Work Text:
Why falling off a trashcan is inadvisable
The clearing is unbearably busy. Feinberg has stuffed himself in a corner, wonderfully hidden under the low hanging canopy of a tree. Its branches can’t block the heavy magic in the air, but it keeps the other irritations of being around too many people at bay. His eyes scan the crowd again, looking for a familiar patch of brown fur or hair, but he doesn’t see anything. Couriway, had mentioned he needed to run a small arrant and thus would arrive late, but it had been 30 minutes now. Sure, Feinberg knew events never started on time, hell, he knew Couri knew that, but 20 minutes over was still late. Luckily his worries weren’t long lasting as his eyes finally catch on a bunny weaving expertly trough the legs of rowdy magicians and straight to the tree Feinberg had hidden himself under. Upon arrival it jumps up and shifts. “Hey, I haven’t held anyone up, have I?” The now man pants. “There were more technical difficulties than I thought.”
“Nah, you’re fine. I doubt we are starting something serious anytime soon.”
“Good. I see you managed to survive-” Couriway cleared his throat to finish his sentence in a spooky voice “-the people~”
“Shut up.”
It takes another agonizingly slow 30 minutes of waiting until a magically amplified voice rings trough the clearing. “WELCOME WITCHES! WE ARE HOUNARED TO SEE YOU ALL HERE AGAIN. TO START OFF we- what-” The spell breaks abruptly and the confused voice of the host gets drowned out by worried murmurs and gossip. Feinberg can just barely see the organizers frantically discussing with each other next to the small wooden stage. Next to him, Couriway freezes. A second later, Feinberg feels why. It felt like the opposite of opening a window in a stuffy room, okay even he could admit that sounded vague…but there was no real way to describe it. The important thing is that Feinberg recognizes that feeling, knows what it is and Couriway does too. Something is sucking the magic out of the air. They are at a witch’s gathering. Something is sucking the magic out of the air in a place filled with people who work with magic. In his peripheral he sees Couri’s human form collapse into a growling bunny and – universe – Feinberg’s blood runs cold as his mind pieces together what must be happening. “HUNTERS!” His voice caries easily over the big clearing with the help some projection magic pulled from a bit of not yet drained locally stored energy. It gets people moving. The murmurs switch over into full out yelling and screaming, the clearing exploding into action like bugs under an uplifted rock. The telltale clicks and whistles of crossbows come from behind the trees and an arrow lodges itself into a tree right next to Feinberg head. Fuck.
-
A shiver ripples through Couriway’s hide as he crawls out from under the bush. The clearing is empty now, the magic and livelihood that had hung in the air only a few minutes ago stolen away, leaving it barren and even worse: silent. Like the forest Couriway’s body feels weak. He cannot properly feel his bond to Feinberg anymore, leaving him unable to change back into a human form. This is bad. Really really bad. He physically shakes himself from his stupor. He has to get help. Find another witch. One that hasn’t been taken. Couriway remembers a town close to this forest on the map hanging in their study at home. If he pushes himself, he might be able to get there by sundown. The familiar is no stranger to running when it feels like every bone in his body and soul are protesting. As much as he will and can fight when needed, rabbits are prey animals. His body was made to run.
The sunset above the town was usually a sight to behold. One that stopped weary travellers in their tracks just to marvel at its colours painting the sky. Tonight, the orange of the falling sun was illuminating the rainclouds that had started gathering in the air at noon. Couriway didn’t spare any of it a single glance as he raced down the hill, past the farm lands and deeper into the town as the buildings grew taller and closer together around him morphing into a place where a bunny on the road would have been a peculiar occurrence where it not for the weather and early darkness shooing people inside their houses. Exhaustion and caution hindered the familiar’s pace. He panted, having ran out of breath a whole hour ago, but also tasting for any hint of magic in the air. He knew there had to be witches in town. There couldn’t not be. He just had to figure out were. And if they were any good.
