Chapter 19 – Snowbound Slaves

-.-.-.-.-.

"Hey, are you awake?"

The voice came from far in the distance, and it had a soft echo that made it almost surreal, like it was speaking to Phisto from out of a half-remembered dream. It didn't help that the Docks boy had a blinder of a headache, making his return to consciousness all the more unwelcome.

Blearily, he forced his eyes open despite the film of gunk that sealed his eyelids together. Light streamed painfully through the opened slits, making him cringe and squirm uncomfortably.

"I-Is he getting up…?"

Vaguely, Phisto noticed that there were two people speaking. He was beginning to notice other things, too, like how his back was severely cramped and numb, and how the inside of his mouth tasted nasty. He tried to move some more, and felt his body respond, albeit slowly and groggily. A low, zombie-like moan emitted from between his sticky lips.

"He's waking up. It looks like he's been out for a while."

"Wh-Where are th-they taking us…?"

"I don't know, Attie. Right now, we should just be lucky we're still together and unharmed."

"B-But y-your leg…"

"It'll be fine. The pain's mostly gone away by now."

More light spilled through the newly-reopened slits in Phisto's eyes as he tried once more to wake up fully. This time, he was successful – the light rapidly dimmed and his vision cleared after several experimental blinks. Planting his hands on the floor beneath him, he forced himself into a sitting position and winced when a wave of dizziness swam through his head and worsened the headache.

A squeak and a sharp buzz sounded at the same time.

"Shh, Attie. It's just the human researcher… Histo? What was his name again?"

It was coming back to Phisto little by little. He recognized the voice as belonging to Kumono, the one that… hmm, he couldn't remember that yet. He lifted his head to stare vaguely at the Nerscylla-boy, hoping that a glimpse would jog his memory. It didn't, at least not immediately.

"Phisto," he rasped out, answering Kumono's question.

"Ah, thank you," he smiled gratefully. "I'm glad to see you awake, finally. But it isn't as if you missed much while you were asleep. We've been stuck in here for hours."

Only now did Phisto take the time to absorb his surroundings. To put it simply, he was in a cage. On one side there were bars that rose from the floor to meet with the ceiling about a foot above Phisto's head – that is, when he weakly climbed to his feet. He had his back to one of only two solid walls in the cage. There were the bars in front of him, of course, but more bars on the other side of the confined space. It seemed as though that this was one big cage, divided in two for the convenience of those who were trapped inside.

And indeed, the other half of the cage did have an occupant. She was a middle-aged woman dressed in a smooth material not unlike silk, which glittered iridescent blue in the limited light. A long, feathery shawl was draped over her shoulders, hiding everything above her knees. Her face was porcelain-white, and her hair was done up in two elegant tails that fell down her back. She stood perfectly still, the epitome of calm.

A sudden buzz sounded nearby, and Phisto turned to see Atticus the Seltas-boy self-consciously fluttering his wings. Almond-shaped eyes glistening strangely, the exoskeletal hybrid peered up at the teenaged human without blinking, rubbing his mantis claws together in what seemed to be a nervous habit.

"Where are we?" Phisto asked, somehow getting his still-dry tongue and throat to work.

"Kidnapped," answered Kumono. "That old human, the one they called the Tundra King… he got Attie while everyone was asleep, and me as well when I tried to save him. As for you… well, I don't know. You must have done something he couldn't tolerate."

Shivering, the Docks boy relived the moments leading up to his unconsciousness as they came trickling back to his memory. There had been that awful skirmish in Port Tanzia, with Atticus and Kumono killing a number of the Tundra King's soldiers in cold blood. Then Jaedal cornered him – gods, even the thought of her was enough to spook him – and… nothing. It must have been her that knocked him out.

One detail suddenly stood out from the uncomfortable memories, and Phisto turned to look at Kumono. "Your leg?" he asked, suddenly concerned. "I thought they cut it off…"

In response, Kumono unfolded the spidery limb from his back and waved the stump to show that it was no longer bleeding. His expression wasn't one of worry at all, and actually appeared reassuring if anything. Phisto didn't know why he was the one that needed reassuring when he still had all his limbs, but since Kumono wasn't in bad condition… he supposed it wasn't too important right now. Besides, couldn't arachnids regrow their legs? Or was that crustaceans he was thinking of?

