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There are few places Mydei finds himself uncomfortable in. As a formidable opponent on a battlefield, an unstoppable force hurdling towards his objective, why would he ever find himself in such a position?
Of course, the answer lies in the situation that there is nowhere to hurdle to.
Anaxa’s lab is large and yet still incredibly cramped. Tall bookshelves reach up to the even taller ceilings, binders with papers a mere breadth’s thick filling them until they threaten to spill out. Almost everything is made of glass. The lamps, the vials, the tools. The different hues cast the room in a colourful glow. A few candles sit on each table, and to spare the current invaders, two particularly reckless Chrysos Heirs, from any future misfortune, Mydei makes the executive decision to blow them all out. It dims the place by a significant margin, and he has to squint to see anything worth reading, but it is far more preferable to the other possible outcome of there being nothing left to read at all.
“I am completely certain we shouldn’t be in here without permission.” Mydei stands in the middle of the laboratory, away from anything potentially fragile. He watches as Phainon, who is not even half as careful as him, marches forward, looking around the room. “Be careful,” he finds himself saying, not for the first time since they’ve entered. “We’re here for Lady Aglaea’s book, nothing more.”
“We did get permission,” counters Phainon. “From Lady Aglaea.”
“But not from the individual who actually owns this room.”
To be quite honest, Mydei is nervous. The place is built for someone of Anaxa’s figure, no more. Anyone bigger has to turn to the side, shuffle, and pray to not meet an ill-fated demise via suffocation between two shelves. Mydei is aware of this. Phainon, not so much, too busy snooping through his professor’s personal belongings to notice.
A bull in a China shop is the first comparison to come to Mydei’s mind upon watching Phainon. They’re warriors, not alchemists, and even then, there’s a reason why they’re never sent on stealth missions. The first (and last) time they were, things had gotten a bit too dull and they decided to play chicken, traversing the grounds louder and louder until one of them gave in. Neither did. They were caught almost immediately.
“Deliverer,” Mydei warns again, still not moving from one of the only spaces open enough for him to comfortably cross his arms without worry of knocking twelve different things over, “I can guarantee you Lady Aglaea’s book is not somehow nestled between the glass pipes. Anaxagoras is going to notice if you leave fingerprints.”
“Relax, I’m his star student!” Somehow, Mydei feels safe to doubt that. “And besides, this is a golden opportunity! You only live once, why not enjoy the moment?” There is a beat of silence, and Phainon pauses. “Well- I only live once.” He goes back to rummaging.
“I-” A groan. “You know what, I’ll find it myself. And the second I do, we’re leaving.”
Phainon doesn’t even bother to turn, opening anything he can get his hands on. “Sure, sure. It’s gold and white, impossible to miss, and- oh! Ohhh-! Okay, wrong drawer, wrong drawer, wrong drawer!”
Mydei doesn’t look to see what the fuss is. He doesn’t want to know.
“Don’t go over there, Mydei.”
“Duley noted.”
A moment later, Phainon is by his side again, clearly done exploring and still yet to recover from- from whatever it was that he had discovered. “Found it yet?”
“No.”
“Well, why not?”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Uh…”
“Exactly.”
Phainon scoffs. “It’s probably further in, is all. Near the back, maybe. That’s where he does all of his paperwork."
Maybe Phainon being an old student actually is good for something. “Even in solitude, he likes to be as hidden as possible… I’ll never understand. If you’re invaded, where will you escape to?”
“I don’t know, maybe he can just drink a potion and turn into a bird.”
“That’s not how science works, fool. Even someone like him can’t turn people into animals.”
“Maybe that’s what he wants you to believe!”
Looking through his professor’s belongings has made Phainon far too giddy. Mydei chooses to ignore him, squeezing into the rapidly narrowing maze.
“I take it back. It’s a perfectly safe place to be. No invaders could find their way through, let alone get to their target.”
“Except maybe Cipher.”
This makes Mydei bristle with annoyance. “Why didn’t Aglaea send her instead? She likes her more, anyway.”
“Because she’d come out with more than asked for.”
