"Jak! Jak!" Alya waved to him from across the dining hall. He sat with them, a little quiet, fingers rubbing over the hole in his shirt where a wooden stake had pierced right through him. Training was a little different now. It had been a few days, but we was slowly making his way through the Gauntlet. With the Glove, Jak made it a point to always finish, but with the new obstacle course, he felt absolutely fine about walking away when things were getting a little too death-threatening. Gavin might be crazy, but Jak still wanted to keep his fingers on him.

Today's run was a little more eventful. Jak had slipped on a balance beam, tumbling onto a wooden spike. It was the worst pain he'd felt in his life. The healing obelisk was only a hundred paces away, which seemed like nothing when he started running the Gauntlet. With a hole in his stomach, that was the longest hundred paces he'd ever taken.

"Jak?" Alya was waving her hand over his face, shaking him out of his daze. "Look what Bobo made!" Bobo was with them, a quiet smile on his face as he brought out from under the table a wooden pole. It was beautifully crafted, a dark smooth wood that had a bunch of runes and circuits carved near the top.

"Wow, that's a nice... stick?" Jak said. He was impressed with the carvings, he just didn't know what it was for.

"It's a spear, silly!" Alya said with a pout. "Bobo made it and carved the circuits, and I'm going to enchant it!" Her eyes sparkled at the thought. "It's just lacking one thing. We need" she dropped her voice lower "some monster parts. They act as a kind of mana pool and enhancer for the enchantment." Jak thought about it.

"Yea, I suppose I can try go hunt for— oh! Be right back." Jak raced back to the Vipers Nest, and into the ground floor dormitory where the stage two guards slept. He opened his chest and lifted the false bottom he'd made, revealing the fire-boar tusks he'd put there. He'd almost forgotten them, just focusing on the Elite Guard training. He grabbed both and headed back to the dining hall.

"Here," Jak said, pushing the tusks into Bobo's hands, "will these work?" Bobo's eye's had grown very large seeing the tusks. It was a bit strange, the pupils dilated almost like a cat's. He nodded quickly.

"Fire-boar tusks? These will work perfectly." He squeaked. He dropped the tusks out of his hands, and as they tumbled toward the floor something flashed out of his coat around his waist height, grabbing the tusks and pulling them back into the cloak. It was so fast Jak only saw a blur. He didn't know what to think. Was that a tail? Something else? Every time they interacted, Bobo seemed stranger and stranger.

Bobo, suddenly realizing what he'd done in front of the others, froze.

"Ah, thank you, I, ah, have to go." He proceeded to do his funny hobble-run out of the dining hall. The others watched him go.

"He's not human, is he?" Jak asked.

"Not even close." Tim said thoughtfully.

***

They didn't see Bobo the next day, but the day after he hobbled into the dining hall with an excited look on his face.

"Human friends! I mean, ah, friends! I have finished the spear." Jak, Alya, and Tim exchanged glances. Bobo's disguise was slipping.

"Try not to call humans human, Bobo, it's... not something we do." Tim said. Bobo's face fell, and he grew tense. "Oh don't worry about it." Tim said dismissively. "We've shared chocolate, that makes us brothers."

"H-how... How long have you known?" He asked the group. They each shrugged and made vague noises, not wanting to let Bobo know how poor his hiding was.

"You're part of the team, Bobo," Alya said, "and more importantly, you've made something. Show us what you got!"

Bobo was still reeling from the sudden news that his friends weren't quite buying the very-long-cloak-at-all-times act, but he nodded and brought out the spear he had made. It was the same wooden handle, but this time it had a bone spearhead. The bone was also carved with patterns and lines.

"It's beautiful." Jak said, looking at it. Instead of a symmetrical spear head, it curved out to the right before finishing back with the point in the center, in a sort of half-tear shape, following the natural curve of the tusk it had been made from.

"It's not finished yet." Bobo said, offering the spear to Alya. "Take this to the mage's tower, ask them to show you how to enchant it. I'm not sure how that works myself, all the mages I've worked with are very careful to hide what they do."

Alya took the spear without a word and left the dining hall running. Bobo looked a bit awkward.

"I didn't mean right now... did she even eat?"

Tim, Bobo, and Jak had dinner together, and talked about the coming Forest Trip. Once per semester, all the students took a few days to journey into the forest. Inter-disciplinary teams were encouraged. The Guards would practice survival skills and care for the crafters. The crafters would better understand the source materials of their crafts. That was the superficial reason. The hidden reason, all the students were whispering about, was that this was a chance to find animal companions.

"Companions?" Jak asked, "Like Ash?"

"Exactly like Ash," Tim explained. "Having a pet is one thing, but a magical creature as a pet? Super rare. Super valuable. These pets aren't just collared slaves, they are too smart for that. An animal companion is a magical creature that chooses to be with you. Something you can't buy, you have to earn."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Jak thought about the giant moonwolf staring at him, and dropping her pup at his feet. He wasn't so sure about the earning part. It had just sort of happened. Tim kept going.

