Illusory Empire: A Magic School Progression Fantasy, page 24
Gray’s eyes lit up as he understood the implications.
“You guys were the agents?”
Kole nodded.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Before they could talk more, Professor Underbrook started the class.
“Time for some mental defense training!” he said with sadistic glee, and everyone let out a collective groan.
***
Kole was tempted to ask Gray if he could use Mind Spike on him during the training, but decided it wouldn’t be good to knock him unconscious if the spell’s full force struck him. He also didn’t particularly want to explain how he suddenly knew the spell after being stranded in another realm without access to spellbooks for a whole week.
My life sure has gotten strange, Kole reflected.
After a full hour of mind-aching defense training performed while Underbrook lectured about the ways to identify creatures with mental offensive capabilities, class was dismissed.
As Kole walked out, Professor Underbrook intercepted him and handed him a note.
“Good luck,” he said and then teleported away.
Kole unfolded the note.
Kole Teak,
You have been summoned to meet with the Headmaster of the Wizarding College at 2:15, on the 3rd day of Waas, in the year 821 AF.
—Timon Toonivus, assistant to Grand Master Cyril Lonin, Headmaster of the Academy of Illunia’s College of Wizardry.
Kole read the note over, laughing that the signature was longer than the note itself, even with the addition of the full date. He tried to recall meeting Lonin’s assistant, but he couldn’t recall ever meeting the man.
With wizard college classes no longer taking place in the Dahn itself with the reduction of extraplanar space use, Kole had to jog to get to the office in time.
He was pleased to note that the light jog wasn’t even winding him, as it would have at this point in the previous semester. He still longed to learn the spell Teleport. Even with the cost increase due to his primal nature, travelling great distances in an instant would be very useful.
Someday, he vowed, knowing third-tier spells were a way off.
Kole got up to Lonin’s office, surprised to see that the building had been rearranged. Before his office door had opened to a hall filled with other doors, but now there was a reception area set into the hall, with a desk beside the door manned by a middle-aged male gnome.
“Can I help you?” the gnome said, after Kole had stood there for a few moments unsure what to do.
“I have an appointment,” Kole said, handing over the note.
The gnome, presumably Timon, inspected the note, reading it carefully, as if checking if it were authentic.
After he was satisfied with it, by whatever criteria under which he was scrutinizing it, he admitted Kole.
“He’s ready for you,” he said, gesturing to the door.
Kole let himself in to find Professor Lonin looking out a window, through which the harbor rift was still visible. Kole didn’t recall looking out the window the last time he’d been here, but he was pretty sure the mountains had been in the background, not the harbor.
The idea of a moving window intrigued him, and he quickly entered his vault to review the memory there using his spellbook. Doing so, he found that the window had in fact faced north towards the mountains.
In hindsight, a moving window was one of the less impressive magical feats he’d seen the Dahn do.
“—for coming on such short notice,” Lonin said as Kole brought his awareness back to reality.
“No problem,” Kole said, taking the safe bet he’d not missed much of the introduction. “I’m sure you’re busy with—well—that.”
Kole gestured out the window.
“Not just that,” Professor Lonin said with a heavy sigh. “You don’t realize how much work someone does until they suddenly disappear. Miss Wood’s mother, as flighty as she might appear, was doing a lot to keep this ship afloat. Kelina does much to cover for the absence, but I’ve had to take on an assistant just to keep up on everything.”
Kole nodded in understanding. Zale’s mother didn’t seem to be the type suited for the role of chancellor, but in hindsight her air of flippancy was likely an affectation. She was, after all, a world-famous adventurer over a hundred years old. While it appeared she delegated everything to those around her, more likely she was dealing with larger issues behind the scenes, assigning the more mundane tasks to her subordinates.
“But you didn’t come here to hear an old man complain,” Lonin said, clapping his hands together once. “Let’s discuss you and your recent developments. Have a seat.”
Here goes nothing, Kole thought, deciding to lay everything out and pray that the professor would aid him, not convince him to leave his chosen path.
Kole complied, and he began to tell the Grand Master wizard all about the new developments involving his spellbook.
Chapter 37
Consequences of Misadventure
Eventually, his experiments grew too unruly to be ignored, and he was run out of the city he’d made his home. He ventured out into the wilderness. No one knows where he went, or what he did while out there, but it is believed the majority of magical creatures classified as “formed creatures” by Lidian Oakcrest were created by him.
—Wicket, Temin. Wicket’s Guide to the Pantheon, 1st ed.
“Simply fascinating,” Grand Master Lonin said, not for the first or even fifth time, as Kole finished his summary of his abilities. “And you learned Mind Spike from a traditional spellbook in just a day?”
Kole nodded and said, “But I haven’t optimized the Will cost yet.”
As if that made the feat any less impressive. In fact, the confidence with which he asserted he could further optimize the spell suggested just how impressive his recent developments were. Optimizing the path of a spell was no small task for a wizard of Kole’s age, even a gifted one.