“Ah. Right.”
“What I don’t get is why Aglaea’s book is here in the first place. They can’t stand each other.”
“They can stand to learn a lot from each other, though.”
A glimmer of gold catches the corner of Phainon’s eye and he looks up. There, on the very top of the shelf, is the target of their desires.
Right out of reach.
“How the hell did Anaxa even get it up there?! He barely comes up to my chest!”
“A chair, probably.”
Phainon turns, an insult already halfway out his mouth, then stops. He sighs. “Yeah, probably.”
“What’s that you said about being his star student, again?”
“Just shut up and help me look for a chair.”
Six minutes and one wooden chair later, they realize it’s not going to work. The chair, much like everything else in this room, is fragile, and would almost certainly break if either man were to put their weight on it.
“Why do I get the feeling he’s doing this on purpose…”
Mydei sighs. “Well, from a defensive standpoint, it’s useful to fashion things in a manner that make them accessible only to those the item belongs to. And, if it did break, or anything else in this room, he’d know if someone was in here.”
“Well, it’s working,” grumbles Phainon. “Next time, Aglaea can get her book herself. Mydei, give me a boost.”
“This is a horrible idea.”
“It’s the only idea we’ve got.”
No, it’s really not – they could try jumping and whacking it down or take their chances with the chair and the countless breakable and flammable items around them, either succeeding or leaving a pouch of coins next to whatever broke in their attempt, or…
Actually, the boost is the best idea they have.
Mydei groans. “Fine.” He hooks his arms around Phainon’s waist and lifts him up.
“I’m convinced Aglaea already knows what Anaxa’s lab looks like, and that’s why she didn’t bother with this mess.”
“Then why send us? Deliverer, don’t grab onto the shelf like that.”
“To laugh at us, obviously.” Phainon ignores Mydei’s warning, using the edge to pull himself up further. “If her threads reached this far, she’d probably be watching us right now.”
“Didn’t I just tell you not to grab onto the shelf?”
“Relax, relax. Here, it’s kinda far back, so I’ll sweep it off, kay? There’s a ruler up here I can use.”
“Deliverer, don’t you dare-”
The next events occur so quickly that, with Mydei unable to see what’s on the shelf, he cannot follow what happened until he is on the floor, Phainon on top of him, and a searing pain shooting up his ass.
When Phainon used the ruler to pull the book towards himself, the corners of the cover must have dragged something(s) down with it. Glass, based on the sound of the shattering. Full of liquid, based on the fact that Mydei is now sticky and wet.
“Owww…”
Mydei, who has experienced far worse that a fall of a few feet, is already sitting up with a scowl on his face. “Deliverer! What did I just tell you?!”
“Not to do that… Listen, I just thought-”
“Save the explanation for later, you’re sitting on me, get off!”
“What? No I’m not! Hold on at least, I can’t see- I face planted into this stuff…”
Mydei, who has found himself in a similar situation, is also trying to rid his eyes of the gooey fluid. “You don’t need to see to move!”
“Gimme a sec, I said! I don’t wanna knock into anything else!”
He has a point. Mydei stops his badgering and grabs the corner of Phainon’s cape, wiping his face on it. When he does, something soft and fluffy hits his head. It seems like it would be more absorbent than the cape, so he abandons it for the new towel-thing.
“Wh- Mydei, what the heck are you doing?”
“What am I doing? Drying my face, obviously.”
“On me?!”
“Duh.”
“Well stop, it tickles!”
“No it doesn’t, unless your cape has fused to the rest of your body!”
The ‘towel’ begins to shake back and forth, and Mydei, finally somewhat dry, opens his eyes to look.
It is not a towel. Instead, it’s some large, white, furry thing, squirming back and forth.
Is it some sort of creature? Parasite? What in Amphoreus does Anaxa have in his laboratory?!
Instinct taking over, he tries to tug it, only to find that it is attached to Phainon when the man yelps. A parasite, then- he is most likely right. With a numbing ability, if Phainon did not feel it burrow into his lower back. So, he does the only thing he can think of: he squeezes the thing tighter and grabs his dagger from the sheath by his hip. “Phainon, hold still.”
