Chapter 64: Silence

With the aid of adventurers serving as emissaries, most having come to prominence on the Day of Heroes, the Hardune won over many nations to their cause.

Cedric Bospian. In The Last Dragon War, 1st ed.

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“What’s this?” Kole asked as she dropped a large sack of paper on the table of their common room.

“Notes,” she said. “On the other teams.”

“All the other teams in the word?” Rakin asked, eyeing the massive stack.

“No,” Zale said, not giving Rakin’s teasing the satisfaction of a reaction. “I had Runt tail the other teams. She collected this information.”

“What does Shalin’s favorite color have to do with anything?” Kole asked, having taken the top sheet and begun examining it.

“Runt is very thorough, despite her... Runtness,” Zale said,  the compliment a concession to the girl that her mother had forced a rivalry with.

“What is it?” Rakin asked.

“Turquoise,” Kole said.

“That ain’t a color, it's a stone,” Rakin said.

“What color is a turquoise then?” Kole asked.

“Uhh, greenish blue?” Rakin said.

“Mouse’s favorite color is sandy brown,” Doug said. When everyone turned to him and said nothing, he felt the need to add. “Umm, because she’s on the other team.”

Zale opened to a page in her stack and frowned.

“Mouse’s page is basically blank,” she said.

Doug beamed, proud of his girlfriend, “She’s very private, and good both detecting and at escaping tails.”

Zale wrote that down, eliciting a groan from Rakin.

Kole spent the last week before the battle royale with an itch. It wasn’t a physical itch that could be scratched, but something more elusive.

For lack of better words, he felt close to something. An abundance of potential with no outlet. Like a swollen waterskin that's sealed waiting to explode.

All of these are metaphors that went through his mind as he tried to articulate the feeling, all of which were far off, and none of the thinking about the feeling did anything to scratch the metaphysical itch.

Despite his inability to describe the itch, he knew exactly what it was.

Sorcery.

He was close to something, but as is the nature of sorcery, he couldn’t explain what he was close to or how he’d achieve it. All he could do was wait until in some time of utter terror his mind would reach for the Fonts and find power there.

He hoped it would be the power of a new Font, but he doubted that would happen. It was known that advances in a wizard's understanding of their wizardry could fuel advances in their sorcery. While these advances were usually directly related to the Fonts studied, they could apply to adjacent Fonts. He hoped all his work on the constituent Fonts of the Font of Illusions would result in yet another Illusion spell.

So, while he couldn’t do anything about the itch, he carried on as usual, and worked on more spells—and read Zale’s dossiers. Between it all, he tried to scratch the sorcerous itch, but couldn’t quite get it.

His week of study rewarded him with in-depth knowledge of twelve of his classmates and Silence.

The spell itself had been easy to learn, but once more he struggled with learning the components of the spell. Unlike Shatter, he didn’t need to learn a new skill like whistling. The difficulty in the task was that the verbal and somatic components of the spell were joined in a way new to him.

To cast the spell, he had to hold his index finger in front of his face and make a drawn out shushing sound.

This was the universal signal for telling people to be quiet, but like many things, the spell component was actually the origin of the gesture.

While doing this, he had to imbue a fraction of the spell into both the sound and his finger. Again, this wasn’t something new. The part he struggled with was timing the actions. The aspect in his finger had to be delayed and timed so that it occurred the moment the Will in his 'shush' struck it.

It was as difficult as it sounded and it took Kole the better part of the week, sitting there alone in a room shushing the emptiness like a fool, getting light headed until finally he felt the resonance of a success.

He knew he succeeded—aside from the fact he could feel the magic rushing through him—when he could no longer hear his shushing. He clapped his hands together, marveling at the lack of sound.

He walked around, moving his mouth soundlessly like a fool until he reached the end of the spell's twenty-foot radius and suddenly heard his voice.

“HEW HAW GOO—” he shouted before cutting himself off.

Glad I’m in the abandoned section, Kole thought.

He played with the spell a little longer, clapping his hands with his head in the bubble, and then again with his hands in and head without.

Then he cast a Thunderwave, thrusting his hands into the bubble at the completion of the casting. He felt the power rush out of him, just as he did every time he’d succeeded in casting it, but he heard nothing.

Satisfied the spell worked, he let go of his mental hold of the spell, only realizing after the fact that he’d just cast a first-tier spell while maintaining concentration on a second.

