Faya sat with Weylan and Darken at the edge of the hall; the verdant hare curled on her lap. Its ears twitched as she stroked it absently, already halfway to sleep.
That was when Kastor Veyne swaggered by. The apprentice beastmaster-mage was tall and broad-shouldered, with the lean confidence of someone who grew up among kennels and hunting packs. His familiar padded silently behind him: a lean albino snow-wolf with cold blue eyes.
Kastor’s gaze flicked to Faya’s lap. His lips curled. “That’s your familiar?” he said loudly enough for the surrounding tables to hear. “A rabbit? By the gods, girl, you bonded with a snack.”
Snickers spread through the nearby crowd. A few students leaned in for better view.
Faya’s cheeks flushed. She clutched the hare protectively to her chest. “He’s not…”
But Kastor wasn’t finished. He tilted his head mock-thoughtfully. “I suppose it makes sense. Not everyone is cut out for a real bond. Some people are just… harmless.”
Darken set his spoon down with a clack. “You’re one to talk. That wolf of yours is probably better housebroken than you are.”
The jab earned a few laughs, but Kastor only grinned wider. “Why don’t we settle this the old way? A duel of familiars.”
The laughter stilled. Students leaned forward. Whispers rippled.
“An academy duel?” someone muttered.
“They haven’t done one of those in years.”
“It’s tradition,” Kastor pressed, gesturing to the wolf at his feet. “My Fenrik against her… what’s it called? Green lump? Let’s see if it can hop its way to victory.”
Faya shrank back. “I don’t want him to fight.”
“You don’t have to,” Eric cut in, voice calm but edged. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “The tradition isn’t forcing anyone to participate. It’s just a custom for thick-skulled dog breeders.”
Snickers answered him, but so did a ripple of protest. “Coward’s talk,” someone jeered. “If she refuses, she admits her familiar’s worthless.”
Faya’s face burned. The hare twitched an ear, unimpressed.
At the back of the crowd, Valen Aldrich didn’t laugh or jeer. He slipped away to a runic circle inscribed in the ancient wall of the cafeteria, eyes gleaming with malice. His family went to Wildeguard for generations. His uncles and his father told him about most of the old enchantments hidden throughout the campus. Some had functions, modern enchanters could not yet duplicate, like instant teleportation into the arena. There had been another teleportation enchantment to transport critically injured students directly to the infirmary, but that had been broken while trying to reverse engineer the enchantment. One of the enchantments he knew about, were the hidden controls for the dueling circle that came from a time when students regularly started fights in the cafeteria. He wasn’t supposed to know the sequence of runes he needed to touch to activate it, but one of his uncles had been tasked with helping repair the enchantment after some malfunction. His hand brushed the runes carved into the stone. Then the glyphs flared under his touch. Since there were only two animals inside the area of effect, it wasn’t difficult to choose the participants. He activated the duel enchantment and slipped away.
A surge of magic rippled through the hall.
Before anyone could react, both familiars vanished from their masters’ sides, snatched in a flash of light. A circle on the floor blazed to life.
Gasps erupted. Students stumbled back as a shimmering projection appeared above a circle on the floor, distorted because of chairs and tables standing on the formerly unmarked spot. After the furniture was hurriedly moved aside, the illusionary projection stabilized and showed the interior of the dueling arena.
The first word they could hear were a surprised mumble by someone hastily chewing down his food. "What? No one told me about a duel! There's nothing scheduled..." He gulped down the last bite and got more serious. "Okay... duel of familiars... Who's using the old cafeteria access? Thats supposed to be restricted! Someone's going to be in so much trouble... No matter... Ahem... We have a duel of familiars. Sir Cloverton the verdant hare against Fenrik the snow wolf. No one entered rules, so preset rules apply. To death, incapacitation or surrender. There is no one here to throw the towel it seems... So I’ll decide if an animal clearly signals its defeat."
The announcer became visible as a small illusion. He was frantically waving his hands above the control panel. The wolf started circling the now awake and visibly nervous hare. "Wait! Not yet. Stop! Damn it. The protective wards need a few minutes to charge..."
Aldritch's smirk vanished. No one had ever mentioned a charging time for the wards. Probably because that wasn't an issue with scheduled duels or the usual time students needed to prepare in the arena. That had been meant as a joke. A cruel one, but he didn't want to actually kill the annoying hare!
