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Chapter 5: Stowaway
🕑 Added 2023-12-24 04:44:31 +0000 UTCOn the way back down the levels, Kole explained his magical situation to Jorin.
Kole told Jorin about how he’d built his vault at any early age, and upon finding no evidence of the Font of Illusions within, had dove into wizardry head first. But, on the creation of his wizard’s bridge, he’d found it opened up beside the Font instead of within it. He was a primal, only one without any of the instincts needed to harness the abilities.
He told him of how he kept it secret, and his struggles in learning magic, spotted as they were with hints of success.
The master mage seemed not to be paying attention, greeting people as they passed and occasionally casting some spells to entertain a child. But, he would ask questions and ask for clarification at times, proving he was following the tale.
“Let me get this straight then,” Jorin said, stopping at a seemingly random location in the storage hold. “You could have trained to become a powerful Mirage Knight, using your sorcerous Will pool, but you chose to hide the power on the off chance that the last hundred years of magical study into primals was somehow wrong?”
“Yeah, but when you put it that way it sounds really crab headed,” Kole defended, he didn’t think his decision was that crazy. “That same hundred years of study said that someone couldn’t be both a sorcerer and a primal. And... something’s wrong with my primal instincts. I can’t see my Font from my vault and I never gained a primal ability”
“Very curious. Does your primal connection hinder your sorcery?”
In response to that, Kole turned invisible without the powerful mage even realizing he’d cast a spell until it’d been complete.
Jurin let out a whistle, “Well, well. I stand impressed. I didn’t sense you drawing on the Fonts until the spell was completed.”
Kole took a step to the side, out of habit whenever he turned invisible to hide his location, and was unnerved when Jurin’s eyes followed him, maintaining eye contact.
Jurin performed an arcane gesture and spoke another word, and suddenly Kole was visible once more, “Hmm, that is impressive. That was truly a third tier spell, not some weird primal shortcut. How much Will did it cost you?”
“Around three,” Kole confessed.
Jurin shook his head, “I don’t know if you’re a fool or a prodigy, but if you have time between your duties, I’d be interested in talking about your situation more—the magical one, not the fugitive state. This is your bunk, you’ll get your duty assignment at breakfast in the on duty mess. Be there at 5 A.M.”
At that, Jurin vanished, having teleported away.
“I guess he didn’t like all the stairs,” Kole said to himself, finally taking in his surroundings.
What he’d first taken to be a storage hold was—in fact—an actual storage hold. A hammock hung tied between the nets securing bundles of cargo to the walls. Kole stood in a small illuminated area, darkness on all sides. The immediate area was illuminated with Light runes carved into the ceiling, and had lit before them as they’d approached, and gone off in their wake.
Kole’s eyes were drawn to the runic symbol for the Font of Light briefly, but he wasn’t sure why. After a moment, the light went out, and he was forced to navigate his way to the hammock in the dark. He could cast the Glow cantrip, but it would take all the Will he had for the day, and he was hoping to not spend the rest of the day with a Will drain induced headache.
With nowhere else to be for nearly eighteen hours, and having most recently slept in a sewer—even if it was a clean one—Kole decided to take a nap.
Thud
"Ow!"
The sudden noise broke Kole from his sleep, and he turned invisible out of instinct.
He stood slowly and crept, barefoot, out of his small alcove between crates. A dim glow came from a small opening a few bays down the hold, and Kole could hear indistinct whispering.
He crept closer, careful to remain silent using well honed skilled gained from a adolescence spent hiding. When he had only covered half the distance, the light went out, and the whispering stopped. Kole froze, afraid he’d somehow been spotted, but he knew he hadn’t made a sound. Eventually, when no challenge came, he moved close, ready to cast Shield or Magic Missiles if the need arose, though afterward he’d be defenseless.
“Stop right there or I’ll blast you!” a very nervous girl’s voice called out.
As threats of murder came, it was probably the worst that had ever been thrown at Kole. Not that he’d been threatened with murder often, but it had happened enough time for Kole to make that assessment. So lame was the threat, it took him a moment to realize the speaker had somehow spotted him. He examined himself, but to his relief—and mild confusion—he was still invisible.
