„It´s a good night isn't it darling?“ she asked sincerely.
And for her reasoning it was. It was one of the best nights in her life so far. She tiptoed a few inches closer, tail still lightly wagging behind her. She was so caught up in joy that she didn't even care for the possibility of making some noises.
„Well, it certainly is a good night“ she said, more to herself than to him.
With a little smirk on her face she got even closer, thinking about how easy it had been to trick the home-guards of his parents. No one was allowed to know that she was here, with him, in this very room that his parents kept so safe. But it had been nothing more than a few days of observation and some coins to get precious information that she knew how to get in this gross building containing her treasure.
„Soo... did you think about coming with me?“ she asked rhetorically.
He was so handsome. And so easy to predict. Never had he failed her expectations and never did he do something unexpected. Still with the smirk on her lips she inched closer to stand right beside him. Her fingertips trailed down his face, throat, chest and stomach to his covered loins. Than she snapped out of it and did what had to be done. She took the dagger she had placed in her belt out and placed it over his throat. With a little cut she got his blood running and dripping down his neck. She now placed one of her hands in his fresh blood and thereby on his throat and the over on his chest where the heart lied. Taking a few deep breathes before conjuring the huge spell she had prepared within another two days she whispered:
„Let´s go now, it´s a long way“
Just the blink of an eye later they were both gone, together with his sheets. No one had heard nor seen it than the entity she had bidden her powers from. The first ones to notice would be the maids in about another 8 hours when they were told to wake him up and get him dressed. Until then she would however be far far away.
In a matter of fractions of seconds about two miles across town a little rumble shook the sleeping citizens as in a room of one of her safe houses a little explosion of magical energy went on when the to of them arrived. The reason she had not ported herself into the mansion but could be doing it to get out of there. Still a little dull from the magical energies that flowed in her body she stood up and off of her unconscious victim. Again a little smirk appeared on her lips, that had been much too easy. One should think that an heir of such a family should be protected as nothing else, but she got in and out without even one of them noticing. Well some of the people around her destination might have caught up on something being fishy around their home. But then again, who should stop her now that she had him. She allowed herself a little leap of the ground before concentrating on the task at hand. She retrieved him off his sheets and got some clothes from a chest in which she dressed him. After that she bound and gagged him so that she would be safe. After that she took the little cart off the maintenance room and him on it. Then she opened the back end door of the room and got into the secret passage hidden in this safe house to get to another one. In a few minutes walk she arrived at a house a few hundred meters away from the explosion and therefor out of scanning range of the town-guards. This particular house stood close to the towns walls. With even more coins than she had used for the home-guards she had gotten the town-guards to look somewhere else at a certain hour as she slipped through a hidden door in the solid rock. Not before casting a spell that conjured fire to her first houses roof so that a fire started quickly after. Now she had more than enough time to get away because town-guard would be busy with firefighting for about one and a half day. Her plan had worked well so far. Now she was going towards sunrise with a little boy on the cart behind her. He wouldn't wake up until morning, and so she had plenty of time to get to the cave she had chosen as their first hideout. Now that she was dragging him along she was thinking about how he was going to react to being kidnapped. She didn't inform herself more than necessary and so she only knew part of his social life and his habitats, but almost nothing about his personality. But his character would become a lot more clear in the morning. So she wandered on, dragging the heir of one of the greatest families in the realm behind her on a little cart.
As she had predicted, it was late in the morning as the little one woke up. His daily routine was to be awoken around 10 o´clock and then staying in bed for half an hour or so more. He was having a great lifetime despite being forced into the heritage. He was never one for great economical thinking like his father, but more he was talented handling others and discussing as well as being empathetical minded. He didn't judge people off their birth but more of their character. But he simply loved the amenities that being of noble blood had as a side-effect. But today something was awkward. He didn't hear the baroness softly speaking to him when he awoke, and neither did he feel the soft touch of his bedsheets on his fur. Instead he was feeling a strange burn-like feeling in his shoulders and a really uncomfortable thing in his muzzle. His fur was touched by simple linen, which he didn't recall putting on before going to sleep, and his nose was touched by a gentle but really cool breeze, which was awkward with the windows been tightly shut in the evening. With his eyes still closed he tried to turn around and drift back into sleep, but found himself lying on not his mattress but something really hard only insufficiently covered by a blanket. His eyes flew open and were almost completely blinded by the sudden burst of light. It took a good 40 seconds to see anything again, and then still his surroundings made no sense. Why was he looking at a wooden wheel ride beside him and through that on the entrance of a cave. And why particularly was he himself in that cave!? As he tried to speak up to question what was going on he noticed the gag in his muzzle. Now that was weird. He struggled a little with sitting upright, finding his han and feet bound, and looked around, only to find the place deserted. When the wheels in his head finally started running he quickly realized that he was being kidnapped and held captive. Leaving that one question burning in his mind: Who did this?! He guessed there was no other way to find out then to wait for his captivator. He lied back down, cause that was more comfortable in his state, but kept himself wide awake and looking out for anything, any sound besides his breath and his sight of the caves entrance. He waited for a good half an hour before he heard something besides his own breathing. He was at attention a split second after his ears caught the sound o rustling leaves outside the cave. As he sat back up and turned to face the entrance a feline scent filled his nose. It took him not more than a few seconds to realize though, that what he was smelling was none of the intelligent races of felines but a mere historic creature which was an ancestor of the today living feline races. In this case, a cougar, female entered the cave and looked at the bound boy with hunger and greed. He realized quickly that this was no visit out of curiosity, but because of the need to find something edible. And with a shock he realized, that he himself was something edible. Stunned with fright he looked the female cougar in the eye as she approached her prey. It took the canine boy another few seconds to regain control over his body and trying to crawl back , only to find his back pressing against the cart´s other wheel. FUCK! He didn´t intend to die that particular day. With a quick look around he found a way down off the cart and took it this instant. He knew that he was much slower than the feline hunter, but he did try nonetheless. He saw a dagger about half across the cave from him and crawled in that direction. Behind him he heard the growl of the cougar which made him crawl a little faster. Just a few feet from the dagger he felt claw on one of his legs. He took a quick look behind him and saw the cougar reaching out and clawing him again. Just as he saw this the feeling from the first scratches reached his brain and tortured him with waves of searing pain and desperation. Not only would he die far from home, no he would be eaten by a cougar, an uncivilized predator of ancient times. His mind conjured pictures of his lifeless and half eaten corpse on a cavefloor, and he was half about to scream. But his body was not yet ready to give in. He kicked the predator across the face and crawl the remaining few inches to the knife lying on the floor. Without looking back he cut his forepaw bounds and reached down to cut the ones on his hindpaws. As his back was bent he felt his cloth, fur and skin penetrated by claws again. This time he did scream, but within his scream his bodytension released, his back snapped back and he buried the knife in the cougars neck. It growled in pain and sank to the ground. He survived, which his mind didn´t really grasp at that moment. It took him a good 30 seconds to realize what had just happened. He looked down on his paws on the knife still clutched in his fist. Then he began to scream in earnest. As the full reach of the pain got to his brain his body collapsed and he just screamed. Screamed and screamed until his vision blacked out and he sank into the blissfull abyss of unconsciousness.