He'd been away fast enough so no one had seen him messing with the controls. He looked around. Everyone was focused on the projection, but a single turned head, and he'd be seen at the controls. Be that as it may, he had to risk it. He did not hesitate. He hurried back to the panel and entered the abort sequence.
The announcer looked up at a red glowing rune. "Someone's trying to manipulate the duel after start? Not on my watch." He waved at a rune on his control board and concentrated. The red light vanished. "That access code should have been removed ages ago. I'll go through all stored codes later so that doesn't happen again."
The panel went dark under Aldrich’s hands. He stared a moment. Then he stepped away silently to watch the duel with the others.
No one noticed him since the wolf chose that moment to pounce.
* * *
Far away deep under the fortress city of Mulnirsheim, another mage was frantically at work rune-hacking the arena's control.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The announcer saw another set of runes lighting up and put his hand down hard on the lockout rune, stopping all external access cold.
Malvorik felt his connection cut off.
Equations flared and changed on his walls as he parsed various enchantments variations.
He stopped as the wolf pounced.
* * *
The verdant hare blinked awake on a sandy floor, nose twitching. Across from it, Kastor’s wolf bared its fangs and growled, muscles taut.
“No!” Faya lunged toward the circle, but it was clearly just a projection. There was no way to get to the arena in time to do anything.
All they could do was watch.
The projection shimmered overhead, crystal-clear. Every student in the hall could see the sandy dueling circle, the wolf pacing with bared fangs, the hare crouched low, ears back.
“End it quickly, Fenrik,” Kastor called, his voice trembling with excitement. His wolf could not hear him, but seemed to have the same idea. It gave a deep growl and lunged.
Faya cried out, but the hare moved.
It was like a blur of green and white. One heartbeat the wolf’s teeth were inches from its neck, the next the hare had darted sideways in a streak of impossible speed. Sand sprayed where its paws landed.
Gasps erupted.
“Did it just…”
“No way that rabbit’s that fast!”
The wolf snarled, spinning, and lunged again. Once more the hare slipped aside, impossibly light, ears flicking as if mocking the predator’s fury.
On the third charge, the hare didn’t dodge. It leapt forward.
Wham!
The tiny body slammed into the wolf’s shoulder with surprising force, sending the larger beast skidding sideways in the sand. Fenrik snarled and scrambled upright, lips peeled back, blood dripping from his nose.
“That shouldn’t be possible…”
“Is it enchanted?”
Kastor’s face reddened. “Get him!” he barked. As if he could hear him, his wolf lunged again, faster, jaws snapping for the hare’s spine.
The hare dodged. It sprang over the open mouth, over its head, onto the wolf’s back, teeth sinking into the scruff of the neck.
For a heartbeat, it looked ridiculous. Herbivore molars pressed to thick fur. They were not meant to rend flesh. But the hare didn’t care. Then the roots came.
Thin, pale tendrils burst from the hare’s teeth, curling into the wolf’s hide like barbed vines. They burrowed deep, pulsing as they drank blood and lifeforce itself. The wolf’s howl echoed around the arena as it thrashed, rolling, but the hare clung tight, eyes blazing.
Students shouted in horror.
“It’s draining him!”
“Stop the fight!”
“Faya, make it stop!”
Faya pounded helplessly against the barrier, tears in her eyes. “Please, let it end!”
Weylan’s jaw clenched as he searched the crowd for the revenant who had started this, but the culprit was gone, vanished in the chaos of everyone moving to get a better position to watch or forming groups to discuss. One even running for the arena.
Far away, Malvorik felt the surge of lifeforce flowing through the hare, not from itself, not from its own meager body, but from a hidden reservoir. It was the energy stolen from Ulmenglanz’s tree, he realized. The dryad’s lifeblood, stored in the hare since the ritual… and now nearly spent.
On the sand, Kastor’s wolf staggered, its legs buckling under the drain. Kastor’s hands shook. He tried to shout commands, but the fear in his voice betrayed him. Finally, his pride cracked.
“I yield!”
The announcer couldn’t hear him. But he came to the same conclusion. The victor was obvious. Magic flared inside the arena, pulling the two combatants apart. Blood sprayed where the teeth refused to let go and flesh burst.
