Longs and Shorts of Laverito: Latent Element

“Focus!” the guard spat. There was exasperation in her tone and disdain on her face. She didn’t think much of Laverito, not at all. She was made of elegant curves and sharp edges, wide and stout and immutable, a knight in night-dark armor. Laverito had complimented her perfect polish. She’d not returned the favor. 

“You’re hardly the first young mage to have their first spell run amok,” the guard told him. “But you must have focus, to gain control.”

Laverito already was focused. He was focused on the sounds of people moving along the street above, on the stance of the guard before him, on the sensation of grime coating his poor ears. He always needed to be focused. Laverito was a very small hare-demon in a world full of very large carnivores. He needed to be focused on nearby footsteps, how many there were, how heavy, and whether coming or going. He needed to mind body language, read between lines that weren’t written, and move before an attack could land. And he needed his ears to be clean.

He’d always loathed being indoors. Ceilings were wretched things, rife with cobwebs and spiders and all manner of wretched textures. His eartips were surely bruised, after slapping against the lid of this cell all day.

Night was falling now, and there was a certain set of footsteps approaching, heavy enough to stand out in the chorus of coughing and cursing outside. The guard hadn’t noticed, which just went to show that Laverito was focusing on the right things, and the guard was not.

“To control your fire, you must be able to find it,” the guard urged. “Delve within yourself, and harness it at the source.” A plume of blue fire swelled to life between the guard’s splayed fingers, spinning languidly. “Fire unleashed is a wild thing. If you cannot tame it within yourself, you will never be able to do so without.”

Laverito was not swayed. Give up his awareness of the world around him, and the plentiful dangers therein, to perform obscure mental gymnastics, to metaphorically find a piece of his body which didn’t physically exist? Dumb. And if the guard was going to be so rude to him, why not be obstinate back?

The grueling training session, which Laverito absolutely had not asked for, was interrupted at last by the appearance of the captain, announced by the tall white feather-plume on her helm. The guard turned away from Laverito to exchange words with her superior officer. All of the words were about Laverito. None of them were complimentary. 

There were many footsteps. The captain and the guard shuffled as they spoke. Above, through the tiny barred window that opened to the street, there were even more. But one set in particular stumped to a stop just outside. Laverito’s ears twitched. Only the manacles around his wrists stopped Laverito from desperately scraping the grime off.

With a final despairing look at Laverito, the guard and the captain stepped out, closing the door behind them.

Laverito rushed over to the window, and gazed up at a mass of mostly-white feathers. “Badallaioc!” he half-squawked, half-hissed. “You came for me?”

Badallaioc grunted. With tack on his back, the stryx looked as if his rider had merely stepped off for a peek in a nearby shop. Stryx were large, carnivorous, and picky about their riders, so having a mount stolen was slightly less likely than a rider returning to find a fine for ‘Public Gluttony’ pinned to their saddle. Badallaioc made a show of ambling in a restless circle, scratching at the hard-packed dirt with his red talons.

Who could say there wasn’t something positively fascinating caught between the bars of Laverito’s cell window? Badallaioc bent down for a thorough inspection. Between pecking at the bars, Badallaioc quietly clucked, “I know the route to run. Get out now.”

Laverito showed Badallaioc the manacles, and the stryx hissed. 

“Turn around and lean your butt against the window. I’ve got lockpicks in one of those bags,” Laverito hissed back.

Badallaioc made a show of ambling around again, scratching and pecking through the dirt. The stryx paused to snap at a passing dog, sending the stray running with a yelp. Trash wasn’t rare in any city, and Badallaioc found a crinkled old jewelry chain, sans jewels, to inspect most critically. Naturally, such intense scrutiny required settling down against the wall, putting Badallaioc’s butt within Laverito’s reach.

Retrieving the lockpicks around the restriction of the manacles made for some interesting acrobatics, to say nothing of actually using them. By the time Laverito managed to shake the manacles off, he could hear the footsteps of the guard and captain returning.

“Badallaioc, the bars! Quickly!”

Badallaioc must have caught on that the time for stealth was passing. The stryx stood, turned, hooked the talons of one powerful hind leg around one of the window bars, and threw his considerable weight against the wall. The bar did not yield. The wall, however…

Laverito threw himself out of the way just in time to avoid most of the debris, as the bar fell inwards, bringing chunks of old brick with it. 

“What was that?” came the voice of the captain. A key rattled in the cell door’s lock.

Badallaioc pushed a second window bar onto the floor. Laverito heard the cell door open, and threw himself up into the gap, scrabbling for handholds in the broken bricks, squeezing and wriggling and wrestling with his wings, until Badallaioc caught him by the back of his collar and yanked him up into the night. Several buttons did not make the journey. Someone shouted, “Prison break!” 

And Badallaioc ran. 

There was smoke heavy on the air in all directions, but Badallaioc avoided the source of it, because most of the city’s mages were concentrated there. Yesterday, a row of grain silos had stood tall and proud on the west side of the city. Now they bowed and warped, filled with flames that had already spoiled all the grain with smoke and heat. Water mages and bucket brigades still stood against the spread, protecting most of their fields, and most of their barns, and most of their homes. But there was nothing to be done for the grain silos. They had been the culmination of the thousands of hours of hard work. Now their blackened shells would be another mess to clean.

The ruins that fire left behind could be worse than nothing.

Laverito grit his teeth, ears itching and wings stinging as he clung to Badallaioc’s back. The stryx rushed along alleyways and side streets, twisting and turning to avoid guard patrols, and Laverito knew better than to question Badallaioc’s chosen route. The city had injuries to treat, homes to rebuild, and people to feed. How many resources would they spend hunting down one arsonist on a swift-moving stryx? 

Laverito and Badallaioc would escape, and then — they’d never, ever return to this city. People would forget about one stolen pie a lot faster than they’d forget about their home burning down. 

Fire was too loud a thing. The light, heat, smell, and ashen results all attracted attention, and Laverito could not live with that. He didn’t want to control fire.

He didn’t want fire at all.