The auctioneer opened the secret door and dragged Stormbristle’s cage in. The screeching of the metal grate on the stairs raked at Storm’s earbuds. Stormbristle saw that cells from ceiling to floor as well as cages stacked in front. All manners of either sapient nonhumans and enchanteds. Normal animals that, through some stroke of luck or curse or as a result of some genetic anomaly, were made slightly bigger than their normal animal counterparts and were gifted the intelligence of a human*. Most were normal dogs, rats. Normal pets. Rats were the most often to be found enchanted because of their plentiful numbers. But even something as common as a dog and cat sold well to the rich little children of merchants without any empathy.

  “We ain’t got space for a cage that big, sir,” Said the portly guard sitting behind a desk.

  “Open the air cage. And make sure he doesn’t run off.”

  “Pleasure.” Said the guard as he got up, he grabbed a black stick with a white tip from his belt and took it out.

  The auctioneer opened the cage door as the guard unlocked the cell door. Stormbristle walked but not fast enough. The guard took his wonner and zapped Stormbristle with it, “I'm going! I’m going! No need to use that infernal thing. I’m doing what you want!”

  He entered the cell. The auctioneer and the guard walked back to the guard’s desk. The guard grabbed a clipboard with a paper on it as the auctioneer said “Mark it down, enchanted storm boar. Start the bidding at ten thousand crown.”

  “You’re worth a heck of a lot, Storm.”

  Storm looked up and saw Sal leaning against the bars, “Sal! Sal! It’s so good to see you, my boy!”

  Sal waved his hand, “Hey,” Sal reached his hand out, Stormbristle licked his hand and Sal laughed at the ticklish feeling, “Those Ducervi couldn’t sell me anywhere. They tried an apothecary, a butcher’s shop. Eventually they realized that no self-respecting institution would take me so they went to the one with the least respect for anybody. They had heard about this secret auction that went on under the auction house.”

  “Yes,” Stormbristle said, “We figured as much. They’re probably upstairs right now, hopefully our team is avoiding their detection.”

  “This whole thing is going to start in about an hour. Then we get sold off. So tell me you’re here to break me out.”

  Stormbristle looked around, “Uh. So to speak. We have come to break you out, but I wasn’t supposed to be down here. But…”

  Stormbristle let his words trail off. The auctioneer walked away and slammed the door behind him. The guard approached the cage. He crouched on his knees and stared right at Stormbristle, “You didn’t come down here to give me no trouble, did you?”

  Stormbristle shook his head.

  “No scheming with this one. Lest you want some of my stick…” The guard stuck up weapon. It was a one-trick wand, known as a wonner. A helpful little tool for nonmagics to use a single spell. He clicked the edge and a little electrical shock came out the other side. His smile showcased his ill-kept teeth and his laugh was laced with poor intentions. He knocked his wonner on the side of the jail cell.

  “I assure you I-aHHH!” Stormbristle cried out in pain. The guard had clicked the end of his wonner and a shock jolted Stormbristle into agony. His clouds became dark and swirled.

  “And more of that as well as all you lot! If I hear any whining! I’m off to get me sandwich. Tuna and ham. AND cheese. I better not hear a peep. I’ll be back in thirty seconds.” The guard opened the door and sped off to get the sandwich his wife packed him from his locker.

  Stormbristle turned to Sal, “Have you not tried to escape?”

  Sal set his hands on fire and rested them on the bars. He held for as long as he could but when his hands extinguished, the bars were not red and still cold to the touch.

  “Fire resistant. Can’t get anything done with these. I got other fire types in my cage as well.” He moved and Storm saw the other creatures in his cell. All fire-based. Stormbristle looked at the other people in his cage. He was set against a few birds, including a few flying snakes and a jellyfish that floated around in the corner. The cells were split up by the creature’s predominant element, with all the nonelemental animals in the cages. The water creatures were placed on the cells on the opposite side, presumably not to seriously injure the fire creatures. He looked up and saw that there was netting to keep the wind creatures grounded.“What do we do?”

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  Sal shrugged his shoulders,then peeled himself from the bars and slid into the metal slat that acted as a bed, “Get sold I guess.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Sal shook his head, “It was fun being part of the ride with you, buddy.”

  “Sal, we’ll get out… Davilo will make sure of it.”

  Sal opened his eyes, “Davilo? Lord Davilo? He’s here?”

  “Keep your voice down. Yes, he’s come to save you. He insisted. But as we were instructed by Kip, this mission must remain one of stealth.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little bit beyond the pale now?” Sal asked.

  “Unfortunate, but that may be so.”

  Cat in the cage in front of him turned around and said, “If you guys are talking about a breakout, I want in.”

  “Yeah, me too!” Piped up a mouse.

  “And me.” Said another mouse.

