[A gold dragon and a red dragon fighting in the sky.]

D is for dragon, the first children of the gods, but their connection to Faust placed them at odds. The power of the betrayer corrupted their minds, and to preserve all the races they fled to protect the frailer kinds. Once protected by the power of Bild__’s metallic sheen, the pacted dragons grew stable, rational, and pristine.

-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic

—

The attack had only been a raid, they discovered quickly after returning to the ring of wagons. The gnolls had attacked, stolen supplies, and then retreated. Zale and Kole had faced the strongest battle, and Kole was beginning to suspect he’d been targeted.

“They must have observed that first attack,” Kole said. “They cast silence on me, which disabled our ability to raise the alarm, and my ability to fight. If it wasn’t for Zale doing… something, they would have caught the camp completely by surprise.”

“They were much larger than the others,” Doug observed.

“I think those were their young, maybe some sort of trial?” Zale suggested. “I thought I read something about this but… I never finished reading that part.”

Zale began to blush.

“I don’t remember that,” Kole said, thinking over their discussions. They did their research together and shared any important parts. He thought he’d remember something like that.

“I was studying with Harold, and then we got distracted.”

“Sure,” Rakin said, making air quotes. “Distracted.__”

Zale pushed the dwarf, but she might as well have shoved a wall for all it did to him.

“It’s not like that, we started training.”

“Sure,” he said again, “Training.__”

Zale was as dark from her strange method of blushing as Kole had ever seen her, and her face looked almost like holes in reality with facial features imposed on it.

“Can we get back to the raid?” Kole asked, jumping in to save Zale. “What did you do to that silence spell?”

“Oh, that,” Zale said with relief, embarrassment already fading. “I sensed that spell as soon it was cast. When I realized I couldn’t escape I tried something I thought I could do back in that goblin cave, and figured this was a good time to try it out. I sent my Will into the spell, and kind of broke it.”

“Ye broke a spell?” Rakin asked in disbelief. “Just like that?”

Zale nodded.

“Not just like that,” Kole corrected. “It was horrible. It hurt, but, like, everywhere and nowhere at once.”

“Yeah…” Zale said. “Sorry about that. I felt that too, it was pretty awful. I don’t know what that was. We should—“

“Ask your uncle,” the three boys said in unison, and Zale darkened once more.

Just then a commotion broke out in the camp.

Through the chaos, Kole heard shouts of “They’re missing.”

The four ran to the center of the chaos, and Zale went to the captain of the caravan guard.

“What’s happening?”

“They did a head count and came up short,” the man said wearily. “We are trying to find out who’s missing.”

A few moments later, a guard ran to the captain.

“Merchant Korin is dead, his family is missing. No bodies or sign of them.”

“Krod,” the captain said, using a curse Kole had never heard before.

Where in the fauell are we? Is this even real? He wondered.

The lack of mountains on the horizon had suggested that they weren’t in Basin, but that was easy to forget. The strange curse brought this thought back to mind.

“So, this is it? The real test?” Rakin said, looking at the others.

“Oh don’t spoil it,” Zale said, Rakin’s words taking her out of the excitement of the moment.

The four volunteered to search for the missing people while the guards protected the caravan. Zale acquired a clarity potion from a potion merchant in the caravan, which helped her recover what she’d lost in dispelling the silence, while Rakin had found some sort of endurance potion that he assured them would help him recover some of the ki he used.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Kole had his second clarity potion still, but would only use it in dire needs. It had been hammered into him at a young age back in Illandrious that the overuse of clarity potions could be harmful in the long term, even fatal. But, the most immediate reason to not do so was Will poisoning.

Most people—wizards, sorcerers, primals, and even runesmiths—could safely use twice their Will capacity in a day without experiencing harmful side effects, but beyond that Will poisoning occurred. Each person’s tolerance was different, but exceeding it would cause them to be unable to channel or manipulate Will for days. It was temporary, but short of a life-or-death struggle, was not worth the risk. Even with abundant access to affordable clarity potions, Kole had never been tempted to push his boundaries. Squeezing an extra bit of Will out of a day wouldn’t be worth the loss of the next week.

So, Kole had a second potion, but would only use it if he had to. A third would only cause him to get sick and be more hindrance than help.

While they begged for supplies, Doug had gone out into the darkness around the camp in search of signs of the gnolls’ retreat. It hadn’t been hard to find. He led them down the trail on foot, no lights lest they give away their approach. Kole could only just make out the ground beneath him in the dual moonlight, but he trusted Doug and his friends’ abilities to navigate in the dark.

It seemed like they traveled for hours, but Kole knew that to be a trick of the mind, his body couldn’t have supported the pace they had run at for more than a half hour. Eventually, the flat plains grew inclined, and before Kole knew it they were navigating around large rock outcroppings.

“Stop,” Doug whispered.

“I don’t remember the mountain being this close,” Zale observed.