Maybe its a bluff? He thought.
He stood still, focusing on calming his breathing, lest it give him away.
“I know you are there,” the voice called again, somehow sounding nervous and irritated simultaneously. “I’m pointing a blasting rod at you, so turn visible before I use it.”
The light returned, and Kole could see a small rod back lit and protruding out from between a stack of crates.
“Fine,” Kole relented, letting his spell lapse. He held his hands out to his side, in a gesture that gave the impression of harmlessness, but kept his hands ready in case he needed to cast a spell.
“Why are you here?” the voice demanded, gaining confidence. “Were you looking for me?”
“I don't even know who you are. I was asleep over there and heard you fall.”
“Oh,” the voice said, sounding almost disappointed. “Why are you down here then?”
“They assigned me a bunk down here. I’m trading work for passage to Edgewater. What are you doing down here?”
There was no answer for a moment before the girl finally spoke.
“That’s none of your business. Turn around, go back to your bunk and forget you ever found me.”
Kole ignored the demands and asked, “Are you a stowaway? You know the ship clans throw stowaways overboard right?”
He knew the ship had set sail some time ago, and the window for this girl to come clean had likely ended. Ship clans don't usually throw stowaways overboard anymore, but... the conversation with Jurin strongly suggested that their captain wouldn't be so lenient.
“I... didn’t know that,” she said, all hints of surety now gone from her voice. “Is it true?”
Kole nodded, not sure if she could see him in the dim light, but she had somehow detected him
“I’m Kole. Can you come out, or at least stop pointing that at me?”
There was a clattering and Kole saw the stick fall to the ground as she dropped it and began to move crates around. When the crack was wide enough, a girl crawled out, bringing her light with her and illuminating the space. The light was a short stone cylinder, runed to emit light from the top like a stubby torch. She looked to be around Kole’s age, but was short and thin. She had pale skin and short messy blond hair tied up in a birds nest of a bun, and her ears had shallow tips marking her as a half-elf, and calling her age into question.
“I’m Amara,” she said, looking at Kole’s feet as she spoke. “That was just a stick. Please don’t turn me in.”
Kole let out a heavy sigh.
"I won't, just..." He looked around at the empty rows of cargo. "I have to go, I lost track of time and need to be somewhere. Stay hidden. I'll see if I can bring you something to eat. I have to report in, I have no idea what time it is but I think I’m running late."
Amara’s uncertain face lit up at the mention of food.
“Okay. I’ll stay,” She said, and then added in a whisper, “Please don’t turn me in.”
Kole made his way up the levels of the ship, berating himself.
He really should turn this Amara girl in. He’d lucked into getting passage himself, and now he was putting that passage—and his very future by extension—at risk by helping a girl he’d not only just met, but had introduced herself with a threat. But, how could he turn her in? She had looked quite pathetic and he could very well have been in her situation if his barrel had surfaced by a different ship.
He wrestled with what to do until he found the mess hall he’d been assigned to. He ate a standard ship clan meal of fish and bread, and then found Meech waiting for him outside.
“Good morning Kole, it looks like I’m going to have some help with my dung duty.”
Several odorous hours later, Kole left the “stink hold” as the crew call it, and began to head to the mess.
“Not that way,” Meech called after him. “My brother wants to see you.”
Brother? That explains it.
Kole looked himself over, noticing he’d done a very poor job in keeping himself clean through the transferring of the “product” into the holding tanks.
“Don’t worry about that,” Meech said, as if reading his mind.” Jurin will take care of that, you’re not being punished and he’s not a fan of the smell."
Kole found my way back up the the master mage's quarters and knocked.
Jurin opened the door and—before Kole could voice a greeting—cast Clean on him. The filth flaked off of Kole's skin and clothing, disintegrating into a cloud of black dust that then vanished.
"Much better," Jurin said, and then gestured for Kole to come in.
A meal for two was set inside and Jurin invited Kole to take a seat. Jurin asked Kole about his particular condition, and Kole was more than happy to share. Very few back home seemed to have any interest in his attempts to learn wizardry. They'd marked him as mad and his recent successes hadn't served to change their opinion of him, not that he’d stuck around long enough to hear what they thought.
