NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 39: Recover
The Fonts were the first permanent creations of the gods. Built as tools to facilitate their future wonders, the Fonts are the building blocks of our realm.
-Tallen Elmheart, Secondary Fonts
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Outside the dungeon, Kole felt as his hearing quickly returned to him. They stood around looking at each other with mixed expressions of triumph and relief as they waited until they could hear each other. Kole was pleased to find his discarded quarter-staff and blasting rod leaning against the wall of the room, right next to a small pile of shattered glass. The others each had some of their own discarded equipment alongside it, Doug’s pile of arrows being the largest.
He inspected the glass and found a familiar cork stopper beside it.
The potion bottle? He wondered
“Everything we take in comes out with us,” Zale said from behind.
It sounded to Kole like she was speaking softly at the end of a long hall, the sound barely getting to him.
“You can leave the garbage here,” she added,
“What happens to it then?” Kole asked, speaking in a loud voice that sounded like a whisper even to himself.
Zale just shrugged, and she collected some of her lost belongings alongside him.
By the time they’d returned the equipment he’d borrowed and laid down on the ground in exhaustion, he could hear Doug asking in bafflement where the two girls had disappeared to.
While his hearing recovered fast, his arm still felt very broken.
“What happened to you guys?” Kole asked as he lay with his eyes closed.
“We got to the cave before they raised the alarm,” Zale explained. “We were defending that tunnel, keeping the goblins at bay when the log trap fell. That was you right?”
Kole gave an exhausted grunt of affirmation.
“We were about to push through to the beach when suddenly dust was everywhere. We killed the few pushing into us, and escaped into the tunnel in the confusion. Rakin collapsed it behind us, but when we got to the trap door, he stopped us, sensing the ambush above. We mustered the courage for a blind charge, but when we surfaced, the goblins had begun to chase you.”
“Did the girls survive?” Kole asked.
“Yeap,” Zale declared proudly. “I bet we’re the first group to pass with full marks.”
“Weren’t we only the third group?”
“It still counts.” Zale defended and then changed the topic. “So Doug, what’s your deal?”
“Me?” Doug asked, surprised at the sudden turn. “Oh, I just wanted to be an adventurer to see more of Assuine’s creation. I must say though, cities have really left a lot to be desired.”
“Not that, you dob,” Rakin said, “The teleporting business.”
“Oh, that,” Doug said with a smile, showing that he knew Zale’s intent from the start. “I’m a Spatial primal, but the only primal in my family was my great-grandfather, and he’s been dead a long while. I can’t exactly control my magic.”
Zale eyes grew wide in recognition.
“Oh! You’re you!”
“Excuse me?” Doug asked.
“My mother told me about you. You were supposed to be here last week for a primal study group she put together. Why were you late?
“Your mother? Professor Shalia?”
Zale nodded, and Doug continued, now more embarrassed than he was for his confession about his magic.
“I got to the region alright, but people were quite rude to me,” he said, gesturing to his antlers. “I asked for directions along the road, and the first person who would speak to me said I was on the wrong road. He seemed friendly, and I listened. He lied. Sent me all the way to the ruins of Landing, and I had to backtrack just to get here yesterday.”
Rakin’s sour mood softened at the tale.
“Aye,” he said in agreement. “People can suck.”
Zale, Doug, and Kole all nodded silently in agreement.
“Well, aren't we just a bunch of positive ponies,” Zale said, breaking the solemn mood.
“Positive ponies?” Kole asked.
“Yeah. It’s a phrase,” Zale said. “Ask anyone.”
“It’s really not,” Rakin said.
“How would you know?” Zale teased. “You grew up underground and then spent ten years in a monastery on top of a mountain.”
“Bah,” Rakin grunted, waving his hand at Zale, done with the frivolous debate.
Zale smiled, and Kole was fairly certain she’d just won the little exchange—but he was also fairly certain she’d made that saying up.
They sat resting and telling Doug about the study group before the topic went back to their performance. Kole tried to listen, but the sensation of his arm healing kept distracting him. It was as if his bones were itching, and he could almost feel the fracture knitting itself back together.
While they talked, other groups shuffled through the dungeon. Where last week it had taken nearly the whole three hours to get through the class, this time it took less than an hour.
“Why is it going faster?” Kole asked.
“Magic?” Zale suggested, less than helpfully.
“Bah!” Kole shouted, imitating Rakin, which earned him a flick on the head from the dwarf.
The group was shown to one of the many doors on the side of the room that led to a locker room with shower stalls and fresh sets of martial college training uniforms. They all took the opportunity to rid themselves of the accumulated filth, though the grime of the dungeon had already begun to vanish from them, leaving only the remnants of their own blood.
***
After everyone had finished, Underbrook gathered the class to the center. Kole was gratified to see that other groups were in far worse condition than their own, and the latest group to exit still hadn’t recovered their hearing. They were looking at each other with panic, cupping their ears to try to catch the professor’s words.
“I hope you all enjoyed today’s lesson,” Underbrook began. “But it was not all about fun, it was a lesson after all.”
Underbrook pulled a crystal out of his hand and placed it on a pedestal forming an illusion in the air above the class.
“Normally you will each receive one-on-one feedback from me or my stoic counterpart, but today, we will just do the group debrief.”
The illusion showed Kole and his group all gathered in the latrine room, frozen mid-air as they were thrown back by the goblin shaman’s spell. Dread went through Kole to be put on the spot in such a way.
“While Ms Zale and her group were the first to complete the mission without losing a member, they did make some mistakes we can all learn from. They had the clever idea of climbing up the goblin’s waste shaft to get to the captives. But, once inside, they stayed grouped together, even when they knew a spell caster was coming.”
To Kole’s relief, the professor didn’t dwell on them and quickly moved on to other groups. Gray’s team had succeeded as well but had opted for a different strategy. They’d sent Mouse, their Assuine Blessed in as a—well—mouse, to find the hostages and free them. Then the group created a large distraction out front allowing Mouse to bring the girls to safety through the river. They hadn’t gotten off without their own failures though and their battle against the shaman outside had set the forest ablaze.
Other groups had failed spectacularly, and those failures were shown in all their glory. Nothing though rivaled Kole’s embarrassment of being shat on, and he was extremely grateful the professors seemed to be exercising some restraint in what he shared.
As the class wound down, Underbrook gave one last announcement.
“Details on next week’s dungeon will be passed out at your next class with Tigereye. Don’t miss it.”
“Why can’t you just tell us now?” an entitled voice Kole didn’t recognize asked from the group.
Underbrook smiled mischievously before answering, “I have no idea what it will be. As soon as you leave, Tigereye will reset the dungeon and see what’s in store for the lot of you.”
As if emphasizing the point, Tigereye came out of some back room, wearing a well-patched and unadorned version of his normal uniform and carrying a backpack stuffed to the brim.
“Class dismissed!” Underbrook yelled, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Now it’s our turn.”