The first five or so years of wizarding education revolved about learning existing spells, relegating customization of spells for much later. There were, after all, thousands of years of magical knowledge to draw upon; why spend time recreating the wheel when there were already countless suitable models for any occasion?
“So,” Lonin said, after a long silence. “How can I help you?”
“Excuse me?” Kole said, not at all expecting that response.
The professor let out a small chuckle.
“You were expecting me to try to convince you to quit PREVENT?” he asked.
Kole nodded.
“Will you?” Lonin asked.
Kole shook his head.
“I assumed as much. So, instead of frustrating both of us by pursuing that path, I ask again. How can I help you?”
“Be my mentor for PREVENT?” Kole asked, hoping for a second unexpected response.
“That I cannot do. I don’t have the knowledge or skills to properly train you for that path, nor the time to do so if I had.”
“Well, then, could you help me find a mentor?” Kole asked. “I need someone who knows about my spellbook’s abilities, but I can’t go around advertising that I have an ensouled artifact. If you could tell people about my situation on my behalf, and find someone trustworthy and willing, that would help.”
Lonin considered the request, then said, “That’s a good idea, but have you considered Professor Underbrook?”
“No…” Kole said, trying to see why that would be a good suggestion. “He doesn’t seem particularly interested in the more theoretical parts of wizardry. What guidance would he have for navigating traditional spells?”
“That is true,” Lonin agreed, but then added, “But what guidance do you currently need for navigating traditional spells?”
Kole opened his mouth to speak, expecting a deluge of areas he needed help in, but found no words came out.
In all his advancements in wizardry the past few months, it had never occurred to him that his needs for a mentor would have changed alongside them. He no longer needed a mentor with knowledge of traditional wizardry. It would be nice, but it was no longer a requirement for him to progress at a reasonable pace. He’d passed any sort of reasonable pace.
After a moment, he simply said, “Oh.”
“Oh indeed,” Professor Lonin said.
“Does he take apprentices?” Kole asked.
“Not usually. He doesn’t like ‘babysitting,’ or so he says. But I think I could convince him to make an exception for you.”
“Really?” Kole asked. “Why me?”
In response, Lonin gestured to the window with the rift beyond.
“You can likely handle yourself well enough to keep up with his preferred teaching method, and you have a sense of spectacle he looks for.”
“Spectacle?” Kole asked, knowing that Underbrook had a flair for the dramatic, but not certain about himself.
My default is to hide, the opposite of spectacle, he thought, but then realized that was no longer true.
Sure, he did hide, turn invisible, or use his Fade ability, but it was now just a tool in his arsenal, not his primary means of facing conflict.
Once more in response, Professor Lonin gestured to the rift.
They talked for a while longer, Kole asking about the details of some pathing techniques that still confused him, and Lonin helping fill in the gaps in his larger self-taught skill set.
As Kole moved to leave when the meeting was over, Lonin stopped him at the door.
“One more thing,” he said. “There is the matter of the consequences for your misadventure.”
***
Sometime later, Kole left with a stack of annotated experimental spellforms that Lonin was working on. Each was fully drawn out, but they lacked the Will intent that turned them from strange squiggles to invaluable vessels of arcane knowledge.
Kole would have to fill them in over the remainder of the semester. The task wouldn’t be hard, especially if he used his spellbook, but it would be boring and time-consuming. Which, he supposed, was the purpose of a disciplinary action.
Chapter 38
Conjure
His isolation ended when his magnum opus terrorized civilization: the hydra of legend. With the body of a drake, the head of a snake, and the regeneration of a troll, the beast escaped his control and attacked a small village. In an effort to stop it, the villagers tried to slay it, but with each attempt to do so, the hydra grew additional heads. For years it roamed the outskirts of society, Rettew pursuing it, always trying to coax it back home while innocents fled its destruction.
—Wicket, Temin. Wicket’s Guide to the Pantheon, 1st ed.
“Is that even a punishment for ye?” Rakin asked Kole one day as he was working on Lonin’s assignment in the common room.
“Yes,” Kole said, finishing one spellform and moving on to the next.
He really would rather be learning another spell, but he’d neglected doing any of the disciplinary work all week and it was already Friday.
After the week before it, which consisted of constant boredom coupled with an ever-present fear of suddenly being ambushed by an army of ants, this past week had been a cyclone.
Kole and his friends had been assigned two rift watches as a group, which had been uneventful, but yet another thing to do on top of everything else. The duty consisted of walking the newly constructed battlements and being ready for an invasion at any moment. While not physically exhausting, the mental drain of being constantly on alert was such that Kole found his Will didn’t recover passively as it normally would have. They all had to cram to keep up with the current week’s curriculum. And through all that, Kole was constantly eager to squirrel himself away and work on one spell or another.
He wasn’t the only one to have a breakthrough in that other realm.
