Chapter 31
“You know, my old world was full of stories about shit like this. People going to a school for some special skill and getting dragged around on adventures. I always thought they were bullshit—like, why would someone send students on a quest when they had trained professionals?” Levi said as he walked beside Nox.
His stasis lantern hung over his leather coat and the bandoleer of pouches was bulging with supplies. The vials of healing tonics for his beasts filled the loops, and Flix clung to the strap over his shoulder while looking fiercely around as they walked through the woodland. Nox looked over at him with a raised brow as he spoke, and then reached up to retie the tail she’d put her hair into.
“This isn’t much of an adventure, just a walk through the woods to reach a downed ship. The only reason we’re going is that the errant gift of a survivor touched our dreams. Did regular people never go on search and rescues when someone was lost in your world?” she asked, curious.
Levi considered that. “Well, when a hiker got lost the local communities would gather people and then spread out in the woods to try and find them,” he admitted.
“See? Our worlds aren’t so different,” she said with a smile.
A flash of gold streaked past ahead of them as Vardis launched a spell from his hammer. The magic struck a creature that looked like a bear with moose antlers—the heavy animal was sent flying through the trees and the corpse dropped somewhere out of sight. Levi looked over at Nox and snorted.
“Right, totally the same thing,” he said.
Conversation remained idle as they walked. With a ring of soldiers around them, there wasn’t a great deal for the students to do. Things had fallen into a routine as the day moved on. Vardis had taken to striking at the larger predators to save time—or so he said. Levi thought the Bear house master just enjoyed showing off. He felt bad for the animals; most of them had simply been following their instincts and would have left the group alone if given the chance. Zuzan had taken to riding in a breast pocket on his coat, not wanting to watch the creatures die. Flix simply glared in all directions around her. Levi couldn’t help but compare this trip to the one he had taken with Flix. They’d had no real trouble moving quietly through the woods, and nothing had given them a hard time. This violence felt senseless to him.
He suspected Tawny felt the same; he had seen the house mistress arguing with Vardis on several occasions, but the teachers kept a separation between themselves and the students. Complicating the situation, Darren and Elizabeth walked on one side of the group because the canid wasn’t willing to speak with Levi present. There wasn’t much sense of camaraderie to the individuals in the group, except when Levi interacted with Tawny or Nox. Levi was disappointed to discover they had assigned tents. Each of them had a small tent assigned, and the knights kept a strict curfew after dark. They were determined to treat the woods as if they were hostile, which grated on Levi’s nerves. Sir Chambers claimed the organization was a safety precaution.
He tightened his grip around his cane and focused on practicing summoning his magic without calling on the crimson power. The calming blue-white mana he used as a beast tamer was harder to control, but he didn’t feel the manic, chaotic emotions burning when he used it either. At the moment, he was focusing on performing an incantation with it, and Nox had been tutoring him as they walked. “Tinto-ni,” he murmured.
A tiny blue sphere formed above the head of his cane, then light spread out to his left in a dispersed cloud and swept in a circle around him. Levi got a mental image of where everyone around him was within fifteen feet, and then the spell popped. Nox gave him a hug that staggered him a step.
“Levi that was great! You did a sensing! I knew you’d be able to work noncombat incantations!” she cried, bouncing with pride. Levi flashed her a smile. She had told him the elvish words meant “far sight,” which helped him with his visualization.
“Thanks, now I just need to work on refining it,” he replied.
The spell hadn’t actually drained his limited supply of peaceful mana, which reminded him that his initial evaluations had pointed him toward a supporting role. His professors had insisted that beast tamers were meant to buff their companions and support other magi, not fight directly. Using his innate magic to produce a shield or form an attack left him exhausted, but this incantation had been easy. He wondered how precisely he could shape it. I’ve watched enough science fiction to have some pretty interesting mental images to use, he thought.
Levi closed his eyes as he focused on the concept in his head. Now that he knew he could do it, he felt drawn to perform it better. He pictured what he wanted and went over the words that Nox had provided him, building the refining statement. “Tinto-ni sam burdo ri,” he whispered.
