Animalians Omnibus

There are many ways to die at the Hundred Halls.

Pax Nygard has spent her childhood at the world's most dangerous zoo, and has a psychic fox named Kali as her companion, so she should be well prepared for the challenges that await her at the Animalians Hall. But when mysterious deaths at the local zoo and a dangerous rival create issues, she realizes it's the two legged kind of creature for which she lacks the skills to interact. If she can't learn to navigate the intricacies of human drama, while mastering the skills the hall teaches, then it will be her final year—in school and life.

Pax smelled blood on the way past the fyrehound dome at the Portland Supernatural Zoo. She stuttered to a stop, her shoes scuffing gravel on the path.
She hesitated to test the air again—not that she wasn't used to blood, she'd dealt with buckets of the thick red stuff when she was in charge of feeding the manticore, but her nose hadn't been enchanted for hyper sensing then like it was in that moment. She'd forgotten to have Esmerelda remove the spell before she left the herpetarium.
The brief tang she'd caught had been like gargling coppery fire—it choked her. The unexpected wave of late summer heat turned the scent rancid. Even without actively sniffing, her nose burned as if she'd snorted chili powder.
But her reluctance evaporated the moment she heard the shrieks of a wounded animal. The noise had come from her right, off the path, in a thicket of trees. Leafy branches whipped her bare skin as she burst through the undergrowth, cursing for the first time at the zoo's policy of natural landscaping. Pax fought through a bramble patch, where a thorny limb snagged her backpack.
The rational part of her brain reminded her quite dispassionately of the sheer stupidity of rushing towards the cries of a wounded animal, especially in the confines of the Portland Zoo, which was considered the most dangerous zoo in the world due to the prevalence of supernatural creatures. If a creature was being injured, it was likely something larger was doing the injuring, which meant she could be rushing into a more dangerous situation than she could anticipate.
When she broke through the underbrush into a small clearing, she had to accept that the rational part of her brain had been correct.
Stupid brain, she chastised it.
It was a dangerous animal. The most dangerous of all. And worse yet, there were three of them.
"Where'd it go?" asked a tall boy in a striped T-shirt, wielding a long stick he'd clearly broken from a nearby tree.
"In that hole," said a second boy, who had a zoo flag resting on his shoulder in the pose of someone who was always taken seriously. "Derek, you go over there and shove your stick into the hole. Me and Blaine will wait over here for when it comes rushing out."
The boys hadn't seen Pax yet, but she'd certainly seen them, and with growing distress, she realized they weren't just boys, but well on their way to adulthood. Probably around her age, had been lead to believe they were their parents' gift to the world, and had a severe lack of a working conscience.
She'd rather be facing down a long-tailed dragon with bad breath, but there was no way she was going to let them bother even a fruit fly if she could help it. It'd be a lot easier if Kali was with her, but since she wasn't allowed at the zoo anymore the little thoratic fox was at home in the shed.
Nor did she think returning to the main pathways would help since it was unlikely she'd find one of the guards—the zoo was radically underfunded—and the creature could be dead by then.
Pax checked that she was still wearing her Portland Magical Zoo shirt, took a deep breath, and yelled, "Put even one inch of that stick in the hole and I'll have my deathhawk bite your faces off. My darling Anthrax loves eating faces," said Pax with her arms crossed, glancing at the sky expectantly.
Three heads turned her direction. The man-child Derek had the end of his stick hovering over the hole, while his jaw hit his chest.
"Who the hell is that?" asked Blaine.
"Shit, it looks like she works here," said Derek, who was as pale as chalk. "This place freaks me out enough already."
Pax craned her neck towards the trees. "Come down here, Anthrax. Lovely, lovely faces to eat. Yum, yum!"
As she turned her back on the three boys, she pursed her lips and made the call of an African lightning bird. Despite the name, the creature was relatively tame—she'd gotten to handle one last year in the avian section—but their calls were shiver inducing. The first time she'd heard one scream, she thought a ghost had climbed through her.
Logan, the boy in front who'd been giving them directions, screwed his face up. "She might be working at the zoo, but there ain't no such thing as deathhawks, and she wouldn't have one with her outside of the domes, anyway."
Derek didn't seem to be buying his argument. He threw down his stick and backed away, breaking into a jog as he left the clearing. Blaine looked like he was going to stay until Pax spread her arms wide and screeched like the lightning bird again.
"This chick is messing with us," said Logan as he strolled towards her.
"Deathhawk or no, I don't want to get in trouble. She's got a zoo shirt on," said Blaine over his shoulder as he trotted away.
After the other two left, she was face-to-face with Logan. He had brown, wavy hair, icy blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. He should have been attractive, except she could see right into his rotten soul.
"I don't like when people mess with me," said Logan, slapping the flagpole in his other hand.
Pax's guts were doing backflips. Logan was calling her bluff. While she knew a few spells that she wasn't supposed to cast because of the dangers of faez madness, using magic as a non-Hall mage would get her into major trouble.
Pax crouched low and rocked on her heels as she decided if she should run, but she could still smell the injured animal in the hole and she didn't want him to finish the job.
He poked her in the shoulder with the flag.
"I wouldn't let my two idiot friends talk to me like that, so I certainly ain't going to let—"
Before he could finish, Pax knocked the flag away and lunged with her fist, driving it into his nose. The crack filled the clearing.
"Owww, fuck, you broke my nose," he said, holding his hands over his face as fresh blood streamed down his lips and chin.
"It looks like we've got a bleeder," she said.