>>5784559Of course, with your grades and your most recent feat of EXCEPTIONAL magecraft, requesting some time off was easy enough—you’d simply explained (not entirely falsely) that your chimericism had left you drained and depleted, and that you needed to recover. A mage must cast from their own lifeforce, after all, so some bedrest actually wouldn’t have gone amiss. That you were hiking out of Hawksong against instead was… Well, not ideal, but it was necessary.
You brought one cage for little Whatshisname (what you dubbed the not-quite-a-jackalope) and another for his ‘father’ (the jacakalope he was modeled on, which dear Pearce managed to smuggle out for you). The deer, and the other rabbits… Well, those were a bit beyond his ability to secret out of the classroom, or wherever they were now kept, as well as yours to march through Hawksong without drawing attention. With your internal energies running near empty, you couldn’t have kept that array of skittish prey-species <Calm> the entire time even if you’d wanted to.
“I’m surprised you even had enough juice for THAT,” Pearce noted, and nodded to your little elemental helper: an Earth Elemental a little shorter than a halfling, summoned to support the two cages.
“Well it’s easier than carrying them myself the whole way!” you’d protested.
“Noodle-arms,” Pearce had teased you.
“Noodle-BRAIN,” you retorted.
You left him watching Muffins—though you regretted to leave your three-headed companion, and Pearce hated to be responsible for cleaning up the natural chimera’s rather eclectic digestive outputs. With your elemental and your two caged creatures, you made your way through the night and day until late afternoon found you once more at the hill. Utterly tapped of all stamina and spellcraft, you dismissed the <Summoned Elemental> and gently laid the cages down. Unable to muster <Faerie Fire>, you waited for dusk, and the appearance of the court.
At least, compared to your first two visits, this came easily to you… or perhaps, knowing you now, your friends simply allowed themselves to be seen.
