The dragons spread out over the world, exploring the wonders the gods had made, and when the gods followed the creation of dragons with the creation of the Illusian races, the dragons acted as shepherds and guides.

-Unnamed Dwarven Text

—

Kole and Zale bought a meat-stuffed bread roll from a cart and ate in a park while they killed time. Once they were done, they sat in the grass, watching some children play a game of hardball.

Well, Zale was at least.

“Are you working on your spell right now?” Zale asked disapprovingly.

With his mind in his vault, it took Kole a moment to register the words.

“Umm… no?”

“I think I could feel it,” Zale said, ignoring his clumsy line. “Do it again.”

Zale closed her eyes and entered her own weird voidling version of the mental vault.

Kole obliged and sent the modified Thunderwave he’d been building through his bridge.

“There!” Zale shouted.

“You found the Font of Sound?” Kole asked, remembering that Tallen had suggested they train together.

“No, but I could sense you casting the spell, which is the first step.”

Kole tried casting the spell a few more times over the next hour before he stopped to make notes of what he’d done. He sat up in the grass—he’d laid down after Zale had realized what he’d been doing, but Zale sat cross-legged in a zen-like pose.

He wrote some notes down in the margin of his spellbook, wishing he’d thought to bring the journal of magic paper with him so he could try the new ink. He did use the nib however to take his notes and found it was worlds better than a quill.

“What’s your mental vault like?” Zale asked, still inside her own.

Kole explained his vault, and his perception of the Arcane Realm, eliciting a laugh from Zale.

“A library in a library? That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?”

Kole shrugged.

“I like libraries. What about you?”

Zale hesitated, gathering her thoughts.

“I don’t exactly have a mental vault,” she explained. “Voidings can’t form them, and what I can do isn’t exactly what you can do. When I vanish—like you saw before when I… uh…”

Zale blanched—as much as a bone white-skinned woman could blanch—at the thought of her embarrassing scene the day before.

“When I vanish,” she repeated. “I’m actually leaving the Material Realm, going to that place between realms the voidlings came from. But, I keep a mental hold on the Material Realm and can reappear nearby.”

“What does this have to do with your vault?”

“I’m getting to that. When I’m in this place, it feels like I’m hanging from a cliff, and down below I can see for miles. I can see the Arcane Realm from there, it’s like a forest of light beams. Staying there, in this place, is hard. It takes strain to hold onto the Material, and I don’t want to know what happens if I drop. When I created my mental vault, my mind entered this same place, but I wasn’t hanging. I was just floating in the void between Realms, able to see them both. There’s no representation of memories or places to store information like spell construct templates. Just the empty void.”

Kole hung on every word, fascinated by the ability to step between realms. Immediately his thoughts went to the possibility of using the ability to enter sealed pocket realms, but he figured Tallen would be a better person to ask. He voiced his next thought.

“What happens if you try to make a bridge?”

“I can’t. My Will doesn’t really work the way it’s supposed to, but that’s a whole other thing. What I can do though, is move where I am in that void. To find the Font of Sound, I honed in on Uncle Tal’s spells until I found the Font. And, while I can’t store spells, paths, or gates in my mind like you can, I can open my vault to that location at will.”

“So that’s how you learned your silence aura?” Kole asked.

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Zale nodded.

“I was trying to do the same with you today. Your spell was harder to detect than the ones Uncle used, but I could just barely sense them. I think it will help train my senses, then maybe it will be easier to find other Fonts.”

“That will have to be another time. If I keep going I’ll be stuck with a headache all day.”

The two gathered their things and headed back to the tailor shop where Kole handed over the coins with a clenched fist.

“Changing room is in the back if you need it,” the tailor said, cupping Kole’s hand in her own and taking the coins.

Kole took his new clothes to the back.

Maybe I did need new clothes. He reflected as his sleeve fell off his shirt when removing it. A closer inspection showed he’d been burned on the back shoulder while fleeing Rakin.

His new clothes were nice, but he didn’t think they were fifteen silver nice.

I doubt anything in this store is. He thought as he sulked over his remaining funds.

He examined himself in the mirror and the outfit was very similar to the Stormcaller outfits he was familiar with from his father’s wardrobe, but it had silver embroidered accents on the trim. The fabric was various shades of dark blue in a random pattern of irregular shapes, and the cords that bound his sleeves tight at his wrists were also some sort of spider silk cord instead of leather. The cord was made from a single massively thick strand that had been treated to not be sticky.

When Kole left the dressing room, he could still hear Zale fretting about inside her own changing stall. He sat down and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Hours? Day? Maybe weeks, later, the door opened and Zale stepped out.

