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Chapter 56: Confrontation
🕑 Added 2025-02-17 10:00:01 +0000 UTCThe Storm Knight is the name given to the Bearer of Zyglin’s Blade. Archmage Zyglin was a master of the Font of Lightning. The Storm Knight gained the ability to use Lightning offensively, as well as teleporting through bolts of lightning.
-Bladed Knights by Kysin, the 195th High Librarian
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Some people thought that Faust, the third month of the year named for one of the four original gods created by Oaan, was cursed due to that same god's slow plotting descent into evil.
If Kole was being honest with himself, he thought the idea silly. Sure, curses were real, but those were magical effects—Will harnessing the power of creation to create a persistent torment. The nebulous idea that things are just worse for a whole thirty days every year because someone long ago chose to name it after an evil god was a little absurd.
But, despite his reservations, the thought did run through his mind when he spotted the hooded figures hiding in the underbrush on campus on his route home from Astronomy 101.
While their hiding spot might have caught the Kole of two months ago off guard, this older and wiser Kole had one distinct advantage over his younger and more foolish self.
He’d learned the spell Darkvision and used it liberally. While the Will cost of the second-tier spell was 8, the spell lasted 8 hours. He had a far cheaper persistent Light spell, that created an orb of light that hovered overhead, but that spell only lasted an hour at the cost of 3 Will.
Always looking for ways to optimize his Will expenditure, Kole had quickly noticed the mathematical advantage that Darkvision provided. Aside from that, seeing in the dark was just so useful. He could turn invisible and still see, he could lay on his back, holding a book above him, and not worry about catching the Light, and when doing all of this, he never had to fear he’d look directly at the light and ruin his ‘dark vision.’
So, it was because of his new favorite spell that Kole was very prepared for the four men waiting for him in the bushes.
What to do... Kole thought, stopping where he stood and pretending to look through his bag as if he’d forgotten something.
While doing this, he touched the signaling device Amara had made them all, which they’d fallen out of using since they spent nearly every free hour of every day together. He quickly signaled emergency, and indicated he was on the green, one of the prearranged locations set into the device.
Backup summoned; Kole decided to play it safe.
“Flood,” he cursed aloud. “My notebook.”
Kole was rather proud of that bit of acting, small as it may be.
He turned around, as if going back to class to get his forgotten notebook.
It was then he noticed he didn’t have four ambushers, but six. And, while his Darkvision allowed him to see the four ahead relying on shadows to hide, it hadn’t let him see the two that had been hiding behind walls.
“Flood,” he cursed for real this time.
He weighed his options. He could probably catch all four under the bush in a Shatter, but he was not yet certain they were after him. They almost certainly were, but he had no idea why.
The two from behind the walls had come out to block his path. Each was well over six feet tall. They were wearing dark leather armor, and each held two-foot-long clubs.
“Good evening,” Kole said, waving to the pair even as he heard the other four come out of hiding.
“Kohlyn Highridge?” one of the two asked, the simple question making everything suddenly clear.
The only person he knew with the inclination to target him for a nighttime mugging was incidentally the only person who would refer to him by that name. Even his uncle had started to call him Kole in their last meeting—not that he would have hired muggers.
Darkvision wasn’t the only spell Kole had learned over the past months, but he was struggling to think of something he could do that wouldn’t kill these men outright.
Sleep? he considered. The spell could knock out the four tightly packed men in the bush, but he’d not yet learned to cast spells while maintaining concentration on another, and they would wake as soon as he cast a spell at the two ahead. He was, unfortunately, not confident enough in his martial prowess to handle two adult goons alone.
And if he was still being honest with himself, he doubted he ever would.
Kole spun around, facing the four crawling out from under the bush, impressed to see they’d gotten out so quickly and quietly in the moment he’d looked away. His spell was already formed in his mind as his target came at him. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a loud piercing whistle and watched with satisfaction as the bushes exploded at the sound.
The spell Shatter had been the last he’d learned in the past week, not because it had been particularly difficult from a wizarding standpoint, but because the spell’s somatic component had required him to learn to whistle with his fingers. He’d been very frustrated over the set back and had vented to his friends about it well past the point they’d grown tired of hearing it.
The four men from the bush shouted out in pain, two of them fell outright and didn’t get back up, but a second application of the Shatter, focused now on the two men still standing, saw those men laying down too—hopefully unconscious but possibly dead.
Kole didn’t let himself dwell on that at the moment. The spell had magically amplified his whistle, and he was certain the guards on campus would be here soon.
He could simply turn invisible and run away, but Corbyn knew he could do that. In fact, that’s the only thing Corbyn really knew Kole could do, so he suspected the men came prepared for such an occurrence.
Instead, he decided to test out another spell. He could put them to sleep now that there was only two of them, but that wouldn’t let him test his next spell in actual battle—if you could call this a battle, which Kole had already internally decided not to.
Kole pictured in his mind the horrible giant ant soldiers he’d see far, lifted his two hands forming a triangle with his fingers, looking through it so the man on the left’s head was within the circle, and unleashed the spell.
Kole couldn’t see what was happening in the target’s mind, but he saw the effect.
The man on the left suddenly recoiled in fear at his partner.
“Ant!” he shouted, making a rushed swing at his former ally as he fell back.
The attack was made in panic and weak, but it got the full attention of its target.
“What are you doing you Flooding moron!?” the second man shouted, turning on his ally.
The ensorcelled man only jumped back holding his club up. He looked around in panic.
“Tony? Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here you moog!” Tony shouted.
“Ah!” the moog shouted, mustering his courage. “You ate Tony!”
He leapt forward at Tony, bringing his club down hard on what he thought to be a soldier ant.
Tony brought his club up, blocking the attack, and he pushed the moog back, still trying to reason with him.
Bu, the moog couldn’t hear whatever it was Tony was saying, and he screamed in pain at the light push. For in his mind, he’d just been stabbed in the chest.
The two fought while Kole waited for the guard to arrive, placing himself behind a tree to watch discretely after making sure the other four were down for the count. He heard some groans of pain, so was happy he’d likely not killed them. All of them at least.
The guards had either been paid off, or their schedules altered because none arrived before Kole spotted Rakin and Zale running out of the art building Kole had been heading toward.
They saw the two men fighting and ran over to investigate.
“I’m over here!” Kole said, getting their attention.
He stepped out from behind cover and satisfied with the efficacy of his new spell Mental Phantom, cast Sleep on the two men, casting the first-tier spell as a second tier spell to ensure it knocked out both men.
The moog had a moment of clarity before he passed out, his eyes growing wide as the soldier ant he’d been beating up morphed back into his friend Tony.
“Look at you!” Zale said, inspecting Kole’s handy work. “You don’t even need me to save you anymore!”
“Hey!” Kole said, “I’ve saved you just as many times as you’ve saved me.”
“Aye,” Rakin said, agreeing with Kole. “Yer both equally pathetic and codependent.”
“I, uh, may have hurt those four really bad,” Kole said, ending the banter before any of the four men could potentially die.
