Danil ran.
He ran faster than ever before in his life. Fallen tree branches and leaves crunched under his feet with every step, even despite the silence spells he had cast around his own body.
'Werewolves are fucking crazy!' He screamed in anger and immediately tripped on a particularly thick tree root.
From the blow of his foot, the root shattered into small pieces, but the balance was already broken. With tremendous speed, Danil rolled head over heels on the ground, stopping only when his ribs crashed into a hard tree trunk. The teen groaned quietly in pain, even with his thick skin, it was quite unpleasant.
"And why are you lying here?" Silver's voice rang out. "Nobody gave you permission to rest. Get up."
What he didn't want to do was get up and run away again. He wanted to curl up by the fireplace under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and Luna in the other. Or fall into the sea and die. He would rather do anything else than continue this torture.
Have you ever run through a battlefield and written an essay on philosophy in advanced mathematics at the same time? Try it, then you will understand what exactly Danil was doing now. Only, instead of bullets, spells from Remus and small stones were flying around him, which Silver threw every time he made a mistake in casting a defensive spell or in a counterattack. Danil thanked the universe that these were not knives, his teachers had not gone so crazy yet.
'But next week...'
His whole body ached, the brand-new combat staff in his hands was already rubbing the second row of calluses, his soul wanted to leave the body as soon as possible. He had never used so much magic in one day, even during his raids into the catacombs.
'And Silver says this is the easiest challenge?'
All that Danil needed to do was get from the edge of the forest to the Iron Haven, while Remus, Kendrick and the girl from the sun lounger – whose name he never learned – followed on his heels. In order not to lose in the first minutes, Danil had to constantly monitor his surroundings and use as many spells as possible. Teleportation was forbidden, because the point of the training would be lost if he avoided all the tests.
"We are preparing you for a possible future where someone finds a way to block your teleportation." Silver said. "Such an experience will be useful for you."
Danil slowly rose to his feet, his throat wheezing with every breath, his lungs refusing to take in air. It seemed that now his heart was beating not two times a minute, but much faster.
"Bitch, how- kha!" Another pebble flew into the teenager's stomach, but he didn't have time to dodge or put up a shield.
"The Bitch is running after you right now, wanting with all her heart to rip your hands out and make fashionable gloves out of your skin. She's rather playful today." Silver said with a grin, passing another stone in his hands, only this time it was larger. "Now stand up!"
Rolling away from the tree, Danil jerked to his feet. His vision swam, green leaves and brown tree trunks mixed together inside the teenager's eyes, but he resisted.
Quickly throwing the air blade behind his back, he ran on, not even paying attention to the howl of pain that came after him. The spell found its target, which meant it was worth speeding up. Angry wolves were much worse than playful ones.
Dodging the thick tree branches that again floated past his gaze, Danil tried to throw off his tail. For the third day in a row, he was trying to get to the Haven, repeating the same actions in a different order. For three days the target did not change, nor did the pursuers.
Another stone whistled near the hole that replaced his ear and the teenager fell out of his thoughts; it was definitely not worth being distracted now. Someone had been running behind him for two minutes, and he was only able to notice his steps now. Danil took a handful of small earthen cubes from his pocket and threw all twenty at his feet. With a dull creak, the cubes returned to their normal size, acting like a springboard and launching the teenager forward.
The footsteps behind him stopped.
"Clever, but you'll have to clean it up after." Silver's voice came, but Danil could not understand where it came from.
The tricks up his sleeve were running out, magical and physical exhaustion came in waves, tangling his legs and taking his breath away. The veins hurt, although Danil had never even thought that this could happen. Pretty soon, he will simply fall to the ground exhausted and will not be able to get up for the next day.
"Three hundred meters." Silver said. Danil was getting closer.
The teen kicked the ground and was thrown up by a gust of wind. The way to the village most likely had traps and it was much, much easier to walk through the trees.
Only he didn't take into account the fact that the trees weren't safer than the ground. Someone had already prepared an ambush for him, jumping out of the shadow of a tree like a ninja.
