Eventually, this led to strife amongst themselves and between the dragons and men. The dragons did not seek to do harm, but they could not remain with the mortal races without doing so. With heavy hearts, they retreated to the far reaches of Kaltis to live in isolation and conquer these strange new urges.

-Unnamed Dwarven Text

—

The rest of the night after the ambush went by in a blur. The city watch showed up, the screams of the thugs having drawn their attention, though Kole didn’t recall any screams as focused as he was on not dying.

At Zale’s insistence, he’d helped staunch the wound on the man he’d shot, and they were covered in his blood when the first pair of guards arrived. They were almost arrested for attempted murder, but one of the guards recognized Zale and sent the pair home with a promise to check in on them the next day for a statement.

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill any of these men,” one of the guards scolded them.

Kole was about to shout something at the guard, but Zale pulled him away.

“Let’s just go.”

When they were away from the guards, Kole asked, “Why did you let them treat you like this was your fault? Those men are the lucky ones.”

He’d come very close to killing two men tonight and, on reflection, didn’t feel bad about it in the slightest. Much like with the goblins, this was another first with him and he found he didn’t much mind the violence.

Is this because they were going to kill us? Or am I just some amoral psycho?

“But it is my fault,” Zale said, looking at the blood that was still all over her hands. “I knew this would happen someday if I went out in public without a disguise. It was only a matter of time.”

“Stop,” Kole said, halting himself.

Zale took a few more steps and then turned to Kole.

“This is not your fault. Anyone who says so is an idiot.”

Kole didn’t know what reaction he’d been hoping for, but Zale turning away from him towards campus wasn’t it.

He jogged to catch up and they went back to school in silence. Zale disappeared into the art college building, and Kole made his way to the martial college, hoping the showers were open at this late hour. They weren’t but the doors weren’t actually locked, and it was quite easy for an invisible teenager to sneak into an unguarded bathroom at night. As he showered, he marveled at how the black ink and blood seemed to swirl together, refusing to mix as they ran down the drain. He made an attempt to rinse the ink and blood from his new clothes, but it was futile. The fabric itself wasn’t badly damaged, but the sleeves were stained dark brown up to the elbows, and the left side was completely black from the ink.

Dressed in a borrowed sparring outfit, Kole made his way back to the library and his secret room within. His occasional roommates—mage and rat—were absent, and he collapsed into bed, asleep as soon as he landed.

***

A persistent buzz woke Kole up what felt like a minute later. He disabled the alarm and began to get ready for his morning run when the events of the night before caught up to him. In the light of the day, he felt a little more remorse for what he’d almost done, but then he pictured Zale’s defeated expression on the way home, and that vanished.

Those men had been monsters, looking for an excuse to kill someone. If it hadn’t been Zale, it would have been someone else. Maybe a demonkin, or just a dwarf with darker skin they mistook as a duergar.

He wasn’t sure if Zale was going to be at the training yard that day, but he didn’t want to leave her alone if she was. Kole arrived on time for once and saw that the field had a lot more occupants than the week before. Many of his students from PREVENT were there, running laps around the field.

Looks like the goblin cave served as a bit of a wake-up call.

Kole couldn’t say his two weeks of training had produced any measurable results yet, but after running through that goblin cave, he needed no more convincing of the value of physical conditioning. He scanned the surroundings, looking for Zale but didn’t see her. He did however spot the familiar antlered head of Doug running alongside an olive-skinned brown-haired girl wearing Zale’s armor.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Wait a minute…

“Zale?” Kole asked, waving uncertainly.

Zale’s eyes widened when she saw him briefly, but then she smiled and waved back uncertainly herself.

The pair ran up to Kole, and looking at Kole’s feet, Zale said.

“Good morning.”

“Are you okay?” Kole asked, not sure what else to say.

She looked up into his eyes and nodded.

“Yes. Drop your bag and run. Ten laps!”

Zale didn’t give Kole the opportunity to ask any more probing questions that morning. Any time he broached a topic outside training, a new training exercise occurred to her.

Along with Doug, Rakin was also out training, him too motivated to push himself from the weekend’s events. To Kole’s surprise, the dwarf was one of the fastest runners there, even without using his Earth abilities to catapult him forward with the ground.

