When this author was a child, she was invited to join a burgeoning school in the then-nowhere town of Edgewater by a then-unknown mage. I almost declined.

Foreword of Tallen Elmheart A Biography by Rail Dahnchild

—

For the first time in what felt like months, Kole woke up and didn’t immediately head to the training field. Instead, he got up, went to the showers, and met his friends for a quick breakfast before they were to head out to their PREVENT class.

While the dungeon trips had been canceled, the class itself hadn’t been. When the school had been put on high alert due to the incursions, large numbers of adventuring alumni had been asked back to campus. As such, there was an abundance of groups able to help in the training of young adventurers. Each team had been assigned a group of graduates who would oversee some aspect of their training for the remainder of the semester.

So, it was because of this that Kole and his team found themselves in front of another non-descript door deep in the basement of the art department.

“Why are we down here?” Kole asked.

“Tigereye said to meet here. He’s not a man of many words and didn’t elaborate,” Zale explained.

Zale opened the door, and they stepped out into a small circular room, the walls lined with identical doors. Professor Underbrook and Tigereye stood in the middle, turning to the students as they entered looking as if they’d just been deep in conversation.

“Welcome, students!” Professor Underbrook greeted them. “Welcome to the doors of wonder!”

“The what?” Doug asked.

Zale sighed.

“It’s just a room with teleportation doors,” she explained.

“I stand by what I said,” the halfling said, crossing his arms. “Teleportation is a wonder.”

“We will be going to the mountain passes today,” Tigereye said, interrupting his partner’s theatrics.

Professor Underbrook sighed this time.

“Very well. We’ve found an adventuring request uniquely suited to your group’s abilities—well, not yours Kole, sorry. Minor earth elementals have been raiding the demon kin villages at the foot of the eastern mountain range.”

Doug perked up at the mention of his people and his home region.

“It’s not your village,” Underbrook said, reassuring him. “We will take you nearby, and it will be your job to track them down and eliminate the threat. You’ll even get the reward.”

The mention of a reward perked Kole’s interest, which had quickly dwindled after Underbrook’s comment.

“Any questions?” The professor asked, looking at the students expectedly.

“Is everyone else doing something like this?” Zale asked.

“No,” Tigereye answered simply.

“Then why are we?” Kole asked the follow-up Zale was holding back out of respect for her mentor.

“Because you’re special,” Underbrook said, smiling.

“Really?” Doug asked, hopefully

“No,” Tigereye answered again.

“Well, fine. You four are a special case,” Underbrook said, revising his statement. “The other groups are doing missions in the area with adventuring parties. You four have missed a lot of class, so you require our more direct instruction, but you also have Ms Zale on your team, and I understand you are already familiar with the Dahn’s ability to create portals. So, I have scoured the surface of Kaltis for tasks I felt would best accelerate your education in these trying times.”

“What happens if we get in over our heads?” Kole asked.

“Oh don’t worry about that,” Underbrook said. “You’ll be fine—probably.”

“And if we’re not fine?”

“We’ll be around, don’t worry about it too much. I can teleport you out if you’re about to get yourselves killed. Now is that all?”

It was, and they all went through the door out into the bright morning of the mountain glade beyond.

Pop!

“Ow!” Kole shouted, rubbing his ears.

“Oh yeah! I forgot. It’s best if you keep your mouth open when teleporting to help equalize the pressure differential. We are a lot closer to sea level here,” Underbrook explained.

To emphasize his point, he pointed to the mountains above, and Kole saw the massive waterfall in the distance where the ocean broke through Basin’s mountain walls to form one of the rivers leading to the Plume Lake at the heart of the continent.

“Well, good luck!” Underbrook said, grabbing the calf of Tigereye and they vanished.

“Where’d they go?” Doug asked.

“Nowhere,” Kole said with a smile. It was his turn for once to ruin someone else’s invisible fun. “They’re invisible.”

Kole had sensed them drawing on the power of the Font Illusions, Underbrook—it seemed—had learned the newer version of the spell that drew on it directly instead of simply blocking light and drawing on that Font.