“Ow, ow, ow! Hey, what are you- oh, no! Don’t you dare, you get that blade away from me, you hear me, Mydeimos?! Ow!” Phainon’s clearly starting to panic – is the numbing wearing off if he can feel the pain?
“Stop squeezing me, it hurts! Put the blade down, I told you!”
Mydei looks up.
The fluffy thing in his fist is still trying to escape, and a similar look of fear is on Phainon’s face. A few inches above, on the top of his head, are two matching white, fluffy ears, twitching.
Mydei’s jaw drops, along with his dagger.
“Phainon, you-”
“Mydei, your head!” exclaims Phainon at the same time.
Mydei’s hands shoot up to the top of his head, expecting to find it cleaved in half or something based on the reaction. Instead, all he finds are two pointy triangles, soft and sensitive to the touch.
Phainon slowly backs up. As he does, Mydei finds that the pressure he was complaining about before is now gone. He looks down, almost dreading what he might see.
A furry tail, narrower and a bit longer than Phainon’s, flicks to the side now that it is free.
“Hks.”
In the time that it takes the two of them to wipe up the spill and sweep up the broken glass (with a broom that took nearly ten minutes to find, mind you), the shock has worn off, at least enough for it to be replaced with confusion, anxiety, and frustration, among other cheery things.
Mydei is mad at Phainon for having the genius idea to knock an entire shelf-full of items onto the floor and shatter the beakers in the first place. Phainon is mad at Mydei for yelling at him. Mydei is mad about his tail being sat on. Phainon is mad about his almost getting chopped off.
But hey, at least Aglaea’s book is safe and sound.
“Now what,” whines Phainon miserably, ears drooping as he sulks on the chair he wishes he stood on instead. “The professor’ll kill us for sure.”
“Us? Don’t forget who decided to tip over the bottles.”
“It was an accident!”
Mydei crosses his arms and looks away. So does Phainon. Behind them both, their tails swish back and forth. It’s very hard to be quietly annoyed with someone when your tail says everything for you.
“…So now what?!”
“Now,” Mydei starts, with an edge in his tone, “we return Lady Aglaea’s book. Obviously.”
“And then Anaxa will kill us. After laughing at us.”
Mydei’s ears twitch. They’re those of a cat, or rather a lion, something they had quickly figured out without much trouble. It was too perfect to be anything else. As for Phainon... Well, they didn’t need much to deduce him either. A dog. A Samoyed, much like Phainon's pet dog, Snowy. Mydei hadn’t been surprised in the slightest. “If we’ve went through all this trouble, I want it at the very least to have been worth it. …Deliverer, what the hell are you doing?”
Phainon, having half learned his lesson, is standing on the chair, looking through the same shelf that had caused this mess. “Looking for a cure.”
“No. No you aren’t.”
“Of course I am.”
“I mean,” Mydei rises, grabbing Phainon and pulling him off the chair, “absolutely not. You are not touching anything else. We’re going.”
“But-”
“No.”
“Mydei…”
“No.”
“But I can probably find a way to reverse it-”
“You’ll kill us both!”
“I’m his star student!”
“Phainon, he failed you at least three times. It’s a miracle you graduated, so the answer is very much no.”
Both Phainon, and his ears, wilt. His stupid dumb tail stops wagging and he goes limp in Mydei’s hands.
Mydei, in turn, drops him.
“Ow!”
“You weigh a ton.”
“Rude.”
Phainon dusts himself off, letting out a long, pathetic puppy sigh.
Mydei thought that Phainon was very dog-like before. He finds that now, with the added tail and ears, it is more than he can handle. He really wants to toss a bone in his direction just to see how he’d react. “Really, Deliverer, I’m certain that if you step into public right now, nobody would notice anything new with you.”
Phainon only groans and lets his head fall against the wall with a thunk. “…Ow.”
