Chapter 66: Alone

I do not like to boast of my accomplishments. Intellectually, I am aware that I contributed greatly to the Last Dragon War. I will not suffer the false modesty I’ve seen many espouse and claim that the war effort would have gone just as well without me. I am a genius, yes, but I am no hero. There are more books written about the Last Dragon War than I care to read—which is saying something. So, I only seek to add my unique perspective—and correct some often-cited falsehoods. Many books are written about the heroes of this war, but I want to write about the men, women, and other beings behind the legends.

—Burg, Levar. Heroes.

Kole watched from the rocky chunk he sat on as his team struggled to make it off their doomed island of stone. Zale was the closest to the center and the nearest to the epicenter of the blast.

Duldin had used his Blessing powered magic to fracture the platform to ensure that if their team didn’t win, then Kole’s wouldn’t either. Kole suspected this had been something they’d decided on before setting out, so Shalin could fulfill her misguided sense of revenge on them because of their tenuous connection to Amintha.

He was the first to fall. The ground beneath him turned to rubble, and he fell right through it before being teleported to safety.

Doug, Zale and Rakin all ran for the nearest edge, but before any of them could make it the ground fell out beneath them.

Rakin tried to use him primal magic to hold the stone together beneath his feet, and it worked if only for a moment. He took two steps onto crumbling rock held together by his will, but by the time he reached his third, there was nothing more than pebbles to hold together. He leapt off his last footfall, hoping for the gravity to give out with the platform, but it didn’t, and he fell with his hand outstretched towards Kole, but still yards away.

Doug and Zale both ran for their own edges, and when they began to fall, they vanished, drawing on their own magics. Zale disappeared into a cloud of black motes that were invisible where the void back dropped them, only visible where rubble stat behind them from Kole’s vantage point.

While Zale disappeared stayed gone for some time, Doug reappeared beside Kole the instant he vanished.

“I aimed!” he said proudly beside Kole before collapsing in exhaustion.

Kole saw that he’s taken a lot more wounds than he’d first realized. His light leather armor was shredded, and he was covered in his own blood.

He didn’t have eyes for Doug however, and he scanned the area around Zale waiting for her to reappear. His heart sank when she did. For just a moment she hovered in place, nowhere near floating rock. Doug reached out, trying to teleport her as he had Kole before.

Doug let out a gasp, and Zale vanished. Kole’s hopes were buoyed for a moment before crashing back down. She teleported only a short distance, before falling into the void.

“I’m sorry,” Doug said. “I was all out of Will.”

And then Doug too vanished, the Dahn deeming his injuries too great to continue.

“Well Flood,” Kole said, scanning his surrounding.

He was alone. There were no teammates or opponents in sight.

Kole turned invisible.

Well, that was an anticlimactic way to reveal that ability to the world, Kole reflected.

But, he wasn’t Professor Underbrook. He didn’t need flair. In fact, he was an agent of subtlety, the complete opposite of his potential mentor.

He needed a plan.

I can still do this, he thought. If the other teams ran into each other, they can’t be that much better off than me—though unless they both took each other out in a blaze of glory, there are certainly going to be more of them.

He scanned the maelstrom of stone and spotted the center. In the distance, he thought he could make out people. Bringing up his Looking Glass cantrip, he saw students fighting off in the distance, but couldn’t make out who was left.

Kole began to make his way towards the center, no longer needing to be circumspect, he jumped from platform to platform, heading right for the center. Periodically he’d check on the status of the battle, but between jumps it had ended, and Kole couldn’t see where the remaining combatants had gone.

What felt like hours later—but he knew wasn’t by the simple fact he was still invisible and the spell didn’t last that long—Kole heard something disrupt the alien silence of the void.

When he landed on his next rock chunk, Kole stopped and listened. Careful to not kick any loose rocks, he crawled over the block, marveling at how the gravity always pulled him to its center.

Two platforms away, Kole saw two of his classmates talking, huddled together behind a section of wall that still remained attached to their small bit of floor.

He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he had just the thing.

He cast Eavesdrop and the voice of Sleet Icecliff was suddenly perfectly audible in his ear.

“—to the center. They are out there somewhere. We can’t let them get the jump on us.”

A deeper voice, belonging to Ekrod the dwarf on her team spoke next.

“There’s only three of ‘em. We can take them. Let’s bait ‘em.”

“No,” Sleet said, ending the discussion. “we will ambush them once they have the sphere.”

The moved out of range of Kole’s spell after that, heading towards the center at an oblique angle.

Kole made out where they were heading, and moved on a path to intercept them. Without the need to stay hidden, he quickly got past them and paced them for just the right moment.

It came when they stopped to talk out a plan once more. They ducked begin a ridge on one chunk of stone, and there was only one block they were likely to jump too next.

Hiding himself from their view, Kole let his Invisiblity drop as he cast Silent Image. The next boulder vanished, reappearing ten feet to the left, a perfect replica thanks to Kole’s drawing upon his memory of the original with the aid of his spellbook.

The two members of the Ice Picks conferred a moment longer, before jumping to the next rock. But, at the last minute, the dwarf stopped. He looked from where the rock was, to where it had been and furrowed his brow.

He was too late to stop Sleet however, and she sailed out into the void, and passed right through the block of stone she’d been aiming for.

Ekrod let out a loud series of curses that would have given Rakin a run for his money as soon as he saw his team leader pass through the stone, and he fell back into a defensive position behind the rocks.

Kole watched as Sleet passed through his illusion and continued on a way through the darkness of the void before she began to fall. The Dahn sweeping her away to safety after it was clear she had no means of saving herself.

Good to know there’s a limit to the floating, Kole thought.

He’d assumed as much but not wanted to risk it.

That’s just the kind of thing Professor Underbrook would throw in to humble those too confident in their own abilities.

“Come out ye coward!” Kole heard Ekard shout into the void.

Kole turned invisible again and stuck his head out to see Ekrad looking towards him.

He cast Message, throwing his voice to the opposite direction and shouted, “No!”

Ekard turned to look for the source of the shout, and Kole leapt out of his hiding spot, sailing right towards the dwarf, already preparing his next spell.

He knew Ekard to have scored high on the mental defense, and had ruled out a more subtle mental attack. He’d considered Radiant Bolt, but that glow would pinpoint his position to anyone watching.

While the attack he settled on wasn’t going to be subtle, it wouldn’t tell anyone else where he was, only that he still existed, and that was fine with him.

Kole landed near Ekard, and the dwarf spun around to look for Kole, just as Kole appeared with hands extended our before him, fingers splayed and wrists touching. A crack of thunder roared from him, and shocked by the sudden appearance of Kole, Ekard was not at all prepared by the attack. He lost his footing and flew out into the void, where he too dropped and them vanished.

The sound echoed strangely off of the surrounding rock, and Kole was confident no one short of a Sound primal would be able to trace it back to him, and as far as he knew, there were no Sound primals of any Illusian races, let alone on Gray’s team.

Kole quickly did the math on his remaining Will. He he’d cast 14 Will worth of spells after taking the potion, and with a capacity of 48 at last measuring, Kole had 34 remaining.

Doug’s words about Mouse came back to him just as he was about to him.

“She’s very private, and good both detecting and at escaping tails”

Kole cast his Fade enhanced Invisibility.

He wasn’t sure if she was still in this, or what means she used to detect people following her, but it was worth the additional cost.

Surverying the strange battlefield once more with his Looking Glance cantrip, Kole leapt once more into the void.