Sometime after his death, undead hordes began to encroach on the savanna the Hoodin called home. Desperate for aid, the Hooadin called heavily on their ancestors. They called on them for advice, training, and direct aid. Wookan was called daily. He gave guidance to all that asked it of him, and with each summoning his legend grew just a bit. It wasn’t until the Hooadin learned to manifest spirits for battle that Wookan gained the renown to ascend. In a desperate move, as the horde was about to overwhelm their final redoubt, a great ritual was performed, tearing the veil between material and ethereal. Wookan led an army of the dead to defeat the undead, saving their people.
-Excerpt from Wicket’s Guides to the Pantheon.
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“Hardball,” Professor Underbrook said, spreading his hands out in front of him as he spoke, illusory explosions going off above his head—something Kole now recognized to be fireworks.
His display was met with blank stares. As the second semester class of Pre Adventurer Battle Training sat in a lecture hall waiting for class to begin, the professor had appeared before the class in a magically unnecessary puff of smoke and said the word with great enthusiasm and spectacle.
While the previous semester class had met at the end of each week, the schedule had inexplicably been changed to Monday mornings. No one was taking it well, even Zale, who’d been angry it messed with their training schedule.
“Nothing?” Underbrook said, cocking his head to the side.
He lowered his hands, and sighed.
“Fine. You’re all too serious. No appreciation for flare.”
In a bored voice, he droned, “Welcome to the second semester of Pre Adventurer Battle Training. I am your professor, Professor Underbrook. Due to unforeseen events caused by other-realmly invaders, magic towers that defy space and time, and the requisite caution that much be taken when these things occur, you will obviously all not be going into the dungeon this semester.”
He was once more met with silence.
“It was decided that the best manner in which to provide this class the opportunity to practice the tactics we teach without getting horribly maimed, killed, or maimed and then killed, would be to have a hardball tournament throughout the semester. Each team will compete on a biweekly—every other, none of that twice a week nonsense—in a tournament that will be broadcasted out to all of Basin.”
Finally, the class broke out into excited murmurs.
“Finally,” Underbrook said to himself under his breath, but then interrupted the class. “Attention please.”
Once everyone had quieted down he asked, “Alright. Any questions?”
Hands shot up all around the gathered students.
“You,” Underbrook said, pointing to a halfling girl.
“Why are you broadcasting the matches?”
Kole had wondered that himself. He knew that there was a hardball league through the school, but those games weren’t ever broadcasted out magically.
“Money,” Underbrook said. “Any other questions?”
More hands shot up, and he pointed to another student.
“What?” they asked simply.
Underbrook sighed again, but was smiling.
“I think he missed tormenting us over the break,” Kole whispered to Rakin beside him, earning a grunt of agreement.
Or, at least a grunt Kole thought was agreement. Kole was getting better at interpreting Rakin’s grunts—probably. He honestly wasn’t quite sure but the grunt seemed to have more nuance than he’d originally thought.
“The protective magics you see on the professional hardball circuit are extremely expensive. They allow professionals to go all out without fear of permanent death or dismemberment. The student leagues are heavily regulated to prevent students from getting hurt. If we had you all running around with sparring weapons and shield devices, you’d all have a lot of fun and learn a whole lot of nothing. The school negotiated terms with the professional hardball league. They agreed to start an amateur league on a trial basis, and broadcast the games, offering to fund the protection magics needed to let you go all out as you would have in the dungeon.”
“Permanent death?” a voice asked without being called upon.
“Some Blessed of Ganik are always on hand in the recovery rooms of professional matches in case someone’s teleportation effect goes off too late. Their god allows them to revive anyone who died in friendly competition—if they get there fast enough.”
“How often does this happen?” a stricken voice shouted out over the murmuring that broke out.
“Hardly ever,” Underbrook said, rubbing his forehead in frustration. “I think you are all missing the point.”
The class did not agree, and he spent the next five minutes fending off questions about the specifics of the league’s protection magic.
Kole’s mind raced at the possibilities.
