Chapter Text
“Sit,” Will ordered, sternly, coin in hand. “Sit.”
The mimic looked up at Will, practically vibrating with excitement. It did not sit down. Will groaned, sitting down next to it on the cold wooden floor and tossing the coin he’d been holding down, sending it rolling across the floorboards with the mimic wildly chasing after it. Will couldn’t help but laugh as he watched it pounce and jump with reckless abandon, skittering around and leaving claw marks he’d no doubt have to buff out later.
Will whistled and patted the ground in front of him. The mimic turned on a dime, rushing back towards its owner. It flung itself into his chest, nuzzling against him as it drove all the wind out of his lungs.
“Easy boy,” Will wheezed. The mimic vibrated and continued to nuzzle, settling down into Will’s lap. The shopkeeper sighed, patting the tiny monster on the top of its…head? Body? Wooden carapace? Will still wasn’t sure how to refer to the mimic’s chest-shaped form, lacking in anything animalistic except for sharp teeth and a slobbering tongue.
He picked the small monster up by the iron wrought handles on either side of its body (or its lower jaw? Will wondered), bringing it to face height. The mimic wiggled, trying unsuccessfully to lick his face.
“You,” Will sternly instructed the small thing trying desperately to love him, “are a fierce killing machine. You hail from a long line of fierce killing machines. Being a fierce killing machine is in your blood—er, iron and wood.” The mimic wiggled even harder, its tiny chest-feet pawing at the air. “You can learn how to sit. You can.”
The mimic lunged forward out of his hands, its blue tongue finally licking Will all over his face as it clawed up his shirt. Will screeched, flailing.
“Down! Heel!” Will said, pushing his over-exuberant pet down. He stood up, wiping away the slobber and keeping his face well away from the mimic. “Maybe we should work on ‘down’ first…” Will muttered to himself, walking to the backroom and sitting down at his work desk.
It’d been just over a week since Will had found the unremarkable gray egg in the Forest Dungeon, on the corpse of an iron mimic that had tried very hard to rip out his ribcage. He’d shoved it in his pack, figuring he could scope out if anyone would buy it in town. Eris was a witch, after all—maybe she could use it for something.
He’d promptly forgotten about the damn thing when he got home and came down with a cold. Fever, stuffed nose, coughs, the whole nine yards. Will had been bedridden for a good day and a half, dazed and shivering miserably underneath three heavy blankets.
His fever had broken and coughing had subsided when the cracking noises began coming from his bag. Confused, wondering if he was still feverish after all, he’d squinted across the dimly lit room as he watched his pack bulge and wiggle against the wall it had been haphazardly leaned against. A tearing sound had torn across the room. The mimic, covered in some strange purple, semi-transparent goop, had come somersaulting out. And as soon as it came bounding across the room, jumped on his bed, and cuddled against him, Will knew he was doomed.
Currently, Will tapped his pen against his journal’s pages in thought as the mimic curled up underneath his chair contently. He’d seen the damage a fully-grown iron mimic could do. They could rend steel armor, bend swords, and swallow arrows. Not the most dangerous of the species, especially in comparison to the gold mimics (he shuddered), but still something he had to be careful with. He had to make sure he set a good training precedence to keep everyone, his mimic included, safe. He started to scribble down some of his ideas, determined to make it work.
It was the afternoon, and Will had closed the shop early for some more training time with his mimic. He whistled and patted the ground in front of him, and his tiny friend came bounding out from the bedroom, its jaws clicking excitedly and tongue lolling out.
“That’s a good boy! That’s a good mimic!” Will crooned, pitching his voice higher and giving the creature’s dark wood scritches and pats. “You came when I called you, good good boy!” The mimic jumped up, its iron feet clawing upwards.
“No, no, down.” Will said sternly, standing up and turning away from the mimic. Jumping was something he was determined to train out of it, and he’d decided last night that every time the mimic leapt onto him, he’d disengage from the reaction. He kept his back turned even as he heard the mimic tapping unhappily behind him.
And so it went. Every time the mimic did something he wanted to train it to do, such as sitting, or staying, or letting him grab its tiny iron feet and shake it in some semblance of a handshake, he’d reward it. Sometimes with affection, sometimes with food—silver coins were a particular favorite of its—and sometimes both.
By the end of the day, the mimic was reliably coming every time he called for it, and even sitting and staying every so often when he told it to! “Shake” was still a work in progress, but Will was feeling damn optimistic.
“You are doing amazing, little buddy,” Will told his mimic that night, curled up in bed with it cuddled up against his chest. The mimic purred as he scratched its wood.
Will continued his practice with the mimic as the days went by, with various degrees of success. The mimic was a ball of energy and still wrestled with the “stay” command, but it had gotten “sit” down for the most part. It could “shake,” but only after Will had had it “sit,” otherwise it would get confused and just sit down. And Will had tried to incorporate “roll over,” like how he’d seen dogs do as a kid, but that had ended up in the poor mimic getting stuck on its flat chest-side, its iron legs flailing helplessly in the air. After he’d stopped laughing, Will had righted the poor thing.