  “I’m afraid…” Stormbristle looked around, “I’m afraid that’s not our directive.”

  “I’m staying too then.” Said Sal.

  “Wh-what?” Sal shook his head, “If they stay, I stay.”

  Storm took a deep breath, “But we must.”

  “These people deserve to be free as much as me. Let’s use our power for some good.”

  “He's making a lot of sense!” Peeped up one of the dogs.

  A cute green orb with two eyes and a large dandelion puff looked at Sal in his jail cell, “You’re really not going to help us Mr. Storm?”

  “Uh,” Storm looked around. He saw everyone in every cage looking at him. He saw Sal who had faced away from Storm on his cot. Storm could feel a migraine coming on but he relented, “We… will help.”

  The entire menagerie huzzahed and cheered.

  “So,” What’s the plan?” Sal asked.

  The guard ran back in with his turkey and ham and cheese sandwich. His wonner still hung outside of his back pocket, “I know I heard the lot of you make noise. I better not hear no plotting.”

  “No plotting whatsoever, chump.” Said one of the mice.

  “And no talkin’!” The guard said.

  “Oh yeah?” The rat interjected, and what are you going to do if we do? One shot of that thing and I’m dead! That gonna come out of your paycheck?”

  The guard slammed the wonner like a batton on the cage with all the rational rodents. They jittered but they did not stop talking.

  “No seriously, You use that wonner on me, and I’m toast, right? You get that? Or are you too stupid?”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of ways to deal with you than just a spell. Believe you me,” The guard picked up the cage and shook it, staring at the cluster of rats as they jostled inside their tiny confinement.

  Stormbristle and Sal locked eyes and nodded to each other. Sal lit himself on fire, “You better stop picking on those guys!” Sal yelled. The guard dropped the cage on the ground and turned around to look at Sal.

  The guard revealed a rotted smile, “You want to be brave and then you get to play the big lizard, all covered in fire? Well, guess what, max capacity probably works on you!”

  As the guard approached the fire cell, a turtle stepped in his way. The turtle was bright red with a shell that oozed steam from being so hot.

  “Better stand out of the way!”

  The turtle said, “We Infurtles are made from the magma themselves, who dried and made us alive. You mess with him, you’ll mess with us!”

  Then a knee high gray creature with a long nose and pointy features, cracked his knuckles and said, “Yeah! We’ll show you what for!”

  All three of them created heat with their body however they could. Sal by lighting himself on fire, the infurtle by creating steam, and the mephyt by lighting fires on his hands and tossing them in the air.

  The guard started to laugh at the sorry bunch of flame critters locked in the fire resistant cell. He pointed his wand at Sal and clicked the button. A jolt of the Lightning Bold spell shot out of the tip and attacked Sal. He cried out in pain and his fire turned off. Sal took a look at Storm, who shook his head. Sal took two deep breaths in and turned himself back on.

  “Flame on!” Then he picked himself back off his knees and told the guard, “Think you missed me.”

  Slowly the animals all started to join in, teasing the guard. Making him feel small and pathetic and overloading his senses with a series of noises. The guard was sweating profusely, hungry because he had not eaten his tuna and ham and cheese. His madness cranked up by the sweltering heat of the fire cell giving it their all.

  “QUIIEEEEET!” The guard screamed. The fire monsters stopped. The enchanteds and sapiens ceased their racket. The guard undid his collar and took off his cap, “Blasted, confarnit, rotten animals. Going to give me a bleedin’ heart attack.”

  “Funny.” Storm said, “They’d be doing my job.”

  The guard turned to look at where the gruff noise was coming from. He could not find anyone.

  “Who said that?”

  “Down here, my boy.”

  Stormbristle stood, outside of his jail cell. Much… much… smaller than normal. Storm was small enough to slip through the cracks of the gaps of the bars due to the extreme heat of the three fire monsters. The guard was confused but let out a laugh, “You think you can take me?”

  Just then, a frog in a suit spewed water onto Stormbristle. He opened up his cloudy exterior and let his body drink in the water, reappearing at full size.

  “Now I am.”

  *There is a school of thought in magizoology that these anomalies were not what people thought they were. A horrendous school of thought states that the enchanted nature or biological anomaly of these creatures who could speak and love and think and feel like humanoids was not so. That in fact, it was merely a sophisticated mimicry. Of course, that prompts more debates from the well meaning scholars, who put forth that even if it is sophisticated enough mimicry, that it is indistinguishable from the original. But what these well-meaning scientists don’t understand is that the scholars who claim this hypothesis are not doing so to be well-meaning. They are doing so because they would like a civilized excuse to disregard these animals’ sapiency. And thus they take a fruitless, obvious truth and run it into the battleground of ideas such that one side is just as legitimate as the other.

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