Every single instinct Bogo possessed, honed from decades of work as a member of the City Guard, was telling him that something was terribly wrong. He had been involved in hostage negotiations before—rarely, it was true, but he had done them before—and he had a sort of idea of what mammals were like when they were pushed to their ragged edge. He held nothing but loathing for the sort of mammal who would, when faced with arrest, would grab an innocent and threaten them with violence. It tended to be either a random stranger, simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a member of the perpetrator's family. Those situations were the worst, easily among the most haunting of scenes he had been forced to bear witness to. Watching a parent panting frantically as they held a knife in one trembling paw to the throat of a tearful child, with his own heart in his throat as he attempted to de-escalate, had always left him feeling utterly exhausted even though he had never failed. The emotion of those moments were always so intense that the world afterwards seemed utterly drab, as though feeling things so intensely had temporarily stopped his ability to feel anything at all.
That was how it should have been, watching the fox attempt to talk his way out of arrest.
But it hadn't been. The fox had seemed almost dangerously calm and rational, as though it was Bogo who wasn't in control of the situation with a number of highly trained guardsmammals backing him up. But then Commandant Totchli had acted—with a recklessness that told him that no matter her potential she still had a lot to learn about being an effective member of the City Guard—and subdued the alchemist. The queen was happy, of course, that her daughter was out of danger, but Bogo knew that whatever he said she'd never understand how near a thing it had been. Totchli might understand one day, particularly if she eventually reached the point that too many of Bogo's colleagues from his younger days had. All of those arrogant young ensigns and lieutenants—and Bogo had been one of them once, he had to admit—who acted as though everything would always work out in their favor would eventually learn a hard truth. No matter how clever or strong or lucky they were, there would always be a criminal out there who was more so. And, when they finally met that criminal, the officer would have to figure out how to live with themselves afterwards. Some of them went back to the job, humbled and a little wiser. Some of them quit. And some of them seemed determined to not learn anything, as though their failure had not been their fault at all.
As Bogo walked forward, the torc intended for the fox in his hoof, he decided he ought to have a talk with Totchli afterwards. Maybe she'd be one of those rare officers who could learn from the mistakes of others. Maybe, just maybe, she'd listen to him if he sat her down and tried explaining his thoughts. He'd understand if she didn't, though. Everything seemed to have worked out for her, and her instincts probably weren't telling her to be wary the way his were.
With each step he took closer, that uneasy feeling seemed to grow stronger and stronger. And yet, at the same time, it was as though there was a voice whispering in his ear not to worry. As long as he followed his orders, everything would work out. "Don't move," Bogo ordered the fox, once he had gotten close enough to touch him.
"No sir," the fox said, and considering his previous bravado he seemed appropriately humbled.
There had been something about his previous words, though. Hearing the fox claim he had been part of a conspiracy involving Lord Cerdo had been particularly ridiculous, but still, there was a part of him... No. Bogo mentally shook the thought aside, trying to banish it. It was bad enough that his focus had a tendency to drift; it would be far worse if his loyalty did too. Not that he wasn't loyal to Cerdo, of course.
That thought seemed almost to itch at Bogo's brain, like a troublesome insect biting a spot he couldn't scratch, and he tried once more to regain his resolve. Everything was almost over. All he had to do was bring the fox and the princess—who was, at least, being no trouble at all—back to Cerdo and his worries would end. Cerdo would activate the alchemy array and that would do it. Bogo couldn't understand why he had even entertained the idea that the fox had created the array; obviously it had been Cerdo's work. But it was as though that memory had slipped beyond his notice until his thoughts had been drawn back to it, and Bogo repressed a sigh. It really was time to retire.
He reached out with both paws, preparing to place the torc around the fox's neck, and then the alchemist suddenly twisted in Totchli's grasp. He threw himself backwards, flopping over the rabbit's head even as she helplessly tumbled with him due to how she was holding his arms, and managed to wrench one arm free. As the fox's fingers grazed the dusty ground, Bogo threw himself forward, trying to be positioned to shield the queen. The more reasonable part of his mind told him that it was quite likely that this wouldn't do anything, but he had to at least try.
Contrary to his expectations, though, there wasn't a giant fireball or a cloud of high-speed needles or any of the other myriad ways an alchemist could attack. There was, instead, only the briefest of flashes of red light, but it wasn't nearly enough of a distraction.
Although the fox had grabbed a dazed-looking Totchli and was running full-tilt for the tunnel's exit, long practice and an agility that most criminals never expected both worked in Bogo's favor. The fox's feint as he tried evading Bogo's grasp was almost clumsily obvious, and Bogo easily snatched him up in one hoof.
It meant, unfortunately, that the alchemist dropped Totchli, who hit the ground in what looked to be a somewhat painful fashion, but Bogo doubted she was seriously hurt. For one brief moment, Bogo thought he might have even acted fast enough to prevent whatever the fox had tried. But then, as he roughly forced the torc around the alchemist's neck despite how the much weaker mammal tried pushing it away, something happened.
With an enormous cracking noise, a thin fissure suddenly spread from where the fox had touched the ground and into the alchemy array that had been behind him. The gritty dust coating the ground streamed into the newly formed crevasse, which had peculiarly metallic-looking sides, which flowed in a nearly mesmerizing fashion. Bogo nearly forgot about the fox, pausing only long enough to bark a single order—"Stop moving"—before staring at what he had done.
The fox was as limp as a rag doll in his grasp as Bogo hauled Totchli back up to her feet, his eyes glued to the spreading damage. The sight was so strange it took him a moment to figure out what had happened, but once he saw it for what it was he couldn't help but be a little impressed. The very ground itself, in a triangular patch that was roughly half a foot wide where the fox had touched it and expanding to nearly eight feet wide where it crossed the alchemy array, had turned to quicksilver. The dust on top of the formerly solid stone hadn't been affected, and it seemed to float on top of the glossy silver-colored metal as it dripped downwards.
The triangular wedge of the tunnel's floor started tilting, and with a painfully loud grinding noise gave way, opening up a hole that led into a tunnel beneath the one they were in. Sluggish dribbles of quicksilver fell to the floor below, barely visible in the dust cloud that had been kicked up by the floor's partial collapse. The tunnel itself, however, seemed quite stable; the floor that had been the ceiling of the tunnel below had been nearly two feet thick, and the missing chunk seemed barely significant compared to what remained. The alchemy array that the wedge-shaped hole had opened across, however, had not escaped unscathed.
There wasn't only a section of it missing; the light it had burned with was entirely gone, leaving only intricate carvings. The chunk of floor that had carried a piece of the array away with it had shattered as it hit the floor of the tunnel below, and through the slowly dissipating haze of dust Bogo could see fragments of the array across dozens of different pieces, none of them much larger than his head and most far smaller.
Bogo's gut tightened as he looked at the damage. No one had been hurt, or had even lost their footing, but the alchemy array had been utterly ruined. "Nicholas!" he said, hauling the fox up by the scruff of his neck to look him dead in the eye, "You will obey my orders. Say it."
It was perhaps a bit superfluous a test to make, since the fox had gone completely limp when Bogo had ordered him to, but it was still gratifying to hear him say, in a voice utterly devoid of insolence, "I will obey your orders."
"Fix the alchemy array," Bogo ordered.
"I can't," the fox replied, "No idea how to."
Bogo scowled, mulling over his options. "We'll have to just take him to Cerdo," the queen said, and Bogo couldn't come up with any other possible path forward.
Still, as he marshaled the group together, the princess seeming exceedingly nervous or perhaps simply shaken up from what she had gone through, Bogo wondered if there was something he was missing.