Now, Will had fastened a leather harness on the mimic. The mimic wiggled unhappily, opening and snapping its jaws shut in discomfort.
“I know, I know. It’s new, it’s weird, you’re not used to it,” Will said soothingly, petting the mimic as he spoke. “But you’ll like going on walks, I promise. This way I won’t have to trap you in my bag every time we walk to the dungeons, see?”
The mimic pawed at the ground and wiggled its protest more.
“I’m not taking it off you, buddy. Sorry.”
The mimic laid down heavily. Will shook his head, and fished out a coin from his pocket, rolling it across the floor with a flick of his wrist in the way he’d learned the mimic loved. It went chasing after it without a second thought, discomfort with the harness completely forgotten as it went zooming. Will grinned and shook his head.
A knock at the door of the shop interrupted his thoughts, and the mimic’s snack. It let out a growl, snapping its jaws as it ran towards the door. It jumped up, scratching the wood of the door.
“Hey, hey, down!” Will said, quickly grabbing something to distract the mimic. He whistled, waving some of its tug-o-war wires to get its attention. “Away from the door! Come on!” The mimic perked up at the wires, momentarily diverted. It grabbed on to them, tugging insistently.
“One second!” Will called over his shoulder as he scooped up the now-distracted mimic. He deposited it into his bed, giving it another toy (this one a wrought piece of iron that it’d been chewing on). “You stay here,” he told the mimic sternly. He needn’t of bothered, with how easily distracted the small thing was.
Closing the bedroom door behind him, the knocking grew more insistent. “I said I’m coming!” Will said, maneuvering around his shop stands. He yanked open the door, huffing. “The sign says we’re closed—”
“Yes, I can read, boy,” Zenon said, leaning on his staff and tapping his foot impatiently outside. The midday breeze blew some orange and brown leaves into the house as Will stood there, frozen. He wasn’t sure what Zenon was doing here, but he could feel “parental disappointment” practically oozing off of Zenon just from his stance alone.
“Oh, er, Zenon. I’m sorry,” Will shuffled his feet nervously, opening the door wider. “Sorry for being rude. Please, come in.”
Zenon strode in, his critical eyes scanning the empty pedestals and stands of the shop. He harrumphed, tapping the glass of one of the empty cases.
“You can’t keep leaving the shop closed like this. You need to focus on the Moonlighter; customers and rent won’t wait forever,” Zenon turned to face Will, stroking his long white beard I thought. “But that’s not what I came here to talk with you about. I heard you’ve brought something dangerous home from the dungeons.”
“Er, nothing recently?” Will said, wracking his brain at the unexpected subject. “Mostly just old books, scrap, some monster bits…nothing out of the ordinary, at least.”
“Something alive,” Zenon said, pointedly. Oh. Will smiled widely at Xenon, a nervous tick he’d never quite gotten rid of as a kid.
“Ah, well, I did get a pet recently, yeah,” Will said. He was trying desperately to get his facial muscles under control. Stop smiling! You are so obviously doing something you know he won’t approve of, stop smiling and giving yourself away. He groaned at himself internally.
“A pet.” Xenon enunciated his sentence carefully. “You call it a pet?”
“It is a pet!” Will said defensively. “It’s a very good mimic. It can sit and stay, and even shake sometimes. And it helps me bring home loot in dungeons!”
“It is a wild monster! Boy, you put yourself in such unnecessary danger,” Xenon scowled. “Put the thing down before it hurts or kills you. I won’t have your death on my shoulders just because you’re foolish.”
“‘Put it down’?” Will was horrified. “No! Hell no!”
“It’s a mimic, Will. Leave owning dangerous magical creatures to the stupid Heroes who don’t know better. Sell the thing, if that makes you feel better, but keeping it around isn’t worth your life.”
“Absolutely not!” Will said, reeling. “It’s my mimic. It’s sweet, and a little clingy, and a fast learner, and a good boy. It would never intentionally hurt me. And I’m not giving it away to the first asshole that walks in!” He crossed his arms, his chest aching at the thought.
“It. Is. A. Mimic,” Xenon growled, gripping his staff tightly. “It is not a dog! If it doesn’t hurt you, it will hurt someone else. It’s dangerous. It doesn’t belong in your shop.”
“And you don’t think I’ve already considered the dangers?” Will shot back. “That’s why I’m working so hard to train it. It’s not some mindless abomination, Xenon—it’s smart, and affectionate.” He glared at the man who had raised him after his parents had passed, refusing to budge an inch on the matter. His mimic was his mimic. He would sell it as soon as he’d sell his sword, or his arm.
“You never listen to my advice, boy, and I just pray that this isn’t the time it kills you,” Xenon said, banging his staff onto the ground. He swept away from Will and out the front door without a word, displeasure and disappointment hanging in the air behind him as he slammed the door shut.
Will physically deflated. He trudged to his bedroom, taking shaky breathes. He held his hand to his mouth as he sat down onto the bed, his mimic fast asleep in the covers. It snuggled up against him as he let out a wracking sob. He picked it up, hugging it close to his chest. It nuzzled against him, asleep and concerned, pawing at his shirt as he held it and cried.