The beast's bellow struck Ilmari's chest like thrown slate, claws shearing through the low fog. In that split second, an impossible impulse seized his thoughts. He locked onto the bug, forcing his will outward. Ice-blue runes materialized before his retinas.
`[Skill: Tame (Active)]`
`[Target: Skittermite (Juvenile)]`
`[Taming in progress...]`
His skin prickled. A faint friction hummed against his skull, like dry carapace scraping across shale. Rotten meat stench washed over his face as the brute closed the distance.
`[Taming successful! Skittermite (Juvenile) bound to user Ilmari Vesa.]`
`[New Skill Acquired: Chitin Whisper]`
A thread snapped taut behind his eyes. Not speech, but *vector*. He shoved an impulse down that thread. The mite broke into a dash—not away, but into dry bracken beside the charging brute, thrashing dead leaves into an erratic rustle.
The predator's charge faltered mid-stride. Crimson pupils flicked toward the noise. Driven by reflex, its heavy skull snapped sideways as hooked claws gouged loam where the siblings had stood half a second earlier. Ilmari hauled Kielo back by her collar.
“Run, Kielo, *run*!” he bellowed, his voice raw. He didn't look back, trusting the fleeting distraction. The mite led the brute away with erratic snaps of brush farther into the timber.
They ran until the bellowing thinned into fog. Cold damp clung to their tunics as they breached the iron turnstiles of Vesiros, slipping through brutalist concrete gates toward the low-rank dormitories.
Inside their unheated cell, Kielo collapsed onto her cot, trembling against the thin wool. Ilmari dropped down to inspect her boots and hem for blood.
“Are you bleeding?” he asked, gravel in his throat.
Kielo shoved his hands back. “I’m fine. But *you*—Ilmari, the perimeter is forbidden! A Wyrd-beast nearly cut us in half! If the Gilded Hand finds out, if Matron Orvokki hears we were near an uncontrolled anomaly while I wasn't mending some high-rank's split lip, she will tear us apart. She’ll lock me in the clinic wards!” Her knuckles whitened on the blanket. “You never ask for help. You drag us into the dirt just to prove you don't need anyone!”
The rebuke burned. He could not explain the unseen leash or the blue text; claiming the Gazer role could direct vermin sounded like fever talk.
“I had to test the boundary,” he said flatly. “The recruiters patrol the courtyard every morning. We need an exit.” He left out the rest: guild handlers discussing her rare mend-rate like cattle yield.
Around midnight, after her breathing leveled into sleep, Ilmari stood. The mite clung motionless to the underside of his desk plank, tethered to his awareness by that cool neural thread.
He slipped toward the Chronos Archive in the lower foundation, a storehouse of decommissioned curriculum walled behind warding glyphs.
The archive door was a slab of polished basalt framed by active sigils. Reaching into his cuff, he guided the insect onto the stone face. It navigated the micro-crevices of the jamb, passing beneath the trip-mesh without triggering an alarm.
Through the link, he mapped the latch mechanism on the reverse side. Six chitinous limbs pried the physical bypass pin loose. The heavy door unsealed with a dull metallic click.
For three hours he combed moldering slates and dry volumes, casting his gaze over discarded manuals until he reached an unindexed folio titled `[Treatise on Aetheric Anomalies – Vol. IV]`. Black ink covered several paragraphs, but blue text cut through the redactions.
`[Entry 34B: Gazer-Class Pre-Patch Capabilities]`
`[Information redacted by System Authority ‘Ouroboros’]`
`[Note: Earlier iterations of Gazer-Class exhibited unusual interaction protocols with Wyrd-matter. Suggests a deeper, more active engagement beyond mere observation. Further research flagged as ‘High Priority – Security Compromise Risk’.]`
*Pre-patch.* The faculty taught that Gazer was an inert scout role, incapable of output. But if the core protocol had been altered, then his taming exploit was an unpatched vulnerability.
In his office, Commandant Juhani Kantola paused the perimeter drone replay on his desk glass. The footage showed the predator's head jerk sideways right before it could crush the Vesa siblings.
Kantola scrubbed the playback frame by frame. The brute hadn't missed; it had veered off, drawn by a deliberate trail through the brush. Coordinated lure tactics required an active summoner or a high-tier decoy skill, neither of which existed on the southern fence log. He flagged the file for quarantine.
Pale dawn seeped through the clerestory slit as Ilmari descended to the basement vault. There, preserved in cracked amber resin along the rear wall, hung a desiccated nest cluster. He cast `[Appraisal]` across the dry honeycomb. Instead of a single readout, rows of pale blue text cascaded across his sight in endless tiers.
`[Skittermite (Dormant)]`
`[Class: Arthropod-Class Scavenger]`
`[Threat Level: Minimal]`
`[Status: Dormant]`
`[Hidden Status: Tameable: Loyalty Potential 100%]`