Fabrisse Book 2 (Chapter 20)

Fabrisse didn’t know if the Quartz-Mutated Nibberhare had noticed them staring, but if it had, it hadn’t cared enough to move yet. It sniffed the air then lowered itself into a crouch that made every muscle coil like a wound spring.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” Liene whispered. Her hand dipped into her satchel. When it came out, she was holding a small crystalline orb inscribed with faint glyph-lines—another one of her emergency light traps.

The runes danced in tiny motes of light across her hand as she cupped it, trying to mask the glow. “I don’t know if this is strong enough for something stone-touched,” she murmured.

Earth, in its pure form, was considered the most inert of the four classical elements, and stone even more inert by extension. Its essence was density, permanence, the refusal to be moved. But creatures did not reason the way humans did. Many lived and died with their bellies pressed to the soil, their burrows hollowed through rock, their diets steeped in dust and mineral runoff. Over generations, their bodies learned to drink from Stone’s deep, unmoving well. It did not make them agile spellcasters—no creature hurled slabs of granite with a sorcerer’s precision—but the resonance seeped into their bones, their teeth, their armor, and possibly their neck skin too, in the case of this nibberhare.

In the past, Fabrisse would’ve wondered why generations of researchers didn’t dissect all these animals and figure out how they absorbed the element. However, after seeing Draeth cast a Rank IX spell—what could only have been Rare tier or higher—he figured maybe they already had. Maybe they had made a breakthrough and simply buried it, for political reasons.

Fabrisse tracked along the creature’s body and decided his Stupenstones wouldn’t get through. The quartz wasn’t random growth; it had spread in deliberate lines, as though generations of pressure had guided where the mineral took root. The thickest ridges spiked across its shoulders, its belly, even down the spine of its neck—places any predator would naturally aim.

Liene’s whisper was steady, but her free palm had already opened as if gripping an invisible haft. Lines of radiance stitched themselves out of nothing, forming a shaft first, then lengthening into a tapering head. A Lance of Light coalesced between her fingers

“Stay behind me,” she breathed. “If the trap fails, I’ll pin it through the joints. That’s the only place not armored.”

“What happened to not harming animals?”

“Imagine the pride your Department would feel when their student brings back something like this, Fabri,” Liene’s voice dropped lower. “If we can bring its carcass back, they’re giving us at least 100 Kohns for this rare specimen.” 

100 Kohns would be like ten merryberry pies. It would cover his eating expenses for some time.

Fabrisse almost let himself imagine the coins stacked neat in his pouch—until the nibberhare lunged without warning.

Liene snapped her wrist and flung the crystalline orb. It cracked open, spilling a lattice of glyphlight that wrapped the creature in a glowing net. For a heartbeat, Fabrisse thought it might hold.

It didn’t. The net couldn’t cling to the mineral plating. With one violent twist, the creature tore the glyphwork apart.

“Damn it.” Her grip tightened on the Lance of Light. She drew back and threw, and the spear of radiance streaked across the gap. Only to meet dirt. The nibberhare had swerved with its unnatural speed, the lance shearing a glowing line across the forest floor instead of the exposed joint she’d aimed for.

The nibberhare’s eyes fixed on Liene, more like a shard of garnet than anything living. Then it surged forward, quartz claws ripping up soil as a low vibration rattled from its throat.

The vibration deepened, resonating through its plated chest until the sound sharpened into a grinding crack. Segments of quartz along its back glowed, and then they rocketed.

[Adversary activates: Crystal Spine Volley]

A storm of spines launched, glittering like diamond shrapnel. Liene dragged her hand and cast her lightshield, the disc of light widening instinctively into a barrier dome. The first wave clattered and ricocheted, spraying shards in all directions.

But one spine slipped the angle of her defense, whistling toward Fabrisse like a crossbow bolt. Fabrisse’s fingers jerked into a half-formed mudra, lips whispering the mnemonic drilled into him for Stillbrace:

“Air stands still.”

He was supposed to channel resolve into the weave. But all he felt was the hot coil of shame, for freezing, for dragging Liene into this.

The spell formed anyway. The air stilled into a disc before him, and the crystal spine shattered against it. A shock shuddered through his arm, but the quartz cracked against the improvised barrier and fell in splinters at his feet.

For a heartbeat, Fabrisse could only stare. Shame had been enough.

His breath hitched. That would’ve hurt a lot.

The creature only used the covering spray as momentum. Its bulk lunged low, claws gouging furrows into the earth with each bound.

Liene frantically dragged her hand wide to create another light shield, but as a translucent wall blossomed between her and the charging mass . . . the nibberhare tripped. Its foreclaw caught on a hairline fracture running through the earth. A jagged fissure had unzipped the exact moment the rodent stepped on it. Fabrisse’s Shearline.

