With a lightning-quick movement he’d have missed if he blinked, the snake jerked its head and spat. A wad of thick clear-white substance splattered against the transparent surface. It was probably venom. He hoped it was venom, and not just that the snake was pleased to see him. Either way, he was glad for the protective glass barrier that separated them.
Behind him, Coll flinched backward.
“—ing cobra!” he cursed.
Benin was impressed the warrior had recognized one of the creature’s component species. “How did you know?”
“What?”
Benin rolled his eyes. Okay, maybe not.
Coll gave the hamadryad’s tank a comically wide berth, then asked, “So what kind of animal are we looking for? Owl? Cat? Toad?”
“Haven’t spent much time around mages before, have you?”
“Well, no. Just you, actually, but my dad once told me a story about a wizard who…”
Benin shook his head and tuned him out, focusing instead on examining the next exotic caged creature: an antlion, which was an impractical hybrid if ever he’d seen one.
As he moved on to the next enclosure, Coll’s voice filtered back into his awareness.
“—kind of animal are we looking for, then? You never answered me.”
I’m not sure. I have no idea how any of this works. I think… I think I’ll know it when I see it?
Benin replied, “Something unique. Not a cat, or an owl, or a gods-damned toad. I won’t know until I see it, but it will definitely be something you’ve never seen before.”
“So, not all that familiar after all?”
Coll waited, mouth open in an expectant grin, and it was all Benin could do not to smack him. Why did I bring this utter fool along again?
“This. Is. Serious,” he managed to say without shouting. “All the high mages agree that the best kind of familiar is one with a primary element that complements its owner’s.”
“Complimentary… you want something that tells you how great you look in those robes? Because I can do that. Ben, you look great in those robes.”
Benin ignored him as he scanned the cages, occasionally glancing back at the dark doorway to make sure their presence had not been discovered. “The hamadryad would work,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “Its earth-based abilities would complement my fire nicely without opposing it, and the poison could have interesting possibilities. But… it’s a dirty great snake. Who wants a dirty great snake around them all the time?”
“You know, that’s exactly what my last girlfriend said to me the first time she saw me without pants.”
“Yeah, no snake. If I could find a different earth-based creature, though, maybe…”
Coll sighed heavily. “Trying to make you laugh is like trying to get blood from a stone. Or milk from a minotaur, as my dad used to say.”
Benin rolled his eyes so hard he swore he glimpsed brain. No way he could let that one go by without comment. “Except minotaurs are all male. And males don’t lactate, do they, Coll?”
“I think that’s kind of the point? I dunno though. I’m no beastiologist.”
“That’s… not a thing.”
He frowned. “Is too. It’s what Tiri is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is!”
“Nope.”
“All right, what is she, then?”
Benin sighed and looked up from his inspection of what looked like an electric mouse to give Coll a withering stare. “Tiri is a…”
Ah. What is it again? Something about crypts. And insects.
“She’s a crypt… a crypt… ugh…”
“Oh yeah! A crypty-antologist.”
“Something like that.”
Benin shook his head, tuning out Coll’s latest inane muttering about undead bugs and zombie spiders and returning to his assessment of potential familiars. He discounted the yellow mouse-thing crackling with lightning—Benin’s own element, fire, was quite volatile enough, though there was no denying he and the electric mouse would make a formidable team—and moved on to the next row of enclosures.
He bypassed several more mildly interesting yet wildly impractical possibilities, including a massive segmented worm with rock-like flesh, a turquoise turtle with what looked like an enormous onion bulb on its back in place of a shell, and a tank containing what was apparently nothing more than a regular carp which Arcane Sight explained would be ineffective if removed from water.
He was beginning to lose hope of ever finding the perfect familiar—until an orange flicker in the far corner caught his eye, and Benin found himself staring in wonder at one of the most beautiful creatures he’d ever laid eyes on.
The little animal was curled up asleep in a corner, its nose tucked beneath a bushy tail that covered most of its body in a softly glowing blanket of deep red-lit fur. Benin couldn’t stifle a gasp at the sight of that tail; the fur was shifting, slowly and gently, but not like fur in a breeze; rather, like slowly flowing magma. There were patches that alternated between darkening and glowing so seamlessly it was as if he were watching the embers of a campfire waiting to be stoked.
This tiny beast was about as perfect a thing as he’d ever seen.
“Ben?” Coll sounded nervous. “Ben, you’re making grabby hands. Why are you making grabby hands?”
At the big man’s overly loud voice, the fiery fox’s pointy ears twitched and its eyes blinked slowly open.
Benin’s older brother used to joke that his sibling’s first words were, “Burn it with fire.” While this probably wasn’t true, he did have a natural affinity for that finest of elements, and as a pyromancer he found himself drawn to it like the proverbial moth. Even had this not been the case, though, he would still have been mesmerized by the thing before him.
Sleepy sunset-orange eyes assessed him from across the enclosure. For a long moment they just stared, set to glowing by the reflected light of the tail they were peering over. Then the tail unfurled, revealing it to actually be three tails, joined together at the base like the curling prongs of a wrought iron fence. The creature stood, yawned, stretched, and then padded delicately over to him.
Entranced, Benin inched closer to the bars, easing himself down into a crouch so
