Tal was pivotal in the war and gave many sorcerers the courage to come out of hiding and use their abilities to battle Faust's followers. In the aftermath, the survivors traveled to the growing city of Edgewater to further their knowledge of the arcane arts at the school that would be known across Kaltis as the Academy of Illunia.

-Tallen Elmheart, On Mages

—

A very sore and sleepy Kole arrived at the training yard just after six to find Zale going through sword forms with a wooden practice weapon. His better judgment had won out the night before and he'd returned to his bedroll to sleep.

“You’re getting less late,” she said cheerily when she spotted him.

“It’s way too early to be that happy,” Kole observed sullenly.

While he recognized that exercising outside of his martial class was necessary to pass and achieve his long-term goals, he still hated it. If it wasn’t for Zale holding a free breakfast hostage, he wasn’t sure if he’d be here.

“Light training today,” Zale said, lifting Kole’s spirits. “We’ll want to be fresh for Prevent.”

“Prevent?”

“’Pre Adventurer Battle Training.’ We call it Prevent. The professor likes to joke that the class is meant to ’prevent’ us from dying.”

“That’s a pretty terrible pun.”

“I know, my mother hates it too, though my uncle’s a fan of it.”

Kole and Zale sparred lightly for an hour, Zale correcting Kole’s mistakes after exploiting them to “bonk” him on the head.

“The bonk helps reinforce the lesson,” she explained at Kole’s protestation.

Not that Zale needed Kole to make a mistake to get through his guard. Zale had been training alongside the students of the martial college her whole life in the pursuit of becoming an adventurer and was easily the most skilled in the class.

At seven, the pair broke off their practice to wash up and eat before going to their only class of the day.

Zale met Kole outside the locker room of the martial college fully clad in armor. She wore a fresh pair of the martial college’s training cloths, but atop that, she wore a bright steel breastplate, along with pauldrons, gauntlets, and faulds.

“You’re going to wear that to breakfast?” Kole asked, looking her up and down.

Zale held up her articulated metal fingers and twinkled them all.

“It’s good training. I need to work on my fine motor skills with these. The armor was a gift from my mother for enrolling in the academy and I’m not exactly used to it yet.”

Kole assessed the armor again. He knew very little about armor, only that it was expensive to get even a simple functional set made. Some of the Mirage Knights back home wore it, but he'd done all he could to avoid their attention, so had little experience with them.

While Zale’s wasn’t ornate, the craftsmanship seemed exceptional even to his eye. The plate shone brilliantly in the sun and had a near mirror finish with no visible defects or irregularities on its immaculate surface.

“It looks expensive,” Kole said, not sure what else to say about it.

Zale beamed proudly.

“It is. My mother bought it from the dwarves as a surprise and as an apology. She’d not been very supportive of my desire to be a knight over the years, and she likes to apologize without actually saying ’I’m sorry.’”

Zale garnered more looks than usual as they ate in the mess of the martial college. Normally people saw her and moved to keep a wide berth from the strange voidling girl. Now as they sat eating their breakfast, people kept sneaking glances at the armor-clad pale-skinned girl who kept dropping her spoon.

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"Flood!" she cursed after it slipped from her grasp for the fourth time.

Surprised by her own foul language, she covered her mouth as if to bring the words back.

"Sorry!" she whispered.

"Why don't you give it a rest and eat?"

"I can't. Mom said I need to be able to use chopsticks with these on by the end of the month."

"What happens if you can't?"

Zale looked up from her portage with an expression of dread.

"She's going to take me to a ball in New Lakeside during the semester break."

Kole could think of many reasons why he'd hate to do that, but he was unsure of the source of Zale's trepidation.

"How bad is that?"

"The first time we went wasn't so bad. I enjoyed dressing up. Everyone gave me a wide berth and I stood bored for a few hours. The second time she let me use a magical bracelet that disguised my appearance. That was the worst," she grounded. "I had to dance with an endless line of these wastrel nobles. They would tell me all about how important their father was, or how many horses they owned."

She smiled at a memory as she continued, "One tried to impress me, boasting that he was a dueling champion. I challenged him to a friendly duel on the spot. He refused, but then I called him a coward and he did not like that. He wasn't actually half bad, but I still beat him."

