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John gave the Red Wolf one last firm pat along his flank, fingers sinking into that absurdly soft crimson fur while the beast quivered with the kind of pent-up excitement only something ancient, magical, and catastrophically under-stimulated could manage.
The wolf barked at once, sharp and eager, then shoved his broad head against John's side hard enough to nearly move him a full step.
"All right, all right–!" John laughed, bracing a hand against the beast's shoulder. "We'll get there soon. Gods, you're worse than a kid on a sugar high."
The Red Wolf barked again as if to say that yes, he was, and that John should perhaps stop wasting time pointing out the obvious.
A few steps away, Elyse looked between the two of them with the expression of a woman witnessing the birth of a highly specific apocalypse.
"My lord…" She began carefully, voice already carrying the defeated strain of someone who knew she was about to be ignored. "Are you quite certain this is a wise idea?"
John and the wolf both turned to look at her at the same time.
It was deeply unfortunate for her dignity that they did it with almost exactly the same expression.
John wore a bright, questioning grin, one brow faintly raised.
The wolf's ears perked, head tilting just slightly, red fur framing a stare that somehow asked the same thing.
Elyse closed her eyes and sighed in exhaustion.
"For my sake, then…" She said tiredly, opening her eyes again. "Try to keep the collateral damage limited, please."
John's grin widened into something openly dangerous and entirely too delighted.
"I promise nothing."
The wolf huffed what sounded suspiciously like agreement, then spun on the spot and padded toward the massive doors leading out of the Debate Parlour with all the impatient energy of a creature who had already moved on to the next thing and expected the world to catch up.
He reached the doors, reared up slightly, and planted both forepaws against the old wood with a heavy thud.
The doors groaned.
John laughed under his breath and followed after him. "Yeah, yeah. I'm coming."
He reached for the handles, hauled one side open, and before he had even fully finished the motion, the Red Wolf let out an excited bark and surged forward.
Or rather, he surged forward through John.
The beast shoved his great wedge of a skull between John's legs from behind with all the subtlety of a siege engine and heaved.
"Wha–?!"
John yelped as his feet left the ground entirely. For one absurd, glorious second he was airborne, pitched up and forward by several hundred pounds of ecstatic magical wolf.
Then he landed hard across the wolf's broad back.
The Red Wolf did not slow down for even a heartbeat.
John righted himself on instinct, one leg swinging over, both hands grabbing fast into thick handfuls of fur as the beast bounded through the open doorway.
Laughter tore straight out of him.
"You are way too excitable!"
The wolf barked loud enough to shake dust from the stone arch and sprinted harder, apparently taking that as praise.
Behind them, Elyse made a small, pained sound that very likely meant she was reconsidering every decision that had led her to this exact point in life.
Then she was left behind.
The corridor outside the Debate Parlour blurred past in flashes of pale stone and blue light as the Red Wolf tore through it at a pace entirely inappropriate for indoor architecture. His strides ate distance in impossible, springing bounds, his claws skidding and catching against polished floor while John leaned low over his shoulders and held on with both hands, half riding and half surviving.
The beast smelled like warm fur, old glintstone, dust, and faint traces of blood and debate-chamber ruin.
John, for his part, had no intention whatsoever of pretending he was not having the time of his life.
He barked another laugh as the wolf hit a turn too fast, bounced once off the inner curve of a stone wall with reckless confidence, and launched them both through the final open archway into one of the Academy's larger inner courtyards.
The space beyond opened wide and bright beneath the azure saturation of Raya Lucaria's enchanted skies.
It was a grand courtyard, broad as a noble square and framed on all sides by towering white-blue stonework, high walkways, narrow bridges, and elegant archways threaded through with glintstone sigils.
Statues of old scholars and lunar saints stood between dry fountains and patterned garden plots now overtaken by magical flora and stubborn weeds. Balconies overlooked the central grounds from every level, and the whole place hummed with enough ambient sorcery that even the air felt thin and bright.
More importantly, it was full.
Dozens of sorcerers, preceptors, students, and armed Cuckoo retainers occupied the courtyard and its surrounding approaches. Some were in clusters discussing scrollwork and magical theory.
Others were moving crates, books, equipment, and reagents from one wing to another. A few were clearly part of whatever increasingly panicked internal response the Academy had been attempting to mount ever since John's arrival.
All of them looked up at once when a giant crimson wolf with a demigod on its back burst into view like a deranged story told by drunk men who swore they saw it happen.
The Red Wolf slowed only enough to prance in a sharp half-circle near the center of the courtyard.
Then he shook himself.
Violently.
John grabbed on with both arms and a laugh as the beast ruffled from head to tail in one full-body motion, crimson fur shivering under him while loose glintstone dust and fine debris puffed off his coat in a sparkling halo. The motion nearly threw John clear over the wolf's shoulder and would absolutely have succeeded on a lesser rider.
Instead he leaned with it, thighs tightening, hands buried deep in fur, head thrown back with open delight.
"Oh, you bastard—!"
The wolf barked again, sounding altogether too pleased with himself.
That was when the entire courtyard properly processed what it was seeing.
Someone near a fountain dropped a stack of books into the water.
A robed student in a glintstone crown stumbled backward and pointed with a shaking hand.
One Cuckoo soldier took a full step away before seeming to remember that running first usually got one noticed more.
Then the shouting began.
"The Carian beast—!"
"It's loose!"
"It's with him!"
"Gods preserve us, it's the demigod!"
"They're going to kill us all!"
"Seal the stairs!"
"Close the upper galleries!"
"No, no, no, no—!"
Panic spread through the courtyard in widening ripples. Sorcerers scrambled backward with robes gathered in their fists. Apprentices fled for columns and doorways. A pair of preceptors on one of the upper landings nearly collided trying to reverse direction at the same time.
Glintstone staffs lit all around them in nervous, uncertain flashes while several Cuckoo guards raised spears that they very clearly did not believe would solve this problem.
The Red Wolf threw back his head and howled.
It rang across the courtyard like a victorious declaration, deep and resonant and full of wild, delighted life. The sound bounced off white stone and azure arches, climbed into the open heights above, and sent half the people below into immediate spiritual collapse.
John, sitting astride the great beast with one hand still tangled in its mane and the other braced against its shoulder, looked out over the chaos and started laughing so hard it nearly stole his breath.
He pointed at the nearest knot of retreating scholars.
"Gods, you're all pussies!"
The Red Wolf barked sharply beneath him.
It sounded extremely supportive.
That only made John laugh harder.
One old sorcerer near the far side of the courtyard drew himself up as if to protest on behalf of Academy dignity, only for the wolf to turn his head and fix him with a bright yellow eye that still carried traces of play and predatory arrogance both.
