As the Flood waters began to cover Kaltis, the Hoodin people once more relied on their connection to the Ethereal to survive. The people crafted a great ritual and left the Material Realm for the Ethereal. For years, they traveled the Ethereal Realm, their few remaining ancestors protecting them from the threats native to that land, until eventually, they found the mountains that boarded Basin, discovering the dry land within.
-Excerpt from Wicket’s Guides to the Pantheon.
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After walking together for five minutes in silence, Gray worked up the courage to say something Kole could tell he’d been wrestling with the whole walk.
“I’m... sorry,” Gray said, first slowly then quickly as if he’d fought to push the words out before expelling them rapidly to get rid of them.
Kole stopped walking, as one does when the unexpected occurs on a clear blue day.
“What?" Kole said, brain struggling to catch up.
Gray’s face darkened in irritation at being forced to repeat the apology.
“No, sorry. I heard you,” Kole said, allowing him to relax. “I just... what?”
“I’m not saying I was 100% wrong in my judgment of you when we first met—you really could have become a massive liability to your team. But I didn’t have to be just an ass about it.”
“That’s...” Kole began.
Stop talking before you know what you’re going to say! he yelled internally.
Finally, he collected his thoughts, “a fair assessment I suppose. You were an ass, but you weren’t really saying anything I hadn’t heard a thousand times—usually accompanied by dead fish.”
“Dead fish?" Gray asked.
Kole explained his run-ins with Corbyn Oldhill growing up.
“For real?” He asked, not believing the stories. “That wasn’t bullying, those were murder attempts.”
Kole rubbed the back of his head as he reflected.
“Yeah... but on the bright side it made your tongue-lashing seem pretty mild,” Kole joked.
“Corbyn...” Gray said, repeating the name.
“He’s in one of your classes?” Kole asked, because, of course that would happen in this enormous school.
Gray nodded.
“There’s a Corbyn in my fencing class. We met this morning. He’s not bad, but he also didn’t seem like a sociopath.”
“Flood,” Kole cursed, wondering what to do.
How do I get him to not mention me? Do I tell Gray I’m hiding from him? Can I trust him?
“Don’t worry,” Gray said, reading Kole’s expression. “I won’t tell him where you are.”
“He can’t even know I’m here,” Kole blurted out, jumping on the opening. “He thinks I’m dead after the whole disappearing for a few months thing.”
“What?” Gray said,
“I’ll be honest,” Kole said, making a decision. “I don’t trust you enough to know the details, but apparently his father wants something that belongs to my parents. Something that I’m going to use to find them someday and have no intention of giving to him.”
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Gray considered, then asked, “Did you steal it?”
Kole shook his head.
“It still belongs to my mother. In fact, Zale’s uncle used it to divine that she’s still alive.”
“Really?!” Gray asked, snapping to look at Kole.
Kole remembered then that Gray’s parents had been adventurers who had died.
How long had Gray laid awake at night, dreaming up scenarios via which his parents could have survived? Kole thought. If I was more adept at this sort of thing I probably would have led with that.
Kole nodded.
“Wait,” Gray asked, this time he stopped. “Zale has an uncle?”
Kole spent the rest of the walk trying to get Gray to stop asking about Zale’s uncle. Apparently, she’d never spoken of him to her childhood friends, which raised some questions in Kole’s mind.
When the pair got to class, they both eyed their preferred seating locations, before silently agreeing to part.
They’d extended olive branches, but they weren’t friends. Kole looked over the faces of the class and saw a few he recognized from the last semester, but most were new, and none—save for Gray—were from their PREVENT class. Though, a few other first-years were in the class. He'd been fairly certain before he disappeared for two months the previous semester that Gray and he were the two most advanced Wizards in their group—at least when it came to theoretical wizardry—but now he was sure. There was always the chance one of his fellow PREVENT students was an extremely gifted high-affinity sorcery with amazing control of a Font, but that was more a gift of birth than a sign of wizarding genius.
Though Kole's own talents were primarily accidents of birth, he didn't spend much time reflecting on the hypocrisy. He was, after all, a very hard worker and without that he'd have nothing to show for his magical heritage.
Professor Underbrook reappeared with his typical flair.
"Good afternoon class! Welcome to WIZ 205, Combat Wizardry. Who wants to fight?" he asked, conjuring a ball of fire in his palm as he surveyed the students.
When no one volunteered, he dismissed the fire.
"Fine. You are all no fun. But the offer stands,” Underbrook said. “This semester, we will be learning combat applications of spells. To facilitate that, Fridays will be dedicated to magical dueling. Come with Will to spare.”
Murmurs broke out among the students at the pronouncement, and Kole felt a smile creep onto his face.
This wasn’t on the syllabus, he thought.
“Now, some of you might be wondering why that isn’t on the syllabus,” Underbrook said as if reading Kole’s mind.
“We don’t want to encourage students to take the class for the sole purpose of dueling. Mondays and Wednesdays will be split between spell theory and magical combat tactics. We will also cover Mind magic defense. You must all achieve a certain level of mental defenses to pass this class.”
That was met with a groan, one Kole joined in on. Mental defenses weren’t something specific to wizards. Anyone with a mental vault—and a penchant for torturing themselves—could train their mind to resist outside influence, but there was a reason few people did so. It was miserable.
Underbrook went on to provide more details on each area, and when he was done speaking, Kole felt a lot better about his chances of passing this semester. The practical final for this class would require Kole to duel a professor and show a certain level of ability in offense, defense, and utility magic in battle. While Kole didn’t think he’d pass if forced to do that battle now, he was confident in his ability to meet the task by year-end—so long as he didn’t vanish for a few more months, but the chances of that occurring seemed rather low.
Class was dismissed without homework, and Kole was very excited to find he had a homework-free afternoon to spend working on his magic.
But, he was making progress at a good pace and could afford the breaks, and that was enough—or so he told himself when Zale banged on his door later that night, threatening him with additional conditioning exercises should he choose to stay up too late.
The next morning, Zale judged that he probably had gone to bed.
“But,” she said, chewing her lip and cocking her head to the side as she examined him. “It’s hard to tell. You always look tired.”
“Hey!” Kole said, but then stopped himself from convincing her that his current tired-looking state was out of the norm.
He had in fact gone to bed—though, he had taken a page out of Theral’s book, and done a few pathing exercises in bed until he fell asleep.
Zale was merciful that morning as they did their exercises, choosing to focus on weapons instead of conditioning.
“Why aren’t we running,” Kole asked, when they went straight to the weapons racks.
“Don’t worry,” Zale had said with a wry grin. “Tigereye will take care of that.”
“Throw up on your own time Garvin!” Tigereye said, in what was objectively a booming shout, but for him was simply his speaking voice.
Garvin, a boy Kole vaguely recognized from PREVENT, was kneeling on the side of the path, throwing up his breakfast as their morning conditioning entered into its second hour.
Kole was now extremely grateful to Zale, who in her foresight had stopped him from getting seconds of breakfast and recommended everyone eat something light.
He did, however, wish she’d warned them what Tigereye had planned.
“Five more laps then water,” Tigereye spoke-shouted. “I will get you all back to your pre-holiday form in no time.”
Then, despite Zale’s precautions, it was Kole’s turn to join Garvin.