Fabrisse tried again.

This time, his arm moved slower, more precise. He focused on the breath before the embarrassment hit full bloom—the dip, not the spike. Just like Liene said. The stone didn’t leave his hand, but his wrist tracked the arc with a cleaner motion.

Huh. It’s working . . . a bit.

He felt a bit more embarrassed. This Varnic arc was supposed to be easier than the Synod-sanctioned version, but he wasn’t improving much. He wondered what he was doing during the Synaptic Resonance practice sessions. Maybe while the sessions were going on, he was busy indexing different types of rare earth he’d found in a nearby cave.

The glyph flickered.

Wait. Was the Eidralith quantifying practice outcomes now? That didn’t match earlier feedback.

That hadn’t shown up before. It didn’t feel like normal spell feedback either. It was too structured, too numerical. Was the Eidralith measuring the timing?

He stared at it. “Bird-based trauma.”

[Confirmed.]

He didn’t know the glyph could joke like that. Or maybe it wasn’t joking.

“Did you say something?” Liene asked.

“Oh, no, no. I’m just happy we’ve made progress,” he waved the glyph away.

“Great! One more, then we’ll go full spell. You’ve got this.”

He rolled his neck, reset his stance, and lifted the Stupenstone once more.

He channeled the feeling.

He moved his arms.

The trajectory was, in fact, amazing for his standards. It was, like, almost clean. Aether sparked faintly across the stone’s surface, like specks of chalk.

Liene squawked.

Wait. What?

He turned around. It wasn’t Liene squawking.

Something barreled into his head from the right, feathers slapping his temple like a flapping broom.

“GWAARK!”

His brain was still processing the path of the throw when the bird hit—late sensory sync, a classic override. He stumbled sideways, nearly tripped on his own stance, and fell straight onto his backside.

Liene’s shout of laughter exploded across the courtyard as a squat, round, web-footed creature flapped upward from the impact zone and landed three feet away, glaring at them both with judgmental yellow eyes. It was somewhere between a duck and a feathered ballista.

“Was that—” Fabrisse pointed. “What was that?”

“I think it’s a campus clucklebeak,” Liene said, nearly crying from laughter. “But they’re not supposed to be out at night. Or this far from the North Pond. Or this aggressive.”

“We’re not even near a pond!”

The glyph rang, intrusively cheerful.

Wait. Lorvan? The Mentor Lorvan? A FLOCK of clucklebeak?!

Why is Lorvan involved with birds? The only bird he tolerates is fried chicken.

Another squawk split the air like a wet trumpet, followed by the low whumph of containment magic firing off nearby. He turned around and spotted the source.

A tall figure in dark robes came skidding around the edge of the courtyard, one hand outstretched, the other clutching what looked like a modified tracking scroll layered with emergency glyph overlays.

“Catch them—!” the figure, who was Lorvan, barked, already launching a hexagram of containment magic from his fingertips. “Catch them for me, Kestovar! Don’t let them breach the atrium line!”

The spell from his hand was a hexagram of light, tinged not with urgency or aggression, but an almost unnatural beige hue.

Is that a Calm-anchored spell?

He had to double-check that.

Calm? And why was the spell’s name in purple?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He looked again. Lorvan was gliding across the uneven stones, flinging defensive glyphs with zero vocal mnemonics and tracking the darting clucklebeaks with an eerie stillness. His brow was furrowed, yes, and his robes were slightly wrinkled—possibly from bird-related trauma—but his spellwork was the magical equivalent of steady breathing during a fire drill.

He didn’t look calm. But he was. The glyph confirmed it.

How?

Fabrisse stood there gaping.

“Now would be an excellent time to help!” Lorvan called sharply, his voice still maddeningly even. “They multiply if you leave them untethered for more than seven minutes!”

“What?!” Fabrisse yelped. “They what?!”

“Come on, Fabri!” Liene shouted, pulling her sleeves up to her elbows, snatching the Stupenstone from his palm, and shoved it back into his satchel. “You heard the mentor.”

Another squawk barreled toward them from the treeline.

Fabrisse barely got his arms up in time.

A third clucklebeak came flapping low from the edge of the underbrush like a feathered cannonball.

“Fabri—down!”

He ducked.

A flash of white burst overhead.

Liene’s hand was already extended, fingers flared wide as a beam of sharp, prismatic light lanced across the clearing. It hit the creature with a sizzling snap, and the bird wobbled drunkenly in the air before slamming into the grass in a puff of startled feathers.

“Nice hit!” Fabrisse gasped.

“Thanks!” she called, already lining up another.

