DearSpellbook
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Chapter 54: Connection
🕑 Added 2025-02-10 12:04:23 +0000 UTCThe Temporal Knight is the name given to the bearer of Palyn’s Blade. Archmage Palyn was a sorcerous wizard with a deep affinity for the Font of Time. While the Font of Time resides in an unknown region of the Arcane Realm, and cannot be pathed to via any gates, Payln’s natural affinity for the Font allowed him to draw on the Font for both wizardry and sorcery.
Palyn’s Blade has only ever bonded two knights. The blade granted its wielders a glimpse a second into the future in a bubble around the wielder. The blade also allowed the user to cast Haste on themselves, and slowed anyone it cut. The Temporal Knights did not bond regularly enough to have an established combination, and was used to supplement the weak points in groups as they arose
-Bladed Knights by Kysin, the 195th High Librarian
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“What?” Kole asked, thrown by the sudden change in topic, and the request itself.
“Some noble fop accused you of stealing a family heirloom or whatever,” Underbrook said, holding the glass sphere out to Kole. “They used some political connections to get this brought up through the school administration—likely because their case wouldn’t hold up in a legal court. They’re hoping they can lean on the school to do their dirty work for them.”
“Does that normally work?” Kole asked.
He remembered Corbyn’s threat to go to the Chancellor, which had been hilarious at the time, but he hadn’t really expected the boy to have actual political connections.
“Sometimes,” Underbrook said with a shrug. “Every bureaucracy is susceptible to bribes. Lonin wouldn’t be swayed by one, and the Chancellor is... well, the chancellor, so who knows what she’d do.”
“Should I be worried?” Kole asked, taking the orb.
“That depends,” Underbrook asked. “Did you steal a locket from this Oldhill family?”
“No,” Kole said, infusing his Will into the orb so it turned foggy inside to show it was active.
The fog remained gray.
“I’m going to need more details,” Professor Underbrook said, twirling his finger in a ‘keep going’ gesture.
Kole figured that if he could tell anyone about his mother’s ensouled amulet, it would be his new potential mentor. It would likely come up anyways during their future training.
“His family sponsored me when my parents went missing so that when they were declared dead, they’d be able to take all my family assets to cover the debt.” Kole said, the orb remaining gray, “Corbyn admitted as much the other day. What they wanted was my family’s ensouled artifact amulet, which I did take, but both Zale and her uncle confirmed it was still Bonded to my mother, meaning not only can they not claim it as theirs, but that my mother is still alive so her assets can’t be seized to pay debts I accrued.”
“Ok,” Underbrook said, taking the orb back.
“That's it?” Kole asked, expecting there to be follow up questions.
“Yeah,” Underbrook said. “The school will stand behind you. I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but you sort of have some connections in this place.”
Underbrook gestured around at the school as he said that.
“This Oldhill family clearly doesn’t know that the Headmaster of the Wizarding College is desperate to make you his apprentice, or whose daughter you’re spending all your time with. Actually—you two are living together, right?”
“Yeah, but so is Rakin and Doug and Amara!” Kole said, quickly trying to provide context to the situation.
Underbrook held up his hands.
“I’m not judging, but you better be careful when the Chancellor comes back,” Underbrook advised, “She’s rather protective of her daughter.”
“I know,” Kole said, his worry over Corbyn dispelled and once more replaced with his worry over what Zale’s mother would do to him on his return.
With no hardball matches to prepare for or watch, the friends resumed their Saturday morning study group. By then, it was a more habit than necessity, as they already spent most mornings together training as it was, along with sharing classes, most meals, and of course, living in the same extra dimensional house.
The Saturday mornings had begun to serve as a touch point, where they could get news from Runt on the greater comings and goings of the Basin, and force Amara to work on something other than runes.
In the wake of their recent adventure, all their mentors had made them swear they would stop searching for Amintha and to leave the preparations for the defenses to the school and city. They’d agreed, and only Amara had done so under duress. Professor Donglefore had threatened to ban her from assisting in the construction of the Spatial defense runes he was designing to seal the rift.
Amara had grown so engrossed in that project that she’d neglected to make Kole any additional rune gear—which was fine by him. He’d decided against preparing more. With only four mental slots for spells or runes, he’d dedicated one to Conjure—so he could never lose his spellbook, another to the shield bracer, and the third to the blasting rod. The fourth he chose to leave open, and it served as the storage space for whatever spell he was currently working on. Having the dedicated spot removed the need for Kole to juggle spells to make space, speeding up learning.
That Saturday marked the beginning of the most productive and boring months of his life.
Without the hardball matches or jaunts to other cities and realms to bookend each week, they all began to blend together as Kole began to expand his spell repertoire.
