I was harassed into this
Having never been keen on following any of Medik's "grand schemes," Virmir was entirely justified in being hesitant to take up another offer made by the jackal. When he saw something that seemed like a good idea to his... well, inexperienced might have been the word - mind, he sought after it like some grubby CEO determined to grow their own paycheck. And sometimes it really was that sort of idea; numerous times, he had been after long-lost treasure (Virmir wasn't fond of remembering their Atlantis misadventures), and sometimes it had been stupid enough to get one of them killed. Or both. But given that death wasn't exactly a serious subject for a couple of toons, they always awoke later, and Medik seemed to have forgotten his mistakes by then.
Virmir hadn't, and liked to remind him, however pointless it was.
This time, Medik was still focused on treasure, but this time it wasn't money. Or fame. It was something magical, something ancient, and it was certainly something that Medik truly had no idea about, which left Virmir with very little choice as to whether or not he should get involved. As soon as he had received the parchment from some odd-looking bird on his windowsill, Virmir dropped his drawing where it was and packed an extra cape into his cape, just in case. He jumped from the top of his tree-house to the ground, using his charcoal-cape like a parachute, and started to walk indignantly to where Medik had said he was.
It was a rather long, arduous walk, given that he said he was in blasted Flordia. Why the jackal was there, Virmir wasn't sure. There was certainly nothing ancient or magical about that disgusting Mardi Gras. (That was probably where it was held, right? Somewhere southern.) The swamps there gave him the chills, what with gigantic alligators and other nasty, slimy things residing there.
So of course the destination Medik had left on the letter was in a swamp, just outside of a large town. Virmir shuddered at the thought of running across so many idiotic people, and made sure to take the long way around to the swamp.
And once again, a long way it was. The trek down to Florida had felt long already, but now he had to contend with weird creatures that he had never want to know about, as well as dozens of bugs that would not. Leave. Him. Blasted. Alone.
It was all of two minutes before Virmir decided he had had enough, and summoned up enough magic to coat himself in wonderful, cozy fire. The few bugs who had tried to rest on his body were eaten up by the inferno, and ashes were spit back out. Animals that Vir hadn't even noticed quickly retreated away from him, deeper into marshy pools and behind weeping, bent willows.
The fox smiled. Fire was truly a lovely thing.
He then grunted and tripped over himself, tugged down by a root that sent him face-first into a puddle of deep, deep mud. He coughed and gagged, struggling to righten himself back out. Eventually he managed, but now had a lung full of gunk and a face full of who-knows-what-was-in-the-swamp. He sighed and swiped at his face with his cape to clear off as much as he could, but when he looked down into the clearest pool he could find there was still plenty of mud on his muzzle.
The temptation to just incinerate the entire area was very strong in his mind, but calling attention to himself was something he sincerely wished against. Instead he took out his extra cape and pulled it beneath himself, setting it into the muck like a carpet. Disgusting and annoying as the action was, it would keep himself clean.
Recalling the trick he had learned from some Egyptian peddler a while back, he summoned up enough air (frazz, the entire atmosphere here had so much dang humidity in it) to lift his cape up, furrowing and billowing in the wind like a sail. You know, except sideways. He then gripped onto the sides of the cape as hard as he could, and forced the thing forward with another blast of air.
Virmir didn't like "thrills." But the feeling of rushing air that threw him deep into the swamp without getting any of him covered in swamp-muck or eaten up by alligators was a pretty great sensation. He laughed, once, then a whole-hearted laugh.
It was cut off as the cape (and his head) rammed into a very tall and tough tree.
The gray toon fox blacked out instantly, and only awoke much later, at night, with some sort of rodent-like thing sniffing at him. He swatted at it, and sat up tiredly. He pulled the cape out from underneath him and sighed, the only garment he cared for being torn and covered in memoirs from the swamp. He groaned and packed it back up into his other, close-to-untouched cape. At least he had that.
