*Cue epic opening song*

Chapter 1: The Maze of Myst

Author's Notes: Hey, hey, hey! I'm back! This is Wild Cat 214, and you're reading episode 2 of Strays, on .

Okay, enough parodies of Disney Channel.

If you're a new reader to this series, I recommend reading episode 1, Lost Homes, first. The events of this story might not make much sense if you don't.

Reviews:

mc arno (Apr. 3, Chapter 10 of Episode 1) – Merci beaucoup! Je parle un peu du français, et j'étais trés joyeux t'aime mon récit (J'espère mon français était bon).

The Story Of Your Life (Apr. 3, Chapter 10 of Episode 1) – Tell that something it deserves a cookie, because you're right. No one is going back to Berk anytime soon. As a matter of fact, cookies for everyone! *flings a basket of cookies into the air like confetti*

I hope you guys have fun with this episode. I know I will :)

Disclaimer: HTTYD is not mine.

Key:

0*0*0 – scene change

Horizontal line – perspective change


The trip was grueling. Hiccup worried that Toothless wouldn't be able to fly much farther, and from the looks of it, Cog and Levi were in the same boat. How his Seraph managed to fly with those tiny wings on his ankles was a mystery, but after spending a few days in Faded Dreams, he realized it probably had a simple answer. Magic.

When they had flown long enough that a streamer of white rocks arced in the sky over them, Levi and Dhole began spiraling down to what looked like a huge pit in the side of a hill. Even with the pale light from the rocks above, it was impossible to see what that hole was, exactly.

Cog made a noise halfway between a squeak and a groan when they got closer, and Snow looked at her with worry while Ash maneuvered. They touched down right at the edge of the hole, which turned out to be some sort of tunnel leading deep into the ground. Levi dismounted and began walking down the rough stairs along the floor of the tunnel, but the white-haired girl put a hand to his shoulder and stopped him.

"Levi, you cannot be serious about going in there. That's the Maze of Myst," she said, pointing out something that must have been obvious to the two of them. Hiccup got off of Toothless and joined them, folding his arms in front of him curiously.

"The Maze of Myst? What's that?" he asked, glancing between them for the answer. Cog sighed and let go of Levi to lead Hiccup a few feet away, probably to keep Levi from hearing their conversation. Why that was the case, he had no clue.

"The Maze of Myst is a very dangerous place filled with monsters. It's this massive tunnel system, and no one really knows just how deep it goes. Some say it reaches all the way to Eldur, realm of the fire Guði," she explained quietly, glancing over her shoulder. He nodded and frowned a bit.

"Okay. Why do you need to tell me over here?" he replied softly. The girl groaned quietly and lightly cuffed him.

"Because Levi doesn't know that you're from Berk, and something tells me we should keep it a secret until we know for sure what's going on. Things have been crazy lately. We don't need any more insanity right now," she hissed, switching from her normal pleasant self to the intimidating Cog he had seen earlier that night. Gods, had it really been only a few hours since he had used his Myst Magic, helped her find Snow and Ash, and run away with her and Levi?

"Are you two done? Because we need to see the Librarian of the Spire of Heaven. She's bound to have something that can help us in those musty tomes of hers," Levi said casually. The two of them eyed him uncertainly. Cog had been reluctant to go into the Maze, and from what she had said, it didn't sound like such a friendly place.

"And, uh, how are we going to get there without being seen?" Hiccup asked nervously. He shrugged in answer.

"The Maze should help with that. We can travel below ground until we find an exit that will get us there," he answered casually, as if this was something Hiccup should have known already.

"Right, but how will we find a way through?" the young Viking clarified. At this, the other man seemed stumped, until they saw Cog crouch down and start pulling things from her bag, the same one she had grabbed just before they left. First came some sort of round thing with a tiny piece of bi-colored metal behind a glass cover, one end red and the other silver, then came a few canteens of water(?), a silvery stand with a pitch black cover on a chain over the top, and, finally, a large roll of paper.

"I can help with that." The teenage girl grinned with delight and took the cover off of the stand, revealing a small anolite crystal that illuminated the area around them, and pushed the paper flat.

"The Maze of Myst is actually a huge structure that lies underneath every part of the Fractured Lands. We can use these passages to travel unseen until we get to the Spire," she replied confidently, running her finger along the paper to a circular spot on the map. The male members of the group stared at her in mild shock, and she blushed.

"What? I paid attention in some classes. I'll have you know that I liked history and geography," she protested. They all looked amongst themselves, then to the dark hole leading into the bowels of the earth.

