by Envy Mercury
Mew was running again.
◆◆◆
I hurt all over. My body felt destroyed, and even my heart hurt. I had failed, and my heart screamed to me as it broke over and over. Degath was correct with what he said before leaving. I was living that moment over and over as I went in and out of consciousness. I could see their faces, and though I hated how it made me feel, I didn’t want to let them go. It was very haunting to have their expressions burned into my thoughts. The girls both had a face of agonized pain as they watched what Degath did to me before they were stolen away.
Tears started running down my face.
I had never been much of a crier. When I was young, I would cry over silly things children would tear up over, a lost toy, a fight with a friend, or being grounded. I sometimes called from a broken romantic heart when I was a bit older. Life could harden you a bit, and I felt I had been hardened so much I would probably never cry again. Even at funerals, I would feel guilty seeing everyone emotionally broken, dealing with loss in their own ways. I just stood there, physically not showing anything. It was like I had nothing left emotionally to give. It didn’t help that I coped with drugs to block those feelings for so long.
I couldn’t stand the twisting emotion that stung me, the feelings ripping my insides out. It was like everything that had ever hurt me was coming out, pouring out along with all my blood. Everything I had ever done to hurt others was pouring out and poisoning the ground with all my sins. I watched blood slowly pump out of me onto the now wet ground. Me, pierced in a way to the tree that would make a hardcore sadist jump with joy. Then I closed my eyes. I didn’t have much to live for before. It was evident with how I didn’t take care of myself. I was never a person who would just kill myself, but I had made choices leading me towards an accidental death, the same end.
I was so tired. My breaths slowing to a few short dramatic exchanges here and there. The blood not flowing out of my body as fast from my heart rate decreasing. Maybe I just needed to get some rest.
Yeah, I just need some rest.
Everything went dark, and I faded away.
◆◆◆
Waking slightly, I started to choke. Something tasted foul in my mouth, and I couldn’t stand it. I did what anyone would do when something nasty was in their mouth. I spit it out.
I felt a hand slap my face. “So- fucking nasty! You got it in my eyes!” I opened my eyes to see Mew reaching up, trying to get me to drink something out of a bottle. “It doesn’t taste terrific, but you need to drink it for me, Rezner… also, sorry for slapping you. You spit it in my face.”
I grimaced as I drank down the bottle, feeling it burn down my throat and spreading through my insides. My heart suddenly started to feel healthier, and I could breathe again. I looked down at Mew, her eyes analyzing me. It expressed some hope mixed with worry.
“Hey there Mew, what brings you to this wonderful party?”
“I heard there was some good shish kabob here, and I didn’t want anyone else to have it,” she said. Wiping her eyes with a light laugh. “You idiot.” She reached up and wiped the tears from my face. “Quit looking like a pussy. I’m the only cat allowed here.”
“You’re my favorite pussy right now.”
She blushed and scrunched her face, so easy to tease, I couldn’t help myself. She looked at the swords stuck in me. “Quit flirting with me, and I’ll get you unstuck, you ass.” She reached up and grabbed on both the swords, “This is going to hurt, and you will have to drink another one of those health potions when I get these swords pulled out of you.”
“Worst bartender ever, forcing people to drink nasty concoctions. I will do it, though, because it’s you.”
“Keep sweet talkin’ me like that, and I might accidentally push them instead of pull.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
She started to pull on the swords, and so far, they weren’t budging. She kept working at it and then asked me a question. “Did the girls getaway? Where are they?”
“They took them,” I said as sadness started to overcome me again with remembering what happened. “I was stuck here hanging out, and the creepy children took them through a portal thing.”
“Did they say where they were going?”
“One of them mentioned that Victor wanted Yumi, so I think they went where he is.”
She let out a breath, a look of determination filling her face. “That’s better than the Demon Lord. So, there is that. We need to get going so we can get them back.”
I started to say something when she grabbed hold of the swords and lifted her feet up, straddling me. She gave me a small wink and then leaned back and started to strain, pulling with her upper body and pushing with her legs, her feet pressing up against the tree. They began to loosen, and they removed from me with a sick sound spraying more of my blood out. I fell to my knees as I spit some blood. Mew handed me another bottle of nasty lifesaving liquid, which I greedily drank.
We sat for a while as I let the potion do its job. We sat in silence, lost in our thoughts. Mew was across from me, sitting with her legs pulled up into her, her chin resting on her knees.
“Rezner, can I come to sit with you?”
“Sure, I mean, you only saved me.”
She got up and walked over, I thought she would sit beside me, but she turned around, repositioning my legs so she could sit between them. She held onto my legs and leaned back into my chest. I did the only thing I could think of doing and started to pet her head and play with her ears.
“We need to get them back. We will have to go to your domain, that is where Victor is located. If they took them to him, that has to be where they are,” Mew said.
I thought for a moment, my head reasonably clear for once. “That is a good idea, but I have no idea how. I mean, there are only the two of us. I doubt anyone else would be willing to go up against him.”