The man made a noise not unlike a strangled kettle and vanished behind a pillar.
John slapped the wolf's neck in delight. "See? Even you agree!"
The wolf huffed proudly and strutted three paces forward with John still on his back, shoulders rolling and tail held high as though he had personally conquered the courtyard and everyone in it had correctly acknowledged his superiority.
Which, in fairness, was not wholly inaccurate.
Above them, on balconies and connecting halls, more figures were appearing now. Sorcerers leaning over railings. Armed retainers scrambling into position. A few bolder preceptors trying to bark some form of order into the panic below.
None of it mattered much yet.
Because for the moment, the Academy had not organized itself into a military response.
For the moment, it was simply witnessing.
Witnessing the impossible sight of the Red Wolf of Radagon, old terror of the Debate Parlour, charging joyfully through the grounds with a laughing demigod on his back as though the two had been friends for years.
Even Elyse, having finally reached the arch behind them with her robes gathered and her breath clearly strained, stopped dead the moment she saw the full scene spread out before her.
Her shoulders slumped.
Whatever she had planned to say died unspoken as she stared at John atop the wolf and the wide ring of horrified scholars around him.
Then she lifted one hand and pressed it to her brow with a look of profound, private defeat.
John caught sight of her and flashed a grin so bright and unapologetic it should have counted as an act of war.
"Told you it'd be fine!"
Elyse stared at him as though trying to decide which gods she had offended badly enough to deserve this exact punishment.
The Red Wolf bounded straight past the panicking sorcerers, past the scattered students, and toward the massive fountain standing in the middle of the courtyard like he had been dreaming about it for the past ten years.
John barely had time to brace before the beast planted both forepaws on the fountain's stone lip and shoved his great muzzle into the water with zero dignity whatsoever.
Then he started drinking without any kind of politeness or the measured, regal restraint one might expect from Radagon's old red terror and Rennala's beloved academy beast. No, he drank like a man dying in the desert who had just been told the oasis was free and all his.
Water splashed everywhere. His tongue lapped in heavy, greedy pulls. His tail wagged behind him in broad, satisfied sweeps that nearly clipped a fleeing apprentice off her feet.
John barked out a laugh and rubbed one hand along the wolf's side where the fur burned warm beneath his palm.
"What, these idiots not giving you enough water?" He asked, clearly amused. "Neglecting the giant murder puppy, are they?"
The Red Wolf paused only long enough to huff wetly through his nose and go right back to drinking as though the answer was obviously yes and also this conversation should not interrupt hydration.
John leaned back where he sat and looked out over the Academy around him.
It was different.
The game had never really captured scale properly, not the way living places did. Not the way sound carried through high stone and azure sky, not the way sorcery clung to the air like humidity, not the way people ran when a demigod rode a giant wolf into their workday and started insulting their institution.
Still, beneath all the impossible extra size and detail, he could recognize pieces of it. The broad flow of the courtyard. The old bridges and elevated walkways. The way the towers were arranged around deeper inner sections. The routes curling toward the schoolhouse, the church, the debating halls, the older paths leading farther inward toward where all the real nonsense would be waiting.
Then, at the edge of his vision, he caught movement.
A preceptor in Academy robes was barking frantic orders at a cluster of frightened retainers near one of the side approaches, pointing sharply with his staff while trying to regain some scrap of control over the situation.
John's grin returned at once.
He leaned down and scratched at the Red Wolf's side again, fingers working through the thick crimson fur. "Hey, buddy. See that guy over there? Take us to him. He seems useful. He can help us find mommy."
Marika chuckled somewhere behind his eyes, rich with helpless amusement.
The Red Wolf lifted his dripping muzzle from the fountain and followed John's line of sight at once, ears perking forward with renewed purpose. Water ran from his jaw in shining streams. One bright eye narrowed on the unfortunate preceptor in the distance like a hunter reacquiring a moving target.
John heard Marika's laugh linger and snorted softly.
"I don't know what you're laughing about."
She shook her head, golden hair shimmering as she drifted beside him in his mind's eye. "I feel a measure of pity for the fools who stand against thee in here."
That only made his smile deepen.
The Red Wolf turned fully and launched.
He left the fountain in a single springing motion, paws slamming down against wet stone before he surged across the courtyard with John still on his back.
Sorcerers and students yelped and scattered out of the way. A pair of Cuckoo soldiers broke formation entirely when the beast thundered past them, one dropping his shield into the fountain with a loud splash.
The preceptor at the far side barely had time to turn.
He saw a giant red blur, a laughing demigod, and then the Red Wolf hit him.
The man vanished beneath several hundred pounds of magical canine with a shout that cut off into a choked wheeze as the wolf pinned him flat in the courtyard shallows, one paw planted against his chest while a low, deeply threatening growl rolled out over the poor bastard's face.
John slid off the wolf's back with easy practice now and walked around to crouch beside the pinned sorcerer.
The preceptor was older than Elyse, thin-faced and wild-eyed beneath a glintstone mask that had been knocked crooked by the impact. His staff had gone spinning away somewhere behind him. Water soaked half his robes. The other half was being actively compressed into the stone by the Red Wolf's weight.
John rested one forearm casually on one knee and smiled down at him.
"So…" He said pleasantly. "Would you happen to be in possession of a map to this fine academy?"
The preceptor blinked at him in stunned disbelief.
"I– y-you cannot–!" He stammered. "You cannot simply burst into Raya Lucaria and–!"
The Red Wolf's growl deepened.
Azure light began to gather in the back of the beast's maw, low and bright and immediate, building into a glintstone glow that lit the underside of his fangs and threw cold blue across the preceptor's already dying face.
The man stopped talking.
John broke into laughter so suddenly he had to brace a hand against his own thigh.
"All right, all right…" He wheezed, wiping at one eye. "See, this is what I mean. I'm trying to be polite here. He's trying to move things along."
The Red Wolf gave a short, impatient snarl that sounded suspiciously like agreement.
John patted the wolf's shoulder and slipped smoothly into the role of good cop with infuriating sincerity. "Look, just help us out, and I won't let him hurt you. Fair?"
The preceptor made a tiny, awful sound.
Then something in the air changed.
It was subtle, but John noticed it instantly with his enhanced senses. So did the Red Wolf.
Both of them paused.
Then, in eerie unison, Demigod and magical wolf lowered their gazes toward the man beneath them and stared in blank, deadpan silence.
The preceptor had, quite simply, shat himself.
The smell bloomed into the magical air with complete, incontestable certainty.
John's face went perfectly flat.