It took 3 corners for Couriway to find a good trace. The magic was hidden well, most likely to keep those same hunters –or anyone smart with a common hate for magic – away, but Couriway had been part of this world for long enough that he felt confident in his ability to follow the trail to its source. The source being a grey blob of a building, like most of the architecture here was. Couriway dragged himself into the alley next to the building, where one open window was situated, just barely reachable if he leapt from one of the trashcans against the opposite wall. He scrambled up some rubble onto the trashcan and let himself sink trough his hind legs. Gathering just a bit more strength in his tiny body. Lower… lower… lower… push! He felt his legs fail against the trashcan, and his nails were scrambling for purchase against the wet plastic as he slipped. A warbled noise slipped from his throat as he fell and bounced of off the pile of trash bags next to the container. Laying in a heap on the cold stone all of the adrenaline drained from his blood, his magic was limited with his connection to Fein blocked and his fur was wet and matted together by mud and grime. On top of that his fall straight into the trash now also made him stinky. Couriway tried to push himself up, but his paws gave out under him. Not able to be pushed any more past their limits. He thought of Feinberg, it seemed the both of them were fucked now.
A repetitive thump and creak made him try to raise his head and turn his ears. It had turned completely dark, shadows making it difficult to make anything out. The taste of magic in his mouth grew stronger though. Coming closer with each noise. Couriway thought he might’ve heard the sound of a door opening he could distinguish footsteps on the wet stone and for a split second light burned beyond his now closed eyelids.
“Oh-” The footsteps stopped. “Hey buddy.” The footsteps started again as the magic now almost engulfed him. They must be crouching over him. “Come on, we should get you inside.” The stranger murmured. A pair of warm hands gently wrapped around his body and pulled him up into an even warmer chest. Clearly experienced with handling animals. The witch’s warmth screamed at his body to relax, untense the pent-up muscles, but his in his mind he fought it, he had to let them know about the other witches. About his witch. Feinberg needed help. But it seemed like his body didn’t have much care for what Couriway thought of the situation. Letting him succumb to the haziness of sleep in the arms and house of a stranger.
-
Mimes reading got rudely interrupted by a loud crash. Making him sit upright from where he has been lounging on their couch. “Poundcake! You alright there bud?” His noticeably uninjured roommate peeked around the corner. “Uh, yes...why?”
“I heard a crash. Must have been outside if it wasn’t you.” Mime explained.
“Okay, that is weird.” Poundy properly entered the room.
“Go take a look, in case it’s something important.”
“What? Why me? You heard it!” Poundy exclaimed.
“Because I’m saying please?”
Poundy grumbled, but Mime new he had won when the other man started slipping on shoes despite the protests. “Fine I’ll go take a look, BUT if I get brutally murdered my spirit is going to haunt you.”
“Don’t die then!”
-
Poundy’s footsteps up the stairs sounded suspiciously softer than the stomping he had gone down with. Mime had yet to figure out if this was worrying or not. The door down below fell closed and a few second later Poundy came up the stairs entering the living room again. “What was it?” He asked standing up and approaching his friend.
“Get some warm water running.” Poundy didn’t go through the curtesy of removing his shoes as he walked over to their kitchen table. Mime cringed at the wet floorboards until he spotted what Poundy was holding to his chest and made his way to the kitchen, biting back his comment about the shoes. They didn’t have a boiler, so Mime filled up a kettle and put it on the stove. On the way back he remembered to grab a towel to spread out over their kitchen table. “I’m guessing that’s what made the noise?” Mime inquired as Poundy laid the animal, now recognizable as a bunny, down on the towel. “Yea. The little guy was lying between the trash bags. Probably tried to jump on a container and fell or something.” Mime hummed and the two witches got to work.
The bunny barely stirred while Mime and Poundy got to work on cleaning all the dirt and grime from its fur. This wasn’t the first wild animal they had temporarily taken in to patch up, but usually it was birds or a stray cat. A rabbit this deep into town was unusual. What could have possibly driven it out here? When they had gotten it clean and dry, checking for injuries and luckily not finding anything more than some small scrapes, they left it to sleep in a blanked owned for this exact purpose. The cuckoo clock Mime had silenced months ago in a fit of justified irritation let out a dull thud to indicate midnight. Tomorrow, they would feed it something as an apology for the scare and bring it back to its home in the forest.