Being cut off entirely from the Font of Space had done great things for Zale and Doug. In Doug’s case, he’d become much more sensitive to the presence of the Font within him. The way he’d described it, he’d always felt the power’s connection to himself, but he never knew where it was. It was like he was blind and there was something constantly spinning around him. Sometimes he’d bump into it by accident, and whenever he’d try to reach for it, he’d invariably miss.
Now he had a better sense for it. Tangibly this meant he could now more reliably force a teleport, and he had some control over the direction he went in. His limit, if he pushed himself, was about seven teleports before running out of Will. With that skill finally coming under some semblance of control, he’d moved on to something Kole himself had begun work on.
Conjure.
This ability was simple and unimpressive at first glance. Summoning an object from on your person into your hand didn’t seem like that big of a deal on its own, but when one was an archer wasting precious time drawing an arrow from a quiver, the small cantrip drastically improved one’s offensive capabilities.
Doug wasn’t being particularly forthcoming about it, but he had been meeting Professor Tailor ever since their run-in, and the expert Space Primal was giving him some guidance.
What little Doug did share was only enough to press the importance of them keeping this fact a secret.
“I don’t think he’s allowed to teach me,” Doug said. “I think I told you, but Shalia tried to get me a tutor from the Hollow Peak when my parents reached out to her for help, and they refused to help. Tailor… doesn’t seem to have the same issue everyone else has with me.
“My ancestor Eric knew Shalia. He was from the Hollow Peak and helped them escape their refuge in the Peak after the Flood had stopped—actually, Tal of Storms did most of the saving, but my ancestor was the one who got him to help, so he got credit. Afterwards, he refused to return home, instead living in the mountains with the demonkin tribes. Most people took Eric’s rejection of his own people poorly. Our existence was mostly forgotten until Shalia showed up asking for a trainer for one of his descendants. Her offer was rejected.”
They’d agreed to keep it a secret, and Doug had then stopped talking about it, letting his progress speak for his tutoring.
Kole’s task for the week had been to learn the cantrip for the Font of Space in whatever time he had to do it. He’d also spent a small portion of that time getting Mind Spike down to 3 Will, which he was now certain was his lower limit for a first-tier Mind spell.
By Friday, he’d learned Conjure and been disappointed to discover that it still cost him 10 Will to cast the cantrip that cost Doug nothing once he’d mastered it.
Despite the disappointment, Kole was still proud of his accomplishment. He could Conjure his spellbook to his hand from as far away as he was willing to test it. They’d even sent Zale through a door in the Dahn back to Orinqth holding it, and Kole had been able to Conjure it back to his hand as if it had been in his bag. That had been his highest hope for the ability.
No one could break the Bond he had with his ensouled spellbook, but it wouldn’t be hard for them to simply take it from him, depriving him of its use. During the long-distance Conjuring test, Kole found that he lost access to the spells stored within the spellbook when it was that far away, but further local testing proved the maximum distance he could stray from it while keeping access to be at least a mile.
Other applications of the cantrip weren’t of much interest to Kole, since it cost three times as much to cast as a first-tier spell. Conjure didn’t work on anything with a touch of foreign Will in it, like a clarity potion or nonensouled magic item, so the things Kole could do with it were rather limited.
Zale, fresh off of her own week of being deprived of the Font of Space, recently coupled with both Kole and Doug’s constant drawing upon it, had found the Font in a single day.
She’d been so ecstatic with the discovery that she’d jumped to her feet, cheering in celebration, and activated her void ability on the Font of Space without thinking through the potential ramifications.
Instead of Space vanishing around her—which would have likely resulted in something terrible—a black circle had appeared in the air in front of her, about two feet in diameter.
Kole, who’d been sitting with his back against Zale’s and working his way through pathing Conjure, stopped and stared. The circle was the darkest shade of black he could possibly imagine, immediately drawing to mind the black mass of darkness that made up the hair of the voidling he’d killed.
That brought back the weight of what he’d done. He’d been avoiding the thought of the unfortunate captive he’d had a hand in killing, and now he felt his heart sink. He’d killed creatures before—in and out of the dungeon—and some of them had been thinking creatures. But… the voidling had been innocent. He shook the thought away, not wanting his mind to spiral, and focused on the magical feat in front of him—and the tried-and-true means Kole had employed to distract himself from introspection in the past.
Despite the circle being so completely and utterly black, it seemed to glow. While Kole wasn’t certain how this was possible, he was certain it was the case. The black circle of darkness glowed. With that minor revelation, the thoughts threatening to overwhelm him were swept aside.
He was less concerned about the odd color than the more immediate and evident effect of the ability: the sudden roar as the black spot rapidly sucked in all the surrounding air.
They were all sitting on the green under a tree when this happened—at Zale’s insistence that they spend the day outside. The block spot became a hungry maw, swallowing everything around it. The branches of the tree bent forward toward the hole. The roar of the air and flapping of the leaves were almost deafening, until abruptly it all stopped and the branches, released from the force of the suction, sprung back up.
“What in Fauell’s rocky arse was that?!” Rakin shouted.