The Red Wolf's did too, in-sofar as a wolf's face could manage such a thing.
For a few tense moments, neither of them moved.
"Damn." John spoke, very gently.
The Red Wolf huffed once through his nose like a creature who had lost all respect in one breath.
The preceptor looked like he wanted the Academy to collapse on him immediately.
"Y-Yes!" He blurted in total surrender. "Yes, I have a map! I have a map, I can make one, please just– please keep that thing from vaporizing me!"
John's smile returned at once, bright and horrifyingly cheerful.
"There we go. See? That wasn't so hard."
The preceptor's hands shook as he slowly lifted them, apparently deciding that remaining pinned under the Red Wolf while doing delicate sorcery was still preferable to any alternative.
Glintstone light gathered at his fingertips, lines of pale azure threading through the air in geometric lattices as he began sketching out an arcane projection over the wet stones.
The magical map formed quickly.
First broad outlines of the Academy's central structure, then the inner wings, side halls, lifts, courtyards, classrooms, chapel sectors, storage chambers, and older sealed sections. Bridges, staircases, towers, service corridors, hidden transitional spaces used by faculty and senior preceptors, even several routes that were very clearly not intended for ordinary students.
John watched closely.
And as he did, his System quietly absorbed the information.
A soft flicker passed through the corner of his vision, then another. A few seconds later, a clean little representation of the Academy snapped into place like a game mini-map, hovering faintly at the edge of his awareness with routes, vertical changes, and surrounding structure all translated into usable clarity.
John's eyes widened just a fraction.
'Oh, that's useful as hell.'
The preceptor finished the magical sketch with a shaky exhale and let the shining map hover between them like an offering to a mad god.
John smiled in deep approval.
"Excellent work."
He patted the man on the shoulder with such patronizing warmth it ought to have counted as a crime, then straightened and vaulted back up onto the Red Wolf's broad back.
"All right, buddy…" He muttered slowly, settling himself with a grin. "Let's ride."
The Red Wolf barked and took off immediately.
Unfortunately, he took off in the exact wrong direction.
John had just enough time to realize they were not heading deeper toward Rennala's wing but instead veering toward some side roofs and upper lecture galleries before the wolf leapt bodily up onto a lower building with impossible ease.
"Hey–! Wrong way, wrong way, wrong fucking way!"
The Red Wolf barked back over one shoulder without slowing, clearly affronted by the accusation.
John pointed ahead with one hand while clinging to fur with the other. "Yes, I am questioning you! You are going the wrong way! I'm the one with the map here!"
Woof!
The wolf barked louder.
Woof!
John barked right back.
It happened so naturally that half the terrified sorcerers watching from below physically stopped moving just to witness it.
The Red Wolf bounded across one rooftop, sprang to another, then kicked off a glintstone-trimmed parapet and landed on a high connecting bridge while John continued arguing with him in increasingly indignant, increasingly dog-like bursts.
"No! Left! LEFT, you overgrown furry missile!"
Bark!
"Don't you bark at me like that, I know where we're going!"
BARK!
"Well your instincts are shit!"
The Red Wolf whipped his head halfway around just enough to bark directly into John's face.
John answered with one of his own, his louder and more offended.
Below them, a pair of Academy students stared upward in total silence as a Demigod and Red Wolf sprinted across Raya Lucaria's upper reaches while shouting at one another in a language that, from a distance, sounded alarmingly like two unruly dogs settling a domestic dispute.
Marika let out a sigh so long and full of exhausted amusement that it nearly became laughter halfway through.
"Mine champion, thou truly hast approximately the same mental age as a literal dog."
John twisted enough to glare vaguely in the direction of her voice while the Red Wolf vaulted a broken arch and kept running.
"He is not a dog. He's a magical, hyper-intelligent Red Wolf!"
Marika's silence lasted exactly three seconds.
"Of course that is the part of my statement thou choosest to argue with…" She muttered dryly.
John had no defense against that whatsoever, so he did the only logical thing left.
He pointed ahead, where the mini-map was now helpfully flashing the actually correct route toward Rennala's section of the Academy, and shouted over the wind in the wolf's fur. "Take the next right or I swear to God I'm grabbing your ears and steering!"
The Red Wolf barked in scandalized outrage and ran even faster.
Eventually, John hauled the Red Wolf back toward the courtyard by the oldest and most reliable method known to man.
He grabbed a fistful of thick crimson fur, pointed with his other hand, and argued until the beast begrudgingly allowed himself to be redirected with all the wounded dignity of a prince being told he could not, in fact, bite the furniture.
"Left!" John barked as the wolf skidded across a stretch of pale stone and nearly clipped an overturned brazier. "No, your other left!"
The Red Wolf snarled something deeply opinionated under his breath, but he obeyed just enough that they cut back across the ruined courtyard and reached the broken span that led toward the higher inner rises of Raya Lucaria.
Ahead of them, beyond a gap between shattered balustrades, a winding stairway climbed in broad, curving switchbacks around the outer body of the Grand Academy proper.
It had once been stately, no doubt. Elegant, even.
Now parts of it were cracked, sections of railing had collapsed into the lower courts, and glintstone growths gleamed from old fractures in the masonry like azure veins surfacing through old bone.
John leaned low over the wolf's neck as the beast bounded the gap in one clean leap and landed upon the lower turn of the stair.
"There we go…" He muttered, grinning as the wind tore at his hair. "That's more like it. Rennala oughta be somewhere up there."
The Red Wolf barked once in clear agreement, then kicked into a faster sprint.
They flew up the winding stairway in great red-and-white flashes of fur, cloth, and demigod laughter. Stone blurred beneath them. The Academy walls rose higher to their left in layers of carved arches, stained windows, and pale glintstone latticework.
To the right, the open air of Liurnia spread out in drowned blue distances beneath them, the lower courtyards and terraces of Raya Lucaria falling away in dizzying levels of stone and magical haze.
Then John saw the sigil.
It flared at the top of the stair in sudden azure geometry, broad and circular and hovering over the upper landing with all the subtle menace of a trap he remembered far too well.
His eyes widened a fraction before it pulsed a second time, brighter.
"Oh, we're here…"
A great grinding shriek rolled down the stairway.
At the very top, half-hidden behind the rampart and spell-latticed guardline, sorcerers raised their staves and fed power into the conjuration. A moment later a massive enchanted iron ball, as large as a carriage and twice as ugly, slammed into existence and began rolling down the ramp at murderous speed.
It thundered toward them like a collapsed tower given hate and momentum.
John's grin returned immediately.
"All right, buddy!" He called, slapping the Red Wolf's neck. "Avoid the ball and then we'll go punish those idiots before we head to mommy!"
