I am an idiot. I had changed my color scheme around while the hunter was travelling in the forest. I had been bored and there hadn’t been anyone watching. Of course, as soon as we arrived at the town I had completely forgotten that I had turned myself into living bling. Now I was super suspicious looking.

“It’s quite pretty” (Mellina)

The two of them were looming over the hat Anthus was holding, staring at me. I was a bit intimidated even though I knew I could probably change size and escape. Though I was surprised to find out, Anthus was an elf as well, the hat had just hidden his ears.

“I have no idea where I got it from, honest.” (Anthus)

I wasn’t sure what to do, if I ran I would let them know I was alive, that would make staying under the radar a lot harder. If I stayed still they might assume I was an object, then if I slipped away they would just assume someone stole me and I could move about in peace. Of course my scheming was ruined when Anthus reached for me I flinched backwards.

“it’s alive!” (Mellina)

...oops

“Is it a mythic beast? I’ve never heard of one looking like a tree monk.” (Anthus)

“No, it’s a mutant beast, I’ve never seen one this beautiful.”

Okay, I don’t have a clue what they are talking about.

“Can I borrow it for my class? It would be perfect to help teach the students about magic beasts, I have one of Brokkr’s kodo beetles but this would be helpful as well.” (Mellina)

She IS a teacher, yay! knowledge! If I can go with her then listen in on the classes and read the books I will probably learn the answers to all my questions. If kid me knew I was this excited about school he would probably think I was crazy.

“Eh, you can have it, it’s no use for me. I don't think it's dangerous, otherwise I wouldn't have made it here alive.” (Anthus)

Perfect. Anthus handed the hat over and reached behind to untie a small wire cage trap from his backpack. He lowered it over the hat and tried to scrape me into it. I cooperated, after all, I understood the concept of latches and levers; I would be able to leave any time I wanted.

“It’s pretty docile isn’t it?” (Mellina)

“Yeah, listen I gotta go, Lawrence gets fussy if I take too long with the ingredients. Even if he plans on aging the meat anyway.” (Anthus)

Mellina took the cage and put it under her arm, giving me a nice view of the ...surrounding scenery. She waved at Anthus and walked off towards one of the larger buildings on this side of the river. The building was solid brickwork; it was connected to a tree, with a spiraling staircase climb the tree like a creeper. The front had the words Honeywood Academy above the door.

The sun was just starting to set, so when she entered the inside of the building was quite dark. That didn’t matter to me of course, my night vision is spectacular. Still, hers didn’t seem to be up to snuff. She pulled out a loop of strange looking string and used her hands to pull it into an oddly patterned shape between the fingers of one hand. Holding up the strange little creation she muttered some words and a ball of light rose from within the inner shape formed by the string and floated a few inches over her hand.

Magic! real magic!

As she took me down the halls I tried to focus on the surroundings and identify the rooms, but the magic was too distracting. It didn’t seem to produce much heat, or the caster was somehow immune. In the end I didn’t see any libraries or anything else important. Mellina brought me into a classroom and set me down on what I assumed was her desk. as she left the room the light cast strange shadows across the room.

I waited for the light to disappear and listened to make sure she was gone. And when the cat’s away… I reached up and flicked open the hatch to my cage. The mantis will play.

To my special eyes the light from a third quarter moon coming in the window was more than enough to see by. I hopped onto the desk and started searching for the boon of knowledge.

Luckily for me there was a couple books already on the desk so my only lifting would be the cover and the pages. The first book seemed to be the one for tomorrow’s lesson; it was titled Magical Beasts by Marco Polaris and had a picture of a lion, a peacock and a crocodile on the cover. When I looked closer I saw that each picture had some oddities; the lion had bat wings and a scorpion’s tail, the peacock was bright red and sort of swan-like and the crocodile was elongated and a bit snake-like.

I read carefully through the book; the main subject of the book was on the naturally occurring types of magical beast. It defined magical beasts as animals that use or develop magical abilities or properties. Pretty self explanatory... The book the further divided them into separate categories based on how they gained magic, this would be very useful for getting me stronger. Of course the first thing I looked for was anything on “mutant beasts” to help me figure out what made me so special.

What I found could be summarized as this; mutant beasts were normal animals that developed magic beyond natural levels. This in turn affected their body, changing it one way or another. Mutant beasts didn’t have magical abilities, just abnormal bodies that often had unnatural amounts of strength or vitality. Looks like the schoolteacher assumed wrongly. I have a lot of power and seem to be pretty durable but I also have weird shape shifting powers.

I kept reading. Mythic beasts were entire species of magic beasts, like the vermillion bird, flood dragon or manticore on the cover. These were the only creatures who had children with similar abilities. These didn’t fit either since tree monks were pretty mundane; during my feeding frenzy I had eaten a couple adults and they couldn’t even fight back.

Spirit beasts were like the opposite of Mutant beasts, developing abnormal powers but retaining limited bodies. This would be more plausible but even considering my growth as a subset of my shapeshifting I was still a lot stronger and more durable than a normal insect.

Guardian beasts were animals that became magical through a combination of age and power, they lived and were unrivalled in the area they lived for so long that it changed them somehow. This didn’t apply either, I was too young and too weak, I had seen big badger things and tall elk and a lot of other animals that could easily wreck my s**t if they wanted.

Eventually I came to a paragraph on king beasts. According to the book, so called king beasts were unique, powerful and incredibly mysterious. It was a nice long paragraph, and it used a lot of words to say that this Marco fellow had no clue about them beyond that.

Well, it might be a bit egotistical of me to assume so but it looks like we have a winner. It also tells me nothing of use. What worries me most is that this seems pretty generous of Lady Luck, I’m waiting for the bill, or at least the punchline.

