[The king disembarks a carriage in the drive of the country estate and bursts through the front doors. On seeing the interior of the renovated country estate, he falls to his knees and weeps.]

Handmaiden: Is it not to your liking? The queen went to great lengths to recreate the rooms to match the lost palace.

Labored screams ring out from offstage, and then cease.

-Act III of the Keyhole of Time

—

“So,” Tallen said, also unamused by Shalia’s antics. “Back to Kole here’s missing parents.”

Shalia didn’t look cowed, but took the hint and relinquished the spotlight.

“What do you know about their pocket realm?”

“Not much,” Kole confessed. “My father left some notes.”

Kole gave Tallen a summary of what he knew, which was very little. The pocket realm had been a desert wasteland with signs of a lost society. Nothing had lived in it—or so his parents had thought when they discovered it—but underground in one of the ruins they’d found trap-laden halls populated by sand elementals. His father had escaped, barely, but Kole didn’t know the specific details of the dangers that had caused them to run. His father hadn’t liked to talk about it.

“So, how do you think your parents survived in such an environment?” Tallen asked after Kole had shared what he’d known.

“My father thought time passed differently inside…” Kole said, voicing the idea for the first time and connecting it to his own recent experiences.

Tallen’s eyes lit up at the mention of time, but he stayed silent.

Kole continued, “When he escaped for the first time, the guide who’d brought them to the pocket realm’s entrance had gone, and so had all signs of their camp, despite only a few hours having passed inside. When he got back to civilization, he’d realized it had been gone for months.”

“Hmm,” Tallen said, thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can dig up. I’ve done some study on pocket realms myself, and I’m not an expert but I know enough. This seems to be either a dragon or Midlian pocket realm. If it was created by an outsider, it would have been a lot less coherent. I’m leaning towards dragon since there was a focus on elementals. The Midlian realms tend to have more horrific hybrid monsters. Where was the entrance located?”

“The first time, in the eastern desert,” Kole answered, referring to the small patch of desert east of the orc city of Orinqth. “I don’t know where it reappeared the second time, my father was more secretive by then.”

Tallen nodded as if he expected the answer and reassured Kole that he’d look into it.

“It’s probably not always connected to the Material Realm. If it were, we might have gotten a faint result from the divination on the amulet.”

Kole deflated, crestfallen. He chastised himself for his brief window of hope. Without the pocket realm connected to this one, it would be impossible to find it.

“Don’t look like that,” Tallen said, noticing his shift in mood. “No offense to your father, but if he found the pocket realm, I’m certain I could.”

Kole seemed to keep forgetting that Zale’s ‘Uncle Tallen’ was in fact a famous mage out of legend, and he gave himself a mental smack in the head. Then, Tallen added unhelpfully, thinking aloud.

“But… it’s also possible your father didn’t find it, and simply died in his search.”

Tallen quickly noticed his words had once more deflated Kole and added, “But, like I said. I’m probably better than him…”

“How about we start the discussion?” Zale asked, saving her friend and Uncle from the awkward conversation they’d become trapped in.

“Great idea!” Tallen said, clapping his hands together.

Kole allowed Tallen to disengage. He knew the mage had meant well by his meandering word vomit, and overall he felt good about the situation.

He opened his uncle’s letter as Tallen got the other student’s attention.

Kohlyn, Kole,

I hope this letter finds you at the Academy of Illunia. I know you’ve spoken of attending, and I pestered the guard until they gave me back your journals. I found your plans. I’m disappointed you felt the need to hide them from me, but in hindsight, I see why you would have feared my response. I’ve been reflecting a lot of late.

I know I have been hard on you. I’m sorry. I still don’t know if what you seek is possible, but I hope you find what you are looking for at this school. Know you are always welcome back home, but you should stay away until things die down.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Be careful. Lord Oldhill is looking for you and likely knows where you are. He asked about your mother’s amulet.

Don’t let him have it. Hide it.

It’s not safe to discuss this in a letter, and maybe you’ve figured it out by now, but the amulet is valuable.

I’ve never told you this, but I’m proud of your dedication. I don’t agree with your decisions, but I respect your commitment to your goals and the work you’ve put toward them. I hope you prove me wrong.

-Uncle Jaryn

Kole wiped his nose with his sleeve and found his cheeks to be wet as well. His uncle’s words hadn’t exactly been gushing with praise, but it had been praise—praise he’d wanted to hear his whole life.

“Well, that warning came a little late,” Runt’s voice came from just over Kole’s shoulder.

He spun around, nearly knocking her over but she jumped back out of his way.

“Whoa! Sorry!” she said, holding her arms up in a placating gesture. “It was a bit sappy for my taste, but I haven’t exactly been modeled healthy family dynamics back home.”

Kole clutched his amulet protectively.

Is she trying to get this? He wondered, remembering how she’d perked up at the revelation of what it was.

“That was private,” Kole said as a weak rebuke.

“Well, I happen to like private things,” Runt said, raising her eyebrow suggestively.

Already suspicious of the girl, instead of growing flustered Kole knew for certain Runt was trying to get his amulet.

