The next morning, Karl completely forgot to warn Jill about the spider on the balcony, but when she failed to return with Dana after a minute, he went in to check on them and found her wrapped up like a cocoon, and glowing with power from her hastily raised magical barrier.
“Thanks for finally coming to check on me. Now, would you kindly ask this young lady to let me go so that I can get my charge to class on time?” Jill requested.
Karl considered the look of restrained rage at being attacked for a second time by Karl’s pets when she went to wake Dana up, and for a moment, he contemplated whether it might not be safer to leave her there.
But she could break out easily enough, she was just waiting for him to do it so that she didn’t have to fight with the Bloodbath Spider.
“Rae, you can let her out. She is Dana’s teacher, she won’t hurt her, just wake her up for early morning instructions before breakfast.” Karl instructed.
[That sounds like torture to me.] The spider replied suspiciously, then vanished into the Beast Space, which was now becoming much more comfortable after another night of work by Karl.
“Alright, she’s definitely not a morning person. But she won’t attack any more today.” Karl informed the teacher, who gave him a pointed look.
“Right, the web.”
Karl activated the enhanced Rend on his index finger and cut the surprisingly durable webbing down the front, releasing Jill to shake Dana awake.
[See, she’s not even just vibrating the web, she’s shaking her like some animal.] Rae informed Karl in an insulted tone.
“Five more minutes.” The young mage complained, and Karl smiled. It was the same thing every day, but her schedule was so packed that she couldn’t waste any time in the morning.
Karl walked over and gently rocked the hammock, then plucked a string by Dana’s head, which she should hear vibrating next to her ear.
“Fine, I will get up.” She mumbled and opened her eyes.
“How did you do that?” Jill asked in shock.
“Wise advice from the Bloodbath Spider. She knows all the best ways to operate a web.” Karl explained.
Jill looked down at the mass of spiderweb on the ground, then picked it up, expecting a mass of loose strands now that it had been cut open, but the strands were stuck to each other and interwoven, creating a form of blanket.
“You know, this is actually pretty well-made, all things considered.” Jill noted as she admired the soft white silk.
“Karl brought me a silk blanket? That looks comfy.” Dana agreed, while Karl tried not to laugh.
“No. A certain someone thought it was appropriate to wrap me in webbing when I tried to wake you up the first time. Now, we need to go, or we will be late. Karl, we will be borrowing your shower, there isn’t time to make a detour across the floor.” Jill insisted.
“You cut the times awfully close. Go ahead, I will head down and eat first while I go over my day with Sergeant Rita. I’m sure she has a few questions about my mission report anyhow.”
But Rita didn’t lead him to the cafeteria, she led him to the staff lounge, where they could talk without the curious student ears listening in. The teachers were all privy to the official reports, so there was no point in hiding it from them.
Karl and Dana had been the talk of the staff for a while now, and once the new pet was spotted, everyone would be gossiping about it.
“Start at the beginning. There was a lot in that report and I want it play by play from the time that you left the Academy,” she instructed.
Karl went over the trip, the early morning locust attack, and then got into the sighting of the Golden Dire Bear.
“So the other pet, the one named Thor in your report, is a Golden Dire Bear?” Rita asked.
“No, we left it alone. Picking a fight with it and stealing its cub seemed like a monumentally bad idea when it was ready to charge our truck, so we left and went looking for something less hostile.” Karl explained.
He realized his mistake. In his report, Karl had only briefly mentioned the species of the pets, and had been referring to them by name for the rest of the document, so a cursory scan would be confusing.
“We were headed further into the trees, and away from the river, when we came across a clutch of Lightning Cerro eggs, while the herd was on the far side of the clearing. I sent Hawk to recover an egg, then brought them both back into my mental space. But it wasn’t just the one egg. There was a Bloodbath Spider egg stuck in his feathers as well.
So I set about hatching them both.” Karl explained.
“And of course, nobody realized that would be a terrible idea until after you were injured.” She replied with an eye roll.
“Exactly. I didn’t expect them to hatch that close together, and I was unprepared for the requirements that each of them must have a separate space, even though they can move to the other beasts’ space.
So I had to mentally form the third one in a hurry when the Bloodbath Spider hatched, and that put a lot of strain on my mind and body.
The extra mission time was to recover enough to stabilize the bonds, and now I’m back to as good as new, or something close to it.” Karl agreed.
“Can we see?” One of the teachers at the next table asked.
“Of course. Rae, do you want to come see people? Thor, if you come out to say hello, they will rub your head for you.” Karl instructed.
Thor bounded out, nearly knocking one of the teachers out of his chair before stopping himself, while Rae appeared, but hid under the table on Karl’s thighs.
“Oh, she’s shy. Alright, we will admire her from a distance.” The older mage who taught his morning accuracy training class said softly, with a gesture for the others not to scare the spider.
Thor had no such restrictions, and the large dog sized animal happily bumped against people, asking to be patted, nearly spearing a dozen people before realizing that his horns were going to be in the way if he kept charging at them headfirst for attention.
“Is this the Lightning Cerro variety? The smaller ones.” One of the teachers asked.
“Yeah, he will get about two metres tall, if he’s the size of his parents, so he will be big, but not elephant sized.” Karl agreed.
The teacher happily rubbed at the scales on Thor’s side. “He’s going to be beautiful with these deep green and white scales. Have you decided what sort of training he will undergo?”
“Not yet. That’s what Rita is glaring at me for, I think. And maybe the fact that there is a giant spider climbing up her leg.”
That made the teachers burst into laughter, but Rae was intrigued by the Sergeant’s uniform, and she wanted to find out what the buttons were made of.