Their last—and quite brief—experience with hardball had been a complete and utter failure. Going into that he’d had hopes of performing so well he caught the eye of a potential mentor, but their failure had put an end to that brief hope.
He’d planned to spend the holiday inquiring after mentors, but the failure coupled with the punishment detail had kept him from that. On reflection, he’d thought it probably for the best they’d gotten out quickly, and still managed to pass. He hadn’t had to make the difficult decision on risking outing his invisibility or not to pass.
But now, that was once more a concern. His Invisibility and Silent Image spells were far more powerful if no one knew he had them.
Am I being paranoid? Who am I hiding these things from? Kole thought briefly, before recalling his uncle’s words.
Oh no. The Oldhills.
He thought he stood a good chance avoiding Corbyn if he could get a hold of his class schedule—something he already had a plan for. If he should happen to see him, a simple Fade would seem him blending into the crowd. But... if he were to appear in a broadcast of the hardball matches, it wouldn’t be so easy to remain anonymous. Especially if word got out about his primal abilities. Surely even Corbyn would put two and two together if he heard of a first year student casting Invisibility.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“After the end of last semester and the break, enough students remain enrolled to make up 16 four man teams,” Underbrook announced, getting tired of all the repeated questions about personal safety.
“Each team will have a match every other week. On the off weeks, you will be assigned or taken to deal with a local threat. Those of you with mentors already will have your mentors’ assist your groups in these tasks. The tournament will be single elimination, but as we need you all to keep practicing—even the losers—those who have been knocked out will be paired against each other.”
“What do we get if we win?” a familiar voice called out, and Kole looked over to see Gray, an eager smile on his face.
They’d done well in the hardball battle royale, and the other young wizard was clearly eager to prove themselves.
“What?” Underbrook said, in mock affront. “Is the joy of victory insufficient?”
Gray only raised an eyebrow, knowing the professor better than to take that at face value.
“Fine,” Underbrook conceded, dropping the act. “There will be a monetary prize for the winners, but I don't know what. It’s based on whatever revenue the broadcast brings in, and they deduct the cost of all the magical protections needed from the pool.”
That was met with a clamor as all the students started talking to their teams in excited chatter.
“Now,” Professor Underbrook called, using magic to amplify his voice. “Let's go over the rules and general tactics.”
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The rules, as Kole had learned from Zale, were extremely basic.
1. Get the ball to your goal.
2. The match ends when the ball or the other team is destroyed.
At the end of the match, whoever scored the most wins, unless one team was completely eliminated, then the remaining team wins by default.
The basic strategy basically every team employed was to score once and then destroy the ball.
While those were the rules of hardball, there were some league specific rules to make the games more entertaining.
In the event of the ball's destruction with a tie score, the match continues until a team is eliminated. Some lower leagues simply end the match when this occurs but Underbrook was of the opinion that wasn't any fun, so he'd petitioned for the elimination rules be used.
Some magics were also regulated by the league. Spacial magic was limited when the ball was held. If your team has the ball, you can't teleport more than a few dozen yards closer to your goal than your teammate closest to the ball. You also couldn’t teleport to within a certain range of the ball, a distance which varied based on the arena.
These rules were magically enforced by the protective magics used and if they are violated the perpetrator was eliminated—though those magics themselves made violating the rules cost additional Will, acting as a warning to players that might not be fully aware of their surroundings.
Aside from that, anything else was allowed—even magics that would otherwise be illegal such as mental domination, not that that would be an issue for their level of competition.
They were also allowed to bring whatever equipment they wished, and the school would provide access to equipment and gear like they had in the dungeon.
Despite knowing he could recall the rules with perfect clarity later on, Kole took attentive notes. He was going to win.
As they walked out of class Kole and his team received more sidelong glances than usual—if you defined usual as the significant but not constant amount they'd received near the end of the previous semester.
Having a party voidling and demonkin on your team while simultaneously disappearing for months tended to draw the occasional glance.
“So, that was an easy class,” Zale said as they walked out.
“I’m not going for a jog,” Kole said, seeing where she was going with the leading statement and beating her there.
