ALL NOVEL Chapter 96: Confession
Few on Kaltis can say their life hasn’t been drastically altered for the better because of the deeds of Mage Tallen Elmheart. Fewer still can they boast that Tallen put them on the path to greatness—or at least out of the path of destitution.
Foreword of Tallen Elmheart A Biography by Rail Dahnchild
—
After an hour of indulging himself in the shiny new spells available to him, Kole forced himself to return his attention to refining Magic Missile and Shield. He had three versions of Magic Missile left from his initial ten as well as four versions of Shield. He’d hoped to talk to Tallen on his return about which of these he should use as the basis of his next version, but that hadn’t worked out. But, after all his recent experience and study into spellforms, Kole thought he had a handle on it. Based on his experience thus far, he was fairly certain a number of the spells he had left would be steps backward. He was now much more familiar with the spellforms associated with offset gates and could recognize when a spell used them, but he had long ago passed up all use of those techniques in his journey into wizarding past.
His recent experience with pathing Thunderwave had also taught him a lot. One of the issues causing Kole’s increased Will expenditure—aside from the fact that he needs to open the gate at all—is that some pathing techniques are inherently tied to the gate. Essentially, a pathing technique is a set of instructions for the spell to travel through the Arcane Realm, avoiding obstacles that would rip it apart. While the older methods Kole had been studying used directions relative to the spell’s current position, the newer spells often used the gate to determine a frame of reference. It was the difference between telling someone to walk straight out their front door ten feet and then turning 90 degrees to the left versus telling them to head away from their house, and then turn right until they are traveling parallel to the front of their home.
With that knowledge in mind, Kole found that only one of each of the spellforms lacked these gate-referenced directions so those became the basis of his—hopefully—final versions of each. So, with mildly renewed vigor and sufficient distraction to forget about Harold, Kole worked far later into the night than was advisable.
The next morning, Kole was extremely tempted to use one of his two potions of clarity to mitigate his sleep deprivation, but it only took twenty minutes of physical conditioning for his sleepiness to become the least of his aches. After the exhausting training, the day went by surprisingly fast for Kole. Zale forced him to use the hour allotted to history tutoring to actually work on his history classwork, but once that was done Kole dove back into his wizardry.
At his meeting, Kole told Underbrook his plan to learn either an offensive first-tier Light or Mind Spike, which he had “found” a suitable spellform for. He also told the professor that he would seek out a second-tier Mind spell meant to disable an opponent. Underbrook was pleased with the decisions, and Kole used the remainder of the time discussing the pros and cons of various spells—though they both ultimately agreed Kole’s final spell choices would be driven by which older spells he found most intact.
“Where’s everyone else?” Kole asked Rakin as he found him alone in the dining hall after his meeting.
Rakin shrugged.
“I don’t know about Doug and Amara, but Zale’s studying with Harold. They’re in a class together.”
“Oh,” Kole said, taking his seat across from the dwarf. “I need to tell you something about Zale.”
“It’s fine. I already know. Don’t worry about it. I don’t care,” Rakin said.
“You do?! How? Did you see him too?”
“See who?” Rakin asked, face scrunched in confusion.
“Harold!” Kole said, nearly shouted.
“Ye have a crush on Harold?!” Rakin asked.
“What? No!”
“I mean, it's fine if ye do I guess, but it’ll make things weird with Zale. I thought ye hated the guy,” Rakin said.
“I don’t have a crush on Harold,” Kole said firmly.
“Alright, then I have no idea what ye were going to say. I thought you were going to tell me you had a thing for Zale—which I already knew.”
“You knew?” Kole asked confused again. “How could you know?”
“Aye, it was pretty obvious!”
“No, I mean you couldn’t know, because I don’t like Zale—in that way I mean.”
“Bah!” Rakin shouted and began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Kole demanded, beginning to feel a little flustered.