“He’s using Assuine’s power within his body to fuel himself,” Doug explained to Kole, noticing him staring at the speeding dwarf. “The monks call it ‘ki.’ They’ve learned to claim the power inside of them that druids draw out of nature.”

“Isn’t that like… blasphemy or something?” Kole asked, eliciting a laugh from Doug.

“No. Life is Assuine’s gift, and her power is simply a part of life most do not fully utilize.”

Rakin eventually slowed and ran alongside Kole matching his pace.

“What happened last night?” he said, hardly panting even after maintaining his blistering pace for half an hour while Kole alternated between sparring and laps.

“We… got…. attacked… racist… thugs,” Kole panted between breath.

“Oh,” Rakin said. “That explains the bracelet. She blames herself?”

“Yup.”

“Stupid girl.”

“If you have breath enough to talk, you could be running faster,” Zale barked at Kole as she ran by him.

***

They all met outside the showers before heading to get breakfast together.

Kole tried one last time to bring up the night before.

“Stop. Please.” Zale said. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just drop it. Thank you for what you did. I truly appreciate it, and I will replace the ink and clothes, but drop it.”

“Alright,” Kole agreed reluctantly.

He was about to say she didn’t need to replace anything, but something told him he should just let her do so.

Amara wasn’t present for breakfast that day.

“So,” Doug asked into the awkward silence once they all sat down with food. “How was everyone’s weekend?”

Rakin burst into laughter, and Zale ignored the question, focusing instead on her gauntleted chopstick skills.

“We got attacked by some weird frost people in an abandoned section of the Dahn” Kole said.

“Oh. That sounds interesting,” Doug said. “Is that a normal weekend activity for you?”

That broke through even Zale’s resolve, and they all laughed at Doug’s question.

“I don’t get it. What did I say?”

After they settled down Kole had explained elemental humanoid attacks were not in fact commonplace occurrences in city life.

“Oh,” Doug said. “I thought maybe it might be. Monster attacks happen all the time back home in the mountains.”

After lunch, Kole and Zale headed to their alchemy lesson in a tense silence, neither knowing how to break it.

They arrived at class early and sat down in an open area expecting no one to sit beside them. To Kole’s surprise, as the class filled, students began to fill the rows around them. A few did a double take, recognizing Zale’s features if not her coloring, but no one got up to sit somewhere else.

Kole saw that Zale had a mournful smile, both happy to not be shunned, but feeling the sting of what it cost her to be accepted.

“Today, we have a guest speaker,” Professor Donglefore said, gesturing to a Dryad. “This is… well, she doesn’t have a name we can say, but she goes by Pale Oak. As promised we will soon leave the classroom to get some more practical experience.”

Zale leaned over to Kole, whispering in his ear, “She’s bark naked!”

Kole let out an audible groan as Zale broke out into a giggling fit. The students who’d risked sitting near them all stared daggers at them and scooted away to make it clear they were not associated with the pair.

“Is there a problem Miss Wood?” Professor Donglefore asked from the front.

“No! Sorry! Carry on!” Zale answered, stifling her laughs.

“Thank you for your permission,” the professor said before continuing.

Kole leaned in close to Zale when the professor’s eyes were gone, and asked, “Your name is Wood?”

“It was my dad’s,” she whispered back, a sad smile replaced with a real one. “It took Mom years to figure out what it was. He never told her. He was weirdly private.”

Kole didn’t appreciate the attention from the professor, but he was glad the silence between them had finally been broken.

The guest lecturer, the dryad who gave a name no one in the room could pronounce, let alone spell, taught on the proper methods of picking broad leaf alchemical ingredients and the methods of preservation. Wednesday’s class would meet in one of the crafting college’s gardens and they would practice on some of the less expensive plants.

The class was dismissed, with instructions to practice the techniques discussed on the bushes and clover throughout campus in preparation for Wednesday.

“Do you think Doug could give us tips on this?” Kole asked Zale on the way out.

“You can’t just assume an Assuine worshiper knows how to pick plants. It’s rude” Zale said. “But… probably. Yeah. He doesn’t seem to know anything about life in a city, so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows everything about the wilds.”

“You know, with a name like Azalea Wood, you could probably pass for a dryad yourself,” Kole said as a joke.

Looking back towards the naked woodland teacher, Zale said, “I don’t know, I think I’d get cold.”

The both tried to stifle their laughter as they left the room.