The Red Wolf's ears flicked, then his eyes glinted.
John felt, with instant and mounting dread, that the beast had not heard the word avoid at all.
"...No."
The wolf accelerated.
"NO."
Instead of veering, ducking, or doing anything remotely sensible, the Red Wolf charged the ball head-on with clear delight.
John had exactly enough time to swear before the beast planted his paws, coiled like a spring, and leapt.
He hit the incoming iron sphere with one savage, well-timed slam of shoulder and forepaws. The impact rang out like a cathedral bell being struck with a battering ram.
The ball lurched sideways, then it went over the railing.
For one beautiful, terrible second it hung in the air beside the stairway, turning slowly over the lower courtyard with the serene certainty of an enormous problem about to become someone else's.
Then gravity claimed it.
The iron sphere crashed down into the courtyard below with a detonation of shattered paving, broken fountain stone, and shrieking sorcerers.
John burst out laughing.
"You insane fucking mutt!"
The Red Wolf barked triumphantly.
Then, before John could grab his mane, steer them back upward, or even finish the thought of "no no no don't you dare–"
The wolf jumped after it, and John was launched clean off his back.
He laughed even as he flew, twisting through the air with the easy reflexes of a body now far too strong and far too used to nonsense. He hit a lower ledge, kicked off it, grabbed a protruding arch, swung once, and dropped into the courtyard below in a spray of dust and broken tile just as the Red Wolf landed nearby in a four-pawed crouch.
The giant iron ball was still rolling.
It had smashed through part of the central paving, bounced off a carved fountain basin, crushed two decorative plinths, and was now wobbling along the courtyard in a broad, destructive curve while half the surviving sorcerers fled from it in blind panic.
John straightened, looked at the ball, looked at the wolf, and saw the exact same thought already burning in those intelligent yellow eyes.
The Red Wolf crouched.
John grinned. "Oh, we're really doing this?"
The wolf barked once and launched.
That was answer enough.
What followed was, by every reasonable measure, a disaster. A glorious one.
The Red Wolf tore after the rolling ball with reckless, joyful speed, paws hammering shattered stone while his tail whipped like a crimson banner of bad intent.
John kept pace alongside him, laughing as he bounded over broken benches, springing fountains, and fleeing scholars, occasionally shoulder-checking the ball just to keep it moving and change its angle.
The ball crashed through an old row of columns.
The wolf chased it through the dust cloud.
John vaulted the collapse and landed on top of the iron sphere for half a second before kicking off as it rolled under him and nearly flattened a group of Cuckoo retainers who had been trying very hard to establish a line.
They failed on that account.
Utterly.
The ball plowed through their formation like judgment wrapped in steel.
A sorcerer on a balcony fired a glintstone shard downward in desperate indignation. The shard hit the ball, ricocheted off with a blue spark, and struck a completely different sorcerer in the shoulder.
John laughed so hard he nearly lost a step.
"This is why ranged support needs better communication!"
The Red Wolf barked in delight and overtook the ball from the side, slamming it with his shoulder hard enough to send it careening through a statue of some dead lunar preceptor, which exploded into pale chunks around them.
Some poor bastard tried to stand his ground with a staff and a half-finished spell-circle.
The ball did not care.
And, frankly, neither did John.
He sprang up onto a fallen slab, ran three steps along its edge, then dropped down beside the rolling sphere and shoved with both draconic arms, adding his own strength to its ruinous momentum.
The thing surged forward like it had suddenly remembered vengeance.
It tore through a lower wall, ricocheted off an inner support, and rolled back into open court where the Red Wolf met it head-on again with another delighted slam.
Marika's voice rang through the back of John's mind somewhere between outrage and hysterical amusement.
"What in the name of all ordered things art thou doing?"
"Playing fetch!" John shouted back, laughing.
"That is not how fetch works!"
The Red Wolf barked at the ball, then at John, then chased it again as though to prove that Marika was wrong and they were pioneers of a newer, more violent form of the game.
At one point the ball rolled up a sloped stretch of broken paving, lost momentum, and began to tip back.
The wolf crouched low, ready to launch at it again.
John beat him to it.
With an ugly, delighted grin, he ran straight at the massive sphere, planted one foot, twisted at the hip, and drove a full demigod kick into its side.
He hit it far too hard.
The ball left the ground.
It sailed in a broad, beautiful arc over the ruined courtyard, cleared one entire outer parapet, and vanished into open air beyond the Academy with a fading metallic shriek that went on for several seconds before ending in some distant, catastrophic crash far below.
Silence for a few seconds, before the Red Wolf slowly turned his head toward John.
And whined.
It was not a small sound. It was a deeply offended, betrayed, almost wounded noise that seemed to ask "how could you?".
John, still halfway through the follow-through of his kick, lowered his foot and looked back at him with the faint sheepishness of a man who knew he had overcommitted.
"...Okay, that one's on me."
The Red Wolf stalked two paces closer and huffed straight into his chest with pointed, personal irritation.
John laughed, reached out, and rubbed one hand along the beast's neck and shoulder.
"Hey, hey, don't look at me like that. Main goal, remember? Mommy. We're trying to get to mommy quicker."
The Red Wolf's ears twitched, and his posture softened by a degree.
John pressed the advantage shamelessly. "C'mon, buddy. We can play ball later. Probably. Maybe. Depending on how much of the academy is still standing by then."
The wolf gave him a long, extremely judgmental stare. Then, with a sigh worthy of a disappointed scholar, he lowered himself just enough and shoved his broad shoulder insistently into John's side until the message became obvious.
"Get on."
John barked out a laugh. "Oh, now you want me back up there?"
The Red Wolf nudged him harder.
"All right, all right~!"
John swung himself up onto the wolf's back again with practiced ease, settling low between those powerful shoulders and sinking both hands back into soft crimson fur. He gave the beast's side an affectionate pat.
"You are unbelievably spoiled, you know that?"
The Red Wolf barked once, which sounded suspiciously like yes.
Then he took off. And this time he actually behaved.
More or less.
He bounded back toward the stairway in a spray of shattered masonry and puddled water, leapt up onto the lower turn, and resumed their climb with the sort of coiled, concentrated energy that suggested he was very consciously choosing not to veer off after every moving object in sight.
John, aware that this fragile state of self-control might not survive another surprise, leaned low and kept one eye ahead.
At the top of the switchback, the magical sigil flashed again.
Another ball.
The second iron sphere screamed down the ramp toward them, iron and sorcery grinding together in murderous harmony.
The Red Wolf's muscles tensed under John.
"Oh no you don't." John warned, grabbing a little fistful of mane. "We are not doing round two."
