"So. What do you think?"
Kyro crouched low, knees hovering an inch above the disturbed earth without actually touching it. First and foremost rule of Divination: look, don't taint.
"Judging by the prints on this patch of soil between the lawn and the hedge, and the mess of broken branches under the hedge there," he noted, pointing, "I'd wager the creature was sheltering in the garden before making a run for it the moment the security wards went down."
"Right. What else?" Othic, bald head gleaming faintly under the midday sun, didn't bother rising from his armchair to verify any of it. Such was the privilege of rank.
"Left foot's sinking deeper than the right," Kyro added, crouching lower. He moved a half-step forward, eyes narrowing at the next print where the soil had given unevenly beneath the weight. "Same stride length, though."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it was probably injured before it even escaped."
Having gleaned all he could from the scene using non-sorcerous means, Kyro straightened and scanned the hedge-lined garden behind them. Spacious, pristine, manicured, it exuded the kind of quiet affluence only a medallion could buy. "Also means wherever it ran off to, it couldn't have gone far."
Othic grunted—his version of approval—before rumbling, "Client says the furry thing's been limping ever since a freak training accident. Luckily, she had the good sense to seek us out as soon as she realised it had bolted. Makes our job considerably easier."
At that, the tall, broad-shouldered man, garbed in a heavy brown canvas trench coat with the collar turned up, finally rose to his full height of 1.9 metres with a groan that seemed disproportionate to the effort involved. A long, neglected beard would have suited him; instead, he kept his jaw clean-shaven, which only drew more attention to the heavy scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. "A relic from a bygone time," he'd once claimed.
"Divination Art: Vestige," Othic intoned.
Kyro watched intently as the cerulean blue of Othic's eyes took on a glassy sheen. After a moment of glancing around, the senior Ascendant turned on his heel and walked off into the cobbled lane without hesitation.
Kyro promptly fell into step after him.
Divination Art: Vestige, an Ascension Art that surfaces past impressions of a location for the user. It was one of the more versatile tools in Othic's arsenal, and one of his most enviable.
Very soon, I'll be able to do that too, Kyro thought, watching the older man's back.
Two hundred metres later, the trail spilled into a narrow side street between two looming, ivy-draped estates, and that was when Kyro heard it. A high, furious chittering, somewhere close, somewhere panicked.
"There!" Othic shouted, just as a blur of patchy red fur shot across the cobblestones—six-legged, the size of a large dog, with a tail that forked into two whip-thin appendages currently lashing the air in pure agitation.
Kyro had seen the job listing that morning. Lost: one domesticated Iron-grade hexafox. Answers to "Bubbles." Reward offered.
Bubbles did not look like she answered to anything. Why anyone would willingly keep a mutant creature—flesh-eating monstrosity or not—was beyond him.
"Catch it!" Othic bellowed from his position.
No shit! Kyro yelled back inwardly, lunging sideways as the creature barrelled past him at a speed that seemed thoroughly unfair given its limp.
"It's getting away!"
Not on my watch. Kyro picked himself up and sprinted after it.
Being Bronze-grade meant he was almost twice as fast as before. Bubbles had the edge on him thanks to her additional appendages, but he wouldn't necessarily lose to the lower-grade hexafox in a flat foot race. In fact, her injury meant he was gaining.
That was, at least, until the creature juked left, scrabbled up a drainpipe with horrifying speed for an "injured" animal, and launched itself over a garden wall.
"Left! It's going left!"
"I can SEE that, Othic!"
"Then why are you going right?!"
Cursing, Kyro skidded, corrected, and threw himself sideways through a gap in the brush just in time to see Bubbles disappear into a narrow alley between two garden sheds.
Perfect. A dead end. For her, anyway.
Kyro slowed, breathing hard, and edged into the alley with both hands raised in the universal gesture of I am not a threat. Bubbles pressed herself against the far wall, all six legs splayed, tails lashing, eyes wide and frantic.
"Hey. Hey. Easy," Kyro murmured, inching closer. "I won't hurt you, I promise. I just need to get you home."
The hexafox chittered something deeply unconvinced.
Kyro lunged.
The mutant creature bolted.
What followed was a frenzied mix of twisting, writhing, shrieking, yelling, and lashing, culminating with Kyro catching the hexafox by one trailing leg. She dragged him a solid two metres across gravel before slowing just enough for him to wrap both arms around her surprisingly heavy body. The half-feral thing very nearly took a chunk out of his ear before finally going limp with the particular dramatic resignation only a spoiled pet could manage.
"Got you," Kyro panted triumphantly.
He emerged from the alley scraped, dusty, and missing a button from his shirt.
"You good?" Othic asked, arriving at a leisurely pace, having witnessed approximately none of the ordeal.
"Peachy," Kyro wheezed, Bubbles squirming irritably in his arms.
"Good. You're getting faster." The senior Ascendant was already turning toward the estate at the end of the street. "I'll handle payment. You handle returning the creature without losing any further buttons."
Kyro watched him go, exhaling a long breath that turned, somewhere in the middle of it, into a short laugh.
Two months.
It had been two months since he'd died and come back to life. Two months since he'd walked into the Ascendant Authority headquarters and come out with a bronze medallion clutched in his palm.
Two short months, and here he was: chasing exotic pets through upscale neighbourhoods for coin, apprenticed to a man who treated him like a glorified dogsbody.
It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the grand destiny some part of him—some buried, foolish, hopeful part—had half-expected when he selected [Yes] that fateful evening.
But it was something. A trade. A mentor. More money than he'd ever have earned sweeping floors and scrubbing shelves. Most importantly, it was experience, the kind no book or A.A-sanctioned public lecture could teach. The kind that helped him acclimate to a life that, two months ago, hadn't even been on the list of lives available to him.