Tris Muskaron: The World Of Warm Blood

octoberraven

Tris woke up strapped to a table. The room was cold, not enough to keep her asleep but enough that her senses were marred by drowsiness. Even in her stupor she could hear the footsteps of someone approaching her.

"Do you know who it is you've captured?" She said, as clearly as she could manage. A dim part of her understood that it came out more slurred than what was in her head.

Suddenly she felt a soothing warmth and with it her body was more invigorated, immobile as she was. The lights above her were bright but not uncomfortable. She managed to turn her head long enough to see a male approaching, his pale green scales glistening in the lights, wearing a lab coat over an orange jumpsuit. She recognized the insignia on the latter: HOMID.

"Yes, Princess Tris, we are well aware of who we have captured. Your father will pay handsomely for your safe return... or at least, that's what my superiors wish." He put his hand on her head and leaned over to her. "But between you and me, Princess... I hope he doesn't. I would love to see how your noble blood fares against my serums." He grinned to her with a sadistic glee, but Tris would give him no joy in seeing her panic. It may have been many centuries since the Musakron clan took arms, but she had the discipline of a warrior of the Yuan-Ti Empire all the same. And the first thing a Yuan-Ti warrior is taught is to never show fear to the enemy.

The scientist took samples of her blood and checked her vitals before leaving her cell, then used the climate control system to lower the temperature again, putting her back in the blurry dimness.

As she tried to fight the coming mental fog, she kept focused on thoughts of how to escape. She knew all about the kind of horrors HOMID was said to be willing to inflict on their fellow Saurian to further their goals.

Fortunately for and unbeknownst to her, the technicians of this particular base had been lax in their maintenance...

(To be continued)

octoberraven

Saurian society is like our own in more ways than one would expect, however the slight differences between the progress of Saurus Sapiens and H. Sapiens have caused more than a handful of divergences. For example, Saurian society has never had a concept of 'race'; some Saurians find some scale pigments more pleasing to the eye than others but the idea of judging one's worth as an individual due to their scales has never been accepted in Saurian society. There are a myriad of others but the most important to our story is that of Saurian attitude towards magic.

Saurians, a stoic people by nature, have strong mystic traditions. They prize subtle magics most of all, considering evocative magic to be crude and lacking in wide utility. A Saurian mage may use evocations to defend itself if need be, but this is considered a last resort. Fire magic is considered vulgar, a sign of a lack of inventiveness. Ice magic is almost universally shunned. But the most celebrated of magic is that of what they call 'the weaving of fates', or in layman's terms, luck magic. When such magic is woven well enough, it sometimes difficult to tell if any magic was done at all. Whether the Musakron's clan's court wizard was involved in the circumstances of Tris' escape from the clutches of HOMID, only the wizard herself would know for sure.

Some time had passed between the princess' realization of her predicament. How much, Tris was unsure. They kept her room cold whenever she was not being fed or tested. With some persuasion, Tris was able to convince her guard to allow her the dignity of feeding herself, allowing herself to be temporarily unrestrained. It was only one hand, little she could do to overpower the guard even with her training in traditional Yuan-Ti martial arts. But with this, she was able to turn her wrist slightly as her arm was restrapped. This would allow for some slack in the binding. There were no cameras in her cell, Tris was aware of this during one of her moments of warmth, and no cameras facing the door of her cell either. Once she was alone, and before the cold overpowered her, she would carefully slip out of the loose binding, loosen those on her ankles and other wrist, and then slip her hand back in before the chill overtook her senses. The plan was simple, next time she was fed, she would try to fight her way out. She wondered before she slipped into her daze if her meager preparation would be enough to begin her escape.

Eventually the warmth would return to her body and mind, and in her lucidity she quickly assessed the situation. The lights were off, and more importantly, there was no guard either. She escaped her bindings and checked the door to her cell. She knew it was a magnetic lock, and hoped to find it with a fail safe. Fortunately it was, and she blessed her good luck that they didn't think to make a fail secure door instead. She wondered to herself if this base was one of the several legitimate laboratories that HOMID had seized over the years.