"If a magical beast comes across you, and finds you worthy, it might just follow you and become your companion. I don't know exactly what criteria we need, but I've been saving up my luck for weeks."

"I think you've mentioned that before, saving up your luck or using your luck. How exactly does that work?" Jak asked.

"No idea." Tim replied. "I just know that if I concentrate, I can nudge the threads of fate ever so slightly in my favor. If I don't do it often, I seem to be able to get a bigger result. I'm saving up now for the forest."

"Can't you just go into the forest any time, and find something?" Jak asked. Tim rolled his eyes.

"Of course _you_ can go into a dark forest full of terrifying magical creatures, Mr. Elite Guard. Us mortals have to wait for big trips, so we can have some relative safety."

At that point Alya burst into the hall, holding high above her head a spear that had runes glowing orange along the haft and tip.

"No weapons in the hall!" Someone shouted at her. Lowering the spear and looking a little embarrassed, Alya beckoned for the others to follow her and went outside.

Once they reached a field away from others, Alya turned around and pushed the spear into Jak's hands.

"Look at this!" She said, and threw her hand in the air. A wave of heat and fire poured out of her hand, blasting into the night sky. It was a short range, but Jak could feel the heat wash over him.

"Alya, I didn't know you could do that!" Jak was stunned. The fireballs Alya were always playing with were cool but mostly just visually impressive. This felt powerful and dangerous. Alya squealed and did a cartwheel.

"Second stage! I was waiting to tell you, but I can't keep it in anymore. Wooo!" She threw a hand at the sky again, making another blast of fire. Then she turned to Jak and gestured at the spear in his hands. "Now you do it!"

"I— What?" Jak looked at the spear with the faint orange glow in its lines.

"The orange light means it's ready."

"Ready for what? What am I doing?" Jak was afraid the thing would blow up in his hands. He wondered how far away the healing obelisk was.

"Oh right, you're not a mage are you. Hmm, try... just wanting it to shoot fire?" Alya suggested, unsure that would work. Bobo stepped closer.

"I put the trigger at the bottom. Use your mind to pull the mana back toward the base of the spear, like a bow drawing tension. Then let go."

Jak had zero experience using his mind to do things like this, but the concept seemed simple enough. He stared at the orange lines, and imagined them pulling back into the base of the spear. He could picture it easily, because every day he was pulling on a bow string. He imagined the same kind of tension building up. Then he made sure the spear was pointing away from the others, and let go. A roar of flame and heat billowed out of the end of the spear. A patch of grass in front of the spear went black instantly, the edges catching fire. It was far beyond what Jak expected, and he stood there in stunned silence.

"It not only stores my casting, it actually enhances it because my magic matches the fire-boar's so well." Alya said, pointing to the circuitry. "See how the glow has gone? When the spell is ready, it'll glow again. When it stops recharging, that's when you know the monster part is spent, and we'll have to make a new spear.

"Alya, Bobo, this is beyond anything I've seen..." Jak stared at the weapon in his hands, then tackled Alya and Bobo into a group hug. Bobo was tense at first, but then hugged back. While his short arms wrapped around Jak's waist, another pair of arms came out of the cloak and hugged Jak and Alya around their legs. There was a pause as Jak and Alya processed this.

"Bobo?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you have four arms?"

"Oh..." the bottom arms withdrew. "I thought you'd figured it out?"

"We realized you weren't quite human, but to be honest we still don't know what you are."

Bobo looked around to see that nobody else was nearby. Then he opened his cloak. Underneath the cloth, Bobo was actually a tiny goblin, about three feet tall, sitting on the shoulders of another goblin, who was blinking at looking up at them with wide eyes.

"Oh..." Alya said, not knowing how to finish her sentence.

"What is your name, Mr. Goblin?" Tim asked the bottom goblin.

"Oh, no," Bobo said, "we're not two... let me show you." There was a green flash and the two goblins merged into one another, becoming just one, standing in a pile of cloak that was much too large. "It's just me, Bobo. I spent all my Potential in a mirror image ability. It's good for crafting, and also good for pretending I'm human-height. Goblins aren't very welcome among humans. But Bobo wanted to learn crafting. I really like crafting." He shuffled his feet, looking nervous.

"Don't worry," Tim said, looking up at the stars as they started to appear in the night sky. "I don't really have a place in the world. I came here because I didn't really know where else to go. Jak and Alya did too. Us misfits have to stick together. Plus," he added, "you really have a gift there. Do you think a bunch of first year students made Gavin's wind sword? Not a chance. But this? This... fire-spear of doom? I'm just saying, I would choose that over the sword. I think we can look forward to great things in our future. With Jak's fighting, your crafting, Alya's enchanting and my chocolate, what can stop us?"