The initial assault was meant to completely remove the Hardune, opening up their paths beneath Basin for the Forsaken to infiltrate deep into the interior. The Forsaken were nearly destroyed, but some few Hardune remained. The Forsaken had gained deeper access to Basin, but they’d not snuck in unnoticed.
-Day the Heroes by Erol Vondermin
---
“Hmmm,” Professor Underbrook hummed exaggeratedly as he reviewed the document Kole had handed him.
The five students watched the diminutive professor intently as he read it.
“Hmmm, hmm, hmmm,” he hummed some more.
Kole watched his eyes trace the short note where he’d summarized their theories and saw as he looked it up and down, reading it multiple times.
After what felt like an eternity—not helped by the ‘hmming’—the professor pocketed the note and looked at the group.
“Well, good job. It matches what we came up with ourselves,” he said.
The congratulatory words deflated the students’ excited mood.
“Oh don’t be like that,” Underbrook chided them. “We’ve been working at this too and have far more resources than you five. Why do you think we made you all recount your recollections after all your harebrained misadventures on magic paper? Do you think we just filed it away in your permanent record and forgot about it?”
“Sorta?” Rakin said, half joking.
“Nothing is new then?” Kole asked, not wanting to admit he’d wasted the last week for no benefit.
They’d alerted the faculty to the ice kobolds incursion, and given a report when it had occurred. Kole knew the school had been at work in tandem with the students, but after their success in ‘saving’ Amintha the week before where the school had failed, he’d fallen into the trap of thinking himself more capable than the combined might of the Academy of Illunia.
“Well, this bit about subservient races isn’t something we considered,” Underbrook said after thinking for a moment. “You might be onto something there. It would explain how the soldier ants tie into all the elemental nonsense. They may serve some earthen elemental masters.”
Kole felt relieved that they’d added something.
“Is there anything you can tell us about what you uncovered?” Amara asked, desperate for more information on the riddle.
Underbrook looked over each shoulder, where other faculty and adventurers filled the room about their business, considering what to share—and to see if anyone would hear him share it.
“We think the Midlian Empire is preparing to come back from wherever they are,” Underbrook said conspiratorially, holding one hand up to his mouth in an exaggerated gesture to shield his words from the nearest faculty. “People theorized the Emperor had survived the Flood somehow. Too many of his powerful allies had all vanished without a trace when a little water shouldn’t have been an issue for them. If that's true, and this place you discovered through the dungeon is where they ran off to, then they are mobilizing to come back. We’ve gotten reports in the last few days of incursions like those we’ve seen, all over Kaltis. Strange new creatures are showing up seemingly out of nowhere. But, seemingly isn’t actually. The locations roughly line up with known pocket realm congruencies. We think the Empire is using pocket realms as a bridge to come back.”
The professor watched the students’ reactions expectantly.
“Flood,” Rakin said in a curse after processing the words.
“Flood indeed,” Underbrook agreed.
“What are we doing about it?” Zale asked.
Professor Underbrook shrugged.
“We’ve informed the governments in Basin we are on speaking terms with. The Mayor of Edgewater is making preparations with our assistance, but we are just an academy. As an institution, we will not be the vanguard of this coming war—no matter what your mother might think. Though, I suspect many of our alumni and faculty will be, in their capacities as adventurers and mercenaries.”
“You won’t help?” Kole asked, surprised by what he knew of the Master Wizard.
“Oh, I never said that,” Underbrook said slyly. “The school may not be the vanguard but it has a long history of working to coordinate the disparate efforts of the squabbling nations of Kaltis. I have access to magic teleporting doors. I won’t be at the vanguard. I’ll be wherever the fun’s at.”
Rakin looked around the room of people studying maps and books.
“And that's here?” he asked, a very bushy eyebrow raised.
Underbrook’s grin faded slightly.
“Unfortunately no. There is yet no fun to be had, so I continue on in my duties as an attentive professor. But, speaking of fun, you five should go have some. Tomorrow is Landing’s Eve. From the note and your combined complexions—Miss Wood excluded—tells me that the lot of you have been confined to a room this past week worrying over a note we had already deciphered,”
Kole, who while not as into the whole endeavor as Amara, had thought the past week to have been quite enjoyable, was confused at first about the professor's words.
“Fun?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” Underbrook said, smacking his forehead dramatically. “You’re from Illandrios, I suppose they don’t celebrate Landing Day there. You have some whale poo festival right?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Yeah...” Kole said, not really wanting to defend the Festival of the Great Migration after recent barrel-related experiences.
Zale’s face lit up at the revelation that Kole was wholly unfamiliar with the festival.
“You’ve never celebrated Landing Day?!” She asked but didn’t wait for an answer. She grabbed his hand, and Rakin’s beard and ran back through the door to her home. “Let’s go! We have so much to do!”
Some time later the group was on the roof of the Griffin’s Nest, watching a procession of costumed individuals and decorated wagons parading before them.
“Why are so many people dressed up as animals?“ Kole asked as an actual bear walked past them on two legs, waving to the crowd.
Kole strongly suspected that to be an Assuine Blessed, and not a real bear—though sapient bears were a thing.
Zale answered while Kole went on a mental tangent trying to determine the difference between a person transformed into a bear and a bear granted intelligence.
“It’s to celebrate the Basin and all its bounty,” Zale explained. “The wagons are decorated as the ships that bore their ancestors to Landing.”
