ALL NOVEL Chapter 33: Rune Library
The Bond primals can draw upon their Font to create Bonds, both physical and metaphysical, and have utilized their magic alongside a communal ensouled artifact to create a system of energy sharing that makes the already massive people fearsome in battle.
Lidian’s Manual to Magical Fauna, 283rd ed
—
Kole fell out of bed as he reached for the buzzing magical device. The room had gone dark when he’d fallen asleep of its own volition, and as soon as he’d woken it had been flooded with a gentle light. He’d forgotten himself and rolled over to find his alarm, only to find no bed or floor to roll over to.
“Ow,” he groaned from the floor, shielding his eyes.
***
Zale was waiting for him outside the dining hall, Amara standing with her clutching something protectively. To Kole’s eyes, Zale seemed back to normal, amused as always by his tardiness.
“Long night of adventure?” she asked jokingly.
“You’d be surprised,” Kole answered, tempted to tell her about at least being chased by the divination class, but he wouldn’t be able to deflect any of her follow-up questions. He wanted to ask her how she was feeling but didn’t want to dredge up bad memories.
“Is that the blasting rod?” Kole asked instead, turning to Amara with forced excitement.
Amara beamed, holding it up like a proud parent.
“It is! Can you come by the rune library after breakfast to start learning the intent?”
Kole agreed, and Amara went on to explain the process she’d gone through to make this first prototype blasting rod. This one only contained the blasting runes and not the self-repair ones. She was still working on those, but this would last him through a few battles before failing.
As Amara chattered on, her friends trying to follow out of politeness but failing to keep up, Zale walked next to Kole and whispered, “Sorry about ditching you yesterday.”
“It’s okay. I understand. Do you want to talk about it?”
She considered briefly, biting her lip.
“Maybe later, but… probably not.”
Rakin was waiting inside when the trio entered, having already eaten his simple breakfast of boiled oats.
“Yer late,” he grumbled.
“You just need to accept that Kole’s always going to be late and plan accordingly,” Zale said. “We were waiting for him outside.”
Rakin only grunted in response, not giving Kole a read on where his mind was at on the matter, but he vowed to prove Zale wrong. He had a bed now, hopefully, that would translate into better rest—though if he hadn’t literally fallen out of it this morning, it would have been difficult to coax himself out.
They discussed plans for the next day’s class over breakfast. They’d identified what they’d done wrong in the first attempt, and at this point, there wasn’t much more to go over, but the failure had stung Rakin’s pride and he refused to let the topic die, no matter how repetitive it grew.
“I have to go learn to use this thing,” Kole said to Rakin, seeing an opportunity to get out of the conversation.
***
Amara led Kole to a library in the crafting college’s area of campus. The college did have a library of books and scrolls, but this was not that. They passed that section of the building and continued on to something more akin to a warehouse. Chests of drawers filled the entire space, going up towards the ceiling. For the most part, the drawers were tiny, like the catalogs in the more primitive libraries, but others were large enough to fit a person.
Amara went up to the attendant at the desk, and after a quick conversation Kole couldn’t follow beyond the greeting, she led Kole deep into the racks.
“Here,” she said, gesturing to a small drawer.
Kole pulled it open to find a tiny purple marble within. He closed his eyes and tried to get a picture of the Will within, as he would while reading a spellform, and a complicated mess of intent appeared in his mind.
***
Thirty minutes later, Kole left the library with the intent to power a blasting rod nestled in his mental vault. He’d surprised Amara and himself with the ease he’d copied it. Runes and spells didn’t use the same components to bring forth the power of the Fonts into the Material Realm, but they were similar. It was as if they were both different written languages using the same ink. Kole might not know what the words meant, but he could copy them down easily enough with the skills he’d honed over the last five years. He had no doubt that with his massive Will capacity and particular struggle with magic, he had more experience copying unknown intent imbued Will than anyone his age.
