Chapter Text
Taako cracks open his eyes and flinches as a sharp ray of sun shines directly into his face. He holds up his hand to block the offending beams and at the same time notices the amount of digits on his hand. He has four fingers. He inhales sharply and slowly turns his hand around. The place where his pinkie should’ve been was a smooth plane with an extra knuckle.
So that wasn’t a shitty dream. Taako closes his eyes and lets his hand fall to the ground.
And jumps at the startled squeak that comes from where it fell. Taako scrambles to the side and away from the noise before even seeing the source. When he gets to his feet he glances around sharply until he sees a thin body crawl out of the underbrush near the tree he was leaning against. It scrutinizes him with small black eyes and its small pink nose twitches as it smells the air. Taako snorts out his nose and relaxes. It’s just a damn mongoose.
“Wh- … dghh ht?” Taako says, or tries to. He scowls and reaches up to massage his throat. He had a small habit of talking to things or animals when he thought no one was looking. It was a dumb thing, but he remembered doing this ever since he was a kid. No one ever responded but he made quips anyway. Someone used to be there- he begins to think, but that thought slips away and he loses it in an instant. Speaking out loud was something he did all the time and this new situation was going to take some getting used to.
Taako sighs, at least he could do that and have it sound the same. He rubs his eyes and flicks out the little sleep sand thingies that roll on his fingers. His cheeks feel crusty like they do after you’ve had a good cry.
The mongoose is still staring up at him and Taako thinks it’s laughing at him with those dangerous little eyes. Taako raises a brow,
What are you doing here lil’ fella? He thinks.
Didn’t mongooses- mongeese(?) live in desert places? Why was it sitting next to him anyway? As he stands there the little creature cautiously begins to make it’s way forward again and Taako stands very still. Sure the little thing was extremely cute and noodle-y, but these little guys were fucking badasses in Taako’s book. This little thing could slash his eyes up and he would say thank you for the face lift.
It gets to his foot and then stops with its little nose twitching rabidly up at him and its head swaying back and forth like it was searching for something. He blinks. It blinks. Taako uncrosses his arms and the mongoose flinches back just an inch before leaning back. Taako realizes its sniffing at his pouch on his hip.
Taako carefully reaches into his pouch and fits his fingers around something. As he pulls it out the mongoose stands on its hind legs and Taako thinks he hears a squeak. He looks down at his palm and sees a portion of one of his rations. It was a decent sized piece of jerky that he made himself. Ah, the little guy was hungry. Taako grins down at the mongoose who is now hyper focused on the morsel in his hand.
He moves down to crouch and makes it very obvious so that the brown animal doesn’t scurry off. Taako barely holds the jerky out for one second before its snagged away. The mongoose doesn’t even take a glance back as it scurries off into the underbrush.
“Ddh,” Rude, he thinks.
Taako watches the place where it left and berates himself for hoping that it would come back. He feels his mood slowly become sour. He flops back down under the tree and lets out an even bigger sigh. Where does he even start?
Damage control.
That seems like a good place to begin. Find out just how fucked he is. Taako thinks about reaching for a paper and pencil but it’s too much effort.
Taako starts with the obvious things. He only has four fingers on each hand, which isn’t that bad, he looks like a human now because his elven ears were taken away, which made him a little uncomfortable, and last but not least he had no voice.
The voice part was especially shitty. Like what just happened before, he talks to things when no ones looking. His voice was heavily attached to his personalty and he couldn’t run Sizzle It Up with just looks and pizazz. The jokes and gaffs were a huge part of the show! Taako grimaces. Talking in general was also nice. He had no idea how people interaction was going to go now. The worst thing however about the lack of his voice was…
He has no magic.
Taako closes his eyes and shakily breathes in. His chest feels tight. That isn’t true, he has some magic, he can still transmute (maybe) and he can still cast spells that don’t require a vocal component. Taako sits there for a moment and then laughs, that’s practically nothing! Almost every spell in the book requires its name to be activated! Why wasn’t he paying attention when he landed on the space where he sacrificed his voice? If he listened to Edward he would’ve said no and forced Sazed to take the other two sacrifices.
He’s pretty much the opposite of a dope ass wizard.
I’m a pretty worthless wizard.
Taako runs his hands across his face and through his hair, uncomfortably pulling on a few knots. By the gods I need a good siesta.
He needs to get these bad thoughts out of his head before they start to fester he decides. Taako couldn’t do that. His survival instincts which he relied on when he was a kid were beginning to kick in and the biggest thing that he learned when he was on his own was that once you got the thought that ‘everything is over then everything will be over.’
