It took me a while, but here I am finally uploading my longest completed long fic. I started writing this thing nearly a year ago, and I'm grateful that I didn't start posting it immediately because I had quite a writer's block right in the middle of it. So here you are, one smoothly published multi chapter fic.
I don't usually get to have a beta, but this story was beta'd completely by the amazing SarcasticSeraph. It's all still my jumbling of writing, but she helped me out a lot!
Warnings: There will be smut, foul language, and probably still a lot of mistakes in my English
"I'm really excited about testing this spell, up until now I've only used it on plants within a magic confinement."
"So what are you going to test it on now?"
Ja'far followed Yamraiha into her laboratory, giving the immense clutter of random materials and stained scrolls a disapproving look.
"I'm going to use a chicken now," Yamraiha explained excitedly as she rounded a chair stacked with fragile looking glasswork, "it should be completely harmless, I promise. None of the plants have shown any sign of damage after the spell, on all levels I checked."
"Fair enough." Ja'far pulled the small pen from his writing board, dipping it in the ink vial on the side to quickly scribble down some of the things she had already told him. He tried to follow her without bumping into any of the mess spread around on the floor, deciding to give that moving ...thing... lurking in the glass tank underneath the large desk no second glance.
"The only problem with using animals is that I can't confine it in a magical barrier like I do with plants." Yamraiha took a small covered cage from under the table and wiped a place on her desk clean. When she put it down a small clucking noise resounded from under the cloth.
"Why can't you use a barrier?" Ja'far looked at her curiously. She had asked him to come over to record her findings from his point of view - wanting a second opinion to improve her work - but he knew what she really wanted was to show off what she found. She often asked him over to watch small demonstrations of her work, sometimes with Sinbad if she felt it was important. But generally, she seemed to prefer his analytic way of looking at things and not have the king bounce around her impressively messy laboratory. He had to admit though, if this experiment succeeded it would be beyond impressive, and Sinbad would be all over it.
"Animals react badly to the barrier as it obstructs the flow of the rukh. It seems like plants are more resilient to the circumstances inside the confinement barriers. So long as you don't keep them there for too long, of course. But an animal immediately starts acting strange and will try to escape. When I tested the effects on a snake, it even died in less than a minute." He noticed she paused shortly at that, her face dropping at the memory. He had always had the feeling she got too attached to her testing animals. And plants.
"You haven't tried to change the barrier to make it possible to test animals in it?"
"No, not yet. It's a bit of a puzzle, seeing as the whole purpose of the barrier is to obstruct the movement of rukh to keep in the magic, and that in itself seems to be the problem for animals. I am thinking it has something to do with fresh air, as plants can create their own and animals need it from outside. But that doesn't make much sense with the snake dying so fast." She frowned to herself, seemingly distracted by her own thoughts for a few seconds.
"I see." Ja'far said after a moment, if only to get her moving again. He watched as she quickly uncovered the small cage with the chicken, the bird fluttering about for a moment before settling again. "Just to be sure, does this mean there is no security in place around this experiment?"
"Well, it's not really necessary." She pouted, unhappy with his question. "There is nothing else in this lab that could be affected by the spell, apart from the two of us. If you stand behind me I doubt anything can go wrong."
"That must be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly say," Ja'far muttered, circling around the desk to stand behind her, still scribbling away on his board. "What are you expecting we'll see exactly?"
"This spell should reverse this chicken in age, turning it back into a chick." She looked back at him smugly, sliding a small dish with seeds over the desk towards him. "I've reverted plants to saplings; or even seeds."
"Will we see it happening slowly, or will it be over in a puff of smoke?"
"Puff of smoke, you wish." She grinned. "But yeah, it will be instant. It's a bit tricky to control the amount it rejuvinates, however. I can't just let it rejuvinate and stop when I think it's fine, it has to be in one go. That part still needs a bit of fine tuning. But I want to know if it works on animals first."
"And show off your hard work while you're at it," Ja'far pointed out, smiling.
"Of course. Now, are you ready?"
"More than ready," he ended his last note with a wide underlining, marking the start of his own observations.
"Then watch and see." Yamraiha tilted her wand, tipping it to press against the cage. "Minzar ajin."
With a small mutter of a spell the chicken froze in place. Ja'far shuddered at the feeling of the shift in power, being too sensitive for his surroundings as an assassin to miss the reaction of the rukh to a spell this big. The feathers of the chicken fluttered as if in a breeze, even though the air was completely still. His pen stilled on the paper when he saw the chicken curling in on itself, almost as if trying to hide from the world.
"Hey, Yamraiha-!"
Both of them stiffened in horror when Sinbad burst through the door - which coincidentally had to be directly opposite to the direction Yamraiha was pointing her wand in. Sinbad halted in place, his happy face and wide spread arms freezing in position as if turned to stone.
"S-Sin-"
Yamraiha stopped, tipping her wand back up in horror when his hair and clothes flickered around him, caught in the same intangible wind as the chicken. With a loud cackling the chicken jumped out of its frozen state, tipping over the cage in its force and upsetting a couple of bottles on the desk.
"Watch it," Ja'far dropped his writing board to quickly pull Yamraiha back when the bottles exploded in multi coloured smoke. With a surprised screech she tripped backwards, causing them both to fall to the ground. Ja'far winced, but curled an arm around her to cover her mouth and nose with his sleeve, burying his own face in her robes on her shoulder.
She whimpered and trembled against him, clinging to his arm while they waited for the smoke to clear again.
Luckily it didn't take long, and after just a little while the smoke started to dissipate. They heard a pained groan on the other side of the room. Ja'far stiffened in response, a starting panic eating at his stomach. Sin could be hurt, and he was stuck here trying not to die from inhaling whatever smoke this was!
Yamraiha pulled his hand away from her mouth. "It should be safe, Ja'far."
"Thanks." He used a table to pull them both to their feet quickly, hurriedly zigzagging between the tables and fragile looking objects to the other side of the room to his king. His king being sprawled on the floor on a stack of smudgy papers, collapsed backwards. Ja'far thanked all the gods he'd ever heard of for Sinbad's wide robes, part of the cloth normally covering a shoulder twisted up and draped over his face. Whatever was in the smoke, Sinbad likely hadn't inhaled any of it with his position on the floor and his face covered. And it also looked like he was still in one piece.
...had his clothes looked so big on him before?
Although there was really no doubt about what happened, Ja'far still had the tiniest bit of hope to find his king unharmed and with the same stupid grin as always on his face when he tentatively lifted the cloth off Sinbad's face. He could only groan when that was not what he found, a sleeping, slightly rounder face than usual being revealed instead.
"Yamraiha... Congratulations, your spell works just fine."
"...he didn't!"
"He did. Roughly fifteen years, if I should hazard a guess."
"Oh. Are... are you going to kill me now?"
Ja'far ignored her meek question, scowling at the sleeping face of the young man in his King's clothes. Sinbad, just like he looked when he first met him. Just as young, and just as fast asleep.
Only this time he didn't get kicked across the room for bending over him to grab him and throw him over a shoulder.
"I'm going to put this kid to bed. Time to start on a new research Yamraiha: How to reverse our king back to his own age. We can only pray he still has all his memories."
He left the cluttered laboratory to the sound of an adult chicken clucking in a small cage and the hissing of bottles releasing steam to the clouded air.
Sinbad would never cease being a headache, now would he?