Kole to the arrival of Tallen as the teleporting wizard displaced the air. Kole didn’t detect the Arcane Realm being tapped, unlike with Theral’s arrivals.

Just how powerful is Theral’s teleport? he wondered, wishing he could ask Tal about it.

He thought back to Underbrook’s spectacle spell and how he’d almost sensed it. He was getting better at sensing the magic of others, at a far earlier age than was to be expected, but his case wasn’t exactly typical.

“Hello, everyone,” Tallen greeted casually as if he’d simply walked in. “Shalia is busy addressing some urgent school-related business, so I’ll be handling today alone.”

“Great,” Runt said, deadpan.

Ignoring the comment, Tallen went on.

“As I understand it, some of you had a bit of extra time on your hands since our last gathering. I look forward to seeing your progress.”

Zale went first, explaining to her uncle her experience with the void, and something lit up in the older wizard’s eyes. Kole knew that look. He’d had it himself countless times in the last three weeks—eleven if you count the time in the dungeon. Whatever Zale had experienced was the key to something Tal had long worked at.

Tallen interrogated her at length, and Amara stopped trying to butt in to ask questions and began taking notes instead.

“Did you know that it’s much easier to enchant objects in the Ethereal Realm?” Tallen asked no one in particular.

“Of course!” Amara said, as if everyone knew—by the looks on everyone else’s faces, they did not.

“Do you know why?” Tallen asked, turning to her.

At his attention, she began worrying the half-carved stone cylinder in her hand. Yet instead of being intimidated by the attention as Kole might have been, she spoke with great confidence, the topic being in her purview.

“I read Levar Burh’s treatise on it. He speculated that the proximity to the Arcane Realm facilitated the drawing on the Fonts, and the distance from the Material Realm reduced the interference from other Fonts.”

“You are well-read. He’d have liked you,” Tallen said with a smile. Then he grimaced slightly and risked a glance toward Runt, who was not paying attention.

Not gifted with guile, it seems, Kole thought, remembering Zale’s mother’s surprise that Tallen hadn’t let slip his own identity before Zale did. He wondered how many slips of the tongue like that he’d missed in the past and chastised himself for not piecing it together.

How can you have one of your heroes in front of you and not notice?

Kole risked a glance to Runt, but she didn’t seem to pick up on the name of the famous crafter.

Amara positively glowed at the comment, and Kole thought she was about to pass out.

“But I think he might have missed something,” he continued. “I have a theory… but it will take some more studying before I can test it.”

Amara then inundated Tallen with questions about Zale, her abilities, and her lack of abilities when it came to using Will.

“The voidlings don’t have Will. They are beings made up of something akin to Will, but from elsewhere,” Tallen explained. “But they can interact with Will in the environment. We can’t do that. The only Will we can use is the Will we generate. We can sense it, but just because we can smell something, it doesn’t mean we can do anything with the odor.

“The gods are beings of pure Will. They harnessed their power to create the Fonts: incomprehensible tools of power which they used to craft the Material Realm and everything within it. But when they made the Illusian races, they put more than just the excess Will into us. They put a spark, a tiny fraction of a sliver of a fragment of their own beings, able to generate its own Will. That’s our soul, and it allows us to generate Will, harness it, and use it as a tool to interact with the Fonts.

“The voidlings were not created by our gods. They don’t have that spark”—he held his hand up—“and before you ask, I don’t know if voidlings have souls by the traditional definition, but I know for a fact Zale has one. Anyway, whatever created them achieved a similar result as our own gods, only through different means. They were created outside of anything we’d even call a Realm, and as such can operate and interact with our Realm without the restraints of being bound to it.

“As beings entirely of some Will-like energy, they can use it to interact directly with the Fonts or the Will of others.

“We are like a scribe, writing on paper with a quill. The ink pot is the Font, the quill our Will which we use to channel its power, and the paper the Realm on which we write. We can only write by putting them all together, but the voidlings are not so constrained. They can break our quills, stick their fingers in the ink, and smear it all over the page. Some very skilled can even alter the ink we have already laid down to form words of their own.”

“Why can’t we mess everything up with our own hands?” Doug asked when it was clear the explanation was over.

Tallen turned to the demonkin.

“Because that would ruin the analogy,” he said kindly. “So, let’s just pretend like I had a good answer. The better question is why can the voidlings interact with Will as they do. No one knows. My answer is just the leading theory based on observations.”

The group discussion moved on to the progress reports of others. Runt was making slow progress on creating her own mental vault, while Doug and Rakin both thought themselves close to producing soul stones after their months of isolation in the dungeon.

Tallen dismissed everyone else before asking Kole for an update.

“You all probably don’t want to hear us talk about wizardry, so you can go get to work on your tasks.”

He looked at Kole, studying him curiously, and then asked, “So, in light of your recent revelation, do you have any questions for me?”

Kole had plenty but led with the simplest one.

“How are you not dead?”

Tallen chuckled.

“I’ve died, more than a few times, it just hasn’t seemed to stick so far. But I think you meant something else.”

Kole nodded and now had even more questions.

“Well, that’s a secret. Sorry. I can’t really share. But I’m not some lich or immortal. I’m fairly certain if you killed me this instant, I’d remain dead—but you can never be too sure about these things.”

Next Kole asked about his experience saving Illandrios from the outsiders, and Tallen gave a brief summary of the tale, filling in many details and contradicting others from the story he’d grown up learning about. Even still, Kole could tell he was leaving much out.

“Anything else before we get back to the topic at hand?”

Kole worked up his courage and decided to just go for it.

“Will you take me on as your apprentice?”

Tallen winced slightly at the question, regret on his face.

“I was afraid that was what you were going to ask,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t commit to always being around. If I were to take you on as an apprentice, and I was forced to leave for one reason or another, you would be dropped from the program. And trust me, I won’t be able to stick around here for too long.”

“Well, that would be better than never getting in,” Kole countered.

“Only if you don’t get in,” Tallen shot back. “Have more faith in yourself. You’re making progress, and you have only been here three weeks. Be patient. You’ll find a mentor. I know it. If I agreed to do it, you’d stop looking, and it would only be a matter of time until you got dismissed.”

Kole sensed much more certainty in Tallen’s words than he expected. He really did believe Kole would find one and wasn’t just saying it to placate him.

“Fine,” Kole said, trying to not sound sullen, but not succeeding. “While you’re here, I need some help with a few things.”

Kole had to restrain a smile as he remembered his recent development.

“I can’t seem to reduce the cost of Thunderwave,” he said.

“You really shouldn’t worry about that until you’ve…” Tallen began, but then picked up on Kole’s tone. “You already pathed Thunderwave?”

Kole swelled with pride at the surprise in Tallen’s voice.

“Well, I did have two extra months,” he said, unable to hedge his accomplishment in front of the famous wizard.

“Even still, that’s great. So what’s the cost?”