Now he needed to think about the second part of damage control. He needs to get down what he still has.
.
.
.
What does he have?
Taako’s hands begin to curl as a horrific emotion begins to take him, but then stops. His fingers aren’t touching the mossy ground around him, they were curled around a soft and rich material. Taako can’t believe he completely overlooked the Cape of Mountebank. A small smile reaches his face again. So yeah, he got fucked over and he got fucked over hard, the cape didn’t even come close to making up for the lack of his voice, but it was still a rad as fuck item. Being able to “peace out” of any conversation ever is a gift.
Second, the cape is gorgeous now that Taako has some time to appreciate it. He sits up and takes it off his back to look at it. He runs his fingers over the embroidered golden fabric. He would have to find some appropriate clothes to fit with this thing. He’s wearing some pretty clashing trash with this thing though. The dull purple with the bold crimson red cape- this is right- and gold trim just doesn’t fit. He needs something simple yet complimentary.
He’s a pretty worthless wizard alright, but now he’s pretty and a worthless wizard.
The cape was made of something sturdy as well as Taako kept prodding and twisting it around. The material was soft and had a healthy amount of give when pulled. Taako concluded his investigation of the cape with a, Nice.
Now what did he have that wasn’t on his person?
He still has his name and his fame. He could go around under a minor illusion where he still had his ears and someone would recognize him. He’d ask if he could crash for a few days and someone would probably fall to their knees to have the Taako from TV in their house. He might be able to live like that, jumping from house to house for as long as he can until people start getting tired of him.
Damn he was really back to square one.
This sucks.
At least he still has all that money he was keeping away from Sazed tucked safely in-
Taako feels something vile lash out in his chest and he remembers the whole reason he’s like this. It’s his fault Taako lost his voice. It’s his fault he’s now in the middle of nowhere with no magic. Sazed wanted to fucking kill him. Who does that? Who thinks it’s okay to kill someone for not sharing the spotlight- the spotlight Taako made for himself out of nothing? Fuck Sazed for wanting to take his fame, his one way ticket out of living on the streets with no safety net to fall back on.
Does he even know how much that cart cost him? (Taako didn’t remember but he bet it was a mini-fortune.)
He’s probably in the cart right now and running a sorry excuse of a show. Oh he hopes the people in Glamour Springs are hella confused and angry that Taako isn’t there. He hopes Sazed chokes and dies on a piece of garlic chicken he doesn’t know how to make.
Taako yells to the sky, totally ignoring the screeching sound his throat adds.
This is fuckin’ unfair!
Why did fate want to drop kick him back down to the first peg. Taako groans into his hands. He shouldn’t have followed Sazed. He shouldn’t have even hired Sazed. Sure the extra pair of hands was nice and it allowed him to focus more on the cooking part of his show, but he was handling everything just fine until Sazed showed up. Taako peeks up from his fingers and stares ahead.
A pair of mongoose eyes stare back. Taako blinks in surprise.
“Ouh hhoh,” Oh hello.
I’m gonna call you Hanry, like Harry and Henry combined, Taako muses as the mongoose waddles past him after scouring the area for any enemies. Apparently he gives off a whole nonthreatening vibe now. It just took one look at him and scurried past like a dutiful little soldier.
Taako doesn’t know what he’s doing.
After his whole introspective session he didn’t know what step 2 was. He found out that he can’t teleport endlessly. Apparently the cape had a once per day use. Taako teleported to the top of the tree to try to get a vantage point of where he is. That was a bad decision because as soon as he stopped clinging onto the top branches for dear life he immediately saw the cursed cylindrical form of Wonderland and promptly fell out of the tree. He lost his grip pretty quickly and tried to activate the cape again mid fall. Didn’t work.
He hit the ground pretty hard and didn’t feel like moving. He definitely lost a decent amount of health from that. He bet if he got up there would be a Taako shaped indent in the moss around him.
What to do, what to do…
Taako reaches into his pouch and pulls some dried fruit from his rations to munch on as he stares at the sky. He absentmindedly chews as he thinks about what step 2 should be.
I can try to use magic again. A thought invades his lazy zen and makes him stop chewing for a second. He wants to dismiss the thought completely but it keeps coming back. Taako grabs for his wand which dropped to the ground next to him just within reach and holds it up at the sky.
He closes his eyes. He fills his lungs with air and then lets it out slowly through his nose. He cracks open his eyes, doubt mingling with anxiety in his chest as he forms the words magic missile.