"Gotcha!" There was a victorious cry from Bitch and two strong hands grabbed Danil by the torso, starting to pull him down. Another stone flew in his direction, only this time it hit Bitch's shoulder. She made a mistake.
The branch under Danil's feet cracked from the weight of the monster and the girl and broke in half. Without thinking twice, the teenager turned around, shielding the Bitch with his body from the blows of the branches, until a couple of seconds later his back met the cruel ground.
The girl groaned in pain, because even having protected her from most of the blows, Danil couldn't soften the last one completely. He himself was not in the best shape, and now a couple of dozen new bruises added to his exhaustion.
"Fuck-" he threw off Bitch who had not yet regained her senses and rolled over, starting to run again. He had no strength left to return to the treetops.
Finally, he saw a clearing in the distance, but Danil had no right to relax and rush there headlong. The smell of wet metal from somewhere nearby stopped him dead in his tracks.
Swerving sharply to the left, he dodged Kendrick's fist, who was hiding behind a tree. Blood was running down the man's palms, and a shallow cut was visible on his wrists. Grabbing his wrist, Danil pulled Kendrick towards him and threw him aside, sending a Stunning Spell after him to ensure that he was knocked out.
There was only a short distance to the village, but Kendrik wasn't the last obstacle he met for today.
Covered in a thin layer of earth, with a wand in his hands and an evil glint in his eyes, Remus stood between Danil and his well-deserved victory. The ground in front of the werewolf turned into quicksand, and above it, he could see a web of thin steel cables. And this was only what Danil could see.
"Looks... dangerous..." The teenager said breathlessly.
"Don't be afraid, none of this is fatal." Remus reassured him as he prepared the next spell.
Danil had to bend down to avoid being hit by a bluish ray of light. Raising his hand up, he was about to release another blade of wind, but a spell that his sister had once talked about popped up in his head.
"Sectumsempra!" The invisible blade cut the steel threads like a hot knife trough butter; he couldn't even hear them break.
Remus responded by erecting a transparent wall in front of him that seemed to be made of armored glass. But this was not a hindrance to the enderman's strength. Having placed a circular shield against spells around himself, Danil jumped over the swamp, flying straight onto the glass. Another stone whizzed past his eyes, but there was no time to be distracted by that.
The blow of the hand made a gaping hole in the glass and Danil jerked himself upward, flying over the wall and landing directly on Remus, immediately depriving him of his wand.
"I won." The teenager muttered and fell to the ground next to his teacher. He reached the village.
For the next five minutes he didn't move or even breathe. Endermen hold their breath for up to an hour, the oxygen in their blood moved slowly, adjusting to their heartbeat. The only reason Danil was used to breathing faster than usual was because he talked a lot.
The wet grass burned his skin, but he was too lazy to move now. It was much easier to simply regenerate the melted skin later.
His remaining teachers slowly emerged from the forest. Kendrick helped Bitch walk, throwing her arm over his shoulders, and Silver looked thoughtfully at his student.
"Mmm..." he drawled, walking up to Danil and sitting down next to him on the ground. " I'd give you a C+, but for your first try it's acceptable. Naturally, you have some things that will have to be corrected next time."
Danil groaned.
"What... idiot came up with this torture...?" He squeezed out with difficulty, finally taking a breath.
"Saint Creole, who once visited our Heaven." And again, this name. Danil was already wondering what kind of person that man was. "His student and the genie were also good company. He passed on to us quite a lot of ways to raise the youngsters."
Danil didn’t like something in these words. "Youngsters?"
"Children, usually under eleven years old." The old man watched with pleasure as Danil's eyelid began to twitch behind the goggles. "Of course, their task was a little simpler, and they only have to walk about two kilometers, but everything is learned by comparison. My Sarah, for example, quite successfully passed this test at the age of six, hiding from the eyes of her pursuers."
A groan came from Danil’s mouth again, but not because he was overtaken by a small girl, but because he finally noticed one inconsistency. Although the werewolves were beaten and even wounded, not one of them was even out of breath. There weren't even any wrinkles in Silver's clothes.
"Any one of you could grind me to dust in a minute." He tried to say it as a fact, but he knew he was starting to whine.