Her outfit was tailored in the style of the school’s martial school uniforms, but only if one squinted and took liberties with the term ‘style’. She wore a high-collared emerald green jacket, with the offset buttons standard of the uniforms. Silver embroidery covered the jacket, spreading out from each button and branching out with sharp angles giving the impression she was covered in the crystals of a snowflake. The jacket had a long coat tail which hung low to the floor but flared out making it look somewhere between a cloak and dress. The hilt of a dress sword poked out from the jacket. Her pants were ruby red leather that matched her boots, each free of any adornments.

Maybe something is worth fifteen silver here. Kole thought.

“How do I look?” Zale asked, spinning around.

Kole noticed then that her hair was now in a tight braid, and it looked like a rift of darkness splitting her back down the center.

“Fifteen silver,” Kole muttered before he caught himself.

“What?”

“Uh… You look good?”

“That’s the right answer. Let’s go.”

***

The “mentor-student introductory gathering,” or mentor mixer as everyone actually called it, was held at the Griffin’s Roost. Several were held throughout the year, but the first was always the most populated. As the year went on, the attendees tended to grow more desperate, both the students and adventurers.

Students needed mentors to join the program, but adventurers needed students as well. The school strongly encouraged its alumni to take on mentees. There was no hard rule on numbers, but the school kept count, and those who flouted the program often received visits from the academy’s staff.

“Mom loves scaring deadbeat adventurers into being mentors,” Zale said as she explained this all to Kole.

The trip from the tailor to the tavern was short, but their fancy dress drew more attention than was usual—which was saying something because people generally fled or froze in fear when they saw Zale, ever-present smile or not.

A large man in a blue enameled breastplate stood outside the door of the Roost.

“Papers,” he said to a nervous student Kole vaguely recognized from class.

The student fumbled through his pocket and pulled out a small card.

“Flood,” Kole muttered. “I forgot to pick up my school ID.”

Zale sighed and patted Kole on the back.

“What would you do without me?”

“I’d have more gold,” Kole observed.

“Na, you’d have to pay for food. Remember?”

“Ho, Zale!” the guard greeted amicably.

“Hi, Mink!” Zale waved, “This guy’s with me. He forgot his ID.”

“No problem. How’s your mom?”

“Busy…” Zale said, leading off. “There was an incident.”

“I heard,” The many nodded towards the inn. “It’s a full house. They put out a request for extra security. Can you tell me what happened?”

Zale looked from Mink to Kole, who was trying to not draw any attention to himself.

Is it good or bad that I caused the events that put the school on high alert? Kole thought, weighing the benefits of speaking up.

“If Mom didn’t say, I shouldn’t either.”

“Fair enough. Go on in—Oh I forgot, Harold’s inside. He asked if you were here yet. He told me not to tell you he asked.”

Kole watched as Zale grew nervous and she began to chew her lip, but she quickly banished the look and walked in with a smile.

“Thanks!”

***

Kole learned an important lesson that day. He hated mixers. The place was packed inside with students and adventurers alike. Thankfully, no one was armed or armored. With the tight press, Kole was certain there would be countless injuries.

Immediately upon entering, Zale was whisked away by people asking after her mother. She tried to introduce Kole to potential mentors, but he was quickly edged out of the conversation as the strong personalities of the adventurers told stories to each other of “Shalia’s” exploits.

Kole noted that while it was semi-public knowledge that Zale’s mother was an adventurer, it was not public that she was the famous adventurer Trish Mason. Zale tried a few more times to introduce Kole to someone, but eventually, he just waved her off and let her talk. It was nice seeing her in a crowd, Kole reflected. She looked truly happy listening to the stories of those around her, and Kole couldn’t remember ever seeing her this accepted anywhere else.

That didn’t mean everyone in the Roost looked past her voidling heritage though. There were a few who kept staring daggers at Zale from across the room. Knowing Zale’s mother, Kole suspected some were people wronged by her, but others were the familiar looks of hate and fear.

Kole saw a group of adults that were all varying flavors of wizard, judging by their clothes. Two human men wore formal dress robes, and they looked old enough to have bought them back when they’d actually been in style. Another wore a Stormcaller outfit similar to Kole’s own and the last was an orc wearing the traditional dress of their clan shaman. She wore heavy white furs, spotted all over with the fangs, claws, and horns of various creatures sticking out, like some horribly disfigured porcupine.

“Here goes nothing,” Kole muttered to himself, and walked up to the group.

“Hi, I’m Kole Highridge.”