“Oh no. NO! NOPE! NO! UH-UH! I am not dealing with one of THESE, today, of all days!”
Those words echo in your ears as you slowly come to. Your head throbs and you weakly open your eyes, the world around you dim, and blurry.
A different voice, sighed, then spoke up. “What is it now, Ti-? Oh! Oooohh. Wow. Never thought I’d get to see one of ‘em pure, before.”
“Pure? Pure?” The other voice stammers. “Pure trouble, more like it! What’s it doing in my basement! You didn’t fill in the hole, did you Arthur? I bet this is all your fault.”
As your vision comes into focus, you can see a stone ceiling above you, walls lined with towering bookshelves, containing countless books, and dozens of bags and jars, filled with substances you probably couldn’t identify even if you didn’t have a pounding headache. But where were the voices coming from?
“Oh sweet Luna, it’s waking up! Quick Arthur! Throw it outside before we get ‘webbed up in its destiny’ or whatever fiddle-faddle the larva say about these things!”
“Throw it out? The ferals’ll eat them alive!”
“Oh, we can only DREAM of getting rid of these things that easy!”
You manage to prop yourself up, and look toward the source of the voices. What you see causes you to let out the most terrified scream of your life.
In front of you, standing on four legs, with four more arms to match, is a round, brown bug, nearly half as tall as you. He wears a little blue cape around what could dubiously be called his neck, and a big, blue pointy, wide-rimmed wizard hat sits on top of his tiny head (for lack of a better term; it looks like his eyes and mandibles were just stuck to the top of his rounded body). A giant tick dressed up like a wizard.
And standing beside it was another bug, bright blue in color, this one taller than you, but quite lanky. His four stick-thin legs shook slightly as your face turned toward him, and he clutched a book in his two thin arms. Behind him dropped a long rigid tail, er, abdomen, and on his back were four long, narrow, shimmering wings. In contrast to the tick’s tiny eyes, this dragonfly’s hefty compound eyes looked as if they made up more than half of its head’s mass.
Your scream and scampering backward startled both of them, the bugs jumping back, watching you carefully for a few seconds, before the tick stepped closer.
“Alright, ‘eu-mahn,’” the tick said, before the dragonfly interrupted.
“I think it’s pronounced ‘hue-man,’”
“Quiet you!” The tick spat back. “Now list, ewman, or human, or whatever you’re called, I don’t know how you got in here, but if you don’t go back where you came from, I’m gonna-”
“Please don’t drink my blood!” You scream, holding your arms up in front of you.
“Drink your…” The tick pauses, then looks incredibly angry. “DO I LOOK LIKE A WOMAN TO YOU?”
“Uuuh…” You really weren’t sure how to respond to that.
“To be fair,” the dragonfly whispered, “I doubt you can tell what sex they are, either, can you?”
“That’s not the point!” The tick shook his head. “I’m not letting it stay here and wrap me up in its freak izzy-kai adventures.”
“Isakei?” You blink. Well, that might explain the giant bug people. Slightly.
“Whatever it’s called, I want no part in it, see? I want you out of my laboratory’s library before you inevitably mistake some potion for an aphid shake, read a forbidden book, or sneeze the wrong way, and then get turned into a giant feral tarantula destined to save the four kingdoms, or whatever prophecy the grubs are spouting this week. I don’t care where you go just scram, okay?”
“Tick Wizard!” The dragonfly speaks up. “They’ll die out there before the end of the day if we don’t give them some protection!”
The tick looked like it was about to speak again, but the dragonfly cut him off. “Besides, this could be an incredible opportunity.”
The tick looked at him skeptically. “Opportunity for what?”
“To study a pure human, not yet influenced by our kingdom’s magic!”
“Eh, save it for a bug that cares.” Two of the ticks arms reached out for you and grabbed one of yours, starting to drag you towards a door.
The Dragonfly’s eyes dart around trying to think of something. “An unchanged human’s hair is a key ingredient in the Philosopher’s Brew!”
The tick eases his grip on you. “That’s a fairy tale.”
“Only because most humans don’t end up staying long enough for the brew to be finished! We can’t miss out on a chance like this, could we?”
The tick frowns, and lets you go. “...Take it to the guest room. I’ll look up the brew’s other ingredients and see if we have even a chance of getting them.”
And with that, he crawled to the other end of the room passing through a doorway, and shutting it behind him.
The dragonfly person turns back to you. “I’m so sorry about that! The Tick Wizard isn’t normally so…” He paused. “Okay, maybe he is normally pretty irritable, but it’s not normally THIS bad. He’s stressed because he’s been working on the final steps to making a magic amplifier, and it’s a very delicate process, and… oh, where are my manners?”
He offers a hand to help lift you off the ground. With some hesitance, you accept. His skin feels unusually firm. Well, compared to the hands you’re used to shaking, anyway.
“My name is Arthur. I’m the Tick Wizard’s assistant. He’s not one to tell his real name. Thinks that ‘giving people your name gives them power over you,’ or some nonsense. I tried to tell him there’s no scientifically documented magic with that sort of effect, but he insists anyway. Anyway, who are you?”