"Well not exactly." Silver disagreed. "Without any restrictions, Kendrick could kill you in about five minutes when he understands your teleportation scheme. Your fight with the Bitch may end up in a draw if she's lucky, but she won't have enough experience to escape or defeat you in a fair fight. But Remus can do it in about two minutes, spending the first one on preparing traps."
He had nothing to answer to this. Danil knew very well that even with all his strength and abilities, he was sorely lacking in experience. But with all his advantages, how could he lose? After all, he had almost killed Remus once before.
"You're still young." Remus patted the teenager on the shoulder. "You're here to gain experience and learn something new. Don't worry about it for now."
The monster and four werewolves sat in silence, looking at the waking up inhabitants of the Haven. Looking at them from the outside, it was hard to believe that every full moon they were attacked by an unknown enemy. Life went on as usual, and people tried to get through the day, even despite the danger hanging over them.
"So, what about you?" Danil finally asked, looking at Silver. "How fast can you kill me?"
The white-haired werewolf did not answer, he just pointed his hand somewhere towards the forest. Danil followed his hand with his eyes and winced in phantom pain.
The stone that flew in front of his face last did not disappear into nowhere. He crashed into a tree and made a neat hole through its trunk, leaving only a small web of cracks in the bark. He might not have time to escape from such an attack.
"Got it." Danil muttered, regretting that his magic staff would only be ready by the end of the month. Maybe then he'll be able to use more complex spells instead of being limited to what he has now.
"You can rest, you are free until evening." Silver stood up without much effort and headed towards his house. "At night, the Bitch will start teaching you how to use your stick."
Danil and the Bitch simultaneously coughed in surprise.
"Walking with a staff and swinging it like an ax is like carrying a dead weight. It's stupid and dangerous, there's no pleasure in it." The old man didn't even try to hide the fact that he was mocking them.
Finally rising from the ground, Danil noisily inhaled. His body regenerated quickly, healing its injuries and exhaustion within minutes. But magical reserves did not. Danil had long ceased to be surprised by the peculiarities of his body; now he could only sculk.
"I've never taught someone to fight with such a long weapon before, especially someone your size." The bitch looked at Danil appraisingly, rubbing her bruised back. For a moment, her gaze dropped to his belt, but then returned to his face. She licked her lips. "It will be an interesting experience for both of us."
The girl turned around and walked away, slowly swaying her hips with each step. Danil looked after her without a shadow of shame in his soul, but he had one question.
"Does she know that I'm not even seventeen?"
Kendrick laughed into his fist and shook his head.
"Of course, she knows, that's why she's a Bitch. No one went beyond words with her, neither girls nor boys. They say that she loves attention more than people themselves."
"And she chose her name herself?"
"No one knows. The naming process in a pack can happen in different ways."
The brain in Danil's skull began to scrape against the bone. For some reason this information seemed important to him.
"Naming?"
"Why do you think no one calls Silver by his real name? Or the Bitch herself?" Kendrick raised an eyebrow questioningly. "If you don’t call a wolf by their nickname, it feels wrong, as if someone put salt in your tea instead of sugar. The Named ones are those who received their nickname among the company of other Named ones. Another person can come up with it, you can give it to yourself. Each nickname distinguishes the essence of a person, sometimes superficially, and sometimes to the very depths of the soul, it's difficult to guess which one it is."
Danil glanced at Remus, but he just shrugged.
"My nickname is Moony, but that name died a long time ago, along with James and Peter. Now I'm just Remus."
Danil tensed. Remus spoke too calmly about losing his name, there was no anger or hatred in his eyes, only cold calculation. The last person who knew his nickname has now escaped from Azkaban. Most likely someone will die during the meeting of old friends. Danil decided not to stir up this topic any more than necessary.
"Does every werewolf get a nickname?"
“Sooner or later, everyone gets one, some just have to earn it.” Kendrick spoke quietly.
Sighing heavily, the man rose from the ground and also left without another word. As a result, two people remained on the outskirts of the village, Remus and Danil, watching the boiling life from afar.
