As he progressed in his magics, he began to grow bolder. Most of his experiments failed with the deaths of his subjects, and he mourned each loss deeply, both for the failure of the experiment, but also for the loss of life. To this day, Assuine’s Blessed cannot answer why she never removed her Blessing from Rettew, despite all he did. The best case is, that despite ramifications of his experiments, he did it all from a place of passion for Assuine’s gifts.

  Eventually, his experiments grew too unruly to be ignored, and he was run out of the city he’d made his home. He ventured out into the wilderness. No one knows where he went, or what he did while out there, but it is believed the majority of magical creatures classified as ‘formed creatures’ by Lidan Oakcrest were created by him.

  -Excerpt from Wicket’s Guides to the Pantheon.

  —

  Kole found himself suddenly back in the ready room, barely able to see in the sudden darkness. The smell of burnt alchemics filled the room, overpowering him.

  “What happened?!” Zale asked, part nervous and part excited.

  Kole took a moment to orient himself. Three adults were in the room tending to their wounds. Kole was the least injured, with just a few minor burns. Rakin stood with a towel around his waist, and was in the process of scrubbing the caked-on soot which was the source of the odor.

  Doug too wore burned clothing, but he was also covered in a white sticky material he was fighting to remove. It was all over him, even webbing between his antlers, occasionally dripping down over his face. He’d pull it off of his arm only for it to get stuck on his hand. Eventually he walked up to the wall and began scraping it off his hands onto the stone.

  “Stop that!” one of the attendants yelled at him. “We have a way to dissolve it.”

  The attendant handed Doug a bottle, and it disappeared into the glob of goo that surrounded his hand.

  Zale was being treated for burns, and as Kole’s eye’s adjusted he could see that a large portion of her hair on the side of her head had burned away.

  “Are you okay!?” Kole found himself asking, ignoring the question and forgetting about Doug’s semi-humorous situation.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Zale said, though she rubbed at the bald spot on the side of her head and frowned. “Rakin over there did this.”

  “How?” Kole asked, turning to Rakin.

  “I was on fire,” Rakin said with a shrug. “Zale was struggling with her opponent, wrestling on the ground. They were punching each other in armor like a bunch of morons. So I tackled him. I landed a top them both, and when the other guy vanished then I fell on her.”

  “How did you get out then?” Kole asked.

  “Suffocated,” Rakin said, shrugging. “I was holding me breath the whole time I was on fire. Alchemical flames suck up all the air. Me magic ones don’t.”

  Zale smiled now at a thought, getting over her sadness at the lost hair.

  “You should have seen the face of the guy with the shield,” she said. “When Rakin lit on fire, he turned his back on him for a second, but once Rakin started charging, he panicked. He shot another Fireball at Rakin with that wand of his, and when Rakin came through the flames even more of fire, he just vanished. He yielded!”

  “Me first opponent had some sort of anti magic field on him. I couldn’t use any of me primal magic,” Rakin said, explaining why he’d fought as he had.

  Zale nodded, “I couldn’t vanish either, or use my darkness ability.”

  “Well I’m glad whatever that was didn’t get near me,” Kole said, adding with a malicious grin, “My opponent yielded too.”

  “I teleported on purpose!” Doug shouted suddenly interrupting Kole, as if he’d just remembered. “I couldn’t direct it, but I saw the Fireball coming and just made myself not there!”

  “Could you do it again?” Kole asked.

  Doug closed his eyes, focusing hard, and then he vanished, the white goo that had been attached to him crashing to the floor.

  Kole looked around and saw him in the corner of the room, hand clutching the vial.

  “I did it!” Doug explained, holding up the vial.

  “Give that back if you aren’t going to use it!” the attendant who’d handed it to Doug yelled at him. “Its very expensive.”

  Chastised, Kole walked over to the woman, antlers hung low, his joy at his achievement already stolen.

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  “So...” Rakin said into the silence. “Did we win?”

  “We did!” Kole said.

  Kole then finished his explanation about how he’d repeatedly shielded against his opponent, and in the end bluffed, leaving out the part about casting Shield unprepared. He was eager to share the news, but not around the attendants. Blessed of Ganik wouldn’t spread news gathered in the service of their duties to their insane god of competition, but he didn’t know for certain if that's who these women were.

  After determining the four were all alive and healed well enough, the attendants left them to their own devices in the room.

  “Dinner?” Zale asked.

  “Aye,” Rakin agreed, “I’m starvin.”

  “Before that,” Kole said, “ I need to tell you something.”

  All eyes turned to him, and Kole told them the full story of how his bracer had been destroyed, and he cast Shield despite it not being prepared.

  “And that’s a big deal?” Doug asked. “Ow!”

  Rakin had flicked him hard in the side and shouted, “Of course that’s a big deal ye antlered dinbadan!”