“20. It’s a mess.”

Tallen let out a low whistle.

“That is a mess. Any other wizard your age would have given up once the spell cost reached their Will capacity and started over.”

“Start over?” Kole asked.

“You likely made a poor choice in your path early on and then just compounded the cost trying to fix that early mistake,” Tallen explained. “It’s like you made a wrong turn in a city and just kept going, trying to find a way to your destination. In the end you’ll get there, but if you’d turned around as soon as you realized you’d made a mistake, you’d have saved hours.”

“That… sounds accurate,” Kole confessed. “So, what do I do?”

“Start over,” Tallen said.

Kole balked at the idea. He’d spent months on the spell, could he really just toss it aside?

“You don’t have to, but I strongly recommend it,” Tallen said, reading Kole’s expression. “Don’t worry, it will be much faster the second time.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Suit yourself,” Tallen said with a shrug. “But you did ask me for advice, and I do actually know a thing or two about this.”

Kole wrestled with the decision. He could keep going trying to optimize, but did he have time to risk it? If he truly did need to start over, he only had eleven weeks until finals. If he counted the dungeon, he’d had eleven weeks already. If spell complexity was a sign of whether or not he was on the right path, and if he chose better next time, he’d know if he’d failed in another six weeks or so, fewer if he moved faster as Tallen suggested. He could maybe try two more times before the end of the year.

“Alright,” Kole conceded, “I’ll start over… but I’m saving my old spell.”

Tallen smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

CHAPTER 66

Tal of Storms

[A wizard looking at a cut perplexed with a large question mark over his head.]

H is for healing, the magic divine, its workings complex beyond wizard design.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

Kole didn’t let Tal escape with only one pointer. He showed him all his work on reconstructing Shield and Magic Missile.

“Good job, you are making remarkable progress,” Tal congratulated.

“That’s all?”

“Um… you’re a smart young lad?” Tal added, uncertain of what Kole was asking for.

“I want advice!” Kole demanded.

“Oh! Advice. That makes sense. I do really think you are on the right track. Let me see the other versions you’re working on.”

Kole produced the spellforms he’d copied from the old spellbooks he’d found in the library.

Tal flicked through them, comparing them with Kole’s latest fully repaired spellforms, making thoughtful noises and squinting at them.

He pulled two out and handed them to Kole.

“Toss these out, these spells won’t actually work.”

Kole took them, inspecting them for what Tal saw, but was unable to see it.

“Here,” Tal said, putting two spellforms on the table. “Try these next.”

The older wizard placed his fingers on a few of the spellforms, and his eyes grew distant. He repeated it a few times in quick succession.

“That should help,” he said once he’d finished. “I imbued the constructs I recognized offhand, but you’ll have to do the rest yourself.”

Kole stared awestruck from the wizard to the spellforms and back. The man had just saved him weeks. Possibly more, depending on how long he would have worked futilely on those incomplete spells.

Was it this easy? Could I have just asked him before?

“Any more questions?” Tal asked with a knowing smile.

“Ummm, what do you know about ensouled artifacts?”

“That’s a bit of an open-ended question. How about you tell me what you want to know.”

Kole hesitated for only a moment. If Zale was right and he’d begun to Bond to this book, he didn’t need to fear Tal taking it from him. Everyone knew only artifacts made by the evil and cruel could be stolen through betrayal and deception. He didn’t think he was some paragon of virtue, but he seriously doubted he’d be able to Bond something like that.

He gestured to his spellbook. “Zale told me this is an ensouled artifact and that I’ve begun to Bond to it. I thought it was just a book made of the magic paper they use throughout the school.”

“May I?”

Kole nodded, and Tal picked up the book, flipping through its pages.

“She’s correct,” he said as he looked closely at the ink. “This paper is perfect. Does it produce its own ink yet?”

“Yet?” Kole asked.

“I just meant I assume that’s something it could do eventually. Ensouled artifacts gain abilities as your Bond grows. A book producing its own ink, and creating more pages, seems like the least an ensouled book would gain the ability to do.”

“Have you encountered another magic spellbook like this before?”

“I have stumbled on them a time or two,” he said, trying to hide a grin. “They are rare, but as you interact with the powerful, you encounter a concentration of magical artifacts. Did it have any messages from the previous owner?”

“No…” Kole said, for the first time realizing that was odd.

Who would create an ensouled artifact, then never use it, leaving it blank?

“…it must have been erased. Maybe with its bearer’s death?”

“That seems possible, but I think that too might be something that’s revealed over time.”

They spoke a while longer, theorizing on what he might do to learn more of its magic. Kole mentioned some things he’d seen Theral do with his, such as creating folded paper tools at will. He spoke as though they were ideas he’d just had.

“By now, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything an ensouled artifact did,” Tal said, the conversation reaching a lull. “I think you already know this, but I would be remiss to not say something. Don’t let it be widely known you have that. While it is common knowledge that artifacts can’t be stolen and used, that doesn’t mean they can’t be stolen and sold. It’s been known to happen, though it only works if the recipient wasn’t involved in the murder or theft. You’re not yet able to defend yourself from the types of people who traffic in such work.”

“Oh…” Kole said, at a loss for words.

Tal had left out the fact that Kole would be murdered in such an event so that the Bond between and the book would break, but the implication hung in the air between them unspoken.

He was used to hiding things, he was even good at it, but he hadn’t thought this needed to be a secret, not until he considered the resale angle.

Tal excused himself, going to speak to Amara, who had been eagerly waiting for her turn to press him with even more questions. Kole excused himself when she began to run her ideas for self-defense items by him.

Kole got to work immediately, starting over with Thunderwave from the beginning. The last two months with no distractions had been great, and he’d planned on spending the entire weekend pushing himself to improve the spell, but he had no hope of pathing a whole new version. He almost reconsidered, but… while Tal hadn’t taken him on as an apprentice, he had finally given Kole actual detailed advice. It would be foolish of him to ignore it now.

Zale noticed Kole practicing Thunderwave and came to sit near him, meditating to sense the Font.

Sometime later, Kole was pulled from his vault by a nudge.

“Let’s go,” Rakin said, already walking out of the room.

Kole noticed then that the room was empty save for the two of them.

“Where’d everyone go?” Kole asked.

“They left. Zale went to go “train” with Harold,” Rakin said, doing air quotes.

“And everyone else?”

“I don’t know. I’m not yer secretary. Next time I might just let ye stay here all night.”

Kole smiled at the dwarf’s comments. His surly nature was starting to grow on him.

Instead of being disappointed at being left behind, Kole found himself excited. He had a whole weekend of uninterrupted studying ahead.

Back in his room, Kole was pleased to find it vacant of rat and human residents. He poured himself a bowl of oatmeal from the magic jug and got to work.

***

Late on Sunday night, a bleary-eyed Kole stumbled into the shooting range in the Dahn. Completely devoid of Will, he held a clarity potion in his hand, debating whether or not to take it. He only had three, and he was saving them for important occasions, but… he really wanted to try it.