Before it could recover, he spun his fingers in a clumsy spiral, pulling stray threads of air together into a tight weave. He chanted his mnemonic and cast Whirlweave. The air smacked the nibberhare’s snout. 

The effect was absurdly mundane for how much effort it cost him. The quartz-beast reeled back with a startled grunt, whiskers twitching, nose wrinkled as if he’d just booped it with a rolled-up parchment.

[Damage Dealt: Nose Itch]

“You should stick to tripping it, Fabri . . .” Liene had already cancelled her shield and formed a new Lance of Light. “How many more Stone spells can you cast?”

“I can keep casting for a minute.” He’d worn Lorvan’s ring and Tommaso’s trinket for this reason.

“Okay. Keep tripping it. It’s gone back up!”

Fabrisse planted his heel into the soil and shoved his aether control to the ground. The ground quivered beneath the nibberhare’s claws, small tremors rippling outward in a circle. Tremblehold.

The beast’s quartz-plated paws sank a fraction into loosened dirt, but then the nibberhare sprang. Its hindlegs coiled and launched as if the earth’s shifting meant nothing.

[Adversary’s DEX Check: 20 > 12]

[Tremblehold failed]

He forgot about the dexterity requirement! This rodent was quite a bit too fast for him to contain. But . . . Shearline required the same DEX check. Then why did it work? He tried to remember the detailed description of the spell.

Effect: If the opposing creature is aware, it forces an immediate DEX check (DEX = 10 + Caster’s INT modifier) to avoid stumbling or partial restraint.

Ah. If I understand correctly, Shearline can trip the creature if they’re unaware.

“Fabri! Why stopped?” Liene had no choice but to press forward on her own. She used her lance like a polearm and drove it toward the creature’s exposed shoulder joint, only for the radiant tip to glance off quartz plating with a brittle crackle.

She swore under her breath and jabbed again, rapid staccato thrusts, but each strike scraped or ricocheted off the armor. The weapon should have been piercing; Fabrisse could see the points of articulation she was aiming for. But in the chaos of movement, her precision faltered. 

Fabrisse blinked hard, replaying the earlier stumble in his head. The nibberhare was once again focused on Liene. This was the chance.

“Shearline now!” he muttered to himself, thrusting both hands down.

The earth split a hair’s breadth from the creature’s foreclaw. Its step landed directly on the fault, quartz plating grinding against stone as the fissure yawned wider. With a sharp crack, the beast’s legs tangled, and it staggered off-balance in a jarring stumble.

Liene saw the opportunity and reversed her grip on the Lance of Light. The next thrust struck clean, slipping through the narrow joint behind its plated shoulder. The radiant tip punched past armor at last, sliding into living flesh beneath.

The nibberhare shrieked.

[Damage Dealt: Deep Cut To The Joint]

Her spell is strong! It cuts through flesh like butter.

Liene saw the opportunity and conjured a fresh shield in her off-hand, a compact disc of light. The nibberhare lashed down with its claw, but the miniature barrier caught the strike with a crystalline clang, holding steady. With one leg gone, its ferocity meant nothing.

[Adversary’s DEX Compromised: 20 → 10]

I can Tremblehold it now!

It tried to wrench free, but the ground shook minutely with Tremblehold. The hare dropped to the ground again. Liene pressed her assault. A few more precise thrusts into weakened gaps—armpit, hip, throat seam—and the nibberhare sagged. Its red eyes dimmed, body rattling as it collapsed to the ground, finally still.

Before Fabrisse could exhale, Liene summoned her last light trap. This one was larger, a radiant lattice spreading out like a net. The weakened creature thrashed halfheartedly, but its struggles barely slowed the glowing weave from sealing shut around its form. The bindings locked in place, humming as they constrained the corpse-like body.

Liene flashed Fabrisse a sharp grin. “That was my last trap. Let’s pull back before another stone-touched hare shows up.”

[Combat Completed: +52 EXP]

[Progress to Level 7: 4536/4550]

[Multiple Skills Progressed: Stillbrace, Whirlweave, Tremblehold, Shearline]

[Item Dropped: Crystalline Spine Fragment x4]

No! That’s not enough for levelling up! Again, he was fourteen points short of leveling, as if the Eidralith was teasing him.

Then he remembered something else.

I haven’t gotten my experience point from the field trip yet. It’ll probably only count after I’ve walked out of the forest.

He saw that there were item droppings, and when he scanned the ground, there were indeed fragments. He picked them up and put them into the satchel. As he turned one of the fragments over in his hand, the light from Liene’s trap its latticed interior, but the reflected hue seemed a bit murky. Must be a characteristic of quartz formed on lifeforms. He wasn’t sure if it was reagent, component, or just debris. Too crystalline to discard, too strange to ignore.

Maybe Min Hajin would know.