The wolf made a displeased sound as the ball hurtled closer.
At the last possible second, the Red Wolf compressed like a drawn bow and sprang.
They flew over the rolling sphere by inches.
John laughed as the enchanted metal thundered beneath them, missing their hind paws by less than a foot. Then the wolf landed cleanly on the upper stone, claws scraping sparks across the old glintstone inlays, and launched forward into the inner sanctums of Raya Lucaria without so much as glancing back.
Behind them, the ball continued down the stairs and into some lower section of the academy where, judging by the immediate distant screaming, it found plenty of willing new friends.
Ahead, however, the architecture changed.
The open, battered courtyards and lecture spaces of the outer Academy gave way to something grander and older.
The halls narrowed, then opened again into high inner passages worked in pale stone and azure glass. Narrow windows cast cool glows across polished floors. Arched ceilings loomed overhead, ribbed with old lunar carvings and glintstone geometry. Bridges crossed interior voids. Towers and sanctum-wings rose around them in elegant layers of sorcery and silence.
The Red Wolf ran through it all with clear, excited familiarity.
John grinned over his shoulders, hair wild, shirt torn, and adrenaline still singing through his blood as the beast carried them deeper toward the heart of Raya Lucaria.
Toward Rennala.
Toward mommy.
And the Red Wolf did not slow until they reached the grand lift.
It waited beyond a final stretch of inner stonework and high Academy arches, broad and circular and wrought into the bones of Raya Lucaria with enough old glintstone craft to make the whole platform hum beneath their feet. Pale blue sigils glimmered across the engraved surface in concentric rings, and the shaft above vanished upward into shadow and sorcerous haze.
John knew this lift. Or rather, he knew what waited at the top of it.
The Grand Library. Rennala's prison. Rennala's nest. Rennala's grave without the courtesy of dirt.
The Red Wolf paced once in place, tail swishing in broad, impatient arcs as though the existence of vertical travel offended him on a spiritual level. John slid from his back and stepped onto the platform beside him, one hand still resting lightly against that thick crimson mane.
"All right…" He murmured, smiling despite the strange little tension taking shape in his chest. "Almost there."
The wolf barked once, sharp and eager.
Then the lift began to rise.
Its movement was smooth in the way only powerful magic ever really managed, not the creaking labor of chains and gears, but the soundless certainty of sorcery enforcing direction upon the world.
The stone beneath them glided upward through the great shaft while blue light washed over walls etched with old lunar motifs, glintstone geometries, and Carian flourishes half-buried beneath Raya Lucaria's colder architectural arrogance.
John folded his arms and rocked slightly back onto one heel, trying and failing to pretend he was not weirdly excited.
The Red Wolf failed less elegantly.
He paced, huffed and looked up, then looked at the rising walls. And then looked at John and whined, as if asking why the platform was not already done being slow.
John laughed softly and rubbed the side of his neck. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Same."
When the lift finally reached the top, the platform settled with a faint click and a low pulse of blue-white light.
The gate ahead opened.
John and the wolf stepped out together.
What followed immediately after could only be described as a brief and educational visit to the sorcerers who had sent that oversized metal death-ball down at them earlier.
They had, apparently, assumed the ball would solve their problem.
It had not.
There were three of them on the upper landing, all in Academy robes, all standing behind a lattice of faded protective sigils and half-toppled cover, and all very obviously in the process of arguing about whether to summon another sphere when the Red Wolf emerged from the lift with John beside him and the sort of murderous enthusiasm only a beloved house-beast and a demigod on a petty streak could produce.
One looked up first.
His face drained of color.
John smiled brilliantly and raised one hand. "Hey, fellas!"
The Red Wolf lunged.
The next ten seconds were, by any reasonable standard, painful.
The first sorcerer got bowled into a wall before he could finish drawing his spell-circle. The second tried to flee and got clipped at the knees by the wolf's shoulder, folding with a shriek and hitting the floor hard enough to lose both dignity and staff.
The third had enough presence of mind to fire a quick volley of glintstone shards, which John casually batted aside with his draconic arm before stepping in, catching the man by the front of his robes, and introducing his face to a support pillar with enough force to make the whole landing ring.
No one died.
Mostly because John was in a good mood.
The Red Wolf barked sharply at the first one after pinning him beneath a forepaw, and the man nodded so frantically that John almost felt bad.
Almost.
"There!" John said brightly, brushing his hands together as if to cleanse them of dust. "Punishment delivered. Let's go see mommy."
The Red Wolf immediately forgot the sorcerers existed and bounded away at his side with renewed enthusiasm.
Only one more obstacle stood between them and the royal library.
The Carian Knight.
He waited before the entrance like a line drawn by oath and steel.
John slowed a fraction the moment he saw him.
The knight stood alone at the threshold of the great doors, a blue-cloaked figure in silvered armor that bore none of the fussy Academy excess surrounding them.
Where Raya Lucaria's soldiers and sorcerers looked like products of institution and rank, this man looked like something older. He was cleaner, sharper. A knight out of another tradition entirely.
Which made sense, he was a Carian, after all.
His armor was elegant without becoming vain, every plate fitted close and practical, every edge polished but not decorative. His shield rested at his side. His blade remained sheathed, but only just. Pale moonlight-blue details were worked into the steel in subtle lines, and his posture was perfect, not stiff, not strained, not panicked.
He simply stood there.
And when he looked up at John and the Red Wolf approaching, his face did not change much at all under the helmet.
That alone made him stand out more than half the Academy combined.
The knight inclined his head only the barest degree.
"I am Moongrum, Carian Knight." He announced, his voice low and steady. "Johnathan Pendragon. Turn back at once."
John's brows rose with immediate approval.
Moongrum continued, gaze never wavering.
"I am oath-bound to the lady beyond these doors. I shall not permit any who would bring her harm to pass. Demigods included."
The Red Wolf slowed beside John, ears flicking, body already reading the knight as obstacle rather than threat.
John, however, only smirked.
"You needn't worry so much!" He said lightly. "I'm just here to visit my mother-in-law for the first time."
Moongrum stared at him with a deadpan stare of a man whose soul had chosen not to interact with what it had just heard.
John shrugged, easy and shameless as ever, and tilted his head toward the knight.
"Well, you heard him…" He patted the Red Wolf once on the shoulder and grinned. "He's not letting us go see mommy."
The Red Wolf's ears snapped back in immediate indignation.
A low, furious growl rolled out of his chest, and then he launched himself straight at Moongrum with the righteous wrath of a child being denied access to his mother.
For the first time since John had seen him, the knight made an undignified sound.
It was brief, sharp, and startled.
Then discipline took over.