Kole told Jurin how he'd struggled to cast even a cantrip, how he'd pored over the library trying any version he could find until eventually he'd found ones that worked. He explained how he'd discovered that the older spells were easier to cast. Those spells used simpler gate components and compensated with more complex paths. Working his way into the past, he eventually learned the oldest spellforms the great library back home had that were still intact. He learned every cantrip he could, noticing some Fonts were marginally easier to connect to than others, but so great was his connection to the Font of Illusions, opening his bridge anywhere else in the Arcane Realm took an immense deal of Will.
"After that, I taught myself spellform construction theory and began to repair the damaged ones. By the time I left, the only spellforms I'd yet to try had been completely devoid of Will and beyond my ability to restore."[[ Great spot to move info dump]]
“So what can you do now?” Jurin asked.
“I can cast Shield and Magic Missie, but each cost me nearly forty Will.”
At that, Jurin’s brow rose and he let out another surprised whistle.
“That... is a lot. You have that much?”
“I know and I do,” Kole said, a little embarrassed, “But I can still do it, which is more than any other primal wizard ever could. It means there’s hope I can figure it out.”
“That there is,” Jurin agreed.
Kole looked up into Jurin’s eyes, and didn't know what to say. Never before had he encountered a wizard who thought him anything but crazy.
Before he could think of how to respond Jurin held up a hand to stop him and continued, “You have a lot of work ahead of you, and theres still the rather large possibility you will fail, but... I believe there’s a chance you won’t.”
Despite his hedging, the words still filled Kole with hope, for they were validation.
They talked after that about less serious matters, when eventually the topic came around to Kole’s stowaway status.
“So...” Kole began, “How do you think the Captain would respond if they found a stowaway mid-journey?”
Jurin’s face became serious and he examined Kole closely before asking, “Why?”
Flood, Kole thought
“Umm... I was just curious, you know? Like, what would have happened if I’d not announced myself?”
“You’re not a good liar. Tell me the real reason you are asking.”
“Flood,” Kole said, this time aloud. “Let’s say—hypothetically—there was a stowaway on the ship. What would the Captain do?”
“Hypothetically, the Captain would rouse the entire crew to search for them and throw them overboard when found.”
“That seems... harsh,” Kole said.
He knew the ship clans had strict laws about stowaways, but he also knew they'd grown more lax on the issue in the last couple hundred years and were more than likely to bend the rules away from capital punishment.
“Yes, it is. The previous High Captain Durant was killed by a stowaway that he happened upon by chance. High Captain Meerim had been the commander of the ship and quartermaster of the fleet at the time, and High Captain Durant had been her mentor. When Meerim was elected High Captain in the wake of the murder, she made an example of the stowaway, binding him before throwing him over the edge. If there was a new stowaway found, she’d likely not bind them, but she’d certainly throw them overboard.”
Kole didn’t say anything after than, and Jurin continued after a moment’s pause “She’d also throw anyone caught aiding the stowaway overboard as well.”
Flood...
Kole considered Jurin’s tone and past actions, and was fairly certain he didn’t share the Captain’s opinions of the matter.
I might as well ask.
“How would you suggest getting food for a stowaway if one wanted to remain undetected and unejected?”
Jurin let out a heavy sigh and began to rub his forehead.
“Hypothetically, of course,” Kole amended.
“Of course,” Jurin agreed. “Hypothetically, I’d suggest one not steal food from the mess. Ideally—in this hypothetical situation—it would be best to find a member of the crew sufficiently high ranking to have their own private pantry, and to steal food from there. Now, if you will excuse me, it is very late, and I must go to bed. Please clean this meal up.”
Kole was taken aback at the sudden turn.
Jurin stood and walked out of the small dinning room, toward the door in the back. “Please place the uneaten bread back in the pantry in the kitchen. Just through that door, the first cabinet on the right. I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner at the same time.”
And then, Jurin left, and Kole sat at the table looking over the small heel of the loaf that remained.
Oh! I see... am I actually supposed to clean up?
