The arch mages of Illandrios were the flashiest and more memorable assets, each supported by armies of lesser mages and soldiers, but they were not their only core magical force. While the means of crafting ensouled artifacts has been lost, many nations integrated the items into their society in the century between the discovery and loss of the art.
-Bladed Knights by Kysin, the 195th High Librarian
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“What’s this place?” Kole asked, as Zale brought them to, not to the Roost as he expected. but a small shop near the tailor they’d once visited together.
They had gone back to campus to clean up, and now Zale was dressed in her ‘spare outfit’ while Rakin and Kole wore the training clothes available to the martial college students. Zale’s spare outfit was one of many she kept in a rented locker in the dressing room of the martial college. She wore riding boots with tight linen pants tucked in and a heavily embroidered linen shirt which Kole was fairly sure was called a blouse, but he was not really interested in asking and getting educated on the differences in clothing names. Over that she wore a blue vest that hung low in both the front and back, almost like a cape combined with a scarf.
I could probably try to remember the differences if I used my spellbook, Kole considered, but decided against it.
He knew would just forget again.
A pastel awning fronted the establishment, under which sat two tables, neither occupied at the moment. Through the wide glass window, Kole saw a room filled with more tables, but all were empty. A lone woman in a black apron stood inside, looking out the window towards the harbor with evident concern.
“Molly’s!” Zale said, giving the woman inside a big wave.
Molly’s? Kole thought over the name of the restaurant. It seemed familiar but he couldn’t recall where he’d heard the name but gave up.
Zale must have mentioned it. he thought, but that didn’t seem to be right.
The woman started, knocked out of her introspection at the movement. It took her a moment to recognize Zale—who was in her disguised state after the morning's battle.
“Best not to aggravate people who are already on edge,” Zale had said when she’d activated the illusion outside the dressing room.
Kole had sensed the magic activate, looked between Zale and Rakin, sensing a resonance between them suddenly where there hadn’t been one.
Does Rakin have an illusion? Kole wondered.
When the woman recognized Zale, she smiled back, and moved to open the door, which had been locked and barred.
Kole thought that a futile gesture with the giant glass window but didn’t feel the need to mention that.
“Zale!” the woman said, putting her hands over her heart. “It's been ages! Who are your friends? What have you been up to?”
Zale introduced them to Molly, the titular owner of Molly’s, and they were ushered in.
“Boy, does it feel good to just sit down in a building and not in a hole in a field in an alternate dimension,” Kole said, leaning back in his chair once they were seated, and Molly had gone off to get them food without even asking for their orders.
“Aye,” Rakin said.
“It’s a bit surreal,” Zale said, gesturing around. “Being here after that battle—and the week over there.”
They three grew quiet at the mention of the battle.
“Why not the Roost?” Kole asked, eventually to break the silence.
Zale laughed.
“You don’t want to go there for breakfast,” she said, taking an embroidered napkin off the table and laying it over her lap.
Kole copied the motion, and Rakin grunted, doing the same, but putting a lot of effort into making it seem like he didn’t want to.
“This place is the best breakfast in the city,” Zale said. “We just don’t have time with our morning trainings to ever come.”
“I’d come here with you over training any day,” Kole said.
Kole felt Rakin nudge him under the table, and when he looked at the dwarf he was raising his eyebrows approvingly. Only then did Kole realize his words could have been interpreted as an overture to a date.
“Hmm,” Zale said, chewing her lip. “Tempting. The last place you took me led to an inter dimensional invasion, but you aren’t getting out of it that easily. I saw you running when you were invisible. Your form really could use some work.”
“There are forms to running?” Kole asked, genuinely unsure if she was joking or not.
Zale and Rakin both laughed at the question, now certain they were laughing at his question, and not at Zale’s comment.
“You have a lot to learn,” Zale said. “Maybe we can come here for dinner instead.”
Kole froze for what felt like an eternity, until Rakin nudged him under the table, and he let out a weak, “Sure.”
Sure?! He yelled at himself internally.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Zale didn’t seem to notice the lame response, and they moved on to other topics, like the punishments they expected to receive at what was going on between Professor Tailor and Doug.
“Do the primals of the Hollow Peak not know about Doug?” Kole asked.
“Some of them do,” Zale said. “My mom reached out to them on his behalf, but they refused to help him.”
“So, Tailor wasn’t asked?” Kole asked.
“I think he's new,” Zale said. “At least, I don’t remember him from before this semester. I vaguely remember a gnome taught the Spatial curriculum but can’t remember who.”
Eventually the food came out, which took a while as they hadn’t actually been open and the ovens and stoves had all been off.
Kole ate a large meal of eggs, breakfast meats and some round sweet breads covered in a sugary sauce he’d never seen but were delicious.
“What are these?” he asked.
“Pancakes,” Zale said.
“No, we have those in the cafeteria, they are hard and round,” Kole said.
“Yeah, those are garbage pancakes,” Zale said. “Hardly edible if you’re not a dwarf.”
Kole looked to Rakin to see him react to the dwarf comment, but the other boy smiled at the crack and kept eating.
That's weird, Kole thought. Rakin wasn’t one to take a joke without throwing one back.
The thought vanished a moment later when Molly brought more coffee and fruit flavored syrup.
“What do you mean you’re closed!” a voice vaguely familiar to Kole shouted front the door. “There are people sitting right there!”
Molly stood at the door, attempting to politely turn away a potential customer.
“We are closed due to the incident at the docks,” she said. “These people assisted in defending the city and are personal friends.”
“That’s redicu—Kohlyn?” the voice said, and something clicked in Kole’s mind,
"Oh no," Kole whispered.
“I know them!” Corbyn said, pointing to Kole, who continued to look down at his plate.
