Illusory Empire: A Magic School Progression Fantasy, page 6
“Maybe we were supposed to follow those healers out?” Doug said.
The four looked between each other and ran out of the room in search of some sort of adult.
And some sort of adult was what they found. Professor Underbrook was waiting for them in a central chamber that branched out to various other ready rooms.
“How’d you all like my sand bowl?” he asked eagerly.
“Your sand bowl?” Kole asked.
At the same time, Rakin said, “It was great.”
“Yes, my sand bowl. I devised all of the match environs for this year’s tournament. I think you’ll find a bit of my own personal touch with each one.”
Kole and Zale let out a shared groan.
“The decoy balls were your idea, then, too?” Kole asked, earning a proud grin.
“I tried to get a sandworm, but it would have stretched the budget,” Underbrook said.
Aside from a congratulations on their performance and a “see you Monday,” the team was a little underwhelmed at their welcome as they left. There would be a monetary prize for the finalists, but the first round rated nothing more than words.
***
Later that night, the four teammates plus Amara walked into the Griffin’s Roost with a round of applause and teasing catcalling whistles. Before meeting at the tavern for dinner, they’d all gone back to their home to get the sand out of their—well—everywhere.
Rakin, despite having literally swum through the stuff, was the least grimy due to his ability to will the sand off himself, but even he was still pretty grimy.
Kole had learned there were many, many, many perks to having one’s bedroom attached to an actual home as opposed to a dark and forgotten corner of a library. Some of these were simple pleasures, such as not having to sneak in and out, not needing to hide one’s food from time-traveling rats, and having a dedicated room to relieve oneself, forgoing the use of a chamber pot. But of all these benefits, the pinnacle was the access to a shower.
While not generally one to waste time on trivialities when that time could be better used for things like studying, Kole had been making an effort to finding the time each day to shower in Zale’s home if he hadn’t already done so after morning training.
His regular cleaning had even attracted the attention of a certain sand-loving dwarf.
“Are ye showering so much ’cause of Zale?” he’d asked Kole with a conspiratorial smile.
“What? No?” Kole said, a little too defensively. “Why? Did she say something?”
At the Roost, the freshly bathed team found a roar of applause and countless offers of food and drink on the tab of the resident adventurers.
“This is amazing!” Zale said to Kole. “You should go ask around for a mentor!”
Few things seemed less appealing to Kole at that moment than walking up to strange wizards and asking them to take him on as an apprentice.
“Maybe we just celebrate tonight, and I’ll try to get a feel for who’s interested?” Kole asked more than suggested.
Zale looked around and then back at Kole. Noticing his reluctance, she said, “Good idea.”
“Why was the other team so bad?” Amara asked, once they’d been seated and Zale had fended off two groups of adventurers giving their congratulations for the win and their condolences for her missing mother.
“They weren’t terrible,” Zale began, only to be interrupted by Rakin.
“We’re just great.”
“Yeah,” Zale agreed hesitantly. “Pretty much.”
Amara then asked a bunch of questions about the nature of the runes used in the arena’s magic, earning looks of confusion from everyone.
“There were runes?” Kole asked her, trying to recall if he’d seen any.
Amara looked at them all stricken, at a loss for words.
“Wait!” he said before Amara passed out from utter shock.
He pulled out his spellbook and began to write about his experience in the ready room. Immediately, the ensouled artifact’s magic went to work enhancing his memory, and he began to sketch out a few simple runes he suddenly remembered seeing.
Amara moved to snatch the book from him, but Kole pulled it back just in time.
“I think you could probably just go to the room yourself and study them,” Kole suggested. “There wasn’t any security.”
The ready rooms for the arena had been set up in an empty building on the outskirts of campus, and no efforts had been made to secure the building, so Kole didn’t think they were secret.
Amara’s eyes lit up with possibility.
“Tomorrow,” Zale said, reading the expression on her face.
“Of course you’re studying in a bar,” a very disappointed Runt called. She abruptly appeared beside their table, a stack of paper in hand.
“What?” Kole asked, then realized what she meant, and put his spellbook away. “No, this was about the hardball match.”
“Sure it was. You’re a nerd. That’s fine. Look, I really don’t care. I got the schedule of that psycho,” Runt said, handing Kole a stack of sheets. “And I got his entrance exam.”
“Really?” Kole asked, taking the papers.
“Yeah. He did okay. Above average, but no genius,” Runt said.
He took her word for it and didn’t go through the stack, only looking at the schedule on top. He was a little disappointed that Corbyn wasn’t a complete failure, but he’d already known the boy to be at least competent back home.
“Thanks!” he said.
“I still need to tail him to get his actual schedule, but this should help you avoid him this week.”
“This is perfect! You did it so fast, too. You don’t have to do any more.”
Runt held up a hand to stop him.
“It’s nothing, really. The security at that school is a joke.”
“You only say that because my mother whitelisted you on half the school’s defensive measures because you kept triggering them!” Zale said, already aggravated by this brief encounter.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Kole asked. “I thought you said the nightlife here was terrible.”