"It's fine, Attie," the hooded hybrid spoke soothingly to his quivering counterpart.

"N-No y-you're not," Atticus replied. It was the first time Phisto had heard him speak – his words came out in a thin and reedy tone, which quavered constantly with repressed fear. "N-None of us a-are. W-We d-don't know what th-they're gonna do to us."

Phisto briefly turned his head to look at their silent neighbor, who hadn't moved at all. "Maybe she knows something we don't."

"Atticus and I tried," Kumono replied, shrugging. "She won't answer. She's either asleep or too absorbed in her own troubles. As we should be."

"On the contrary, I am actually listening very closely to you three," said the voice, making them jump.

When he looked at the mysterious woman again, Phisto leapt back and had to bite off a squeak of alarm. Her body hadn't moved, but her head was facing them all the same, like she had voluntarily twisted her own neck to speak with them and was apparently suffering no ill effects. A queasy feeling rose in Phisto's gut, which only intensified when he saw that her eyes were glowing bright crimson and staring straight through his body and into his soul.

"Are you a hybrid too, miss?" Kumono asked politely. He was more curious than afraid.

She finally turned around properly, and her head rotated back into its proper position as she did so. With her pupil-less, scarlet orbs, she stared at the three of them with intense scrutiny. All of them felt a chill climb up their spines.

"I am a Malfestio," she said. "Or at least, I was fairly sure I was, until I found my voice after many nights of confusion. I found my name as well, almost as if the trees were speaking it – Uzera."

So that explained her creepiness. Bird wyverns in general were not one of Phisto's favorite subjects, and he had heard that the enchanting Malfestio of the prehistoric forests was the worst of the bunch.

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Uzera," Kumono greeted. "I am Kumono, a Nerscylla hybrid, and my charge here is Atticus. That is… Wisto?"

Once more, Phisto corrected him. He got an acknowledging, polite nod as thanks.

Uzera blinked slowly at them before speaking anew. "I have no experience with humans. I was captured soon after I wandered away from my home. Where they are taking us is just as much a mystery to me as it is to you."

"It's not good, wherever it is…" muttered Phisto.

His words reached the three hybrids, and they all turned to stare inquisitively at him. Even Atticus seemed to forget his nerves.

"You know something about these humans?" inquired Kumono.

"Only a little," he replied, somewhat sheepishly.

"A little is better than nothing at all," observed Uzera. "Why not tell us this 'little'?"

Hesitantly, Phisto divulged what he knew. "The leader of the men who captured us is called the Tundra King. He's the ruler of a small city to the north of Tanzia, and he's not… well, not all that pleasant. Back during the war, his hunters would kill monsters and sell off their parts, like scales and claws, to other cities. The Tundra King made a lot of money back then, but since the war is over, I guess he's had to rely on other things to keep his business going."

"Things like kidnapping?" Kumono asked, confused.

"Maybe," Phisto mused aloud. "He said something – it's coming back to me now – about you hybrids being valuable. But it's almost as if he knew about your kind for a while, longer than the Guild-Master."

No-one had anything to say to that. The hybrids were just as bewildered as he was, Kumono in particular – Duruhos sent out scouts constantly to every corner of the Great Continent in search of new hybrids, hoping to get hold of them before the humans discovered them. Had he been unsuccessful in one, disastrous case?

The next time a voice split the foreboding atmosphere around the dark cage, it didn't belong to any one of them.

"Very good, cute boy," she cooed, melting out of the shadows to lean against the bars. "Maybe it was for the best that you were banished, darling. You know a lot more than my father would be comfortable with."

Jaedal. Run. Hide.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere Phisto could go, confined as he was, to escape the terrifying girl's predatory gaze.

"On the other hand, I happen to like clever people," his captor continued. "Aww, you look so pale. Afraid the scary princess is gonna eat you up?"

Her naturally lovely voice took on a taunting tone as she poked fun at Phisto's paling complexion. It didn't last long, however – soon she was back to the low, flirtatious one she had used to such great effect on him when they last met.