Before he could think better of it, he chugged the potion and basked in the banishment of his headache and lessening of his fatigue.

“Alright,” he said to himself, rubbing his hands together.

He extended his hand out to the target and spoke the verbal components of the newest version of Magic Missile.

“Roh-Ta-Ko.”

He sent the spell through his bridge. The Will pull of the Font of Illusions was noticeably smaller, and before he’d even finished, he knew he’d succeeded.

Three bolts of magic shot out of his hand one after the other, poking coin-sized holes in the practice dummy.

And then he did it again.

CHAPTER 67

Atrophy

[A picture of a giant with a crown holding a fist over his head.]

J is for Jarl, the kings of the giants, who can rule over their kin as autocratic tyrants.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

“Ow!” Kole yelled, slapped on the head by Zale while he was running laps in the morning.

“Wake up!” Zale yelled at him as she ran past.

Calling Kole’s pace “running” was really stretching the word. To even claim he was jogging would be generous. His arms were held high, given the appearance of jogging if one didn’t look too closely, but his slow trudging was no faster than a walking pace.

He’d only gotten two hours of sleep after his late-night success before his alarm woke him for Zale’s training. While he was moving slowly, that was just the exhaustion, and he could tell that he hadn’t lost any of the stamina he’d built in the dungeon—which only confused him further about the place’s mechanics.

“What kept you up this time?” she asked him when they were sparring.

“Your uncle gave me actual advice this time. I spent the whole weekend learning a new Magic Missile,” he said, unable to keep from smiling. “I cast it twice last night.”

“That’s great!” Zale exclaimed as she swung at him.

He moved to block with his staff, but before he made contact, Zale vanished in a puff of black motes.

He spun around in panicked shock, looking for her before realizing what had happened. Then Zale appeared at his side, facing the same direction she had been when she left.

“Darn it!” she cursed—well, cursed for Zale. “I thought I’d be able to appear behind you.”

“Nope,” Kole said. “But that’s a good idea.”

“Thanks,” she said, proud. “Harold suggested it.”

“Oh… that’s… great—I guess.”

“I know. Isn’t it? I think I can get the hang of positioning with a little practice, but changing my orientation will take some work.”

Their morning training wrapped up shortly after that. By then, it was the fourth week of the school year, and they were no longer the only first-year students out for early morning training. Those still not present were not likely to make it through the semester.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Zale said, pulling an envelope from her bag on the way to alchemy class after they’d finished training and cleaned up.

“What’s this?” Kole asked, looking it over.

The envelope was nothing special, save for a few water stains. “Kole Teak, Student at the Academy” was written in a rough hand.

“I don’t know. Mom gave it to me to give to you.”

“Why is she getting my mail?” Kole asked, suddenly very concerned.

“Would you rather I go to the registrar and put down your living situation so you can receive it directly?”

“Um, I guess this is better,” Kole said.

Kole opened the envelope and read.

Kole,

We returned to your home port recently. All the ships were asked to produce their passenger logs starting from the day of your embarkment. Obviously, there was no record of you. Just thought you’d be interested to know.

M

“What’s it say?”

“Did I ever tell you how I left Illandrios?” Kole asked, instead.

“On a ship?”

“Yes and no.”

Kole briefly recounted the tale of his flight from his home, leaving out the embarrassing parts, like the details of the fish fight, and the poo barrels. He’d never told Zale the specifics of his departure. He’d been—well, he’d tried to be—secretive about his past when he arrived, but in light of what Zale revealed about her own family, it was silly of him to think he couldn’t trust her. It was about time he returned her honesty.

After explaining it, he showed her the letter.

“Who’s M?”

“Meech, I assume. He’s kind of a smuggler-spymaster-fixer,” he explained.

“Hmm, I wonder if Mom knows him,” Zale mused.

“I know she has a… colored past, but why would she know him?”

“She dabbled in piracy over the years,” Zale answered as if it were nothing.

“‘Dabbled in piracy?’ How in the Realms is your mother allowed to teach children?”

Kole didn’t need more reasons to fear Zale’s mother, but he seemed to keep finding them regardless.

“Don’t be like that, she’s great with kids, and a surprisingly good teacher when she wants to be. But we’re getting off track. Why do you think you’re being searched for?”

“I have no clue. I don’t even know why they tried to stop me from leaving. It could be my uncle trying to find me, but… he doesn’t have the influence to get the floating city above to interrogate ships on his behalf.”

“You never talk about your uncle—or really your family at all…” Zale said, inviting Kole to share.

“It’s not so much a secret as that I don’t have a lot to share. My mother was lost in a pocket realm when I was young, and finding her became my father’s obsession. Mine too, especially when he disappeared looking for her. My uncle wanted me to be a Mirage Knight like he and my mother are, and I didn’t want to do that—but… I see now he only wanted what he thought was best.”

Zale put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. They were almost at the garden where that day’s alchemy class would be held.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s alright. Amara knows about it. It just never came up.” Kole forced a smile and added, “Besides, your family is a lot more interesting. I only have the one uncle. I’ve lost count of yours.”

She laughed, and his forced smile turned genuine as they walked into class together.

That first alchemy class set a tone that would define Kole’s fourth week of school. While he’d made amazing progress this past week in his wizardry, to say that his botany skills had atrophied would falsely imply they’d ever advanced to a state from which they could decay.

Pale Oak kicked him out of the garden almost immediately on seeing how he was handling a mundane grass she’d assigned him to practice on.

Sitting just outside the garden, studying a book on the proper methods to harvest plants, he reflected.

I really should have used those extra months to do more than study magic.

Later in history class, he’d completely forgotten all the details of the previous week’s discussion, and he sat lost during the lecture trying to follow. He took notes but would need to dedicate time to rereading his old ones—at least the ones that had survived the ink spill, rewritten into his spellbook when it had just been a journal.

The thought brought another memory to mind. Tal had mentioned that his spellbook would likely produce extra paper.

Has it already? he wondered.

He pulled the spellbook out and flipped through the pages, counting them. The book had exactly two hundred sheets in it. Then he recalled he’d removed two pages—back when he’d not known it to be an ensouled artifact. He flipped back to where he’d been when he wrote the essay, but there was no sign of the missing pages or new ones in its place.

Were there two hundred and two pages, or did it repair itself?

He spent the remainder of the class recounting the pages, confirming his count of two hundred, and then he removed one from the back as an experiment, tucking the page safely in his old filled spellbook in case it didn’t replace itself.

“Next week, we will be moving on to an analysis of the pre-Flood road systems of the Basin and what they tell us about the politics of the lost civilizations here. Be prepared for an exam on the topics covered thus far.”

Groans went out through the class, the loudest by far from his classmates who were also in Pre-Adventurer Battle Training. Kole was not the only one who’d failed to keep up on their classwork in the extra months they had.

