Belleton, Chapter Eight
#8 of Belleton
EIGHT
"You really think throwing more magic at him is going to help anything?" Marcel frowned at Colem, wishing the golden retriever would look up from the clay jug on the table in front of them, but Colem was concentrating, focused intently on the jug's light brown surface.
That didn't stop the dog from snapping up at him, "Magic is the only solution to magical problems. You should know that by now. If you lot had called for me from the start, we might not be in this mess. Lev and Eckart and Dusker might all be alive. But no, you waited until Turick was long gone before ever thinking that perhaps the town mages might have an inkling of how to help."
"Solving an evil problem with more evil will only make things worse," Marcel insisted. They'd been arguing about this for some time already.
"Oh yes, ever the faithful servant of the gods. Perhaps you should go back to praying, that always seems to be of such tremendous help."
"I have been praying." It was true, in his own way, though Marcel's prayers were never as ritualistic as the priesthood had taught him. "For Turick, for Solierre, for the huntsmen. For everyone."
Colem smirked, but he didn't look away from that cursed jug. "Even for me?"
"Especially for you," Marcel said with a wry sigh. Colem was the oldest apprentice in Belleton, and it had always gone to the canine's head. Mage apprenticeships lasted several years longer than any other field, and the golden retriever was very close to graduating to journeyman status. They were all young adults, the apprentices, but those few extra years made the dog behave as if everyone else deserved to be in a nursery.
"Your efforts would be better directed elsewhere," Colem muttered, and he waved Marcel closer. Reluctantly, the lizard leaned in toward the jug, his scales itching between his shoulder blades. "You can feel it, can't you? The magic inside?"
"I feel a darkness inside," Marcel corrected, and indeed he did. "A foulness. Nothing that can be of aid to anyone on the mortal plane."
"You're mistaken, as usual, but that is not my point." Finally, Colem looked up and locked eyes with Marcel. The retriever already had a mage's piercing gaze, despite his youth. "You can feel the arcane, Marcel, energy from the fey realms. You know what that means. You're as much a mage as I am, merely untrained."
The lizard shook his head, taking a step back. "I may not grow into the best disciple in the priesthood, but I'm no magic user, Colem."
"Only because you choose to deny your nature."
The priest's apprentice was about to snap something back, but a howling shout from the far side of the village made them both turn in alarm, craning their necks toward the voice. "Marcel!"
That was Turick.
They shared a glance, both of them holding their breath, then leapt to their feet and took off out of the mage's study at a sprint. Colem shouted back over his shoulder, "Finish the preparations! I'll stall him if I'm able!" Yatchel, a small goat, nodded obediently, the junior mage apprentice taking Colem's spot in front of the clay jar.
They were across Belleton in less than a minute, other apprentices peeking out from shop windows and doorways, but none daring to join the two of them. Turick's murder spree had everyone sheltering inside and locking their doors. Everyone sane, at least.
Marcel's heart skipped a beat when they came within view of the forest's edge. Turick was nowhere to be seen, but Solierre...
The rabbit lay naked and unconscious in front of the nearest trees, his lips slightly parted and his eyes closed peacefully, arms down at his sides. He looked like he was sleeping, but Marcel feared the worst. After what he'd seen the day before, there wasn't much optimism left in the lizard.
Panting from the short run, he didn't slow until he was right next to the rabbit, dropping immediately to his knees and holding his palm over the bunny's nose. Solierre wasn't breathing. The priest apprentice knelt down, pressing the side of his face against the rabbit's naked chest. He grimaced at the smear of cum that squished against his scales, but tried to ignore it, desperately hoping to hear a heartbeat.
There wasn't one.
Solierre was still warm, though. "No," Marcel whispered, grasping the bunny's mouth in his hands and opening the smaller male's muzzle. "You're not gone yet." That was a prayer, too, in its own right.
He pressed his lips to the rabbit's while Colem crouched down on Solierre's other side, his eyes narrowed as he looked slowly up and down the striped bunny's nude form. "Interesting..."
Interesting? Interesting? That's all the dog had to say? Marcel wanted badly to snarl something up at the canine, but he didn't dare stop giving the rabbit mouth to mouth, not until he pulled up to start pushing his palms fiercely against the rabbit's chest, and by then he was too furious, too panicked, to get a word out.
Colem had no such trouble. "You know that you could save him, don't you?"
"What the hell does it look like I'm trying to do?" Marcel gritted through his fangs.
"Not like that," the retriever calmly told him. "He's too far gone for mundane methods, and I expect you've already sensed that."
"Like hell he is."
"He's not beyond the reach of the less mundane, however."
Marcel snapped his head up, glaring at the canine without slowing his pumping palms. "If you can save him, Colem, then stop talking and do it!"
Colem shrugged a shoulder. "I need you to move back. You'll get hurt, otherwise."
Every fiber of his being protested, but Marcel made himself shuffle back on his knees, still panting. Solierre hadn't moved a hair, and it left the lizard feeling helpless. He didn't have the first inkling what he should do.
