’Please submit any concerns regarding violations of the Rules and Regulations found within this handbook, accompanied by substantiating evidence, to the University’s duly appointed Peacemaker representative.’

  — Excerpt from ‘Hollow University Student’s Handbook

  The morning of the second day of classes began with one of the residents of Linton Tower scrambling to get ready as thunder rumbled outside his window. Tucking in his shirt and tightening his belt, Quinn couldn’t help but miss the simplicity of a t-shirt. Stealing a peek at his clock, he shook the complaint from his head and threw a cloak around his shoulders. Having been up late the night before, in addition to lacking a proper alarm, had caused Quinn to wake up much later than he intended.

  Grabbing his satchel, he headed out the door. He’d have to run if he wanted to make it to his first meeting of the day: Private tutelage with Professor Whitewood.

  After descending the stairs of Linton Tower, Quinn pulled out Tome and instructed him to show a map of the University. Studying the map, he found the location of Whitewood’s office and frowned. Looking up, Quinn gave a longing look down the corridor leading further into the main University complex before turning and opening the door to the outside.

  A torrent of rain awaited him on the other side, though Quinn was quick to notice that none of it got blown through the threshold of the door. Paying closer attention, he felt the faint pull of Aether and saw softly glowing glyphs lining the door frame.

  Tapping Tome twice, a gesture he had come up with while taking notes on the Handbook last night, Quinn flipped the page and was greeted by a fresh new one. Pulling a pen out of his pocket, he started to jot down the glyphs. Maybe they would be useful for study later.

  Once he was satisfied that he had them sketched out accurately enough, he closed Tome and focused back on the task in front of him. With one last look down the nice, dry, hallway and a parting sigh, he sprinted out onto the cobbled path leading from Linton Tower.

  The rain pelted him from all directions as he pulled the cloak tightly around himself in his best attempts to stay shielded from the downpour. A deafening peal of thunder made him miss a step and nearly sent him stumbling into the mud that was already forming along the path. Lucky for Quinn, his frequent brushes with the ground since arriving in Hollow had carefully honed his skill at not face planting in an embarrassing manner.

  A well-timed stiff arm against the ground, which then transitioned to an awkard sort of half crawl for several steps, was enough to save him from a muddy fate.

  Continuing on the path, it wasn’t long before he reached his destination– The gatehouse that stood between the University grounds and the bridge leading back to the city of Hollow. It looked almost ominous as he looked at it through the torrent of rain, the effect amplified even further as a flash of lightning illuminated its outline. Why a professor had their office at a gatehouse, Quinn couldn’t tell you, but he’d started to accept absurdities as part of his daily life.

  As he was reaching to pull open the heavy, iron-banded oak door of the gatehouse, the universe played a cruel trick on Quinn. The door swung outward before him, opened from the other side. Colliding with Quinn and sending him pinwheeling backwards, failing to gain traction on the rain-soaked stone. Sliding off the edge of the door’s steps, his fall was broken with a wet squelch as he took an impromptu mud bath beside the gatehouse door.

  Several seconds passed, seconds he spent staring up into the downpour, questioning why this kept happening to him, before a familiar voice exclaimed over the constant slapping of the rain against the ground.

  “Oh Aether! Are you alright?” called out Andrew from the doorway.

  With a horrific slurp of the mud suctioning off his body, Quinn sat up and addressed the voice’s source with an empty look.

  “Oh, hi Andrew.” said Quinn, his voice an eerie calm in the surrounding storm.

  Andrew pulled a wooden rod, slightly larger than a foot in length from his coat. Around him, there was a welling of Aether and a hemisphere of respite formed above him as he stepped out into the rain to help Quinn to his feet.

  He looked Quinn up and down, eyeing his disheveled figure. “Uh, I think I’ve got a circuit for this, let me check my bag. Hold this.”

  He handed off the magical umbrella to Quinn and retrieved a book from the bag around his shoulder. Flipping through a few pages, he found what he was looking for. Studying the page for a moment, he gave a slight frown, before shrugging his shoulders and pressing a hand to the page. As he looked back at Quinn, another Aether flow opened and the air around Andrew’s hand started to shimmer.

  Water seeped out of Quinn’s clothing, cascading down his body and onto the ground to add to the puddle beneath his feet. Of course, this didn’t do anything for the mud covering his clothes. Instead, the mud formed a crust on his clothing as it rapidly dried out.

  “That doesn’t seem to have helped much.” Said Quinn, his speech accompanied by the crackling of his clothing as some of the dried mud flaked off.

  “You don’t say…” said Andrew, pulling out a pen and scribbling a note beside the circuit in his book. Closing the book and sliding it back into his bag, he added, “But at least you’re not wet anymore!”

  Quinn, unsure if his current state was much better than it was before Andrew’s help, grumbled an agreement, before squinting his eyes slightly as a question wormed its way into his mind. “Wait a minute… why are you at the gatehouse?”

  “Same reason as you, probably.” came Andrew’s cryptic reply. “Anyway, I’ve got class. Sorry about the…” He looked Quinn up and down. “...that. I’ll make it up to you, though. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking that.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He reached out, taking the wooden rod back from Quinn. Then, with a nod, he started to walk down the path back towards the University, pulling the dome protecting from the rain along with him.

  Not wanting to get soaked again, Quinn decided to ponder that response later. Rushing into the safety of the gatehouse, he pulled the heavy door shut behind him.

  —

  In the end, Quinn made it to Whitewood’s office just in time for their meeting. As it turned out, though, it wouldn’t have matter if he was late. A quarter of an hour had passed and Quinn was sat in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair as Whitewood’s secretary gave him sympathetic looks between pieces of paperwork.

  Quinn didn’t mind too much, though, as it gave him time to think about the peculiarity that was Whitewood.

