Reunion on the Canal

The morning of his Hunter Assessment, Felix walked the canal path toward the academy. His breath misted in the cold air, and he could feel the familiar weight of his halberd across his back. The stonework beneath his boots had been worn smooth by centuries of use — how many other aspirants had walked this same path? The thought should have made him nervous, but mostly he just felt ready. Years of training had led to this moment.

The creature changed everything.

It came up out of the water fast, pulling itself onto the embankment with a wet, scraping sound that made Felix's stomach clench. C-rank Ocean-element, he identified automatically — the way the water clung to its body in defiance of gravity confirmed it. Easily the size of a small van, with scales that caught the morning light. Tendrils of elemental water extended from its bulk, giving it mobility on land that should have been impossible.

Felix had his halberd off his back and into guard position before he'd consciously decided to move. Training took over.

The creature struck first. A tendril of pressurized water lashed toward his head. Felix brought the halberd's shaft up, deflecting the blow. The impact jarred his arms — stronger than he'd expected. He gave ground, assessing. The creature was fast for its size, and those water tendrils gave it surprising reach.

He needed height advantage. Felix backed toward a set of stairs leading up from the canal path, keeping his weapon between himself and the beast. He made it three steps up before the creature sent a concentrated blast of water at his back.

The blast never connected.

A wall of vegetation erupted from nowhere — vines, moss, leaves unfolding faster than Felix could track. Behind it stood another creature. Large, roughly the size and shape of a Bernese mountain dog, but covered entirely in moss and trailing vines. It moved with purpose, positioning itself between Felix and the Ocean-beast.

Nature-element, Felix's mind supplied. But wild Nature-element creatures didn't just help humans. They were territorial, aggressive. This didn't make sense.

It didn't matter. The opening was there.

Felix launched himself from the stairs, using gravity to add force to his strike. The halberd's blade drove deep into the Ocean-beast's exposed flank. The impact threw him clear — he'd put everything into that strike — and he hit the ground hard, rolling. His weapon remained embedded in the creature's body.

The beast rounded on him. Felix scrambled backward until his back hit stone. No weapon. No way out.

The dog-creature moved again, vines shooting out to form a barrier. The Ocean-beast's next strike splattered harmlessly against living vegetation.

Felix stared at the dog-creature, and something clicked in his mind. A feeling, like a word on the tip of his tongue. Like remembering something he'd forgotten years ago. He reached out without thinking, and his hand touched the creature's muzzle.

The world vanished.

Felix stood in complete darkness. Not the darkness of night or a closed room — absolute absence. No sound. No sensation except the feeling of standing on solid ground that might not exist.

A Bernese mountain dog puppy sat in front of him. Small, maybe three months old. It looked up at him with familiar brown eyes.

Bartholomew.

The recognition hit like a physical blow. His dog. The puppy that had disappeared four years ago, just... gone one day, never found despite weeks of searching. Felix had eventually accepted he was dead.

The puppy began to glow. Its form expanded, shifted, grew until it matched the massive creature that had saved his life. The connection between them solidified — Felix could feel it now, like a new sense he'd always had but never noticed. A bond. Permanent. Unbreakable.

The darkness spoke, though he heard no voice: Soulpact formed.

Felix opened his eyes on the canal bank. The Ocean-beast was still moving, thrashing toward them. His halberd was still embedded in its side, just out of reach.

'If only I could reach my halberd,' he muttered.

I think I can reach it! The voice came from Bart — not spoken aloud, but Felix understood it clearly. More than understood. He knew what Bart was thinking, what he intended to do.

Vines shot from Bart's body, wrapping around the halberd's shaft. They pulled, and the weapon came free with a wet sound. Bart's vines brought it through the air directly to Felix's hand. Felix caught it, already moving forward.

More vines coiled around the Ocean-beast, pinning it against the embankment. The creature struggled, water sputtering from its tendrils, but the Nature-element growth held firm. Felix drove the halberd down through its skull. The beast shuddered twice and went still.

Felix stood there, breathing hard. Bart stood beside him, solid and real. His dog. Alive. Transformed into something impossible.

Four years. Bart had been gone for four years. And now he was back.

Into the Mist

Law enforcement arrived within minutes — Felix heard the sirens before he saw the uniforms. Three officers, weapons already drawn, spreading out along the canal path. Their eyes locked on the massive dog-shaped creature standing beside him.

'Step away from the monster!' The lead officer's voice carried the practiced authority of someone used to being obeyed. 'Hands where we can see them!'

Felix opened his mouth to explain — to say what, exactly? That this monster had saved his life? That it was somehow his childhood pet? — but Bart shifted beside him, vines rustling, and the officers' fingers tightened on their triggers.

Then the mist came.

It rolled in from nowhere, thick and cold as winter fog but moving with purpose. Felix's breath crystallised in the sudden chill. The officers' shouts became muffled, distant. Visibility dropped to arm's length in seconds.

Something brushed against his leg. Not Bart — he could feel his dog through the bond, confused but alert. This was something else.

'Climb on.' The voice came from below and to his left. A creature emerged from the fog — wolf-like but wrong, its body too feline, covered in blue fur streaked with white over a pale belly. A long tail tipped in black curled behind it like a snow leopard's. 'Now. Unless you want to explain your new friend to the authorities.'