“That wasn’t supposed to work...” Kole spoke to himself.

Professor Underbrook had told him that he’d continued to improve after learning the trick of it but doing so in only a week seemed far too quick.

As much as he wanted to continue to investigate this new discovery, he left the library. It was Friday before the finals of the Hardball tournament, and he’d promised Zale he’d be back at a reasonable hour. And as with all his promises, he fully intended to keep them when he made them.

Unlike more of his promises, he actually kept this one. He didn’t stop to admit that had he not successfully cast that spell when he had, he almost certainly would have lost track of time and been late.

Despite himself however, Kole lay in bed, restless. He’d gotten done what he’d hoped to do before the finals, but still that itch persisted.

He’d attempted to figure out what he was on the brink of, but nothing had given him that push over the edge for his mind to break down some internal wall to unlock new instincts.

“But I’m not just a sorcerer,” Kole reminded himself.

He’d done something before, with Fade. He’d stretched it beyond its initial abilities. Sorcerers weren’t supposed to be able to make new spells outside of those they learned by fate. But he’d combined his primal magic with his sorcery in his enhanced Invisibility.

What more could I do with that?

He sent his mind to the Arcane Realm, standing outside the Font of Illusions to think. He thought of his cantrips. His only sorcerous cantrip from the Font of Illusions was his seldom used ability to make something invisible in his hands. Fade, while of the Font, was a primal ability that was far less structured than a spell.

That illusionary trick couldn’t be the only possible cantrip for the Font. Kole couldn't accept that. If he’d learned Silent Image first, he doubted that he’d be able to make things disappear in his hands.

He drew upon the Font as if he was going to cast Silent Image and tried to release his touch before finishing the spell. Nothing happened.

Moving part of his mind to his vault, he reviewed the attempt in his mind. Over and over, he repeated the process, trying to find some connection he could make with his sorcery to his primal ability fade, but no matter what he did he couldn’t link them. The ability Fade was essentially the opposite manifestation of the Font as Silent Image. One made Kole hard to notice, and the other made something meant to draw the eye.

What else draws the eye?

Kole tried again, drawing on the Font of Illusions, drawing also on the knowledge in his spellbook. He had lots of loud and bright spells, but one was a beacon.

Radiant Bolt.

He thought of the spell, tried to infuse the essence of it into the Font of Illusions, and failed. But he wasn’t discouraged, for he’d failed in a whole new and exciting way.

This is going to work, he told himself.

He worked into it far into the night, pursuing success that was just within his reach.

The next morning saw them having a special pre-finals meal at Molly’s at Zale’s insistence—though she carefully watched what everyone ate to ensure they didn’t so much as to be a detriment to their performance.

While they ate, they went over their gear and the contingency plans they’d put in place depending on the environment they’d face.

Kole had two Will potions on hand that Zale had acquired from his mother, both enclosed in the inert dwarven steel vials that wouldn’t shatter in battle. Each member of the team had some sort of valuable alchemical that Zale had “borrowed” from her mother.

Kole even had backups of his runic gear, provided by Amara. She’d made an extra blasting rod and bracer in case one broke during battle. He stored both rods in his inner holster and had one bracer on each arm underneath the cord wrappings of his stormcaller garb. On donning them, he realized how useful it would be to project a shield from either arm.

For the Shield spell itself, it took greater effort and mental training Kole didn’t have to cast a spell from one’s nondominant hand—or one could learn an alternate slightly more complicated version of the spell, but Kole wasn’t going to go through all of that again. It was a great detriment to wizards that preferred weapons and was one of the reasons Gray had learned to wield the rapier with his left hand instead of his right.

Doug had three quivers full of arrows, many of them imbued with Assuine’s power to ensnare his foes. Zale had with her both her bastard sword and her rapier, as well as an assortment of daggers and her shield.

Rakin had a big rock.

“What’s with the rock?” Kole asked when they were all gathered in the ready room in the Dahn.

This time they’d been directed not to one of the hardball league’s facilities, but to a random room in the Dahn itself. The room was empty save for a bench to sit on and a door without a handle.

“I’m not risking bein’ left without any stone again.” he said, pulling more smaller stones out from the pockets of his robe.

An attendant poked their head into the room and gave them a five-minute warning, and they sat waiting in silence.

“Good luck everyone,” Zale said just as time was about to run out. “We can do this.”