“Are ye lying because ye think I’ll be mad? Or do ye really not realize ye have a crush on her?” Rakin asked once he’d gotten control of himself. “I already told ye I’m okay with it. It’s her mother ye should be afraid of.”
A bolt of terror went through Kole at the thought of Trishalia the Ice Queen’s displeasure at his dating her daughter. He tried to banish the idea.
But I don’t like Zale, it’s fine.
But, instead of convincing himself he didn’t like Zale, his mind quickly raced to ways he could win her mother’s approval—or at least avoid her ire.
Wait…
“Flood,” Kole cursed quietly, earning more laughter from the dwarf.
“I think I like Zale,” Kole said aloud, and then his eyes grew wide and he looked around the room wildly, earning more laughter from Rakin.
“Told ya,” Rakin said after swallowing a bite of food, having resumed eating during Kole’s internal battle. “So what were ye going ta tell me?”
“You’re just okay with it?” Kole asked, surprised the dwarf didn’t have any insult or warning prepared.
Rakin sighed.
“I probably hate ye the least of all the people here. She could do worse. She is doin worse. Bah, Harold. Sniveling tal.”
“Tal?” Kole asked, confused at the mention of his not-uncle.
“Oh, yeah. Tal means weasel in Torcish,” Rakin said, playing with the metal band he always wore. “Me ma teased him ta no end over it. After the war, a bunch of dwarves named their kids Tal, so there’s a whole generation of weasel dwarves running around. Idiots.”
“Can I tell you now?” Kole asked, exasperated.
Rakin gave a “go ahead” gesture, circling his finger.
“Not my fault ye don’t speak Torcish,” Rakin said. “It’s right useful to know.”
The mention of the language reminded Kole of the pages of Sound magic that sat just beyond his reach due to the language barrier. He pushed the thought aside to finally get back on topic.
“I think Harold was at the play with someone else when we were sneaking in,” Kole explained,
Rakin looked up from his food, face serious, and Kole told him about his attempt to get the ticket from will call.
“And then when we were leaving, I thought I saw him out in the crowd ahead of us, but I couldn’t have been sure. At the time I told myself I was seeing things,” Kole said. “But I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Of course, ye can’t,” Rakin jabbed. “Yer in love with me cousin.”
“Hey! I never said that. I just like her is all,” Kole defended. “And you just called her your cousin.”
“Bah,” Rakin said, ignoring Kole’s comment. “I don’t know. Harold’s a real danar—“ Rakin chuckled to himself, having used the torcish word stink head Zale had accidentally coined as an insult “—but he’s not so sneaky. He’s usually very upfront about his idiocy.”
Kole was surprised to hear the dwarf defend the boy he so regularly denigrated.
“So you think he didn’t do it?” Kole asked.
“I didn’t say that. I said it was unlike him.”
“What should we do then? Tell Zale?”
“Oh, ye’d like that wouldn’t ye?” Rakin asked, ire suddenly in his voice. “Break her heart and be there to pick up the pieces huh?”
Kole’s eye grew wide and he leaned back, afraid the dwarf had been hit by a sudden bout
“What? No!?” Kole said desperately.
“Bah-ha-ha,” Rakin laughed, dropping the anger. “I’m going to like this.”
“I’m not,” Kole said sullenly.
“Why don’t ye just follow him?” Rakin asked, getting back to the topic.
“That’s… a good idea.”
“There, do that. Tell me what ye find, and if he really is a weasel we can kill him and throw his corpse into the rivers.”
“That seems excessive,” Kole said.
“It’s for his own good. Who knows what Aunt Shalia would do if she found out.”
Kole’s emotions were in a bit of a state of turmoil at the moment, but they settled as a cool streak of terror on Harold’s behalf, and suddenly he found more reasons to hope the boy wasn’t cheating on Zale. The revelation would devastate Zale, obviously, but he thought the news of Harold’s horrible disappearance would hurt her even more. Plus—he didn’t want Zale’s mother to get any practice killing her daughter’s suitors.