The hunting mission was Franscene's idea.
She brought it to Clara one afternoon with the specific quality of someone who had wanted to ask something for a while and had finally decided the wanting outweighed the uncertainty. The board posting: glimmer rabbit collection, forest zone, two students minimum. She had been looking at it for a week without signing up.
Clara signed them both up without deliberating.
They went out on a Wednesday, through the forest path two miles from campus, equipped appropriately and moving through the trees with the ease of two people who had been running together every morning for weeks and had developed a working sense of how the other moved.
The glimmer rabbits' bioluminescence was visible even in afternoon light — small moving points in the undergrowth, quick and evasive, the specific behavior of prey that had been hunted consistently enough to develop respect for pursuit.
Franscene worked with her spear. The form corrections had compounded over the weeks into something noticeably better than what Clara had seen on that first morning in the practice yard, and the improved baseline gave the corrections somewhere to go. She missed the first rabbit. Clipped the second. On the third she tracked it around a root system with the patient accuracy of someone who had learned to let the target commit before she did, and took it clean at the end of the lunge.
She looked at it. She looked at Clara.
Clara gave her a thumbs up.
Franscene laughed — the surprised kind, the one that came when something you had been working toward arrived without ceremony.
They worked the zone for another hour. By the end Franscene had taken four, which Clara knew from the board records was more than most students managed on their first field mission. She did not mention the records. The achievement was Franscene's to find in her own time.
They gathered their take and started back through the trees.
◆ ◆ ◆
The group of men was on the path half a mile from campus.
Six of them, working clothes, weapons that suggested professional use rather than academy training. They had the look of mid-rank adventurers — experienced enough to be confident, not experienced enough to be careful about what they were confident toward.
They saw Clara and Franscene and adjusted their posture in the specific way of people who had decided to be interested.
Clara registered this and continued walking. The direct approach sometimes worked — just walking through as if the complication did not exist.
It did not work today.
The tallest one stepped into the path. 'Two young ladies out hunting alone,' he said. 'You need any help? We could show you a few things.'
'We're fine,' Clara said, and moved to go around him.
'We're heading back anyway,' the man said, moving to stay in front. 'Keep you company. Forest isn't safe.' He looked at Clara with an assessment that had nothing to do with her safety. 'Especially for someone who is as pretty as you.'
'Let us pass,' Clara said. Simply, without anger, with the tone she used when she was stating a fact.
The man reached for her wrist.
She knocked his hand aside. Not hard — the minimum deflection required.
He looked at his hand. He looked at her. 'Feisty,' he said, with the tone men used when they lechery was on their minds.
One of the others had moved toward Franscene. She had backed against a tree, her spear up.
Clara looked at the six of them, at the positions they had taken, at the trees that had closed off the direct path behind. She looked at Franscene — the wide eyes, the spear held properly despite the fear, the expression of someone who was scared and was not running anyway.
'I'm going to ask one more time,' Clara said. 'Let us pass.'
The man who had reached for her wrist laughed. Three of the others moved.
What followed was brief.
Clara did not enjoy it. This was not practice, not the clean honest work of the arena, not even the specific clarity of the prince in the courtyard where she had known what she was doing and had chosen every part of it. This was the kind of situation that left her tired in a specific way, tired of the fact that it kept being necessary.
The men closed in on the two girls and the leader, once again reached to grab hold of Clara. As his arm extended, Clara pulled a small dagger and did a clear slice aiming for his index finger. His finger fell the the floor and he began screaming in anger. As he held down on his bleeding finger stub he shouted to his buddies, 'Hold this one down for me and watch out for that sharp blade of hers!'
Clara looked him in the eyes, 'That was my warning shot. You still fail to have learned your lesson. Just for the sake of my own conscious, What are you going to do with us if we were to surrender?'
'Darling, with a face and body like that we promise to treat you real nice. We will even be extra gentle, no shutup and spend the rest of the day with us.' the leader said, clearly not put off by the fact that he was still bleeding from his hand.
'I see, so you are brutes through and through. I was wondering why you are all hunting in these woods that are frequented by the students. The monsters here is fairly low level but I guess we are the reason. I wonder how many female students or other women you have raped. Honestly, it is quite pathetic for somewhat strong men to have to force themselves on girls. What's wrong with you guys? Did you lose your patience at being rejected by women your own age?'
The men, upon hearing her sharp words, began to become enraged. 'On second thought, perhaps we won't be so gentle with you. Perhaps by the time we are done with you, you'll be damaged goods.'
'Ah there it is. Now I won't feel guilty for killing each of you.' She used the minimum amount of spells required. A simple force blade which functioned similarly to a windblade. She launched it low and aimed it at their knees. Within 2 seconds each man had their legs below their knees cleanly severed.
Clara picked up the rabbits she had dropped during the altercation. She took Franscene's hand — she had a habit of doing this, she had noticed, the specific physical reassurance that she had absorbed from years of a mother who communicated through touch — and they walked back to the path and continued toward campus.
Franscene did not say anything for a moment. Then: 'Are you all right.'
'Yes,' Clara said. 'Are you.'
'Yes,' Franscene said. She looked at Clara's hand holding hers and did not let go.
They walked back to campus in the afternoon light, taking the longer route that came out at the academy's east gate.
The following day, a report at the guild was annouced stating that a rogue group of adventurers who were known rapists and thieves was found dead after all bleeding out in the forest near the academy.
◆ ◆ ◆
The spider on her collar had been quiet through all of it, which meant Arthur had watched and had decided she had handled it. She took the silence as what it was.
She sent him a message that evening: *handled it.*
Back: *I know. You're fine.*
She held the device for a moment. Then: *Franscene was brave.*
A pause. Then: *I saw. She kept her spear up.*
Clara smiled at that. *Yes. She did.*
She put the device away and went to find Franscene, who was in the common room with the after-mission quiet of someone who had been through something and needed the presence of people she trusted without necessarily talking about it.
Clara sat beside her. Their shoulders touched. Franscene looked at the fire.
'Thank you,' she said. Quietly, with the weight of someone meaning something considerably larger than the words.
'You thanked me already,' Clara said.
'For this,' Franscene said. 'For today. For everything.' She paused. 'I've been here two years and nobody — ' She stopped. 'I didn't have anyone.'
Clara looked at the fire. She thought about the morning she had walked through the practice yard on her way to the morning run and had seen the form error and the girls watching from the fence. She thought about Arthur reaching into the hollow in the forest and asking a frightened girl her name in the same voice he used to ask anything else.
'You do now,' Clara said.
Franscene's ears went slightly pink. She looked at the fire and did not say anything, which was its own kind of answer.
They sat in the common room until the dinner bell and then went to eat together, as they had every evening for the past three weeks, because some things became arrangements without being decided.