“Dueling? Isn’t that with rapiers? I thought you used a bastard sword.”

“I’ve trained with pretty much every weapon. I prefer the bastard sword, but my mother prefers the rapier and was training me in it most of my life. Bastard swords are hard to come by in polite society, but rapiers are more acceptable to bring to court.”

“Are you expecting to be in courts much?”

“Gods I hope not, but it's best to be prepared.”

Zale eventually gave up trying to be refined with her gauntlets and grasped the spoon in a fist like a toddler would, and shoveled the food down.

They arrived to class on time, which was early by Kole’s estimates and late by Zale’s. The class was taught in the Dahn proper on the lecture floor. The door to the room itself sat innocuously between two other small lecture halls, with doors ten feet to either side. When they stepped in, however, they found themselves in an enormous circular room, equipped with everything from sand pits to a chalkboard and desks.

Kole did a double take and stepped back out to confirm he was still in the Dahn.

Zale sighed, amused.

“We have magical doorways that take you up to other levels and people are still shocked when they open a door to a room that's just a little bigger inside than it should be.”

“This is more than a ’little bigger.’” Kole defended.

Zale only shook her head, and they continued in, Kole looking all around trying to drink it all in.

The idle chatter of students ended when they noticed Kole and Zale’s arrival. Kole looked to Zale to see how she was taking the ostracization. She was smiling, but he was starting to recognize the difference between her real smile and the one she put on for show. He’d been elated to find himself accepted when he first arrived, but he was finding he didn’t actually mind everyone ignoring him. In fact, it was kind of nice.

He reflected on that. He’d hated his isolation back home.

What’s different now?

Was it that he had a few friends? Or did he always prefer isolation, but hadn’t realized it until he’d been forced into idle small talk for weeks on the boat and the few normal days he’d had here? He wasn’t sure which it was.

Maybe a little of both?

In either case, he was worried that his presence might be causing Zale to experience more shunning than was usual.

“Sorry,” they whispered to each other at the same time.

And then Kole saw Zale’s false smile turn genuine.

“Thanks,” she said, and they walked into class together.

The conversation picked up briefly before one of the many doors that lined the room opened and Professor Underbrook walked out with the looming figure of Tigereye close behind.

“Good morning class!” Underbook greeted them as they all grew silent. “Welcome to Pre Adventurer Track Battle Training. I'm Professor Underbrook, and the giant behind me is Tigereye. Together, we'll be teaching you all enough to realize how little you actually know."

Tigereye took over from there.

"The time you spend in this room will be spent training. We will teach you to function as a valuable and reliable member of an adventuring team."

Kole looked at Gray and saw the boy look away quickly.

"Outside of class," Underbrook continued, "you will research. Knowing how to fight does you no good if you find yourself up against a foe immune to your attacks."

In what was clearly a well-rehearsed introduction, Tigereye took over again, and the juxtaposition of the deep, serious, halting voice next to the excited halfling almost made Kole laugh.

"The key to being a successful adventurer is preparation. The only thing you have when you enter a pocket realm or monster lair is what you bring with you. You must know what to bring and when to use it."

"So," Underbrook shouted, "to make it abundantly clear from the start how little you all know, let's enter the dungeon! For most of you, this will be your first real taste of battle. This will be an important moment to prove you have what it takes to pursue this path."

Professor Underbrook looked at Kole and Gray as he spoke this last part, giving them each a nod.

Murmurs broke out across the room, as all the other students clearly knew what that meant.

Zale had been expecting this and whispered to Kole, "It's a magical simulation. They can configure it into any environment and fill it with creatures."

"How does it work?" Kole asked.

"I don't know," Zale shrugged. "Magic?'

She thought about it a moment longer and then added, "It's probably one of the Dahn's abilities. Chosen Daulf's connection with Illunia unlocked a lot of amazing abilities in the Dahn tailored towards education. The dragon that created the Dahn and gifted it to the Hardune had a passion for teaching and it seems the artifact found a kindred soul in Daulf."

“Form up into adventuring groups!” Tigereye shouted.