The next time Mortigus woke up, his headache was way more quiet, leaving able to recollect the last meeting he’d had with Nostra. Mortigus peeked under the bandages around his arm, looking at the wound left by the doctor’s knife, yet the wound was closed up and healing, considerably fast for how wide the cut seemed to be. This new body still felt far too alien, standing up and walking needing a whole morning to successfully pull off. Blur after blur, the moments of the day would go by. Nostra would visit once or twice to take different samples from his body, together with other doctors that restrained Mortigus. Sometimes injections would be delivered to his back, sometimes his skin would be poked. Mortigus tried everything he could to simply endure and ignore, his tiny body unable to truly fight back. While physical pain was so insignificant in this new body, Mortigus felt a deep and frigid sensation of having something taken away from him. This emotion though, was buried under the shock of his new life and of his new caretakers. For the moment, Mortigus was slowly getting accustomed to being kept alive.
Days of experiments could go so slow yet so fast, the day becomes insufferable until the moment you realise you wasted it. Mortigus wasn’t unfamiliar with effort or hard days, but his parents let him play from time to time. Even if details were foggy, he tasted freedom once, decisions that even when they would sometimes repeat, their monotony would still have a bitter-sweet taste of familiarity. He could do everything for an evening, but half the time he would pick the same game with his siblings. This monotony of life underground could become like the one he’d experience when a bit smaller? Could he grow to enjoy this or should he even do so? Mortigus couldn’t revel with the idea of succumbing to these testing tables and these masked statues that mimic emotion. Escorted again into his cell, he just sat down at his table like any other day, this time even more robotically, and tried to enjoy the food. He then threw himself onto the bed, rattling his overused body. His routine would begin tomorrow but now, he could try to sleep or stare at a wall, or a ceiling. From his many choices, his eye locked onto the latter.
Mortigus was having another staring contest with the ceiling, waiting for another night in the most comfortable cell of the plague doctor’s basement complex, and the silent walls pierced rarely by steps on the hallway floor. Two weeks had passed since the operation, or that was to say two weeks he could still remember. The thought alone, the chance of being locked in a loop of losing his memory while continuing this labrat role, was so unnerving Mortigus would subconsciously push it as deep inside as possible. Resting his body on the cell mattress began to be about as comfortable as his bed back home, or so he wanted to think. Isolation, imprisonment, what could they do any worse to one who was sick for so many weeks? He couldn’t walk before out of his own weakness, but now his freedom was impaired, yet he could not distinguish one anguish from the other. Perhaps being captive brought more frustration and anger for his captors, an object for potential revenge. Perhaps the illness induced a resentment for God or for his own luck, as these were truly the root of his and his family’s problems. These little emotions were stirring in him, making the ceiling a simple background for his thoughts.
Particles of dust started to fall, and a loud thud vibrated through the room, shaking for a second the entire ceiling and walls. Mortigus snapped from this trance, looking around chaotically while other weaker thuds continued to rumble. Rapid steps could be heard on the corridor’s,accompanied by shouts like “ Room breach!”, “ Oasis Dragon out of cage”. “Torches, bring torches!”. All these steps were headed to the right, rapidly drawing further from Mortigus’ cell, except for a faint sound of uneven running, coming closer to the cell.
Suddenly, the door to Mortigus’ chamber opens, and a shadowy figure runs towards his cage, holding a torch. Their right shoulder was covered in thick ice, in which the torch light would faintly reflect, yet the cloak around them kept the figure a mystery. They raised their cloak, a head-like lump obscured by cloth directly facing Mortigus, who was staring in distress. Their legs ran to the cage door, grabbing with one arm the rusty lock. Chaotically, they plunged their hand into every pocket they had, searching for a certain item, only to finally pull out a series of keys on a key-chain. Putting the key-chain under the cloak, seemingly grabbing it in their mouth, they then grasped a painted key in their free hand. With a few bad attempts, the figure missed the keyhole of the lock, the key hitting the metal with nervous movements.
“Could you please hold the lock up, I can’t use the key properly with one hand,” whispered the figure to Mortigus. An adrenaline rush overtook Mortigus, as he frantically grabbed the lock and pointed it at the figure. Under the weak, green glow of Mortigus’ eye, he could see a bit of the face under the hood, recognizing a certain pattern on the mask worn by the figure. Rhit was indeed the one now opening the unlocked door and pulling Mortigus out and up, hurrying him towards the staircase.
“Put all the strength you have in you into moving forward. This is the only chance.” said Rhit, a pained desperation unmistakably residing in his tone. What were Rhit’s intentions? Mortigus saw them as much of a traitor, a liar, a monster, like any other doctor, perhaps even worse, for Rhit did receive Mortigus’ trust once, only to cut and wound him harder than any before. Yet, in this moment, with the faintest of hope of escape, Mortigus brought back that lost trust, giving his all into climbing the staircase, together with the wounded Rhit.