This is it. He’ll be a dogboy forever. Mydei would see to that. Mean, mean Mydei in all his cruelty, doesn’t he see how embarrassing this is for him? No one to beg for help, no way to escape from the evil clutches of his doggy ears and doggy tail, no-
Phainon’s world goes dark in an instant. He reacts accordingly with a yelp of surprise, groping around until he feels the hard muscle of Mydei’s torso. Suddenly, he can see again, and he is made acutely aware of Mydei’s unimpressed glare. In his hands is a large, black cloak.
Oh.
So then-
He reaches behind himself, finding the same fabric covering him.
“There. Now nobody will see these cursed appendages.” The pink blush creeping across Mydei’s face suggests that he isn’t too keen on the public eye seeing him like this either. “So quit your whining and put it on. You look pathetic like that.
Pathetic Phainon pathetically obeys, then follows the now cloaked and not-pathetic Mydei out the way they came. Pathetically.
. . .
Mydei and Phainon are not particularly subtle people. The citizens of Okhema are more than well-acquainted with them, often having to shield their shops and carts whenever the two men go racing through the marketplace, determined to win yet another foolish bet for nothing more than bragging rights and the sheer thrill of it all. Whenever they’re looking at each other particularly voraciously, they are immediately shooed off for fear of deterring customers with their next actions.
Phainon, especially more so than Mydei, stops to chat, sometimes for an hour: small talk about the weather derailing into a deep discussion about philosophy and the state of politics in the city, and often, memories of his hometown as Mydei listens while purchasing his third honey cake of the day.
And even while busy, unable to leave their duties as Chrysos Heirs to ramble, they are greeted all the same. After all, Phainon is the boy saviour, and Mydei the crown prince of Castrum Kremnos. They are highly revered. Which translates to highly recognizable.
Mydei doesn’t think they’ve ever been more conspicuous in their life. Two grown men, totally jacked and wearing a couple black cloaks that most certainly were not meant for people of their size (Anaxa is at bare minimum a foot shorter than either of them, and Phainon has no doubt that his hands could wrap around Anaxa’s waist fully. He knows, on account of the many occasions he’s had to interrupt one of his professor’s ‘debates’ to scoop him up and flee before the other ‘debaters’ could threaten him with crucifixion (again)), tumbling their way through the backroads on Okhema’s border while tripping over their stupid tails, and trying their best to be what the gray-haired outlander would define as “nonchalant”.
They are so, so chalant.
It certainly doesn’t help that Phainon feels obligated to reply to everyone who says hello.
“Deliverer boy, wonderful day for a walk, isn’t it?”
“O-oh, absolutely! I agree, I totally agree!”
Mydei grabs Phainon by his arm and tugs him further away. “Are you trying to get us caught?”
“He said hello!”
“You could have been anyone!”
“Well, yeah, but he was right.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to respond. Pretend you didn’t hear!”
Phainon’s ears droop. Mydei pretends to not notice the twinge in his chest when they do. His hand slips down from the crook of his elbow to his fingers, and he intertwines them with his own.
Phainon’s ears perk back up.
Unfortunately, so does his tail.
In the brief moment Mydei lets go of his hand to fix the now wrinkled and unhelpfully revealing cloak that Phainon’s tail had pushed to the side, his ears have drooped again.
“You are impossible.”
. . .
In a few minutes, they have reached the point where the true trial begins.
Standing at the edge of the city, Mydei tries to remind Phainon of the many rules they had established while rushing through the emptier areas of the city as quick as he can. Every second spent idle is another second closer to their fluffy likeness being discovered.
“I do not want to see you speaking to a single person until we reach our destination. No waves, no nods, everyone is invisible to you, do you hear?”
Phainon nods. His tail wiggles again.
“And control that damn thing, will you? Like me.”
“Yours has been anything but controlled.”
“What? Yes it has, don’t lie just to make yourself feel better.”
“I’m not.” Now on a mission to prove his point, Phainon reaches out, trying to sneak his hand underneath Mydei’s hood.
“Hks, what the hell are you-” Jerking away from the sudden touch, Mydei grabs Phainon’s hand to try and push it away. “We’re in public, this is the opposite of subtle-!”
