"Hey, you're getting faster Raph," Brit said to her "cousin" as she insisted on calling him. No way they make me marry a cousin.
"I'm not as fast as you though," Raph noted.
"I've been training up my whole life Raphiel," Britanny said. "But you SHOULD be faster than me I think. You've got my Dad's build, and I'm supposed to be slow for a cheetah."
"Cool, can I get as strong as you too?" he asked.
"Probably not," Britanny said, reluctantly. "But listen up, all you've got to do is break the sound barrier, and after that everything is easy."
"Hey, thanks, Britanny," Raphiel said. Then he looked upset and glanced away. Britanny frowned as she noted the direction.
"Everything's going to work out fine," she assured him, not explaining what she was assuring him of.
"What is she, seventeen, maybe nineteen?" Britanny asked. "What kind of freak asshole turns a kid into a weapon like that?" After her little run with Raphiel to test his speed, she was spending some quality time with her husband. She was having a hard time settling down after the events of her arrival in Main Guard.
"Calm down, Britanny," Stripe said soothingly.
"Sorry, baby," Britanny said. "I know we're supposed to be on vacation. But this is the same guy that set up my clan to be killed, the werewolves to be enslaved and had those kids put that damned collar on me. Do you know how hard it was to coordinate my outfits to that thing? Not to mention the jokes about a WERECHEETAH wearing a bell put on her by a bunch of WERERATS!"
"Yeah, well I believe you have your sisters to thank for that last part," Stripe reminded her as Britanny huffed indignantly at the end of her rant.
"This was supposed to be a vacation," Britanny said sitting down in something of a pout that quickly became a truly worried expression.
"What's really got you worried, Cheetah?" Stripe asked cautiously.
"I look at her and I wonder if any kids we have will grow up like that," she said quietly.
"We'll make sure that won't happen," Stripe promised her quietly.
Lydia woke up, though certainly not by choice. She much preferred the oblivion offered by unconsciousness than the nightmare she faced waking up. She didn't move as her eyes cracked open to see the sun streaming in. The smells in the room told her everything she could know.
Sheena was in the corner. There were more flowers in the room, she could faintly detect Raphiel's scent on the blooms despite their natural fragrance. And, of course, there was the smell of hot food, probably on the table.
"You're not fooling anyone, child," the weretiger said. "I could smell the change in your scent when you woke up."
"I thought you said you'd leave me alone," Lydia said woodenly.
"Britanny Diggers said that," Sheena said. "I have left you alone far too much already." Lydia did not answer. She could hear the weretiger tapping her fingers on the table. "If you insist I can run this like the prison camp you seem to think it is."
"About time you @#%$#% stopped pullin' my #@$%# chain." Lydia snapped.
"If that's the way you want it," Sheena said. Lydia heard the woman standing up and approach her.
This is it, Lydia thought. They finally realized that I won't give them any help. Lydia braced herself for the feel of sharp cats talons tearing her to pieces, and it never came.
Lydia hands were grabbed and held uselessly together by the tigress's greater strength. Then the rat assassin felt herself lifted up and cradled like a little baby. To add to the humiliation, she was carried thusly through the hallway into a lounge like area and set down at a table.
Lydia looked up confused and angry as Sheena left the room.
"What are you doing?" Lydia demanded.
"I'm getting your lunch," Sheena said firmly, permitting no contradictions. Lydia's mouth flapped soundlessly as Sheena left the room. Less than a minute later she had a tray of food in front of her.
"My apprentices will start breaking for meals in the next few minutes," Sheena said. "You can eat with them." Lydia mumbled a few moments before answering.
"How do I get back to my room?" she asked irritably.
"Walk," Sheena said. "Like the rest of us."
"I can't walk that far," Lydia reminded her, though the older were had already left the room.
As the tiger had told her, it was only a minute or two before the first of the apprentices started to appear in the room. The first was a human woman at least a decade older than Lydia.
"Wait a minute," the woman said. "This is the apprentice's room."
Another...apprentice entered and...barked.
Lydia wasn't certain what the next...person was. "It" was female, but other than that she wasn't really certain. She looked like some sort of hyena creature, but was most certainly not a werecreature of any kind.
While Lydia was trying to puzzle out the scent and appearance of the gnoll woman, the other woman went ahead and spoke in her own barking language to the human.
"Is that right?" the woman said, then gave a lop-sided smirk.
Lydia frowned, they were obviously plotting against her, speaking in a foreign tongue like that.
"Sorry girl, didn't mean anything by it." Lydia looked her up and down a moment.
"You...are an apprentice?" she asked doubtfully. The woman had the carriage of someone trained to the shadows and fighting. So did the...other.
