The King: Send my wife away, to the country. How can she die in her room if she is not there?
The Seer: Distance is a flimsy shield against the power of fate.
The King: Then we shall burn down the royal suites. As soon as she is gone from the city, burn the palace down.
The Seer: As you wish my king.
-Act I of the Keyhole of Time
—
Kole really wanted to sleep, eat, and shower after the battle, but the weight of the emerald compelled him to seek out Amara. He also knew he should probably shower, eat, and then sleep, as was the more responsible order, but he was just so tired, and the magic of the Dahn seemed to keep his bed clean, so there would be no harm.
Wait a minute…
He looked down at his filthy clothes, one of his two remaining sets, and now only suited for the rag pile. He hadn’t had to get his clothes cleaned since he moved into his room, and had only just noticed now, and realized the room must have also been cleaning his clothes.
“If only it’d repair them,” he mumbled.
He’d worn clothes provided by the school early on in the dungeon, but those had eventually gotten destroyed, and when it was between his own clothing and sail cloth replacements, he’d elected to wear his own.
The same gnome attendant as his first visit greeted Kole as he entered the workshop building of the crafting college. Or at least, he thought it was the same student. He was ashamed to admit he was terrible at telling gnomes apart, but in his defense, he’d only ever seen a few.
As he walked down the hall, he paid close attention to the details of the building, as he tried to figure out where the building on campus ended and the Dahn began. Now that he was looking, it was quite obvious.
While most of the doors in the building were wood or metal—the metal doors often accompanied by large warning signs—the door to the hallway where Amara’s workshop led was the stone door Kole had come to associate with the magical doors of the Dahn. Not all the stone doors in the Dahn were portals to other areas or pocket realms—or so he thought—but all the portals to other areas or pocket realms had been stone doors like this one.
As usual, Kole felt no difference as he passed over the threshold and he wondered how far he’d traveled in that single step.
He navigated to Amara’s door from memory and knocked hard on the metal, but no one answered. He tried the handle but found it locked. He placed his ear on the door, but couldn’t hear anything through the thick metal.
“Hello!” he yelled, pounding on the door with his fist.
It was possible Amara wasn’t there, but it was far more likely that she was simply engrossed in something and not paying attention. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the gentle scratching of tiny claws on the bottom of the door. He waited a little while longer, and a flustered Amara answered the door, combing back her hair out of her face with her hands.
“Oh! Kole! Hi!” she said, as if she’d not heard the knocks. “That must be why Gus attacked my hair.”
Gus perched on her shoulder, looking at Kole proudly.
Can rats be proud? He thought, despite being certain he’d read the posture correctly.
“I wanted to bring this back,” Kole said, offering her the emerald.
Amara’s eyes grew wide and she sagged in relief.
“I didn’t know you took that!” she said, snatching it back. “I was looking everywhere for that thing.”
Kole looked past her and saw the ordered chaos of her lab was now just regular chaos.
“About that..” Kole began and then explained his last month to her.
“The Dahn teleported this from my lab into your bag on a ship at sea!?” Amara said amazed.
“It seems like it,” Kole said, “But I suppose it could have put it in the bag in the ready room. But, I’m still not sure whether or not the place beyond the ready room is real, though I have no idea how it could exist otherwise.”
They sat in her messy workshop, and speculated for not the first time about how the dungeon might function, but as always settled on “weird ensouled artifact magic.” Unlike sorcery, wizardry, enchanting, or runecraft, which all drew on the Fonts in recognizable and decipherable ways, even the least of ensouled artifacts tended to bend the learned’s understanding of magic and the Dahn was far from the least. It had been constructed by a dragon, using its own soul stone, and gifted to the dwarves before it eventually fell into the hands of Daulf to eventually become the Academy of Illunia.
“Grandmother hates cloakers,” Amara said offhandedly.
“She does?” Kole asked, surprised.
Lidian Oakcrest was a famous naturalist. The famous naturalist and he thought it odd she’d hate a creature. From what works of hers Kole had read, she seemed to appreciate something about all creatures.
“Mhmm,” Amara said as she was focusing on the emerald, filling it with some new rune intent now that Kole was done with it. “She could never figure out why they behaved the way you experienced. She theorized that they were displaced from their homes in the deep of the original oceans by the increased sea pressure of the Flood, but she could never prove it since.”