Near the middle of a long staircase, Rhit and Mortigus were beginning to lose steam, their feet making deeper and deeper steps. At the bottom of the stairs, a terrifying echo was approaching, and a figure slammed itself lightly on the wall adjacent to the stairs.
“What are you- Mortigus?! Why are you out- did the dragon cause this?” the figure’s voice boomed through the staircase. The run-aways took a glance backwards, only to see a disgruntled doctor Nostra, his furious eyes radiating behind his mask.
“Rhit, is that you?” exclaimed the doctor while beginning to climb the stairs at an alarming pace.Rhit and Mortigus picked up their pace towards the top, but they let Nostra too much time to accelerate, as his hands were inches away from grabbing Mortigus’ leg. In a swift, desperate move, Rhit turned to Nostra, pulling out a flask out of their coat, a light blue liquid sparkling inside. Rhit threw the flask at the doctor’s feet, and in a flash of white light, the doctor had his right leg frozen in a spike-pile of ice.
“You were the one to set the Oasis dragon free, how dare you!?” Nostra shouted, this time most of his words were left unintelligible by anger.
Rhit firmly grabbed Mortigus’ arm and pulled him to the top of the staircase, gaining pace once again.. Nostra was raising his cane, muttering words and letting his hand pass along the cane’s length. The wood revealed a few symbols carved deep into it, glowing faintly as sparks started flying around the handle. Once his hand reached the top, terrible flames began spewing out of the cane, ferociously lighting the whole staircase in vibrant red. Nostra pointed the cane towards the ice, melting it in seconds, but Rhit already slammed the door connecting the basement to the ground floor. Rhit threw another flask at the door, freezing the handle, in the hopes to buy another few seconds. In their hurry and fear, Mortigus slammed himself into a shelf of items, flasks and metal tools hitting the floor. The sound of broken glass and steel ricocheting from the stone must have surely woken up anyone who was left on the top floor, as a commotion ensued upstairs. The air was changing colour, gaining a slight amber tint, slowly rising from the floor of the ground floor. With a few torches illuminating the entrance of the doctors’ inn, and the main door unguarded, Rhit hurried to the lock, opening it with the help of Mortigus. Every turn of the key and its sound inside the lock felt like an eternity, a rock falling into a canyon and waiting to the bottom. Until it did, unlocking the door, which Mortigus pushed open with all his force. His head turned back to Rhit, who was looking worried back to the basement.
“Mortigus, get out, run out of here to the left, towards the forest, don’t stop for as long as you can, I’ll follow you, I just have to convince them not to follow us.”
Rhit then pushed the boy forward, their half-fallen mask revealing determined eyes, which Mortigus could not refuse. Mortigus left the threshold of the inn, disappearing into the dark field to the east of the building. A few seconds later two masked people ran inside the inn with torches, most likely two assistants running an errand and coming back to the mayhem of the doctors’ office. Rhit ignored his remorse and aimed a flask at them, which freezed their torsos together, snuffing out even their torches.
“Rhit, you harmed your own brothers-in-work just to run away?! Stealing our breakthrough? No apology can make up for this!”, Nostra’s voice reverberated through the frozen door, like a beast between growling and grunting.
‘No apologies can make up for Mortigus either!” replied Rhit, throwing more flasks and plant pots onto the ground. With the thuds onto the basement door loudening, Rhit planted their feet into the ground.
With a strong push, the basement door was slammed into the wall by none other than Nostra. The doctor entered the room, panting, his whole body shaking. His eyes locked almost instantly onto Rhit, and he raised his scorched arm holding a smouldering cane. Both Rhit and Nostra began chanting a short phrase, sounding like an incantation, flames yet again brewing around the cane, while air was getting visibly denser in front of Rhit. The fierce fire was already launched forward when Nostra realised the severity of the thrashed room and the broken glass. It was too late for any other outcome, Rhit’s spell condensing the flammable gas in the room, feeding the flame into evolving in a flash of devilish white. A sound indescribably loud and rapid, like a woodpecker hitting the inside of someone’s eardrum, signalled the explosion of the ground floor, feeding the top floors of the inn to a powerful flame. Among the shadows of the walls burning, a few piles were vertically standing before collapsing all together.
The night had gotten mute as fast as it burst into noise at the beginning, the lights fading in the distance. Mortigus was throwing himself forward, just to get further from that place. Everything slowly began vanishing into the night, and the only glow left was his eye.The grass was rustling, the moon was shining, the wind was blowing, but he perceived nothing. Moving forward was all he could do now, no matter the dark, no matter who could be behind or in front of him.
At this moment Fate blinked, letting time pass until Its eyes would open to let reality unfold again.
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