“You just called me a nerd,” Kole said tucking the amulet away.

“Well, maybe I’m into that sort of thing,” Runt lied extremely convincingly, though Kole saw through it. “How about we—OW!”

Whatever Runt was going to suggest was interrupted when she got struck in the head by a book. She spun around to find Zale staring daggers at her.

“Leave him and his amulet alone,” Zale told her.

“Fine,” Runt said with a sigh.

She relaxed, her posture completely changing. It was only then he realized how elaborate her deception had been. The thief in training already had amazing control over her mannerisms and she’d altered her own to come off friendlier to Kole. She walked back to a desk and sat down, to listen to Tallen as he discussed soul stones with Doug and Rakin.

“I finished mine yesterday!” Doug said, triumphantly lifting a rock in the air.

To Kole’s eyes, the soul stone looked like a slightly mossy riverstone—wide, smooth, round, but with a green fuzz on part of it. Only, on closer inspection, the stone was slightly transparent and the green section was opaque all the way through.

“Bah!” Rakin shouted in frustration.

“Were you two racing?” Tallen asked, amused by the dwarf’s reaction.

“No,” Rakin said, producing his own stone. “I made mine too, I just wanted to have a more dramatic reveal.”

Doug and Rakin told Tallen how they’d worked on their soul stones through the journey, but how they were unable to create them inside the dungeon. On returning to a more comfortable environment after the six-week voyage, they were quickly able to finalize the process.

“Do you think this has something to do with the dungeon?” Amara asked.

Tallen considered it for a moment before answering.

“I don’t think so. The soul stone is something produced from one’s self. There are many ways to pull the soul into the Material Realm, but those methods don’t create the soul stone any more than a prybar creates the nail it pulls from a board. More likely the methods these two used were weakened by their distance from earth and nature.”

Rakin and Doug both nodded in agreement at the assessment. Rakin’s stone appeared to glow, though it emitted no light of its own. It appeared to be at first glance a dark orange—almost red—citrine gem, uncut and caked with stone. The lumpy stone had dark stone clinging to it, but like with Doug’s stone, what at first appeared to be on the surface, actually ran through the whole of the stone.

“So what do we do with these now?” Doug asked.

“Funnily enough, we are going to make amulets,” Tallen said.

He went on to explain what he’d planned. While soul stones couldn’t be used to make ensouled artifacts any longer, they were still valuable for making less fantastic magical artifacts. The dwarves used soul stones as the heart of every stone golem they created and often used them to power runes.

At the mention of using them to power runes, Amara stared hungrily at the stones in her friend’s hands.

Aside from the dwarves, enchanters could use soul stones as part of the crafting process to produce and sustain more powerful enchantments—though this was not as popular since a soul stone could be recreated so long as the person whom it belonged to still lived, causing the existing one to vanish, not only removing the enchantment from the weapon but often causing it to fail catastrophically. Because of this, soul stones of the confirmed dead were used almost exclusively for this.

“So what are you going to do with these,” Amara asked after the lecture about soul stones wound down.

She’d been hanging on every word and Kole knew she was going to seek out a means of creating one of her own as soon as she could.

“I almost forgot! Sorry, I can get carried away—or so I’ve been told,” Tallen apologized, and Kole struggled to connect this sort of scatterbrained man with the Tal of legends. “I had an… acquaintance—”

Kole sighed, frustrated at the vaguery. Even after learning the big secret of Tal’s identity, Zale and her family were still being evasive about some things.

“—who devised a method of using soul stones to power protective wards in a more active way. I thought about using these to simply block off the Fonts from you two, but that would only be a bandage on the problem and would not allow you to learn control. For Rakin, he had a means to filter out Faust’s influence, which I think we can modify to work for our unique situation. For Doug, we will need to add a delay so your magic manifests slower and gives you the opportunity to channel it. I tried both these methods on my own issue with varying degrees of success, but my problem is more severe than you two, so I suspect they will work fine.”

Dozens of questions flickered behind Amara’s eyes, as she debated what to ask first. Settling on one she blurted out, “Who will make such a thing?”

“I’ve been considering it,” Tallen said, then paused to think. “I should probably go to Kalkin—“

Kole had never heard of the name, but the way Amara’s eyes bulged out even further—something Kole hadn’t thought possible before—he assumed him to be suitably famous.

“But… the dwarves always make so much of a fuss when I visit and I’d rather not.”

Rakin let out a grunt of agreement.

“He’d rather spend years locked in a room than be the center of attention for a day” Professor Shalia said from the side of the room, not looking up from where the letter draft she was writing Oldhill.

Tallen’s eyes lost focus and he seemed to be reflecting fondly on some memory the comment had triggered.

“We all have our vices,” Tallen said back to her, as if secreting oneself away was some guilty pleasure. “Anyway, I’d prefer not to go to the dwarves. So I thought I’d look around the Academy. I’m sure there’s a talented rune crafter here somewhere.

Looking to Amara he asked, “Do you know of any?”

All that escaped Amara’s lips was a strained screeching sound of disbelief, reminiscent of one of Gus’ squeaks.