“Yeah, it is near impossible.”
“I got lucky this time, and things only turned out ok from me using that bog marrow stuff and then having some luck.”
“Rezner?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you know what bog marrow is made from?”
I stopped scratching her head. “No, the demon children told me what it was. They were evil monologuing when they thought I was going to explode.”
She tilted her head back to look up at me. “Explode?”
“I felt my only chance was to use all the bog marrow I had left, all at once. Apparently, that makes a person go boom,” I said as my fingers did the universal expression for explosions.
“That sounds like something stupid you would do.”
“Yeah, I suppose. I had the little bastards dead to rights, but I felt mad with power. I realized that I was going to kill the girls, too, if I continued. Last moment, I just pointed it up into the sky, then I ran out of all my strength.”
She looked back towards me, shifting in my lap. “So, you didn’t mean to make the tornado?”
“No, that was just dumb luck.”
“Maybe some of your luck can help get them back.”
“If I had my powers and memory back, I could probably just do it myself. That would involve finding that princess and talking to her if she even has them. Then figuring out how to get them back.”
Mew snuggled into me and reached up and wrapped her arms up in mine, pretty much forcing me to hold her. She was demanding, just like an average, typical everyday house cat. “If we knew where the fairies were, they could maybe grant you power, you know… after they forgave you,” she said.
“You don’t know where they are?”
“No one does. The fairies that weren’t captured went into hiding.”
“Oh, how do they get them to make the bog marrow?”
“It is said slavers took them away, and then after that, the rest went into hiding. Fairies aren’t powerful on their own, they have magical power, but most cannot do too much to defend themselves. Then the captured fairies are hidden somewhere. I mean it's no
t like illegal activities are out in the open. The slavers don’t want to be caught.”
“They have slavery here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s horrible.”
She squeezed me a little harder and pushed even further into me. “It was.”
It took me a moment to realize that she meant that she was a slave. The thought was horrible. I wasn’t sure how it worked here, but with how close things were to my world in many ways, it had to be a lot like that. It made me want to protect her even more, she could handle her own in a fight, but she had a lot of hurt inside her. I wanted to protect and save her from that. I knew it wasn’t possible. That didn’t change the fact that it was what I wished for. I wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t want to either. It was a sensitive subject; you don’t just ask someone bluntly about it. I didn’t have to ask, because she kept talking.
“They attacked my village, you know? Those they didn’t kill, they took captive. Captives either died from being abused or went to be sold as slaves. Which, depending on who bought them, that could maybe be worse.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“It isn’t your fault. It was pretty bad, but I was also pretty young. I also wasn’t sold to anyone.”
“Mew, what happened?”
“Lady Yumi saved me,” she said, smiling as she seemed to recall the memory. “She came across me by luck. A trader had me captive with him. Lady Yumi left her home to get away like she sometimes did when she was younger. She was in the right place at the right time. She, of course, questioned him, and then she beat him up pretty bad. She was so kind; she told me to wait in the wagon for a minute. Then she returned to him and killed him. I could hear everything that happened. She didn’t want me to see, I guess. Then, she took me in, bringing me back to her family’s manor. They gave me a home and cared for me. I was trained in many different things, and now here I am.”
“I’m happy she found you,” I said sincerely.
“Me too, now I need to find her and get her back to us.”
Many thoughts were going through my head. Mew’s tragic past and horrible things she dealt with. The slavery of different creatures, taken against their will, ending up in awful fates with no happy endings. Then, the idea of finding some fairies for extra strength, even if that was tangible. They would have to give it willing to me.
“I think it's time for us to go on a date Mew,” I said.
Her eyes widened at me, and her jaw dropped. “What!? What are you talking about? You bring up dates- when- I mean, I’d like to go on one, but no, we can’t. I mean, we can’t right now! We need to figure out how to pull off a rescue and save them!”
I pulled her into a hug ending her rambles, and then I kissed her on the cheek. She sat in blushing silence, and then I told her about our date.
“We need to go on a date, and that date will be rescuing the fairies from the slavers. Once we save them, and whoever else the slavers are holding against their will. I will then ask the fairies if they will give us their assistance.”
“That would be wonderful if we could find them. We don’t know where the fairies are, remember?”
I kissed her forehead and gave her a wink. “You just have to know where to look, and I know just the place to start.” So, we had our date planned. Sure, it wasn’t super romantic or a valid date, but I didn’t take Mew to be the romantic girly type. At least she wasn’t right now. Maybe that would be in the future. Plus, I didn’t like the feeling of hopelessness. I wanted some morale, which we both desperately needed.
We were going to go to the town area where I found the potion shop that sold me the bog marrow. I had a feeling that the shop owner Bangrim would know where they were, and he was going to fucking tell me.
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We headed back to the city on our mission that would hopefully pay off. Either way, it was the right thing to do, and we didn’t really have many other options. So, we were off to see how much my street smarts could help.
“I haven’t always been a good person,” I spoke to myself as much as Mew.
“What do you mean?” Mew asked as we speed-walked towards our destination.