He started out trying to learn Blink, both to see if he could, and because it would be invaluable. He quickly found—relatively quickly that is, as it took over a week of failure for him to admit it—that the second-tier Space spell was beyond him. He knew he could learn spells of the second tier, he’d done it after all with Mirror Image, and the rune repair intents, but many of the components of the Space spells were unfamiliar to him, and his mind had difficulty wrestling the concepts into submission.
Part of this had to do with the added strain his connection with the Font of Illusions had when opening gates to other areas of the Arcane Realm, but the largest part was simply that he wasn’t as good with Space magic as he was with those he had an affinity for.
So instead, he’d moved on to his list of Sound, Light, and Mind spells and over the course of two months he learned them all. In the process, he experimented with other Fonts, seeking out others that he might be naturally gifted with in the hopes of broadening his skill set. He learned—or relearned as was the case for some he’d learned back in Illandrios and then abandoned to make room for spells—cantrips for the Font of Fire, Ice, Bonds, Lightning, and Air.
He could have learned more, but as they all seemed to be as difficult to learn as Space, he’d judged that he wouldn’t be finding any more Fonts with which he had a special knack for. Once he’d decided this, he focused on cantrips that he thought would have practical applications.
He even found the time to squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of Magic Missile and Shield, getting them both down to 15 Will, and firmly establishing that as the lower limit for all first-tier spells that used a gate. This development, along with the discovery that cantrips of the same variety cost him 10 Will, gave him a reasonable idea of what Blink would cost him should he ever learn it. He figured it would cost him 20 Will, as 10 was the base cost of opening a gate for him, and he couldn’t optimize the spells themselves below their baseline cost without resorting to the very spell construction tricks that had stymied his progress all these years.
By the end of the period of boredom, Kole’s spell repertoire was as follows. For first tier spells he had Magic Missile, Shield, Thunderwave, Radiant Bolt, Light, Mind Spike, Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Alarm, and Shield.
For second tier spells, he had Mirror Image, Shatter, Darkness, Darkvision, Mental Phantom, Mind Lash, and Burning Rays.
After completing his list, he’d gone back to working on mastering Blink, but progress was slow, and it became a side project rather than his main focus.
His focus shifted to something more nebulous, incorporating his primal abilities into his wizardry. The progress on this front was notably slower, namely as there appeared to be none made at all.
Kole’s friends also developed greatly during this time of rest. Doug finally learned to conjure arrows out of his quiver, easily doubling the rate at which he could loose arrows, though the constant mental strain did take a toll. He’d begun to bring a second quiver with him to allow him to better make use of his increased speed.
Zale’s didn’t discover any new Fonts to link her Void ability too, but she did manage to extend the range of her aura another six inches, now making it thirty inches around instead of twenty-four. Now when she created a void of sound, it covered an area six feet across.
She also experimented more with her Void bubble, as they’d taken to calling it. The ability was frankly terrifying. Anything that went through it vanished. It was simple, but also had horrifying implications. In part, it acted as a phenomenal shield, not blocking attacks but erasing them from existence, but it wasn’t something to play with lightly.
The effect wasn’t limitless however, and as things passed through, it drained Zale’s Will. Though they didn’t try it, they suspected it would fail entirely if they tried to push something living through it.
Kole sent spell after spell through the Void, and the amount of Will it took Zale was similar to the amount it took Kole to cast them, though if he sent a Magic Missile, it only cost her around 5 Will, not the inflated 15 it took Kole to cast it.
Rakin continued his work on extending the range of his primal control. He could now create a mini dust storm around him, obscuring the sight—and making breathing a real pain—for everyone within five feet of himself. Within this cloud of dust, his tremor sense was heightened, and he was aware of everything within it as it created a cavity devoid of sand particles.
His range with his fire improved, but not as dramatically. He could now project his flames a couple feet away from his hands, but the heat was noticeably less.
Amara spent most of this time working with her mentor on the grand rune schema he was constructing, both consulting with the design and helping with the work. This fixation had completely eclipsed her work on the auto broom and overall the group thought it good she’d found something to focus on that had a purpose after being directly told to no longer seek out her sister.
Through it all, Kole felt as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Everything was going so well. He’d made friends, confronted his childhood bully, conquered his inability to learn magic, and then learned an absurd number of spells, he’d found his mentor, and so much more.
He knew it couldn’t all last forever, and despite himself a large part of him was hoping something would happen.
Gods, he thought, one day as he sat studying in the library, finally getting his last new spell down to the cost of 3 Will. This is getting kind of boring.
Comments
Kaku John
I like the little month time skip, this chapter makes me wonder if kole will find a way to use other fonts or with traditional wizardry make his own spells like making blink but from his personal knowledge
