Reader Request Side Story: The Honey and the Bear (Part I)
Drawing perfect concentric circles with a piece of chalk when your hands are the size of overripe dumplings is a form of psychological torture that should be outlawed by the Mage Council.
Hania wiped her sweaty brow with the back of her sleeve. A thick streak of white chalk dust immediately transferred from her fingers to her cheek.
She didn't notice. She was too busy glaring at the massive geometric diagram sprawling across the obsidian floor of the Tower's private training hall.
An Archmage-level domain-folding spell.
She had been drawing it for six days.
The geometry must be flawless, Hania. Her father's voice echoed in her memory. Dravin had stood tall and immovable that morning, his silver hair catching the pale light from the floating lanterns. His eyes had swept over her.
Since your core is sealed, you cannot rely on instinct. You must rely on precision. Memorize the lines. Draw it ten times.
Then he had vanished into his laboratory.
Ten times. She had barely managed three yesterday before her fingers cramped.
"Pwesision my foot," Hania muttered under her breath, dropping to her knees to fix a shaky curve.
The chalk snapped again. She grabbed another piece from the pile beside her, the fifth one today, and kept going.
She was five now. She could run without falling over, mostly. Her teething was mercifully over, though she still had nightmares about the week her molars came in.
Domain spells were taught to third-year scholars at the Royal Academy. Not to toddlers who still needed a step stool to reach the top shelf of the pantry.
From the slightly ajar double doors at the end of the hall, a faint rustling sound caught her attention.
Hania's hand kept moving, tracing the outer ring of the circle. But her purple eyes slid sideways toward the gap in the door.
Two pairs of eyes stared back at her.
Lower-tier combat mages. Probably on their way to the armory or the storage closets. One of them was holding a stack of magical parchment tightly.
"Is she... is she drawing the spatial compression sequence?" the thin-faced mage whispered. "That's an Archmage-level spell! If she misplaces a single line, the feedback could take out the entire East Wing!"
His companion, a woman with short-cropped hair and a scar above her eyebrow, elbowed him sharply. "Shut up. If she hears you, she'll get distracted."
"She's five! She's always distracted!"
"She's a Noctis. The Archmage's blood doesn't get 'distracted.' It gets efficiently diverted."
Hania bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Efficiently diverted. She was definitely going to use that phrase at dinner tonight just to watch Kofery choke on his soup.
Before the two mages could continue their whispered debate, a shadow loomed over them from behind.
"And what, precisely," Kofery's voice low and dangerous, "are you two doing hovering outside the young miss's training quarters?"
The two mages spun around so fast the thin-faced one dropped his parchment. It scattered across the floor.
"M-Master Kofery!" the woman stammered. "We were just—we felt a spatial resonance from the hall—we were concerned for the Princess's safety—"
Kofery stood with his arms crossed over his chest. "The Lord Archmage has deemed this exercise safe for the young miss. If she requires assistance, I am here. If she requires a distraction, you will find yourselves reassigned to the Wyvern stables by sunset. Are we clear?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Then clear out."
The two mages fled. Their boots echoed down the corridor, fading into silence.
Kofery stood there for a moment, his shoulders sagging slightly. He ran a hand through his hair.
Then he turned and looked through the gap in the door. His eyes found her, still kneeling on the floor, chalk in hand, surrounded by her massive circle.
His expression softened. He raised a finger to his lips.
Hania tilted her head, widened her big purple eyes, and gave him a bright grin. "Look, Kof'ry! I making a big, big circle for Daddy! Like a giant donut!"
Kofery’s chest melted instantly. He offered a warm smile, nodded approval, and quietly pulled the door shut. The latch clicked.
She was alone.
Hania waited until the footsteps vanished entirely. Then her smile dropped, and she let out a snort.
She stood up, dusting off her tiny knees. Her legs ached from hours of kneeling. Her fingers were red and raw from gripping the chalk. There was a cramp developing in her lower back that she was definitely too young to have.
She looked down at the finished circle. Without the blue-white glow of active mana, it just looked like a giant doodle.
But as she traced the lines with her eyes, a strange sense of familiarity hit her. She had seen this exact layout before.
In her past life.
In a dark fantasy manhwa she had stayed up until three in the morning reading, ignoring her pharmacology notes and the pile of unwashed dishes in her sink. The protagonist had been a villainess who summoned a demon king using a circle that looked exactly like this.
Hania stared at the chalk lines. Then she started giggling.
The giggles turned into laughter. The laughter echoed off the stone walls, bouncing back at her from the high ceiling. She clapped her hands over her mouth, but the sound was already out.
She laughed until her stomach hurt.
When she finally caught her breath, she wiped a tear from her eye, chalk dust and all, and looked at the circle with new eyes.
If I'm going to play the villain, she thought, a wicked grin spreading across her face, I need a proper sacrifice.
She reached into the hidden pocket sewn into the waistband of her dress.
The pocket was Lusha's handiwork. Wrapped in a square of silk, tied with a silver thread, hidden at the very bottom.
Her most prized possession. She pulled it out and held it up to the light.
A single, long strand of silver hair. It glowed faintly, the way everything associated with Dravin seemed to glow.
Two years ago, she thought, turning the strand between her fingers. I pulled this from his head two years ago.
