CHAPTER 25

The lounge was warmer than usual and when I came in, Xanile was freshly bathed, her hair still wet, but she had some bruises on her cheek and arms that I could see.

“What happened to you?” I rushed closer to her and she just smiled at me, “Seriously!”

“I could ask you the same, there’s a gash on your shoulder, did you not notice?” I paused, looking down at my shirt to realize that I had a slit in the shoulder of my shirt but the skin beneath was only pink and slightly raised, like it was a welt.

“No?” I smiled weakly and she snorted at me. “What happened?”

“I got into a scuffle that was a little less fruitful than I wanted, but in the end, it paid off more that I could have ever thought it might.” I frowned at her vague answer then she added softly, “I want to wait to tell you about it with the instructor so I only have to tell the story once.”

I nodded and she smiled at me, “You?”

“I got into a scuffle I wasn’t sure would happen and have privileges I didn’t know about until today, stupidly.” She frowned at me and tilted her head to the side. “With my parents’ donation, I can do things like go into the outer ring of the training forest. That’s what I did.”

“Good evening, cadets!” Instructor Lialarn spoke as she strode into the room with her robes swishing noisily. “I trust that your first weekend here as students has been both restful and informative. How has it gone?”

“Well.” I replied and turned my gaze to Xanile expectantly.

She sighed and began to speak, “I went into the training forest today on my own to hunt beasts.” I was shocked, but then again with her bruising, it checked out at least. “I was looking for beast cores, and when I was hunting in the outer ring, close to the second ring, one of the second ring creatures broke through the ward to attack me.”

Instructor Lialarn stilled and stared at her, “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“I thought that too, but this one is stubborn and not something that is found elsewhere I think.” Her eyes glowed for a heartbeat and the door to her room began to bow inward and she hollered, “Stop it, you dunce!”

I stood up and took out my weapons, ready to fight and as soon as I did, something slipped through the door and part of the wall. The massive creature was a sleek-looking one that had black fur and a softly glowing white set of stripes that ran from its nose to the tip of its tail along its back. It was at least twelve feet long and looked like it could weigh more than the moss lion that I had fought.

“The specter badger?” Lialarn whispered with her eyes opened wide in shock.

“When I couldn’t kill her, she and I shared a moment when we locked gazes and I began to understand what she was thinking and feeling.” Xanile reached out and the badger hissed before pressing her head into the girl’s palm fiercely, burbling from the throat as it shook its whole body. “What’s more, our connection allows me some interesting power.”

She closed her eyes and mana flared around her arm, then slid down to her right hand and a ghostly clawed paw made of pure mana covered her hand like a mitten. “I feel like if I were to have a beast core, I could do more, I just have to find some.”

“Do you plan on hunting again tomorrow?” Lialarn asked Xanile, the cadet nodding once in the affirmative. “Then I am afraid that there must be some excuse for me to not be here this evening. I need to ensure that your new pets slipping through the wards from the fourth level of the forest is a huge potential risk that I cannot allow.”

She made toward the door and frowned at me, “Did you do something similar?” I nodded and she frowned at us both. “Practice your protectis tonight. At least until its strong enough that one of you can attack it three times without it failing. Begin.” She went out the door and then came back in and pointed to the badger, “And keep that thing under control!”

“I will.” Xanile said brightly as she watched the instructor leave. “She has a name as well. I have been calling her Treat.”

The badger perked up and put her paws on Xanile’s shoulders before she began to chitter noisily.

Xanile looked at me, “How was your hunting?”

I grinned and walked back into my room to pull the two cores from my Hollow Flower and held them up. “I got really lucky.”

Xanile snarled a curse I had only heard my father use once and I raised both my eyebrows at her. “That was intense.”

“Those are what I wanted and instead I got this angry lummox.” The badger snuffed her hair and puffed it to the side noisily. “She has been like this all day. And she eats all the time!”

“I fought a moss lion and a brilliant boar for these.” I grinned and her eyes widened. “It was a hard fought victory, but it was good to learn from it.”

“What do they do?” She asked me and I stared at her, confused. She realized what was going on and laughed, “They have properties to them. Why have you not added them to your shuna?”

“I wasn’t sure what the best way to do it would be, and if it would be reasonable to just yet since I didn’t know.”

She laughed again, “Just try it! Come on, I’m curious now.”

I grunted and took the boar core and added it to the first hole in my axe. The core didn’t really fit into the slot for it until it touched the edges and they widened to consume it, leaving what looked like a golden coin in the side of it that was flush with the blue wood.

Beast core slot 1/4 filled: Brilliant Boar beast core assimilated. Kalia’s voice echoed into my ear and made me flinch. She continued, Bright Flash weapon ability available. Core maintenance available. Notes added to Frix’s tome for later use.

That was new! All of it was, but at least they were learning not to ask me incriminating questions in public.

“Can you gather what it does?” Xanile pulled me out of my thoughts, making me grip the weapon a bit tighter.

I lifted it and willed the ability to activate, promptly blinding us both. “Oh gods, its so much worse than I thought!”

“Saemus, what the hells is wrong with you?!” Xanile gasped and something fell over, “Treat do not move!”

“Hiss.” The massive badger’s paws skittered and something knocked over further from me on the other side of the room.

After a few seconds of fruitless blinking, shapes and outlines returned, then color and detail.

Xanile blinked rapidly at me and growled, “Do not do that again!”

“I won’t!” I returned and put the weapon on my hip where it belonged. I blinked away some more of the dizzying effect of the flash and slid the other beast core into the blade of the knife shuna.

Beast core slot 1/6 filled: Moss Lion (Mutant) beast core assimilated. Kalia’s voice echoed into my ear and made me flinch. She continued, Grass Blade (Mutant) weapon ability available. Core maintenance available. Notes added to Frix’s tome for later use.