The dueling circle flared and collapsed. Both familiars reappeared beside their masters with a shimmer of light.
Fenrik the wolf collapsed at Kastor’s feet, breathing but bleeding, his proud fur matted with blood and roots still sticking out of his neck. Kastor fell to his knees beside him, pale and shaking.
Sir Cloverton hopped lightly back into Faya’s lap and flopped sideways, already half-asleep again. Its tiny chest rose and fell fast, its reserves clearly drained.
The cafeteria was dead silent.
“Did the rabbit just…”
“It bit a wolf and won…”
“That’s… that’s not natural.”
Ulmenglanz pushed through the observers and knelt beside the wolf. Her hand touched the wound gently and the roots withered. More healing spells stopped the bleeding and closed the wound.
When the wolf was clearly stable, she turned a cold gaze toward its master. “If it’d been you, I’d have left you bleeding out on the ground.
* * *
Malvorik gave a silent bow to the verdant hare.
The dungeon heart shunted mana and lifeforce from dungeon monsters into the connection. Considering the vast distance, terribly inefficient connection and the fact that he didn't want to kill his monsters, put that effort on a timer.
* * *
Faya cradled her familiar tightly, tears of relief streaking her cheeks. “You were amazing,” she whispered.
Around her, whispers turned to arguments, some impressed, some disturbed. Everyone wanted to know how a hare could have defeated a wolf.
The side door slammed open and the broad-shouldered professor Trillin stormed inside. “Who dared to activate the dueling circle without permission and supervision?”
Students silenced and shuffled their feet. Kastor stepped forward and pointed at Faya, who still cuddled the hare. “She powered up her hare with some potion or trickery! Look at it! It almost killed my wolf! An apex predator, killed by a snack!”
Faya looked up. “You call him a snack one more time, and I’ll punch you!”
Trillin looked at the hare, the wolf, and the students around. He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh of deep dissatisfaction. “No one? I see some of my third-year students in here!”
He waited for a few more moments, while the students looked at each other confused. Then he sighed. “Okay, I’ll spell it out for you. Slowly, so you can understand.” He pointed at Faya’s familiar. “That is a verdant hare. It has shown unusual abilities and power. That is not green hair, that’s clearly a plantlike structure. Verdant hares also don’t usually have a twig growing out of their forehead. It is therefore clearly a mutated specimen. How could that happen you ask? Well, verdant hares eat magical plants. It must have eaten something much too powerful for it. It mutated and there has been a reservoir of remnant power it has just released.”
He walked over to Faya and waited for permission to touch the hare. When she reluctantly held it up, he laid a hand on its fur and cast a divination spell. Runes and equations appeared in the air above the animal. First red, then turning to green. Trillin studied them and nodded satisfied. “As I thought. There are residues of a powerful magical interaction. The structure would indicate it ate something like a dryad’s birth tree, at least that’s the nearest example that comes to mind. Can’t be that of course. We’d have a horde of angry dryads knocking on our doors.”
He didn’t see Ulmenglanz slowly retreat behind other students to avoid notice.
He continued. “Its mutated form holds much more lifeforce than normal for an animal of its size and level. There has also been a lot of nature mana stored in its aura, but that is now almost depleted. There won’t be any more superpowered attacks I’m afraid.”
Faya looked at the hare concerned. “Will Sir Cloverton recharge that mana?”
Trillin shook his head. “It’s never been supposed to hold that much power. Only by mutating, could it even survive that kind of pressure. It’s a wonder it didn’t explode. There seems to be some kind of nature bound enchantment still active, probably an ability of the plant it ate. Seems like some kind of communication or connection magic. Maybe it ate a tree from the secret druid tree-teleport network. It seems inert, so I expect no problems. But there’s no way for it to recover that power naturally. He’d need to eat something quite powerful and survive it. Again.”
* * *
Malvorik had seen the professor nearing early enough to reduce the connection as much as possible to seem completely inert. Which was something he’d been preparing anyway. Since the hare used up the remnant power of the dryad tree, the connection had become instable again. This time he’d known what to expect and he had the mana reserves in his dungeon-core to stabilize the connection. For a time.
Equations appeared on the mirror walls of his heart-room. He was frantically changing and solving them to find a solution. The hare needed to restore its nature-mana reserve, and fast.