Part One
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The cell was made of wood, or maybe bamboo, he really didn't know. All he knew was it was strong, and entirely out in the open. He'd already had a handful of rotten fruit thrown at him this morning.
Vellis sighed in frustration, sitting back against the bars of the cage. They dug into his shoulder blades, but it was still more comfortable than sitting stiffly in the middle of the little wooden prison. Just, not by much. He stared out at the camp, ignoring the shifting colors at the very edges of his vision. He touched the ring on his left hand and they faded some. It glowed brighter, making the glass ripple with colors like an oil slick. He shut his eyes.
Vellis had seen them take Castian off three days ago into one of the rounded tents, and not once since. He was probably dead. He tried not to let that sting, or the fact he could have stopped all of this if he'd been a little faster.
The morning light had woken him on the day they were captured. It streamed over him, making his skin tingle.
A wide field of some sort of tall grass had surrounded them, and it damn well wasn't somewhere he'd ever been. Why hadn't Castian taken them to DC? It would have been easy to find their old Warp hole and reenter the Field from there, assuming they could at all.
Instead he'd thrown them down in the middle of nowhere. Vellis studied the horizon for signs of life and found none. Back in some distant past, probably. Castian lay curled in the grass a few feet away, fingers twitching in his sleep. He looked exhausted. How could you look exhausted while sleeping?
Vellis shook his head, walking up a hill to get a better vantage point. Grass kept snagging on his pants, as if it were trying to hold him back. Ripping it off, he crested the hill. The next side was exactly the same. Grass, grass and more golden grass. Maybe it was a wheat field? There was another hill a ways ahead, behind it, there were trees, though at this distance it was more like a green smear, it mingled with the sheen of colors dancing in his vision. Probably trees.
Thin fingers of smoke coiled up from them, slowly coming into focus against the sky. He looked up, squinting. The sky was wrong, somehow.
Too close to purple. Right? Well it didn't look like the clear blue they showed on TV. Maybe a storm was coming, or maybe it was just a dawn thing.
He turned back the way he'd come. There wasn't anything he could do till Castian woke up and hopefully knew where the hell they were.
Where the hell was Castian? He stopped, scanning the grass for a dip where the other boy had crushed it down. There was just too much of it. He swallowed, chewing the edge of his lip.
Vellis shut his eyes, taking a deep breath. He felt them... change. There wasn't another word for it. It was a disconcerting feeling of something inside his eye moving.
When he opened them again, everything was reds and dull grey-blues, with patches of orange and green.
He scanned the grass. Ah. There he was, one of the red blobs, curled tightly on the ground off to his left. Smaller, less bright reds and oranges moved through the field. Mice, or some other little rodent probably. He glanced back at Castian's blazing red form. Too bright. Vellis frowned, blinking hard again to change his vision back. He took a few steps forward towards the small hill Castian was on and paused.
The soft muttering of the grass against each other had changed near the other boy.
Something was creeping through it. He tensed, breathing in deeply, his mouth slightly open.
Cat.
A cat? Here? Another breath. Big cat.
"Castian," he hissed, crouching down in the grass and edging forward. He could probably fight off a big cat. Maybe. Vellis wished he had his sword, or knife at least. Slowly, he moved forward, still breathing through his mouth and nose. Multiple cats. God. "Castian, wake up." The other boy didn't reply, but he couldn't see him to tell if he was still asleep. Probably.
The grass in front of him stopped abruptly, crushed down where Castian had rolled on it in his sleep.
A creature that was definitely too human to be a cat looked up at him, a knife to Castian's throat. His eyes were open, but glassy in a way that screamed of wrongness.
Castian's breathing hitched in and out, and he looked over at Vellis, staring through him.
"Let him go," Vellis said, voice even.
"I don't think so," the creature said in a distinctly female voice. She looked past him at something. Vellis shot to his feet, spinning around.
One of them was standing directly behind him, a male, if he had to guess from the lack of a shirt of the obvious muscle beneath the short, blond fur coating every inch of him.
He had a knife at his belt, and a spear in his hand which he leveled silently at Vellis' chest.
"Move, and you die. Move, and he dies. Move, and someone dies."
Vellis stood perfectly still, watching a third creature slip by, low in the grass. His heart hammered at his ribs, making him feel sick. Like Vellis needed another thing to make him feel sick. Like the constant rippling of colors near the edges of his vision wasn't enough these days.
"What do you want?" he asked, making his voice as even as possible. He could kill them, if he got the spear away. It wouldn't be so hard.
They'd slit Castian's throat before he moved two feet.
He closed his eyes, breathed, then opened them again, meeting the strange man's gaze. They were tilted and golden.
He smiled, showing long fangs on his upper and lower jaw. Vellis suppress the urge to snarl and show his in response.
"You don't get to question us, underworldling," his said, a low growl edging his voice.
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I told you guys we'd see the strange, alien cats again, how else did you expect it to happen?
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An Assassin In Time
Fiksi Ilmiah(ON HOLD) If time couldn't hold you, what would you do? Castian was born inside a Field, outside of time. He has no timeline. He belongs nowhere, and anywhere. The Field he was in was destroyed when he was young, and he and four other children...