“I'll get you into the cafeteria after,” Zale said, attempting to appeal to his cheaper sensibilities.
With a sly smile, Kole pulled stack of paper slips out of his pocket and waved it in front of her.
Meal vouchers.
“You have lost that power,” Kole said.
“Fine,” Zale said, accepting defeat. “No morning training on Mondays, but I still expect you all every other morning. You don't want me to use the Dahn to get you out of bed in the morning. Mom found a lot of creative uses for the Dahn’s defense systems as a parenting aid and I think I could employ them if need be.”
“Is she serious?” Kole whispered to Rakin, who only shrugged.
“I wouldn't put it past her ma.”
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After PREVENT, Kole killed an hour waiting for his history working on Radiant Bolt in a grassy patch of campus as Zale sat beside him, eyes closed trying to sense his connection to the Font of Light.
He’d started his work on the spell creating a Light cantrip that didn’t require a gate. The task had been a lot simpler than he’d feared. He’d already known the spell intent for the Font of Light from his existing Light cantrip. So, he opened his bridge, and sent that tiny mode of intent imbued Will into the Arcane Realm.
Nothing had happened, but he hadn’t expected it to on the first try without any path—though he’d had some small hopes of it.
After that, it only took him a few days of pathing in between work on other spells and tasks to path the tiny little effect. Now, with a cantrip not based on an offset gate he could cast a Light cantrip at will, for no Will
He was still growing used to the novelty of it, and he found himself idly casting Glow, the name for the Light cantrip, as he walked around campus.
After he’d completed that, he’d moved onto learning Radiant Bolt. By this point, he’d already constructed the spell construct in his mental vault. Unfortunately, he’d had to remove Magic Missile from his mental vault to have space to store this one, even if it was still incomplete. His mental vault could only currently hold the templates for four spells, and the other three slots were occupied with Shield, Thunderwave, and his Blasting rod rune intent—the last wasn’t technically a spell template, but they both operated on the same principles and took up the same spot in his mind.
The spells he removed were safe in his spellbook, and he could reform the templates in his mind given a little time to review them, but if he had the sudden need to cast Magic Missile, he’d be out of luck. Similarly, the Will intent for the repair runes on his blasting rod were not stored in his vault, but now that he’d learned the pattern once, it only took him a short trip to Amara’s workshop to relearn it and repair the rod. He was, in the process of trying to make a spellform for the intent that was otherwise stored in a gem, but he wasn’t making much progress.
Unlike spellforms which could store the Will intent of spells in an inert shape for later review, the shapes that stored rune Will intent were the ones that activated the effect. No one had tried to find runes that could store the intent without activating them—or at least, no one had succeeded. So, all rune intent was stored in gems, which could hold any Will with intent stably without the need to discover the complex arcane geometries of a spellform.
So, Kole sat in his mental vault—mentally at least—and repeatedly sent his incomplete Radiant Bolt through his bridge, in an attempt to discover a route from his own, personal, unique bridge into the Arcane Realm to the Font of Light. It had been a simple task to do with the cantrip, the spell effect being so small it dodged and slipped past most obstacles in the Arcane Realm with ease. But, the more complex or powerful the spell effect, the more difficult the task.
After his experience in pathing Thunderwave and now Glow, his hopes were high. having pathed once to the Font, he felt he’d have a better—well—feel for it, though he couldn’t articulate why if pressed.
Traversing the Arcane Realm was often like that.
“Oh! I felt something!” Zale said excitedly from beside him in the grass. “Did you just do something?”
“Ummm,” Kole began, waffling between simply saying no, or teasing Zale.
Before his realization he had feelings for his friend, he’d have made a joke, but now...
Will she take that as flirting? Will it be flirting? Do I want it to be? Do I want her to know its flirting?
He’d begun to over think things a bit.
In the end, he settled on, “No.”
“Oh darn.,” Zale cursed—at least, a curse for her. Then she muttered “Maybe it was gas."
“What?” Kole asked, not quite hearing her.
“Nothing!” Zale said quickly, pale white skin darkening a shade in embarrassment. “Look at the time! We need to run to history!”