Chapter 63: Catharsis

They long feared how the surface dwellers would react to new that Faust’s Avatar resided in the center of Basin.

Cedric Bospian. In The Last Dragon War, 1st ed.

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“Let’s see how tough you are without your friends,” a voice called, breaking Kole out of his focus.

He was in the far stacks of the library, sitting in the dark and reading by aid of his Darkvision. He’d grown accustomed to sitting in the abandoned sections of the library after all his time spent living back there, and now set out for them intentionally. Part of it was that it was closer to the spellbooks he needed to reference, but the larger motivating factor was the nostalgia.

Corbyn had entered his study area, the glowing orb of a Light spell hovering above his head.

“Oh, it's you,” Kole said, disinterested once he saw who it was. “Why are you bothering me?”

Corbyn looked confused that Kole was not only ignoring him, but not at all afraid.

“I don’t think you heard me,” Corbyn said, then repeated his threat.

“No, I did,” Kole said, writing as he spoke.

The writing was an affectation to get on Corbyn’s nerves. He’d long since stopped using a writing implement to write in his spellbook, instead simply willing the words to appear.

“Also, my friends didn’t show up until after I defeated your goons,” Kole said.

“Your lies aren’t going to save you,” Corbyn said, as he regained his footing on the conversation. “Give me the amulet and I’ll only break your arm.”

“No,” Kole said, looking back down at his page.

A tickle at the back of Kole’s mind warned him that Corbyn was casting a spell. He didn’t waste time marveling at the sudden and timely enhancement to his senses, but instead lifted his left arm and activated his shield bracer just as Corbyn’s Magic Missiles crashed into it.

“What are you doing?” Kole asked. “You’re going to break something in here.”

He’d finally stopped pretending to write and turned to the other boy.

Corbyn only glared at him and began casting another spell. He sent a Firebolt this time, and once more Kole blocked it with his rune powered shield.

“Stop!” Kole said, in a more commanding tone.

Corbyn didn’t.

Instead, he drew his rapier and began to advance on Kole, shouting in a voice boarding on manic, “That one trick won't save you!”

Kole watched Corbyn approach and wasn’t sure at all what to do. Not out of fear, but out of a sense of morals he knew the other boy lacked. He was fairly certain Corbyn was trying to kill him at that moment—again—but he was doing such a poor job at it that it didn’t feel right for Kole to attack back.

A large part of Kole was also laughing at the irony of Corbyn’s claims that only the presence of Kole’s friends had saved him from Corbyn’s hired moogs, when Corbyn had always conscripted friends to torment Kole in their past.

Corbyn was getting closer, and Kole finally made a decision.

He brought his hands up forming a triangle with Corbyn’s head in the center and cast Mental Phantom, remembering his rat friends that had gone missing around the time the tower’s defenses had increased. Corbyn stopped, staring in confusion at something Kole couldn’t see on the floor in front of him. His eyes grew wide and cast his gaze about frantically, as in his mind he saw one rat turn into dozens.

Corbyn, like Kole, was used to mirror rats from back home, but with those, the copies moved in sync with the original, reassuring any human who crossed their path that most of them were false. Pack rat duplicates however moved independently, showing that they were all real—or at least Corbyn thought they were.

He swiped his sword at the ground, and then began kicking his leg.

“Get them off of me!” he shouted.

Kole watched for the entire minute duration of the spell as Corbyn battled invisible rats climbing all over his body. He slammed his body against bookshelves, dropped to the ground to crush them beneath himself, and ran his blade along his limbs to try to cut them off, shredding his clothes in the process. All the while, he was screamed and begged Kole to help him.

When the spell ended, all the rats vanished, and Corbyn looked around frantically fearing they’d return.

“Can we be done?” Kole asked. “I really don’t want to waste my Will on this.”

“Argh!” Corbyn grunted and lunged at Kole.

Kole had expected that, and despite his words had prepared another spell.

He brought his hands up once more and unleashed a Mind Spike. To Kole’s surprise, Corbyn only flinched slightly at the mental attack, shrugging off the spell.

Corbyn got in range and sent his blade for Kole’s chest.

He really is trying to kill me, Kole reflected, the revelation not making him take this any more seriously.

He blocked the blade again with a shield and was about to cast Thunderwave when he stopped himself.

This is a library!

Instead, he punched Corbyn in the face—again—the boy over extended and open from the magically deflected blow.

“Ow!” Kole shouted, in pain just as Corbyn fell back clutching his face.

Punching people in the face hurt a lot. He followed up the punch with another Mind Spike, and this time, with the target still recoiling from the pain, the spell broke through Corbyn’s defenses, and the boy collapsed.

Kole ran over and checked Corbyn’s pulse. Once he was confident he’d only been knocked unconscious, he ran off to find the librarian to report a mess in the stacks.

Upon reporting the assault under truth stone, Corbyn was picked up by the campus contingent of the city guard, overseen by Professor Underbrook and Dean Cornwall.

Corbyn also had to be questioned about his assault under a truth stone, but he’d refused to answer without his legal representation present.

As he was pulled away, the dean leaned over to Kole and said, “He’ll be expelled, no matter the results in a court of law. The facts of the case are fairly clear cut, but gods know whatever convinced him to attack you. He clearly hadn’t been keeping up with the hardball matches.”

Kole found no comfort in Corbyn’s expulsion. He just found more indifference. Well, actually, he felt profoundly disappointed that he lacked any joy. He’d dreamed up confronting Corbyn again, and while the results of the actual confrontations had been great from Kole’s perspective, he’d taken no joy in beating the boy up and rubbing his face in his inadequecy.

“It's hard to believe I lived in terror of that guy,” Kole said, mostly to himself. Then the rest of the Dean’s words caught up to him. “You watched my match?”

“Oh yes,” the Dean said. “I won five silver on you. After seeing what you did to those hired goons, I knew you could handle a few kobolds.”

“There were way more than a few,” Kole said.

Professor Underbrook began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Kole asked.

The professor looked around to make sure no one else was present.

“This is strictly between us, mentor mentee and all that,” he said. “But I hadn’t actually expected any of you kids to go in the ziggurat. The bridge was supposed to deter you and get you two to fight it out.”

In all his focus of the past weeks, Kole had forgotten something important. Professor Underbrook was the one responsible for organizing the hardball matches.

“I don’t like you sometimes,” Kole said.

“That’s fine,” he said, waving off Kole’s comment. “You get to fight me next week. You can work through your frustrations then.”

Aside from the brief attempted murder, the weeks leading up to finals were uneventful.

The last groups for the hardball battle royale were settled. The Ice Picks and Shalin’s group Kalka’s Fist would be the final four. Once more Kole found himself disappointed with his reactions. He thought facing Shalin’s group in a mock battle would be therapeutic after they’d attacked him unprovoked. Her and her friends had continued to give Kole and his friends death glares throughout the semester, but they’d taken Tigereye’s warning to heart and not started anything.

The Icepicks were a group he was eager to test himself against, but he still knew very little about their abilities.

Zale made sure that wouldn’t remain that way for long.