The Tower had fallen long before the building itself was swept away in a flood. Chosen Daulf of Illunia saw to that and took what little good remained in the place with him before leaving it behind for good.

-Tallen Elmheart, On Mages

—

Kole slunk off out of the training hall a short while later. He'd yet to buy food to keep in the library and ate the extra fruit he'd take at lunch as he went back. He had assignments due in both alchemy and history and he hoped to get a few hours of magical study in.

The thought of practicing magic sent a throb of pain through his Will-drained head and his body seemed to weigh four hundred pounds now that the adrenaline of battle had faded.

Maybe I skip that tonight.

He'd studied magic Will drained in the past, but even he could recognize sleep would be a far more productive use of his time under those circumstances.

So, exhibiting levels of responsibility and self-restraint usually foreign to him, Kole went to the library, set up at a well-lit study table near the center, and got started on his classwork.

The work for alchemy required him to read through some dull reference books and the history assignment too was just reading. Kole found the required books on the shelves and powered through them. He was happy to discover there were dozens of copies of the books required so he hadn't needed to buy them. The librarian explained that the required readings were well-stocked so students wouldn’t need to purchase the potentially expensive texts.

When he finished he placed his books on the end of the table as everyone else seemed to do and stepped behind a shelf, turned invisible, and ran off to his secret spot.

* * *

The next morning, Kole woke up with plenty of time to get to his alchemy class. Weighing the rumble in his stomach with the dwindling weight of his coin purse he decided he could hold out until lunch.

"Kole!"

Kole looked up to see a familiar face waiting in front of the lecture hall.

"Hey Amara, what are you doing here?"

"I've been trying to find you since Sunday. Where have you been? I went to that hostel you mentioned but you weren't there. Then I realized you must be in this class."

Kole hadn't exactly forgotten about Amara, but finding her again had been low on his list of priorities after his first failed attempt. He'd checked the runed tracking device but it'd always pointed towards the main building of the crafting college.

"Oh... yeah.,. I found someplace else to stay. Somewhere cheaper."

"Oh good!" She said, happy for him and once more oblivious to his awkward answer. "I wanted to set a time to meet so I don't have to track you down again. I haven’t had time to make a new tracker with an indicator on it. Professor Donglefore has kept me quite busy."

They settled in meeting up after Kole's history class. He had to go out and buy more food—and possibly a rat trap—and Amara agreed to go with him. She was surprisingly okay at the thought of killing a magical rat that wasn't Gus.

As Kole made his way to his seat, he noticed that some of his fellow classmates were watching him.

Am I late? He thought. No. Maybe they recognize me from Gromck's class.

The assignments were collected by one of Donglefore's teaching assistants who then proceeded to teach the class. He was a human, a few years older than Kole. Despite his age, he spoke confidently on the topic and bored them all with the most common side effects of low-level alchemical interference. The man had a talent to make even the most horrible flesh-wasting disease sound boring and tedious.

After class, he paid to eat in one of the dining halls, stocking up on extra fruit and bread, and then went back to the library to work through the spells he'd found. Intellectually he knew he'd made the right choice getting sleep the night before, but it still just felt like wasted time.

While he wasn't late to his history class, Zale's prediction proved accurate, and he made it just in time to grab an open seat beside his new friend as the professor walked in.

As Kole scrambled in, he noticed even more eyes following him.

Maybe it is because I was late last time? He thought as he sat down.

Zale watched him, looking less cheery than he expected from her. He sat just as the professor began to talk, and spent the rest of the lecture taking notes. At the end of the class, more reading was assigned.

"I wasn't late," Kole said once they could talk.

"Yeah, but you certainly weren't early," Zale answered, once more her cheerful self, though her eyes darted around the room as she spoke.

"You grew up on campus right?" Kole asked, and Zale nodded. "I have some questions."

Kole told her about his run-in with the disappearing rat as they left the lecture hall

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Oh, that's just a pack rat. They’re a nuisance, but largely harmless. They eradicated them from the campus as a whole, but they never seemed able to root them out of the tower."

“Can’t the magic of the Dahn eradicate them? I’ve noticed everything in the library is spotless, even in the hold and forgotten parts of the library. Surely they could do something to remove some rats.”

“Yeah, they tried that. They got rid of all the bugs and other pests, but the Dahn didn’t seem to want to remove the pack rats.”

Before Kole could ask about the Dahn having an opinion on the matter, Zale forestalled his question.

“I don’t know the details, that's just what my mother told me.”

Moving onto the next topic he had in mind, he asked, “Do you know a guy named Gray? I didn’t catch his last name but he seemed really familiar with the campus.”

Zale was hesitant to answer, looking around nervously again at the mention of the name.

“Yeah... I know him. Why?”

“We were talking after class yesterday and there were these crazy goblin-rat things, and when he found out...”

Flood I guess I’m telling Zale too. Kole thought. For a primal of the Font of Illusions I suck at deception.

“I told him that I’m a primal, and that my wizardry is stunted because of it. He didn’t take it well.”

The nervousness left Zale, replaced by relief and then excitement.

“You fought those?! I’m jealous!” Zale nearly squealed in excitement. “I heard about that. Tell me all about it.”

Kole reluctantly recounted the event, complete with Gray’s reaction at the end,

“You’re a primal?” she asked when he was finished. “That's great!”

“It is?”