On Tuesday, Kole walked into Martial 101 somewhat confident he hadn’t fallen behind here, at least—though he had started behind the rest of the class and was yet to catch up.

Tigereye announced to the students of PREVENT that their next dungeon run would take place aboard a ship and asked them to prepare accordingly. This pronouncement elicited a storm of cursing from Rakin just like the mention of the ice sheet had.

“The man has it out for me!” Rakin grumbled as they ate after class.

“That’s not true,” Zale said, “you know they don’t pick the locales.”

“The Dahn has it out for me, then!” Rakin amended.

“Probably,” Kole said, earning a baleful glare from the surly dwarf.

CHAPTER 68

Offset Gates

Few on Kaltis can say their lives haven’t been drastically altered for the better by the deeds of Mage Tallen Elmheart. Fewer still can boast that Tallen put them on the path to greatness—or at least out of the path of destitution.

When this author was a child, she was invited to join a burgeoning school in the then-nowhere town of Edgewater by a then-unknown mage. I almost declined.

—Dahnchild, Rail. Tallen Elmheart: A Biography, foreword.

WIZ 204, typically Kole’s favorite class, seemed to have chosen to pile on his difficulties. The class was an advanced study of first-tier wizardry with a focus on combat applications. As such, it covered topics from spell construction to the types of magic best used in any given situation. Kole was more than prepared for the topic of spell construction, his skill in the matter had even caught the eye of Professor Lonin. There was, however, one area of it he was wholly inept at, both in knowledge and ability.

Offset bridge spell construction.

Kole listened on as Professor Underbrook spoke about the amazing advances it provided wizards, terror growing throughout. If any sort of practical test was required, he was doomed.

“The earliest spells were crude constructions, bulky spell effects guided to the Fonts of traditional wizards using winding roundabout paths. These predate even the traditional method of passing on spells via spellbooks, where wizards detailed their construction in written words.”

Kole was probably more familiar with traditional wizardry than most of his classmates. Back home, he’d found a few traditional spellbooks, but at the time they’d seemed impossible to comprehend. More recently, however, he’d read through some of the old spellbooks Theral kept in his room, and it hadn’t seemed as hard to comprehend as he recalled. Recreating a spell from the text descriptions didn’t seem easy, but he thought he could do it.

“Without spellforms or even traditional spellbooks to study, and with no formal system of Will measurements existing at the time, it’s hard for any to judge how efficient their spells were compared to modern spells, but we do know that wizardry in its infancy couldn’t hold a candle to sorcery.

“The discovery of the gates was a cornerstone of modern wizardry, but that alone wasn’t enough to truly revolutionize the art. Gates allowed any wizard to learn any constructed spell, regardless of their own affinities. However, the nature of the Arcane Realm made gates and paths difficult to communicate with others using the written means of the day, making collaboration impossible. While traditional wizardry had a long-established art of transferring spell effects via written word—lots and lots of written words—the gate and path components of spells were exceedingly difficult to explain without spellforms. As such, wizards took apprentices with similar affinities to their own and passed down the spell effects while teaching the students to path the spells themselves.

“With the development of spellforms—the concept of which the Coterie of the Midlian Empire derived from dwarven runes—wizardry exploded, and wizards supplanted sorcerers as the premier magic wielders.”

Professor Underbrook sent his illusory explosions into the air to emphasize his words.

“The Flood halted the progress, and in the aftermath the Tower arose, strangling innovation with its systematic suppression of the proliferation of spellforms. The last hundred years—since the Disavowment of the Tower and the end of its influence in the Last Dragon War—magical innovation has flourished, with spellforms becoming widely known.

“It’s from this time we learned to create support structures in spell constructs to make them more efficient, developed pathing techniques, and made verbal and somatic components highly efficient. All of these reduced the average Will cost of a spell by a quarter! But it was the offset gate technique that we are learning about today.”

He went on to explain the technique in great detail, but to Kole, it boiled down to this:

Wizards could open their bridge to a specific part of the Arcane Realm, i.e. a gate. Something Kole could only do with extreme Will expenditures. They’d learned that with a little more Will and a lot of specific spell components, they could open the bridge to a location near a gate, closer to the target Font from which they wished to draw power. This allowed the path component and the effect component to be much simpler. Since Will cost was multiplicative, the dual reduction was amplified.

Unless you were Kole—or a primal of any sort, he supposed.

That “little bit” of extra Will was amplified to some amount so high, he’d yet to successfully open an offset gate, and he’d even tried after his Will surpassed 40. It was only after Kole discovered spells predating these techniques that he’d gained any hope of being a wizard.

Before this newest method, spell construction theory had already been making the spell effects simpler and less nimble, relying on the developments of complicated pathing techniques to make up for the difference, which resulted in higher efficiencies. And so had begun Kole’s journey through wizardry’s past.

“So, for your assignment,” Underbrook said at the end of his lecture, “I want each of you to create the spellform for an offset gate.”

Kole winced, but it wasn’t so bad. He could make spellforms, he just couldn’t cast them.

“I have decided that it would be in all of your best interest if I added more study into spell construction into the curriculum. So, we will be using these as the basis to create a spell for the second semester of the class.”

“Flood,” Kole cursed aloud, drawing attention from those around him, and a mocking smile from Gray.

***

Kole spent all his free time trying to catch up on classes, meeting sporadically with the others on his team to discuss a plan for the upcoming sea journey.

In one of these meetings, Kole finally got around to asking Doug for help harvesting plants.

They went to the Glade, through the great tree, and found some wild plants to practice on. Zale accompanied them, seeking to improve her abilities as well.

Kole was terrible, but Doug was a far more patient teacher than Pale Oak.

“She’s a bit of a hardhead, even for a dryad,” Doug admitted when Kole spoke of his experience. “But in her defense, you are quite terrible.”

“Thanks…”

“It’s fine, it’s not that complicated,” Doug assured him.

“You know that doesn’t make me feel any better, right?”

“Sorry. What I mean is, I learned as a kid.”

“Are you trying to make me feel worse?” Kole asked, genuinely confused about what Doug was getting at.

“I mean, I grew up in the forest, and that’s why I learned as a kid. You grew up in Illandrios. Did you even have plants?”

Finally seeing Doug’s point—as obscured as it was—Kole nodded.

“A few, but we were taught to leave them alone.”

“That’s my point. It’s not hard, everyone else just had a head start.”

If Kole improved any that day, he couldn’t tell, but he was grateful for Doug’s assistance.

Once they’d packed up and prepared to leave, Doug stood by, not moving to guide them out.

“Something wrong?” Zale asked.

Kole looked around the clearing, searching for a threat.

“No, I had a question. I needed advice,” Doug said, scratching at the base of his antler. “How would I go about courting Mouse?”

“Mouse?” Kole and Zale both said in surprise.