Phainon presses onward, and with the quick swipe of his fingers across Mydei’s ears, the prince’s tail shoots up. “Aha! There! See?”
“That doesn’t count, you cheater!”
“Yeah? Then what about this-” Phainon tries to lunge forward again. Mydei tries to dodge.
In Mydei’s attempt to spin behind Phainon, he steps on his stupidly big and fluffy tail. Phainon yelps and grabs onto Mydei to try and regain his balance. Mydei does the same. In the end, they are both on the ground, the civilians around sighing as a man struggles to wheel his cart around them.
The only mercy is that in the scuffle, their hoods managed to stay on.
“Deliverer,” Mydei says in a fake, sickly-sweet tone, “get up.”
For once, Phainon doesn’t test him.
The way back to Aglaea’s feels much longer than the way from, and Phainon is certain it’s because of the added anxiety of these new additions to his body. The people know they don’t usually walk around with cloaks that obscure their figures, let alone cover their heads. Hell, Mydei walks around half-naked most of the time.
Other than a small fright from Phainon’s tail nearly toppling over a water pitcher as they made their way up to the Hero’s Baths (in which Mydei kindly threatened to cut off his tail), they made it through unscathed and unnoticed. Cipher would be proud. Of course, she would have been able to make the trip twenty times over by the time they’ve finally reached the elevator, but the word used was proud, not amazed.
And as they approached the garden, green and bejeweled with flowers and vines, Aglaea turns. Ethereal and draped in gold and pearl, she nods her head. Phainon has never incurred her wrath before. He certainly hopes that it will stay that way after today.
“Ah, there you two are. What trouble did you get into to take so long? Unless you did some errand running for me on the way here?”
She knows. Certainly she knows. If not by the way Phainon’s tail is tucked between his legs meekly, and Mydei’s twitching back and forth, then by the bickering once they entered range of her golden threads that covered Okhema.
Still, Phainon is too bashful to confess the truth, and Mydei is too bashful to stop him from lying straight to the face of the Flame Chase Journey.
Phainon gulps. “We got distracted. Sorry, Lady Aglaea.”
“I see. By another competition I assume?”
Still, he doesn’t want to lie too much. Not only for the sake of his honour and respect, but also because Aglaea knows that he knows that she knows- and he doesn’t want to look too much like an idiot. Technically it was a competition to see who could be more subtle on their way here, right? He decides that it counts, and nods his head dumbly. “Yup.”
“Yup,” Mydei agrees, because if they are counting this as a competition, then it’s one that he’s won.
“Little boys, the both of you.” A smile curves up on the corners of her lips. As the men stand still in place, she approaches them herself and extends her arms. “The book, please.”
Phainon all too happily hands it over.
“Thank you. Now, if the run over didn’t tire you too much, you two can make your way back to Anaxagoras’s laboratory. He should be back by now, so he’ll be able to help with your… extra appendages.”
…So that’s why she’s smiling. At least she’s not angry.
Still, it doesn’t help much because Phainon slouches over, head in his hands. “Oh… I’m so happy to hear that,” he says, very unhappily.
Mydei rolls his eyes. “Don’t be childish, this implies that there’s a cure. You should be grateful enough for that.”
“Yeah, but-”
“And you’re his ‘super special star student,’ right?”
“Yeah, but-”
“And you’ve known him for years at this point, correct?”
“Yeah, but- Hey, wait, you’re just hoping to pin this all on me, aren’t you?!”
Phainon’s epiphany is rewarded with an innocent shrug. “It was all you.”
“You agreed to it.”
“Then it was mostly you.”
.
.
.
The trip to Anaxa’s lab from the baths is much faster than last time. Half because the second attempt of scurrying through the city went better than the first, and half because they want to get the inevitable punishment over as soon as possible.
The cobble path widens as they grow nearer to the lab, the building looking the same as always. The only difference now being one missing bottle, a pile of glass shards hidden at the very bottom of the trash can, and a professor that has finally returned. Mydei’s ears twitch. “Hey, Deliverer.”
