Mistic Pets

Welcome to Issue 74
Created by The Mistic Pets Team

A Life at Stake
Written By Lugia

His legs were sore and his chest was heaving, but Ero would not stop climbing. Not with his brother's life at stake.

He was nearing the roof, judging from the chill the stairwell had adopted, piercing even through his layers of jet-black fur. Mist Co. was a formidable structure, fifty stories of paned glass and clay bricks designed to insulate chemists as they tinkered on this project and that, but up here the wind was not so easily tamed.

Climbing warmed him some, though, and for that Ero was thankful. And however useless fur might be in the sere warmth of Ravii Sorin, in the realm of blizzards, it could spell the difference between life and death.

One more flight, that's all, Ero told himself, and you'll be there. He was running guided only by the words of Rae's Sent Prophet, the Anya bearing no mortal name. For all he knew, "there" could be a trap, a steep and windy trail to a night-altar. He would have killed me there if I was to be a sacrifice, thought Ero, but even a hundred leagues from the Sent he didn't feel safe enough to shiver.

Disoriented by that thought, he almost missed the doorway. It had come up sooner than he'd expected, and he was still sprinting when a gilded 7 caught his eye. Aha. Boasting sharper instincts than most Anyai of his age, Ero was able to catch himself before he ventured up a flight too far. My brother's quick as a super-Anya, he recalled Vyn boasting to his classmates, mere days before the illness took his voice. Ero darted beneath the empty doorframe and into a long moonlit hall, the smile he'd been holding for so long finally surfacing. 

He was no more a super-Anya than his brother, the kit he'd raised, the gregarious child he'd watched grow, but now more than ever he wished to have the fabled strength of Boran Whiteclaw, the ethereal speed of the oracle Spell, the healing prowess of Pandoria above. I could have saved you before this black humor wicked your voice away. But Ero would not think of what was past. There were other ways to communicate, smiles and laughs, parchment, even, but a life was more valuable than words could ever describe.

Shadows lengthened all around him as he made his quick way down the hall, gathering to watch the intruder at his work. Doors painted silver by the moon's glow winked at him in passing, but they were nothing to Ero. 704, he realized, when a silver doortag displaying 700 caught his eye. That's it. He was glad for the number now that he'd drawn so close. What if he had passed it, or turned off at the wrong floor?

    Ero shivered, but he was too close now to skit down the hallway and back out into the night. His legs, he was certain, would not carry him so far as the cabin he'd claimed for himself and Vyn; some distance stood between Mist Co. and the Woodwraith Forest, and without breaks the journey was nigh on impossible. And to make that return empty-handed... I will not think of that. I will only run.

When he found the door it was locked, as he'd expected it to be. Upon closer inspection it was a simple mechanism, deftly popped with a sharpened claw. Once the click sounded, he pulled the door open, a wash of warm air pressing against his fur. Perfect. Perhaps too perfect.

He scanned the room, peering through the darkness. In it, he saw the murky outline of a trestle table in a most distressing state of mess. He went to it, hands running over the disorder, shoving aside padded folders and overturning anything that could hold the panacea the Sent had described.

And then he found them: two vials, carefully padded and secured in a nest of smooth round rocks. Simple as that. Ero was in a state of disbelief, but still he stowed the vials in the folds of his fur, securing them gingerly. He had just enough time to find a pen and scrabble out a few lines before the words came.

"Someone in here?"

Ero turned softly on his heel. A guard. Instinctively he stumbled back, sending two chairs rolling into the darkness with pitiful whines. That cannot be. Ero fought to keep his breath steady. I unarmed the building, all of it, you're not supposed to be here.

But unless he was dreaming, the Gourix before him was very much real. "Come on now, Ken," he chided into the darkness. "I know you're in here. Don't think I'll fall for that old 'ghost chair' trick again."

With newfound relief Ero eyed the Gourix; was it possible that he could not see through the darkness? Anyai were most adept at peering through veils of shadow, but perhaps they were alone in that.

The Gourix knit his brows when there was no answer, the scar along his cheek curving down as he frowned. There was a moment in which he vacillated at the door, one taloned foot already in the room and the other close. He could go either way, Ero thought... until the guard shook his head and pressed into the room.

He was fumbling around for a light switch when Ero drove into him, leading with unsheathed claws. "Wha--" he grunted, before one pierced through a chink in his scaling and found tender flesh. His words melted into a roar, clarion as any alarm.

But Ero was past him by then, running quite literally for his life, his mind racing. One of his feet caught on the other as he passed through the doorway and he pitched forward. His escape might have stopped then and there, but with some difficulty he spread his paws and rolled, vaulting up breathless and quite unsure of what he'd just done.