-
Couriway woke up with aching muscles. Disgruntled he sniffed and tried to bury himself closer to Fein’s chest, the texture felt off though… It didn’t smell like Feinberg, the magic surrounding him didn’t hum in tune with his own. And… That woke him up. He was in the witch’s house. Yesterday rushed back to the front of his conscious. The gathering, the hunters, losing Feinberg, getting to the village and falling off that stupid trashcan. The last thing he could recall was the the witch’s magic spilling out into the alley. That same magic hung around him now. Couriway also remembered that he was hungry. Really hungry. He hadn’t eaten since his early lunch yesterday. With his stomach guiding his actions he jumped of off the well-worn table onto the floor, his nails scratching against the wooden planks. From the table he had seen two doorways and a staircase. The kitchen was easy to identify with the entrance’s missing door revealing the space. The qualms he would usually have with grabbing food from a stranger’s house were buried underneath another growl from his stomach and the logic that if the witch had cleaned and him up (which he was incredibly thankful for) they wouldn't want him to starve from hunger. A small stool allowed him to climb up on the counter. He was sure to be careful with the jump (a repeat from yesterday now would be embarrassing). Cool morning light filtered into the kitchen from a window bracketed by herbs growing in the windowsill and hanging from the curtain rails. On the other side of the counter sat a basket with fruit and vegetables. Jackpot.
Couriway was already munching on a carrot when he heard the witch wake up. “What—” he looked over. “The fuck.” The witch was wearing a striped shirt half tucked into a pair of pyjama pants. The busy pattern doing a decent job at distracting from the thin scar trailed across one of his eyes which were now staring at the rabbit eating a carrot on his counter in absolute bafflement. Not breaking eye contact Couriway went over the next steps of his improvised plan:
- Convey to this witch that he was a familiar and not just a random rabbit
- Figure out a way to communicate across the rabbit-to-human language barrier
- Convince them to help him get his witch back from a group of witch hunters
(he was decidedly not thinking about what he would do if the witch was not hospitable to familiars and instead one of ones to make misuse of the power of a bond or sell him for a fortune)
The first thing he did was check if the guy could speak to animals naturally. He did not. Couri’s squeaking fell on deaf ears as the witch unfroze and promptly decided to pick him up –With no respect for Couri’s dignity mind you—and carry him to the living room.
-
“Would you stop kicking?” Mime said as he carried the rascal back to the living room. The little shit had eaten their carrots! Would Mime have given it the carrots anyway? Yes, but it’s about the principle. He grumbled about this under his breath as he adjusted the squirming rabbit in his arms to hopefully calm it down. It is too early for this. Poundy’s door opened with a clearly put on just to irritate him overly enthusiastic: “Morning Mime!” He retaliated with the dryest “Good morning, Poundcake.” He could manage. As he did he their rescue used the distraction to slip out of his arms. “No don’t you dare-” and onto the table. “Getting beaten by a bunny now Mime?” Poundy teased as he took in the situation.
“A bunny that has managed to steal our carrots right of the kitchen counter.”
Poundy leaned down to get a closer look at the creature. “So you’re smart one huh?” The bunny made another vaguely offended sounding noise again, stomping on the table before turning away distracted. “You’d almost think it understands us.” Poundy laughed. “It’s a rabbit Poundcake,” Mime rebutted, taking his eyes off the bunny. “I doubt it understands English. Maybe it feels some magic or emotions, but nothing more.” The universe must think of him as a joke because he turned around just in time to see the bunny sticking its nose in his – how did it even – open spellbook.
-
Bang! Couri spotted a spellbook laying neatly on a corner of the table. Surely, he’d be able to use that. The plain notebook was slightly uncomfortable to move around, but he’d pushed books around in this form before. He concentrated on feeling the magic packed inside the pages before deciding on a good place to flip it open. It took more effort to read the page, not having access to his glasses, but he managed to make out a work resembling ‘speak’ and a scribble looking like a bird when he heard the scarred witch- Mime? Letting out a panicked yelp. He wasted no more time and slammed his paw onto the neat runes pushing some of himself into it. What felt like warm air wrapped around his snout and forced him to blink and take a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again the witches had stilled. He didn’t bother paying too much mind to their respective awed and gobsmacked face- he had mission dammit!
“The hunters. They took my witch. I need you to help me find him.”
Feinberg’s Intermission: Possible Allies
Of course these fuckers didn’t clean any of their shit. His back hurt, probably from the ride here and bruises from the fight littered his body. He could taste the blood that must have ran down from the nosebleed he’d gathered from annoying the shit out of the guards.
When the hunters had first stuffed him along with the rest of the witches in a similarly shitty room Feinberg had taken it upon himself to be as much of a nuisance as he could. The resulting ruckus led to one of the hunters docking him in the nose. He’d bitten her hand and had been restrained and knocked out in approximately 43 seconds after that. A decent fight considering it had been him without magic against 4 hunters with weapons. Even if they wanted him alive.