"... Well, that wasn't good." Danil said to himself. His back was wet and peeling, but the desire to move never appeared.
Clutching the combat staff in his hands, Danil looked at the body of his opponent. Even a novice fighter knows that all movement starts from the legs so that the impulse of the blow is stronger. Only the wooden thing standing in front of the monster boy had no legs. As if stolen from a film set about ancient Chinese martial arts, the wooden... thingamajing had only five spinning rings with protruding sticks.
Danil didn't know the name of this thing, and the Bitch lovingly called it "dummy."
"Wasn’t there anything taller?" Danil asked, looking down at the dummy. It didn't even reach his chin.
"Get used to it, squirt. Almost all your opponents will be much shorter than you, you should know that." The Bitch answered caustically.
Muttering something unintelligible, Danil agreed. Skeletons, zombies and even slimes could not reach his height. Why he thought he should train with someone his size, he couldn't say. After all, you still had to try hard to meet people like Hagrid or himself.
"Just try not to fight with goblins, they will bite your legs off."
Concentrating, Danil stood still. To begin with, the Bitch asked him to show what he already knows.
Wood hit wood with a dull thud as he spared no effort, knowing that the indestructibility charms on both items had only recently been renewed. Due to the force of his blow, the first ring began to spin and the teenager was forced to block and hit the next ring.
This demonstration lasted about ten minutes, while Danil got used to working with the dummy, the Bitch carefully watched his every move. Every mistake he made, from small to large, was noticed by her. And as soon as those ten minutes were up, the Bitch told him to stop.
"Not so bad, at least you're not mindlessly waving it around." Although she approved of his form, the Bitch was frowning. "But the fact that you are used to fighting with other weapon can be seen a mile away. A double-headed axe, I assume?"
Danil nodded.
"Well, then you should add short blades to your staff if you want to continue to take advantage of its benefits. If not, then I advise you not to backhand so often. The blade of an axe is difficult to intercept, but anyone with a brain can catch a staff. Focus on fast, precise hits to internal organs. Later, I will show you where they are located in most living beings."
The Bitch forcefully spun all five rings of the dummy and took Danil's staff in her hands. Four dull blows sounded in the night, but the fifth was only able to graze the spinning stick and the staff rested on the ground, going down a couple of inches when the ring spun to the end and struck back.
"Still, it's a little big for me." She drawled. "But I hope you understand what I showed you. For now, try it for yourself, then we will solve the issue with the blades and pressure points."
Shrugging, Danil took his weapon back and continued to train. The Bitch stayed with him for another hour, correcting his stance and movements, and then went to bed. The boy seriously decided to take up hand-to-hand combat, because you can always be left without a weapon in the heat of battle, but it would be harder to lose his arms.
The night passed slowly. Danil persistently hit the crossbars of the dummy with his staff, sometimes blocking retaliatory blows. He was not bothered by the lack of sleep or the darkness that had fallen over the forest.
Three quick pokes, a block and a backhand blow that even made the dummy sway. The machine itself was indestructible, but the ground around it was not, Danil quickly corrected this. The pain in his muscles from the tension disappeared almost instantly, leaving his body stronger and sturdier than it was before.
He took breaks only twice – to eat. The body required fuel to function.
When the sun began to peek over the horizon, Danil stopped for the third and last time. He was interrupted by the quiet hooting of an owl and the flapping of its wings. A moment later, a strange-looking bird landed on his shoulder – it looked like an owl and a macaw parrot at the same time – and extended its claw to him, in which a letter was clenched.
The bird was blue, with cool white feathers on the tips of its wings and tail. She squinted one eye and looked at the monster boy with some suspicion. Of course, it was the Lovegoods' owl, as strange and unusual as they come.
"Hey girl. Is it from Luna?" The owl hooted approvingly. "Can I take it?"
Having waited for the second hoot, Danil took the letter and opened it with a smile on his face. No matter what, the new day started off great.
"I'll write an answer. You'll wait until I'm done?" He said and finally went to the dugout allocated to him.
Danil didn't notice how the bushes moved behind him, perhaps it was just the wind, but two bright eyes that flashed in the dawn sun said otherwise.