Zale recovered from her surprise first.

“I didn’t know you knew each other,” she said.

“We have a few classes together,” Doug answered. “She’s just… so wonderful.”

Zale gave a thoughtful hum.

“That’s a difficult question. She’s… a bit different.”

“Oh, I know,” Doug said, getting over his embarrassment.

“What would you do back home?”

“Back home? I’d probably be getting married soon. It’d be arranged by my parents with another tribe of demonkin. I was thinking maybe I would give Mouse this.”

Doug pulled out a long-wrapped object from his bag.

“Gifts are good,” Zale said, taking the parcel.

She unwrapped it and froze, cocking her head as if it would change what she held.

“A… carrot?”

“Yeah! It’s perfect! Look, it’s a hybrid, purple and orange! And see how the colors blend?”

Doug took the carrot from Zale and began to show her all the marvels of his “perfect carrot.”

“So, what do you guys think? Do you think she’ll like it?”

Kole and Zale looked at each other, and Kole shrugged.

Zale finally answered, “You know… she just might.”

CHAPTER 69

Swimming Lessons

Many people say many things about Tal of Storms. Some say that he was a great hero, others a monster.

In this biography, I will not try to paint him in any light but the truth, but here in the foreword I will say this: When that young mage looked at me and offered to help me, I saw that he genuinely cared about me and my friends. It shocked me then, and to this day still surprises me with all the more I learn. As he prepared to fight the war that would follow, he and his friends—with the fate of Kaltis on their shoulders—stopped to help a group of nobody urchins find a fresh start.

—Dahnchild, Rail. Tallen Elmheart: A Biography, foreword.

Thursday night saw Kole and his team in the library once more, researching and planning. Without warning, Zale looked up from the study table at Kole and spoke.

“Wait…”

“Yes?” Kole said, suddenly very concerned he’d done something wrong.

“Can you swim?”

Back in Kole’s home, the water supply was tightly controlled. The dome kept water out, which made it difficult to replenish any water that was lost. Therefore, they city didn’t leave large pools of water available for anyone to learn to swim in. Some went up to the floating city above and learned to swim in the ocean, but Kole had been singularly focused.

“No.” He was now aware of a large gap in his skill set.

“That’s not good,” Zale said worryingly.

“Everyone else knows how to swim?” Kole asked, receiving nods.

“Even Rakin?”

“Aye,” Rakin said with a wide grin. “it’s very important for being an adventurer.”

“Flood,” Kole said.

“Let’s go,” Zale said, standing. “I’ll teach you.”

“It’s probably—” Kole began to say, but Zale pulled him out of his chair by his arm, and he was reminded how deceptively strong she was.

Zale ran back to her house to grab her swimwear. Despite Kole’s inability to swim, all of his outfits were designed to be worn in the water if necessary. The ship clan clothes he was accustomed to had a pair of shorts as an undergarment that were light and easy to swim in—if one knew how to swim, that is.

She emerged from her house wearing a dress which Kole thought impractical, but he admittedly knew as much about swimming as he did about fashion and refrained from commenting lest he embarrass himself further. Together they went to the martial college. Kole had assumed they’d be going to the river, but Zale led him to a building he’d never been in before.

“They do some underwater training here,” she explained, guiding Kole through a place that was deserted at this late hour. “There’s a whole series of classes about underwater combat.”

“That seems… difficult,” Kole said.

Zale nodded emphatically.

“Fighting underwater is the worst,” she said.

At last she brought Kole to a pair of changing rooms and instructed him to get changed, then exit the room through the back.

Kole obliged and caught sight of his shirtless self in a mirror on the way out. He was surprised by what he saw. He’d never been overweight, but to call him fit before he came to the Academy would have been a generous lie. Now his formerly lanky body had begun to gain some semblance of muscle tone. The contours of muscles were making themselves known, and the slight paunch he’d had was completely gone.

He had never thought to be self-conscious about his appearance before, but the idea occurred to him as soon as he realized he didn’t have to be.

It appeared that all his brutal conditioning was paying off in more ways than one. Clad in just his shorts, and feeling better about himself, Kole went out through the back door.

The room beyond was huge, over a hundred feet long and wide. A pool sat in the ground, filling the majority of the chamber, leaving only ten feet of floor around it on all sides. He paid very little attention to all that, though, for Zale stood outside the door waiting for him.

Gone was the dress she’d been wearing—presumably over her swimwear—and she now wore a one-piece suit that covered her torso, leaving her arms and legs exposed. She stood there confidently waiting for Kole, as he froze, unsure what to do.

When he’d seen her before in her shift, she’d panicked at the impropriety of it all, but now she was wearing even less and didn’t seem at all bothered.

“Are you okay?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, shaking himself out of it.

He considered voicing his thoughts but decided not to.

“Great, let’s go. The water’s perfect.”

Zale and Kole spent the next two hours working in the pool. Zale started by demonstrating different ways to move his arms and legs and then had him mimic her. Eventually they moved on to him trying to use those moves to propel himself across the pool. That didn’t go so well.

Instead, Zale taught him how to tread water, which he picked up rather quickly. Unfortunately, he found the endurance he’d built up for running did not involve the same muscles he used for swimming. After that, Zale tried, and failed, to teach him the complicated strokes she used.

“Let’s just teach you how to move,” she said. “Treading water will keep you alive until someone can throw you a rope, but you can use your arms like this to pull yourself toward it.”

She proceeded to teach him how to “doggy paddle”, and after only a short time, Kole was able to propel himself across the pool—albeit slowly.

“I can swim!” he said triumphantly as he climbed out of the water on the far side.

“I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves,” Zale said teasingly. “You can go in the water and not immediately drown, but I wouldn’t call that swimming.”

“It’s good enough for me,” he said, walking back around the pool.

Before Kole got back to Zale, there came the sound of breaking wood.

CRACK.

“What was that?” Kole asked, just as Zale gestured for him to keep quiet.

He mouthed “sorry” and ran to meet her, trying to minimize the sound of his bare feet slapping against the floor.

The sounds of scuttling and scuffing followed once he got close to Zale. The doors to the locker room stood between them and the noise. Zale gestured for Kole to follow her. She led him to a large cabinet along that same wall and opened it gently to reveal a rack of weapons from daggers to greatswords and everything in between.

Unfortunately, they were all made of wood.

Kole grabbed a quarterstaff, relieved to find it felt normal and had no special modifications for training. Zale grabbed a war hammer that looked to be made of steel. On closer inspection, Kole saw that it had runes all over the head, likely a safety feature to prevent students from bludgeoning each other to death. Zale touched the runes, covering the head of the hammer with her palm. Black motes floated up from the weapon, and when her hand pulled away, the runes beneath where they had been were gone.

“My blasting rod,” Kole whispered, and gestured to the locker room.