The new cell they had moved him to smelled of piss, dust and rot. The bad conditions didn’t surprise him. What did was that he could hear two voices whispering to each other just soft enough to be unintelligible, covered up by the sound of water dripping from the ceiling. Feinberg hadn’t opened his eyes yet and it was starting to irritate him that he couldn’t make out the conversation. Time to wake up then. “Can you two shut up? I’m trying to take a nap here.”
The whispers fell silent and Feinberg pried his eyes open. The first thing he thought was that those two were not the guards. His eyes met their wide-open ones, frozen like spooked deer in the forest. The one on the left – brown curls and eyes, a small mole just under the chin – recovered first. “Sorry, we didn’t expect you to wake up yet.” His partner – long white almost silver hair and heterochronic eyes: one a noticeably lighter shade of yellow than the other – gave a curt nod in agreement, even if he didn’t cease his staring.
With a bit of prying his news cell mates turned out to be Reignex and Silver, two witches who were captured by the hunters way before they crashed the gathering. “Do you know of anyone you didn’t see in the other cell?” Reign asked. “Someone who might have escaped?”
“Couriway, my familiar.” At least Feinberg hoped he had escaped. He’d lost Couri in the fight, but he hadn’t heard the guards talking about capturing a familiar. They seemed cocky enough to have boasted about it had they had the chance to. Couriway was capable though, he must have made it out. Had to. It’s why Feinberg had “accidentally” dropped his compass when the hunters were restraining him. If Couri could somehow find that he might be able to trace it back to where Fein was kept. He explained this to Reign and Silver whose faces had only grown into even more complicated variations of the look they had given Feinberg before. Between that and the amount of glances the two shared Feinberg knew there was something he was missing. It irritated him to no end. He was missing information right in front of him, but didn’t know how to get it. The situation forced him to ignore it for now though. On the surface at least. He would definitely keep mulling it over in the back of his head. Instead he asked what the food and water situation was: Bad. It was bad. That statement was proven when a guy in mismatched armour came by to throw a mouldy lump of bread and 2 apple cores through the cell bars claiming it was “dinner”. No more words passed between the duo and Feinberg as they divided the bread and he retreated back to his corner of the cell. The bread was so hard that eating it involved a lot more dissolving the stuff in his spit than the common process of chewing and swallowing. When he finished, Reign and Silver were back to whispering among themselves again. With nothing better to do and a brain that thought better busy Feinberg dug up a piece of cloth from his jacket and started cleaning his glasses.
Improvised Rescue Mission Music
Out of everything Poundy had expected to do this weekend, going on a rescue mission had not been on the list. The rabbit he’d found behind their house was a familiar. One bonded to a witch. Poundy had honestly thought he would never meet a familiar with how much they had pulled back from civilisation since the late king’s reign. But know there was one waiting for him and Mime to pack their bags at the top of the staircase, asking for their help in rescuing his witch among others from a group of hunters. Poundcake and Mime hurried of course. His roommate collecting his most useful notebooks and Poundy digging up some of his old armour and making sure to tie the travel-save brewing stand securely to his bag. He had gotten it from Nerdi with a “birthday-discount” as the man called it. How Nerdi had known it was close to Poundy’s birthday he had no clue, but they invited him over for dinner as a thank you.
The forest was quiet aside from the trio’s footsteps as Poundy and Mime followed Couriway to the scene of the crime. Poundy knew it when they were there. At first glance the clearing looked normal. Calm even, but to anyone even vaguely connected to nature or magic there was clearly something deeply wrong about the place. The clearing was so empty it felt uncanny, no magic, left by man or natural, hung in the air. Even now almost a full day later. Mime leant down to inspect some gashes in a tree. “This is it I presume?”