Runt looked around the tavern and wrinkled her nose.
“I’ll manage,” she said. “And besides… I think it’s best if I stay around the Dahn. I’ve heard reports of those weird animals popping up in other cities, but the occurrences have died down here. I’d like to avoid a repeat of…”
Runt trailed off, looking at Amara meaningfully. She was engrossed in the runes in Kole’s spellbook, ignoring the conversation.
The statement drew everyone else’s full attention.
“Weird animals?” Kole and Zale asked in unison.
Runt sighed, rubbed her forehead, and muttered under her breath, “Adventurers.”
Chapter 9
Truce
Cork the Many is a pack rat, Blessed with intelligence by his Assuine Blessed mother. His efforts saved the Village of Eval and in doing so stopped the summoning of a major demon.
—Vondermin, Erol. Days of Heroes.
“Explain!” Zale demanded.
Runt, who was still standing in front of their table at the Griffin’s Roost, sighed again, looked around, and pulled up a chair in an unnecessarily showy manner. She pulled it towards her with a jerk of her foot, spinning the chair into place and facing away from the table.
She plopped herself down, legs around the backrest and arms crossed atop it.
“Fine,” she said, “but you’re all asking for trouble. I’ve gotten reports through Shalia’s information network about more strange hybrid animal creatures appearing around Basin.”
“How do you have access to that?” Zale asked.
“I am her apprentice,” Runt said haughtily. “I manage a small part of it as part of my training. I’ve been giving what information I can to the Academy staff in her absence.”
“The professors know about this and didn’t tell us?” Kole asked, looking at his friends with a tad bit of self-righteous outrage.
“Eh, why would they?” Rakin said with a shrug. “We’re just students.”
Kole’s sense of reason caught up with his apparent burgeoning sense of pride, and he realized his outrage had been a little unjustified.
“Where did these hybrids appear?” Amara asked, suddenly joining the conversation.
Runt closed one eye, considering, before listing, “New Landing, Orinqth, and a half dozen places out in the wilds.”
“There were reports of missing primals in New Landing and Orinqth!” Amara said, jumping to her feet.
“Whoa, calm down there, ant girl,” Runt said.
“How do you know about that?” Zale asked.
“I’ve paid for an information broker to tell me about any reports of missing primals to get clues about Amintha. It’s apparently fairly common, so none of the reports so far had been anything worthwhile. What were the dates?”
Runt listed the occurrences, and Amara pulled a sheet of paper out of her bag.
“They are the same day!” she shouted, getting the attention of other patrons. “We need to go find her!”
“Slow down, Amara,” Zale said, gesturing for her to sit. “That was a week ago. She’s not there now. Let’s talk this through.”
“When did you have time to hire an information broker?” Doug asked. “You were obsessed over your broom thing, and we were very good at keeping you distracted—ow! Who kicked me?”
“I did,” Rakin confessed without any shame.
“It’s alright,” Amara said, looking at Rakin. “I knew what you were doing. I’m not that oblivious. And I can obsess over two things. I didn’t think to keep an eye out for hybrid creatures, though, that was smart.”
Amara pulled a map out of her bag as well, which had two marks already on Orinqth and New Landing.
More forcefully than usual in anything but discussions of runes, Amara looked to Runt and said, “Mark on this map where the hybrids appeared with the dates. Zale’s right, Amintha is probably long gone, but there were patterns with the last incursions here, and there will be more. If we can find the location of a portal in a place primals went missing, we can find a path to her.”
“But why?” Runt asked, though she didn’t reject the command. “She’s awful.”
“She’s my sister,” Amara said, as if it were obvious.
“But… she was so mean t’ya,” Rakin said. “Why do ye want ta see her?”
“I don’t,” Amara said, looking up from the map. Her face was set in determination, but the hint of a tear welled up in her eye. “She needs to be stopped, and I need to help do it.”
Runt just shook her head, disappointed.
“Sure, it’s your funeral. I’ll get you the information—and ask around about missing primals.”
Kole watched his friends. Zale was chewing her lip, looking from Amara to Zale with worry. Rakin looked angry, and Doug looked like he’d rather be elsewhere.
“We’re not really doing this, are we?” Kole asked. “Hunting her down across Basin? No, beyond Basin. Another Realm. I know this worked out last time, but that was pretty dumb of us to try to handle alone.”
“We don’t have to do it alone,” Amara said. “I just need to help. I don’t have to single-handedly catch her, but I can’t just sit around and wait while she’s out there hurting people.”
“Alright,” Kole said. “I’ll help, but how are we going to do anything more than mark up a map?”
“We can do more!” Zale said, having overcome whatever inner turmoil she’d been fighting. “I found doors!”
“You what?” Doug asked, just as Runt said, “You did?!”
“Yeah! I was going to tell everyone this morning, but…” Zale turned to Runt, her excitement dying down. “Runt was there, and I didn’t want her to know.”
“Oops,” Kole said for Zale.
“Oops indeed,” Runt said with a smile. “If you show me where they are, I can be a lot more helpful gathering information.”
