Mortal Loyalty - a Tangled Fanfic

Chapter 3.- Disaster

Minutes later, Varian turned and noticed that now he was alone, Nigel was gone. The little alchemist sighed heavily; he was tired to put up with his attitude, his accusations. He never hurt the princess not even a little, and even so, he was treated as if he would have made her bleed. Varian pet his raccoon, who gladly accepted the action, purring and stretching. Varian laughed and then, breathed in deeply, he was so close to achieve it, to finish his experiment. An annoying visit couldn't stop him, Nigel wouldn't take away his good humor.

Varian approached to his desk, took the flask with his hands, downed his googles to protect his eyes and took a test tube that he had in other desk. Carefully and with precision, Varian used a dropper and counted the drops he poured in the flask. Two, four, six. He moved away to see the flask and observe the reaction it would have. Instead, Ruddiger was away from him, eating his apple and looking at his human.

The liquid in the flask started to bubble up and its color changed from a purple tone to a fluorescent yellow tone. Varian was surprised, it shouldn't be the reaction, something was going wrong. There was a little explosion. Little but it created smoke than covered all the face of the boy, who started to cough. He waved his arm to dispel the smoke in front of him until it disappeared, coughed a little more and saw the flask with confusion. The smoke didn't have sense and now the liquid was purple again. Nothing made sense. What was that? He didn't understand, it supposed that he did the calculations hundreds of times to be sure that he wouldn't have any problem during the experiment. He sighed heavily again, shook his head and took off his googles.

-I don't understand, Ruddiger – he said while he was scratching his scruff. –It had to work, why it didn't do it? Well... I think this is another failure to add to my list of failures.

He turned to go and write what happened in his report book, he had to take notes of the result he obtained with the experiment, he had to find out what was wrong and correct it. However, at the moment when Varian moved from where he was, his head started to spin making him to feel dizzy, his head hurt like he had a press on both sides of it. He put one of his hands over his eyes and with the other hand he held to a desk. It was weird, suddenly his health decayed notably. Even to breath was painful, like the oxygen would be burning his lungs, his head was spinning, his balance was unstable and, even through his gloves, he could notice that his temperature increased drastically.

-Ruddi... ger... Buddy... - he said trying to stay stand, but the next step was too fragile than he ended falling to the ground heavily.

The little raccoon reacted worried and ran to his human. He pulled his hair and gave little hits with his paws in Varian cheeks, but he was unconscious, he didn't wake up. Ruddiger squeaked trying to be heard for someone out of the lab, but that Wing of the Castle was always alone. Ruddiger brushed his face with Varian's face, and then he tried to go out of there. The door was closed so the raccoon had to climb and went out through the window.

Ruddiger was running as quick as his legs allowed him, squealing repeatedly, but nobody listened him. Suddenly, he saw a known face. Cassandra. Ruddiger climbed for her legs to her shoulders and he surrounded her neck twice, he was desperate begging for her attention.

-Hey, hey! Wait! – she screamed trying to catch him in her hands. When she reached him, she put him in front of her face to see his eyes. –What do you have now, Ruddiger? Usually you're calmer.

The raccoon started to move strongly, trying to escape from her grip. She let him go, then the little animal jumped to her knees while he squeaked with desperation. She didn't understand any of his actions, she didn't know what was happening, but she could decode that he wanted her to follow him. They started to walk, obviously, Ruddiger was so anxious. Cass walked calmly while the little hairy friend came and went, once and twice. Cassandra looked to the front and noticed that Ruddiger was guiding her to Varian's lab. She smiled incredulously.