The Rescue
Your decision comes to you in a split second. You jump in front of her, shielding her with your body, and look at Arch straight in the eyes. You can’t talk, not more then when you were a puppy, but the message is clear enough: you will not permit this. You will not permit this at all!
The elf’s dark eyes widen in surprise at your gesture, but his teeth become bare in an almost animal snarl. “Get out of the way. Or do you want me to strangle you too? I swear that you will be the first one of the three of y–”
“Enough, Arch!” Apparently your noble decision made Blurred change their mind and they are currently glaring daggers at him. “We can’t just kill her like that! Don’t you have any heart?”
The elf looks at the magician, at you then at the woman behind her. You can feel that she is holding her breath in eager expectation as her fate is decided. You see in the hunter’s eyes the moment where he lets go of the idea of killing her, right before he harshly turns away. “Fine. You deal with them then. But I don’t want a single word of this affair to leak out of this room or I’ll take care of everything myself – that includes you, Blurred.”
He walks to a random table, pushes a few of the scrolls that was resting on it aside and sit on it with a small hop. He even crosses his arm to show how much he doesn’t approve of the situation but he isn’t about to intervene.
Once the hot-blooded elf is out of the way, you turn to the one that was so intent of getting your master’s skin. She looks at you with big eyes, clearly impressed by the fast that you, of all people – or rather, of all dragon-dogs –stood up for her and saved her. Her companion is laying next to her, his injured side up so he doesn’t have to press on the tender flesh. You are pretty sure that a simple animal would have trouble understanding the situation and yet you find gratefulness in his eyes.
“Well,” awkwardly starts Blurred. “What shall we do with you…” They take a step forward and keels, their robes ruffling around them. She flinches back at the sudden closeness, but they keep staring at her as if trying to find something on her face. He suddenly smiles slowly. “I think I know.”
“Please!” she suddenly cries out. “I promise I won’t talk! Don’t… Don’t do anything to me!”
Blurred shook their head slowly, their midnight hair swooshing as it moved. “It will only hurt a moment.” They snap their fingers, and she tenses. In front of your astonished eyes, she starts shrinking, and if the way she cries lets anything on, it is rather painful. You almost step back in horror as she kept getting smaller and smaller and your sensitive ears catch the noise of her bones rubbing together and her flesh shifting with a wet suction sound, but you seem rooted to the spot.
When a small red squirrel sits in the spot of the police woman, you feel your breath coming out slowly and you close your eyes. That was a stressful situation, even for you. The bull terrier sniffs her curiously and she squeals a little, before climbing on his head and resting between his ears.
“Couldn’t you have just erased her memories or something like that?” Complains Arch from his spot.
“I don’t do memory spells; I am not very gifted in them. I would risk her making her amnesiac and that would definitely be suspicious. Besides, I always know where are the people I enchanted and I can keep an eyes on them… unless they recover their original form.” You note the information. So, changing the appearance is actually a way of controlling someone? You aren’t exactly showered with clear hints about what is happening and even if this information doesn’t seem very important in this version of the story, you never know when you would need
it.
“As you wish. But she is not coming out of here.”
“She can’t,” assured Blurred. He got up and dusted his robes.
“And her dog?”
Blurred snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the dog’s wound closed and his fur grew again. The canine looked at himself, surprise clear in his eyes, before looking up that the magician as if asking why in the world Blurred would help him. The reason, thought, was clear. “He can, but now I will know about it and will be pretty hot on his trail. He better behave if he wants to make it out alive.”
Arch seemed satisfied by that reply, nodded, and got to his feet. “Well, I will be leaving then. That will teach me to never ignore the law so openly.”
You look at both of them with eyes full of questions, but they don’t reply.
Written by Clayem on 14 April 2016