DearSpellbook
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Chapter 84: Caravan
🕑 Added 2024-04-19 20:46:14 +0000 UTC[A picture of two children holding hands and flying in a bright blue sky]
A is for Air primals who soar through the skies, they hail from Revan the castle that flies
-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic
—
After everyone had gotten through yelling at Kole and they’d gotten back on the road, Kole sat in the back of his wagon while Zale drove it, Doug and Rakin riding on either side.
“How’d you know to jump out the way?” Kole asked after he finally stopped apologizing.
“I could sense it!” she said excitedly, suddenly remembering about the development in all the chaos. “I thought I wasn’t making any progress, but I guess it much harder to sense a failed casting than a successful one. My whole back seemed to tingle and I knew I had to get out of the way.”
“Did you find your way to the Font of Sound yet?” Kole asked.
Zale shook her head.
“But I think it will be easier to find now if you can keep casting that spell for me.”
“The Will cost is around 15. I can only cast it about three times a day, four to five if I cast it once or twice in the morning and let my Will recover through the day and I don’t use it for anything else.”
“Peh, only three? That’s nothing!” Rakin said, disappointed.
“I think you have a skewed view of Will capacities,” Kole said, not taking offense. “How much do each of you have?”
“I don’t know, around twenty-one?” Rakin said uncertainly.
“Same,” Doug and Zale echoed
Kole nodded.
“That’s because you are all primals,” he explained. “Anyone else our age would have 10, maybe 12 if they started training young. Sorcerers and primals have around 20 by the time they’re our age. I have 45… ish. I can cast this spell three times a day, which is about what Gray and the other wizards in PREVENT can do as well.”
“So you fixed your problem?” Zale asked, happy for him.
“No,” Kole said, though not with disappointment. “Well, I found a work around, I just need to work at it more. I should be able to make this spell cost way less. I was bumbling through the Arcane Realm to complete the spell, but now that made it, I can simplify the path and reduce the cost. The books I read showed the traditional wizardry had far more Will efficient spells than those that proliferated from the spread of spellforms. Only in the last twenty years have offset gates allowed modern wizards to match their efficiency.
Rakin began to snore loudly, pretending to be asleep.
Kole sighed.
“That means I might be able to cast this spell for as little as three Will, I jus need to put in the work.”
Rakin actually seemed interested then.
“Really?” he said, snapping to attention. “That’s… a lot.”
They all had experienced the Thunderwave the goblin had unleashed in the cave in one capacity or another, and Kole having that ability on hand would open a lot of possibilities for their group’s offensive capabilities.”
Kole nodded, and then remembered something and began counting on his fingers.
“What is it?” Zale asked.
“I think it’s my birthday—if you count the time dilation.”
Kole’s birthday was on the first day of the first month of the year, Oaan 1st. Oaan was the name the gods gave to their progenitor long after he’d left them to their own devices, and Kole’s parents had thought his day of birth to be a lucky one.
“What!? No! I forgot!” Zale said in distress. “I had a gift!”
“You did?” Kole asked, surprised.
He couldn’t remember the last gift he’d gotten for his birthday. It wasn’t a tradition in Illandrios, but it was in the ship clans, so Kole’s father had given him birthday presents. After he’d disappeared however, that had stopped.
Kole noticed Doug’s look of concern.
“It’s fine,” Kole told him. “I didn’t expect anything.”
Doug relaxed, relieved he’d not made some large social bumble. He was always uncertain of how things went outside his small mountain community but was quickly coming to learn that things weren’t all that different.
“Good,” Rakin said, and they all laughed.
***
Zale left the group, taking a horse and riding up and down the caravan planning something after Kole’s birthday declaration.
When they stopped for the night, Kole was surprised at the speed at which Zale produced a cake from one of the supply carts.
“That was on the cart?” Kole asked.
“Nope, but I bribed one of the cooks to make this instead of bread.”
The caravan had a few wagons dedicated to food prep. While they were making a long overland journey, each of the caravan drivers was merchant of some at least moderate wealth, and they had a certain level of comfort they wished to contain. With the advent of runed powered ovens and stoves, portable cooking stations were feasible, if not exactly cheap.
Zale tried to get everyone in on singing the for Kole in honor of his birthday, but everyone in the caravan was still angry at him from before, Doug didn’t know the words, and Rakin was—well, Rakin.