I looked away from Mew a bit, I had a hard time owning up to my mistakes, and I didn’t like to personally confirm how much of a failure I was. “In my world, things weren’t very easy, and I was a weak person. Very weak. I can’t make excuses, but I made bad choices that put me in the situation I was in before I came here.”
She nodded, then just let me speak my mind until I was finished.
“I didn’t handle things the best way I could. I couldn’t cope. It feels silly when I see everything that happens here in this world. People deal with so much; it makes me feel like a lesser person when I had fallen as low as I did. I was very addicted to drugs and had many habits. I didn’t really care about life or what I was doing. I was just there.” I rubbed my hair and continued my rambles. “Things just seem to pile up, and you get stuck in a dark place all alone. When I came here, I was in the middle of my addiction. I felt I couldn’t let anyone down. I hid it the best I could. Buying that bog marrow was a short term bandage to keep what I was hiding still hidden away. I didn’t want to hurt anyone and have them feel I was a mistake, you know?”
She did a little skip and smiled up at me. She was so pretty at that moment. It made my heart sing. I told a girl the worst about me, and here she was, giving me a smile in return. “I understand a bit, things can be hard to deal with,” she said thoughtfully. “Sure, I had a lot happen to me, but who knows how I would have been if I didn’t have the support that was given to me. I’m lucky, ya know?” She continued looking up at me, her eyes and soul looking pure in the sunshine of the day. “Everyone deals with different things. They all have different hands in life. That was a strong health potion I gave you. Besides healing you, it should have cleaned your system. You won’t have physical withdrawals anymore.”
Relief washed over me. It was a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. Being sicker than shit was a hell of a thing. Besides sucking at life, you could die. I was grateful to her. “Thanks, thank you so much.”
“Well, I just couldn’t let you die, idiot. I don’t think the others would forgive me if they knew I let it happen.” She stuck her finger in my chest, poking me a few times. “Now it's all in your head. Just stay away from things like that, and we are even.”
“I will, I promise.”
“Damn right you do, dummy. I don’t always want to have to save you. It’s backbreaking work. Also, whatever and whoever you were before, I didn’t know him. You are you now. Just be Rezner. This world has needed you for a long time.”
“Mew, what if when I get my memories back, and I’m not me anymore. What if I’m not a good person.”
She stopped walking and kicked me in the shoe. With a hand on her hip, she looked up at me as feisty as ever. She slowly placed her hand flat on my chest and looked at me for a while. Then she came closer and laid her head against my chest. “Just be quiet a moment,” she said.
I stood there wondering what she was doing, this crazy cat girl that was the first person I had a conversation with upon returning to this world. It was a struggle to not say anything and just wait.
After a minute or so, she looked up at me, smiling. “I found it.”
“What did you find?”
“Your heart, it’s in there beating.”
“Yeah?”
“As long as it keeps beating, follow it. Your heart won’t let any of us down, I promise. It’s a good one, I am brilliant, and I know these things.” She smiled.
“I will, only because you asked it of me, my lady,” I said, bowing at her sarcastically.
She took my hand and pulled me along. “Let’s go. Daylight will be wasted if we hang out too much talking all this mushy talk.”
“Places to go, people to save?”
“Yeppers, let’s go, Mr. Hero.”
Chapter Ten
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Mecci woke up in a cell in a dungeon. She was chained against a wall. Across from her lay Yumi, she shared the same fate. Mecci pulled on the bonds that held her against the wall. She felt weak, worn, and beaten. At least she was alive. Which at that thought, her heart hurt. Her master had been up against that tree, stabbed twice, and pinned. He had to be alright, though? She would know if something happened to him, like death. She leaned as far as her restraints on the wall would allow and took a quick glance out of the cell, investigating her surroundings. Just a hallway with other cells. Makes sense.
There was the sound of a door down away from her, how far she didn’t know. She relaxed back up against the wall and passively looked out of her confinement towards the footsteps she heard stepping her way, so slowly and full with intent- each step echoing down the hallway into the holdings.
A hooded man stepped in front of her cell. His aura very dark, his eyes a glowing red. He looked down towards her and let out a wicked smile that she could see below the shadows of his hood.
His voice light and croaky, he finally spoke after minutes of standing, observing. “Welcome to my home, little Mecci. Traitor to her demonkind.”
She gave a look of disgust. “Victor.”
“I have heard from a little bird that someone we both know has returned. I would very much like some answers having to do with the running rabbit, Rezner.”
She growled deep inside. “Victor, fuck off.”
He held up his hand, and a wisp of dark mirk floated from his hand, faint like smoke from an extinguished cigarette. It formed into a transparent green skull. “Oh, you will tell me what I want to know. Both of you will.”
He laughed wickedly, chilling her bones as the skull made its way through the bars and floated towards Mecci’s face. She pulled back as far as she could away from it, its menace terrifying.
She screamed.
Yumi woke up, and she screamed as well.
There would be much more screaming after that.
Chapter Eleven