Chapter Text
The castle with its many secret passages and locked chambers happens to be a remarkable place to explore. Not that Rhys hadn’t been doing that before but now, between him and his young companion, their adventures traipsing through one or another room filled to the brim with wonders the Sorcerer has amassed over the years of his rule, are even more exciting. With Sasha’s ability to pick even the most complicated locks, something she treats more of a challenge to show off, and a book on guarding hexes tightly clutched in Rhys’ hand, every door stands open before the curious duo.
For better or worse, the master of the castle hardly pays any interest to their snooping, occasionally needing to rescue the unfortunate adventurers whenever they stumbled across something truly dangerous. A good example of such instance being that one time they might have accidentally opened a portal to another realm and got lost in a dark forest only to find their way to a peculiar hut perched atop hen’s leg. They have followed a trail of crumbs, carefully picked and shoved into Rhys’ mouth along the way, and the elderly lady they found at the end of it, invited them for a cup of tea and sweets. It wouldn’t have been that bad if not for screams of terror coming from an old oven and when she sweetly asked if they will be staying for dinner, things turned sour. To Jack’s credit, the Sorcerer didn’t even bat an eyelash leading the two unfortunate mortals back home with a sheepish handwave to the clearly disgruntled old hag, robbed of her meal.
Another, when they thought it would be a good idea to plant a handful of beans they have found, spurred on by a prod of magic making them sprout sky high and as they both were sliding down the stalk, unknowingly to Rhys, with a small golden egg in Sasha’s pocket, and chased by a horde of giants, the Sorcerer only watched their misadventures with an exasperate sigh. He ended up rolling his sleeves up and making a quick work of the beanstalk with a lightning axe. For three days Rhys couldn’t get the image of sweat rolling down the straining muscles of the exposed arms out of his head.
One finding after another, their curiosity grew, ever more outraging, magical artifacts catalogued and sorted through since, after a few arguments, Jack gave up on trying to stop their little excursions and tasked them with reorganizing the mess.
A small, gold-rimmed mirror which upon Rhys’ joking question regarding who’s the most handsome of them all replied that of course it’s him, resulted in Jack sulking for a whole week after smashing the mirror into pieces.
The simple gold band slipped around Rhys’ index finger had him lured outside of the castle, headed into unknown direction with an unfamiliar voice whispering sweet nothings into his ear. Parting with his precious wasn’t an easy task but Jack was adamant about the ring being returned to him. At the very least, he made up for the longing in Rhys’ heart with his own brand of filthy words murmured later that night.
The brightly coloured piece of cloth turned out to be able to make anyone draping it over their head invisible and for a couple of days the duo had quite a lot of fun sneaking up on unsuspecting castle inhabitants until Jack grew annoyed with them after having been caught partway through a full blown argument with… himself, or at least it looked like that, despite him constantly mentioning ‘tim tam’. Whatever that happened to be.
On a good day and when the mood was just so, the Sorcerer would indulge them all, spinning tales and stories about this or another artifact’s origin, often warning about using them carelessly.
Today’s catch is a chest full of papers with schematics, unfamiliar handwriting apparently in a language neither Rhys nor Sasha recognize and arrows pointing to scribbles, interjected with Jack’s own suggestions. Beside the parchment, they discover an assortment of strange, conically shaped and with varying degrees of softness items inside.
The Sorcerer finds them in a midst of a battle, Rhys flopping around a piece that is about the length of his arm, quite bendy in fact, and the width of his wrist at best, as he’s trying to fend off a clearly angered, fluffed up ginger tabby spitting hisses at him. At the same time, Sasha is fighting a losing battle against a black demon of ruffled fur, sharp claws and narrowed down green eyes, two tail-like shapes, graciously curled and now marred with scratch marks, in either of her hands.
“What in hell are you doing!?” The booming voice followed with a throaty click has both humans freezing in place and the cats springing forward until they can safely perch in Jack’s arms, the ginger one squirming until it curls around the back of the man’s neck while the black one chooses to simply cuddle closer to his chest, a double sound of purrs instantly sounding. Whatever fight they have had in them, escapes the second they are close to the master of the castle.
“Are those monsters yours?” Rhys absent mindedly keeps tapping the blunt end of his makeshift weapon against open palm. He has caught glimpses of those two furry demons napping in sunny spots around the castle but despite his best efforts, they always inevitably escaped after giving him a few scratches if he got too close.
“They used to belong to …” Jack’s eyes drop momentarily to the creature affectionately rubbing its muzzle against his chest, a glimmer of fondness softening the corners of his mouth, “you know, yeah, they are mine. This one’s …” He seem to be searching for something, sorting through memories until the answer appears to him, “that’s Soot and the ginger one’s called Rust I believe. Not the most original names.”