“Are ye sure?” Rakin asked, looking from Kole to where the professors were. “When yer invisible, I can sense you with me tremor sense. I can’t detect them at all.”

“It’s probably some form of Greater Invisibility that can draw on the Mind aspects of the Font,” Kole explained.

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“Kole’s right,” Zale said.

She pointed right at someone, “I see them right there with my Willsight.”

“Nicknacks!” came Underbook’s disembodied curse. “You primal children are no fun. Get going or I’ll think of something less fun for you all to do!”

Kole was fairly sure he heard a low rumble as well from the same direction.

Was that Tigereye’s laugh? It sounded like landslide.

The four students left their professors alone and started heading up the mountain. Doug led them quickly, finding paths for them and occasionally stopping to ask animals for news of the stone elementals.

As they traveled, Kole kept looking over his shoulder, the sense of Underbrook’s connection to the Font of Illusions following him and making him very aware that he was being watched. While it should have been comforting, it was unsettling. Eventually, they climbed past the tree line and the barren slope of the mountain spread out before them in both directions.

“That way,” Rakin said, pointing confidently to a direction Kole thought was southeast, but growing up with a stationary glowing object in place of a sun, he was still getting used to using it for navigation.

Does it set in the east or the west again? He wondered but decided to not ask Doug… again.

“Stop,” Rakin called after a while, kneeling down to listen to the ground. “I think there’s a cave around here somewhere.”

Kole was gaining an appreciation for the endurance training Zale put them through each day, and he wasn’t that tired despite the climb. But, he now realized they’d never done any of it on inclines, and his legs and butt were beginning to ache from the unfamiliar strain.

“Are you okay?” Zale asked Kole.

“Yeah, my butt is just sore,” Kole said, rubbing said butt. “I’m going to regret suggesting this, but I think we should do some training on stairs or something.”

“Good idea,” Zale agreed.

“Why are ye watching his butt?” Rakin asked his cousin and then raised an eyebrow at Kole knowingly

Oh no… I should have seen this coming, Kole thought as he and Zale both blushed, Kole turning red and Zale black.

“I wasn’t!” She defended. “He hardly even has a butt!”

“They’re comin!” Rakin shouted to the others as he stood out in the open next to Zale who stood beside him on a hastily constructed wooden platform.

The cave was a few hundred yards up the mountain from where they stood at the tree line. Doug himself stood high in a tree, while Kole too was perched up above, if less loftily.

Moments after Rakin’s shout, the ground around him rippled, as if it were a sheet with an animal running below it. Mounds formed in four places, and gnome-sized stone creatures burst from the ground. While they were diminutive like gnomes, they lacked heads, and had thick stone limbs, giving them a hulking appearance despite their small size.

Rakin hit the first with a kick and Kole winced internally with sympathy as the dwarf’s shin struck the elemental, but to Kole’s shock, the elemental stumbled back as if harmed by the attack. Beside him, Zale wielded a shield and mace Tigereye had brought with him and given her after sharing the mission’s objective. She swung the mace with—to Kole’s untrained eyes—the same skill and grace she wielded her bastard sword, and her first strike broke an arm off of her target.

Aside from Zale and Rakin’s grunts of exertion and the ringing of steel on stone, the battlefield was silent. Doug let loose an arrow as soon as the elementals had been visible, but his first shot bounced off his target ineffectively. Kole waited, not trusting his aim at such a distance they’d settled on him using Magic Missile to guarantee his Will was spent to some purpose.

The elementals seemed somewhat blind to Zale, up on her perch. They knew she was there, but her swings were not dodged, or even blocked. But after receiving two blows each, the pair of elementals on her began ripping apart her platform, the small figures flinging the logs away with surprising strength.

Zale vanished from the top in a cloud of black motes, appearing in the air behind where she stood, facing her attackers. On her way down the small drop, she brought her mace down on the single-limbed elemental, breaking off its other arm. The elemental faded into the ground, disappearing, and Zale stepped toward the second.

