Tristan glanced furtively about the domed room, particularly at the sealed door. “So, what are we doing here? Actually, why are we here at all?”

“Because you’re all about the closest people I have to friends here, and I reckon you’d be interested in an exchange of services for information.” Kyle’s reply was immediate and breezy as he swept a scrutinizing gaze across the cleared center of the room.

“You’re being melodramatic again,” Lizzie muttered not too softly from beside Trystane’s waist. Despite her words though, the pink-haired gnome wore a curious look as she regarded both the room they were in as well as the boy who’d invited them in here.

“Really, Kyle, you really should try socializing,” Nel’rath added, the high elf’s voice tinged with exasperation and ribbing. “Cultivating the air of a hermit is unappealing, and you are going to need to learn how to interact with a wider group of people.”

Again Kyle’s response was quick and half-absent. “I have. You’re good practice as is. It helped me lots in Alterac.”

Tristan joined everyone else in rolling their eyes at their classmate’s behavior.

“For the love of…” Nel’rath groaned as he rubbed at his temples, and then turned to the other guest of this semi-secret rendevous. “Please talk some sense into him, Jaina.”

“I gave up long ago,” the princess of Kul Tiras answered with a cheerily resigned shrug. A smirk bloomed on her face, and Tristan had to hammer into his mind that she was way, way out of his league to maintain his rationality. “If Kyle’s going to be a misanthropic king, it’ll mean he gets ousted and sent back here. Which I think is his grand plan.”

Kyle seemed finished with defining his casting space, as he turned back to the quartet with an unamused look. “I wish. Anyway, are you all interested in this or not?”

“You’ve not told us what ‘this’ is, yet,” Tristan pointed out. “We’ve been dragged through the professors’ wing and maybe made to trespass into a mage’s private lab-”

“Archmage Krasus has given me permission to use this room.”

Tristan almost felt his eyes strain as he rolled them. “Oh joy. We’re about to be party to vandalizing an archmage’s chamber. Not just a normal mage, no…”

“I’m not going to do any destructive testing,” Kyle countered with a huff. To forestall any further griping, he then produced a scroll from a discreet satchel hanging off him. “Look, I’m going to show you a spell I’ve been permitted to share.”

“And…?” Lizzie prodded.

“And because you’re all better casters than I am, you’ll help me cast the spell so I can try some non-destructive testing.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested his words, and then a collective sigh.

“Please don’t tell me this is the part where you reveal yourself to be a warlock,” Nel’rath groaned.

“Please,” Lizzie cut in. “It’d make more sense if he did so.”

Kyle let out a theatrical sigh. “Look, there’s nothing forbidden about this, alright? Master Krasus probably knows you’re all here thanks to the wards in the doorway-”

Shit. Tristan forgot to consider that. His head immediately snapped back to the door, half-expecting for a guardian golem or elemental to manifest and smite him for his earlier comments about the room’s lack of tidiness.

“-and he’s been briefed and has given me the approval to proceed with this.”

Lizzie kept a skeptical glare on Kyle as she took the scroll off him, and the three other novices easily bent over above the gnome to have a look at its contents.

“It’s a…conjuring spell?” Tristan immediately commented as his eyes ran through the first lines of the formula.

“A potent summoning spell,” Nel’rath corrected. “Compact and efficient… Where’d you get this, Kyle?”

“Eh, Master Krasus knows a hermit mage who knows a thing or two about magic…”

Silence fell again as the novices fully studied the scroll, digesting the intricacies of the spell’s construction. It was a highly complex conjuration spell, one that managed to be tightly focused in what it could summon, yet had such loose tolerances that even mere novices could (at least on paper) cast it without too taxing their focus. What really drew Tristan’s attention though was the subject of summoning.

“Aren’t summoned crystals practically useless as ingredients?”

“I’m not using it as an ingredient.”

“Could you please be less cryptic?” Nel’rath sniped, his eyes still fixed on the scroll.

Kyle let out an annoyed huff. “Look, I just need a whole bunch of a specific quartz right now for some testing. Master Krasus is busy with other matters, and he agreed that I could seek discretionary help.”

Lizzie tore her gaze from the scroll to look at Kyle. “How discretionary?”

“You can keep the scroll,” he replied, shrugging. “Just…keep what follows after that to yourself?”