“Maybe…” Kole said, thinking. “They looked a bit like some creatures I remember seeing through the dome back home. Flat bodied and alien looking.”
They talked about small things for a while longer, until Kole eventually excused himself. His quick drop-off had turned into a social visit, and he really wanted to get some time alone to do… something.
He was pretty exhausted and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he just wanted to relax.
What would I even do?
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
As he walked back to his room—trying and failing to get a door to appear in the section of the Dahn he was in—he tried to think of what he used to like doing in his free time and came to a shocking realization.
Do I not actually have any hobbies?
***
By the time Kole left Amara, it was past dinner time, and Kole treated himself to a meal in the dining hall. After months at sea and the bland rations that came with it, the thought of oatmeal wasn’t particularly appealing—even if it was free.
After eating alone, Kole walked through the library in search of his room but paused looking at the books.
He went up to a librarian who was busy inspecting books for damage.
“Excuse me, but is there a fiction section?” he asked.
He had remembered he’d used to enjoy reading stories—both fictional and real—about adventurers and their feats. It had been years since he’d read for pleasure, and today seemed a good day for it.
The librarian directed Kole to the shockingly large section of the library dedicated to fiction.
Seeing the surprise on Kole’s face, she explained.
“The founders of the Academy had an appreciation for fiction and stocked the library with much of it even as they filled it with books of academics and magic.”
She left Kole to browse, and he looked over titles for a while before giving up and grabbing one at random. The Lost Prince.
Kole flipped through the pages on his way towards his room and began to regret his choice. It seemed to be a bit of a romance.
Why in the realms is this type of book in the Dahn? He asked himself. He considered going back, but elected to just return to go straight to bed.
But the Dahn had other plans for him. Inside his room, he found both his roommates to be present, and in a one-sided conversation.
“You make it seem so easy—“
Kole heard Theral speaking to the pack rat, which was sitting at the corner of the desk. Theral stopped speaking as soon as he heard Kole.
“Am I interrupting a private conversation?” Kole joked, trying to hide his irritation. He’d really wanted to sleep by then.
“Oh no,” Theral said, “Just me venting my frustrations at a semi-willing audience.”
“I don’t understand why the Dahn hasn’t gotten rid of all those creatures,” Kole said as he collapsed onto his bed.
“I think it’s grateful to them,” Theral said after a moment’s consideration.
“Grateful?” Kole asked, sitting up, surprised at the answer.
“Yeah, I, uh…” Theral began, as if trying to remember. “heard a story about a battle that took place in the Dahn. Some demons had found a way in and a ranger empowered a pack rat to help fight them off.”
“When was this?” Kole asked intrigued. “There have been more incursions lately.”
“Oh, it was quite a long time ago… probably,” Theral answered quickly, waving away the question.
“Have you heard about the latest incursions?”
When Theral said that he hadn’t, Kole filled him in on what he’d experienced. When he was finished, Theral seemed about to ask a follow-up question, but then thought better of it and instead asked.
“How’s your spell work going?”
Kole gave him a rundown of the past month and a half, explaining how he’d been in the dungeon and how time moved differently there. Kole could tell Theral really wanted to know more about the dungeon, but he sat silently, not interrupting despite the curiosity evident on his face.
Kole thought it strange but was exhausted and didn’t want to get into it.
“You didn’t work on Thunderwave at all?” Theral asked.
“A little, but learning the rune took priority and I was closest to learning Shield.”
Theral nodded.
“So how is Thunderwave progressing?”
Kole gave him a summary of his troubles.
“I spoke to another wizard familiar with traditional wizardry, and he recommended I start over and take some different paths, so I did, but I feel stuck again.”
They discussed it a while, and Theral pulled out his spellbook, removing a few pages from them with individual spell components drawn on them.
“Here, these components might help,” he said, handing them over.
“Are you sure?” Kole asked, taking them despite his question.
“Yeah, it’s nothing see? I can just make copies. Magic spellbook and all.”
Theral showed Kole his spellbook, which was open to copies of two of the components he’d just given him.
“Yours can copy spellforms!?” Kole asked, shocked.