I frowned at that, the moss lion had been a mutant?

Once the green coin was fully into the weapon, a radiating green aura pervaded it and worked down the dull blade, giving it the illusion of having an emerald colored blade that stuck out a quarter of an inch or so from the dull wood of the shuna.

I lifted the shuna knife and willed the weapon ability to activate. Green grass exploded from the weapon at the tip, adding another foot and a half to the length, almost making it a sword.

“That could be a useful surprise.” Xanile’s eyes widened and she smile grimly. “In a fight, both of those would be deadly. How many more cores do you need to complete them?”

I blinked at them and counted, I could only find a hole less than what Kalia had said there were, so I said as much but left the voice in my head out of it.

“I see.” She smiled, “It means that we can go hunting together next time—if you like?”

I nodded quietly and she pulled out the bowls, “Are we really going to do this?”

“I want to be able to avoid being someone else’s play thing, so yes.” She reached out and covered her bowl with her protectis. “Attack it.”

We ended up going back and forth on the technique for more than an hour before both of us could withstand three attacks from the other on their protectis. Before she went to her room for the night, Xanile raised a good point.

“We should keep our skills with this toned down for the sake of surprise in class.” I raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed. “We share a class with a common enemy, the Markis, and if we let on that we are skilled with this, they may find a way to counter it.”

“Do you think she’s going to teach us something like this in class?”

She shrugged, “Eventually. I just want it known that we should hide our abilities as much as possible before the duels are opened up.”

I nodded and she left with a, “Goodnight, Saemus.”

“Goodnight.” I waved at her and watched her go with Treat trailing behind, snuffling the floor until the door closed and breathed a sigh of relief before going over to my room.

I checked the parchment and found a message from Lolth, I will be coming closer to the evening curfew bell.

Doesn’t leave me much time to get clean. I frowned to myself and opted to take a hurried bath with minimal water, using a wash cloth to get the worst of the dirt on me off as the bath filled.

I had no sooner gotten out of the tub to dry off as a knock on the door drew my attention. I tripped on my towel and hiked it up over myself in my rush to get to the door.

I opened it and Lolth slipped through, her eyes searching for me until she peered behind the closing door. “Oh!”

I blushed furiously, “Wanted to clean up a bit before you came but with training there was little time…” I hurried over to where the divider was for some privacy and dressed quickly.

I put clean clothes on and dumped my torn and bloodied ones into the chute before ducking back out from behind it, the blushing girl on my bed with her legs crossed as she watched me.

“Hi.” I greeted her with a still rosy smile.

“Hello.” She greeted me in return.

“How are you? How is Coventry and her family?”

She frowned and answered, “She is…recovering. She wants to lash out, but is biding her time. It hasn’t been any easier with the Marki brats raising a raucous to try and have Bruth expelled for attacking a student, even though what he did was the same, worse even. Her parents have spoken to the headmaster and made it clear that if she is acted against, Bruth that is, they will take it as a sign that the Grey elves here take sides and will attack the academy outright.”

“How are you?” My question caught her off guard and she stilled, so I added, “You almost had to leave here. I can imagine that it was scary.”

She heaved a sigh and closed her eyes, “It was. But it was scarier to see Coventry that way.” Her eyebrows knit together and her eyes squeezed shut tighter. “I’ve known her my whole life, and seeing her like that…”

“They adopted you, didn’t they?” I knew I was right, but she nodded anyway as tears formed in the sides of her eyes.

I closed the distance between us and awkwardly reached out to try and comfort her. I had never been good with people crying, neither was my father. But mother always said that being the shoulder someone cried on was never a weakness and to just be there for someone in need. Lolth needed this now.

The difference in our heights made it a bit more awkward for her to lean on me, but eventually, we made a compromise. I would lean back against the head of my bead and she laid with her head on my chest as she worked through whatever it was she was dealing with.

While her closeness and scent were nice for me, I was more focused on how soft her hair felt beneath my fingers as I stroked her head like my mother might mine when I was upset as a child.

After what felt like an eternity, gone all too soon, she sniffed, “I can’t let that happen to me, or anyone else ever again.”

“We won’t.” I muttered to her softly. She crawled down my body a bit more so that she could look up into my face. “Once I beat him in a duel, Coventry can finish it. It’s all a matter of biding our time, and training for it.”

Despite the tears and the slight swelling in her cheeks and eyes, she smiled at me softly, “Do you want help?”

I grinned, “I’ll never say no to spending more time with you, if I don’t have to.”

She wrapped her arm around my stomach, my intestines doing a little flip in surprise, “Then the girls and I shall help you.”

She leaned up and pulled me closer so that I no longer leaned against the wall and just laid next to her. The length of her body was enough to make me look even smaller than I was, but she seemed content to just hold me as she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Thank you for letting me vent. I’m sorry I cried, drow don’t do that. ”

“I never noticed.” I tried to be as nonchalant about it as I could, but it just made her chuckle.

We laid there for a time until eventually her breathing evened and she began to snore softly. I fought not to laugh at the sound, but her clutching me made me smile. The way her body just enfolded my own was a bit embarrassing. Maybe it was time for a growth spurt?

I thought and opened my status, adding the required points.

Name: Saemus Thorn

Race: Elven

Level: 11*

Statistics: Measurement

Might: 3

Dexterity: 6

Constitution: 2

Mind: 3

Magic: 10

Charm: 2

Luck: 4

Skills: Advanced Flow (dual handed)

Skill points available: 7*

Constitution has been increased and your body will need to be fully relaxed to make the necessary changes. We will be putting you to sleep in five, four, three… My eyes widened and I passed out before I could think of anything to say so that they wouldn’t do that.