Moongrum's shield came up just in time to intercept the wolf's leap. The impact thundered across the landing as steel met fur, muscle, and magical spite, and the Carian knight was driven half a step backward despite his stance.
John stood back and laughed.
Moongrum recovered immediately, blade flashing free in one practiced draw while glintstone light flared along the edge of his shield. The wolf lunged again, claws scraping sparks from stone as he tried to break through the guard outright.
Moongrum pivoted.
The Red Wolf's teeth snapped shut on empty air while the knight slid past his flank and struck with the flat of the blade against the beast's shoulder, redirecting rather than wounding, buying space for a second spell-circle to bloom at his feet. A small glintblade formation sprang up behind him, suspended like sharp pale stars.
The wolf saw them and responded like a creature personally insulted by ranged options.
He barked, then sprang sideways just as the glintblades launched. One shattered against a column. One carved a glowing line across the floor. The third the wolf avoided entirely by bounding off a wall and twisting midair in a way that no creature that size ought to have been able to.
John whistled low.
"All right, Moongrum, I see you."
The knight did not answer. He was busy surviving.
The Red Wolf hit again from above this time, coming down in a crimson blur of fur and claws. Moongrum raised his shield, let the impact glance, then tried to slip in under the wolf's chest for a real strike.
He was fast enough that most men would have died there.
The wolf was not most men.
A spectral glintblade flashed into existence over the beast's back and fired point-blank at the knight's shield, throwing off his angle by a hair. That hair was enough. The wolf twisted, slammed into him broadside, and sent shield and knight skidding across the polished approach stones.
Moongrum rolled up with admirable speed, drew a fresh line with his sword, and met the next pounce with a parry so clean that even John felt old gamer trauma twitch in his soul.
The wolf's forelimb was redirected hard enough to throw his momentum off-center. Moongrum followed it with a shield-bash and a quick thrust aimed beneath the shoulder.
The Red Wolf jerked away in time, but only just.
Marika appeared beside him, watching as the knight and wolf tore at one another in quick, glittering bursts of steel and red fur.
She turned her head and raised an eyebrow. "Is it entirely necessary to bully this blameless knight with the aid of this hellhound?"
John hummed and started looking around for a reflective surface.
"A hundred percent."
"That is not an explanation."
"There's history here." He muttered, finally spotting a polished metal panel set into the wall near the doorframe. He walked over to it and checked his reflection while Moongrum narrowly avoided being bowled down a short flight of stairs.
"That man put me through absolute bullshit back in the game. Him and his unavoidable autolocked parries."
Marika stared at him blankly, then let out a tired sigh.
"Thou art holding grudges against men thou surpassed long ago. Sore loser."
"Hush. I'm getting ready to meet my mother-in-law."
He studied himself in the polished metal and had to reluctantly admit she had a point about at least one thing.
He looked rough.
His shirt was torn in several places from wolf claws and earlier nonsense. There was dried blood along one sleeve, soot and dust at the hem, a few spots where fur and glintstone residue had managed to cling to him, and generally the kind of battle-worn dishevelment that might have played well in front of Melina or Millicent, but definitely not for a proper first in-person meeting with Rennala.
So he fixed it.
With a flick of his system and a quick mental selection, the ruined clothes dissolved away into light and were replaced by one of the spare sets Melina had insisted he bring.
It was semi-formal in the way only she could have approved of; a dark fitted longcoat left open over a clean pale shirt with a slightly loose collar and subtle silver embroidery at the cuffs, paired with tailored dark trousers and proper boots. Still mobile, still unmistakably him, but polished enough that he no longer looked like he had just personally fistfought a university.
John adjusted the collar once and nodded to himself.
"Better."
By the time he turned back, the fight was over.
Moongrum lay pinned beneath the Red Wolf in a posture of pure, exhausted indignity.
His sword had been knocked away. His staff had gone spinning off somewhere down the side landing. His shield lay several feet distant with a dent the size of divine disappointment caved into its center. His armor bore scuffs, scratches, and several fresh dents where the giant magical dog had won the argument through superior mass and enthusiasm.
The Red Wolf stood over him, paws planted firmly, muzzle inches from the knight's visor while a low victorious rumble rolled from his chest.
John approached with a smile and crouched down.
"Thanks for your service, kind sir!" He called out warmly. "And don't worry, I won't give you any more trouble."
Moongrum looked up at him with the kind of expression reserved for men who had just been told a housefire was technically over because it had moved into the next room.
"The lady will hear of this…" He muttered darkly.
John's grin sharpened. "If you're talking about who I think you're talking about, then you should probably get her faster."
He rose, stepped past him, and pushed open the next doors.
The Red Wolf immediately got off the knight and followed after John without another thought, leaving Moongrum on the stone with nothing but his oath, his bruised pride, and several new dents to meditate on.
Beyond the doors waited a small inner courtyard.
It was calmer than the rest of the Academy, and older too. A transitional place between the public halls of Raya Lucaria and the deeper private reaches where Rennala had long since been left to drift.
Pale stone underfoot. A few old statues worn smooth with age. Moonlit sigils worked into the floor. And ahead of them, a broad stairway rising toward two large, ornate double doors worked in lunar carvings and old Carian filigree.
John smiled and started up the steps.
The Red Wolf followed close at his side, and the higher they climbed, the more visibly excited he became. His ears stayed high and alert. His tail moved in eager, poorly concealed sweeps. Even his steps had changed. He was still massive, still dangerous, but there was something almost boyish in the quickening rhythm of him now, as though some long-buried certainty had begun waking in his bones.
John glanced sideways at him and chuckled.
"Yeah. You know where we're going."
'How're you holding up?' He then asked inwardly to his patron Goddess.
Marika answered after a few moments.
Her laugh was soft this time, stripped of most of its usual playfulness.
"How dost thou think I feel?"
John exhaled through his nose.
Ahead of him lay Rennala. Behind him lay everything that had led to this woman's ruin. And beside that ruin still lingered the architect, the accomplice, the victim, and the mother of half the world's issues all wrapped into one golden-haired goddess.
Marika's voice turned quieter as they climbed.
"This place…" She murmured. "It bringeth back many things. Not all of them bitter, which may be the cruelest part."
John said nothing.
So she went on.
"We were friends, once. Rennala and I." There was an old ache in the admission, worn thin by centuries but not gone. "Not merely allies by necessity, nor queens tolerating one another across borders. Friends."
The Red Wolf's ears flicked back at the tone, though he kept climbing.
Marika looked past John, past the doors, past the years.
"And then came Radagon. The Beast's influence. The Order's demand. My own compliance." She let out a small breath. "Even if I may name its pressure, its design, its manipulation… the thing was still done by my hand in the end. That cannot be unwritten."