That wasn’t supposed to be possible—or at least, no one had ever done it he corrected himself which wasn’t the same thing as he himself liked to remind people.
Theral looked a little embarrassed.
“Yeah, it is a very powerful item."
Kole could tell Theral didn’t want to talk about it, so he asked a different question.
“How do you know so much about traditional wizardry? Where are you from?”
Theral considered answering at all before finally giving in.
“I grew up traveling with my parents. My mother was a Stormcaller and trained me in wizardry and sorcery, but she’d left her clan before she’d learned enough. When they passed, I had to get by studying on my own and found myself with a lot of free time and easy access to traditional spellbooks.”
“Sorry…” Kole began, not sure what else to say about Theral’s parents
People had spent most of his life consoling him for the loss of his parents and he’d hated it, nothing anyone said ever made him feel better—and they weren’t even dead so it made their words all the more frustrating.
“It’s alright, it was a long time ago.”
Theral then spotted the book Kole had taken from the library.
“Is that The Lost Prince?”
“Umm, yeah… you read it?”
“Yeah, just the other day actually. Though I’ll admit it wasn’t very good.”
Kole was about to jump in and mention that he too didn’t care for the more romantic sorts of fantasies, but Theral continued.
“It’s the weakest of Sibil Earnherst’s books by far. His knowledge of the Midlian Kingdom was… very inaccurate and he seemed to jump from action to action scene with no dialogue between whatsoever.”
Kole nodded along politely, listening as Theral recommended a few other books by the author that were better.
“Well, I really need to get some rest,” Kole said, interrupting. “It’s been a long… day.”
“Oh, sorry. Of course!” Theral apologized. “None of my friends appreciate adventuring novels, so its rare I get to discuss them.”
Kole moved to get ready for bed, turning invisible to change clothes. Theral politely turned away, despite the invisibility, paid extra close attention to his book.
Once he’d changed, he laid his ragged clothes out on the floor to examine the tattered remains of them.
“You want me to fix those?” Theral asked, turning around to face Kole again.
“You can? I mean, I wouldn’t be against it.”
Theral made quick work of the clothes, first casting Clean on them, then Mend. All in all it took five minutes for the clothes to restored to a nicer state than they’d been in before he’d left home.
“Wow! Thanks!” Kole said, holding up his clothes, relieved he’d not have to buy another set.
“Don’t mention it, I had to use up all my Will before bed anyway.”
Kole nodded in understanding. It was rare he didn’t spend all his Will when studying at night, but with Will capacity increasing proportionally to Will expenditure, it was an essential practice for wizards to exhaust as much Will as they could each night sleep. He considered his own remaining Will. He had about thirty left and determined a cantrip would be enough to exhaust his Will before bed.
He cast the cantrip for the Font of Barriers, which simply required him to cast the Shield spell, leaving out the actual spell component and only opening the gate and forming the path.
A translucent barrier appeared just before his palm as he said the words of the spell, “Roh-ta-ko.”
Before the cantrip was completed, he realized how dumb he’d been.
The cantrip he’d expected to cost him 30 Will, only cost him around 10.
Of course!
Shield only cost him 20 Will now, obviously the cantrip cost would have gone down alongside the spells.
“You okay there?” Theral asked. “You look… happy and mad.”
Kole explained, earning a laugh from Theral.
“I’ve done a thing or two like that. Being goal-orientated when it comes to learning magic tends to blind you to anything but the goal. That Barrier cantrip can be quite useful in battle,” Theral said. “You should practice with it. It won’t block everything, but it can stop most things. And it’s free—well, cheaper for you I suppose.”
Kole tested out the cantrip for the Font of Force, pushing a book off the desk from a few feet away, and found its Will cost too had gone down. He cast it a second time to use up the last of his Will, thanked Theral for the advice, and lay down for bed.
As he lay, he realized how late it had gotten. He’d meant to sleep early but now he was going to be exhausted for group the next day.
No, he thought, stopping himself from getting mad at Theral.
The young wizard had given him advice and tutelage he would have killed for a month back, and he was excited to apply his knowledge. His last thought before bed was a hope that Tallen would be as helpful as his mysterious roommate had been.
Not likely…