The pained look in Couri’s eyes answered the question for them. The familiar said it out loud anyway. “Yes. Fein, my witch, and I were standing by that tree when they pulled all the magic out. I lost him in the chaos and was forced to hide under that bush.” They looked around the clearing more. The big cut down tree trunk near the centre must have been used as a podium. With some digging Poundy also found a place with collections of half-burned charcoals. Campfires, for cooking or just to tell stories. There had been a big gathering of magic users here. It felt surreal. Obviously Poundy had known more witches existed, but this many, just a few hours walk from his house? He had only ever met Mime (and Nerdi, but he was only half convinced that man was a witch and not some different magical phenomenon). There had been more people like them here, celebrating, sharing knowledge- “Poundcake!” His head snapped up to where Mime and Couriway had moved to another part of the clearing. “We found something.” Poundy rushed over. They were crouched over a compass, crafted from sturdy iron but holding an intricately decorated face with coloured ink for the cardinal directions. There was some dust on it that Couriway swept off with his paw.
“A compass? How is this going to help us?”
“It’s Feinberg’s” Couriway answered, sounding a little dazed, but mostly ecstatic as he continued: “He must have dropped it on purpose when the hunters got him. It has an enchant carved in the bottom to hold magic, we could use it to trace a path back to him!”
“I should be able to figure something out…” Mime mumbled. “Poundy, do you remember that pathing spell we used when we moved to the village?” He did. Though ‘moving’ was gentle way of putting it. They had used it so avoid running into anyone during their escape from the castle a few years ago. “I do. What do you want with it?”
“What if we turn it around? From a path that avoids into a path that finds?” Mime offered. “Would that be possible Couriway?” Couri perked up. “Yes! That could work.” They started working right away. Mime sat down to work the spell out on paper while Poundy and Couriway went off deeper in the forest to look for the not-packed ingredients Poundy needed to create his own physical component for the combined spell. Physical components are how witches without a familiar operate. They have some magic naturally stored in their body, they wouldn’t be witches otherwise, but for bigger or more complicated spells you need something to essentially push the magic through. Everyone has their own thing trough which their magic flows best, for Poundy it is plants and potions for Mime it is ink and paper. There probably is a way for only one of them to perform the spell, but they were stealing their own homework and don’t have the time to find something new right now. Which means, recourse gathering for Poundy it is! It took some time, but with newly gras stained knees, the gathered coals from the abandoned fires and a bit of finger measuring they were sitting around their own campfire waiting for what should be the right substance to cool in the pot Poundy had just moved away from the heat. When it did, Mime dipped one of his (less treasured) pens in the mixture and used it as an ink to write out the glyphs and enchantments. Poundy took it upon himself to take the compass and lay it down in the middle of the paper. The matching enchantment symbols overlapping, the glow of magic flowing out from under the sides as Mimes intricate drawings melted and ebbed back into the compass, leaving only an empty page, slightly wrinkled and sprinkled with dirt and a compass’s needle spinning in the quickly darkening forest.
Every one of them was holding their breath. “It’s moving, that means it is working right?” As if on Poundcackes cue the needle slowed down, before stilling with a light tremble in between the N and E. “Does everyone agree we follow the compass through the night and sleep at day to avoid unnecessary encounters?” Mime asked.
“Yes.” “Alright.”
“Okay, lets pack up, I’ll take the compass-” He glanced at Couri to check if that was alright, the rabbit nodded. “I’ll take the compass. Let’s be walking in 10.”
They didn’t talk much as they walked, though Couriway stubbornly kept speeding up to stay at the helm of their small party. Poundy could only hope it wouldn’t be too much walking, and that they would come out of this Alive.
Feinberg’s Intermission: Escape Attempt
Reign and Silver were scared of him. Or at least very uncomfortable with the witch sharing their cell. He had been sharing the cell with them for a day now and they kept whispering and staring. He could push the biggest serving of food to them all he wanted, but if the duo didn’t even dare to get within reaching distance he was stuck. They could pretend nothing was going on all they wanted but if they planned on getting out of this place they would need at least some semblance of trust. FUUUUUUCK. If only Feinberg had Couri here to do the whole being nice and friendly thing. This time it seemed he would need to lock in and do it himself. “If we want to escape this place I’ll need you two to fess up what problems you have with me or suck it up.” Okay so… not the best conversation opener…
“Who said we have a problem with you?” Silver shot back.
“Neither of you have come within arms reach of me since they threw me in and you—” he pointed at Silver. “Have been glaring at me like I burned you house down.”
“How would we escape anyway? I thought we were going to be waiting for this ‘Couriway’.” Reign interrupted them. Possibly right before hands would have been thrown. Feinberg signed. “I would prefer it if we at least tried to get out ourselves. Sure, Couri might come and find us, but we don’t know how much help he has and there are more witches trapped above us.” He explained. Feinberg also didn’t want to think about what would happen if the hunters somehow got a hold of Couri.