Zale looked defeated. “Fine. But you need to promise me you won’t steal anything while using them. The last thing I need is you leading a group of guards or thugs through my house—again.”
“That only happened like, twice, before your mom kicked me out.”
“You led them through my room both times!” Zale shouted.
“It’s not my fault the doors keep switching around!” Runt yelled back.
”Umm, excuse me,” Doug said, raising his hand.
He was trapped in the far corner of the booth.
“If we’re done celebrating, can I go? I promised Mouse I’d—” he said, before vanishing mid-sentence.
His antlered head appeared ten feet away, next to a table of adventurers, who drew their weapons at the sudden appearance of a demonkin. Doug’s head spun around trying to regain his bearings after the sudden shift in perspective.
“—meet her,” he finished, just as the adventurers put their weapons away, recognizing Doug and his affliction after the broadcasted hardball match.
Doug’s inadvertent antics broke the tension, and Zale sighed. She offered her hand to Runt.
“Truce?”
Runt met her grip, but scrunched up her nose and reluctantly shook.
Now free of the booth, Doug waved uncertainly.
“Bye?”
Chapter 10
Radiant Bolt
The Phanton Nesni, a thief with a strange array of gifts, and a stranger outlook on life, saved King Kalin from an assassination attempt by forsaken forces, single-handedly thwarting the massive covert infiltration of a celebration.
—Vondermin, Erol. Days of Heroes.
The party left the Griffin’s Roost shortly after Doug’s departure, all headed back home.
On the way, Kole thought over the implications of their encounter with Runt.
Are we really doing this again? he asked himself over and over, unsure how he felt about it.
The larger sensible part of him that preferred to spend as much time as possible studying to improve his wizardry thought they should just take whatever information they found straight to the Academy’s staff. But the smaller—yet rapidly growing—part of him that had gotten a taste for adventuring wanted to… he wasn’t exactly sure, but he was certain meekly turning over information to adults so they could handle the problem for him wasn’t it.
He wasn’t being stupid, at least that was what he kept telling himself. Their plans weren’t to thwart the possible invasion of the Midlian remnants from whatever other realm they’d hidden in all these years. They just wanted to find Amintha. Sure, she was terrifying, in the uncanny way she looked exactly like the sweet and innocent Amara while being a literal sociopath who’d imprison other people and drain for power, but she’d lost all that power, and as far as they’d seen and heard from Amara, she wasn’t individually powerful.
By the time they got back home, Kole had mostly talked himself into being okay with the decision they’d made to investigate these occurrences, but he couldn’t help but wish Tal and Zale’s mother were here.
“What’s everyone want to do now?” Zale asked when they got home.
“Bed,” Rakin said, walking past her.
Zale nodded to Rakin, unconcerned by his rejection.
“I’ve got so much work to do,” Amara said, holding up a notebook she’d been sketching in the whole walk back.
None of them were certain what she was doing. She’d explained what she’d been working on in detail on the way back, but that had been the problem. It had been in exacting detail, and none of them had the knowledge in runecrafting to see the bigger picture.
Zale nodded at her and looked to Kole hopefully.
While part of his mind had been worrying over their plans to find Amintha, another part had been reviewing his latest spell construct in his mental vault. The vaults, while essential for wizardry, had many benefits even for people who constructed them without the intention of ever crafting a bridge. As he’d explained to Rakin, he was working on gaining some of these benefits.
“I’ve got a new variant of Radiant Bolt I’m going to try,” he said.
“Oh, okay,” Zale said, disappointment evident.
What did I do? Kole wondered.
She’d not cared when Rakin and Amara had left, so he’d taken that as leave to be a hermit as well.
“I can—” he began, but Zale shook her head.
“It’s fine.” She forced a smile. “Just don’t stay up too late.”
“I promise,” Kole said with every intention of keeping his word.
***
Too many hours later, Kole fell asleep. He’d begun working at his desk, reviewing the spellform he was constructing for Radiant Bolt on paper even as he worked on the construct in his mind, but after a while he’d moved to his bed to begin work on his pathing.
At first, he would leave his vault after every spell attempt, bringing his awareness back to reality to monitor the time. But as his work progressed, he sensed he was getting close, and his patience left him. With each failed attempt, he dove back in, tweaking the spell and trying again.
Closer and closer, his spell made its way to the Font of Light, until… he fell asleep.
The next morning, Kole woke up confused after vivid dreams of success. As soon as he realized it hadn’t been real, without checking the time or even getting out of bed, he dove right back into his work.
And some unknown amount of time later—unknown to Kole, at least, but five hours to his friends, who’d long since stopped waiting for him to get up—he sent his spell construct into the Arcane Realm, and a brilliant bolt of golden light shot out from his hand and hit the ceiling before dispersing.
“I did it!” he shouted, but no one was around to see it.
At that point, Kole realized he’d not seen the pack rat around since the Dahn had tightened its security, or Theral, for that matter.
Is that a coincidence or related? he wondered.
Finally, Kole got out of bed with a rumbling stomach and went out into the communal living area to find it empty. The clock showed it to be almost dinnertime.