John sighed. "Not great, then."
"No." She said simply.
He rubbed at the back of his neck and muttered under his breath. "Everything about this family is always fucked in some way."
Marika huffed a mirthless little laugh.
"Don't I know it…"
At the top of the stairs, John placed both hands against the great doors and pushed.
The Red Wolf, impatient with even this final delay, shoved his head and shoulder against one of them to help. Together they forced the ornate double doors inward, slowly at first, then wider, until the chamber beyond opened before them.
The Royal Grand Library.
It was massive. And not merely large in floor space, it was winding, layered, and strange, a place that seemed to twist around itself in moonlit shadow and old magic.
Shelves climbed upward in spirals and alcoves, bookcases curled around inner galleries, and ladders rose toward impossible heights beneath a darkness broken only by lunar glow and the rich ambient shimmer of sorcery saturating the air.
And all through it, dozens of juvenile scholars crawled.
John's steps slowed.
They were eerie little things, pale and misshapen, dressed in scraps of scholar's cloth and childish gowns, moving in clusters across the floor, over rugs, around piles of books and stools and little debris-fields of academic life left to rot into odd domesticity.
Some clutched books almost too large for them. Some muttered to themselves. Some simply turned and stared at him with wide, round eyes that held too much age and too little sanity at once.
The Red Wolf ignored them entirely.
John was a little more unsettled.
Not enough to matter, but enough to feel his shoulders shift. '...Nope. Still creepy.'
Marika appeared at the edge of his awareness, gaze sweeping the library with unease.
"I have a poor feeling about this."
"That makes two of us."
They moved farther inward.
The juvenile scholars whispered to one another in soft, broken voices. A few pointed. One dropped a book and simply kept staring. The whole library felt soaked in lunar magic so thick that it almost clung to the skin, rich and old and melancholy enough to taste.
Then they reached the center.
And Marika stopped.
Her heart dropped so sharply John felt the echo of it inside himself.
At the heart of the great library, floating above the central floor in a sphere of moonlit stillness and drifting books, hung Rennala.
She was curled in on herself in the air, turned away from them at first, wrapped in layers of dark blue and moon-pale robes that flowed around her like quiet water. Her long hair spilled in silver rivers down her back, touched with blue where the library's glimmer caught it. Dozens upon dozens of books circled her slowly in an orbit of old sorcery, their pages fluttering in the weightless current of lunar power saturating the chamber.
And in her hands she held the amber egg.
The Great Rune of the Unborn glowed from within it like a wound preserved in gold and honey, warm and terrible and beautiful. It cast a soft amber light against Rennala's pale fingers and the hollowed elegance of her face as she cradled it close like a child and a relic and a heartbreak all at once.
She hummed softly to the juvenile scholars drifting below.
To her sweetings.
The sound was gentle, dreamlike. Entirely unmoored.
John stared.
Rennala was beautiful.
Not like the sharp, triumphant beauty of Marika, nor the dangerous cultivated grace of Sellen, nor the fiercely mortal warmth of Melina or Millicent.
Rennala's beauty felt old and dimly tidal, something moonlit and drowned and wounded beyond measure. Her face was pale and fine-boned, her eyes enormous beneath half-lowered lashes, her mouth soft and tired and absent in equal measure. She looked like a queen who had been left too long in a dream she could no longer distinguish from grief.
One of the juvenile scholars pointed up at him. "Someone's here…!"
Another turned and peered. "And a large dog!"
Rennala hummed once more, then gave a soft little gasp.
"R-Radagon?" She whispered.
John froze.
"I-Is that you, dearest?"
He blinked in genuine surprise.
She had not even properly turned yet. Had not even fully seen him.
And still she had, somehow, mistaken him for the man who broke her.
Then she turned, and the moment her eyes landed on him, she looked as if she had seen a ghost.
No.
Two ghosts.
Her gaze flicked to his face, then above and slightly behind him where Marika hovered, confirming at once that she could sense the goddess too, at least in part. Neither John nor Marika yet knew how clearly. But she saw enough.
Enough for the color to drain from her face.
Enough for her lips to part in breathless disbelief.
And then her eyes dropped to the Red Wolf at John's side.
Her whole expression shattered.
"W-Wolfy?" She breathed, voice trembling with shock. "Is that you too—"
She did not get to finish as the Red Wolf launched himself up.
John had barely enough time to realize what was happening before the giant crimson beast leapt up at the floating queen, caught her carefully, and dragged her from the air to the floor in one ecstatic, overexcited mass of fur, barking, whining, and frantic affection.
The wolf was careful in the way only something monstrously strong and desperately emotional ever was, grabbing her around the middle and shoulders without claws, making absolutely sure she was not hurt even as he overwhelmed her with sheer joyous force.
He licked at her face, her hair, her hands, nuzzled into her robes, barked right into her chest, and generally behaved like a child reunited with a mother after far too long.
Rennala hit the floor with a startled sound that immediately dissolved into breathless, disbelieving laughter.
Marika gasped, then snapped her fingers.
"Wolfy!" She blurted, eyes widening with recovered memory. "That was it! I remember now! Radagon once said Ranni chose that name for him when she was young!"
John's head whipped toward her for half a second, stunned by the sheer amount of teasing material that piece of information represented.
But he did not get time to appreciate it.
Because he was too busy staring.
Rennala, still dazed and half in shock, had both arms around the Red Wolf's head now. She was laughing. Actually laughing. Soft and broken at first, then warmer, fuller, as she buried one hand in his mane and petted him with trembling fingers while the enormous beast pressed against her with all the devotion of a creature who had never, for one moment, forgotten her.
"I missed you too…" She whispered, smiling through eyes gone bright with tears and moonlight and ancient love.
And for the first time since they had entered the library, the room did not feel merely eerie.
It felt heartbreakingly alive.
Rennala's laughter trembled at the edges.
It came out soft and wet, threaded through with little sobs she did not seem able to stop, one hand buried deep in the Red Wolf's mane while the other cupped the side of his face with all the reverence of a woman afraid that if she let go too quickly, the moment would scatter like moonlight on disturbed water.
The great beast pressed himself against her lap with shameless devotion, tail thumping behind him in broad, happy sweeps that sent nearby books and loose pages drifting in tiny gusts across the library floor. Every now and then he would nuzzle harder into her hands, whining under his breath in a way so heartbreakingly eager that even the eerie little juvenile scholars seemed to quiet down and simply stare.
Rennala laughed again, though this time it broke midway and turned into a shaky inhale.
