Amintha, Runt, and Shalin didn’t wake that night or the next morning by the time Kole’s team had to leave for their final.
“Got any of those magic berries?” Rakin asked Doug as he hobbled out of bed.
“Those are rare and have a short shelf life,” Doug said. “If they have any, they save them for life and death injuries. Not sore bottoms.”
“Why’d I get one before?” Rakin asked.
“I don’t know,” Doug said with a shrug. “They probably thought you were going to die.”
They gathered their gear, which was conveniently all in the room since their recent adventures, and hobbled towards campus.
All the students for PREVENT were gathered in the foyer in the Dahn, and they were the last to join. The room grew silent on their entry, and all eyes turned to them. The looks they got varied greatly. Some were irritated, while others were excited to see them. The larger portion seemed to be leaning toward irritation.
“I don’t think people are happy we delayed this,” Rakin stage whispered.
At that, most of the irritated people suddenly found the floor or wall to be very interesting.
Kole found Harold’s face in the crowd, relief and anger warring on his face. Gray beside him shook his head disappointed, and pulled Harold back into their discussion.
“Great, you’re all here!” Underbrook’s voice boomed. “Line up! You’ll each be escorted to a door, which will take you out into the wilderness. That is your goal. Spread around the forest, there is an undisclosed number of hardballs. Get as many as you can back to your starting location. Anything goes, but keep in mind, the world is watching.”
At the last sentence, an illusion appeared in the air above their heads, showing a vast pinewood forest.
“Flood,” Kole cursed.
“What’s wrong?” Rakin asked. “Stage fright?”
“Don’t worry,” Zale tried to reassure him. “This will be good for you! It will be a chance to show off for prospective mentors.”
“It’s also a great way to embarrass ourselves in front of prospective mentors but that’s not it,” Kole explained. “I don’t want to broadcast the details of my Illusion magic to the world. It’s a lot less useful when people know what to look for. Fade already doesn’t work on any of you.”
“Just use your rod then,” Zale suggested. “Not to be dismissive, but that should be more than enough to deal with our classmates.”
Kole considered it. His Will capacity was double to triple that of the rest of his class, and the blasting rod Amara had made for him was something that would be beyond most of their means to buy—his own too. It paid to have a prodigy innovator rune smith friend sometimes. Amara had powered the repair rune for him that morning so he could conserve his Will for the hardball battle royale, and he could cast a Shield and Magic Missile now in a pinch.
Most of his other wizard peers could cast three to four spells by now and would be relying more heavily on their martial training. In their strategy discussions prior to their impromptu adventure, Zale had told them to expect the martial students to hold the front lines, while Blessings and magic were saved for critical moments.
Kole looked back up at the illusion above, realizing that he couldn’t sense the magic in it as he could with the last few illusions he’d seen cast.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Weird. He thought, but his mind was too occupied to dig into it.
Beside him, he saw Zale fiddle with his bracelet, and her complexion changed from stark white to olive tan, her hair changing from black to brown.
“Why are you doing that?” Kole asked, suddenly brought out of his reflection. “Is it because of something he said?”
Kole pointed in Harold’s direction, noticing then that Doug was over there talking with Mouse before the event.
“No!” Zale said quickly. “Well, yes, but not for what you think—or what I think you think.”
When Kole didn’t answer, and Rakin gave her a disapproving glare, she continued.
“I did what you said. Harold bailed on me again, and I pressed him for an explanation. Finally, he opened up and told me the truth. He’s been canceling whenever I went out all voidy. I should have seen it—“
“It's not yer fault he’s a git!” Rakin interrupted, but Zale continued, ignoring him.
“—earlier. When I’m like this, as you’ve noticed, people can be rude. Well, we have a difference of opinion on how that rudeness should be handled. I think jerks should be ignored, Harold prefers to teach them lessons. We’d talked about it, I thought it was settled, but he couldn’t handle it. We broke up. He accepts that I want to be myself, but he can’t hold back when he sees people being… well, racist I guess.”
Kole had known Harold’s side of it, and if he was being honest with himself, it was actually a really solid reason to justify his behavior. But now, hearing Zale talk about it with sympathy in her voice, he started to feel something about the situation other than the mix of anger and jealousy that usually dominated his emotions when on the topic.
“What’s that got to do with now?” Rakin asked.
“I’m doing it for Kole,” she said.
“What!? Me? why?”
“Eyes of the world,” she said, imitating Underbrook tone. “I don't want to ruin your shot at a mentor."
With a smile, she gestured to herself and added, "And besides, my mother taught me to always use a burnable identity when operating on the public stage. There aren’t a lot of quarter-elf half-voidlings running around who look as good as this.”
“Aye, that sounds like her.” Rakin agreed.
“Through your doors!” Underbrook announced, putting an end to the conversation.
“Thank you” Kole said to Zale when he caught her attention as they stood outside their door.
“Don’t mention it,” she said with a big smile. “But you’ll have to make it up to me somehow.”
“I thought you just said you would have done it anyway. Your mom’s thing and all that.”
“I did, but she told me to not give out for free what people are willing to pay for,” Zale said.
“Yer mom was teaching ye to be a prostitute?” Rakin asked and then burst out into laughter.
Zale grew flush, and her eyes went wide.
“Oh Waas, that can’t be what she meant. Can it?”
“Definitely not,” Rakin said. “Otherwise she woulda let Harold keep that door handle and charged him for it.”
“I told you! Nothing happened!” Zale shouted.
“Guys!” Doug said, standing in the forest outside their door. “We need to go!”
----------------------------------------
Adventure tends to find people at inconvenient times. That’s one of the core tenets of PREVENT the professors had been trying to hammer home. Sometimes you have a month-long stint in an inn before an ice elemental attacks, and other times you fall from the frying pan and into the fire.
On one level, it made the final Kole was taking a better test, but on another more practical level, it was really inconvenient.
The first sign things weren’t going to go well was the hobbled pace most of them walked with. The second sign was the blinding headache Kole had when he tried to cast Shield when an arrow came out of the woods.
“Bo-ahh!” he shouted in pain.
The arrow struck him, and he vanished, reappearing in a room with two other students he recognized vaguely from class.
Though, that recollection came later, as he was writhing on the floor in pain.
----------------------------------------
“Will poisoning,” Underbrook said sympathetically as he examined Kole.
The ongoing match was going on above him, but looking at anything caused his headache to get worse.
“How many clarity potions did you use yesterday?”
“Two,” Kole answered, knowing that had been a risk.
“Ah, well. That’ll do it. Most people can handle twice their Will capacity, no problem, but no one your age should get off using triple scot-free.”
“So… does that mean I failed PREVENT?” Kole asked.
Underbrook let out a jovial laugh.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Your group still has a chance without you, but even if they don’t, I think you’ve all earned some extra credit.”
As they spoke, students kept appearing in the room as the magic of the hardball match whisked them to safety.
“Crag-loving ditch weasel!” Rakin cursed as he appeared.
“Extra credit you say?” Kole asked, thinking that they might need it.