Lorvan slid two fingers across the edge of his tracking scroll, barked a short incantation that sounded like half a yawn, and hurled another beige-anchored containment glyph into the clearing.

The net of aether snapped shut around the stunned clucklebeak.

“Efficient,” Lorvan muttered. “Only thirteen more to go.”

“You’re joking,” Fabrisse said. The quest only asked for five!

“I have never once joked in my life,” Lorvan replied. Another glyph flicked from his wrist, calm as tea service. “Clucklebeaks are emotionally resonant livestock. If one panics, the others imprint and scatter. The effect is exponential.”

Fabrisse looked at Liene, then back at Lorvan. “Why do you have them?”

“Interdepartmental research request,” Lorvan said through clenched teeth. “Do not ask.”

Another bird shrieked from the roofline.

“Fabri!” Liene yelled. “Behind you—!”

Fabrisse spun.

His satchel swung.

The canvas bag, weighted with a half dozen enchanted rocks, an extra notebook, and at least one illegal mineral sample, collided with the skull of a diving clucklebeak.

The bird let out a strangled gweeeehk, flailed sideways, and collapsed in a fluttering heap of feathers and indignity.

“Oh no,” Fabrisse heaved a heavy breath. “Don’t die on me now.”

He dropped to his knees beside the downed bird. It was small and round and, now that it wasn’t actively flinging itself at his skull, honestly kind of adorable in a scrunched, unamused way.

Liene skidded to a halt beside him. “You okay?!”

“Why don’t you ask the cluck?”

Three more clucklebeaks dive-bombed the warded garden wall in the distance like angry feathered missiles.

A zapping sound later . . .

It seemed like Lorvan managed to contain another one.

Lorvan’s voice carried over the madness, crisp as always. “Contain that one or carry it! We don’t have time for field diagnoses!”

Fabrisse flinched. “Okay!”

Fabrisse bundled the unconscious clucklebeak into the inside of his coat like a guilt burrito.

What? I’m not adopting a duck, he thought as he clutched the clucklebeak to his chest.

Liene glanced back and saw him awkwardly shielding the bird like a scandalous secret. “You’re seriously hugging it?”

“It’s fragile!”

“You’re fragile! Awww, look at the two little ducklings—” A clucklebeak pecked her head. “Ouch!”

“I’ll help you!” Fabrisse frantically tried to cast Stupenstone Fling at the creature that’d just attacked Liene, but only casting with one hand was twice as challenging.

“Fling!” He commanded as he threw out a stone with his left, and non-dominant, hand.

The stone flew. Not because of magic, but because he actually flung it.

He yelled, “Oh no, my rock—”

It hit Liene in the forehead.

Liene staggered back. The clucklebeak atop her head let out a horrified squawk as it tried to launch itself skyward.

A geometric hexagram bloomed like a summoned constellation: six radiant biege lines locked in place in midair, forming a perfect six-pointed star enclosed within a transparent sphere.

The instant the clucklebeak’s wings brushed the edge of the shape, the hexagram flexed. Thin golden threads seized it like whipcords, coiling around the bird and snapping it to a mid-air hover.

It didn’t thrash. It simply stopped. The bird floated there, wrapped in shimmering aether strands like silk restraints woven by someone incredibly polite.

“Keep it up! You two are great distractions!” Lorvan closed the distance.

Fabrisse ducked beneath another errant wingbeat as Lorvan jogged past him, boots gliding noiselessly over the cobbled courtyard stones. The Mentor barely spared him a glance, already scanning for his next containment target.

The birds were everywhere. One clucklebeak was circling wildly near the upper branches of a frostwood tree at the edge of the yard. Another waddled defiantly atop the disused practice dummy, pecking at its straw scalp with single-minded spite. A third had taken refuge under the tilted bench near the glyphlight post, hissing at a student walking by.

Liene rubbed her forehead with one hand, and with the other, struck the closest one with a Lightstrike.

Lorvan contained the bird that was just struck.

Liene swiveled her head to Fabrisse with an exasperated huff and a hand on her hip. “Do I look like a bird to you?”

“Kind of?”

She lightly hit his elbow.

What qualifies as ‘unnecessary’, he wondered. Sometimes he felt reading from the Eidralith was like taking in instructions from an actual instructant, since they were both prone to elaborations that were in no way measurable. Add to the hand-waving the Eidralith’s habit of sprinkling in half-archaic idioms and cryptic parentheticals, and it became less a manual than a personality test disguised as one.

Oh? He’d wondered what a Thaumaturge would need STR for, but if anything, it could increase his focus. This slight edge probably wouldn’t be enough for him to focus on strength training, but it was something worth keeping in mind.

Fabrisse sighed. He was going to do so anyway.