Then, slowly, she looked up. Her silver-blue eyes, still glassy with tears and a haze of old sorrow, rose from Wolfy's delighted face and found John standing just a few paces away.
For a long moment, she only stared.
John did not move too quickly. He had already made enough of an entrance into this family's life. He did not need to make this worse by rushing a woman who looked as though the world had just handed her back a piece of herself she thought forever lost.
Rennala's gaze traced over him carefully. The dark coat. The white shirt. The broad shape of him standing beneath the moon-soaked dark of the library. The crimson-gold eyes that had first fooled her aching heart into hope. The traces of draconic nature hidden and unhidden through his bearing alike. Then her gaze shifted, very slightly, past his shoulder.
Toward Marika.
John felt the goddess go very still behind him.
Rennala's lips parted. When she spoke, her voice was so soft it almost disappeared beneath the rustle of turning pages and the low happy chuffing of the wolf.
"You are not… Radagon…"
There was no accusation in it. Only a small, fragile disappointment. The kind that came from hope rising too fast and falling just as quickly.
John's expression softened.
Rennala lowered her eyes for a moment, fingers still moving absently through Wolfy's fur as if the contact was helping keep her together.
"Then who…" She whispered. "Who are you, dear?" Her eyes lifted again, finding him with bewildered sadness and faint, lingering awe. "Why are you here, for a lost old woman such as I?" Then, quieter still, as her gaze drifted again toward the golden figure over his shoulder. "And why is she with you…?"
She did not say Marika's name.
Whether out of caution, pain, disbelief, or all three, John could not tell.
He only knew that the question landed heavy.
So he smiled.
It was not his usual grin. Not the teasing, fang-baring thing he wore like a weapon. Just something kind and warm and human enough to bridge the impossible shape of this moment.
Then he walked forward.
Wolfy watched him approach, but only briefly, before apparently deciding that anyone who brought him to mommy was permitted near mommy and returning to his ongoing campaign of affection against Rennala's lap and robes.
John knelt beside her.
The juvenile scholars watched with wide, eerie fascination from every corner of the library. Some had gone completely still. Others leaned in, whispering to one another in soft, cracked little voices as the moonlit center of their broken world changed shape yet again.
John held out a hand to Rennala.
He did it gently, palm open, no pressure in it beyond the offer itself.
Rennala looked at it for a few long seconds, then placed her hand in his with slow and trembling grace.
Her fingers were cool, delicate, and lighter than he expected, like holding the hand of someone who had spent too long floating above the world instead of standing in it.
John curled his hand around hers carefully.
"My name is Johnathan Pendragon." He said softly.
Rennala listened with parted lips and tear-bright eyes.
John's smile warmed by degrees.
"And…" He gave the tiniest pause, mostly because even he could appreciate how absurd this was about to sound. "I'm your daughter Ranni's husband."
What followed were a few seconds of silence.
Complete, utter silence.
Even Wolfy seemed to pause for half a heartbeat, ears twitching.
Rennala stared at him, she did not blink.
Did not breathe properly.
Did not move at all except for the tiny tremor that passed through her fingers where they rested in his hand.
"Are… are you serious?" She asked with a very small and very disbelieving voice.
John could not help the soft chuckle that slipped out of him then. There was too much tenderness in the moment for his usual smugness to survive intact.
"I am, completely."
Rennala continued staring for another few seconds as though the sentence had struck her squarely in the soul and was only now beginning to unfold.
Then her mouth twitched, and it trembled before a tiny, breathy laugh escaped her.
Another followed after it, and another. They were soft, bright, and shaky little things full of disbelief and joy and a kind of relief that felt almost too large for her frail-looking body to contain.
Tears spilled properly then, slipping down her cheeks in warm silver trails as she laughed and laughed in little bursts, clutching at Wolfy with one hand and John with the other as if she needed to anchor herself to both.
"Oh…" She breathed, and laughed again through fresh tears. "Oh, how wonderful… how very, very wonderful…"
John felt his own chest loosen.
Rennala shook her head faintly, still laughing as if she could not believe the world had finally chosen, for once, to be kind to her in any measure.
"My dearest daughter…" She whispered, voice thick with emotion. "She finally left her manor… she finally went out into the world and found herself a fine consort…"
She looked up at him again, really looked this time, and whatever she saw there seemed to please her more rather than less.
"I was worried, you see." She admitted in a rush of soft, broken honesty. "I worried so very much that little Ranni would never find a man. That she would lock herself away forever with her books and her moon and her schemes and never…"
She laughed helplessly again, tears falling faster. "Never give me any grandchildren…"
John broke as alow laugh escaped him before he could stop it, startled and bright and oddly fond.
Behind him, Marika made a noise that sounded dangerously close to choking on divine secondhand embarrassment.
Rennala either did not notice or did not care.
She squeezed his hand with surprising strength for someone so dream-fragile a moment ago.
"Thank you…" She said with such pure sincerity that it actually startled him. "Thank you for taking care of my baby girl…"
Then, before John could prepare in any meaningful way, Rennala pulled with enough sudden, earnest maternal insistence that John found himself caught entirely off guard as the Queen of the Full Moon leaned forward and drew him down into a hug.
And because he was kneeling already, and because she was still seated amid robes, books, Wolfy, and because fate clearly loved him in very specific ways—
Boing~!
—his face ended up buried directly in her bountiful, motherly chest.
John froze completely.
The juvenile scholars gasped in a weird little chorus.
Wolfy barked once, loudly, as though approving the development.
And somewhere just behind John, Marika stopped being silent so abruptly that the silence itself seemed to crack.
Rennala, for her part, either failed to notice where exactly she had pulled him or simply did not care, because she only hugged him tighter with tearful gratitude, cheek resting lightly against his hair as she laughed and cried at once.
"My good son…" She murmured, still overwhelmed and glowing with old sorrow turned suddenly, violently sweet. "My sweet girl has done well at last…"
John's mind, ordinarily equipped to handle dragons, gods, and battlefields on fire, ceased functioning in any meaningful way.
For a few catastrophic moments, Johnathan Pendragon was reduced to a stunned, muffled, red-faced silence buried in the motherly embrace of the woman whose Great Rune he had come to steal.
------------------
Author's Note:
Rennala used: MILF hug!
It was super effective!!
Johnathan Pendragon is unable to fight!
In all seriousness though, as the next chapter's title states, his actions will have consequences
He must do what he fears to his very core… take responsibility for his words!
In other news, I quit my job!
YAAAYYY!!!! UNEMPLOYMENT!!!
...and I went back to Med School...
fuck.
Oh well, how's your day been?
…
Next Chapter Title: Johnathan Pendragon Must Take Responsibility!
…
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