There would be plenty of time for puzzling that out once he was back with Vyn, though, so for now he focused only on the stair that lay ahead. The Gourix would be tailing him shortly, but his injured leg would doubtless slow him.

The shadows that had seen Ero to lab 704 parted to admit the Anya, murmuring to each other in their soundless tongue. In one he saw a black mask graven by moonlight, in another the vials he'd stolen danced. Seht, speaking in riddles as ever.

The carpet was quicksand underfoot, thicker and heavier than it had any right to be, pulling him down as he ran, and the walls were pressing close around him like monstrous tombstones, but once Ero reached the staircase his feet were satin.

He paused before setting downward, though. Beneath him he could hear the sharp trill of a hundred alarms, doubtless set off by the Gourix, and at intervals a wash of red light engulfed the lower half of the downward stair in a harsh glow. You must first go up to go down. Someone had said that once, and at the time Ero had probably thought it a good piece of advice, but now he could see no wisdom in dashing up another floor to the roof. He didn't have wings, after all.

Another cry from the Gourix guard, alarmingly close, was all the push he needed to take the first step up.

 

He broke out into the night gasping, looking about the rooftop for any means by which he could escape. Standing frozen was pointless, what with his pursuer so close at hand, so Ero skirted about, first to his right and then his left, ducking behind anything that seemed large enough to hide him. He wanted desperately for decent concealment, but the roof offered only sparse decoration.

As it was, he ended up in plain sight when the guard emerged, stuck rather unfortunately in the circle of light between two meager lamppoles. The lines about the Gourix's eyes had tightened, and his leg was slick with blood from where Ero had slashed at him, but still he crept forward, eyes black as bad blood.

Ero caught the Gourix's eye, held it. The light at least offered benefit in the way of casting his eyes with a grim red glow, which was good considering he'd already proved his claws were more than decoration. With that in mind he tried frantically to enlarge his small frame. Even on end his fur was far short of being fearsome, but if he could plant in the guard's mind a seed of apprehension just large enough to give him time to break for the stairwell...

The Gourix drew his lips back and snarled in response. Sleet drummed down in a steady fall now, layering the roof in a downy cover of half-melted ice, but it did nothing to stop his charge.

But it was an ill-fated charge.

 

My chance is now. The vial was in his paw quicker than he could say, half from instinct and half from fear. He had the other stowed carefully away on his person, enough dosage for Vyn and perhaps another small child. But the rest would have to go without.

 

Ero felt almost sorry when he cast the vial full in the Gourix's face and watched him shrink back in sudden pain. But not sorry enough to shove him with all his might over the edge of Mist Co. and into the ravenous darkness below.

He watched the night engulf the body as it flailed. He'd been holding his breath, so he let it go with a wheeze. Run, he told himself, rousing from whatever trance he'd fallen into with a shudder.

And run he did, reaching so far as a grey steel generator before two more guards stepped out from the shadow-cloaked stairwell. Bigger than the Gourix, and winged, the Belragoth towered over Ero, gripping rods of tempered steel that appeared to have seen use many times. Up and down their lengths crackled electricity, strong enough to send the Anya's fur to bristling.

"Oh." He tried to keep his voice level, but the word came out as a high whisper. An injured Gourix he'd handled with some degree of difficulty, but Ero had no notion of combating 'pets that hunted his kind, among others, for sport.

So he turned and ran. Behind a thin stone smokestack he stumbled and fell flat, his knees scraping against the roof. He gave a cry and attempted standing, but one paw gave out beneath him, and the other was over the edge, flailing about trying to find stone purchase.

I can't be at the edge already, he thought, anguishing, but unless his eyes were deceiving him reality was a frigid drop into the night. And after, cold hard stone, packed snowfall blanketing it but lightly. Not when I was so close, no, Vyn can't... he can't die...

The guards were almost on him, their footsteps coarse and heavy against the rooftop. Ero heard snowflakes sizzling as they rushed against the charged tip of the rods, and again tried to get up.

 

When he did, there was snow in his fur, in his nose, in his eyes, but he had enough strength remaining him to stand (only slightly swaying) and stare down the Belragoth guards as they slowed to a stop before him, their claws sure and steady in the snow.

Turning away from them, paws dropped in a submissive clasp, Ero was left to stare at the precipitous drop before him. I calculated every nicety, the priest even read my future. He looked to the sun and said my brother would not die, it must be true. But now, cornered, guards at his back and cold regret below, Ero could see the truth of the matter. His brother would live, that much was certain, but...

He swallowed, chasing the dryness from his throat. He could not change his future, but he would change Vyn's. He would not let the Alchemist win.

Come morning snowmelt a traveler would find the body, see the note scrawled out on the vial's identification tag, and return to the cabin with news of a brother's ardent wish to see his brother survive. I am truly sorry I must die to see you live.

He jumped, his last thought of Vyn.

 

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