"I guess it's our best bet. The sun will be rising soon, and Darksoul's soldiers won't hesitate to follow us into the Land of the Rejected if they see us flying during the day," Levi said, glancing toward the lightening sky to the east. They had spent the entire night beginning an adventure, and now they had to continue it by entering a place known as the Maze of Myst. Was it the only way? Most likely. Was it a good idea? Probably not.

That cheerful thought in mind, Hiccup steeled himself for the descent into the Maze, just as Levi and Cog did with their bond animals. With heavy heart and stomach fluttering, the intrepid party began to walk down the steps into the darkness.


I have to admit, it isn't called the Maze of Myst for nothing. The labyrinthine passages would have boggled the minds of even the best explorers, the sheer number of monsters would have driven away the bravest of warriors, and the constant Myst made it hard to see anything beyond its silvery, iridescent billows. Of course, I felt more powerful, and the Myst helped replenish our supplies whenever Levi used an offensive Magic to help drive away monsters (Dhole allowed him to summon up a ghostly Seraph, which I'm pretty sure counts as dusk-affinity Magic) or Hiccup made us invisible before we passed by a particularly difficult monster. The various bond animals helped, too, with Toothless' purple fire, Ash's normal fire, and Snow's ice convincing some monsters that it really wasn't worth it to attack us.

We were doing pretty well as we walked through the tunnels, that is, until we came upon what looked like the ancient ruins of some long-forgotten dweorgir temple. It probably was. The dweorgir had been around since long before the Catastrophe, though they had understandably avoided human contact before that period. Back then, the old gods had been a lot more prominent, and their followers had been a lot more prone to fight anything that wasn't human. We were able to see what it was because Toothless blasted the ceiling with a bolt of fire, making the entire room glow.

But it wasn't the temple that was bad. No, it was what lay inside that was bad.

It was really Hiccup's fault. He was the one who saw the treasure chest in a nook and began going towards it. If I hadn't grabbed his arm and pulled him away, we would probably have been short a member of our party, and I doubt Toothless would like losing his partner.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked as I led him back to the safety of the group. I glared at the chest, then looked back at him pleadingly.

"Hiccup, if you know what's good for you, you will not go anywhere near that treasure. I don't care if someone says it contains the most valuable thing in the world, you are not to step within a yard of it," I ordered quietly. He jerked his arm free of my grasp and backed away a bit.

"Why? It's just a box," Hiccup said, starting back towards it. Levi let out a sigh of disgust and waved for me to catch him before he got himself killed. I hurried after him, and I managed to stop him from moving right when we heard the humming sound.

"Uh, Cog, what is that noise?" he asked, worry creeping into his voice. All I could do was stare at the treasure chest in horror. It was the source of the faint buzzing, and that meant we were too close.

"Listen to me very carefully. We are going to back away slowly, quietly, and without any sudden movements, okay, Hiccup?" I murmured, gently tugging on his shoulders. He nodded imperceptibly, and we inched our way back to Levi, Dhole, Snow, Ash, and Toothless. With our movement, the buzzing faded away to be replaced with an eerie silence, and we all shared a look.

"We need to get out of this place. Come on, I think I see a tunnel this way," Levi muttered once we were within the safety of our group, motioning us toward another dark hole. Both of us said nothing, preferring instead to heed his advice and flee the area as quickly as we dared. It seemed all was going well for us; at least, until we entered the room of the temple containing the tunnel's mouth.

The hum was louder this time, probably because there were at least twenty of the treasure chests in this room. My gaze darted from one brass-decorated wooden box to the next, dread building up inside until I felt like it would start overflowing from me. This was really not good.

"Whatever you do, no loud noises or sudden movements. They only attack if they think you're scared or a threat," the oldest of our group ordered quietly. Hiccup seemed confused, but who could blame him? I'd have been confused, too, if I didn't know what they were.

But the various gods must have thought it funny to see us swarmed, because, wouldn't you know it, that was when Hiccup kicked a loose chunk of rubble and made it skitter across the hard, stony floor.

The treasure chests began unfolding, the lids lifting up and splitting in half down the middle to become the "antennae" of the heads that leered at us with hungry red eyes. The fronts, sides, and backs split into six parts for each chest, the fronts and backs splitting in half like the lids, to become flat plates of armor on spindly, two-jointed legs that ended in sharp points. Pairs of filmy, veined, transparent wings unfurled from the segmented bodies, and long tails ending with two menacing stingers uncurled from underneath the bellies of the insectoid monsters around us. Slowly, the harmless treasure chests became...

