By the time of the Flood, no new Font had been discovered in hundreds of years. Lidian Oakcrest’s discovery of the Font of Understanding (dubbed the Community at the time) after the Flood was the beginning of a new era.

-Tallen Elmheart, Secondary Fonts

—

Saturday at breakfast as he, Zale, and Rakin met, Kole finally got around to asking Zale about the specifics of her silence aura. Amara hadn’t shown, and they’d forgotten to invite Doug.

“It’s something my uncle helped me with,” she explained. “My mother had me tested for magical aptitude when I was young since I was such an… interesting child. They found I had a connection to a Font, but it wasn’t one anyone had heard of. Through some testing with Uncle Tallen, we named it the Void Font.”

“So that silence aura is the first ability you manifested?” Kole asked.

Zale shook her head, her eyes locked on the chopsticks in her gauntleted hands.

“Flood!” she cursed as her finger slipped at the sticks flew from her hands. “Sorry!”

“No one flooding cares if you gods damn curse,” Rakin said, exasperated.

“I care,” Zale said, lifting her chin and looking down her nose at Rakin, “It’s not ladylike.”

Rakin and Kole broke into laughter at that.

“Why is that funny?” Zale demanded.

“Sorry,” Kole gasped between laughs as he tried to control himself.

“Forgiven,” she said nodding at Kole and then gave Rakin a death glare. “But you’re not. Anyway, no it wasn’t my first ability. My first ability put me into some liminal non-space. I can’t even begin to explain what it’s like. Uncle worked with me to build a mental vault, and once I had… things got murkier.”

“I thought voidlings can’t build a vault,” Kole asked.

“They can’t, which is probably why mine is all weird. Voidling don’t have Will capacities like you all, but they can manipulate Will external to them—which you can’t. If I try to channel Will into something, my Will interacts destructively with the environment.”

As a demonstration, Zale took off a gauntlet and picked up a grape. Holding it in her palm, she closed her eyes to focus, and black particles started floating up from the grape until its skin had vanished.

“That seems useful,” Kole observed.

“It would be if that hadn’t taken all my Will. Unfocused like that, it’s very ineffective. But back to my weird voidy-vault. My vault formed, but it had the aspect of the liminal space. I couldn’t use it to preserve memories, or store Will constructs. He tried to have me build a bridge so I could view the Arcane Realm, but as soon as I tried, I found I could already see it. So, we worked over the summer at finding my Font in the Arcane Realm. Without a bridge, I just kind of showed up in there wherever. We failed, but I found the Font of Sound. Through a lot of experiments, we discovered I could connect to it, and negate sound in an area around me. This was way more Will efficient than what I just showed you. At first, I could only make myself deaf, but we’ve been working to expand my range, and now I can do about an inch around me.”

“Wow,” Kole said, unsure what else to say.

He’d fought back the urge to ask questions through the explanation, and didn’t even know where to begin now.

“We get it,” Rakin complains. “You’re a very special magic girl. Can we go now?”

Just then, the leg on Rakin’s chair gave out, and he fell back.

“I lied,” Zale said to Kole, proud of her prank. “The grape skin didn’t take all my Will, while I was talking dissolving his chair leg did.”

***

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“I believe you have all met our newest student, Doug,” Shalia said to the class, holding onto the demonkin’s shoulders as she stood beside him.

Everyone nodded.

“Great. His great-grandfather was a friend, and he’s actually the reason we started this group,” She paused, and turned to Zale, her voice taking on an affectionate tone. “Him, and my little Azalea of course.”

Zale’s face grew black in embarrassment as all eyes turned to her.

“Stop embarrassing her,” Tallen admonished Shalia.

“You don’t tell me how to parent, and I won’t tell you how to… I don’t know… study? Bungle diplomatic liaisons? Burn down forests?”

Tallen clapped his hands and turned to the students.

“Why don’t we start?”

Tallen went around to each member of the group, getting an update on their progress and giving feedback.

For Rakin, he had set him on a path toward creating a vault but had also given him a text to read by the Enlightened Master Monk Oas, a long-dead member of the Order of the Resounding Silence. He was to learn to make a soul stone. Kole wasn’t sure why that was necessary, but Rakin wasn’t sharing, and he didn’t want to pry. Well— actually—he wanted to pry but didn’t want to get yelled at for prying.