"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," she elaborated, smiling a dangerous smile. "After all, you are quite a… tasty-looking one."

Oh mother of Fatalis, she was actually checking him out. With the color in his cheeks making itself scarce, Phisto silently begged, Kill me now kill me now kill me now kill me now…

For now, Jaedal's attention was on the sole human of the group, allowing the hybrids the luxury of staying back and watching their exchange from the sidelines. Kumono stood protectively in front of a shivering Atticus, while Uzera merely stared.

"Speechless, I see," Jaedal went back to teasing. She adopted a more suggestive pose against the cage bars, her hip jutting to the side and her finger pulling gently at the neckline of her dress. "I tend to have that effect on others. Either you're scared, or I have you mesmerized. Mind telling me which one it is, darling?" She drew out the term of endearment until the sound was almost sickening.

"S-Scared," Phisto managed to squeak. "M-Mostly."

It wasn't a lie. Jaedal utterly terrified him, but she was quite enchanting.

She giggled. "Oh, cute boy, don't be. There's no need for me to harm you. I want you nice and safe in that cell until our boat reaches the city. You've been to the Tundra, right? Maybe I'll let you out so we can build a snowman together."

Her laughter grew from a refined giggle to a full-blown cackle. Underneath the gales, Atticus' whimpers of fear were heard as he tried even harder to conceal himself behind his caretaker.

When Jaedal settled down, still grinning at her own cruel joke, Phisto managed to ask a simple question. "Why?"

"You haven't already figured it out?" the princess smirked. "I might have to take back what I said about you being clever. Weren't you just saying something about your friends" – she gestured to the hybrids – "being valuable to us?"

He nodded, but his look of terror was morphing into one of confusion.

"Let me put it to you this way," Jaedal purred. "We can't trade monster parts anymore, so we're settling for the next best thing."

Dark crimson orbs, glittering with the light of sadism, slid slyly in the direction of Kumono and Atticus.

"You're going to kill them," breathed Phisto.

"Not yet we're not," she corrected him. "Because, you know, they'll be far more… entertaining alive. And so will you, cute boy."

A seductive wink accompanied the nickname, leaving Phisto with a disturbing implication of just how entertaining she'd find him.

Keep calm, he willed himself. Just get a grip, Docks.

"Now why don't you be good little prisoners and get some sleep?" Jaedal suggested, backing away from Phisto to address the rest of the group. "We'll be there in a few hours, and my father might want to put you to work immediately. It all depends on what the crowd's like today."

She slunk out of sight, pausing just long enough to direct another wink toward Phisto before she left. The Docks boy slumped against the back wall, relieved that she was gone.

"So they're going to let us live for now," remarked Uzera, cutting through the silence.

"I d-don't t-trust her," Atticus moaned, burying his face in Kumono's cloak. "W-We're gonna d-die."

His caretaker frowned. "But what would be the point of taking us alive if they're going to kill us anyway? I think the girl was telling the truth."

Phisto didn't want to place his trust in that evil temptress. He was familiar enough with her to know her ways. Jaedal was too crafty and fond of playing mind games with her prisoners to tell them the truth. She was lying to give them false hope. She was toying with them. Or at least that's what Phisto wanted to believe – but Kumono was making an awful lot of sense.

"I will be taking this opportunity to rest," Uzera announced. Her shawl rustled as she made her way to the back of her cell, eyes glowing in the darkness. "The girl was not lying about one thing – there will be no rest when we arrive at our destination."

She snapped her eyelids closed and said no more.

A sense of idle curiosity spurring him on, Phisto walked up to the bars that trapped them and peered outside. Several feet away was another cage of similar size to his own, but it was empty. When he concentrated, he realized he could hear the sound of the ocean coming from somewhere nearby, confirming that they were indeed on a boat – though as to where they were bound, he had no clue. But he had his suspicions.

Looking up, Phisto saw a small strip of blue between the roof of the cage and the roof of the empty one opposite him. He guessed that it was the middle of the day, or close to it. Patches of white indicated the presence of clouds, while a solitary wyvern soared above them, a distinctive dark spot amidst the yonder.