Kole had expected a reaction, but not that.

“Yeah! My mother is organizing a sort of... guided study program for primal students. There are a few other primal students here who weren't properly trained in their abilities for one reason or another."

"Your mothers a professor? You made it sound like she wasn't. What does she teach?"

"Art!" Zale declared proudly.

"Art? Why's an art professor organizing a magical study group? Is she qualified to assist in any way?"

"Not really no, but she kind of just does whatever she wants. But, my uncle recently returned to... town and he was helping me with a particular issue related to my"—she gestured to her deep black hair and pale skin—"voidyness, and he suggested we invite others in a similar situation."

"Voidyness? What does that have to do with primals?"

Zale's face dropped as she realized she may have said too much. An internal battle similar to the one Kole had just fought warred on her face for a heartbeat before looked around cautiously and she answered in a whisper.

"I'm sort of a primal too. But... we can talk about that later. Also, where are we going?"

Kole had been walking to the crafting college's dining hall as they spoke.

"I'm meeting a friend for dinner. Want to come?"

Zale hesitated a moment before agreeing, and they talked about the class they'd just left the rest of the walk and Zale asked a few more questions about the monsters.

At the entrance the the dining hall, Zale walked past the counter without even a glance.

"Aren't you going to pay?" Kole asked after her.

She looked from Kole to the cashier at the counter who didn't seem to mind her blazing past.

"Ummm... No, it's fine," turning the the cashier she said, "he's with me."

Kole followed her through, despite his reservations. Zale hadn't struck him as the type to break the rules, and the cashier clearly didn't care. Unlike the inattentive attendants at the library, the cafeteria staff were constantly on the lookout for students sneaking in, or sneaking food out. Kole hadn’t risked turning invisible to get inside, but using his abilities to divert attention from his bag bulging with food hadn’t been below him.

"What was that about?" he asked once they were through.

He never got an answer though, as Amara showed up just then. She looked uncomfortable in the crowded room and was holding the tracker in her hand, clearly having been waiting for their arrival.

"Hey Amara, this is Zale. Were—”

“Are you a voidling?” Amara blurted out, showing her typical lack of tact.

Though Kole reflected, he'd essentially reacted the same way upon meeting Zale, so maybe he shouldn’t judge.

“Sorry! That was probably rude!” Amara apologized.

“It’s okay. I’m half voidling.” Zale answered, taking the question in stride.

Kole proceeded to introduce the girls to each other, and they sat to eat and talk about their first few days of classes. Donglefore, it seemed, was a very demanding master, and aside from meals, Amara was busy every waking moment of the day, though, from the way she told it, she was quite happy with the arrangement.

“He has me working on a few projects,” she explained. “He wants to see how my ants’ carvings can improve the stability of some of the harder-to-carve mundane materials. There are a lot of materials that hold up to runes quite well, but are too difficult to etch reliably. He’s intrigued about my work with the Life Font, but is still deciding how best to pursue it”

“Have you made any progress on your... other project?” Kole asked ambiguously, not sure how open she was about the issue.

“No,” she answered deflating slightly, but then turned to Zale perking up. “You live here, right? Have you heard of a female quarter-elf student who went missing last year? My sister was here, but she vanished.”

Zale hummed, thinking it over.

“Not specifically. Students regularly leave without giving any sort of notice and the school doesn’t track them down. A quarter-elf is quite rare, my mother is a half-elf, so I guess that kind of makes me a quarter-elf as well, but the circumstances of my birth are... odd. Do you have anything else that might cause her to stick out?”

“She was a primal. Does the school track that?”

“Another one?” Zale asked, surprised gesturing to Amara. “Do you think she’d be interested in the study group?”

Kole shrugged.

“You can ask.”

Zale gave Amara the same slightly vague offer to join her mother’s study group. She thought about it briefly, weighing some choice, and then agreed somewhat reluctantly.

“I can give it a try. Part of the reason I’m here—officially—is to bring some understandings back home. If I can bring new understandings of Understanding, that would be great.”

They spent the rest of the time talking about less consequential things and Kole was happy to discover his two new friends got along well. Zale’s outgoing personality meshed well with Amara’s general awkwardness and lack of social understanding.

Gus made himself known near the end of the meal, climbing out of Amara’s jacket to eat the leftovers.

“Shouldn’t you be hiding him?” Kole asked, scanning the room for anyone who may have noticed the rat.

“It’s okay. He’s registered as my familiar now, so I can pretty much take him anywhere.”

“He’s cute!” Zale exclaimed, “Can I hold him?”

Without Amara’s intervention, the rat walked across the table into Zale’s open hand. The sight of the rat brought Kole’s mind back the the previous conversation.

“You never told me about Gray. Why did he react so strongly?”

“Oh him. He’s one of the students brought up through the Dahn’s orphanage. His parents were adventurers. They died in a delve. I heard their wizard had inflated his resume when joining their team, and most believe that's why they died. What exactly did you tell him?”

Hearing that, Kole had a little sympathy for the other boy’s reaction.

Maybe I can patch things up?

“My... primalness”—Kole mimicked Zale’s gesture from before—”makes casting spells difficult. I can only cast a single spell a day.”

Instead of being disappointed by the news—or mad, like in Gray’s case—Zale grew even more animated.

“My uncle will really want to talk to you. You have to come on Saturday.”