Learning that their involvement was required, Assuine and Illunia approached each of their siblings and, with them, created the Illusian races. The two goddesses worked with Torc, deep in his earthen shell, and created the race of dwarves. The dwarves were made to be a strong and enduring race, like their progenitor.
-Unnamed Dwarven Text
—
Kole spent the remainder of that Friday holed away in his room, alone. With the time dilation of the dungeon, it felt like ages since he’d seen Theral. He had a lot of questions for the other young wizard after a month’s work, and he expected he would surprise the older boy with all the progress he’d made in such a short time.
***
The next morning, Kole arrived at the basement of the art college early—partially because he feared getting lost, but mostly because he was worried about being late for a study session led by Tal of Storms.
Gods, Tal of Storms.
Kole still couldn’t believe it and spent a lot of time rerunning all his past interactions with the man through his mind, afraid he’d done something to offend the famous wizard thought to be dead.
It had still taken Kole longer than he expected to find the instrument strewn room once in the basement, but he arrived at the study group just on time. Thankfully, Tal of Storms seemed to be as punctual as Kole of the Library. When he entered, Zale was talking excitedly with Runt while the rest of the group were waiting at desks, looking though their notes. Amara was furiously reviewing a few pages of notes he knew to be questions for Tal.
Kole walked up to her, and whispered, “Remember, Doug and Runt can’t know who Tallen is.”
“Oh yeah…” she said, clearly having forgotten.
“Did you give it away already?”
“Umm… I don’t think so.”
Kole got comfortable at a desk nearby and tried to lose himself in reviewing his own questions for the day while trying to not listen as Zale told Runt all about her picnic date with Harold.
A subtle hiss alerted Kole to the arrival of Tallen. Kole didn’t detect the Arcane Realm being tapped for the arrival, unlike when he did at Theral’s.
Just how powerful is Theral’s teleport? He wondered, wishing he could ask Tal about it.
He thought back to Underbrook’s spectacle spell and how he’d almost sensed it. He was getting better at sensing the magic of others, far sooner than is to be expected for someone of his age, but his case wasn’t exactly typical.
“Hello everyone,” Tallen greeted casually as if he’d simply walked in instead of teleporting. “Shalia is busy addressing some urgent school-related business, so I’ll be handling today alone.”
“Oh no.” Runt said, deadpan.
Ignoring the comment, Tallen went on.
“As I understand it, some of you had a bit of extra time on your hands since our last gathering. I look forward to seeing your progress.”
Zale went first, explaining to her uncle about her experience with the void, and Kole saw something light up in the older wizards eyes. Kole knew that look. He’d had it himself countless times in the last three weeks—seven if you count the dungeon. Whatever Zale had experienced was the key to something Tal had long worked at.
Tallen interrogated her at length about the experience, and Amara stopped trying to butt in to ask questions and began taking notes instead.
“Did you know that it’s much easier to enchant objects in the ethereal realm?” Tallen asked no one in particular.
“Of course!” Amara said, as if everyone knew—which by the looks on everyone else’s faces they did not.
“Do you know why?” Tallen asked, turning to Amara.
At his attention, she began worrying the object in her hand, some half-carved stone cylinder. But, instead of being intimidated by the attention as Kole might have been, she spoke with great confidence, the topic being in her purview.
“I read Levar Burh’s treatise on it. He speculated that the proximity to the Arcane Realm facilitated the drawing on the Fonts, and the distance from the Material Realm reduced the interference from interfering Fonts.”
“You are well read. He’d have liked you,” Tallen said with a smile, and then grimaced slightly and risked a glance toward Runt who was not paying attention to his words.
Not gifted with guile it seems, Kole thought, remembering Zale’s mother’s surprise that Tallen hadn’t already let slip his own identity before Zale did.
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Amara positively beamed at the comment, and Kole thought she was about to pass out.
“But, I think he might have missed something,” he continued. “I have a theory… but it will take some more studying before I can test it.”
Amara then inundated Tallen with questions about Zale, her abilities, and her lack of abilities when it came to using Will
“The voidlings don’t have Will,” Tallen explained, “But they can interact with it. We can’t do that. The only Will we can use is the Will we generate. We can sense it, but just because we can smell something, it doesn’t mean we can do anything to the odor. The gods are beings of pure Will, they harnessed their power to create the Fonts, incomprehensible tools of power which they used to craft the Material Realm and everything within it. But, when they made the Illusian races, they put more than just the excess Will into us. They put a spark, a tiny fraction of a sliver of a fragment of their own beings, able to generate its own Will. That’s our soul, and it allows us to wield our own Will, harness it, and use it as a tool to interact with the Fonts.