This time, the blue-white energy filled the engravings of his cane and raced to the knob beneath his palm. The energy formed a rapidly spinning sphere and then shot into the air over Levi’s head. A few dozen feet up, the spell twisted to form a glowing blue drone with propellers—silent, the spell began to sweep the ground under it with a cone of energy. Levi received a mental image of the group walking and the surrounding woods as his “drone sight” hovered over them. He grinned in triumph—until something flashed red in the magical vision.
“Nox, I think we need to get Tawny’s attention,” he said urgently.
The upperclassman didn’t question him—she put her fingers to her lips and let out a three-burst whistle that echoed through the woods. The group came to a sudden stop as everyone turned to look at them, though Sir Chambers snarled.
“The hell do you think you’re doing? You just gave away our position!” he roared angrily.
Levi ignored that as he focused on moving the spell over the red forms highlighted by his magic. He sensed something wrong from the shapes: a dark aura that was the opposite of the feeling he got when Zuzan or Flix communicated with him. The creatures he had spotted knew about people—knew about them and wanted them dead.
“Ms. Willowbrook, why did you signal ambush ahead?” demanded Vardis, the hammer-wielding teacher glowering at them.
“Levi’s found something ahead—” Nox began, but she was interrupted.
“He’s a second-term first year, what could he possibly have found!” Vardis bellowed.
“Perhaps we should allow the students to speak and find out?” Tawny said, cutting off the babble from the knights.
The angry voices quieted, and Levi immediately felt everyone’s eyes on him. He focused on what he was seeing so he could describe it. “There’s a cluster of beasts about two hundred yards ahead of us. They’re giving off emotions of hate and rage, loathing for sentients. They’re four-legged, sort of horse shaped but they look like reptiles. They seem to have sharp horns but they’re sliding over each other in a big cluster so it is hard to pick out the details,” Levi said. He relayed everything he was seeing, though it was hard to maintain concentration on the spell while speaking, the strain of holding his connection to the construct grew by the moment.
“Kirin. He’s describing a pack of kirin,” Tawny said quietly. “We haven’t had any in the woods around the Academy recently, but they are native to Taryl, so a cluster could have migrated onto our lands.”
“How is a novice able to find something as good at hiding as a kirin cluster?” Vardis protested.
“He’s a beast tamer affinity, Vardis. Now can we stop asking stupid questions and focus on the fact we have a hostile cluster of powerful predators close by? Close enough to hear this argument, I might add, as well as smart enough to do something about it!” Tawny snapped. She sounded frustrated and Levi couldn’t blame her.
Unfortunately, at that moment his spell snapped and caused him to reel in surprise. He shook his head and blinked his eyes several times as the energy around his cane dissipated. “Lost the spell, but I think they started to move just before it broke,” he said. Levi looked around and found everyone was staring at him. Vardis stood near Elizabeth and Darren; the canid silently took his uniform coat off and then the sweater he had been wearing. His skin rippled as he took on his larger wolfman form, so he rolled his neck to the side to shake his jaws loose. Then the canid began to murmur the incantation to summon his energy armor.
Elizabeth adjusted her silver glasses and frowned. She looked at Levi worriedly, then shifted to stand behind Vardis, since her skills weren’t suited to combat in the woods. Tawny had her wand out, and she began tracing violet symbols in the air around her. The runes glowed and floated in a growing circle orbiting the dark elf—Levi noticed that the knights backed away cautiously from those sigils.
Nox seemed calm, and when Levi raised an eyebrow at her she shrugged. “My Advanced Combat Incantations class was searching for a species killing local beasts for pleasure about two weeks ago, so this doesn’t really surprise me,” she said. Levi grinned as she took a slim bar of chocolate from one of her pouches and peeled the paper off of it to pop a chunk into her mouth. His pocket let out a squeak, and she rolled her eye; then Nox broke off a piece and held it over Levi’s coat. Zuzan’s tiny paw shot up out of the pocket, snatched the chocolate, and vanished back into his coat.
