While the wizards were the backbone of the Illandrian military, the Bladed Knights were their elite units, serving in much the same capacity state sponsored adventuring parties do today. Many of these groups were formed by combining whatever blades were currently Bonded in compatible groups, but some groups never changed, the swords always finding a new host at the loss of their previous to keep the group whole.

  -Bladed Knights by Kysin, the 195th High Librarian

  ---

  “Is that even a punishment for ye?” Rakin asked Kole one day as he was working on Lonin’s assignment.

  “Yes,” Kole said, finishing that spellform and moving onto the next.

  He really would rather be learning another spell, but he’d neglected doing any of the disciplinary work all week and it was already Friday.

  After the previous week which consisted of constant boredom coupled with an ever-present fear of suddenly being ambushed by an army of ants, this past week had been a cyclone.

  They’d been assigned two rift watches as a group, which had been uneventful, but yet another thing to do on top of everything else. They all had to cram to catch up on the previous week’s classwork so they could keep up with the current week’s curriculum. And through all that, Kole was constantly eager to squirrel himself away to work on one spell or another.

  Kole hadn’t been the only one to have a breakthrough from their time in that other realm.

  Being cut off entirely from the Font of Space had done great things for Zale and Doug. In Doug’s case, he’d become much more sensitive to the presence of the Font within him. The way he’d described it, he’d always felt the power’s connection to himself, but he never knew where it was. It was like he was blind and there was something constantly spinning around him. Sometimes he’d bump into it by accident, and whenever he’d try to reach for it, he’d invariably miss.

  Now he had a better sense for it. Tangibly this meant he could now more reliably force a teleport, and he had some control over the direction he went. His limit, if he pushed himself, was about seven teleports before running out of Will. With that skill finally coming under some semblance of control, he’d moved on to something Kole himself had begun work on.

  Conjure.

  This ability was simple and unimpressive at first glance. Summing an object from on your person into your hand didn’t seem like that big of a deal on its own, but when one was an archer wasting precious time drawing an arrow from a quiver, the small cantrip drastically improved his offensive capabilities.

  Doug wasn’t being particularly forthcoming about it, but he had been meeting Professor Tailor ever since their run-in, and the expert Space Primal was giving him some guidance.

  What little Doug did share, was only enough to press the importance of them keeping this fact a secret.

  “I don’t think he’s allowed to teach me,” Doug said. “Shalia tried to get me a tutor from the Hallow Peak when my parents reached out to her for help, but they refused to help.”

  They’d agreed to keep it a secret, and Doug had then stopped talking about it, letting his progress be the sign of his tutoring.

  Kole’s task for the week as well had been to learn the cantrip for the Font of Space in whatever time he had to do it. He also spent a small portion of that time getting Mind Spike down to 3 Will, which he was now certain was his lower limit for a first-tier Mind spell.

  By Friday, he’d learned Conjure and been disappointed to discover that it still cost him 10 Will to cast the cantrip that cost Doug nothing once he’d mastered it.

  Despite the disappointment, Kole was still proud of his accomplishment. He’d tested it, and he could Conjure his spellbook to his hand from as far away from it as he was willing to take it. They’d even sent Zale through a door in the Dahn back to Orinqth holding it, and Kole had been able to Conjure it back to his hand as if it had been in his bag. That had been his hope for the ability.

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  No one could break the Bond he had with his ensouled spellbook, but it wouldn’t be hard for them to simply take it from him, depriving him of its use. During the long-distance Conjuring test, Kole found that he lost access to the spells stored within the Spellbook when it was that far away, but further local testing proved the maximum distance he could stray from it to be at least a mile.

  Other applications of the cantrip weren’t of much interest to Kole, since it cost three times as much to cast as a first-tier spell. Conjure didn’t work on anything with a touch of foreign Will in it, like a potion of clarity or non-ensouled magic item, so the things Kole could do with it were rather limited and not worth the cost.

  Zale, fresh off of her own week of being deprived of the Font of Space and coupled with both Kole and Doug’s constant drawing upon it, found the Font in a single day.

