Chapter 12
The Game Master arrived and declared Rune and Stone as the winners of the challenge. "Since Rune found the boar, and Rune and Stone started to fight it before anyone else arrived, they won the challenge. Because Vesper and Xena didn't participate, they won't enjoy the feast."
"Like The Little Red Hen," Lolita said.
Rune and Stone didn't know what she was talking about.
Lolita explained, "The Little Red Hen was going to make a loaf of bread, but the other farm animals wouldn't help her. But when she finished all the work of making the bread, they were ready to eat it. She wouldn't let them have a bite."
Rune and Stone smiled.
Vesper and Xena didn't say a word, but glared daggers at Rune and Stone.
What the Game Master didn't tell them was that that was the only meal they were going to get, so Vesper and Xena were out of luck and went without.
That made the win even better!
Not only that, they had a master chef prepare the feast for them, unlike on the pirarucu, where they just ate it raw, which was fine for wolves, but this was outstanding.
Instead of sitting at separate parts of the woods, everyone sat around the fire to enjoy the feast.
Rune suspected it was a way to bring the packs together in a joint feast of camaraderie, and she was glad for it. No one, well, except for Vesper and Xena, had anything to say but good things.
"I couldn't believe Lolita was in there swinging her short sword," Iris said, smiling at her.
"I had to do my part," Lolita said.
"Well, you were doing a great job," Rune said, though she had already paralyzed the boar's leg. But despite Lolita's small stature, she was a fighter.
What amused Rune the most was that Vesper and Xena were made to sit there to watch them feasting.
It would have been nice to talk without them being at the campfire.
On the other hand, the delightful smells of the roasted pig and sides made Rune’s stomach growl, and she knew they were salivating because they couldn't eat a bite.
It served them right. She was glad the Game Master had made that decision.
The pig’s skin had turned dark amber, crackling and splitting along the haunches where the fat had rendered out.
Smoke curled up from the pit in lazy ribbons, carrying with it the deep mahogany gleam of slow-cooked flesh.
The juices pooled beneath the carcass, shimmering and dark, collecting in the ash-gray hollow of the pit.
Once it was done cooking, the chef sliced the carving knife slowly and deliberately through the crust, a dry, rasping sound, before the blade found the softer flesh below.
They were served succulent meat, potatoes, gravy, and green beans.
Rune licked her lips. She couldn't help herself. It smelled too good.
The first bite delivered a split-second of salty crunch before the fat beneath dissolved warm and thick across the tongue.
Rune glanced at Stone, and he had taken his first bite and was licking his lips, smiling at her. He leaned over and kissed her mouth. She smiled and kissed him back.
But then she dug into her mashed potatoes, pork gravy, and green beans, enjoying every tasty bite.
"Those of you who used bows and arrows and the slingshot were truly effective on the boar," Stone said, giving them credit and praise.
Caspian held up a piece of meat and said, "I think an arrow went through right here."
They all laughed.
Vesper and Xena were sitting on rocks nearby, watching them, listening in, looking like they had made a mistake for not helping take down the boar.
If so, they were right.
It looked like some camaraderie was building among all the competitors, minus Vesper and Xena, who had helped capture the boar. And that was a good thing.
When they finished the meal, they returned to the gaming facility, and everyone went off to do whatever they wanted to. Rune headed to the library, and Stone went with her.
"You're going to read a book?" Stone asked her.
"If they have The Little Red Hen, yes."
Stone smiled. "It sounds like a children's book."
"Yes, but I want to see the details."
The librarian smiled. "I haven't seen you in here before."
"Has anyone come in here?" Rune suspected not.
"Lolita. She reads everything."
"Did she read The Little Red Hen?" Rune asked.
"Yep. It's in the morals books."
"Huh, that makes sense." Rune got the book, and she and Stone sat on a couch together and read it.
"Now I see all the work she had done on the bread," Stone said.
"Yeah, it wasn't just someone mixing flour and then creating bread," Rune said.
Then she wondered if she should read more books that had morals in them, even if they were just kids' books.
She didn't even know how she and Stone knew how to read.
She wondered if it was something innate with them, part of being the fae.
She'd never heard anyone had gone to school, but they didn't live with anyone, so maybe it had to do with the goddesses who had saved them.
