#there's something really funny about my first rise fic being about draxum wanting a drink after his lab blows up lol

[bambiraptorx]

Since today's the anniversary of Minor Interference, I thought it would be fun to post the prologue that I wrote for it. It's not actually super connected to the fic itself, which is why I ended up cutting it, but it's still the first thing I wrote for Rise. So it's kinda fun.

content warning: alcohol mention

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Draxum needs a drink.  

Preferably something strong enough to make him forget the bruises all over his body, the raging headache– although that should probably discourage him from drinking– and the distinct lack of a laboratory around him.

He takes a look around, thoroughly exhausted from digging himself out of the wreckage of what used to be his ceiling.  Yep, the lab is still in ruins.  The walls are partially caved in around him, his equipment destroyed, the cave roof visible above him since his actual roof has collapsed.  Another decade’s worth of work destroyed in a matter of minutes, this time by five completely untrained fighters.  

Draxum sits in the devastation.  

He looks at his hands, covered in scratches and nails blunted from scraping at the stone that had pinned him to the ground.  He wonders if whiskey would be strong enough.  It's been a few decades since he's had alcohol.

He squints in the darkness.  Where are his gargoyles?  Also, where are his mosquitoes?  There were thousands of them, surely they can't all have been destroyed.  There has to be something left this time—he can't be so unlucky as to have lost everything again.  A second time is too much.

There's a flapping sound in the darkness.  He can't tell exactly where it's coming from, his ears are ringing too much.  He doesn't remember when they started ringing.

Whump!

...Something just hit him in the face.  His headache grows exponentially in a matter of seconds, now feeling like one of his seeds is growing in his skull and trying its best to break out.  The headache had just begun to recede too.  He groans, leaning forward and putting his head in his scraped-up hands, suddenly desperate to relieve the pressure behind his eyes.

"Wha- boss?  Boss!  Huginn, he's over here!"

"Quiet," Draxum hisses, more in response to the pain the noise causes than as an actual order.  Muninn appears to understand more than Draxum says, immediately going silent and settling on Draxum's shoulder.  The uneven weight grounds him somewhat.  He takes a breath, inhaling dust and the acrid scent of mutagen.  His head rings, a spell of dizziness washing over him.  He may not be entirely lucid at the moment.  That would explain a lot.

"Boss, finally!" Huginn speaks somewhere between a shout and a shriek, once again aggravating Draxum's headache.  He winces and closes his eyes, as if trying retroactively to shut out the noise.

"Shush, man! He's concussed!" whispers Muninn.  Draxum hadn't considered that possibility, but it would also explain a lot.  He probably can't get that whiskey then.  Alcohol is bad for concussions.  Not only is his lab destroyed, himself injured, and his life’s work once again completely demolished, but he can't even down a beer to deal with it.  Embarrassingly, moisture gathers in his eyes.

It's fine, really.  He's never even liked alcoholic drinks.  He'd just been looking forward to that drink.

It was the only thing he'd had left to look forward to.

Huginn settles down on Draxum's unoccupied shoulder, curling up into a ball and awkwardly pressing his head against the Baron's neck.  It's meant to be comforting, Draxum realizes.  After a moment, Muninn does the same on the other side.

The three of them sit for a while like that.

After a few minutes, Muninn stretches.  "It's too bad the turtles got away," he remarks.

Draxum starts.  The turtles.  How could he have forgotten about them?  He moves his hands to his sides, bracing himself to stand.

"Uh, boss, are you sure that's a good idea—"

Draxum gets to his feet, wobbling slightly.  Pain shoots up his left ankle.  Apparently having a ceiling fall on him has caused more than one injury.  Unimportant.  If the turtles have not only survived, but escaped, perhaps his mosquitoes did as well.

He limps towards his control panel, the gargoyles lifting off his shoulders and hovering after his first three steps.  Silently, he hopes for a force greater than himself and prays that it would allow his panel to be intact.  Its screen is cracked.  He presses the power button, and it turns on.  Small mercies.

He opens the program that visualizes the tracking spell he placed on the mosquitoes, and stares.  There, the rounded shape filled with blues and purples, shows a topographical map of the hidden city.  The miniscule red dots representing his mosquitoes are spread out over an area much larger than that, well past the walls of the city caverns.  That's only possible if the insects are on the surface.

He snorts in disbelief.  The snort gives way to a full-blown laugh, which quickly cuts itself off as Draxum discovers his bruised ribs.  He wheezes painfully, gazing with wonder at the dots on his screen.

"It worked.  It actually worked."

His people are closer to freedom now than they have been in thousands of years.  His decades of work haven't been wasted after all.  His plan might just succeed.

He collapses to the floor as his ankle suddenly gives out underneath him.  The goyles swarm around him in concern.  Draxum sighs.

"I should probably get to a hospital."