Chapter 17: Autobroom

A eternal being of fire roamed the world destroying nations, and in men’s pursuit to kill it, men destroyed the world.

For centuries after the Flood, the fate of the Avatar of Faust was unknown. The great water elemental summoned to defeat it failed, and with its destruction came the Flooding of the world.

-A Brief History of the Flood by Albert Moonsuckle

Kole didn’t think he had it in him to even walk as he limped towards the showers. True to his word Tigereye pushed them hard through the whole torture lesson he had the audacity to call a class.

But, despite his weariness, he pushed himself to shower as quickly as possible. As miserable as he was, he was starving, and his next class began in under an hour.

Kole made it to his class, Arcana 156 on time—if a little sweaty. While he hadn’t thought he had it in him to run, he found he could dig a little deeper after getting a meal in him.

Arcana 156: Basics of Spatial Magic was an elective Kole had chosen this semester. While it seemed extra topical and relevant after the events of the previous semester, he’d been planning to take this before he’d even enrolled as a first step in tracking down and eventually accessing his parents' pocket realm.

Professor Kevin Tailor was the teacher of the class, and he was a primal. A Space primal, as one would expect from the subject matter.

The professor had the innate ability to open portals through space with the flick of the hand, and used it freely throughout the lecture. He sat at his lectern as he taught, drawing diagrams with chalk just in front of him, only he had a portal in front of him that allowed him to write on the black board. As he wrote, the portal moved across the board leaving his neat handwriting and drawings in its wake.

And somehow, despite all of that, he had presentation and flair of an oyster. He didn’t use the ability for show, or even acknowledge that it was anything but completely mundane. He didn’t teleport across the room to wake a sleeping student. He did use it to pick up a piece of chalk he dropped.

And through it all, he delivered a dry and highly technical breakdown of the basics of the Font of Space, making even intra dimensional travel and pocket realms full of weird magic seem mundane.

Gods, Underbrook must hate this man, Kole thought, as he wondered how much of a terror the halfling professor would be with such abilities.

Once more, Kole found himself taking notes, not however because the topic was of great interest, but because it was the only way he could stay awake.

“I’ve got a prototype!” Amara said excitedly as she arrived late to dinner, said prototype in hand.

“It looks like a blasting rod,” Kole observed, examining the blast rod shaped runic device Amara was pointing around at the group.

“It is!” she exclaimed, excited at the correct guess.

All four of them pushed away from their meals at once, ducking under the table and holding their hands up before them.

Kole began constructing Shield in his mind, though refrained from powering it and wasting the Will—he was, after all, planning on studying later, and he didn’t really think Amara was going to shoot him.

Well, he was sort of sure at least.

“Put it away!” Zale shouted from below the table.

Around them, people turned to look what the source of the commotion was, but then turned away when they saw their group was at the heart of it. The Forsaken were gathering a reputation, and this antic was not interesting to those around them. Kole wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“It’s fine,” Amara assured the rest. “It’s an auto broom!”

“A what broom?” Kole asked, peaking above the table to make sure Amara had complied.

The blasting rod—or “auto broom”—was laying on the table.

“Auto, like automatic. Its a broom that you don’t have to sweep,” she explained.

“Okay...” Kole said, then remembered Amara’s recent fixation on crumbs.

“Can’t magic already do this?” Zale asked. “Clean, Unseen Servant, things like that.”

Amara nodded and said, “But, not everyone can cast those spells. If I could sell these, people could clean without costly magics!”

Rakin pointed to the large emerald set in the center.

“So instead they’ll get costly runic crap?

Amara grew flush.

“I’m working on that with a different project...“

"Show us how it works!" Zale asked, jumping in to distract her and staring daggers at Rakin.

Sometimes the dwarf forgot they were trying to keep the flighty girl’s attention away from darker thoughts—which meant often Rakin was actually holding his tongue.

Often, though, not always.

“You just point it at a mess,” Amara said, picking it up and pointing it at an empty plate. “And channel a little Will and—”

Without warning, a focused blast of wind exploded from the end of the blasting rod, sending the near empty plate flying across the table, sending the one behind it and all the silverware and glassware in its path along with it. The blast of wind died almost immediately, but the sound of crashing crockery and cutlery soon followed.

“—the mess is gone...” Amara finished.

She froze, eyes wide uncertain what to do like a deer hiding from a predator.

There was a moment of silence as everyone watched in disbelief, before Rakin broke out into a deep laugh.

“Bah hah hah!”

Two hours later, the group was excused from the kitchen. After creating a mess and destroying school property, they’d been assigned punishment detail in working in the kitchen. They all had the option of foisting all the blame on Amara, but in unspoken agreement decided it would be best to split the blame between them, and not lot Amara work a whole shift in a kitchen, mind free to spiral into despair at thoughts of her sister.

They’d found that if Amara was to be left alone, it was best she do so in an environment where she could occupy her mind.

“I forgot to ask before,” Kole said to Zale, as she escorted him to his Astronomy class. He had no idea where the observatory was for his Astronomy 201 class, and had meant to spent the time after dinner looking. “Why doesn’t Gray know about your 'uncle?”

“How do you know Gray doesn’t know about my uncle?”

“We sort of had a conversation on the way to class this morning,” Kole confessed reluctantly, not really sure why he was reluctant at all to admit that.

“Oh no... did anyone see you? Did you hurt him?” Zale asked, suddenly concerns.

“What? No. We just talked. He actually kind of apologized,” Kole said. “Why would we have fought?”

“Umm.. I’m not sure. It’s just where my mind went. Why did you mention my uncle?”

Kole explained the interaction, and the mention of her Uncle Tallen, though he made it clear he’d given no name or description that would shed any light on the identity of the famous mage.

"So, why didn’t you tell them about him?" Kole asked.

Zale bit her lip, thinking, and Kole pushed away thoughts at how much he was beginning to like that gesture on her face.

Eventually, she answered, “I don’t know. It just never really came up? And then by the time it was sort of relevant it would have been weird to mention him. He only showed up irregularly when I was little. When I was 10, he became a more frequentt visitor, but by then, it was easier to just not mention him. When I met you, he was already a permanentt fixture, so it wasn’t as weird.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“I probably should,” Zale said with a sigh. “If he ever shows up again. They know a bit about my mom—not all of it, but enough that I could tell them that Uncle Tal used to adventure with her—though that won’t endear him to them at all.”

“Why not?” Kole asked.

“Mom was really mad when I gave Harold that door knob,” Zale explained. “For a couple of weeks, the Dahn started sending Harold to random places in Edgewater and beyond when he went through doors.”

Zale looked around conspiratorially before saying the next part to assure they were alone.

In a whisper she continued, “Once, he left a shower and walked out naked into the middle of the market.”

Kole channeled his inner Rakin as he laughed heartily at the thought of Harold’s misfortune, but the laughter ended when the realization sunk in.

“Umm... How do you think your mother will feel when she finds out my room got attached to your house?”

Zale’s face too grew serious.

“I think it might be a good idea to start looking for a way to move the door,” she said.

“And if we can’t?” Kole asked.

“You could always move into the dorms. Right?”

For the first time since the offer of free room and board was made after their '“rescue” of Amintha, Kole was seriously considering taking the offer.