“It’s not gonna be demons?”

“For fuck’s… I’m not a warlock, Lizzie.”

The gnome grinned. “I don’t know… Reclusive, handles unknown magic, summons a flying eyeball… Coulda fooled me.”

Despite the teasing, the four novices did eventually agree to aid Kyle’s simple request.

“Just summon as much quartz as you can. Fill the whole room up, for all I care.”

“Should’ve clued me in earlier,” Tristan groused. “I’d have brought my pickaxe.”

They spread out across the circular chamber, forming an axis while Kyle stood back and watched. Nel’rath went first, on account of being the most experienced caster present. He glanced down to the scroll only a few times as he gestured, and with a forceful push of his arms along with a shout of exertion, a small shockwave radiated out from the center of the chamber as a pile of chunky blue crystals about half the height of the elf literally appeared out of thin air.

Nel’rath wiped his brow as he slowly exhaled. “Be careful, it’s an easy spell to cast…but it takes a bit out of you.”

“Duly noted,” Lizzie said, taking the scroll next and going through the same motions. She visibly trembled as she let loose the spell to conjure not only a pile larger than herself, but also marginally larger than Nel’rath’s. “Heh… Not…not as hard as you make it sound, Nel.” She was being competitive about it for some reason.

Jaina went next, and Tristan had to remind himself to stop from staring so much as the blonde novice gestured with far more grace than either elf and gnome. The princess aimed her spell higher in the air, causing the summoned blue quartz to rain prettily on both Nel’rath’s and Lizzie’s piles to create a larger conglomeration.

Then it was Tristan’s turn, and he thought did respectably enough, putting a cap on the whole heap that made it higher than everyone present. As they studied the result of their work, Kyle gave an appreciative nod. “My thanks. Do you want to go for another round?”

“I think we’ll wait and see what you’re actually going to do with it first,” Jaina replied.

“Fair enough. Now, if you could, please keep the following to yourselves.”

“As long as it’s nothing warlocky,” Tristan said before Lizzie could, triumphantly savoring her glare.

The quartet sat or stood back as Kyle figuratively took to the stage. He walked up to the glinting pile and reached a hand out. By now, seeing his eyes alight with an eldritch glow was utterly mundane to Tristan, though he did feel a rash of concern as the air around him felt charged with…something.

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Lightning arced out from Kyle’s fingertips to dance across the crystalline chunks, causing them to glow with the same blue-white light that spilled from his eyes. Tristan had to squint and cover his eyes with a hand from the increasing brightness, and a quick glance to his sides showed that the others were in similar states.

Loud cracks rang out, followed by sharp grinding and crunching. Through the stabs of light, Tristan could just make out the silhouette of the quartz heap rippling and shrinking. And then there was a final, ear-stabbing crack as the blinding light flared and suddenly snuffed out. As Tristan slowly lowered his hand and his eyesight adjusted to normal light levels, he found that the heap of blue quartz had been replaced with a loose pyramid made of dimly glowing translucent cubes.

“What-” Even as he opened his mouth to raise the obvious question, the Lizzie-sized cubes began to evaporate. Tristan stared mutely as the center of the chamber became empty in a few seconds, with the only blue-white glow left emanating from Kyle’s eyes. That too was snuffed as he snapped out of his casting trance and regarded Tristan and the others.

“I’m sorry that your transmutation didn’t last,” Nel’rath began sincerely, though it trailed off as Kyle broke into a smile.

“Oh, no. It went perfectly well.”

“Then where’d the blocks go?” Lizzie asked, peering around as if the transmuted cubes would suddenly appear out of thin air.

“Uh…let’s just say it’s being stored in a cache somewhere.”

It was hard not to stare at Kyle then, so Tristan didn’t bother trying. He joined Lizzie in silently boring a hole into the boy with an unvoiced question for further elaboration, but Kyle didn’t budge.

“So, is that all?” Jaina asked. “You didn’t just call us all the way here for…that, right?”

Kyle’s smile widened, probably the first time Tristan had seen the potential mage-king show such levels of excitement. “Of course not. I mean, you’re free to leave if you want to.”

