Biological

calico cat
black cat
mainecoon
orange tabby
scottish fold
black wooly tail
black wooly coat
glowing purple clawtips
barbarian's claws
ebpny filigree boots
tarnished steel boots
tarnished steel gauntlets
black renaissance shirt
black breeches

---

Won't you be my friend? Please let me out, I want to play. Pretty please, let me play?

The canvas showed a village nestled beside a sparkling lake. It was a fine summer day, and one could almost see the heatwaves shimmering in the image or...no. The canvas itself was shimmering....

Figures appeared in the picture, moving rapidly towards the foreground. And then they popped out into three-dimensional space: a brightly-colored Pearlcatcher, his tail still dripping paint, and a black-and-white Fae with a bowtie. The Pearlcatcher was sedate, the Fae more animated — literally, in fact. He was chattering at hyperactive speeds, his body contorting into unnatural shapes as he excitedly pantomimed his ideas.

With the constant noise, it took Amusei a while to notice the other Fae. This one was a bit more colorful, with green flashes on his wings and purple liquid dribbling from his mouth. The liquid was quite viscous and he was using it to draw on one of the painter’s blank canvases, but not with brushes....Instead, the light around him shimmered and bent, and multiple copies of his forepaws appeared, scooping up the purple liquid, splashing it onto the canvas. He was chittering to himself, something that sounded almost like a song.

There was a loud “A-oooga!” as Bendy’s eyes bulged from his head. Amusei was less startled. “Biological! Don’t—” Before he could finish, the Fae sprang up, squawking in surprise, and fluttered away. He left a trail of purple droplets behind him, and Amusei sighed at the mess.

“That was Biological, Bendy, another resident of the lair. He’s friendly, I assure you — just a bit excitable at times.”

“Pretty colorful, hey, chief?” Bendy chirped. He slid over to a purple droplet and produced a rubber eraser. It made a loud squeaking noise as he rubbed the mess away.

“Yes. Probably a good thing I don’t keep my mirror in here; otherwise we’d have a bigger mess to clean up.”

“He’s probably not as interesting as little ol’ me, but I bet he can hold his own. So what’s his story, chief?”

Amusei’s brow furrowed. “Hmm. Well, as Garret explained it...”

~ ~ ~
Part of the Tangled Wood was a swamp, with channels carving lazily through the damp land. There was a disturbance in one of them now, near the lair. With a gurgle, a dragon broke the murky surface. A Mirror. He hauled himself laboriously out of the water. It was difficult not only because of the heavy sack he was lugging along — he twitched an overlong tail out of the water and half-slithered, half-dragged himself across the dirt. A genetic mutation had resulted in him being born without back legs. He was a powerful swimmer, but was ungainly upon the land.

Garret was the clan leader — and a master thief besides. Where others would have seen his mutations as disabilities, he had turned them into assets, using his gills and tail to swim speedily, his lithe shape to wriggle into narrow, confined passages. He was able to infiltrate various places and steal the riches hidden inside. On this occasion, he had stolen...

“Et voila! A mirror!” the Mirror declared. The clan was not really impressed; there were some noncommittal murmurs, but that was all.

“It looks very nice,” said Vika, one of the clan’s enchanters. “What would we do with it, though?”

Garret’s smile grew unpleasantly wide. “It is was under heavy guard in a state-of-the-art facility. I wager it has amazing properties nobody knows of yet.”

“Nobody including you?”

Garret was already shoving the mirror into Vika’s arms. She staggered a bit under the weight. “I’m sure that with your great expertise in enchanted artifacts, you will get much use out of this object, my dear,” he said, bowing mockingly.

Vika scowled. Garret could never resist a heist; the fact that the mirror had been heavily guarded had probably been what’d drawn him in, never mind that he didn’t know what it actually did.

Well, they would find out. Vika, too, was unable to resist a challenge, and so were the clan’s other magic-users. Together with Earil the chronomancer, she examined the frame. “Made of depleted sacridite....From an abandoned lair, perhaps? But this material is very difficult to work with....”

“Turn it over,” Earil suggested. “I want to see the front. Shall we break it? Things often reveal their true natures once they are broken.”

“Won’t that incur seven years’ bad luck?”

“Not if I reverse the damage,” the chronomancer replied. He flexed his claws.