“Mmah-h Mhhh,” is what comes out. His wand doesn’t even spark. Taako grits his teeth and tries again, frustration mingling with his other emotions.
Magic Missile. Nothing.
Magic Missile! Nothing again.
Magic Missile! Triple nothing.
Taako angrily growls, breathing in sharply to try again when a piece of the dried fruit that he was munching on frees itself from his cheek and whips into his throat.
“Mmah-h Mh-GH-!”
Taako’s eyes go wide and he quickly rights himself onto his hands and knees. He coughs harshly and pounds his chest. His eyes water and he hoarsely gasps for air, but it isn’t long until the fruit dislodges from his throat.
Taako breathes heavily and massages his throat. He swallows the food in his mouth and groans. God he was glad no one saw that-
A deep and chilling growl rumbles from the right of him. Taako’s head jerks up toward the sound and he stares into the forest. Three pairs of eyes stare back at him.
Oh fuck, oh beans.
The chimera steps into the clearing and roars discordantly at him with all three heads. Its lion head stays low to the ground while the dragon head stays up and Taako can see strings of molten fire dripping from it’s mouth. The goat head is just there looking creepy as fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck!
Taako backs up slowly to the tree, stiff with fear. He holds his cape tightly willing it to work, but it doesn’t respond. In a panic Taako raises his wand and time seems to slow down as three distinct things happen.
The chimera pounces at him because of the sudden movement.
Taako throws his non-wand hand out in reaction. At the same time he did that he was instinctively channeling the magic needed for magic missile. His free hand was outstretched with the palm splayed as far as it could be. A few thin wisps of white magic that are unmistakably similar to magic missile twist through his fingers and fly to his wand. Before they can reach the wand they sputter out mid air, but that’s enough for Taako’s attention to switch focus completely. Did he just…?
The third thing that occurs is the furious brown shape darting out of the underbrush straight toward the monster.
Taako’s back collides with rough bark and that breaks him out of his shocked stupor. His gaze flies back over from his hands to the chimera to see it looking absolutely perplexed at something down in front of it. Taako looks down and almost laughs.
Hanry is screeching furiously at the chimera that is probably fifty times more massive than it’s little noodle body. The little mongoose keeps its belly low while it lunges forward and screams it’s displeasure at the gigantic predator on its territory. Taako feels a little giddy.
Fuck yeah! Go Hanry!
Taako yells happily and throws his hands in the air. The chimera’s dragon head growls and jerks up to him and Taako pales. The dragon head opens his mouth to spit fire when the mongoose has the fucking balls to leap up and bite at the dragon head. The said head looks downright perplexed at this tiny thing. The lion head tries to sneak a snap at Hanry but the mongoose isn’t having any of it, twisting it’s body out of range to screech back over.
Taako’s love for mongooses feels absolutely vindicated by this moment. He laughs at the dumb look on all three heads of this thing as it’s literally driven away by a small, angry, brown noodle of fuzz performing the most obnoxious war dance Taako has ever seen.
The chimera tries to have the final say in all this by roaring at the mongoose and Taako, but Hanry doesn’t let up for a second. It even leaps up and takes a bite at the lion’s neck and pulls out a decent amount of fur. The chimera sends one last glance at Taako before turning tail and running off.
And Hanry runs after it! Taako laughs even harder and he doesn’t even care that he sounds like a broken oboe. After a while Taako can just about see the mongoose stop to watch the monster run away and Hanry proceeds to do the most obnoxious war dance 2.0. Taako has to brace most of his weight against the tree to keep himself from falling down partially from the sheer ridiculousness that just happened and partially because he almost just died.
Taako wipes his eyes as Hanry comes scurrying back. It slows down as it comes to him and gives him a quick sniff over before hurrying back to the underbrush near the tree. Taako was about to shake his head when he got a bit curious.
Carefully, he walks over to the thick bush a good few yards away where Hanry went and gets on his knees. At first he doesn’t see anything but as his eyes begin to adjust he sees Hanry on its side curled around two other brown wiggling shapes.
Aww look at those mini Hanry’s. That means you’re a girl huh… I’m still gonna call you Hanry, he grins. Well at least it made sense why it- she was so protective. Taako finds it awesome that she graciously extended her protective monster instincts to him. He sees her shift her weight enough so that she’s in pouncing mode and Taako realizes he should probably stop ogling the adorable mongoose pups.
He carefully gets back up. As he brushes himself off he sees the wand in his hand.
That fleeting moment of his magic being drawn comes back to him in a crash of realization. He holds up his wand and his hand, looking back and forth in confusion.
Okay, apparently I’m still a magic boy?