Zale told her uncle about her application of sound nullification, and he beamed with pride.

“That’s great!” he said, “I heard you got hit by a Thunderwave, I wonder… do you think you could have canceled out the spell itself?”

“How’d you hear that?” Zale asked, glaring at her mother who lifted her hands up.

“No, not her. I have my sources,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” she said, then paused to think. “Maybe? I kind of sensed something before the spell was cast, but I didn’t think much of it.”

“Let’s work on that today then,” Tallen said.

For Doug, he tasked him with building a mental vault, but also tasked him with asking his Grovekeeper for guidance in creating a soul stone using the methods employed by Assuine’s Blessed.

There were myriad ways to create soul stones, and Tallen was tailoring everyone’s path to their skills. Kole knew a spell existed to create them by force, but the origins and effects of that particular spell were steeped in necromancy.

Runt was just told to keep working on her vault and given some advice. She both hated and appreciated that. From what Zale told Kole, she’d not been deemed worthy of her clan’s training in wielding the Font of Bonds. That training would have started with the construction of a mental vault, or “The Boundary” as her people called it. The hate came from the fact the work itself was mind-achingly dull—literally. It led to Will drain.

Amara talked to him a little about her “Understandings,” but then they talked about her blasting rod the whole time. He never ended up giving her a primal-related assignment.

“That’s fascinating,” he said when she’d explained her application of the Font of Life to maintain wooden wands. “I look forward to seeing your progress.”

“So, what are you working on?” Tallen asked Kole, looking over his shoulder as he read Unknowable Geographies.

Kole explained his plan to cast Sound magic through his bridge from its default location and how he had the spell component already in his vault but needed to learn to map it.

“That’s a solid plan,” Tallen advised, “In fact, it’s what I would have said myself. Keep it up. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Then, he walked away to cast Sound spells at Zale.

Kole sat conflicted. He felt both validated and robbed simultaneously.

Was he brushing me off? Or was this the plan he really would have given? Or is he a fraud, and just claiming Theral’s idea is good because he doesn’t know any better? No… from what Zale explained, he isn’t a fraud, but… why isn’t he being more helpful?

Unsure of Tallen’s credentials—and motivation to help him—Kole resolved to at least make the most of his offer to answer questions and pulled his notebook out.

He began to write down all the unanswered questions he could think of that were lost when his old notebook was destroyed. He found they flowed back into his memory with surprising ease. A few hours later when Tallen came back, sweating from the exertion of casting Sound illusions at Zale, Kole was ready.

“You should spend more time with Zale,” Tallen said in way of a greeting.

“Excuse me?” Kole said when his brain couldn’t come up with a way to interpret that.

“When you practice your spells,” Tallen clarified, but he had a knowing smile that hinted that wasn’t all he meant. “It will be good for her to be near you as you practice pathing your Thunderwave spell. She can practice sensing when a wizard connects to a Font.”

“Oh! I thought you meant something else,” Kole said with relief.

“What did you think I meant?” Tallen asked with a straight face.

Kole felt the blood rush to his face, and he fought the urge to turn invisible.

That is definitely not a healthy coping method for awkward social interactions. He chastised himself. That always seemed to be his first reaction.

“Isn’t that an advanced wizard technique?” Kole asked, changing the topic.

“It is,” Tallen agreed. “Most wizards don’t develop the ability until their thirties, but I learned it around 18 after a… magical mishap. I suspect that Zale’s nature as a voidling will let her develop it even sooner.”

Tallen seemed to be in a talkative mood, and Kole took the opportunity to go through his list of questions. He monopolized Tallen’s attention for the remainder of the time. And for the first time, since their last brief interaction had dashed it all, Kole now felt some hope he might have found a potential mentor. Though, he couldn’t help but feel some resentment towards Theral. If Kole had been a little more desperate, Tallen might have been more forthcoming with his advice.

Don’t be stupid, he told the childish pouting part of himself. Theral’s been nothing but helpful, unlike some other flaky mages.