  She’d been so ecstatic with the discovery that she’d jumped to her feet, cheering in celebration, and activated her void ability on the Font of Space without thinking through the potential ramifications.

  Instead of Space vanishing around her—which would have likely resulted in something terrible—a black circle appeared in the air in front of her, about two feet in diameter.

  The black circle was the darkest shade of black Kole could possibly imagine, immediately drawing to mind the black mass of darkness that made up the hair of the voidling he’d killed. And despite it being so completely and utterly black, it seemed to glow. While Kole wasn’t certain how this was possible, he was certain it was the case. The black circle of darkness glowed.

  But when the circle first appeared, Kole who’d been sitting with his back against Zale’s as he’d worked his way through pathing Conjure, wasn’t too concerned about the odd color. The more immediate and evident effect of the ability was that the sudden roar as the black spot rapidly sucked in all the surrounding air.

  They were all sitting on the green under a tree when this happened—at Zale’s insistence they spend the day outside. The block spot became a sudden hungry maw, sucking in everything around it. The branches of the tree bent forward toward the hole, sucked in. The roar of the air and flapping of the leaves was almost deafening, until suddenly it all stopped and the branches, released from the force of the suction, sprung back up.

  “What in Fauell’s rocky arse was that?!” Rakin shouted.

  He’d been meditating with his eyes closed when the hole had appeared.

  “Ummm,” Zale said, face darkening in embarrassment. “I think that was the Void of Space.”

  “You opened a portal to space?” Kole asked, confused.

  It was known that beyond the bounds of the atmosphere created by Waas, the goddess of air, there was nothing, just endless emptiness until one reached the stars or other planets created by the gods in their artistic spree that was the creation of the universe. But what Kole was struggling to connect was how that tied into Zale’s abilities.

  “No. Not vacuum of outer space. The Void of Space,” Zale said, putting heavy emphasis on the first letter of Void and Space. “The complete nullification of Space in a region. I think I created an opening to the Void between realms.”

  “Woah,” Kole said. “That could be... useful.”

  “Aye,” Rakin echoes. ”If it weren’t so loud.”

  He rubbed his ears to emphasize the point.

  Zale had a thoughtful expression on her face, and then said, “Let me try something.”

  A bubble of darkness appeared around Zale—not the darkness of the Void, but the plain darkness of a complete and utter lack of light. Kole noted that the range of Zale’s aura ability had extended and now formed a bubble two feet away from her in all directions, creating a strange egg shaped blob. Then, the darkness lessened, and instead of black nothingness, Kole could faintly see Zale and her surroundings through the black haze.

  It was as if there was portal in front of him, opening to a part of the world cast in twilight.

  “Weird,” Doug said, poking his hand into the bubble and watching as it became cast in shadow.

  “I thought I could do something like this,” Zale explained. “But hadn’t gotten around to trying. I’m only partially blocking the light. I’m going to try the Space Void again.”

  The bubble of darkness vanished, and the portal into the Void reappeared in the air. The appearance was heralded with the roar of wind once more, but after only a second, it quietened until it stopped entirely.

  “I turned it down to like… thirty percent,” Zale explained, brow furrowed in concentration.

  “What does thirty percent of the Void of Space mean?” Kole asked.

  “Good question,” Rakin said, and then he threw a rock at the circle.

  The rock went through one end, and vanished, not coming out the other end. Only then, watching Rakin throw the rock at the side of the Void, did Kole realize that the black circle in front of him wasn’t a circular portal, but a perfect sphere.

  “It doesn’t look thirty percent,” Kole observed. “It's just as dark as before.”

  Rakin threw another rock, this one smaller and his toss was gentler. The pebble arced toward the sphere and hit, losing all its forward momentum before falling to the ground directly below it.

  “It needs force ta break through,” Rakin said. “It’s like a membrane er something.”

  “Aye,” Kole agreed, but not passing the opportunity to mock Rakin for his uncharacteristic behavior.

  Their experimentation, having been in the middle of the green, had drawn a lot of attention.

  “Maybe we should go somewhere else to keep experimenting,” Kole suggested.

  “Good idea,” Zale agreed, and they made their way through the gathered crowd back to the Dahn and their home within.