Her musing needed to put aside as she came across a guard, who was stepping out of what appeared to be a locker room of some kind. She quickly adopted the traditional Yuan-Ti fighting stance, moving on all limbs to move more quickly and making herself a smaller target. She leapt up from her stance as she got near him, before he could raise his rifle, grabbing his head and slamming it against the nearest wall.

She considered taking his uniform, but realized that it was too large for her. Thinking better of it, but still wanting a change from the surgical gown she was wearing, she moved into the locker room. It took her a while but she found something that fit her, a pair of jeans and a thick jacket. Putting it on she realized these were her clothes, and one of the HOMID agents must have taken them for themselves. Well, at least I am stealing something was mine to begin with, she mused. She took the rifle there too, and took it and the spare magazines from the knocked out agent before moving on.

She crept through the complex, then the power came back on. As did, to her dismay, a camera trained on her. An alarm was raised, she had to make her escape quickly. She found a map and memorized it, making her move. After several turns she found herself facing two more agents. She tried the rifle, but it shocked her and she dropped it out of reflex. She delivered a sweeping kick to one and a leaping blow to the other, moving quickly. The rifle must have been RFID chipped, she reasoned.

More turns, until she found her route blocked off by a maglock door. She had to improvise, find an alternate route, perhaps to the roof. That's when she realized the complex was getting colder. She heard footsteps behind her, dodging the stun fire of males in thermal suits. She scrambled, desperate. This was her only chance.

She found herself in a lab of some kind, her cognitive senses too fuzzy to try to figure out what the purpose of it was. The agents were fast approaching. She had to do something. Through the blurs of her sight, she saw a syringe. If she were warmer, she'd probably worry about what it might be, but that rational side of her was drowned out by her baser instincts.

She plunged the syringe past her scales and pressed the plunger.

The first thing she felt was a surge of warmth. The clarity made her panic for a moment as that rational side snapped awake, but this was soon dissolved as she felt every muscle in her form tightening and firming. Her lack of focus caused her to be hit with a stun bolt, but she barely felt it. It was as if her scales were stronger, more armorlike, more like her primal ancestors.
She grinned as the agents were the ones panicked now. And she struck. With one blow she was able to dispatch the first of them. The second tried to club her with his rifle, but she instead caught his arm, bending it back, hearing the bones break, then she threw him aside. It was done with little effort but he went clear across the lab, hitting the wall.

Tris ran now, without fear, but with worry. For as she tried to find an exit more maglocks stood in her way. Eventually she found herself at a dead end, as the hall behind her and in front of her locked shut. A lab door was open, however, and she went in.
She wasn't sure what she was looking at; a large metal hoop-like structure, it seemed, glowing with some kind of energy. Looking around, she found a datapad with notes. Fifth-dimensional travel theory; portals, in a simple sense. She felt the warmth of the shot she took wearing off (but not the strength she felt, which she considered odd but not unwelcome). Then she heard the voices. The maglocks were being opened.

Tris had only one option.

She jumped into the portal.

An hour later:

Tris watched from the trees the place where she emerged from. No energy was there, and nothing emerged from the spot since. If HOMID was coming after me, she reasoned, they'd have done it by now.

Jumping down from the tree, she found the asphalt ahead of her littered with garbage, a bizarre sight to her as the Yuan-Ti streets were known to be free of such litter. She picked up one of the papers (surprised that it was written in the Yuan-Ti language), which seemed to be talking about the local monarch. She saw his orange, smooth skin and the messy fur on his head with confusion. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at... a male that evolved from apes, probably orangutans from the looks of it.

She looked into the distance, seeing a city, vibrant and bright, much like her home city. She wondered if she could find some answers there.

A sign loomed nearby: WELCOME TO MILLENNIUM CITY!

ealford1985

Welcome indeed