"Not really girlie, I just work here," the woman said, sitting down. "The name's Hannah and that's Chublaka." The hyena person waved and barked.
"She says hi. Gnolls can't speak the common you see, but she probably understands it better than I do." The woman said the last with a bit of a roguish smirk.
"Uh right," Lydia said with narrowed eyes watching both of the apprentices. Ringers, here to make sure I don't hurt any of the real apprentices. She almost snorted at the thought. As if I CAN right now!
"How's the stew?" Hannah asked dishing out her own portion and sitting down next to the gnoll.
The gnoll was currently eating a hunk of meat with her hands, and somehow managing to look more civilized than the woman eating the stew with the proper utensils.
"And what did you do before working for that...cat?" Lydia asked suspiciously. Hannah seemed to consider the way she said 'cat'. Certainly these two were meant to get rid of her without the werecat getting any blame.
Certain highly trained tactical and strategic portions of Lydia's mind were balking at the idiocy of this "plan," but they weren't nearly vocal enough to be heard.
"We were in the import and export business," Hannah said coolly, with the same lop-sided grin. The gnoll rolled her eyes and barked a string of comments, though the human seemed to ignore her. "Anyway, then we got caught in some fracas with Rook's crew and had to ally with Edge Guard to save our necks. To make a long story short, as a little thanks we were given something the new judge around here calls 'community service' as compensation for the help. Basically it means we don't go to jail, but we do shitwork for locals for a while."
"Like dealing with unwanted...persons," Lydia noted.
"Like taking care of the bedridden unfortunates around here," Hannah gestured. Then she leaned forward conspiratorilly. "Speaking of which, did you know you have a tattoo on your rear end?"
Lydia's looked up in confusion at that, and narrowed her eyes angrily. She growled a little.
"What?" Lydia asked. Chublaka shook her head wearily, barked something and went back to eating.
"It's all in good fun," Hannah protested to the gnoll. "Yeah, you do...'Property of Romeo Ellis and Moisha Rich.' So who are these two?"
Lydia's eye twitched angrily for several moments before she more visibly reacted.
"I'LL KILL THEM!!" she snapped to her feet, gripping the edge of the table, tightly and glaring into space. "I'LL TEAR their...I'll...I'll..." She started deflating quickly as memory started to kick in over shock.
"Whoah girl!" Hannah said, backing off at Lydia's exclamation, still smirking.
As the wererat visibly started to shake, Kayla and a youthful seeming man walked in.
"Hey, are you all right, kid?" Hannah asked leaning forward, not noticing the people coming in behind him.
"I'll never see them again...." Lydia whispered almost too quietly too here before her momentarily steady legs gave out from under her and she nearly smacked her head into the table on the way down.
Kayla rushed forward to catch the wererat and prevent any further harm that the girl would have to heal. She silently cursed herself for being too slow, she should have gotten to the room BEFORE the smuggler had.
"Hannah!!" the youth shouted stomping forward into the woman's face.
"What did I do?" she protested. The gnoll barked some comments as Hannah's apparent accuser glanced to Lydia who was currently shaking in Kayla's hands and staring forward into space. "I was just kidding around."
"Why Mistress Sheena would let a scruffy-looking flomph herder like you NEAR one of her patients is beyond me," the woman said.
"Hey, who's scruffy lookin'?" the woman demanded.
"Get a mirror," the other said, obviously irritated.
"Whatever you say your Lordship," Hannah said, standing up and sketching a bow. Said Lordship looked around her at Kayla, ignoring Hannah.
"I'll get Mistress Sheena, Kayla." he said, leaving the room. Hannah glanced back at Lydia and looked confused.
"What did I say?" she asked.
"We believe her friends were killed by that dragon," Kayla snapped. Hannah looked stricken for a moment, and Chublaka gave a long mournful sounding moan.
"Aw, man, she gonna be allright?" the woman asked.
"I don't know," Kayla said frostily. "She was quite near suicidal already. We'll have to wait for Mistress Sheena."
"Yeah, her..." she seemed to think of something. "Awww! That half-elf is going to blow this out of proportion. Layan! Wait! It ain't my fault!!" Then she ran out of the room after the half-elf.
Chublaka mumbled a little something in her barking tongue, shaking her head.
"I don't think there is anything you can do, thanks," Kayla said. She continued to hold Lydia as the wererat's teeth chattered, and she stared forward.
"I failed," Lydia whispered. "Everybody's dead."
"What," Kayla asked. "Did you say something? Lydia?" But the wererat apparently hadn't been responding to her.
"It isn't my fault!" Hannah's voice called out, announcing the arrival of Mistress Sheena before the werecat appeared.
"Would you just be quiet and let us handle this, Hannah?" Layan asked.
"Oh!" Sheena said. "This is MY fault."