  “That’s a bit harsh,” Kole said. “I think... What's a ‘dinbadan?’”

  “It's like, most gravel head, or something,” Zale answered for Rakin while giving him a warning look. “And he’s still a little on edge from the fire.”

  Rakin took a deep controlled breath and then said, “Sorry.”

  “Yes, it’s a big deal,” Zale said to Doug, far more kindly. “How do you think it happened?”

  Kole pulled his spellbook out of his satchel, which he’d taken with him into the hardball match in his satchel along with his potions. He’d meant to buy a potion vial belt, but had never gotten around to it. And when he’d gone to take his spellbook out before the match, he’d felt a large pang of regret to part with it and decided to keep it on him.

  He wasn’t concerned it would break. Ensouled artifacts were extremely durable and could recover from any damage that wouldn’t have already outright killed Kole.

  “I think it was this,” Kole said, holding it up.

  He then went on to explain the familiar sensation. How when he’d gone for the spell, he’d found it in a part of his vault newly familiar to him. Over the past week, he’d spent countless hours in his vault, reviewing his memories through the icon of the spellbook there. And in his moment of need, when he’d gone searching for a spell that wasn’t there, how he’d found it within the icon.

  “That’s a big deal,” Zale said, stating what everyone was now thinking.

  “It is,” Kole said, looking at his spellbook with new eyes.

  He’d already thought it did more than he could ever hope for, but with this... things would change. The aspect that made wizards so valuable over sorcerers was their ability to prepare for any situation. A sorcerer’s individual spells might be more flexible given their arcane signatures, but a wizard could cast anything—well, a wizard that wasn’t also a primal could.

  The limiting factor on a wizard is the amount of spells they can hold prepared in their mind. A problem Kole had only recently started to wrestle with, now that his learning had outpaced his capacity.

  And now? Well, now it didn’t matter. At all.

  Suddenly the implications of that overwhelmed him. He moved to cast an unprepared spell, but found that his Will was still spent.

  “I wish Uncle Tal was here,” Zale said, earning nods and an ‘aye’ of agreement.

  “I know you probably want to go bury yourself in books after that, but I also know you’re out of Will,” she continued. “So. Dinner.”

  Once more their entrance into the Griffin’s Roost was met with a round of applause and offers of drinks. Amara met them there, and they celebrated being one of two undefeated teams so far. The Ice Picks were the second, having won their own second match that day. There were two more matches to go the next week for those that had won their first match, after which would be the semi finals.

  They’d yet to see a match of the Ice Picks outside of the scenes Underbrook displayed in class, but they planned to watch those they could find to learn up on their potential opponents.

  Amara was only a little irritated at Kole’s admission that the bracer she’d made him had been destroyed, and she promised to bring a spare when they met up in the morning. She was more excited to learn that Kole would potentially be able to test four runic devices at once, should he find his ability to cast from his spellbook truly without limit.

  “Are ye gunna to go try to court a mentor?” Rakin asked Kole.

  “What?” Kole asked, confused at the question.

  His mind was still racing over the possibilities his spellbook was about to afford him, and he had little mental processing power for anything else.

  “Are. Ye. Gunna. Find. A. Mentor,” Rakin said slower, gesturing to the bar.

  “Oh,” Kole said, getting his meaning. They’d just done very well for a second time in a row, and he’d been the last member of their team left standing.

  He thought it over and realized he had a bit of a problem. His spellbook.

  To get a mentor, he’d have to fully explain his situation and limitations. If he did that, he’d also need to explain his new found ability to bypass some of the main issues with traditional wizardry. If he explained that, he’d have to share the secret of his ensouled artifact spellbook.

  Can I just go telling people about my spellbook? he asked himself, despite knowing the answer already.

  “I... don’t think I can,” Kole said finally.

  He explained his reasoning to the group.

  “Oh, no!” Zale said, grasping the irony of the situation.

  “I think I might have to go tell Lonin about it. Maybe he could find someone trustworthy on my behalf and get them to agree before revealing my identity.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Zale agreed.

  A large part of Kole was relieved to have an excuse not to go from stranger to stranger trying to sell himself as a viable apprentice, despite his deficiencies.

  They spent a while longer celebrating, Gray’s team joining them some time in. Before it got too late, Kole excused himself. They’d made plans to meet early the next day. They’d first check on the door in Orinqth they’d left behind for signs of Amintha, before following up on another lead.

  Kole was surprised and a little disappointed that Zale didn’t try to stop him from leaving. But when he turned back to the group as he was walking away, he saw her watching him go with a small smile. When she noticed him looking, she gave him a shooing gesture, and then held her hands in front of her face like they were a book. After which she just waved.

  He waved bye in return, and ran off to see what he could now do.

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