She smelled the stain of blood in the air long before she reached the cave in which she had left the boy. She scolded herself for letting him alone for so long. The speed of her steps heightened and it just took her another 30 seconds to reach the entrance which she thought was well hidden. Seemingly not well enough. That´d cause trouble if the little one would be dead. She didn´t intend that to happen. She entered the cave and was greeted by the scent of more blood. It must have been a slaughter. She saw a bundle of fur, clothes blood and flesh lying on the cavefloor, the bounds of the youngling a few inches away from it. They seemed cut. What the hell had happened in here? She edged closer to the bundle and sorted the silhouettes of a female cougar and the little boy out. The boy was bleeding from his back and one of his legs, while the cougar showed ne pretty impressive wound on the neck. Her mind was racing about how to explain the death of her prey when suddenly a cough escaped the little one. The sudden sound made her jump in surprise. But she recovered quickly and got to the boy. She kneeled down and searched for his heartbeat. It took her a little bit to find the fluttering feeling of his heart trying to punp the blood through his rugged body, but she managed to find it. As soon as she did she exhaled sharply and started thinking. If she would try to move him now he probably wouldn´t survive that. If she´d try to bind his wounds first her magic, and thereby his healing would probably fail. She decided to try a path in the middle of both. She took a few steps away and laid a woolen sheet out on the floor. Afterwards she conjured a little piece of energy and burned a sigil in and around the sheet. Then she started chanting and weaving an incantation. It took her five minutes to get every part of what she wanted into the chant and to the entity she tried to call. It took another 20 breathless seconds for the entity to appear inside of her sigil. She then started chanting again and telling the entity how she wanted the job done. The whole procedure lasted for about half an hour, until she was satisfied with the boy being almost cured. She sank to the ground and gasped in shock as she felt the sensation coming back into her body and with it the pain of her numb limbs. It would take the boy another day to wake up again, so she summoned a little warden and told him watch out for any threat nearby. Then she laid down completely and was asleep before her eyes were closed.
In an split second he sat up to full tension. He had just awoken from a terrible dream. But then again he realized he was still in the same cave as in the dream itself. But why was he alive then? Such wounds would kill a man, and with that a boy, too of course. So why was he alive, and why didn´t he feel any pain anymore? He looked around once more and saw the crapped corpse of the cougar just a few feet from where he lied. So it had not been a dream. He still didn´t really get why he was still alive, when his ears told him someone else was there. He saw the form of a little feline girl curled up in the corner of his eye. The girl seemed to be a little older than himself. He crawled over and poked his co-victim. She woke up with a little bit of shock in her eyes and looked at him. “Hey there, you O.K.?” he asked with little more than a whisper. His companion didn´t answer his question yet. “Seems we were both kidnapped hmm…? So what would you say about we work together and try to get outta here?”
He thinks I´m a captive, too? That makes things easier for me
She nodded with a shy look on her face. Then she stood up and examined his face.
“What are you doing?” he asked confused, but quivered as she touched his forehead.
“You´ve got some nasty wound there” she replied as she touched around it once more.
“Wouldn´t surprise me after the… argument I had with that… girl I met yesterday” he said grinning.
“What girl?” she asked innocently. He pointed behind her. She looked there and saw the dead cougar. “Oh…”
“Yep,… oh” he said, grinning again. Then he stood up himself and looked around in the cave again. He walked over to the dead body and searched for the knife. It was still buried inside the cougar´s neck. He gripped the handle and set it free. And with it a stream of blood that almost hit him. He bounced back a few steps and tensed up again, his ears perked and tail stiff. He heard a slight laughter behind him.
“What?” he asked hesitantly, a little red across the face and looking back at the feline girl.
“It´s just blood” she replied giggling.
“Well, whatever. I´m just praying to Rashk to never have to kill again.” He said, looking at the crapped corpse beneath him. Then he turned and said:
“Shall we leave then?”, pointing across the cave at its entrance.
“Yep, Let´s go.” She said, standing beside him. The gravity of the situation lost for both of them for the moment. And with that, they started walking out of the cave and into the forest, with both of them thinking different things.
