Pack rats were long suspected to be primals, but it wasn’t until the Last Dragon War that it was discovered they were in fact primals of the Font of Time. The Font from which they draw their power was long unknown, as is their geographic origin. Pack rats were known to the native pre-Flood orc denizens of Basin but were not present outside the pre-Flood mountain bowl. They are now reported worldwide, having infiltrated the sailing fleets of the world.

Lidian’s Manual to Magical Fauna, 283rd ed

—

“You look like Runt after a bender.” Zale told Kole in way of greeting when he arrived at the training yard. “Rough weekend?”

“I lost track of time working on a spell,” Kole said, rubbing his eyes and cursing the sun. “How was your trip?”

Zale’s amused smile dropped.

“Awful. Mom had us compete to see who could collect more money panhandling. She left us in New Lakeside with some filthy sackcloth and then disappeared.”

“Did you do it?”

“My mother’s training trips aren’t exactly optional.”

“Did you at least win?” Kole asked.

“Only technically. Runt got more money, but she started picking pockets and got disqualified.”

“What did you win?”

Excitement returned to Zale’s face.

“A new sword!” she shouted. “I almost forgot. It’s nothing exciting or special, but my old one was from the academy’s stores, which means some student made it as a project. Which reminds me.”

She walked over to the weapon rack and lifted a quarterstaff from amongst the rest.

“You can have this,” Zale said, tossing him the weapon. “I never use it anymore, except for ’bonks,’ but I can just borrow one for that.”

Kole caught the thick wooden stick and gave it a few practice twirls. He hardly had the skills or knowledge to judge the heft and balance of even a weapon as simple as this, but it seemed sturdy enough.

“Thanks!” he said, but then added. “For this, not for the ’bonks.’”

“Don’t mention it. Now if Amara comes through with that blasting rod, we’ll be in good shape to take out those goblins. Let's try out your new staff.”

The two proceeded to spar, but Kole’s sleep deprivation quickly became apparent.

“You’re way too tired for this. You're almost asleep on your feet,” Zale said after disarming him for the third time.

“Thank the gods,” he said in relief. “Breakfast?”

Zale smiled, channeling her mother, and said, “A good run should wake you up.”

A half-hour later, Kole lay in the grass, gasping for breath, exhausted, but no longer sleepy.

“I. Hate. You,” he rasped between breaths.

***

During breakfast, Zale gave Kole more details on the various trips her mother took her on.

“I thought you weren’t training with her anymore,” Kole asked.

“I wish,” Zale said, wistfully. “I’m not her apprentice, but she still makes me act as a sort of training rival for Runt. She lets me use the disguise bracelet and uses me to goad Runt on. Runt… has a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She doesn’t like losing.”

Kole felt like this was the perfect opportunity to inquire about his weekend meal plans without sounding too much like a leech.

“So… are these like, every weekend?”

“Thank Gava not,” Zale said, swearing by the goddess of hope and protection.

“Oh good,” Kole said, feeling more relief than he expected.

“So what did you all get up to while we were gone?”

“Amara and I tried to search for her sister, but the tracker she’d built wasn’t working. She went to fix it, and I worked on finishing my latest spell.”

“Oh yeah! You said. How did it turn out?”

Kole shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but couldn’t hide his smile.

“It was an improvement. It means I’m on the right track, but it's not going to let me pass WIZ 105 this semester unless I keep improving it. I was hoping your uncle would have been more helpful.”

“Sorry about that,” Zale said. “He usually won’t stop explaining things and trying to teach. My mom hates it. I don’t know why he didn’t have anything for you.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“It’s fine, I guess,” Kole said solemnly. “No one’s helped me so far and I’ve been doing alright.”

“Don’t be like that, I’m sure he’ll come around.”

***

Kole and Zale talked on the way to class, trying to ignore the way people gave them a wide berth, but Kole was beginning to tell when Zale was hiding her sadness, and couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“Is my talking to you making all this worse?” Kole asked, gesturing to the people scrambling to get out of their way.”

“Ha! No. Not at all,” Zale said with a genuine laugh. “If anything, I’m more likely the reason people are avoiding you than any rumor Gray might have spread—though…” she trailed off, then grew worried. “He might have been harsher on the rumor when he found out we were friends. Oh, Wardens, I’m sorry. I’m ruining everything.”

“I’m sure it's not your fault!” Kole quickly tried to reassure her. “No one liked me back home anyway. I’m probably just—you know—super unlikable.”

“That's kind of you to suggest, but it’s not true,” Zale said, kindly, but then added. “You’re only, like, a little unlikable.”

“Oh, well, that's a relief.”

“Yeah, it's the tardiness and overall cheapness that really do it,” she explained amenably.

“Not the body odor?” Kole asked, playing along.

“Well, now that you mention it, maybe you’re just very unlikeable—but definitely not ’super unlikable.’”

They continued trying to own the blame for the others' pariah-ship until they made it to alchemy whereupon they sat in a pair of empty seats only for the people seated on either side of them to move away. This time they both laughed.