One of the other books on the desk was titled Cultivating Monsters by Archmagus Aristaeus and had a stylized picture of a three headed dog on the cover. Sweet they have Cerberus over here!. A quick look showed two major sections; strengthening magic beasts and creating artificial magic beasts.

Just what the doctor ordered!

According to the book, pursuing some sort of magical ability was relatively common. This becomes a problem when dealing with magical thieves and brigands. Not many people had the time or resources to develop magic abilities that counter those who specialize in combat or subterfuge. That’s where training magic beasts comes in.

For people with money, hiring trained guards is not a problem. However, obtaining or creating a magical guard dog allows people to deal more effectively with the sort of problems that criminals cause. Even more useful is the ability to give pack animals greater strength and stamina or make livestock that produce products with special properties. As it turns out around here steel wool isn’t a metaphor. It is used as a cheap substitute for chainmail. The only difficulty lay in shearing the sheep.

The book didn’t give details on the process, instead it summarized types and gave a brief history of development and use. I’ll admit I skipped over the bits about magic animal husbandry… it’s boring okay?

The bits about using them for battle is interesting, I know we used elephants for wars back on earth but here they can be raised into living tanks. Now I want to watch Lord of the Rings. Oliphaunts are awesome. This was definitely important to know, I had gotten the impression that wizards and other magic users were pretty common, but now I had to worry about someone using a chimera as a guard animal(s).

Another important fact I learned was the existence of beastmasters. As you might expect training a large magical animal is difficult. Obedience school isn’t an option with magical tigers. To train ferocious beasts requires magical communication, and for that you need beastmasters who specialize in that sort of thing. According to the book they also were able to form contracts with beasts to create some sort of mutual relationship. I wasn’t sure about this myself. the idea of someone gaining any sort of control over makes me nervous…

Lady Luck doesn’t count ...mostly because there is nothing I can do about it.

*scritch scritch*

Huh? Sounds like the teacher has left the “kodo beetle” in here too. From what I read it ought to be a very weak mythic beast. Looking around I immediately spotted a simple birdcage with a branch placed upright in the middle. Also, inside scratching at the bars, was my nemesis.

You…

This beetle was bigger than the one that gave me the scar. Of course I was bigger now than I was then. Even if I didn’t revert to full size I knew enough about fighting from about one hundred and sixty eight hours of killing and eating anything near my weight class. I also had the boosts to my physique that I had gained from my little storm of gluttony. Plus I had been thinking about my rematch, oh yes I had.

Ah, but this isn’t a wild one, this bug belongs to somebody and that teacher is borrowing it for something. The beetle was scratching at the bars forlornly, as I got closer I saw it was looking at the pot of honey set next to the cage. Examining the inside of the cage I saw that a section of the branch had been painted with something, presumably honey. It seemed that my new study buddy wasn’t satisfied with the little stuff.

Well, he isn’t a threat to me, so it would probably be tasteless and petty to insist on killing him. I looked at him scrabbling at the bars. He really wants that honey though...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mellina POV:

I got up in the morning in a fairly good mood; this lesson was going to be a good one. Most years I borrowed one of Brokkr’s kodo beetles that he raised for making armor. This time I had a mutant beast as well. Having a mutant beast and a mythic beast as an example was perfect as an illustration of the differences between the types of magic beasts.

Mutant beasts are rare as well. Anthus has always had a reputation for being able to get anything that exists in the forest but even he would have trouble finding one. And yet somehow an insect mutant beast decided to ride on that ridiculous hat of his all the way into town.

As I walked down the stairs into the academy I wondered if it might be good to give the little golden bug to Mero Greenbul’s sister. The Greenbul family had been the beekeepers of Honeywood city for time out of mind, they also were the most famous beastmasters on the continent. Singlehandedly routing a major countries’ invading army will do that for one’s reputation.

I knew that a small, manageable magic beast would be great for little Astera’s training. Plus it was shiny and pretty, which would attract a little girl and encourage her to try harder to befriend it.

As I entered the classroom I checked on my latest charge; the sunrise coming in the window made it glow within its cage. It was hard to imagine that this beautiful piece of jewelry was alive, but the way it cocked its head as I approached was evidence enough.

Feeding it was easy enough; the cicadas were in season and in the morning it was too cold for them to move properly. I dropped one I had found on the tree into the cage where it struggled sluggishly.

The mutant glanced at the cicada before it kept looking at me. Casually it speared the bug with a claw and began to eat while watching me. Don’t tree monks have spikes on their arms? I wonder if this one lost them when it mutated…

Since it was missing wings I had assumed it had been immature, but if that was also lost in the mutation then it was already adult. An animal that mutated while immature still had potential to grow more, unlike one mutated as an adult.

The power of mutant beasts is completely unpredictable; the amount of power absorbed, the environment, the strength of the creature itself and the compatibility of the different factors all affect the end result. It was rare but sometimes a beast on the level of a natural disaster was born suddenly and wreaked chaos. The only positive note was that they lacked magic abilities and were unable to reproduce. Luckily for Honeywood forest this one looked beautiful but relatively harmless.

Spirit beasts were even more unpredictable than mutant beasts, they often had truly strange powers. Even so, they were relatively easy to kill, at least compared to the unstoppable juggernaut that a mutant beast can be.

By comparison, guardian beasts and mythic beasts were much more predictable. Guardian beasts gained power slowly and didn’t turn up without warning or move much. As for mythic beasts, a flood dragon was a flood dragon, no one expected it to be weak. Even though these little kodo beetles were legendarily durable you didn’t have to worry about one killing anybody, much less wiping out a city. The best they could do was give you a nasty bruise if you let them snap their horns at you.

Speaking of, I had better feed it too.

…

How did it get stuck on it’s back and glued there with honey?