She nodded, and he turned invisible and crept towards it. The noise grew louder as he neared the door. He reached for the handle, focusing hard to keep his concentration on the spell, and pulled it open slightly. As soon as the door was cracked the tiniest bit, the noise grew louder. Something within was tearing the room apart.

Kole couldn’t see what was causing the clamor, but he spotted his bag, right where he’d left it near a bench by the door. Mustering all his courage, he slipped into the room.

Once he took two steps, a long lithe figure came into view. It prowled back and forth like a great cat but had the chitinous segmented armor of the crustaceans Kole was familiar with back home. The creature was roughly the size and shape of a tiger and even had the long tail that swept back and forth. It had six legs, but it wasn’t using those to destroy the room. In place of a head, the creature had an entire octopus, its tentacles pulling the lockers off the wall and throwing them around. The monster made wet sniffing noises with the occasional click.

Kole didn’t think he’d been heard and continued on toward his bag. He grabbed the strap and turned to run, regretting the decision immediately. While the creature hadn’t heard his entry, it certainly heard his sudden movement, and it saw the bag fleeing the room, seemingly by magic.

He burst out of the door, even as he dug through his bag and pulled out his blasting rod.

“Lobster octopus tiger thing!” Kole yelled as soon as he returned to the pool room.

Kole was ten feet from the door when it came crashing down, the lobster octopus tiger thing landing hard on top of it. He spun at the sound and sent a blast of his rod at the creature. The bolt of force struck the armor harmlessly, the creature not even noticing the attack as it recovered its footing.

“Flood,” Kole cursed as Zale ran up to his side.

The beast leapt at Kole, but before he could dodge, Zale pushed him out of the way. He stumbled and fell, nearly landing in the pool. Zale didn’t wait for the creature to attack her, but vanished into a cloud of motes, reappearing a few feet away an instant later. She took an instant to orient herself, and in that time the monster had refocused on Kole. Zale’s hammer came down hard on the center of its back.

It hit with a resounding smack that echoed in the large open room, but the chitin didn’t appear to take any damage. The creature did, however, reassign Zale as her primary target.

“That didn’t work as well as I’d hoped!” Zale cried.

By then Kole had gotten to his feet and begun to circle around the creature, putting it between himself and the wall.

“I have an idea!” he shouted. “Vanish when I say so.”

Zale nodded even as she began deflecting the attacks of the tentacles from the monster’s head. When she made a counterattack, the creature swept up a foreclaw at her, and she took a long gash along her thigh.

“Argh!” she screamed, clutching at the wound.

Kole ran at the tiger beast and shouted, “Now!”

Zale vanished in another cloud of black, and Kole unleashed a Thunderwave, sending the spell out into the Arcane Realm. The room erupted in sound as the crack of the spell emanated from his hand. He felt the wave of the attack crash into him as it echoed endlessly off the walls. It was painful, but not debilitating.

The tiger monster wasn’t so lucky. It had been caught flat-footed, still recovering from its attack against Zale. The spell sent it sailing ten feet before crashing into the stone wall of the room.

Zale reappeared just as its limp form fell to the ground, its neck having broken on impact.

“I got it,” Kole said, triumphant but exhausted despite the battle being brief.

As if the words cursed them, the sound of crunching debris came from the locker room, and two more of the creatures came out into the pool.

“I don’t have enough Will for another Thunderwave!” Kole said quickly.

“Invisible! Run!” she commanded him. “There’s a potion behind the reception desk!”

Kole obliged, trusting that Zale wasn’t consigning herself to a noble sacrifice.

He turned invisible and ran through the door to the girls’ locker room. As he ran through, he noticed—despite the situation—that this room was far nicer than the boys’ counterpart.

Flowers? Is that a couch?

Zale appeared in the room after having vanished outside, reappearing within just as Kole exited.

It took the beasts a moment to realize what had happened, but once they did, the door came crashing down. Zale struck the first beast, though, in its octopus head, and then fled as the rear one struggled to get around its companion blocking the door.

Kole waited by the door longer than he should have and only ran once Zale, sprinting at him, shot him a withering look. He took off, down the long hall back to the first desk. Before they made it halfway, one of the tiger beasts burst through the door, crashing into the wall opposite.

Zale didn’t turn to see what had happened but kept sprinting toward Kole—who had turned to see what had happened and was now scrambling to stay ahead.

The second beast ran through the door, crashing into its counterpart. The pair of alien creatures made wet hissing sounds at each other and wrestled briefly before suddenly stopping, with one crouching subserviently in front of the other.

“Turn here!” Zale shouted, directing Kole into a kitchen.

Kole noticed then that Zale had lost her weapon, and he threw her his quarterstaff. The weapon had been invisible in his hand, only turning visible as soon as he threw it, but with her Willsight, she’d been ready for it.

He burst through the kitchen door, the runic lights in the ceiling turning on as he entered, revealing long rows of bare countertops.

“Through the serving line and out to the front desk!” Zale shouted.

The pair made it to the counter that divided the kitchen from the student lines when the octopus heads came into the room.

Kole jumped and slid over the counter, the impact knocking the wind out of his chest and causing him to lose his invisibility, as Zale leapt atop it easily. In her run though the kitchen, she’d picked up a large cleaver and was holding it in her left hand while she had Kole’s staff in the other.

“Run to the counter,” she told him. “I’ll hold them here.”

Kole looked back in turmoil. He wanted to stay and help her, but he knew his blasting rod was useless against these beasts while his Thunderwave could save them. After a moment of hesitation that felt like an eternity, Kole nodded and ran through the empty dining hall.

The monsters were upon Zale before he got to the door, and he saw her smack one monster in the side of its head, sending it staggering away before sidestepping a tentacle from the other. She brought her cleaver around and cut a tentacle out of the air. It landed and writhed around on the counter as its former host reared back in pain, the creature letting out a roar.

Kole missed the follow-up as he ran to the reception counter and vaulted over it, this time clearing it. He landed hard on the other side and began riffling through the drawers. All contained papers, quills and inks, until he came upon one that was locked.

He nearly kicked the wooden door before realizing the folly of doing that with his bare feet. Instead he pulled his blasting rod out of his bag, destroyed the small lock, and then ripped the door open. Within was an assortment of potions that Kole could have identified had he the presence of mind to do so, but his eye fixed on the familiar sky blue of a clarity potion.

Kole snatched it up, uncorking it as he ran around the counter and back into the dining hall.

He still had a quarter of his Will left and a long way to run before he got in range of Zale. As he entered the hall, Zale was fending off both beasts, with many more tentacles writhing around at her feet. The counter had grown thick with blood and one of the monsters stood precariously on it, dueling with Zale, while the other one darted around her on the floor dodging strikes from her quarterstaff.