She moved to Kayla and slowly took hold of away from Kayla Lydia and checked her over. Her apprentice also looked over the girl, concerned for the patient that she had been helping take care of the last few weeks.
"Yeah!" Hannah responded. "Errr, wait...It's not my fault because I didn't know, it's still her....my..." The gnoll barked something. "Responsibility...yeah."
"I would comment about Hannah Thola actually taking responsibility for her mistake," Layan said as he brought over some potions. "But there are more important things to do at the moment."
"This IS my fault," Sheena said. "I hoped that exposing her to more daily life would improve her attitude." She calmed down and began to quietly cast a spell of soothing over the girl.
Suddenly a black nimbus formed around the wererat and seemed to become a pair of jaws that reached out to snap out the healer apprentices around it.
"What the hell was that?" Hannah asked. The two apprentices shook their heads, also stupefied. Chublaka, however, barked something that sounded very sorrowful and sympathetic. "Uhh...that's a myth, I don't believe in all that old mumbo jumbo."
"It is not a myth," Sheena corrected. "This is a dragon curse, the old dragons could all leave a boon or curse when they died, but the knowledge was eventually lost as the younger dragons decided the idea was pointless since none of them ever thought they'd die. This is actually a weak curse."
"This...is weak?" Kayla asked, her throat dry. The black nimbus was only now slowly regressing into the shaking wererat.
"One curse eventually led a brother and sister to be separated for many years, lose their memories, get married to each other, and accidentally cause the destruction of all their family and every land they ever called home," Sheena said grimmly as the darkness finally descended.
"And...what does this one do?" Hannah asked nervously eyeing the girl.
"It appears to resort emotion-based magics and turns this girl into a catatonic wreck," Sheena said clinicly, trying not to give up herself.
"Mistress!" Layan called out, pointing. "She's bleeding!"
Sheena looked down at Lydia to see the blood stains growing from where the dragon had clawed her back and legs. Everybody sprang into action again.
"Hello," Raphiel said cheerfully as he walked into the clinic next to Sheila. As they entered people stopped and glanced among themselves before looking toward them hesitantly.
"Something's wrong," Sheila said. The appearance of tired looking Mistress Sheena confirmed that.
"Sheila, Raphiel," she said. "There is some bad news."
"Bad news?" Raphiel asked worriedly.
Many people thought he was rather dense, this wasn't particularly true. He was bright enough to know that being sent to a bunch of women known as "amazon breeders" was probably a good thing for a man. Maybe even smart enough to talk his way into the possibility. However, Raphiel was rather naive. Though the Amazons would probably have seen that as a very strong point in a male as well.
A swift breeze of air was the only clue people had to his passage as he edged near the sound barrier on his way to Lydia's room.
Sheena and Sheila were only a couple of moments behind him, and found him sitting next to Lydia, holding her back upright and waving a hand in front of her face.
Sheila looked into his face and saw a look of sorrow and regret that had only appeared once before on Raphiel's face. When he had heard how heartbroken Cheetah had been over the possibility she'd have to marry him instead of her true love.
"We healed the wounds closed again," Sheena said. "But I don't know how to face the curse yet, it's weak, but none have been documented since well before most of my tomes were written."
"Curse?" Sheila asked. "What curse?"
"The dragon must have been from an old dragon realm," Sheena said quietly. "It knew how to lay a curse of revenge on the girl."
"She won't wake up?" Raphiel asked.
"And she won't go to sleep," Sheena said. "She just stares." Raphiel frowned and hoped for the rat-girl to snap or growl at him or just grumble. Something other than shake and snap her teeth together.
Then he remembered something from a book his friend Brianna had given him. Some story or something called "Is" or something by some king or another. The guy at the end of the story had brought his girlfriend back by outrunning something like this on a bike or something.
Certainly he was faster than a bike. Britanny said he should be able to get faster than her, even if he wasn't as strong.
"I got an idea," Raphiel said. Before anyone could protest, Raphiel and Lydia were both gone.
"Oh damn! Raph!!" Sheila shouted. "Come back here!!!"
"Mo..." Romeo whispered as he peeked around the room. "Mo...is that you?"
"Ewwww...." the other rat said in a distinctive manner that quiet definitely identified the rodent as both lycanthrope and valley girl. "That...that....thing almost got me."
"Which thing was that?" Romeo asked quietly.
"You know...like...THAT...THING!" Moisha whined.
"Mo....there are a LOT of 'things' in this house," Romeo complained. "These crazy kooks are spooky."
"And, like mysterious and junk too," Moisha said.
"And who names their kid 'Odinsday' anyway?" Romeo demanded. Moisha seemed to pause in thought for a moment.
"Why do I like, have this urge to snap my fingers, you know?" she asked.
