The gods eventually fled Kaltis to the newly created Celestial Realm. They learned that their presence thinned the barrier between the Realms, allowing Faust’s minions to flood the Material Realm from the Realm of Fauell, which Faust had created in secret with the aid of Bilieth and Erebog.

-Unnamed Dwarven Text

—

While the mood between Kole and Zale had improved slightly, they didn’t hang out after history class. She made a weak excuse and he didn’t press her on it. He spent some time in the crafting hall trying to track Amara down before he relented and asked after her at the front desk of the runesmithing labs

“Oh, the girl with all the bugs?” an attendant said, “She’s in room 141.”

Kole found the room in question buried at the end of a long hallway that felt more like a bunker than a school. All the rooms had thick metal reinforced doors and no windows. Kole knocked on the door labeled 141. When no one answered, he kicked it with his boot—which he noticed was still stained with blood and ink.

I should get these cleaned… or maybe replaced.

The door opened, and Amara’s face poked out, covered in grime. Her short hair was matted to one side of her head as if she’d slept on it and only just woken. Kole could also make out the faint lines of runes on her cheek, but they looked reversed.

“Kole!” she shouted in greeting.

“Did you sleep in here all weekend?” Kole asked.

“That depends… what day is it?”

“Monday.”

“Yes, It looks like I did. It isn’t by chance Monday morning is it?”

“No, it's afternoon.”

“Termites. I missed a couple of classes.”

“Are you okay? Do you need to eat? Bathe? You definitely need sleep.”

"There's no time for sleep, and I ate yesterday," Amara said and threw open the door.

Kole followed her in and was immediately mystified that space could be both organized and chaotic. There were neatly labeled piles of random materials everywhere. The room was not very large, about the size of Kole's room in the library. Workbenches lined the walls, and the walls were covered in tools of far more types than Kole could name. There was a cleared workspace on one desk, but every other surface in the room was covered with some tool of the trade. Bundles of wooden blanks, labeled by type, age, and moisture content level. Boxes of rocks, similarly labeled by stone types. Jars of sawdust with trial numbers labeled on them. Dozens of prototypes of as many different projects, all neatly labeled with a white tag. Books of research notes stacked high. It was a mess, but an extremely organized one.

Amara noticed Kole gaping at the room.

"Welcome to my lab," she said, gesturing her arms out wide in an awkward gesture.

Squeek

Kole turned to the source of the sound and saw Gus's head sticking out of a tiny wooden house, perched on a stack of wooden crates labeled "Danger! Flammable!"

"Oh, and Gus's house," Zale added.

"It’s very... full," Kole said diplomatically.

"Thank you. I have something for you!"

Amara walked over to a chest of drawers, opened one, and pulled out a small emerald.

"Here," she said, handing it to Kole. "The pattern for the repair runes is in this. Memorize it and give the gem back as soon as you can."

Kole held the gem up to the rune light in the ceiling.

"Wow... this must be worth—"

"Six hundred fourteen gold, three silver, two copper, and eight bits," Amara interrupted. "At least, that's what the school will charge me if I don't return it or provide evidence of its destruction in the genuine pursuit of my studies."

Kole, who was going to say a much smaller number than that—or something vague like "a fortune"—gaped.

"It was a real pain proving I didn't mean to break the last one, so please be careful with that "

"You already destroyed one of these!?"

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Yeah," Amara said far too casually.

"I think maybe I will study this here with you—if that's okay. I don't really want responsibility for this thing "

"Sure. Make yourself at home, but there's only one chair."

Before Kole could do that though, Amara gave him a thorough tour of her workshop. She showed him the latest version of her sister's tracker. She suspected her sister might be in some other place, connected to the Dahn through random openings of doorways. This would explain why the tracker had been so erratic. If doors were opening and closing to places near her sister, the tracker would point to whichever one was closest at any given time. She was building trackers that could lock onto a single source.

She had ideas, none of which Kole could follow. Nonetheless, he could appreciate the complexity and her talents.

Next was the in-progress blasting rod, her ants busily at work carving the runes into the surface.

"This one should be slightly more Will efficient," Amara explained. "But you'll need to tweak the pattern slightly."

"And these," she continued, moving on to the next item "are going to be sending stones. Without gems, they won't last more than a week or be able to do anything but send a single signal, but I think can make improvements over time."