The one on the ground seemed the more pressing threat, as the one on the counter looked unstable, fighting to keep four of its six legs on the counter. Kole pointed his blasting rod at his target and sent out a barrage of bolts, one after another, until his Will was gone. The first bolt didn’t harm the creature, but by the time it had been struck by five, it began to stagger under the force of the attacks. Zale took the opportunity granted by Kole to focus fully on her other attacker. She dropped her cleaver, held the staff in two hands, and swung around hard, striking the beast in its head and sending it to the ground next to its partner.

Kole downed his clarity potion, not even tasting it in the tumult.

Zale jumped down to one side of the pair with a wall opposite her so that they’d stay bunched up for Kole’s spell.

Kole sprinted across the dining hall as he constructed the spell in his mind.

The crustaceans collected themselves and turned their joined focus on Zale, stepping back to leap at her. Zale held her staff up to guard, and only then, seeing streaks of her black voidling blood covering her, did Kole realize that a lot of the blood on the table had been her own.

The monsters leapt at Zale, and she snarled an incoherent battle cry to meet them. As they were airborne, Kole dropped to his knees mid-sprint, sliding with his hands together and palms held up above him. The crack of thunder erupted from him, striking the flying monsters from below and sending them higher into the air. Their trajectory combined with the spell threw them over the counter, back toward a heavy metal oven. The first hit with a resounding crash as the runic appliance crumbled beneath its weight. The second landed atop the first with a less lethal result.

Kole got to his feet, thankful he’d still been wet from his swim so that slide could work. He risked a glance at Zale to see that she was alright. She’d fallen to the ground to avoid the blast of his spell, and from the look of her, she was spent.

He climbed over the counter as he used the last of his Will to prepare a second Thunderwave. The two tiger monsters lay in a heap, one twitching while the other fought to free itself of the mad clutching motions of the dying octopus head. Kole didn’t give it a chance to recover, and he sent another Thunderwave into the pair.

The spell pushed both into the metal oven behind them with a wet thud, and once Kole was certain they were dead, he collapsed to his knees, praying to Riloth that there wasn’t a fourth.

CHAPTER 70

Two-ish Months

[A silhouette of a man laughing.]

X is for Xoctule the shadowy figure. Is he a god, or something much bigger? His wants are unknown, as are his whereabouts, but of one thing there can be no doubts. The one thing about Xoctule that is known to be true, is if you think you know Xoctule, I don’t want to know you.

—Rider, Sally. ABC’s of Magic, 1st ed.

As if they’d been waiting for Kole and Zale to resolve the issue themselves, armed school guards led by Tigereye burst into the cafeteria as soon as the echoes of Kole’s Thunderwave dissipated.

They tended to Zale and Kole while Tigereye went out to explore the rest of the building. It turned out there had been more than three of the creatures. Tigereye had made quick work of the two more that had been sneaking up to the kitchen door, and slew five more throughout the building, felling each creature with a single swing of his large two-handed ax which he wielded like a hatchet.

Kole was looked over and found unharmed—the blood all over him mostly that of the strange creatures—while Zale was taken to the military medical building. She was covered in scrapes and cuts, but nothing that warranted the magical healing of the Grove.

Though he started to follow her, he stopped when he realized he was only wearing shorts. He took the time to utilize the bathing facility to clean himself of the gore of the battle and get dressed before searching for Zale.

He went to the martial college infirmary he’d first gone to in search of Rakin after the incident with the ice people and was shown straight to her by the same gnome attendant from before. Zale already looked better to Kole’s eyes, and she was politely and patiently trying to convince the nurse attending to her that she was okay to go—using a tactic very different than Rakin would have used in the same situation.

When she saw Kole approach, her face lit up, and the relief Kole had felt at seeing her okay turned into joy at the smile.

“You’re alive!” he said.

“You act surprised,” she said with mock offense. “It takes more than three octopus-crab-tigers to get me.”

Kole grimaced.

“There were actually ten in total,” Kole said. “We definitely would have died if Tigereye hadn’t shown up.”

Zale’s humor vanished in an instant as the reality of their near death sunk in.

“Thanks,” she said after a moment.

“For what?” Kole asked.

She smiled at him as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“For saving my life from an octopus-tiger-crab, obviously.”

“We saved each other’s lives,” Kole said. “It was a team effort. And… they were more lobster than crab.”

Zale let out a heavy sigh, and Kole smiled to show he wasn’t being serious about the correction—though he stood by his assessment.

“It’s not just today,” Zale said, suddenly looking nervous. “These past months… I don’t know how I would have gotten through them alone.”

“You would have been fine,” Kole said, brushing away her concern out of a fear of delving too deep into the topic of her old friends. “Harold came around. I’m sure Gray would have, had I not been in the way.”

“Yeah…” Zale said uncertainly. “Harold’s a great guy. You’re probably right.”

Kole felt a pit in is stomach though he wasn’t sure why.

“Thanks for saving my life at least. That’s not something Harold could have done.”

“It was”—Kole and he felt a massive hand on his shoulder.

“Say you are welcome when a lady thanks you for saving her life,” Tigereye’s booming voice attempted to whisper from behind Kole.

“You are welcome,” Kole finally said after a heavy gulp, unintentionally mimicking Tigereye’s cadence.

“Is my mother coming?” Zale asked hopefully.

“No,” Tigereye said, shaking his head. “A man named ‘Tallen’ had just sent her on some errand. Do you know this man?”

When Tigereye saw the recognition on her face, he continued, “It is unlike her to run an ‘errand’ for anyone. He said what he needed was very important. She agreed. I do not know what it was.”

“Did she say how long she’d be?” Zale asked.

“A few days.”

“Zale!” a voice called from the entrance, and Kole turned to see a very worried Harold running in.

“I’ll… umm, leave you two,” Kole said, excusing himself. “I think Professor Underbrook wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes,” Tigereye agreed, “I will take you to him. We will give these two privacy.”

“Yeah…” Kole agreed, though he’d much rather stay and have Harold go.

Professor Underbrook and a slender elf woman dressed in leaves woven into a robe were examining the corpse of one of the lobster monsters, which was suspended in the air in front of them. One by one the organs were being pulled out and laid on a smooth piece of stone that had risen from the grass to form a table.

“Ah, Kole,” Underbrook said, looking up at his approach. “Why is it always you?”

“I wish I knew—or rather, I wish it wasn’t,” Kole said.

“Hmm, we’ll need to keep a closer eye on you, it seems—not that I think this is your fault.” Underbrook turned back to his work. “Please, recount what happened.”

Kole told them as they worked. Through their conversation, Kole deduced the woman was Arch Druid Cecily, the leader of the Grove—though no one introduced Kole to her.

They both listened even as they studied the creature, more academics arriving as he spoke to examine the other bodies. One wizard even animated the corpse of the most intact one to study its movements. When Kole was finished and had been thoroughly grilled, he was dismissed. An escort was offered, but he didn’t want to explain why he was heading to the library when he’d been sent home.

Alone with his thoughts on the abandoned campus, Kole walked back to his room.