Kole looked at the ships with a new eye. Very few of them were of the ship clan design he was most familiar with, but even to his untrained eye, he could tell nearly every ship came from a different nation. Some of the “ships” were lifelike illusions passing by, while others were wagons decorated with painted cloth and everything in between. A good third of them were wooden miniatures with wheels mounted on the side, complete with sails.
“The nations of the world took to the sea when the Flood reached their homes, and they used whatever they could,” Zale continued. “The coastal nations took to their fleets, but when the water reached the inland nations, they threw together anything they could get to float.”
She pointed to a wagon that just looked like a box with a little house built on top of it.
“The floating city above your home probably started out as a giant lashed-together a series of barges from some landlocked nation that roamed the sea until the currents brought it to Basin. ”
“What’s that?” Amara asked, pointing to what looked to be a tree molded into the rough approximation of a ship, though this one was made from painted fabric with bark glued to the side.
“That’s a sea tree!” Doug said excitedly. “Some of Assuine’s Blessed worked to shape ancient trees into a form that could take to the seas. Some were even awakened!”
“What happened to them all?” Kole asked, surprised he’d never heard of the living ship.
“Most returned to the land when they found Basin and lived in the Conclave, but a few preferred the life of the sea and are still out there.”
As Doug spoke, a horn sounded in the distance and excited cheers broke out among the spectators.
"What now?" Kole asked.
"Now," Zale said, pausing dramatically. "The monsters come out."
As if on cue, at Zale's words the parade picked up its pace and the crowd began to cheer. Model ships and costumed people continued to pass for another few minutes until Kole started to hear howls and other strange cries.
The last ship finally passed, one Kole recognized as a Ship Clan design, and right behind it came a mob of more costumed individuals, only these were dressed as the monsters of the wild. Feralkin, dire beasts, harpies, and more all followed the 'fleeing' crowd, pretending to be just on their heels.
While Kole was not familiar with the details of Landing Day and the events preceding the Flood, he was very familiar with the dangers of Basin, even now 700 years after its settlement. The wilds between city-states were still infested with monsters and dangerous animals, and back the place was only sparsely populated by orc tribes, he could see how it would have been much worse.
“That’s why a lot of people decided to stay at sea,” Zale explained, for Kole’s benefit, though he’d guessed as much. “After living on sea for 50 years, monster-infested land was a lot less appealing if you’d grown used to the life.”
Amara nodded.
“My home of Stone Haven was settled mostly after our ship had found Basin. Some of the ships chose to stay at sea, but many preferred the desolate island to the monster-infested Basin.”
“Desolate, giant ant-infested island,” Rakin corrected.
“Infested has such a negative connotation,” Kole said, in Amara’s home’s defense.
He’d grown accustomed to her smaller ants—though the thought of them now brought back memories of the horrible stench of the soldier ants.
The parade ended as they spoke, with a large illusion of a red dragon bringing up the tail, symbolizing the greatest threat that was found on Kaltis after the Flood, the dragons that had succumbed to Faust’s corruption through the Avatar. The illusion breathed fire into the sky, and Kole thought he could actually feel the heat from it along with the roar. At that realization, he felt the tinge of connection the magic had to the Arcane Realm, and realized it must be an illusion drawing of the Font of Illusions, not simply on the Font of Light.
He closed his eyes, entering his mental vault, and sure enough he saw the intrusion of the mental aspected magic entering his vault to influence him. The library that his mental vault had manifested as was filled with a hazy cloud, and Kole focused, expending some of his Will to displace the Will in the space. His own Will was invisible to his eyes, and the cloud dissipated, and with it, he no longer felt the heat of the illusion’s fire, though he still saw the dragon and heard its roar, as those were drawing on the Light and Sound aspects of the Font of Illusions, and not simulating an effect using Mind magic.
They’d covered Mind magic defenses lightly in his WIZ 102 class the semester before, but not in any great depth. Kole knew that if that had been an actual Mind attack, pushing the influence away would have been more difficult, and as untrained as he was, he’d not likely have been able to defend against one, but it was nice to see a practical application to what he’d learned.
I should have Zale see if she can use that against Silent Image, he resolved.
“Can we go home now?” Rakin asked once the dragon had passed.
“Of course not!” Zale chastised him. “We have to go to the boat race!”
Rakin let out a groan but followed as Zale led them on.
On the way, they’d bought some street food from a vendor. Instinctively, Kole almost passed, but then he remembered himself and decided to indulge. After the events of the last semester, the school had offered Kole additional financial support in recognition of his deeds. They wouldn’t go so far as to pay him, but they gave him a meal plan, offered him a free room in one of the off-campus dormitories, and told him he could get whatever school supplies he needed within reason from the faculty supply master—even spellform ink if he could prove the need for school work.
Unfortunately, Kole had a free magic room provided by the Dahn itself, and with his magic spellbook, he no longer needed even the expensive paper and ink. He’d tried to instead negotiate stipend but had been refused.
“We can’t be seen paying students for reckless behavior,” Kelina—Zale’s mother’s assistant—had said. “If people knew the why behind the assistance we are offering, there would be a rush of students in financial trouble going off to do stupid mischief.”
Kole had asked then why Kelina had even offered this to him, and she sighed heavily before saying, “Professor Shalia had left instructions to help in such a manner if you ended up doing something ‘sufficiently stupid without dying.’”
Kole hadn’t pressed after that but had just accepted the gift, grateful that Zale’s mother had arranged for it. Only later did he begin to worry that she might have ulterior motives.
Well, I guess it's good that she missing, for now, Kole consoled himself.
So, it was with that newfound financial security that Kole gladly handed over the copper coin for the hunk of mystery meat on a stick which he ate as they walked toward the river.