Rakin traded blows with his two foes, focusing primarily on dodging the slow but powerful strikes. Kole noticed that he used his earth primal abilities less than usual. Normally he utilized the earth around him to propel his movements, making his leaps faster and further and making his charges more impactful. Now, he used only his ki-enhanced speed to jump and weave around his enemies, only landing strikes when opportunities arose. And, when he did hit, these punches left visible dents in the stone, though the impacts were silent to Kole’s ears.

Kole wasn’t sure, but he suspected Rakin to be using his primal magic solely to enhance these attacks.

Doug’s arrows continued to land with no effect, but his accuracy had improved as he gained a feel for the range and wind. It was then that he pulled a freshly carved arrow out of his quiver. The arrow had a bodkin arrowhead, pulled from an old arrow in his quiver, and the fletchings were freshly donated from a falcon he’d befriended during their preparations. The arrow struck one of Rakin’s foes, and vines burst forth from the attack, wrapping around the elemental while reaching toward the ground.

The elemental reacted immediately and ripped the arrow out of its stony body, and threw it, but the vines clung to its arm briefly before getting ripped off and thrown by its other arm. Rakin had used the momentary distraction to land a series of punishing blows on his other opponent and then jumped back before he could be flanked.

Kole took the opportunity of Rakin’s retreat to cast Magic Missile, and three darts of force, shot through the air, piercing the faltering elemental in quick succession. The creature fell apart under this barrage and crumbled into jagged rocks and dust.

Oh no! Kole thought, seeing what the death of an elemental looked like and realizing that Zale hadn’t defeated her first enemy.

She was locked in a back-and-forth with her second elemental, taking blows on her armor so she could get in and land her own. Despite her larger reach, the elementals were short and she had to bend low to get at them. While Rakin’s enemies were fighting him in a stand up battle, the earth elemental facing Zale was using the ground itself as if sunk in low to dodge her blows, even traveling through the earth to appear behind her.

“Zale! It’s hiding!” Kole shouted.

Kole had one Magic Missile left in him and held it at the ready. Seconds after his shout, the earth behind Zale erupted as the limbless elemental returned—new limbs freshly regrown. It continued from the ground into a charge at Zale and would have struck her if not for her ability to vanish. She disappeared, and the elemental traveled through where she had stood to crash into its ally.

Before Zale reappeared, Doug began to loose an arrow, but let out a curse. Kole risked a glance to see that Doug was gone. He scanned his surroundings and saw the demonkin boy sat in the dirt a few yards away, arrow unfired and on the ground beside him.

The elementals seemed to perk up, sensing the newcomer onto the ground, and one of the two facing Zale broke off, disappearing underground to get Doug. Zale reappeared, just in time to engage the second before it could give chase.

Doug recovered to his feet, and fired his ensnaring arrow at Zale’s enemy, just before a stone elemental burst forth before him. The arrow flew true, and the vines began to wrap around the target. Zale didn’t give the elemental the opportunity to rip the vines free, pummeling the small stone enemy as it clawed at the entangling vines.

Be it some sort of new ability, or chance, Kole didn’t know, but Doug vanished before the elemental could land its body blow on him, reappearing instantly a ways up the mountain.

Kole took the opportunity of the nearby and unobstructed enemy and sent three shots from his blasting rod in quick succession. Only two struck before the elemental retreated beneath the ground, but both took out sizable divots from the surface of its body.

With only one to face, Zale and Rakin both finished off their singular foes, and ran to Doug to guard him, but the fourth elemental never resurfaced.

“Flood,” Rakin cursed,

He closed his eyes, and dropped to the ground to listen before breaking out into a sprint towards the cave, the earth lifting beneath his feet to launch him ahead. Near the cave mouth, he jumped, landing a punch into the stone ground as he touched down.

The last elemental burst forth from where his punch landed, and put up a brief and ineffectual defense as Rakin pummeled it to stone.

“Good job!” Zale shouted, and let out a cheer.

In the distance, Rakin collapsed into the dirt and lay down as if asleep.

“I know!” he shouted back, as if he were insulted he could have done anything but.