Corbyn pushed his way past Molly and moved over to sit with the three of them.
“You aren’t dead!” he said, as if he were happy to hear the news.
He sat down at the end of the table, turning a chair around to sit on it backwards with his legs straddling the back and arms resting on the top, oblivious to the death glares both Rakin and Zale were giving him.
“And you helped defend the city!?” he continued. “I can’t believe it—Molly, I’ll just have a coffee.”
He gestured to Molly when he said that. Molly, who did notice the expressions on Zale’s and Rakin’s faces, looked to them for a cue of how to proceed.
Kole’s brain by that point had essentially shut down. On the ship over, he’d daydreamed about going back and confronting Corbyn, but ever since he’d arrived, he’d not even thought about the boy—barring the realization when he’d spotted him in Edgewater and the plans he’d made to avoid him.
Suddenly it came to Kole where he’d heard of Molly’s. It had been in the dossier Runt had given him on Corbyn’s movements, marked as a place to avoid on mornings. He’d forgotten about it as he’d never once gone out to breakfast and hadn’t considered it pertinent to memorize.
Oh, Flood, I should say something, he thought, as he stood there in silence.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of Corbyn. After facing death multiple times over the past few months, the thought of being bullied was laughable—even if Corbyn’s form of bullying bordered on homicide. No, he was unsure how to proceed because Corbyn was acting nice. Well, nice to Kole, he was being rather rude to Molly and ignoring Zale and Rakin completely.
“I was quite sad when I heard you’d died,” Corbyn continued. “I must—”
“What are you doing?” Kole asked, interrupting, having finally gotten his thoughts together. “Why are you acting like we are friends?”
“What?” Corbyn asked, the question shaking the casual confidence he’d had. “Well—I know we weren’t exactly friends, but we’ve known each other our whole lives. We can be friendly.”
“The last time you saw me, you tried to kill me,” Kole said.
He spoke without any heat or anger, but simply stated it as a fact.
“Oh, it wasn’t that bad. It was just a game,” Corbyn said.
“You swung a club at my head while I was lying on the ground, and if I hadn’t cast Shield, you might have killed me,” Kole said, once more free of emotion.
“No it—” Corbyn began, but then stopped himself. He took a deep breath and then started over with a different tactic. “Look—when I thought you’d died, I realized I might have been a bit of a jerk.”
Rakin, who’d just been silently glaring at Corbyn the whole time couldn’t contain it anymore and let out a bark of a laugh.
“A bit?” he said.
Corbyn turned his head to Rakin briefly and then looked away back to Kole, disregarding him entirely.
“I should apologize,” he went on.
Well, this is unexpected. Kole thought.
His mind immediately went to Gray, who’d apologized in a similar manner. Gray, who despite Kole’s initial reservations was becoming a friend.
Could this be similar?
“No,” Kole said, answering his internal question aloud.
“Excuse me?” Corbyn asked, now completely thrown out of his comfort zone.
“No,” Kole repeated. “I don’t want you to apologize. I just want you to go away. I don’t hate you, I don’t want anything from you. I just want to go about my life, not thinking about you at all, like I had all of first semester.”
Corbyn’s face went through a riot of emotions, and Kole risked a glance to Zale to see her looking at him, positively beaming. Rakin still looked mad.
Finally, Corbyn’s face settled on a variation of someone stooping down to talk to their lesser.
“Fine,” he said. “I can give you that. But I’ll need the amulet you stole from my father back. Give it to me, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll just go home. I don’t see what the appeal is about the surface world anyway.”
“No,” Kole said.
“No?” Corbyn echoed.
“No,” Kole said, and left it at that.
“Give me back our property!” Corbyn insisted, his act of superiority gone.
“It’s not yours,” Kole said. “It’s mine. I didn’t steal it.”
“Of course you did!” Corbyn shouted. “Everything you own is ours. Why do you think my father supported you all those years? It didn’t make any sense to me, but it's all clear now. He played you for a fool. Now all the Highridge family belongings, lands, titles, and artifacts belong to the Oldhills.”
“Not this,” Kole said, grabbing the amulet he always wore beneath his clothing, and then immediately regretted it.
I probably shouldn’t have done that.
Corbyn’s eyes lit up at the motion.
“Give it to me now, and we won’t have to have a repeat of the last time we met,” Corbyn said, in way of threat.
Kole looked at Corbyn and couldn’t help but begin to laugh.
Corbyn grew red and fought to contain a shout of rage as Kole tried to settle down.
Finally, Kole schooled himself.
“I would say the last time was a draw at best,” Kole said, suddenly feeling far more confident than he had in his entire life. “And I’ve been learning a lot here. What have you learned over the past few months?”
Corbyn was thrown by Kole’s confidence, and despite his mounting rage, he managed to hold back from openly challenging Kole to a fight.
“Fine,” he said, after collecting himself. “You’re nothing. I don’t need to resort to violence to get what is mine. I’ll bring it up with the school. My father is an acquaintance of the mysterious chancellor and Grand Master Lonin is my personal tutor. I’ll get the amulet from you that way and see you expelled.”
Kole, Rakin, and Zale all looked at each other for a moment before breaking out into a roar of laughter.
The laughter was so loud, they couldn’t hear Corbyn’s threats. The boy stood there posturing. When Kole began gasping for breath and grabbing his cramping belly, the laughter having continued so long, Corbyn stormed off slamming the door behind him.
“Gods,” Zale said, wiping tears from her face. “I hope his father does know mom. She would have so much fun putting that jerk in his place.”
Zale's smile faded a bit at the mention of her mother, but she turned to look at Kole, and he thought he saw that twinge of sadness disappear.
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