Alchemy class for the day was a pop quiz based on the reading, and Kole did his best to remember all of the horrible, bone-melting side effects of mixing certain alchemical ingredients.

Professor Donglefore came out after the papers had been collected, and continued hammering home the dangers of alchemy with paintings of some of the worse maladies alchemy could impart.

“This is terrible,” Kole whispered.

“Don’t worry,” Zale whispered back, “it's only the first two weeks, to hammer home the caution. Later on, we’ll actually start to learn things.”

By the end of the hour, Kole’s mind was occupied with dozens of pictures he’d rather not remember, and he made a note to read up on mental vault exercises. Many people developed mental vaults to help preserve mundane memories. It stood to reason one could use the same effects to muddy the details of an unpleasant one, or maybe even seal it away.

With an hour between classes, the pair went to a study hall to work on the homework they’d just been given.

***

The energy Kole had regained from the morning’s activities was gone by the time he sat down for Professor Gromck’s lecture. He tried to hold strong, but after only five minutes of theories on the disappearance of the pre-Flood humans of Basin, Kole was asleep, face down on his desk.

***

Kole and Zale went to the library after class to start planning a way to defeat the goblins this coming Friday. Kole caught himself—barely—before he headed through the stacks to his secret corner.

“So…” he asked awkwardly, “can I copy your notes from today?”

Rolling her eyes, Zale plunked her notes down onto the table and then went to find a book. It was a lot of notes.

***

Kole’s hand was cramping by the time he’d finished copying the notes into the new-to-him but very much not new journal he’d found. Sleeping through history class had at least given him enough rest to make it through the remainder of the day.

“You done?” Zale asked, looking up from her book when she saw him stretching his hand.

“Yeah,” Kole answered.

Zale handed him a book.

“Good, now read this,” she said.

Another hour later, Kole put down the book about goblins.

“This is pretty dry,” Kole said, with a sigh.

“Did you at least learn anything?” Zale asked, putting her own book about woodcraft down.

“Actually yeah. Did you know that before the Last Dragon War, goblins were nothing more than tool-using feral dogs? The dragons did something to them, made them smarter, but didn’t give them any sort of empathy.”

“I did know that actually. I did grow up dreaming to be an adventurer listening to my mother’s tales of that...” Zale trailed off as had become a pattern when she mentioned something she hadn’t intended, though Kole had no idea what she was so poorly concealing.

“Sort of thing.” She finished.

Zale threw a balled-up piece of paper, striking Kole on the nose to distract him from her blunder.

“Sorry, carry on.”

“So kind of you. Well, they are cunning. They lay traps—“

“We knew that,” Zale pointed out, sharply, having become intimately familiar with said traps. “Sorry, continue.”

“They lay traps,” he repeated, “But not as well as kobolds. They rely mostly on trip wires and rock falls—which we knew already.”

“So, nothing new?”

“I’m getting to that! At their hearts, they are cowards. Their lairs usually have a rear entrance they use to escape if their traps fail them. If we can find that, we can get the jump on them.”

“That could be useful… If any of us had any skill in tracking.”

“Do you think Rakin can figure it out?” Kole asked. “It is in a cave after all.”

They spent another hour looking over the books Zale had gathered and learned a little bit more. Some goblin clans manifested sorcery, though they never grew particularly powerful due to their short life spans. Others, however, can grow quite magically powerful if they receive the Blessing of the trickster god Jester.

Jester, whose real name was lost to time, was a court jester who traveled from kingdom to kingdom, killing nobles and royals alike through elaborate traps and tricks.

Those Blessed by the chaotic god could perform a whole host of magics, such as forcing their foes to fall into fits of laughter and sowing magical confusion.

Once the books started to repeat themselves, they called it a night.

“Dinner?” Zale asked.

As Kole quickly began shoving his belongings back into his torn-up bag, she wondered why she even bothered to ask.

***

An hour later, an overly stuffed Kole parted ways with Zale as they left the dining hall. They’d gone to the martial college to eat, the staff at that facility being the least off-put by Zale from her frequent visits and the evident lack of anyone becoming a mindless husk as a result.

As Kole walked back to the library, holding his satchel awkwardly to prevent his “leftovers” from falling out, he heard the tone of a lecturer among the green.

“—can be used to find pocket realms. The spacial disruption they create isn’t noticeable by the naked eye, but if one has accurate star charts, the presence of a pocket realm will be noticeable by the distortion of the star’s light. The Dahn itself exhibits this effect.”

Kole looked around to ensure he was alone, and then turned invisible and snuck close to the class. He’d never heard of this method of detecting pocket realms. Finding pocket realms was important for his eventual long-term plans, but he’d had enough magical problems, and that one had seemed less urgent.

The professor was an older human woman, who looked like she’d been around when the stars had been formed. Kole sat, listening to her lecture—which he judged to be for at least Apprentice wizards in at least their second or third year—and was fascinated. The professor eventually dismissed the class and instructed them to return Wednesday at the same time to learn other ways the stars can be used to divine information.

Kole vowed to be here. He had a lot on his plate, but he’d definitely make time for this.