The front of the mirror was made of polished obsidian — black glass. Vika explained, “A panel this large is difficult to create, except magically. Curiouser and curiouser...”

And then she and Earil blinked. There had been motion, a flicker of green — from inside the glass? They looked back over their shoulders, but there was only a smooth gray wall.

“Earil, there’s something inside the mirror.”

“I know, I saw it too. Let’s break it open. Ready when you are, Vika.” The air around the chronomancer began to shimmer. If whatever happened next was damaging, he could stop the flow of time, quickly reverse the damage. Not too much, just by a few minutes. But often a few minutes was all it took.

Vika took a mallet, smashed the glass. It turned white as cracks radiated across the surface — but it didn’t fall to pieces. It rippled like the surface of a lake, and then something burst through.

A Fae — dark of hide, but with a violet belly and flashes of green on his wings. He looked around with wild green eyes.

“It’s another dragon!”

“Vika, I don’t trust this. Why was he in — AAAAAAAGH!” Earil bellowed in shock — the Fae had whirled around, and flung purple fluid into his eyes. He stumbled back, howling for aid, and Vika abandoned the mirror and rushed to him.

“My eyes! It...Oh, good heavens, it’s so icky!”

Vika grabbed a waterskin and dumped the contents over Earil’s face. He blinked rapidly and shook his head as the purple goop poured off his face. He still seemed shocked, but was otherwise all right.

“That was...It was disgusting, but I’m all right. It was more a nuisance than anything, really.”

“The Fae’s gone. He darted off when I went to help you. Can you reverse...?”

Earil shook his head. “I lost my concentration when he hit my face.” As one is wont to do. “We don’t know that thing’s nature. He wasn’t entirely a dragon, I’m sure of it. We shall have to get him back ourselves.”

“Of course we do,” Vika sighed. “But where shall we start?”

~ ~ ~
It took them a few days. There were many places in the lair in which a small dragon could hide, and Vika and Earil crept along the twisting passages, hunting for their quarry. They started to see signs of the little creature’s presence, mostly drops of purple liquid. The clan researchers soon determined that this was perfectly harmless. In Earil’s opinion, however, that didn’t make it any less disgusting.

Then the messes started to escalate. One day, they heard the crash of shattering glass. The two of them raced across the lair, only to be greeted by an empty room. A mirror fastened to a wall had been broken, and shards of glass tinkled as they fell to the floor. There were no traces of who — or what — could’ve smashed it, though Vika and Earil could guess.

“I’m wondering why he broke the mirror, though. Do you think he’s trying to go back inside?”

“Could be. We don’t know how long he was in there, let alone why. The world might be too much for him.” There were other possibilities Vika was considering, but she didn’t think it was a good time to mention them.

They also found shreds of pure white fabric. Vika rubbed them between her claws for a moment, trying to place where she’d seen them. “Mage’s robes? No, there’s no border...Laboratory coats?” Probably pilfered from the clan’s apparel stores.

“Looks like the bird has flown the coop,” Earil muttered. Outside, on the hall floor, were more shards of glass. Not a mirror this time, though: the little scamp had broken a window. More shreds of cloth hung on the jagged frame.

The chronomancer snorted irritably. “We shall have to expand our search to include the clan grounds as well.”

“Search for what?” The voice came from behind them. The magic-users traded looks and, resigned, they turned around.

~ ~ ~
Vika and Earil had guessed right. The creature had been leaving those messes behind: the drops of purple liquid, the shattered mirrors, the shredded lab coats...

The black mirror had been his home for a long time — too long. It was his den, and inside, it was a world all on its own. He had been able to enter and exit it as he’d pleased, but a spell had gone wrong, and its backlash had warped the mirror. Like a tunneler encountering a cave-in, he’d been unable to escape. He could see the light from without, but had been unable to dislodge the obstacle without help from the other side.

He would return to his home again — but when he did, it would be under his own terms. No more getting trapped, no more boredom and experiments to endure. He still remembered the first dragons who had found his mirror. They had seen him inside, known that he was struggling to get out, but they hadn’t helped him. They had instead brought the mirror to a facility to study it, wishing to learn more about the creature trapped within. They had called him a...what were the words again? “Biological” something.