"Oh... my... gods. What... what are those things?" Hiccup stammered, fear drenching his voice to my left. Levi growled with apprehension and readied a sword that had been on his back. He spat on the ground and glared back at the monsters, sword held in front of him in the style usually taught to the royal family of Faded Dreams.

"Mimics," he replied viciously. Hiccup shot me a look of confusion and fear as he grabbed his crossbow, and I pulled my own weapon from its strap on my back. This was not going to be an easy fight.

0*0*0

Let's get one thing straight. I said it wasn't going to be an easy fight. Boy, was I wrong!

It was the most difficult thing I've ever faced in my entire life.

First of all, you have to understand something. Mimics usually attack by ambush, if they're alone in their territory. Unsuspecting, inexperienced adventurers will approach them, ignoring or not hearing the buzz they make in anticipation of a meal, and when they open the treasure chest, their tail, which is folded up at just the right position, will strike and poison or paralyze their prey. Mimics eat people, it's a well-known fact, which makes it pretty rare for someone to be bonded to them. Strut was the exception, not the rule, in that Stefan, his Mimic partner, preferred to eat the same things humans like. In fact, Stefan was the only reason I knew what a Mimic was and what it looked like in ambush mode. That was why I had tried to get Hiccup away from that lone Mimic, before he was attacked and eaten before our eyes (or possibly after we could no longer see). I should have known there would be a hive of them here. This was the sort of place adventurers liked to go to, in search of lost treasure of the dweorgir. Perfect hunting ground for Mimics. In these numbers, they acted more like wolves than the solitary insects did.

As of this moment, we were running for our lives through the tunnels. The entire hive of Mimics was on our tails, almost literally (one had tried to take a chunk out of Snow and Ash's tail, only to be lightly roasted and frozen by the offended dragon), and any monsters within a three mile radius had cleared out before they were caught and brought back to the queen Mimic as dinner. This made our lives both easier and harder. Easier because we didn't have any extra distractions. Harder because it meant the Mimics didn't have any extra distractions.

We had just entered a large, very black cave when my friend decided to speak.

"You know, I never thought I'd be running through a cave with two other people, two dragons, and a wolf-thing while being chased by living treasure chests that want to eat me!" Hiccup shouted over the ruckus. Levi smirked, I just gave him a tight grin, and the bond animals we were riding (hey, it was faster than our own feet, and it made getting through the tunnels a lot quicker) made brief noises of amusement. At least someone thought this was funny.

I would have replied with something snarky, but that was when we heard the shriek. It was the scariest thing I've heard, and I've heard ghost stories from Mr. Klaki. Those are freakin' terrifying. This was worse. This was like the cry of a million Banshees amplified through a huge audicite crystal. If you don't know what that is, it's this special mineral that can transmit sound throughout its entire crystal structure, even when pieces are taken away. Now picture the haunting wail of an army of Banshees through a giant one of those. That's the closest I can come to describing the scream from the depths of the Maze.

"OHH, SHIT!" Levi yelled from his roiling position on Dhole's back. Hiccup glanced over at me and probably saw my terrified face, because his soon contorted into one of his own.

"MIMIC QUEEN!" I informed him over the sound of their feet clattering against the cave walls and floor and ceiling behind us. Slowly, somewhat against my will, I turned around to see her. A massive, female Mimic, the Queen is the only one that can produce fertile children out of her whole hive. This one looked like, at one point in her life, she might have been a somewhat large treasure chest. Not anymore. We could see just how big she was as she slowly rose from the gargantuan crevice that had been hidden by the shadows of the cave.

The pieces of her disguise no longer looked like dark wood and yellow metal. Instead, glowing fungus and spots of color had completely overgrown the armor, making her light up the entire chamber with soft blue, green, and yellow. Her red eyes were like giant glass lanterns seeking us out, and when their cruel beams caught us like the searchlights of a prison in the Blasted Lands, they narrowed in anger at the thought of her prey escaping. The Queen was easily the size of an entire wing of the palace in Faded Dreams, and though her wings could no longer support her, she would have no trouble catching us if we went airborne.

Well, that settled it. We were screwed. Mimics were starting to cut us off, and the Mimic Queen herself had decided to join the hunt instead of letting her minions bring our paralyzed bodies to her. There was no way to escape.


Author's Notes: DUN DUN DUN!

I'm an awful person to leave it at a cliffhanger, but I can't help it. Big things are coming up. I needed to end the chapter somewhere.

Please review! I like feedback of any kind! No, seriously. Any kind of feedback is welcome.

Wild Cat 214, out! *flies off to escape angry readers*