Vir took a look around where he had crashed, and found nothing that could serve as a point of reference. Left, right, forward, behind him was all just swamp. The trees looked too similar. The only animal that he could see was that blasted rat-thing that was dashing away as he spotted it. The emptiness of the area might be signifying something, he realized. Something like the location of the treasure Medik had informed him of.
Taking one last chance, he looked up, and saw something he really wasn't expecting.
The branches directly above him were sprouting out like the petals on a flower. They were wide enough to walk on, and even seemed to descend like a staircase. With only one real option left (considering that he wasn't going to accept wandering the swamp as an option), he followed the branches as they went down and found the one closest to the ground, which still took a fair amount of effort to climb on.
The tree went up for a very long while. The bark just seemed to keep going and going, and Vir was able to see it the entire time, given that it was his only support as he climbed the branches. Looking the other way, off down into the swamp muck beneath him, wasn't pleasant, so he focused on the bark instead.
The flowering branches led up to a point that was much higher above the rest of the forest. It was so high that a light covering of murk and fog was obscuring his sight back down below. He shuddered as he took his last few steps to the top, making sure that he did not misstep. He hadn't been scared of heights, but a deadly fall into a swamp was a deadly fall into a swamp.
At the final branch, Vir found nothing more. The bark seemed to disappear into nothingness. The top of the tree, though, was open, and seemed to go... down. The gray fox looked down into the dark, empty hole and gulped to himself. There wasn't any other option but down.
He steadied himself for the final jump, looked down into the open tree... and leapt down into the dark, unable to help himself as he yelled and cried out. The fall was longer and much darker than he had ever experienced. Thankfully, he never hit the jagged edges of the whole as he went down, deeper and deeper into the earth than even the trunk of the tree had been. He fell and fell, worried about where he was going to land, hoping that he wouldn't hit the solid ground and end up squashed unless Medik was lucky enough to be hanging around, and ideally he was -
With a splash, Virmir collapsed into water, just enough to break his fall and clean his fur. He blinked slowly and curiously, then patted his fur down and smiled confidently. Just as planned, obviously. He took some more time to get the gunk from the swamp cleansed, then stood up and began walking about to explore the area.
The area was, quite clearly, underground and cavernous. Stalactites and stalagmites hung from the ceiling and grew from the ground, though they were... odd. They looked to be made of a material that was not actually stone. The ground and ceiling themselves weren't really stone, either. It looked lighter than it should, like some odd lighting source was illuminating everything in a cyan glow.
Which, it just so happened, there was.
Virmir's eyes scanned the area before he found the source - a giant fountain that stood in the rear of the cavern, clean and clear water pouring down around it. It literally glowed with a magical sort of brilliance, but Virmir couldn't identify the magic. The aesthetics of the fountain itself were ornate and fantastic. Around the sides were runes - again, he couldn't identify them - and at the top was a single stone angel that held an urn in the crook of her arms. The water flowed from the top of it, propelled by... something.
And at the side of the fountain was a certain jackal, bending over the side and sniffing at the water curiously.
"Medik!" the gray called out.
The jackal's ears perked, whirled, and turned with his head to Virmir. "Hey!" He beckoned the fox over, bending further, almost touching the water.
Vir hurried over before the jackal started slurping up water or dumped some sort of junk in it. He tugged back on his scruff and looked him in the eyes. "Is this the thing you were talking about? The treasure? It's just a fancy fountain."
Somehow, Medik's scruff seemed to retract and the jackal escaped from his grip. "It's not just any fountain!" He pulled out a fancy map of some sort of swamp, and at the center: Fountain of Youth.
Virmir blinked, then stared. "THE Fountain of Youth?" Then he blinked again. "What would you even want with it? How does it help at all?"
Medik looked incredulous, like the answer was obvious. "EVERYONE gets old, toon or not! We get older slower, sure, but this? This would make us live forever!"
