It hopped forward, slowly at first, then faster as the smell grew stronger. Its eyes scanned the area while it stayed low. After a while, it reached the source. The small forest grove between the edge of the academies area and the student’s dorms.
Drawn by the scent of fresh leaves and a strange, inviting magic, the creature sniffed cautiously at the newly planted sapling.
It nibbled one of the leaves… and paused.
The taste was peculiar: the power of life, sunlight and spring, yes, but layered with something other. Stone, far away from light… and power.
The hare took a step back, tilted its head, then returned and greedily chewed another leaf.
A shimmer ran down the sapling’s trunk, light rippling across bark and root. Threads of green mana stretched outward, seeping into the creature’s fur. The hare froze. Static danced across the clearing.
Then, green lightning arced from the sapling into the hare.
* * *
Far away, in the depths beneath the fortress city of Mulnirsheim, a red crystal flared to life.
Malvorik had not slept, he never did nowadays, but his awareness had been deep in several trivial tasks. Now his attention collected and he tried to make sense of the mana fluctuations he felt in his dungeon. The source was easy to find. He refocused.
The dryad’s birthtree was arcing with magic, wild, unnatural, and dangerous. Mana surged through its structure, flowing somewhere else. And it was taking the tree’s life force with it. The enchantment... it was vibrating. Overloading and misaligned.
His mental voice fell silent, as his deep intellect worked on understanding what happened. Life energy was flooding through the connection to the sapling. Something had damaged the physical form if the sapling and now the resonance field he had bound to it caused some kind of feedback. The effect threatened to shatter the tree. He had to protect Ulmenglanz’s tree! This experiment was not worth losing a friend. He struck at the connection, trying to sewer it. But the connection was strengthened by the increased mana flow. Too strong and based on the dryad’s magic, not only his.
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He pulled his mind together. Breath mana in… breath mana out…
In a heartbeat, he grounded himself. Feelings would not help him here, so he discarded them.
Panic would not help him here, so he discarded it.
There was only logic.
With a gentle touch, he rearranged the rune steles, adjusted the harmonic field of the tree. The vibration stopped as the tree again harmonized with its sapling.
He reached out and connected to it. Pain… hurt… destruction… Something gnawed at him, ate him… No, that wasn’t his body… Something ate the sapling!
Dryad trees were supposed to be protected from wildlife. Animals were supposed to respect and revere them! The overabounding life energy of the plant should have kept any living thing away! But it didn’t. Something ate the sapling. He could sense an animal of some kind. It was frantic, ravenous. The life energy streaming into it from the sapling had triggered a feeding frenzy.
The animal could not hear him. He had no pact, no connection to it.
If the sapling was destroyed, the enchantment would break. And with such a strong connection open, it would damage the elm tree. Likely burst it to splinters. He could not allow that!
But what… Oh…
The animal was eating the sapling. So, it must have already absorbed some of its resonance pattern. As it ate more, it became ever more visible to Malvorik.
The verdant hare bit into the stem of the sapling, savoring it.
The plant was already gone too far. It wouldn’t recover from this. It couldn’t. The enchantment would… No. It. Would. Not.
The dungeon heart reached out and grabbed the enchantment, fused it into the changing resonance field of the hare and pushed!
The mythril wires binding the manastone shards broke apart as he used their mana to fuel his working. The shards themselves shattered to dust. All mana discharged in an arc into the hare, carrying the enchantment with it. The hare had some attunement to plants, but not enough to hold a tree-based enchantment. Well, he would see about that!
The verdant hare’s eyes sparkled from within with the ruby light of the dungeon heart. The resonance connection filled the mana saturated environment. Malvorik carved a chimeric transformation circle on the floor of his dungeon and drew his side of the resonance field inside. The hare and circle now existed both inside his dungeon, and inside the academy’s area. He had to move fast. If this connection stabilized too much, it would trigger a dungeon emergence warning at the academy. Divination mages would swarm the area to find the source.
Drawing on his last reserves, Malvorik triggered the transformation magic. Dungeon master ability and the chimeric magic from his mage class combined. Magic cursed through the veins of the tiny body, as Malvorik forcefully merged plant and animal. A few blades of grass from the grove were also pulled into the transformation.
Its ears split into leaves and branches, that resembled hare ears cut by a master gardener out of bushes. Glowing patterns rippled down its back, as its already green fur turned fully to grass and a tiny sapling grew from his forehead.
Malvorik anchored the connection to the creature’s plant parts. The transfer of mana and life energy stabilized. It was much stronger than before, since the new chimera held vastly more mana and life force than the young sapling ever had. But while the connection to his dungeon felt stable, his range on the other side seemed severely limited. And he had no control over the chimera. None at all.
The verdant hare shook itself and sat up on his hind legs, blending in with the plants around it. The sunlight filtered through the trees and made its leafy ears glow slightly. It didn’t move, just watched its surroundings with calm, dark eyes. Full and satisfied.