What were those things? And where did they come from? And Underbrook’s right. Why does this keep happening to me? Am I causing all these incursions?

The questions went around and around until the events of the day took on a different meaning.

He’d been in a battle for his life today—his actual life, not some false dungeon experience.

How many times has this happened? Three to four times? Does Rakin and the ice men count as one or two incidents? Also, Corbyn, that probably counts. Yet I feel—wait, four to six, I forgot about the drunken assault.

Kole shook his head to focus. He was tired, and his mind was beginning to wander this late at night.

I just fought a life-or-death battle with strange alien monsters—while nearly naked—and I’m just… okay?

The sewers at the start of PREVENT had been meant to weed out those not suited for the adventuring life. Kole was ashamed to admit he’d never even considered that he might not be cut out for it until that day. But now he knew. He could do this. He had done it. While Zale had helped, he really had saved her life today using a wizard spell he’d learned over the past two months.

Well, four…

Two non-time-dilated months ago, he’d run away from a bully with a club. Today he’d killed three monsters. Even a week ago this fight would have been his doom. Two months didn’t seem long, but in that time, so much had changed for him.

He had a path to his goal. He knew he had the mentality to go after it. And he had friends who would help him pursue it.

His whole life he’d dreamed of becoming an adventurer. He’d always known he could do it, but on this night walking through campus after another near-death experience, he finally believed that he would.

Epilogue

Trish stood nervously before the magic door in her home, checking that she had everything she needed for her mission.

“That egghead owes me big-time for this,” she muttered to herself as she prepared.

While she loved Tal like a brother, she was still loath to do this favor for him.

Or at least, that was what she told herself. In truth, there was very little she wouldn’t do for him. He was her family, and while she stretched the definition of that word greatly, she took it seriously. Her past had been rife with betrayal by those she’d called family, and it wasn’t until she’d met that catatonic, newly orphaned teenager by a drying river that she’d found someone worthy of her loyalty and trust.

He'd proven it time and time again. She wasn’t going to let him down now. Even if he was asking her to go back to the worst place in Kaltis.

She checked her back for the third time, making sure the scroll tubes in the small bag were all accounted for. She checked her hidden holster, making sure Iyckel’s Frost Blade was on her, and then touched one of the sticks holding her hair up, checking for one last time that the Sword of Igan—not in hair-stick form—was on her.

“That’s the third time you’ve checked if I was here,” a strong voice told her, coming from all directions as if the air itself around her spoke. “One might begin to suspect that you are delaying this encounter.”

“I’m not delaying,” Trish said, lying with expertise so good she even managed to fool herself. “I’m just considering if this is the best path. There are other doors to the elven kingdom. I could—”

“There aren’t supposed to be other doors to the elven kingdom,” the voice corrected. “Would you risk the discovery just to avoid this encounter?”

“What if I went by sea?” Trish countered. “I could find a nice pirate ship, go to the elven port. I could avoid ascending the mountain entirely. The king’s vault is closer to the port than this portal.”

“That would take far too long, and you know it,” the voice replied. “And you and I both know you can fly—or rather, I can fly for you.”

“You know I hate it when you’re right, right, Uncle?”

“How do you plan on securing the item from the vault, anyway?” the voice asked in an attempt to get her mind back on the task at hand.

“I was thinking about breaking in, but… I probably shouldn’t,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll probably just ask for it. King Ferinor has been in love with me nearly a hundred years.”

“I don’t think his infatuation is as powerful as you expect.”

“And I don’t think you appreciate how irresistible I am to men with corporeal bodies,” Trish shot back. “But… if he declines—which he won’t—I have enough blackmail to get it. I’d rather just not use it. He really only has the one vice, and if I exploit it now, I’ll lose my leverage over him.”

“Is what Tal needs truly worth it?” the voice asked.

“He says it is, and I trust him.”

The wind around her gusted briefly in what she’d long ago taken to mean a nod from her “uncle.”

“No more putting it off, I suppose… Unless…”

A gale surged, throwing the door in front of her wide open. Another followed from behind and shoved Trish through the doorway.

She dropped into a roll and regained her footing, out in an elegantly appointed elvish sitting room. Everything in the room, from the furniture to the paintings covering the walls, was painfully familiar to Trish. Her father’s hands had crafted each masterpiece. Despite knowing what she’d see before going through the door, she had to fight back a pang of sorrow. Even after over a hundred years, the thought of her lost father hurt.

“Trishalia dear!” a delicate voice called. “This is a wonderful surprise! Where is my granddaughter?”

“Hi, Mom,” Trishalia, Queen of Ice, chancellor of the Academy of Illunia, operator and possible slayer of kings, said with all the confidence of her former teenage self. “She’s busy. She’s made friends. But”—she reached into her bag, pulling out the scroll tubes far too large to have fit inside—“I brought new paintings.”

Author's Notes

Thank you for reading the first book in the Primal Wizardry series. The pre-order for book 2, Illusory Gains, is up now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/hkgAw4vThis book will be available August 5th.

You can also keep reading an earlier draft of this story over at Royal Road if you can't wait until August. The link is on my website below.

If you've caught up you can visit my website PeterJLee.com to see find out what else I am working on. If you've enjoyed the setting, and want to see more of it Dear Spellbook will have a familiar face or two.

I'd also like to thank everyone who helped me with this story, Lu, Joi, Quill, Govir, Scotty, Philippe, Grymalkyne and everyone who left a helpful comment over on Royal Road. This story has been made better from all of your help.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgment

1. Invisible

2. Uncle

3. Competent Guards

4. Castaway

5. Stowaway

6. Understanding

7. Passage

8. Lift

9. Admissions

10. Grand Master

11. Bursar

12. More Rats

13. The Library

14. Commencement

15. Introduction to Alchemy

16. Martial Combat 101

17. Advanced First-Tier Combat Wizardry

18. Goblin-Rats

19. Friends

20. The Room

21. PREVENT

22. Teammates

23. The Dungeon

24. Goblins

25. Blasting Rod

26. Griffin’s Roost

27. Hardball

28. Study Group

29. The Weekend

30. Monday

31. Chase

32. Theral

33. Sticky Runes

34. Rune Library

35. Alive

36. Doug

37. Round Two

38. Rescue

39. Escape

40. Recover

41. Weirdity

42. The Forsaken

43. Vaults

44. Grink

45. Ice

46. Fire

47. Family

48. Pathing

49. Follow the Squirrel

50. The Glade

51. The Mixer

52. Shopping

53. Wasted

54. Morning After

55. The Workshop

56. Old Book, New Tricks

57. Lost Fonts

58. Good Luck

59. Blizzard

60. Ensouled Artifact

61. Forgiveness

62. Elemental

63. Back to Reality

64. Grades

65. On Voidlings

66. Tal of Storms

67. Atrophy

68. Offset Gates

69. Swimming Lessons

70. Two-ish Months

Epilogue

Author's Notes