In any case, it was great news that they could read and could enjoy the stories. They ended up reading a few with morals, then pulled out books on sword fighting filled with pictures showing how they were supposed to fight.
Then Lolita joined them; Silas followed; Caspian showed up; and Elon poked his head in and saw the others. He came in, and he and the others started looking for books to read.
The librarian raised her glasses and smiled, appearing glad to see some of the competitors reading books! Everyone was lounging on the soft seating, nose in a book.
The scene was reminiscent of a peaceful oasis, where the librarian’s kind smile and raised glasses were a welcoming gesture in a sea of book-buried competitors, content to lose themselves in literary worlds.
Across the reading area, bodies draped over armrests and tucked into corners, each one absorbed in a different world while the librarian watched from behind her desk with quiet satisfaction.
A few competitors had pulled their knees to their chests to prop their books higher.
Then Vesper and Xena finally entered the library. Rune and Stone watched them. Everyone glanced up, but then continued reading their books as if they couldn't care less if Vesper and Xena were there.
Rune suspected that Vesper and Xena must have gotten word, or even just smelled all the wolves entering the library, and probably thought they were having some secret meeting about them—the narcissists that they were.
"Losers," Vesper said and left the library.
Xena soon followed after him.
Everyone was smiling. It seemed Vesper and Xena's hold over them was loosening a bit. But it didn't mean that they had ditched them completely.
Still, it was a positive sign.
After reading about swordsmanship, Rune grabbed a wolf-shifter romantic suspense book and started reading. Stone looked at the book and chuckled.
It wasn't a fae shifter book, but a straight wolf shifter one.
He grabbed the next book in the series and started reading.
When they had gotten about an hour into their books, Rune said, "Let's check these out, put them in our rooms, and practice sword fighting."
"Yeah, I'm all for it." Though Stone appeared not to want to put his book down.
"Do you want to get to a better place and stop?"
"No. I'll get to the end of the chapter, and the author will leave me at a cliffhanger, and I'll dive into the next chapter. Maybe the librarian has bookmarks."
They went to check them out, and all they did was write down which book they were taking out, and the librarian gave them bookmarks featuring wolves.
They thanked her and took their books to their rooms. No one else seemed to plan to move from their chairs; they were so engrossed in the stories they were reading.
When Rune and Stone arrived at the weapons training room, they found only a few instructors talking among themselves. And then they hopped to. Lolita soon entered the room, eager to practice with her short sword too.
Stone and Rune began running sword drills—blocking and countering, stepping wide to evade or closing the distance to strike
Sparks rose where their steel met. Footfalls and the clank of blades ricocheted off one another.
Students dodged back and forth in the designated sparring space, each locked into their own practices.
Rune circled her opponent with the wary focus of a wolf, her eyes locked not on the blade but on the subtle twitch of the instructor’s wrist that forecasted each attack.
Her own sword darted out in rapid thrusts that seemed to flicker in and out of existence.
Across from her, Stone parried with his chest heaving with the effort. Rune kept her world narrowed to the play of ankle and hip, the faint shifts in her opponent’s balance.
Above it all, the weapon master’s shadow moved along the wall, silent and watchful, keeping time with the progress of the duelists as they practiced swordsmanship—parrying, thrusting, using their footwork to dodge or rush forward.
Then Vesper showed up, and he wanted to fight Stone, but the weapon master said, "This is for practice only. If the two of you take this into a deadly match, you'll both be sent home from the games."
Rune struggled to concentrate on working with a teacher when Vesper and Stone began to fight.
Stone noticed that everyone in the weapon training room, including Rune and Lolita, was focused on the fight ahead.
Stone readied himself to fight Vesper, though he didn't really want to battle with him again, and he had already been practicing for some time before that.
He didn't trust that Vesper would follow the weapon master's rules and treat this as just a practice session; if Vesper got the chance, he would do something dastardly.
Stone noticed that Rune looked really worried about it also.
At least Stone had been practicing so he wasn't a complete newbie. As soon as Vesper struck at him, Stone blocked the blow. But Vesper quickly struck again, barely allowing Stone to recover. Vesper kept attacking, and Stone fell back, unable to do anything but defend himself.