“When are all your time-displaced birthdays?” Kole asked the others as they ate a cake that was rather dry without any frosting.
“I don’t like to agree with Runt,” Rakin began regretfully, “But… I have to admit she’s right and ye are a massive nerd.”
No one else had any idea and was not particularly interested in doing the math as Kole explained it.
***
The journey continued on without event for a few more days. The group would train together each morning for a short while, and then again when they stopped at midday. Kole would cast Thunderwave for Zale once at each morning practice so she could try to find the Font of Sound, and he would try new versions of the spell each time, to see if he had been able to reduce the cost any. This was of course done far from the caravan.
One time they tested Zale’s silence aura against his spell and found the ability successfully negated Kole’s spell, but it cost Zale a large portion of her Will. Overall the first two weeks of the journey were relaxing and uneventful, save for the events the friends caused themselves.
All that ended on the first night of the third week.
***
Kole was woken by shouts of alarms, and he grabbed his quarter staff and blasting rod as he fumbled out of he bed roll and crawled out from beneath the wagon he slept on. The weather was warm and most slept under the stars, but looking up into the endless void of space was a bit much for the boy raised under a dome.
He fumbled out from under the wagon to see the camp coming alive, torches and magical lights being lit all around. Kole activated his floating light rune, and ran towards the source of the alarm. The caravan had circled their wagons to form a camp in the center, but not all were added to the perimeter, lest it become too large to effectively defend. Kole had been sleeping under a wagon in the center and now ran to the outer ring.
Guards stood in the gaps between wagons while the merchants took up arms to strike down on any intruder daring enough to crawl beneath.
Kole couldn’t see the cause of the alarm, but he heard to sound of battle beyond. The clang of steel and banging of wood accompanied by cries of pain and strange yipping howls. He saw Doug standing on a pillar of earth, raised from the ground just tall enough to give him a line of sight over his wagon, and he went to join him.
As he neared, he saw something dark under the wagon coming for them, and without thinking he pointed his rod and sent a bolt of magic into it. The figure yipped in pain, and lunged out, only to receive an arrow to its back, finishing the job Kole had started. In the light of his runed device, Kole saw the creature of was gnoll, a hyena twisted into the shape of a man and given some level of intelligence by some god or wizard of time lost and set out onto the world.
“Go out there!” Doug told Kole, gesturing beyond. “They need help!”
Kole didn’t know why his going out there would be the best use of his talents, but he trusted Doug and ran for an opening.
“Let me through!” he called to the caravan guard holding a spear at the ready.
The spearwoman stepped aside, and Kole jumped through the opening into madness.
The grass was on fire all around, illuminating the battlefield. Gnolls proweled around the perimeter of the light, while Rakin and Zale stood back to back fend off six. While Kole’s research had said gnolls wore armor and weapons into battle, there was no sign of either before him tonight.
Zale saw Kole and gave him a nod of acknowledgment as she said something to Rakin. Kole watched the fight, inching closer to line up a shot while staying close enough to the wagon for Doug to give him cover. Rakin and Zale had been trying to move closer to the wagons, but the gnolls weren’t allowing it.
Kole waited for the opportunity and when it came sent a bolt of force into the back of the nearest gnoll. The ferakin stumbled, and Rakin punched it in the face, shattering its skull moving into an earth magic assisted leap out of the ring. Absently Kole noted that the creatures seemed smaller than his research suggested.
Behind him, Zale vanished into black motes, and reappeared outside the ring just behind Rakin as they ran for the safety of the wagons. Seeing the pair flee, those circling in the dark broke out in chase, loping on all fours to quickly overtake the pair. Kole saw the gnoll closing in on his friends, and ran to join them, building his newest spell in his mind as he ran. A gnoll came for Kole, trying to intercept him, but on of Doug’s arrows struck in the leg, vines suddenly erupting from the shaft and binding the leg to the ground.
Kole ran to meet Rakin and Zale, Rakin was in the lead and as soon as Kole passed him, the dwarf halted his run, and pivoted, to the side, the ground erupting beneath his feet and completely reversing his momentum. He landed next to Kole just while Zale was still five strides away, with a pack of gnolls closing it.
“Silence!” Kole shouted.