"What wyverns are found this far north?" Phisto wondered aloud, thinking back to his studies as a researcher. "We're almost certainly heading for the Tundra, after all. Um… Barioths, but that doesn't look much like one. Gigginoxes? No, that's not it either…"

His musings were interrupted by the presence of another. He turned to see Kumono beside him, eyes on the sky as well.

"Just seeing for myself what you were looking at," the former temnoceran explained himself with a smile. "Hmm… funny, I could swear that's a Rathian. They're not too fond of the cold, though, which I assume is where we're going. Somewhere cold."

Reasonably, Phisto replied, "He is the Tundra King." With another hard look at the wyvern many feet above, he added, "Huh, that is a Rathian. What would it be doing here?"

"She's even heading in the same direction as us," Kumono offered.

A shake of the head was all Phisto could muster. He spent the next few minutes unmoving, his neck craned as he watched the flying wyvern soar. His thoughts wandered some, but always came back to the question of why a Rathian would voluntarily travel in a direction that led it farther and farther away from a habitat that would be more suitable.

Eventually, he went to the back of the cell, deciding not to wonder about such trivial things. Raths were intelligent – whatever that one was doing, it could take care of itself. His concern was better put to use worrying about himself, stuck in this dire situation.

Trapped in a cage, being taken to the Tundra King's domain, and with the constant fear of being visited by Jaedal… Phisto shivered, as he could tell that this was only the beginning. Somewhere nearby, he could hear the ever-fearful Atticus shifting anxiously, and his heart went out to the Seltas-boy.

We need to stay strong, he thought. Otherwise, there's no chance of surviving what our captors have in store for us at our journey's end.

-.-.-.-.-.

Back in Tanzia, the mood was toeing a weirdly-positioned line between grim and hysterical.

In an uncharacteristic show of complete panic, Caela had frantically woken everyone up and told them that Phisto, Kumono, and Atticus had been taken away. She rallied them as soon as they were awake – which didn't take long, considering the circumstances – and together they ran to the lighthouse to inform Duruhos and the Tanzian Guild-Master. There was no beating around the bush when they delivered the message. The three had been captured by none other than their very own ally, the Tundra King.

And none of them knew where Gulo the Jhen Mohran-boy had gone, either, further adding to the tension. Caela hadn't seen him among those captured. But Gulo could take care of himself, since he was an elder dragon. For now, their first priority were those that were confirmed to be in evil clutches.

To absolutely no-one's surprise, Cindy was furious at this most recent development.

"MYAAAAAGRRR!" she roared, slamming a hand down on the table. "'Here's what we're going to do'?! I'll tell you what we're going to do! We're chasing after them and burning every last one to ashes."

The one at which her rage was directed, the Mezeporta Guild-Master, was too scared to open his mouth in protest. Upon learning that two hybrids and one of his researchers had been kidnapped by the Tundra King, he had tried to come up with a plan of rescue on the spot, but Cindy was far too mad to listen to him.

"If we go in there with fire blazing, there's every chance that the very people we're trying to save will end up dead as well," Ray pointed out.

Cindy let out a long, frustrated growl, scraping her tailblade on the floor with such vigor that it was actually glowing with heat. "Then what?" she spat. "We knock on their door and ask nicely?"

Taking a large swig of his ale, the Tanzian Guild-Master wiped his mouth on his sleeve and told her, "Nay, matey, that ain't such a good plan either. I be a longtime acquaintance o' the Tundra King, ye know. I know his shifty ways – which fills me with more shame than I be carin' to admit, fer the record, now that we be in this situation."

With a huff, Cindy turned away and muttered something about wrinkled old Wyverians that didn't know sarcasm when they heard it.

"We need a plan," decided Zald. "I don't know what he wants with Phisto, but that's our colleague out there."

When Dozer opened his mouth to speak his mind, a random sideways glance showed him that Duruhos was gazing intensely at the floor, not giving any indication that he was even following the debate.

"Mr. Duruhos?" the researcher asked, tentatively.