“Yeah?”
“Has Anaxa ever actually used that firearm of his on any of his students before?”
“You actually believe that rumour? No, not to my knowledge. The prof isn’t like that.”
“Really? Well, today might be your lucky day.”
“Huh-?” Phainon looks up. And his stomach drops.
Anaxa is standing next to the front door, arms crossed and with his shotgun slung around his shoulder. Half his mouth is quirked up, eyebrows furrowed in some unreadable expression.
“Oh, Titans.”
There’s nowhere to run away now, and running away isn’t a term in the Kremnoan dictionary anyway. So, Phainon and Mydei trudge towards their doom.
Anaxa is the first to greet them. “Hello, Phainon, Mydei.”
“Hello, professor.”
“Hello, Anaxagoras.”
He clicks his tongue. With a sweep of his arm, he yanks the cloaks off both of them and tosses them to the side. “Enough of that now.”
Before either of them can think to ask how he knows or when he figured it out, his shotgun is swinging off his shoulder and they’re getting ready to evade the bullet that’s obviously about to hit them for daring to mess with his research-
The barrel taps Phainon on the head. Then Mydei.
Gently.
“Were either of you hurt?”
They blink. Then mumble out something that sounds like a no.
Anaxa’s uncovered eye peers through them suspiciously, analyzing – scanning. And then he nods.
“Good.”
…
Huh?
“There were many vials on that shelf that were much more dangerous. You could have been injured.”
Before Mydei can say something like, “there’s no word for ‘injured’ in the Kremnoan dictionary,” Phainon breathes out a small, “oh.”
“Sorry, professor, we were just trying to get Aglaea’s book back…”
“It always has to do with that woman- …oh, so that’s where I put it. I’d misplaced it a few weeks ago. Didn’t know she’d be so impatient that she’d send you two to pick it up. How irresponsible…”
Technically speaking, it’s Anaxa who’s the irresponsible one for losing a clearly important item, but he’s already surprisingly calm and they’d hate to push their luck.
“Yeah, but uh,” Phainon tries to get the conversation back on track, “she said you’d be able to fix it? Can we maybe get to that now? We’re really sorry, prof, honestly!”
“Fix… Yes, of course I plan to reverse the effects.” He circles them with a careful gaze, running a hand across the tips of their tails, then stops once he’s reached his starting place again. “However. That fluid had been quite the expensive concoction to make, as I’m sure you must be aware. After such a taxing alchemical process it would be a waste to just turn you back now when you’ve already gone through the trouble of becoming the perfect subjects.”
“…In English?” Mydei prompts.
“I’ll give you the antidote in a week’s time. Until then, you two are mine to work on.”
“What-?! Wait, just hold on a sec, prof-”
Anaxa is already pushing them through the front door. What he lacks in stature, he certainly makes up in persistence.
“Aren’t there ethics against this?!”
“Aren’t there ethics against breaking into someone’s private property instead of waiting for them to return?”
Phainon stammers, but says nothing.
“Exactly.”
“Mydei, surely you have something to say.”
The prince’s ears are down and he’s avoiding eye contact, but he’s not fighting back. “It’s true, we trespassed, not to mention broke his personal property. This is an adequate punishment.”
“You’re too honourable. It’s annoying me.”
“I thought that was one of my qualities you appreciated.”
When the door slams shut behind them, Phainon yips and jumps in place. Mydei on the other hand, makes no noise, yet the way his tail immediately stands up straight, fur slightly puffed out, speaks for itself.
Anaxa huffs. “Oh, don’t look so frightened. They’ll only be small tests and inquiries. And I’ll make you some tea and a meal beforehand.”
“Tea?” Phainon echoes, at the same time as Mydei says, “food?”
Anaxa gives them a quick once over. They’re incredibly easy to convince. “Yes. And you can choose what you like, so long as it’s not egregiously overcomplicated.”
And as they both begin to rattle off a nearly egregiously overcomplicated list, Anaxa reaches for a notepad.
Thus, begins the Deliverer and Crown Prince’s new duties as honourable test subjects.