He gave her what he thought was enough time for her to recieve the message and act on it—which felt like an eternity in the battle—and unleashed Thunderwave, sending the spell out through his bridge, and holding his hands out before him to better aim the spell’s effect.
While from his perspective, the spell only sounded like the thunder one heard while in a storm, the effect on the other side of his hands was another matter entirely. Zale ran through it and past him unaffected, but the gnolls on her heels were not so lucky.
Ten gnolls followed, and half of them had their momentum halted and were thrown back a few yards, the rest stumbled, slowing and clutching their ears in pain and letting out yips of pain. Those thrown back didn’t rise to their feet, but those that stood standing paused only a moment before charging at Kole with feral madness in their eyes.
Rakin and Zale took advantage of the halted charge and ran at the remaining five. Before they reached them, an arrow from Doug reduced their number to four, and Kole finished a second off with a blast from his wand. He then scanned the surroundings to see if any more were closing in, but as far as he could see in the flame-lit night, the gnolls were either dead or fleeing from the sound of his spell.
When he looked back, Zale and Rakin were fighting the three remaining gnolls. The creatures had no weapons or armor to deflect Zale’s blows, but she was forced on the defensive as two took turns ducking in at her from opposite sides. Despite her advantage of having a weapon, if not for her armor, she’d quickly have been covered in wounds.
Rakin was wrapped in a close quarters brawl with his lone enemy, ducking under its swipes and bites to land blows on its torso, but whatever power he had to enhance his body had faded and his attacks were no stronger than a trained boxer.
Kole didn’t trust his aim with his blasting rod to not strike either of his friends, but he didn’t have to.
He built the spell for his latest version of magic missile, and fired three unerring purple force darts at one of the gnolls facing Zale. They dropped the already wounded creature, and Zale capitalized on the opening to land a downward blow on the other. Seeing Zale free of her foes, Rakin swept at the legs of his opponent, throwing it off balance in time for Zale to finish it off.
Immediate threats dealt with, the three closed in on each other, Kole in the middle, the dwarf and voidling scanning the darkness for enemies. Kole had enough Will for a single invisibility or rod blast and had his clarity potion at the ready, but he’d only brought two and didn’t want to use it if the battle was over as it seemed to be.
“Let’s circle!” Zale shouted, and the three began to run the perimeter looking for others.
The didn’t encounter any more gnolls until they reached the far side of the circled wagons where one of the wagons had somehow been knocked over, and guards stood atop it fending off the gnolls trying to climb over it. With the help of Zale and Rakin below, the drove the remaining few off, and Kole sent a blast from his rod at the fleeing gnolls for good measure before immediately regretting the expenditure of his last bit of Will.
“Oww,” he groaned, rubbing his head.
Zale and Rakin turned to him, clothing pristine and unmarred, and then looked at themselves in their blood-stained and torn clothing and both let out a laugh.
“Oh, did ye get a headache?” Rakin asked, feigning concern. Then in a feigned shout, he said, “We need a Blessed! This wizard has a headache!”
Kole couldn’t help but laugh, and they went back into the circle to see where they could be of use. He was full of good cheer until the light hovering over his shoulder suddenly flickered, and then went dark and fell to the ground where it disintegrated into dust.
“Flood,” he cursed. “I guess I don’t have to give that back anymore.”
***
Back in the ring of wagons, all the cots had been commandeered and set up as a hospital. Ten men and women lay wounded, while two more were at rest on the ground, bodies fully covered in blood-stained sheets.
With no real skill to help, the three returned to the perimeter and joined the guards on watch.
***
When the sun rose without further incident, the four adventurers were ushered back to wagons that had been cleared out for them, bed rolls set up atop some of the less pokey trade goods. The guards had taken shifts sleeping the rest of the night, but the four friends hadn’t joined them.
As Kole walked through the gathering caravan to find his resting place, he found that the hostile looks he’d been receiving since the Thunderwave incident had all been replaced with looks varying from tolerance to gratitude.
He felt a flicker of warmth in his chest at the latter looks, but a large part of him wanted to say something clever about how they shouldn’t have doubted him, but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound petulant and settled on stoic silence and nods.
He lay down in the back of his assigned cart and was asleep as soon as his head hit his rice-filled pillow—for about five minutes. As exhausted as he was, he apparently wasn’t tired enough to sleep in a bumpy wagon.