Felix didn't question it. He grabbed Bart's scruff — the vines felt strange under his fingers, moss-soft but strong — and hauled himself onto the blue creature's back. Bart scrambled up beside him, surprisingly agile for his size.

Gunshots cracked behind them. The fog swallowed the sound. Felix caught a glimpse of a shadowed figure watching from a rooftop above, but then the creature was moving, and he had to focus on not falling off.

They stopped in an alley three blocks away. The mist thinned, then vanished entirely. Felix slid off the creature's back, legs unsteady.

'You'll get used to it.' The voice came from behind him — human this time.

Felix turned. Takashi Kojima stood at the alley's entrance, calm as if he'd just stepped out for tea. Class president of Felix's year at the academy. Top marks in everything. The sort of person who made other students feel inadequate just by existing — though up close, dark circles shadowed his eyes, the only crack in that composed exterior.

He'd never spoken to Felix before.

The blue creature's form shimmered. It shrank, features softening, until a small feline stood where the wolf-thing had been — white fur, oversized ears tipped in blue, a pale blue scarf wound around its neck. Another shimmer, and it was just an ordinary housecat. Nothing supernatural about it at all.

Except Felix had just ridden on its back through an impossible fog.

'Follow me,' Takashi said. 'We have a lot to discuss.'

The hidden workshop was beneath an unremarkable shopfront, down a narrow staircase that Felix would have walked past a hundred times without noticing. The basement was cramped, every surface covered in tools, components, half-finished devices. Diagrams covered the walls — elemental resonance charts, creature anatomies, something that looked like a wiring schematic.

Aki hung upside-down from a ceiling beam, adjusting something in the tangle of wires overhead. Small and wiry, with messy hair that defied gravity even more than their position did. Oversized goggles pushed up on their forehead, grease staining their fingers and the collar of their mismatched clothes.

'Ooh, ooh — Aki was right!' They dropped from the beam, landing in a crouch, already scrambling across the workbench toward Bart. 'Nature-element bond, resonance signature matches the anomaly from — wait, wait, four years ago? That's the one! Aki's been tracking that signal forever and —' They stopped mid-sentence, head cocked. 'You're the owner. Obviously. The frequencies are all tangled up. Fascinating.'

'You know about Bart?' Felix asked. 'About what happened to him?'

'Know about the bond,' Aki corrected, waving a hand dismissively as they climbed over a stack of components to reach another tool. 'What happened is just context. Boring context. The interesting part is here —' They tapped Bart's chest, then scrambled away before Felix could react. 'Illusion collar! Aki can build one. Aurora's is Aki's best work, obviously, but need materials for a new one. Moon-element petals for the resonance matrix, otherwise the field won't stabilise and he'll flicker and that would be very bad.'

The white cat — Aurora, Felix now understood — sat on Takashi's shoulder, looking thoroughly ordinary. Not a hint of the creature that had carried them through the fog.

'The bond must stay secret,' Takashi said. His voice was calm but tired, like someone who'd explained this too many times. 'The authorities don't distinguish between wild creatures and bonded partners. If they find out, they'll treat him as a threat. Treat you as a threat.'

Felix looked at Bart. His dog pressed against his leg, warmth seeping through the moss and vines. Through the bond, he felt concern. Uncertainty. But beneath it, something solid and unwavering.

We found each other, the feeling seemed to say. We're not losing that again.

'What do I need to do?' Felix asked.

'Tears of the moon,' Aki continued, now balanced on one foot atop a precarious stack of equipment. 'Pretty name, boring flower, but the petals — the petals — they hold Moon-element resonance perfectly. Problem is, only blooms during full moon. Next one is...' They counted on their fingers. 'Two days! Which is fine, plenty of time, unless you have something else happening?'

Felix's stomach dropped. His solo Hunter Assessment was this afternoon. The culmination of years of training. And the group assessment was tomorrow.

'Take the Assessments,' Takashi said, reading his expression. 'Pass them. Then we'll talk about what comes next.' He gestured toward Aurora. 'For now, she can lend her collar to your partner. The illusion should hold long enough.'

'Recalibration, recalibration,' Aki muttered, already moving toward Aurora. They produced the collar from the cat's neck with practiced fingers. Aurora's form shimmered — not into the wolf-feline, but something smaller, more compact. She slipped into the shadows of the workshop, out of sight.

The collar fit around Bart's neck with a soft click. The change was immediate. The vines and moss faded from view, replaced by familiar brown-and-white fur. Bart looked exactly like he should — a four-year-old Bernese mountain dog, fully grown, the puppy softness replaced by adult muscle and the dignified markings of maturity.

This was what Bart would have looked like if he'd never disappeared. The dog Felix had imagined coming home to, all those years of searching.

Felix's throat tightened.

'Solo assessment this afternoon, yes?' Takashi said. 'You should still make it. And the group assessment tomorrow — that's the important one.'

Felix nodded. He had a thousand questions — about the bond, about Takashi and Aurora, about what Bart had been through in the years he was missing. But those could wait.

This afternoon, he'd prove he deserved to be a hunter. Tomorrow, he'd show he could work with a team.

Then he'd find out what came next.