“You know, I’m not sure if chocolate is good for her,” Levi started to say, only to get a wave of chittering and indignant squeaks emerging from his coat. “Okay, okay, calm down! Fine, I won’t try to put you on a diet and no! I never said you were fat!” he protested. Zuzan stuck her head up out of the pocket with a ring of chocolate around her cream-furred lips. She stuck her tiny pink tongue out at him, and then vanished back into his coat.
He looked over at Nox, but she just shook her head, pretending to be completely innocent. Levi raised his empty hand to scratch Flix along the base of her skull, making sure to reach behind her horns. “Hey, girl, think you can fly up and give us a warning if the kirin are headed this way?” he asked his dragonet.
Flix shook her wings and let out several triumphant chimes before she bent her legs and launched herself upwards. Her silver wings spreading wide, before snapping down as she climbed. Soon she was gliding in a circle around the group. Levi watched her flight and noticed when a light began to build up at the bottom of her throat. “Flix sees something,” he called to the others. The soldiers dismissed the warning from a beast, but the Academy members sharpened their preparations—even Vardis. Levi lifted his cane and narrowed his eyes. The thought of something coming to hurt Nox or Tawny was all he needed to feel the sparks of rage ignite in his soul; his crimson-and-black energy began to swirl around his cane. He didn’t know anything about these creatures, but Tawny had said they were powerful predators. Horrors are supposed to be powerful too; I’ll just start at the same energy level I used on the Horrors and that should be fine, right? he thought.
Flix began sending spheres of plasma down into the surrounding vegetation and Levi heard the thud on impact. Each strike was accompanied by a hiss—like meat dropped on a hot grill, yet Levi frowned, not hearing a single scream of pain. He knew that Flix had a strong attack, but he worried for her. Then orange blasts of energy began streaking into the air around her, so the dragonet had to dodge rapidly between the tall trees to avoid them. Levi whistled for her to return. He didn’t want her to be the only target in the sky above them. She let out a series of trills in protest and released several more attacks before she turned to come back—which was when one of the blasts hit her from below.
The orange energy flipped her over several times as she flew through the air. Her wings seemed to go limp and it looked like some kind of flame was chewing at her scales. Levi screamed in protest and began running in the direction she was falling. He knew he’d never arrive in time to catch her, but he had to try. He heard a thundering sound, and then scaled beasts came over a slight rise and began to pour out of the trees. Levi had originally thought there might be a dozen or so—he was off by a factor of three or four. There had to be at least forty kirin stampeding toward them through the forest. Their horns looked like golden pearl twisted into a spike—fucking lizard unicorns? Their scales were round and flexed over their horse-like frames as they ran at the group. Wide-clawed feet tore the ground up and Levi saw they had beards around their fanged mouths as well as huge silver eyes—they’d have been beautiful, if they weren’t coming to kill him.
As Flix fell, the only thought in Levi’s head was that these creatures had attacked his companion. He raised his cane and whipped it in an arc—energy tore out in a beam as he shouted the incantation he had been using against the Horrors. The swirling power impacted against the side of the herd closest to him and beasts immediately began to explode. Chunks of meat, blood, and bone showered down over the herd as the side closest to Levi simply… ceased to exist. He vaguely heard startled screams and cries coming from his traveling companions, but his focus was on getting to Flix.
The dragonet hit the ground somewhere ahead of Levi, so he pushed himself harder to reach her. He’d killed at least six of the kirin, yet the horned reptiles didn’t care. They charged into the knights and he heard swords chopping and shields clanging as the men fought back. He dropped to his knees next to Flix and found her lying limp on her side, one wing twisted behind her. He didn’t see any tears in her scales or wings. Anxious, he moved gently to lift her head. Zuzan climbed out of his pocket and used her front paws to pull a healing tonic free, then scampered down his coat to reach the dragonet.
“Thanks, Zuzan,” Levi whispered as he popped the cork and poured as much of the potion into Flix’s throat as he could. He began using his thumb to encourage her to swallow. Her amber eyes were just starting to open when Levi heard a bellow that shook the entire forest around them.
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