Colem didn't look at all distressed, though. He knelt down at Solierre's side, calmly rubbing his fingertips and thumbs together. Marcel thought he felt something in the air, a prickling over his scales as the yellow dog leaned in and held his paws over the rabbit's chest. The retriever took a deep breath through his nose.
Then every strand of hair on their bodies, dog and rabbit both, stood abruptly on end with a sharp snap in the air, short arcs of blue lightning stabbing from each of Colem's fingertips down into the rabbit's body.
The sudden static poofballs would have been comical in any other situation, but Marcel was too relieved to feel anything else. Solierre gasped with a spasming arch of his back, his eyes opening wide and staring up at the sky.
Marcel rushed back in, heedless of the static tickling his scales as he took Solierre by the shoulders. "Sol? Sol, you're alive. Thank the gods."
Colem sat back on his heels, rolling his eyes. "Oh yes, the gods worked a miracle today."
"Solierre, what happened?" Marcel asked, ignoring Colem's jibe and waiting for the rabbit's eyes to focus and settle on the lizard's face. "Are you hurt?"
The bunny's paws moved up to his own face, his expression so shocked it was easy to read despite his fur still sticking out in a comical puff, shifting in the light breeze. He touched the back of his jaw and slowly blinked, then opened his mouth and said...
Nothing.
Solierre swallowed and tried again, but he didn't make a sound, aside from an alarmed gust of breath a moment later.
"Sol, what's wrong?" Marcel asked, then looked up at Colem. "What's happened to him?"
"You could figure that out for yourself if you--"
"Stop pushing me and tell me what you know!" Marcel shouted, his patience running thin.
Sighing, Colem moved in on the rabbit's other side again, and together they helped Solierre to sit up. The golden retriever moved a paw up to the bunny's throat, touching his fingers lightly to the fur as it began to settle from his reviving lightning jolt. The dog's eyes narrowed again, and he frowned, looking more confused and intrigued than worried. "His vocal cords are gone."
"Gone?" Marcel repeated, and Solierre turned his wide eyes on the canine's face.
"If I'm not mistaken..." Colem combed a finger lightly through the rabbit's fur, then rolled a small wad of sticky cum against his thumb. "They've been melted."
Solierre let out a little wheeze, his mouth forming the word "melted," but no other sound came out.
A bird began singing above them while Marcel and Solierre stared at the dog, a dissonantly happy sound. "Is there anything less mundane methods can do to fix that?" the reptile finally asked.
"No," Colem replied with a grimace. "At least, none that I know of. If the masters were here..." If the masters were in Belleton, the disaster they were facing would never have happened.
Marcel wanted to press the matter, but Solierre was looking more and more distraught by the moment, so the lizard took a deep breath and patted the rabbit's slimy shoulder. "Well. When the masters get back, then, we'll find a way to deal with that. Until then..." He slipped his arms under Solierre's shoulders and knees, grunting with the effort of picking the little male up into a bridal carry and getting to his feet. "There's nothing to do but to get you cleaned up." He had to take a moment to steady himself, his voice strained with the effort of holding the other male. Solierre was small enough, but Marcel was by no means an athlete. Despite his extra foot or two of height, it was all he could do to not drop the rabbit onto the ground. "Perhaps I should switch vocations and become a bath house attendant," he said, trying to keep the mood light. "You're certainly giving me enough training."
He meant it as a joke, but Solierre wasn't laughing, not even silently. The rabbit was shivering, his arm shaking where it was tucked around Marcel's neck, and the bunny's eyes were staring unfocused back toward the forest. Every now and then his head would give a little sideways twitch.
Sighing, Marcel managed to tuck his hand up and give the rabbit's side a comforting squeeze. "Don't worry, Sol. You're going to be all right."
Colem was padding along quietly beside them, looking thoughtful, and the dog perked up when he saw Yatchel trotting toward them down the dusty street between the village's houses, that evil jar held out at arm's length between the goat's paws. "It's ready, Colem," Yatchel said breathlessly once he was close enough to hear without raising his voice. "I did everything just like you told me."
"I'll be the judge of that," the older mage apprentice said curtly, but the goat didn't flinch, merely passing the jar to the canine without a word. He looked all too happy to be rid of the thing.
Colem glared at the clay jar for a moment, and Marcel found himself slowing to a stop a few strides ahead, turning with the rabbit in his arms to watch. Nothing dramatically supernatural happened, though. Colem just stared at the jar with narrowed eyes for a few seconds longer while Yatchel fidgeted uncomfortably in front of him, then nodded with a satisfied, "You did well."
Yatchel broke into a broad, grateful smile, while the golden retriever turned around, back toward the forest.
"Colem," Marcel called to him, his gut twisting. He didn't really want to hear the answer, but he had to ask. "What exactly are you going to do with that?"
Colem didn't break stride or turn around, but his voice was clear. "I'm going to kill Turick."