"Not to devolve into your particular vernacular," Romeo said dryly. "But yeah, I know what you mean."
"Ummm, what?" Moisha asked, scratching her head.
"Just forget it," Romeo said. "Did you find a way out yet? What am I saying, if YOU'D found a way out you would have taken it by now."
"Hey," Moisha protested. "Lyds would have my hide if I like, you know, left you to die or something."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," Romeo said. "So what now. Spend the rest of our lives dodging spooky kids and Frankenstein's monster..."
"Don't, like, forget, you know, that thing," Moisha reminded him.
"Oh yeah," Romeo said. "'That thing.' That or..."
"Try to climb down the carnivorous apple tree?" Moisha said.
"Oh, ratties," a high pitched whine called out. "Where are you little ratties, I have another game to play."
The same basic thought went through each of the rats' heads.
Oh no, (like) a 'game!'
"Where's the tree! Where's the tree!" pretty soon two rats were charging for the nearest window.
Everywhere she looked, as far she could see, there was nothing but bodies. Her parents, her friends. Most of the wererats she had ever known and anyone that had ever helped one lay in a vast pile that she was wading through, unable to close her eyes. She hadn't seen Gothwrain or most of his closest assitants yet, but she feared they weren't far behind in appearing.
She refused to look directly into the darkness that made up the sky. Certain that somewhere in that darkness lurked a flash of black, white and orange that would soon be coming to rip her to pieces and end the war forever.
And now there was a wind, coming out of the darkness and whipping around her with nearly gale force. The rush of the wind was almost maddening already, and added to bleak and hopeless scene she was looking at.
She had no idea how long she had been wandering this deathfield. She didn't care. It was all her fault for failing the clan of rats.
Just like her mother and father had been killed by werecheetahs when she was a child. Like so many of their clan had vanished at the claws of the cats.
Some part of Lydia's mind complained at that. It always had, and she never really listened to it before. It was part of the dragon's curse, however, to show her ALL her failings, real or imagined. And that magic was giving her unconscious more weight as time passed in the void.
This would normally have been a very bad thing, and would merely have condemned the rat to more suffering. The dragon had not really counted on just how vindictive it's small opponent really was. Vindicative enough that if she knew the secrets of the dragon curse, that her death curse could be the stuff of legend.
How could the werecheetahs have killed all those wererats? a small part of Lydia asked, aided by the magics. Britanny is the last, on Earth, and has been the last for twenty years or more. Lydia didn't counter the argument with Raphiel's existence, instead she tried to ignore her own doubts.
There were no werecheetahs to kill us when my parents died, Lydia thought again, still trying to bury the line of thoughts. So what happened to my parents then? Gothwrain's men rescued me from the attackers, I could smell the blood from the battle they had...I could smell all...that.... Lydia froze and stood in the field of bodies, barely noticing the carrion dreamscape begin to fade away.
"Rat...blood...all over...all over the UNINJURED...warriors...." Lydia shook angrily, teeth clinching as she heard her "master's" laughter fading in from the darkness. "Lord Gothwrain is still alive....that clumsy cat couldn't have taken HIM."
The curse was ALMOST sentient, but not quite enough to respond effectively as Lydia's rage at this discovery erupted into a mental fire whipped to brutal fury by that strange wind sweeping the dreamscape. The one neither the curse nor Lydia were responsible for.
Raphiel looked down and saw that his passenger was still unresponsive, though she looked slightly different somehow. Then he saw a rim of darkness surround her and almost tripped in surprise.
Raphiel recovered and pushed himself faster. Britanny had mentioned something about a sound barrier, but he didn't know what that was precisely. He just knew it had something to do with speed.
He was getting tired as he started to push his sprint, and only periphally noted the writhing aura of darkness around Lydia as he took a wide turn to break from his circular path around Main Guard.
The thundering boom occured simultaneously with the sudden burst of the darkness around Lydia, and then he was breezing through the wilds, having troubles avoiding obstacles until he spotted the Observatory.
The speed boosted leap nearly pushed him past the roof of the structure, but he stopped on top of it, though he had to turn about to keep himself from falling.
As he settled to the ground, tired from the run, the sun began to dip below the Western horizon, filling the sky with a wonder of glorious colors. Though Raphiel only paid note to one thing.
Lydia blinked.
She glanced about stiffly and frowned.
"Where the @$@$@# @$#@$#@ am I?" Lydia asked wearily, voice exhausted.
"Hi!" Raphiel said to her, drawing the rat's attention to his face. She looked somewhat surprised and irritated for a moment before weariness took her and she fainted asleep.
"Yeah, sleep's a good idea," Raphiel agreed, panting, before he closed his eyes and started snoring.