  Why did he have his office in the University’s gatehouse? And why had Andrew been seeing him? And why did he have a secretary– Quinn was pretty sure none of his other professors had secretaries. Although admittedly, he’d only been to one other professor's office.

  Thinking back to his oral exam, another tidbit stuck out to Quinn. Bjorndin had said something about ‘keeping his predecessor’s place on the admission committee’. All this combined to tell Quinn that maybe Professor Whitewood wasn’t exactly a normal professor. But that just made him ponder even further as to why Andrew would have been meeting with him.

  The handle to Whitewood’s office rattled and the door opened. A dwarf– bald, stout, and with a beard the color of slate– stepped out, dragging what seemed to be a student in his wake. The dwarf had a menacing aura about him, an aura amplified by the veritable armory he had strapped to his person. The student, whom Quinn didn’t recognize, was not only gagged, but also had a strange contraption on his wrists that reminded Quinn of handcuffs. These ‘cuffs’ seemed to cover the student’s entire hand, though, forming a rather hefty looking cylinder of metal.

  The student also had a defeated look, eyes downcast, as they shuffled along behind the dwarf and out of the reception area. Quinn watched in fascination as they continued on down the hall, before having his attention grabbed by the clearing of a throat behind him.

  Standing at the entrance to his office was Elias Whitewood, a young man who honestly didn’t look much older than some of the upperclassmen Quinn had seen at the university. He had straight blonde hair, an average frame, and a hint of a rakish smirk constantly tugging at one corner of his mouth. He also seemed to take great pride in his fashion, judging by his clothes– sand colored waistcoat accented by a dark brown overcoat with matching pants.

  While he wasn’t dressed too differently from some of the people Quinn had seen so far, he definitely seemed more with-the-times than his other professors. Of course, Quinn had been in Locros for a little under a week at this point, so he might not have been the best judge of what could be considered ‘with-the-times’.

  “Sorry for the wait Quinn, I had business to attend to.” he said, stirring Quinn once more from his musings. “I’d ask if you had any difficulties finding my office, but I can tell by your appearance that you did… Come on in, and I’ll get that fixed up for you.”

  His comment reminded Quinn of the dried mud caking his clothes and made him give a sheepish grin. “That’s okay professor, must’ve been important business from the looks of–” Quinn nodded his head down the hall the dwarf and student had taken, “whatever that was.”

  Standing up, an act that caused bits of mud to flake off Quinn’s clothes, he entered Whitewood’s office.

  —

  Gindrin Steintor was a part of the Magical Threat Retrieval and Containment division of the Peacemakers– Commonly referred to as the Mageslayers. It was a group that saw about half of its recruits dead before the end of their first year.

  He’d been at it for well over fifty and was regarded as one of the best to ever take on the job.

  If there was one piece of advice that had stuck with him from when he first started learning the ropes, it was that when dealing with mages, one had to learn to trust their gut. It was advice that had saved him on countless occasions and one that actually had backing from University research, which had shown that most people feel Aether anomalies in their gut.

  He’d honed this sense over the years to a point where he had an uncanny knack for knowing just when, as his family back in the Undercontinent would say, ‘The shaft is about to collapse.’

  Sitting in the driver’s seat of a Peacemaker prisoner transport cart, taking some idiot student back to headquarters to get processed, Gindrin got that feeling.

  Looking about, he tried to find what was about to go wrong. The streets were empty, and the lighting was poorer than the bottom of a mineshaft– Of course that made sense on account of the rain. Turning his head, he saw through the bars on cart’s cell that the kid's null-cuffs were still in place and his gag was secured– The prisoner was still secure. Glancing to his right, he saw the other Mageslayer he brought sitting next to him, a halfling that– Ah damn.

  Those Aether-blighted halflings and their Bargain. He hadn’t brought another Mageslayer on this mission. Looking past the halfling, a flash of lightning illuminated some small figures creeping out of the alley the cart was about to pass.

  Gindrin jumped into action.

  Swinging out with his right arm, he slammed the halfling’s head back into the cell bars, a crack of thunder covering up their cry as Gindrin felt his elbow break their nose. At the same time, he reached for his left waist pouch and activated the Aether-battery he kept stored there, giving power to the array of Runesmith made gear he kept on his person.

  Grabbing the dazed halfling by his collar, he dove off the cart away from the ambush, pulling the halfling with him. From the other side of the cart, he heard the twanging of crossbows, followed by the thud of bolts hitting the seat he had just been sitting in. As he rushed towards the cobbles, felt his fall get slowed before landing with a gentle splash in a puddle. In his waist pouch, the Aether-battery shattered, spent by his gear to protect him from the fall.

  “Reckon your friends must not like ya’ much, bet one of ‘em bolts woulda taken ya down with me.” said Gindrin to the unfortunate halfling he still held by the collar. Frowning at the lack of a response, he gave the halfling a little shake and was awarded with a groan. “Eh, good. Thought I’d lost ya there. That’d be quite the paperwork.”

  The cart rolled to a stop as Gindrin and his new prisoner kept pace with it, keeping the cart between him and the attackers. Analyzing the situation, he realized he wouldn’t have time to get the other prisoner out of the cart before he got rushed– and he didn’t like his odds in this fight. He’d seen at least five ambushers, members of the Lightfinger crew if he had to guess. He’d have to make a break for it and let them save the student.

  Looking down at the deadweight he had held firmly in his grip, Gindrin sighed. “Well, ‘spose you’ll have to do. ‘Em Lightfingers are gonna regret the kobold’s nest they just fell into.”

  Throwing the unconscious halfling over his shoulder, Gindrin took off like a boulder down a mountain, hoping the heavy rain would cover his escape.