He’d not expected to be able to copy the spell before Martial 101, and he’d been right. Hence the running.
The security screening upon leaving the library hadn’t helped things either. A library full of gemstones required strict protocols to prevent students from running off with wealth accidentally in their pockets—or intentionally. Kole wouldn’t say he was tempted to steal the gem, but the thought definitely crossed his mind. For a kid who grew up with the ability to turn invisible, he’d partaken in a shockingly small amount of crime.
He reflected on that as he ran to class. He’d never really needed to steal. He’d not been above sneaking into restricted areas of the library and had taken a book home a time or two, but he’d always returned them.
Would I steal if it was needed? He asked himself.
Thoughts of the dying goblins flickered through his mind and the lack of remorse he’d felt.
Probably…
He made it to class just as the morning warm-ups began, and fell in line running around the practice yard. It had only been a week of training, but he thought that maybe it was just slightly less awful.
After conditioning, Kole trained with Zale as usual. But unlike usual, Tigereye watched them as they sparred, checking on them throughout the class without comment. At the end of the hour, he finally spoke,
“Great job Zale,” he complemented her. “I am impressed with the improvement you have knocked into his head.”
Kole smiled despite himself.
“That does not mean you are not terrible,” Tigereye was quick to add seeing Kole’s expression. “Anyone else in this class trained one-on-one by Zale would have progressed much further.”
Kole’s smile vanished, though he knew that Tigereye’s words hadn’t been intended to be cruel, only to give Kole an accurate assessment of his own abilities. But still, it stung nonetheless.
Tigereye left them and driven by the words, Kole and Zale continued their training beyond the end of the class.
***
An hour later, Kole and Zale sat in the cafeteria. Zale had gotten him lunch after they’d cleaned up after class, and he’d stayed in the cafeteria studying the spellform Theral had given him.
Like with the rune intent, copying the spell into his vault was rather easy and he did it in less than half an hour.
It sure is nice just copying a spell into my vault instead of painstakingly recreating it. He reflected.
He copied in Thunderwave, a first-tier Sound spell that created a deafening boom, throwing people back and harming them with a high-pressure sound wave. The other spell Theral had given him was Radiant Bolt, which shot a beam of light, which burned its target and illuminated it temporarily. Radiant Bolt had been similar enough to Magic Missile, which he’d still held out hope for figuring out, but Thunderwave had been on his short list of potential spells to compliment his current arsenal.
While he didn’t expect the spell to work without the gate or path components copied over, he’d refrained from casting it in the dining hall.
When he’d finished, he found he still had some time.
“So… do you want to talk about it?” he asked Zale.
“No,” she said, but then shot back with a malicious grin “But what about you? I don’t really know anything about you. You met my mom, and know about my childhood trauma. That’s not exactly fair.”
“I walked into that didn’t I?”
Zale nodded.
“You’re right. It’s not really a secret,” he admitted. “I want to keep my… ability private, because it's less useful if people know you can… you know.”
Zale nodded.
He told Zale about his parents, how they’d been adventurers—or still were, according to him—and his dream to be one too. He told her about them being declared dead, and his flight from his home.
“Eww…” Zale said, leaning away from him when he got to the part about the barrels.
He sighed.
“That was weeks ago.”
He explained how he met Amara and their semi-fugitive state aboard the ship.
“Why do you think that Oldhill guy was after you?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea. My best guess is that he’s mad I broke the glasses—or maybe because I hit his son.”
“You owed him a bunch of money right?”
“Yeah…” Kole said thinking it over. “but he basically got it all back when he took the house.”
“Did you take anything?”
Kole shook his head.
“Nothing worth a manhunt. Just my notes, my father’s spellbook—which isn’t anything special—and my mother’s locket.”
He pulled the locket out from beneath his shirt.
Zale looked at it, then cocked her head slightly as if examining it closer, then her eyes grew wide.
“That’s an ensouled artifact!” she gasped.