Kessen sat by the fire, occasionally glancing over toward the pile of pelts and blankets where Elim rested after fainting. The furry rabbit’s paws that now tipped the prince’s legs poked out from beneath the blankets, their toes splaying and twitching to show off their black-nailed claws, while the long fuzzy ears that had sprouted from Elim’s head lay limp against his straw pillow. Kessen watched as the prince’s breath came in sharp gasps, making his bare chest rise and fall frantically despite still being only half-conscious.
Toreg stirred his stewpot, slowly looking back and forth between Kessen and Elim, smirking to himself when he saw the gentle look on the tiger’s face.
“…He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Toreg offered off-handedly, suspecting what Kessen was thinking. “I’ll say one thing for the royals, they can certainly afford all sorts of fancy oils and soaps to keep their skin and hair looking all smooth and pretty.”
“Sure, he’s cute enough,” Kessen muttered as he ran his eyes up and down Elim’s body while trying not to let Toreg notice. “Don’t know if they make a salve that’ll smooth out that personality, though.”
Toreg let out a big laugh at that as he returned to his stewpot. “Well, he’s a spoiled one, for sure. But, don’t forget he’s been though a lot,” the bear replied as soon as his laughter subsided a bit. “You saved him, Kessen, and he knows it. Despite how he acts, I don’t think he’s angry with you. Once he’s had a chance to come to terms with what happened to him, I’m sure he’ll come around.”
Kessen snorted at that. He trusted Toreg more than just about anyone in the village short of the elders themselves, but he wasn’t buying the bear’s optimism. Kessen’s mind began to wander, thinking back to when he had first met Elim, only minutes away from death and looking at him pleadingly. Kessen knew that his people’s stone monuments held great power, including the power to heal, and he had offered a piece of that power to the prince to save his life.
And look how that turned out, Kessen sighed, taking in the young man’s transforming body with both curiosity and disbelief. The jet-black color of the prince’s hair was beginning to fade, taking on the straw-gold color of the fur on his ears and paws, and Kessen could already see a downy fuzz beginning to spread upward from Elim’s feet to dust the prince’s calves and knees. Kessen had to admit, he found the deep, dark color of the prince’s hair strikingly beautiful, as was the porcelain whiteness of the young man’s skin. Knowing that Elim would instead soon be covered in a thick coat of creamy fur, wearing the pelt of a beastman instead of the skin of a human… It almost made Kessen regret saving the man’s life. Did I have the right to do this to him? To change his soul without his permission? If I’d known the consequences, I-
Kessen gently put one of his huge feline paws against Elim’s shoulder, and the prince’s rapid breathing began to slow to a steady rate while his rabbit-like ears began to perk back up. Well, at least he’s easier to deal with when he’s unconscious, Kessen thought wryly as he continued to stroke the transforming prince’s arm. Seeing Elim’s gratitude, unconscious or not, made Kessen know that he had done the right thing in rescuing him.
“Pa! We found it!”
A boisterous voice rang out from the doorway and Tell and Ferin entered, smelling of dirt, sweat, and vegetation. Tell held up a small branch in his paw and thrust it in front of his father’s muzzle to examine. The branch had a few pods hanging down from it, covered in fleshy spines that Toreg carefully avoided as he took the branch into his paw.
“Good work, boy. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to find any ripe deathroot around here this time of year, but I’m always glad to be wrong,” Toreg said proudly, making his son beam with happiness.
“It was all Ferin, pa! He just gave that dried-up old flower you showed us a sniff, then he made a beeline right into the woods and started looking for it!” Tell exclaimed, pounding Ferin on the back with one paw and nearly knocking the larger man over. “It couldn’t have taken more than half an hour of looking! Heck, I figured we were going to be out there 'til sundown!”
“My family… We used to gather herbs and flowers,” Ferin added quietly, looking a bit unsure of his own words. “I suppose old habits are hard to break.”
“…I suppose so,” Toreg grunted, looking at Ferin curiously and suspecting there was something more going on here. But that could wait until later. Toreg beckoned his son to come closer as he pulled out a small knife and began to slice into the pods on the deathroot branch, letting a few juicy white seeds spill out into his paw. “Deathroot is a very potent medicine, capable to stimulating the mind in small doses. And destroying it in any other dose. One seed to remember, two seeds to prophecy, three seeds to kill. Remember that, son.”
Tell, always eager to learn more of herbalism and folk medicine, nodded in understanding as Toreg took a single one of the seeds and dropped it into a cup of boiling water before bringing it over to Elim’s bedside.
“One seed? So, what does he need to remember?” Ferin asked cautiously.
“The prince is upset, and it’s not just because he nearly died and is being kept in our village,” Toreg replied easily. “I’ve seen it before, back in my adventuring days. Men and women ranting and raving and refusing to see reason when it’s spelled out for them. They all saw something, something that angered them, scared them, made them question what was true. So they bury it away, try to forget it. But whatever it is that they saw still eats away at them. I think our prince here… He saw something he didn’t like on that night where he nearly died.”
Toreg tipped the concoction into Elim’s mouth and held the young man’s lips shut as the bitter liquid flowed down his throat. Elim's bright blue eyes fluttered open, his pupils dilating as the drug had the desired effect almost immediately.