“How do you propose we escape then? If you know it all witch?” Silver asked before Reign elaborated. “Do you have a plan?”
Feinberg, easy to rile up and fall into a rant as he was, started explaining: “Whatever machine they used to suck the magic out at the meeting is dangerous. Destroying that is priority. That way even if we don’t make it out, we will have them weakened significantly. I noticed the guards have a schedule—"
Break Out
There was a lot of walking. At some point the compass let them to a road anyone would have assumed to be long abandoned if it wasn’t for the fresh cart tracks cutting through the overgrown plants and forming big puddles of mud. It explained why the walk was so long and set up the expectation of even more walking ahead.
As the moon moved through the sky the compass needle’s movements were becoming bigger and bigger, eventually they split off from the cart tracks, presumably taking a more direct, less cart friendly route. It was almost sunrise, the clouds already reflecting hints of yellow from the sun, when the needle suddenly started spinning.
Mime had to physically stop Couriway from taking a sprint and rushing in right then and there. The only reason behind his success being how drained the familiar was, having not only walked this whole way, but also to and from their house the day before. With an anxious rabbit in his arms Mime stayed back as Poundy peeked over a cluster of bramble bushes. There was a small clearing. To the side sat a cart with familiar wheels. A few tents were scattered about and on the other side stood the entrance to an underground bunker. This must be it. He relayed this information back to Mime. The morning sun was starting to cast long shadows trough the trees. The bigger dayshift of hunters could be waking up any moment. “Do we wait until it’s night again?” Poundy asked.
“That seems like the right course of action. We will have the cover of the dark and anyone woken up by and alarm signal will be tired from the day.” Mime said. “Plus: we will be better rested too.”
Couriway reluctantly conveyed his agreement.
“Sounds like a plan.” Poundy concluded. “Are we sharing the bedroll to keep warm? So we’re really rested tomorrow.” He teased, wiggling his eyebrows.
“No.”
-
Couriway woke up restless. He was the first of their temporary little party to wake up as the sky turned into darker shades of blue and the crickets started chirping. It felt wrong. To have Feinberg only a few minutes away from him, but being unable to get to him. Not yet anyway. He had wanted to so bad yesterday, but he could recognize it was the smart decision to wait for tonight. Feinberg would have told him to wait too and the path of least resistance from Feinberg was often the right one. Universe, he missed him.
Couriway glanced over at the witched sleeping behind him. Their kindness another reason to go along with their plan. They had followed an animal that just showed up in their trashcan 2 days of traveling away from their house. He could wait few more hours.
He had his nose buried in one of the bags when he heard Mime stirring awake. “Morning.”
“Night.” The man had slept with his makeup on. The two black lines crossing his eyes smudged from sweat and wear. Couriway had not seen the witch without them since he woke up in his living room. Probably because it was hard to fully remove and re-apply make-up in the middle of a forest. He had seen Poundy help neaten up the eye lines a bit in the mornings though.
Eventually the other witch’s snoring faltered too. With everyone awake they ate some berries and roots for ‘breakfast’ and Couriway settled a bit away from them to let them have their little morning routine. It seemed too personal to stay too close. A floating ball of light illuminating Mime’s chin held up in one of Poundy’s hands as he used his other one to fix his roommates make-up, faces close enough that they could probably feel the others breathing.
Instead, he crawled under the bramble bushes to gather some intel on the hunters. He didn't get close enough to see them, but he could pick up the loud vibrations of boots stomping on the ground as the last few guards not on the first nightshift likely went to bed. The pattern irregular enough that they might be drunk. Perfect.
Couriway came back to Mime and Poundy busy with preparations. Poundy removing a murky substance from the fire to put in bottles and Mime jotting down the last lines of some spell components, fingers stained in ink. The later looked up from his pen and paper to shoot Couriway a questioning gaze. In the back of his head he noted the fixed-up eye lines before nodding in confirmation. Ready to go.
“Poundy, how long until those are done?”