And so that had become his name: Biological. He’d grown to dislike it, but not as much as he despised those white-coated researchers and their cold, uncaring claws. They’d held other mirrors up in front of his glass to study him, watch his reactions. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” they often chanted, chuckling to themselves.

Here and now, Biological’s eyes flashed. “Mirror, mirror,” he whispered to himself, unheard in the darkness. It was nighttime, and he was out hunting. He was hungry....In the laboratory, he’d eaten from time to time. Things had been thrown into the mirror to him: dead things, living things....None of them had ever come back out again. He’d devoured them all.

A Pronghorn Stomper appeared, striding through the trees. It didn’t notice Biological, didn’t even feel the Fae’s tiny jaws clamp onto its neck. But the next minute—

The Fae refracted: a hundred snapping mouths appeared in the darkness. Suddenly the monster found itself swarmed under, beset by multiple tearing jaws.

The minutes ticked past as it was devoured piecemeal by a hundred tiny mouths.

Occupied as he was, Biological didn’t sense that he was being watched. He refracted again, multiple limbs appearing, churning like little sawmills as they began ripping the beast apart.

~ ~ ~
“I asked around. I knew you would be able to handle any magical mishaps that arose, but more intel never hurt anyone,” Garret explained placidly. As for Earil and Vika, they had rather complicated expressions on their faces. They’d known Garret had been absent for the past few days, but it would’ve been nice of him to let them know why he’d gone. But then again, Garret wasn’t known for niceness.

“He’s harmless unless provoked. Quite a big appetite, but he’ll eat anything, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Apparently he lives inside the mirror and can normally come and go through the glass. There’s something about him that adversely affects magic — someone was trying out a new spell, and it rebounded, sealed him into the mirror. He couldn’t escape without outside help....If we give him time, he’ll go back inside of his own accord. He might come out again from time to time, though.”

“Is he...dangerous?”

“Everything’s dangerous,” Garret said, rolling his four eyes. “If you mean that he might bear animosity towards you, I rather doubt it. You let him out, correct? He’s probably grateful for that. You might’ve made yourselves a new friend, so the situation’s not completely horrendous.”

The magic-users weren’t much relieved. Vika asked sharply, “Where did you get this information?”

“Ah. About that. I went back to the facility I’d stolen him from and then poked around a bit.” Garret’s brow furrowed. “In point of fact, they might have been a bit more vigilant that time....”

They felt a shift in the air: spells warning them of intruders. Distant shapes appeared in the darkness, and they heard a strangled cry of “My familiar!”

“Some of the guards followed you back?”

Garret laughed, a mirthless, throaty chuckle. He settled back, completely unconcerned, to observe what would transpire next.

~ ~ ~
Biological’s hunger was sated, his wrath less so. He looked up from his meal, saw armed dragons bearing down on the lair. They wore uniforms he recognized from his time in the facility. The sight of those pristine white coats sent flashes of hatred rippling through his body, and he began to drool again, purple liquid splashing thickly from his jaws.

They didn’t notice him; he was so small, invisible next to the hulking monster turned prey. But they saw him, or parts of him, in the next instant: One moment there were a thousand eyes gleaming in the night, and the next there were mouths opening beneath them, millions of sparkling teeth.

“Sear!” one guard bellowed, flexing her claws. With relief, her comrades felt the air heat up — and then relief crashed back into terror as the heat disappeared. Instead, a blinding flash lit up the swamp — light so blinding, it literally took their breaths away. In the sudden illumination, they saw those myriad smiling jaws, tried frantically to raise defensive spells. They could not. Their magic had been reflected against them, unpredictably warped, and it had sealed their voices.

And then the teeth cut, slicing and dicing. The claws appeared next, plunging into the gaps in their armor, puncturing the flesh that lay beneath. The light soon faded, but the debacle had just begun.

By the time it was over, Garret and the others had gone back into the lair. They needed to discuss what they would do about their new resident. It looked like he’d be a handful, but he was useful; he could stay. The last of the light spell faded at last, leaving only Biological’s smile shining in the air.

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users


[*]Imprisoned An accident, mere accident
[*]Do not trust it WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN
[*]F̴̀ ̵̧R̢̨ ̀͟͞Į͡ ̨͘͠E͟ ̨̨͡N͜҉ D̛
[*]Harmless I promise, I promise-

(Art & Small Lore Blurb By: Rhea)




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