“Toreg, is this really wise…?” Kessen asked, keeping his paw tightly gripped around Elim’s shoulder and feeling perspiration begin to moisten the young prince’s skin. “He already doesn’t trust us, so if he finds out you drugged him with something-“
“I’m right about this, Kess. When he sees what he needs to, he’ll know who he should really be angry at. Trust me.”
------------------------------------
Elim awoke in darkness, but within seconds his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Earthen walls on every side, a bed of dried grass lay beneath him. A small pile of fresh greens and vegetables lay next to him, which he began to nibble at, his ears rotating and flicking around and listening for any sign of danger in the distance.
My burrow. My home. I am safe.
He settled in, curling his paws beneath him as he sat on his haunches. His nose twitched nervously. Something felt wrong. He glanced down at himself, trying to figure out what seemed so strange, but he just saw his usual body. Powerful, muscular legs to let him run and jump from any predator, and strong enough to knock anything that caught up to him senseless with a good kick. A short, rounded muzzle tipped with a twitchy nose and a little bush of sensitive whiskers. Thick, warm fur covered every inch of him, from the tip of his nose to the fluffy tuft of a tail wiggling behind him.
Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong tonight. Safe.
Elim glanced to the side, seeing the narrow earthen passage of his burrow that led back to the surface. He could see a tiny flicker of moonlight outside, beckoning him outside. He tiredly hopped forward on his haunches, crawling through the cramped passageway until he felt the cool night air blowing through his fur as he emerged from his safe home.
I am safe. I am-
A scent blew past Elim’s nose, and before he even knew what he was doing he was hopping away as fast as possible into the woods. He could hear snarling and barking behind him, and a quick glance back confirmed his fears.
Dogs. Massive, black dogs, with leather collars studded with spikes and drool flowing down their muzzles. Bred for hunting, unstoppable once they were let off the leash. He felt a pair of sharp jaws snap shut, tearing a bit of fur from the tip of his tail and spurring him to flee even faster.
Elim fled through bushes, thorns and branches slashing him as he ran. He didn’t care, he needed to survive. He could smell something ahead, something powerful, something that even a rabbit like him could understand. Magic.
He once again found himself in the clearing, staring up at the black monument etched with runes. He was completely exhausted, unable to move his body any more. Elim the rabbit collapsed at the base of the stone monument, panting and whimpering like the terrified prey that he was as he saw the black dogs emerging from the bushes and looking at him like he was their next meal. Elim felt drool dripping down onto his fur and the dog’s jaws opened wide, preparing to snap down around his neck…
Suddenly, there was a flash of red, and he was no longer a rabbit. He was a human prince again, staring down a mercenary bearing a razor-sharp sword. The mercenary slowly pressed the blade against Elim’s shoulder, but when he moved his arm to perform the finishing stab he parted his cloak just a tiny bit, letting Elim glimpse something shining around the mercenary’s neck.
A small pendant on a steel chain, formed into the shape of two triangles joined at one side and set with a dark crimson ruby at the center. In that instant, Elim recognized the pendant, and he knew who these ‘mercenaries’ truly were. Before he could even shout, the blade sunk into his shoulder once again, and everything went black.
--------------------------------------
Elim’s eyes fluttered open, and he saw a quartet of faces looking down at him.
“Oh. He’s awake.”
“What, did you think I was gonna kill him, boy?”
“I mean, it was called ‘deathroot’, pa…”
“And I didn’t give him the root, did I? It was the seeds… Oh, almost forgot.”
Toreg reached over and grabbed an earthenware bowl and handed it over to Elim. “You’ll need that in about five seconds, ‘Your Highness’,” the bear advised, and as soon as the words were out of Toreg’s mouth Elim felt a wave of nausea and he began to empty to contents of his stomach into the bowl. Once it seemed like the prince was slowing down, Toreg gingerly took the bowl back and handed it over to Tell. “Wash that up, will ‘ya?”
Tell let out a groan of disgust and rolled his eyes before running outside with the bowl while Kessen, Toreg, and Ferin remained with the still woozy Elim.
“So? What did you see, Elim?” Kessen asked cautiously, his tail flicking nervously.
“I don’t know what you expect him to remember… We were attacked by bandits looking to score a haul by robbing a royal carriage, that’s all,” Ferin said quietly, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced by his own words.
“The medicine gave you the advantage of unclouded vision, albeit filtered through the language of symbolism. It let you turn back time and see details you were unable to see the first time,” Toreg said. “Things that… things that you didn’t want to believe were true.”
I was chased. I obviously wasn’t a rabbit, but I was chased by… hounds? Not just hounds, hunting dogs. I was being hunted down, Elim reasoned to himself, trying to interpret the vision despite not entirely trusting what he had experienced. It wasn’t an ambush by bandits looking for treasure. They were hunting for me specifically. And the ones in charge of the hunt were…
Elim remembered. He saw the pendant around his attacker’s neck, and he knew what it symbolized. He bit his lip and tried to keep his twitching ears from betraying the fright he was feeling, to no avail.
“It was nothing. I didn’t see anything new,” Elim said quietly, making Toreg roll his eyes in exasperation. “Now, give me some of the food you’re cooking. Your ‘medicine’ made me lose my lunch, and I need to replace it.”