“Never thought you’d be a cat person, Sorcerer.” Sasha’s voice is tinged with hardly contained irony.
“I’m not really, these days I mostly use these two as…” Soot is suddenly grabbed by the scruff of its neck and quite carelessly tossed in the air. Any words condemning animal cruelty disappear when instead of soft paws landing against the stone floor, a harsh clack of studded boots comes. Before them, shaking his head, what looks like a copy of the Sorcerer straightens up. A little bit taller than Jack and while the man in question has most of his bulk centered around the upper half of his body, the copycat, despite sharing the same tapered, narrow waist, seems to be a little wider around the hips, thighs bulging with coiled muscles slightly bent.
“...decoys.” The face is exactly the same, mask placed over tanned skin and with two undamage horns curling backwards. The creature looks dazedly around, flexing fingers tipped in sharp claws, before deciding to trot back to its master and resume the affectionate rubs. And wow but this is a sight that’s gonna stick with Rhys for a longer time.
“Little buggers always find a way back to the castle though.” Jack doesn’t seem to mind however, and what Rhys doesn’t know, is that they are more attached to the previous inhabitant of Jack’s body, sensing some remnants of him, than the man himself.
Drawn in by the sounds of the previous battle and the currently ongoing conversation, Fiona pops her head in, around the man standing in the doorway.
“What are you two no-goods up to?” Her gaze drifts to the items strewn around the floor and those clutched in Rhys’ and Sasha’s hands. “Oh… are those?”
Without a second thought, she comes closer, picking up one of the artifacts to turn it in her hands, closely examining the ridges and bumps lined along its length. Curiously prodding at the two softer oval shapes located at the base, her eyes finally move to meet Jack’s, “I think I know what they are… from the Handsome Dragon collection, right? I’ve heard older women in our town whisper about them from time to time…”
“I see my fame precedes my humble self,” Jack all but beams at her remark, completely disregarding the quizzical looks shot between the younger participants of this exchange.
“Used to run this business,” digging once again through the content of the chest, Sasha pulls out a banner of some sorts, spelling the name of said business in ornate letters, “but that was before the ban on magic drove all of my customers away.”
“You have to be joking, that was yours? For real? Of course it was, the Handsome Dragon!” Fiona nearly face palms at the realization. “You know, people still fondly talk about it…”
That’s the exact moment Sasha finds another thing that picks her interest, another of the artifacts in her hand, a flared, hollowed out base giving a loud pop as it sticks to her hand.
“Hey, moron…” before Rhys can protest, the item ends up stuck to his forehead, its soft, flesh-like texture making it bob with every move, “bow to the queen Buttstallion!” And with that she does her best impression of curtseying, much to Jack’s and her sister’s dismay.
Their antics and the soft neigh Rhys produces end up ignored and if he knows Fiona as well as he thinks he does, there is only one thing that can hold her interest for longer. Riches.
“Listen, Sorcerer, what would you say if we brought you back into business?”
“I’d rather not advertise my presence around the nearby cities and towns, not with recent witchhunter’s activity…” But he’s not exactly turning the proposition down and that’s what Fiona hangs onto.
“But what if you had… business partners, sales people, if you were to give us a good disguise, we could go around, scout the market, check the demand, make contracts in your name.”
“We can be elusive,” Sasha chimes in, “in and out before the hunters will know anything.” She doesn’t exactly understand what they will be selling but Fiona’s ideas are usually good and she’s more than willing to support her sister. “We can con the rich folks out of their gold…”
“...and leave a trail of deeply sated men and women in our wake!” They both are getting pretty excited at the prospect of getting their greedy paws on some sweet coins.
“You had people ordering custom made floppies, didn’t you?” Sasha points to the schematics, completely ignoring the cringe flashing across Jack’s face at the name.
“Can you make more ‘floppies’ master?” Rhys instantly picks up on the term, better than referring to them as ‘items’.
“I always prefered calling them dragons although many had different, less tasteful names for them…” the Sorcerer wrinkles his nose, one finger coming up to tap at his chin as he ponders over the suggestion presented to him, “but yes, I can make more, the molds and components should still be somewhere around. There have been a lot of impersonators and copycats trying to take the market by storm after I closed the business but none of them could do that…” A flick of his wrist and the ‘dragon’ currently stuck to Rhys begins buzzing with enough strength to make his teeth rattle and the tail-like ones in Sasha’s hands start wildly thrashing about.
Fiona gasps and her eyes turn dreamy.
“Alright, I agree provided you kids are gonna help me design and test new dragons. If the Handsome Dragon is to make a return, let it be in all its devious glory!”
Sasha’s suggestion that they should come equipped with -more- knives is instantly turned down, while Rhys’, about coating them in icing, at the very least, considered.