"Why would I want to live forever?" the fox asked. He peered around the fountain for anything else, found nothing, and settled on trying to study the runes.
The jackal grinned a slightly manipulative grin. "Why, forever is the best! Imagine how many foxes you could draw in forever!" He started counting on his fingers, then skipped a few thousand. "Infinite foxes! FOREVER!"
At that, Virmir looked up and into the water. He thought and stroked his whiskers. "That does make sense. An infinite drawing session. And I wouldn't have to pick up those canes that the older toons get. Or deal with blurring up in senior years. Or losing my sight..."
Medik rubbed his paws together eagerly. "Perfect! Now, you be my lookout and just keep me safe!" And with that he bent over the fountain again and slurped down water.
Vir shrugged, still looking at the runes. Nothing was going to sneak up on them, probably, so he had plenty of time. Now that he thought about it and looked keenly, the runes were somewhat familiar. He had seen them before thanks to people like Toast and weird cults. Something about... reversal of...
"Wait!"
Virmir jumped from where he knelt at the fountain, trying to tug Medik back. Medik, however, was determined, and latched onto the fountain with his claws, struggling to drink more and more fountain water (which couldn't have tasted very good at all). Virmir continued tugging, Medik continued grunting -
But Virmir won the tug-of-war, though it was at a price. The two of them went tumbling back, and there was a FLASH that blinded the both of them. The fox yelled and swiped his cape around to cover his eyes.
Seconds later, he could see again, but nothing seemed too different. Slowly, he sat up. Medik wasn't around - he had probably been flung further backwards. He turned around and stood, searching in the dark; for some reason, the fountain had lost its glow. "Medik! Come out from there!"
The dark was empty. He waited a minute. Still no reply.
Virmir gulped. He felt behind him for his cape, but there wasn't one. Instead, he had on a full covering of cloth... a robe. He blinked and looked down to find a pair of orbs in the way of his sight.
She blushed as she realized what they were and what had happened.
"Well, whatever," she mumbled. "It's no big change." She pulled out her sword and began to stalk forward into the dark.
She was glad that the Shifty figure had given her a truesilver sword a while back. The metal was durable, to a stupid degree, and it shone in any dark area. Lucile continued to cautiously step around in the dark, waiting for Medik to pop out and try to scare her.
But it simply wasn't happening. Lucile groaned and held her head. "Medik, you know I can't leave without you or child services will kill me," she grumbled.
Then again, how would they leave?
If they could go back up through the way they had entered, she had no idea how. If they were stuck down here, at least they had water. But no food. She held her gut and peered down at it, hoping that she had a small layer of fluff in case they were going to be left without food for a while.
"...frazz, frazz, frazz, FRAZZ, FRAZZ!"
Lucile screamed and dropped her sword, both hands and arms rushing to her gut. "You blasted idiot jackal who just can't keep away from incredibly dangerous and ancient things of power and just have to touch and feel them so that -"
She started hyperventilating, rubbing over her distended gut. There was no doubt about it - that wasn't food. There was most certainly something - someone - in there, and she was not pleased. "I could cut you out, you know, you frazzing blasted cursed jackal!" she yelled, grabbing up her sword again. It took considerably more effort, bending over and picking something up. She groaned and stayed her hand, obviously not keen on cutting into her own gut. ...and it was sort of her fault, too. If she hadn't tried to pull Medik away, maybe he would have been the only one affected and she could just leave with her flying cape that had been replaced by a full robe.
"Gods, you're a hopeless little... pup," she sighed. "And I guess you're... mine." She sighed again, louder this time. She held her head in her paws, rubbing at the growing headache she was getting from yelling.
Lucile wasn't alone, at least. And maybe Medik would be more tolerable before he could get up and run around, or run his mouth. Maybe she could do some thinking or drawing or writing without him bothering her.
...maybe he could be born as a fox, and be raised to be productive from the start.
Lucile smiled and rubbed at her belly. "Maybe you're not so bad."
