NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 79: Busy
The Dahn, or Tower in Torcish, was the first proof we had that extra-dimensional spaces could be formed. The ensouled artifact was created by the silver dragon Tomvian as a place to facilitate education and the pursuit of knowledge. Tomvian was a white dragon, turned silver after accepting the Pact of Bild. He created the Dahn and gifted it to the dwarves who later died in battle against the Avatar.
-Pocket Realms, From Theory to Fact
—
Kole arrived at the training field on the Monday morning of the fifth week of class cautiously optimistic. He had no prospects for a mentor yet, but he’d only really looked the one time, and since then he’d made great progress on his magic. Surely he would be able to convince some wizard that he wasn’t a lost cause when he showed what he could do.
His mood was further improved after talking with his friends—another improvement from his life prior to departing Illandrios.
Despite all the positivity Kole was feeling, he was utterly miserable by the time he completed his first lap around the training yard.
In the last six weeks aboard ship, he’d neglected his physical conditioning, and now all the hard work he’d put in over the last four to eight weeks—depending on how you measured time—had been lost.
“I. Hate. You.” He said between breaths at Zale as she raised her eyebrows knowingly as she ran past him.
She had pressured him aboard the ship in the last dungeon session to do more than just practice with his quarterstaff, but he’d declined. He still stood by his decision, as his improved magic skills had been critical in the fight against the cloaker matriarch, but it was little solace as his sides burned and he fought for breath.
After the hour of training, Kole lay in the grass, moaning, while Doug and Zale spoke over him. Zale was back to using her disguise bracelet and appeared to be a half-elf girl with olive skin and brown hair. Kole tried to tell if that somehow matched her tan training clothes, but quickly gave up.
“So how did it go?” Zale asked Doug eagerly—and with even breath to Kole’s frustration, “Did she like the gift?”
Kole wracked his brain to remember what Zale was talking about.
What gift?
“Oh did it ever!” Doug said.
“The carrot?” Kole asked from the ground, and Doug nodded.
“She loved it. She ate it right in front of me.”
“And… that’s good?” Zale asked, uncertain but genuinely happy for Doug.
“For sure. We are going on a date later this week.”
Zale let out a small squeal of excitement, “I’m so happy for you. When’s your date? Where are you going? What are you going to wear?”
“Later this week…” Doug repeated, confused at the question.
“You didn’t plan anything?” Zale asked, confused.
“No we did, we will have a date later this week,” Doug replied, as if it clarified this.
“You know what?” Zale said, dismissing her bewilderment. “You were right about the carrot thing. Have fun.”
“Did ye all hear about the horses?” Rakin asked, showing up at the tail end of the relationship talk, seemingly by coincidence, but more likely by design.
“I did,” Kole said, raising his hand from where he still lay on the ground. “I saw them last night."
“Me too,” Doug agreed, “They have a few in the Glade and they're studying them. They are like nothing anyone has ever seen. They aren’t letting students get close yet, but they were amazing!”
Zale, usually on top of all the comings and goings on campus looked at her three friends lost.
“What happened?” She asked
“Ye didn’t hear?” Rakin asked in disbelief. “It’s all anyone was talking about last night!”
“I was…” Zale began, then looked away. “Busy.”
“Bah,” Rakin shouted. “I’m sure ye were ‘busy’ all right.”
Zale blushed—her magic bracelet making her skin grow red as a normal non-voidling person would.
Kole stood up then and drew the attention off of Zale as he told everyone what he’d seen on campus the night before.
“Do you think it’s another incursion thing?” Kole asked the group, but looked at Zale.
She nodded slowly, “It could be. There are a few doors to the Dahn under the art building. I want to see these horse things for myself.”
***
The group discussed their plans to try to get a closer look at breakfast once Amara had joined them. When she admitted to having also heard about the horse creatures, Rakin gave Zale a piercing glare which she ignored.
“Do you think this is related to my sister?” Amara asked.
No one replied, and they all looked at each other uncertainly.
“It could be,” Kole said, the first to speak. “I think we need to see these things. Everything else has been some weird hybrid creature. Even the ice people could count as that.”
They began to make plans to get a glimpse, the first step of which was for Zale to ask her mother if they could.
***
Kole turned in his essay at alchemy class, hopeful that with the aid of his spellbook he might actually pass the class. A hope that was dashed when the teaching assistant handed him a slip. The piece of paper instructed him to seek tutoring for harvesting herbs outside of class hours and provided a list of names of students who offered such services. There would be a practical on Thursday and the dryad teaching the class had apparently barred him from returning to her lessons without the endorsement of an Assuine Blessed that he wouldn’t mutilate any more plants.
Kole stuffed the paper into his pocket, and Zale laughed when he told her about it.
“I told you to ask Doug ages ago,” she said, unhelpfully.
***
“Now class,” Professor Gromck said after a brief lecture on the primary agricultural products in the pre-Flood Basin. “Please remove everything from your desks save for a writing implement and paper or parchment. We will begin our quiz shortly.”
The class let out a collective groan, Zale being one of the few students to abstain.
“I don’t see why everyone’s asked so shocked,” she said with a shrug when Kole gave her a look of disappointment.
Kole moved everything from his desk, keeping only a few pages he pulled from his spellbook. He briefly used his primal magic to perform the act unnoticed. He wasn’t so much concerned about the possibility that using his magic paper was cheating—he didn’t even expect that it would work removed from the book. His concern was that other students would see him pulling sheets out of his spellbook at all. Before he’d used it as a notebook, but once he’d learned he could recall lectures at his leisure, he’d begun to use his class time to work on reviewing his spellforms, quickly taking notes on the lecture after the fact—much to Zale’s annoyance. This method of using the spellbook to recall the knowledge, helped him retain the information more solidly and took much less time.
If anyone noticed him removing sheets from what was now clearly his spellbook, he would garner questions that would ultimately reveal he was either fabulously wealthy and able to use expensive spellform paper for a quiz, or that the item was magical and possibly ensouled.
Best if he avoided that entirely.
As Professor Gromck began to write the first question on the board, and Kole began to write his first answer, he realized he’d been terribly mistaken.
The paper hadn’t lost any of its magical properties.
Zale let out a heavy sigh next to Kole as she noticed his smile.
“That’s just not fair,” she grumbled.
“Eyes to your own paper Miss Wood!” a teaching assistant yelled from the aisle.
***
Kole arrived at Martial 101 the next day dreading the conditioning, but was pleased to find that many of his fellow PREVENT students had also suffered from their extended time on the ship.
“I have a few announcements today!” Tigereye said after gathering the students after the class. “First. We will be starting a tournament next week. Prepare. There will be three brackets.”
This was met with a mix of excited whispers and groans, Zale and Kole contributing respectively.
“Second,” Tigereye began but then paused with a look of regret. “For the students in Pre Adventurer Battle Training, you will be experiencing another extended session in the dungeon. Details are on the papers here.”
He gestured at a stack of papers a teaching assistant held up.
This announcement was met with groans and discussion, no excited whispers.
Kole heard the whole range of the stages of grief around him.
“Why?”
“No!”
“Again?”
Zale forced her way through the crowd and quickly came back with a sheet of paper with the details.
“We’re going to be guarding a caravan down the road for a month,” she said disappointed.
“Finally!” Rakin said, looking to the ground in a gesture of thanks to Torc, the god of earth.
“Don’t be too excited,” Zale said smiling. “We are going to be riding horses.”
“Bah!” Rakin said and spat.