“2 minutes max. I made some extra healing ones as well, exhaustion, to stop someone from bleeding out, that sort of stuff. Someone will probably need it.” And indeed in 2 minutes they extinguished the fire and they where packed with everything they wanted to take with them, opting to leave the travel gear at the impromptu camp site and they were making their way around the bushes into the small clearing. It was nerve recking. Couriway had to actively strain not to start thumping the ground. It wouldn’t be helpful in this situation, they needed to be quiet, not loudly signalling danger. The scratching of Mimes stick drawing a circle in the dirt around the tents felt loud enough to wake a village, but as he connected the ends the snoring faded. The hunters falling in a deeper kind of slumber. The kind that wouldn't be broken by their yelling friends when they were inevitably caught. Poundy poured something acidic on the lock keeping the bunker closed melting enough of the thing that it broke off with minimal effort. They were in. There was a staircase leading down into the bunker. Below long dimly lit hallways stretched out in multiple directions. Completely silent. Bases are never this quiet. Never this empty. Not even at night.
“Soooooo, are we sure the compass worked?” Poundy whispered. Mime opened his mouth to respond but got interrupted by a cut of yell. The trio froze. Poundy breathed out a “what the fuck.” As Couriway turned his ears to try and pick up anything else. Maybe find which hallway it had come from. His tiny hearth racing in his chest. The hunters above ground clearly had now idea that anything had happened to their colleagues in the bunker down under. If something had happened to lure away the people who should have been keeping guard at the stairs, maybe even incapacitate them it had to have come from the inside. Feinberg was not a man for sitting still. It had been 3 days. Couriway had closed his eyes at this point. Putting all his focus into his more superior senses. Poundy’s breathing speeding up, the small rustle of Mime reaching for a sheet of paper, a barely distinguishable echo of a voice coming from the same direction as the scream, magic still weak but starting to creep back into the contained world around them like at the clearing, he smelled piss and rot and wet stone and- his nose twitched. They say smell is the sense most connected to memory. Couriway can smell a whole lot more than humans can in his rabbit form. So even this small bit of smell. Just the few molecules undetectable to anyone but him, tell him all he needs to know. He runs to follow it.
Poundy yelps at the sudden movement. The sounds ahead become more distinct as he gets closer. There are footsteps behind him, more footsteps in front as he races closer and closer to where magic is seeping into the building. His core pulling him towards a familiar tether. A well-known smell.
“Feinberg!” Couriway can feel himself shift as he jumps up into Feinberg’s unprepared arms. Pulling from the others magic, giving in return as he loses his superior sense of smell in favour of growing big and heavy enough to make his witch stumble to the ground.
“Couri? What the hell—” In that moment Mime and Poundy caught up.
“Holy fuck—I—wait—” Poundy panted.
“Who are you?’ There were two more witches, no wait- two familiars What are they doing here? with Feinberg, standing over an unconscious hunter. Poundy, having cached his breath puffed out his chest to loudly proclaim: “We are you knights in shining armour! Here to save you!”
The two familiars looked unimpressed. “Well, you’re a bit late.”
Feinberg awkwardly patted Couri on the back making him look up. “Oh! Uh, Feinberg, Mime and Poundy. Mime and Poundy, Feinberg. They helped find you.”
“I’m Reign, this is Silver.”
“Good to meet you.” Mime answered before pulling out the compass and turning to Feinberg. “I understand this is yours?”
“Yes, it is.”
The unconscious hunter on the floor groaned, pulling everyone back into the urgency of the moment. “We should keep going.” Reign said. “We managed to shut down the machines that were sucking the magic up, so we can use that to find where they are holding the other witches.”
“You weren’t with them?” Mime asked.
“Nah, too much of a threat for them if we got more people to help plan our escape with.” Feinberg answered. Couriway shifted back into his rabbit form to climb onto one of Fein’s shoulders. He could feel Fein’s cellmates stare at him. They had no time for it though as the group sped off to find and free the other witches.
20 minutes later everyone was standing outside in the forest out of hearing range from the hunter camp. Poundy helped some with their wounds and soon the other magic users split into groups to start heading off on their own ways back home. The original staff of the meeting tried to do a small word, but everyone was tired to they gave up and just went home as well. Couriway, Silver, Reign, Poundcake and Mime had ended up standing in what could technically be called a circle. It was still dark and the crickets chirping to their hearts content was the only sound around them until Feinberg broke the silence among their group with a groan. “This was a mess. I’m never being social again.” That managed to dig up some chuckles from the group. Someone else quipped back and they fell into the first conversation of what would eventually become a long-lasting friendship.