Chapter 63: Now go put the remaining five thousand Skitterwhits into your jar
The Eastern Target Fields were technically outside the bounds of campus, which meant no faculty supervision, no spell range limiters, and plenty of dried leaves that looked extremely flammable. Tommaso had assured Liene and Fabrisse that this was ‘absolutely fine’ and ‘sanctioned in spirit if not in detail.’
Skitterwhits were winged, jittery creatures, no bigger than a butterfly. Fabrisse had imagined something vaguely mouse-shaped, maybe with glowy eyes. Instead, they looked like a cross between a flying ferret and a puffball, covered in iridescent aether fuzz that sparked charcoal whenever they hovered over the grass.
“Okay,” Tommaso said, crouching behind a slightly smoldering log. “You’ve got to slay them just enough to make them jitter, but not enough to make them combust.”
“Why would they combust?” Fabrisse asked.
“They’re called Skitterwhits, not Stablewhits,” Tommaso replied. “They’re not born to hold that much aether in them. You want a clean takedown, not an aether burst that takes out half the local moss growth. So even if I want to burn them all with a single spell, I shouldn’t. How far can you aim with your fling?”
“A few meters.” The rock should travel much further than that, but he should be more conservative as to how far he could reliably hit a target.
“Good enough. But you need to be precise. Skitterwhits are dumb, but one running amok might lead to them all running amok. Now . . .” Tommaso whipped his head around, eyes narrowing. “Hold on. Where’s Liene?”
Fabrisse straightened up from behind the log. “Wasn’t she right next to—”
They heard muffled footsteps, and both turned.
Liene was twenty paces away, entirely unsupervised, barefoot for some reason, and strolling through the field like it was a late-summer meadow picnic.
In her hands, she held a wide-mouthed mason jar. Inside: one thoroughly non-combusted Skitterwhit, floating in like a spark-happy dust bunny.
She grinned over her shoulder. “Hi!”
“. . . What are you doing?” Tommaso asked.
“I was collecting them,” she said simply, lifting the jar. “Look at this one! It tried to chew on my robe and then curled into a ball when I clamped the jar over its head. Isn’t that the cutest threat display you’ve ever seen?”
The Skitterwhit sparked nervously inside the jar, then sneezed a tiny puff of aether that briefly turned pine green.
The System pinged in Fabrisse’s vision.
| [Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”] ✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 0 / 10 ✦ Skitterwhits Befriended and Illegally Contained in a Mason Jar: 1 (not counted)
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