“The voidlings were not created by our gods. They don’t have that spark—“ he held his hand up to forestall a question “—and before you ask, that doesn’t mean Voidlings don’t have souls, and I know for a fact Zale has one. Anyway, whatever created them, achieved a similar result as our own gods, only through different means. They were created outside of anything we’d even call a Realm, and as such can operate and interact with our Realm without the restraints of being bound to it.
“They are beings entirely of something else, something akin to Will. They do not generate it, they are it and with it, they can interact directly with the Fonts or the Will of others.
“We are like a scribe, writing on paper with a quill. The ink pot is the Font, the quill our Will which we use to channel its power, and the paper the Realm on which we write. We can only write by putting them all together, but the Voildlings are not so constrained. They can break our quills, stick their fingers in the ink, and smear it all over the page. Some very skilled can even alter the ink we have already laid down to form words of their own.”
“Why can’t we mess everything up with our own hands?” Doug asked when it was clear the explanation was over.
Tallen turned to the demonkin.
“Because that would ruin the analogy,” he said kindly. “So let’s just pretend like I had a good answer. The better question is why can the Voidlings interact with Will as they do. No one knows. My answer is just the leading theory based on observations.”
The group discussion moved on to the progress reports of others. Runt was making slow progress on creating her own mental vault, while Doug and Rakin both thought themselves close to producing soul stones after their month of isolation.
Tallen dismissed everyone else before asking Kole for an update.
“You all probably don’t want to hear us talk about wizardry, so you can go get to work on your tasks.”
He looked at Kole, studying him curiously, and then asked, “So, in light of your recent revelation, do you have any questions for me?”
Kole had plenty but led with the simplest one.
“How are you not dead?”
Tallen chuckled.
“I’ve died, more than a few times, it just hasn’t seemed to take so far, but I think you meant something else.”
Kole nodded.
“Well, that’s a secret. Sorry. I can’t really share. But, I’m not some lich or immortal. I’m fairly certain if you killed me this instant, I’d remain so. “
Next Kole asked about his experience in saving Illandrios from the outsiders, and Tallen gave a brief summary of the tale, filling in many details and contradicting others from the story he’d grown up learning about.
“Anything else before we get back to the topic at hand?”
Kole worked up his courage and decided to just go for it.
“Will you take me on as your apprentice?”
Tallen winced slightly at the question, regret on his face.
“I was afraid that was what you were going to ask,” he said, regret clear in his voice. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t commit to always being around. If I were to take you on as an apprentice, and I was forced to leave for some reason or other, you would be dropped from the program. And trust me, I won’t be able to stick around here for too long.”
“Well that would be better than never getting in,” Kole countered.
“Only if you don’t get in,” Tallen shot back. “Have more faith in yourself. You’re making progress, and you have only been here three weeks. Be patient. You’ll find a mentor. I know it. If I agreed to do it, you’d stop looking, and it would only be a matter of time until you got dismissed.”
Kole sensed much more certainty in Tallen’s words than he expected. He really did believe Kole would find one and wasn’t just saying it to placate him.
“Fine,” Kole said, trying to not sound sullen, but not succeeding. “While you’re here. I need some help with a few things.”
Kole updated Tallen in detail about his progress with Thunderwave.
“I seem to have hit a wall,” he said after a lengthy summary of his last month’s study. “No matter what I add to the spell, it doesn’t seem to get closer to the Font. Is there a spell component I’m missing?”
“Almost certainly,” Tallen answered. “There’s essentially an infinite number of spell components, but I don’t think that’s your problem. Cast the spell.”
Kole cast the spell, sending the incomplete spell construct into the Arcane Realm. Tallen watched him do so, his eyes looking past Kole, unfocused.
“Hmm,” he said after the spell had dissipated without any apparent effect. “You seem to have directed the spell into a bit of a dead end. Every piece you add to the spell takes it a step closer to the Font of Sound, but when traversing a maze, you don’t always walk towards the center, and sometimes there are dead ends. You need to backtrack, take some components off the spell, and try again—though I recommend starting over from scratch. The spell you have is already getting up there in complexity to the peak of a first-tier spell. I suspect you took your misturn early on.”
“Start over!?” Kole balked.
“You don’t have to, but I strongly recommend it. Don’t worry, it will be much faster the second time.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Suit yourself,” Tallen said with a shrug, “But you did ask me for advice, and I do actually know a thing or two about this.”
Kole wrestled with the decision. He could keep going, but did he have time to risk it? If he truly did need to start over, he only had eleven weeks until finals. If he counted the dungeon, he’d had seven weeks already. If spell complexity was a sign of whether or not he was on the right path and if he chose better next time, he’d know if he’d failed in another six weeks or so, less if he moved faster as Tallen suggested. He could maybe try two more times before the end of the year.
“Alright,” Kole conceded, “I’ll start over… but I’m saving my old spell.”
Tallen smiled, “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”