Then she showed him her own self-defense project, inspired by their near-death experience. The device was currently a small river stone with black ink markings all over it.

"It's a portable ward," she explained, "it will be able to create something similar to the Shield spell on command, but that's only the first step. Next—"

"That’s a great idea!" Kole interrupted, forestalling a lengthy lecture he'd follow less than half of. "I can't wait to see it. Is it alright if I sit over there in the corner and work on this?

He held up the emerald.

"Of course! Let me know if you need anything."

"Sure, but after I'm done, we are going to get something to eat and you're going to take a shower.

"I don't..." Amara began to protest but then looked at Gus who was comically covering his nose with his tiny paws. "Oh... I guess I do smell a little—"

SQUEEK!

"Okay more than a little."

"How about you bathe, change, and then we meet for dinner?" Kole suggested.

"Alright," she conceded with a sign. "But I still have a few hours right?"

Kole nodded and headed to the corner to get to work.

While Kole had transferred the knowledge of the blasting rod’s force bolt runes in a single sitting, he could tell that this one would take more work. He'd never attempted to learn a second-tier spell before, but he was familiar with them from his extensive research into spellforms. A single glance at this pattern confirmed that this rune was on a level equal to a second-tier spell.

Don't panic. You can do this. You're a smart, capable wizard who may not be able to cast spells, but sure knows how to learn them

Kole sighed at his own embarrassing attempt to reassure himself. The first thing he needed to do was clear space in his mental vault. He’d already considered the decision and decided to abandon the cantrip for Light. He had the light rune device from the library—which he still needed to have Amara replace so he could return it, lest some consequence arise—and light objects were easy to come by. The Air cantrip however could save his life in a tight—or stinky—spot.

With a wave of his imagined hand, the book that represented the Light cantrip in his mental vault exploded into a cloud of paper before fading away. Then he got to work, meticulously copying the spell. As Kole was learning in his pursuit of Thunderwave, the task of copying a second-tier spell was a different kind of difficult than creating a first-tier spell from scratch

All the components Kole needed to add to Thunderwave to make it work were things he was capable of creating, he just needed to put the right ones in the right place. It was like he was writing letters in a language he knew, trying to spell out a word he’d only heard spoken. Except, the word was about a thousand letters long, and if any of them were incorrect, nothing would happen. Occasionally he’d need to look up new components, but he ignored that since it ruined the metaphor.

Copying spells of higher tiers—or in this case, complicated rune intent—was different. While most of the mental Will constructions that made up the rune’s intent were simple shapes within the realm of his ability to create, some were more complex. Not only that, there was simply more. The scope of the construct was massive and he didn't know if he could fit the whole thing in his mind. When he'd first started learning wizardry, he'd struggled to fit cantrips in his vault. Then once those had been mastered, he'd pushed the bounds of his vault to fit first-tier spells—for all the good it did him.

He made quick progress in the beginning, but as the construct began to reach the bounds of his mind, he had to slow to not pop the whole thing like a balloon.

Kole lost himself in the work, only stopping when he felt the onset of a headache from the Will drain. He let his awareness return to the world around him. Amara still worked, stooped over her workbench, and Gus slept in his little house and the ants poured over the new blasting rod. There was no clock or window, but the progress the little creatures had made suggested that it had been a while. That and the rumble in Kole’s stomach.

“Times up,” Kole said, standing and stretching.

Gus jumped up excitedly and ran across the tables to Amara’s bench, where she continued to work. It wasn’t until the rat had climbed onto her head that she realized Kole was standing.

“What?” Amara asked, looking around bleary-eyed.

“You need a break,” Kole said.

“I’m fin—“ Amara’s protestation was interrupted by a large yawn. “Alright, fine. But let me just—ouch!”

Gus had bitten her lightly on the ear, drawing a spot of blood.

“I think he wants you to stop too.”

“He always wants me to stop,” she said dismissively. “But… he doesn’t usually resort to biting. I guess we can go.”

“Great, where do you shower on campus?” Kole asked.

“Shower?” Amara asked,” I… uh… haven’t thought to check.”

Kole only shook his head, at a loss for words. He knew he had the tendency to get wrapped up in his work, but he’d not forgotten to bathe, only eat.

Actually… would I know where the showers were if it weren’t for the martial college classes?

He dismissed the thought.

Of course I would. Right…?