Nobody did, and instead the quartet kept closer to the walls as Kyle’s eyes lit up again and he raised his arms. A shimmer of light rained down from out of nowhere and thickened at points to create a silhouette of a giant. There was a sense of something far more weighty to his gestures now compared to when he summoned his eyeball probe, something that made Tristan and Nel’rath silently cast a protective ward as they watched.

The eldritch summoning took a while, the streams of light adding more layers of detail as they rained down for almost half a minute. Tristan could see something that was larger than a troll or orc (at least the descriptions he’d read about them) but did not give off too bulky an impression. The legs looked a bit weird, and there were weird growths on its shoulders…

Tristan didn’t have the time to fully speculate on the details as the summoning was completed with another crack of sound. This time, it was followed by a clamorous crash of metal as Kyle’s summon completely collapsed to the floor.

“Shit.”

They ran over to his side, tense and ready for trouble, but they found Kyle kneeling dejectedly and staring at a heap of exotic golden metal. Golden metal armor, Tristan corrected himself as he noticed what were large greaves and breastplate and bracers… Each piece was studded with finely cut blue gems. Each piece was obviously too large for Kyle or anyone else to wear.

Tristan finally understood why the legs looked so weird when he finally saw how the whole assembly looked double-jointed, like a large prairie bird. There was even armor for claw-like feet. Who had legs like that?

“Kyle?” Jaina called out with concern at the boy kneeling by the metal pieces and mumbling what were probably a stream of curses. “Kyle, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he replied in a snap, finally rising up. “Yeah. Just…just surprised, that’s all.”

“And disappointed,” Lizzie bluntly added.

“And that,” he confirmed with a weak smirk.

Jaina glanced at the armor on the floor. “Was there something supposed to be in that suit?”

There was a heavy second before Kyle nodded, sighing deflatedly. “Yeah. I thought I’d…” He glanced at the pile, and then to the four novices, and then sighed again. “Nevermind. Didn’t pan out as expected.”

“Don’t lose heart,” Nel’rath comforted. “You still achieved some results. I’m sure with some further refinement-”

“I doubt it,” Kyle cut in. “I mean, if this-” His eyes glowed then, and in seconds, a golden probe popped up in the air beside him, floating with eerie sereneness. “If this works, then that should’ve as well. I mean, more than just the armor pieces… Fuck.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, and both the probe and the pile of armor instantly became glowing, transparent things for a second before they vanished with a clap of displaced air.

“I thought you couldn’t dismiss your summons?” Jaina queried with a raised brow.

Kyle dragged himself out of his despondency to look surprised, like a thief caught in the act for some reason. “Oh. I eventually…recalled how to do it. Careless oversight on my part.”

“Well…maybe you did another oversight here?” she added in a reassuring tone.

“Yeah, this is your first time casting the spell right?” Tristan chipped in with a shrug. “It’s fancy, and fancy spells aren’t exactly the easiest.”

Despite his skeptical expression, Kyle hummed in thought at the encouragement. “Maybe…”

Nel’rath joined in to lift Kyle from his dejection. “Well, the evening’s still young, perhaps we can still conjure more quartz as a stockpile for your future attempts?”

“Yeah, it beats being led around like thieves in the night each the next time you want more,” Lizzie added.

There was a moment’s pause before Kyle nodded, offering grateful thanks to them.

While the others worked to help Kyle, Tristan found himself staring dumbly at the sudden realization of Kyle’s summons. The other boy had far more power than he’s letting show to be able to so casually cast two summoning spells just like that. It might not exactly be arcane power, but it was magical power nonetheless.

And Tristan suddenly felt glad that he didn’t owe Kyle anything, nor did they have any thorny issues between them.

Kyle did try summoning the giant thing once again, but once more it was an empty suit of gold and gems. At least he didn’t look too dejected by the result this time. Instead, as he dismissed the armor, a worryingly manic gleam suddenly filled his eyes as he came to an epiphany.

“I’ll need gas…”

“Huh?”

There was a resolute nod, and then Kyle was regarding the four of them with a querying look. “Do any of you by any chance know of any sort of green gas?”

Tristan was about to exchange worried glances with Nel’rath, Lizzie and Jaina, but the princess of Kul Tiras had to nod at Kyle and further enable his madness.

“What properties would the gas have?” she asked with genuine academic curiosity.

“Dammit Jaina,” Lizzie hissed, but by then it was too late, and Tristan found himself roped into a research group.