Two Years Earlier
Hania had been in absolute agony. Her molar was cutting through her gums. Her entire jaw felt like it was on fire.
Dravin had been sitting in the armchair by the window.
He was holding her with awkward stiffness. One arm cradled her against his chest. The other held a thick tome on ancient curses, open to a page filled with diagrams that made no sense to her three-year-old eyes.
He had been reading for an hour. He had not looked at her once.
"Be silent, problem," Dravin had murmured, turning a page. "The ambient mana in the room is perfectly regulated. There is no physiological reason for your distress."
That was the moment. The moment her rage took over. Blinded by pain, and the injustice of being called "problem", Hania had lunged forward.
Her tiny hands had clamped onto his immaculate, flowing silver hair. And she had yanked.
A single strand snapped cleanly from his scalp. She felt it go.
Dravin went completely still. He looked down at her.
For one eternal second, Hania was absolutely certain she was about to be turned into a very small ice sculpture.
Then the nursery door flew open.
"Oh, look at that."
Lusha leaned against the doorframe, crossed her arms, and smirked.
"The great Archmage, defeated by a teething ring. She's biting her own hands. Her gums are swollen. Look at them."
Right on cue, Kofery rushed in behind her, carrying a chilled teething ring and a stack of damp cloths.
"My Lord!" he gasped, skidding to a stop. "Please forgive her! She is just a baby! She doesn't know her own strength! She doesn't understand that she is—that she touched—that she—"
Hania, realizing that the cavalry had arrived and that she was about to be murdered by frostbite, immediately launched her counter-strategy.
She dropped the hair into her lap, opened her eyes wide, and let out the loudest lisping baby wail she could force out of her throat.
"Waaaaah! Dada look mean at Hania! Dada scary! Hania tummy hurt, mouf hurt, everything hurt! Waaaaah!"
Fat tears rolled down her chubby cheeks. Her lower lip trembled violently. She buried her face directly into Dravin's stiff chest, soaking his silk robes with nose-dripping, pretending to be completely overwhelmed by her own uncoordinated toddler hands. 'I'm just a silly baby, I don't know what hair is, please don't incinerate me!'
The silence stretched.
Dravin stared down at the top of her silver-haired head.
"Insolent thing," he muttered.
But the deadly pressure was gone.
Kofery rushed forward and scooped her out of Dravin's arms, pressing the chilled teething ring to her swollen gums. "Oh, poor little moon, shh, it's okay, Master isn't mad..."
Lusha sauntered over and plucked the silver hair from the crib sheets with a flick of her fingers, holding it up to the light.
"Such a pretty color," Lusha mused. "Like moonlight on snow. I think I'll keep this."
Hania, still fake-sobbing into Kofery's shoulder, watched through slitted eyes as Lusha tucked the hair into her sleeve and gave her a knowing wink.
Little thief, that wink said. I'll keep it safe for you.
Dravin, oblivious, went back to his book.
The Present
"Best trophy ever," Hania whispered, holding the silver hair up to the light.
She had retrieved it from Lusha a week after the incident, trading a promise of "future cooperation", mostly promising to help Lusha sneak weird magical spider-food into the Tower kitchen for the strand. The Spider Queen had laughed for minutes straight before handing it over.
Now, two years later, it was still here.
He probably doesn't even remember I took it. He probably didn't even feel it. His pain tolerance is ridiculous.
She climbed to her feet. Her legs were stiff. Her back ached. Her fingers were covered in chalk dust and starting to blister.
But the circle was finished. Flawless.
She walked to the center—the focal point, where the interlocking rings met, where the caster was supposed to stand.
She crouched down, unwrapped the silver hair. She placed it directly on the central node.
Then she stood up, raised her tiny hands to the ceiling, dropped her voice into her best attempt at a deep, spooky, dramatic toddler whisper, and began her chuunibyou chant.
"O Dwark Lord of the Abwyss!"
Her small voice echoed off the stone walls. She was grinning like a maniac.
"I offer you the... the g'netic m'terial of the gwumpiest man on the continent!"
She was definitely going to hell for this. But it was worth it.
"Accept this humble off'ring and pwese give me—"
Hummmmm.
Hania's grin froze on her face.
The chalk lines on the floor were glowing. The interlocking rings began to spin.
Uh oh.
She had forgotten something important. Her mana was sealed to ten percent. Yes. She couldn't cast high-level spells. Yes.
But that ten percent was still Noctis mana. And the hair in the center wasn't just dead cells.
No no no no no—
The domain spell tried to activate. It tried to fold the space within the room, to bend the training hall into a pocket dimension where the caster held absolute power.
But Hania didn't have the strength to define the boundaries. The magic began to warp, twisting inward like a collapsing star. The air pressure dropped instantly, making her ears pop.
"Cancel!" she screamed in her head. "Abort! I was kidding!"
"WAIT!" she yelled, dropping the act entirely as she lunged forward, reaching for the hair—
The space around her snapped. A blinding flash of purple light consumed the entire hall.
Then silence.
Where Hania had been standing, there was nothing.
The chalk lines on the floor were scorched black, smoking faintly. The silver hair was gone, burned to ash, scattered by the vortex. A single piece of chalk, somehow untouched, rolled slowly across the floor, coming to a stop against the base of the wall.