“It wasn’t,” Rakin said confidently, with no explanation, but no one questioned his assurance.

“The trail stopped,” Doug said.

“Stopped?” Kole asked, “Or you lost it?”

“It’s just gone,” Doug said.

He gestured back to where they’d come from.

“It’s not behind us anymore either.”

“Was it an illusion?” Zale asked.

This time it was Kole’s turn to confidently answer.

“No, I would have been able to tell.”

“What do we do then?” Zale asked the group, opening the floor to suggestions.

“I’ll lead,” Rakin said, relishing the opportunity to explore this rocky expanse.

They fell in behind the dwarf, and followed him through the increasingly large field of rocks. A mountain now blocked the stars before them, and now even Kole was certain it hadn’t been there this morning.

“There’s tunnels,” Rakin said in a whisper, his eyes closed. “I can feel movement below, deep. Its faint but somethings digging.”

They drew their weapons, Rakin pulled a staff out of a boulder next to him, shaping it as he drew it out. The dwarf’s pace picked up and grew more certain as they traveled, and he stopped next to the largest boulder they’d yet seen, twice Kole’s height.

“Under here,” Rakin whispered.

“Flood,” Kole cursed, seeing the dark opening beneath. “I hate caves.”

He’d brought a torch along, but—as Kole had quickly decided after the failure of his light rune—torches sucked.

“Link up,” Rakin said, holding out a hand to Zale. “If I say so, Kole, do yer Fade thing.”

Kole nodded, and he headed into the darkness with an unlit torch at the ready. They traveled down into the depths, the only sound Kole heard was the shuffling of their feet and the pounding of his own heart. The dusty smells of the scree-filled incline were replaced quickly with the damp earthy smell of the underground.

Kole felt his hand squeezed by Zale ahead, and immediately drew on the Font of Illusions to Fade their presence. He thought he heard the sound of rhythmic tapping, and when it stopped, he felt the slightest drain on his Will as his spell diverted the attention of a creature up ahead. The tapping resumed and Kole felt another squeeze.

“Big spider,” Zale whispered to Kole.

“How big?” he asked, very much regretting his decision to come into this cave. No grade was worth this.

“Big.”

They traveled a bit further, and then Zale halted them.

“I can’t see up ahead,” she said, bewildered.

“What do you mean?” Rakin asked, “The tunnel goes on a ways then turns.”

“My Willsight,” she said. “I can see the walls in shades of gray, but it’s almost like there's no Will at all up ahead.”

Rakin shuffled ahead, leaving the other’s behind, and came back a moment later with a hand full of silk.

“Spider webs,” Rakin said. “It’s coating the walls. I felt my Will drain when I touched it, and… something more.”

“Oh boogers,” Zale said, cursing—sort of. “Mage slayer spiders.”

Rakin let out a string of dwarven curses as well.

“That’s bad?” Doug asked.

“They drain Will,” Zale explained. “They live off it, grow off of it. Their webs channel it into them. If they are big enough, they can sense through their webs.”

“The one I saw before was small,” Rakin explained. “So there must be more than one.”

“Do we burn the web then?” Kole asked. “We can’t walk through it, and if it’s big enough that it can sense the destruction, do we even have a chance?”

Kole heard no answer.

“Did you nod?” Kole asked, after an awkward pause. “You know I can’t see right?”

“Sorry, yeah. We’re dead if it can,” Zale answered audibly.

“Great, let’s just get this stupid cave over with then,” Kole said. “The sooner we get eaten, the sooner we can go back to class.”

Kole didn’t wait for agreement and began the tedious task of lighting his torch.

Once lit, Kole examined the walls as his eyes adjusted. The cave was narrow but tall, like a capped-off crevice. Spider webs covered the walls shortly ahead of them, and looking up Kole saw they completely covered the roof of the cavern.

After his eyes had adjusted, Kole took the torch and walked ahead, waving it about into the webs. The thin strands burned as the fire got close, shriveling up and darkening where the flames got near like recoiling tentacles. As he reached the thicker webbed section, the flames ignited fully, allowing the flame to propagate and travel down the cavern, lighting it ahead of them even as the cave filled with smoke. Through the light of this spreading flame, they saw the tunnel split and branch ahead.

“I can see again,” Zale confirmed after the flames had left their view.

“Let’s go,” Rakin said, cloth over his mouth as he followed the flames. “We lost the element of surprise, but there’s no reason to keep them waiting.”

The flames quickly outraced their own pace, and they followed the charred halls it left in its wake. The webs had gotten thicker as they went, judging by the amount of ash and soot that they passed through.

“There’s chaos up ahead,” Rakin whispered, eyes closed and focusing on the vibrations of the earth.

They continued on, faster now, Rakin guiding them through side passages seemingly at random. He paused, and signaled silently that there were enemies around the corner, and they all prepared for battle. Once everyone had given a nod, Zale gave the order

“Go!”