The old Rust Duramboros-man spoke after a few moments. "If he took Kumono and Atticus, then the rest of my people might be in danger."

The others contemplated that, exchanging a few short murmurs of agreement amongst themselves.

"Aye to that," said the Tanzian Guild-Master. "'Specially since he knows where ye're hidin' yer crew. Ye said ye'd eked out a livin' in Loc Lac or somethin'?"

"We did say that," Duruhos despaired.

Hearing his leader's dejection, Ray placed a massive hand on his shoulder to show support. The silent giant wasn't too experienced in giving comfort, but this was his way of telling Duruhos that none of this was his fault.

"A message must be sent," growled Cindy. "Right away. If the Tundra King thinks he can gain something by kidnapping Atticus and Kumono, then he's likely to kidnap other hybrids too."

"There's a safe place…" murmured Duruhos. "I always planned for possible emergencies that would require an evacuation. We would use the sandskiffs to cross the Great Desert and into the Nameless region, then travel through the Everwood to reach the base of Heaven's Mount. It's an isolated place that would provide a temporary haven for us if we were ever discovered."

Zald has a look of wonderment on her face. "The Everwood, huh? That place hasn't been completely mapped out yet. Researchers haven't made much progress, last I checked."

The sound of a throat being cleared led everyone to stare expectantly at the Mezeportan Guild-Master. They respected his wisdom enough to immediately stop talking and listen to what he had to say.

"I sent my Halk out with a message for Dundorma just before we left Mezeporta," the elderly Wyverian rasped. "He should be back sometime today. When he arrives, we can send word to Loc Lac."

"Should we travel to Cathar once that's done?" asked Dozer. "I don't know about you, but it'd make me feel better if I saw Duruhos reunite with the rest of his folk."

Caela nodded along with him. "We could see and hear for ourselves what the Tundra King may be up to, if he indeed succeeds in capturing more hybrids."

Eyes glistening with tears, Duruhos regarded them with delighted surprise. "You would go out of your way for us?" he asked, touched.

Behind him, Cindy and Ray exchanged a look of intrigue. They had both thought they'd have to deal with this problem mostly on their own, since if it weren't for the one named Phisto, this wouldn't have concerned the humans and Wyverians at all. Such generosity wasn't something they expected.

The Mezeportan Guild-Master wasn't able to reply, as at that moment, there was a fluttering of leathery wings at the open window. Right on cue, Algor shouldered his way through the tight opening and landed with a single flap on the Guild-Master's chair. A small scroll dropped from Algor's beak right into his waiting lap.

"Ah, right on time," he coughed. "His Immenseness is always prompt when it comes to his return messages…"

Algor waited for a word of thanks, and when his master immediately buried his nose in the scroll, the Halk let out a huff. Typical.

But the Guild-Master didn't hear. All of a sudden, his blood chilled in his veins as he read the single, ominous phrase written on the length of parchment.

It's back.

For the longest time, he didn't react. Caela and his researchers noticed his lack of a response, and immediately assumed the worst. In turn, Duruhos and his Elites noticed the apprehensive glances they exchanged, and knew that whatever the message said, it was nothing good.

The Guild-Master stood up and ordered, "We're leaving for Cathar this instant. Something bad has come up in Dundorma. I'll explain on the way, but there's no time in the present. Now, we must ready an airship and take flight for the Nameless."

He turned to Duruhos, who, like the rest of those who stood in the room, was bewildered at his sudden decision. "Mr. Duruhos," he added, "if you want to send a message to your people in the ruined city, you must do it now. There's no time to waste."

It took a long time, but finally, the old hybrid gathered his wits and nodded obediently.

-.-.-.-.-.

Mysteries abound as far as the Tundra King goes. He's taking hybrids to his domain, but why? How has he learned of their existence – pure chance, or is there something more sinister going on?

New character introduced as well – Uzera the Malfestio, one of the best monsters in existence. I love fighting Malfestio in MH Gen, and it has such a wonderful design.

In the next chapter, while the two Guild-Masters and Duruhos plan an emergency trip to Cathar, we're FINALLY going back to seeing Sanguis. Yes, I know. Your patience is now being rewarded.

Reviews, please!