Navigating the scattering, screaming crowd feels an awful lot like playing a round of real-life Frogger.

Yoongi swerves around a tree root and narrowly avoids getting impaled by what appears to be a unicorn galloping by. You, in turn, leap over three tiny creatures with lizard-like tails and almost disappear into a pile of bronze leaves that stack up into a metallic leafy pile that's higher than your head,

"Whoa!" Yoongi grabs the back of your T-shirt with both of his cuffed hands, pulling you back from the brink as your arms wave in a panicked, seal-like up and down motion.

Yoongi swings you around with your own momentum, safely directing you away from the pile. In the process, you face backwards, towards the place that the two of you left Mihal and the flaming man locked in combat.

Your heart drops into your stomach like a plummeting rock when you see that Yoongi's grey-furred master is loping toward you with determination.

"Go, go, go!" you shriek, not even having time to thank Yoongi before shoving him back into a sprint.

"What is it?!" Taking a quick peek behind you, your companion groans in frustration at the sight of his former kidnapper.

"Yeah," you mutter under your breath, panting from the physical exertion you're putting yourself through. "Thanks a lot for making sure the only Wookiee in the space station is after us!"

"What is a Wookiee?" Yoongi yells.

"I'll tell you later!" is your response, because the long-legged stride of the grey-furred thing is eating up the distance between you, slowly but surely lessening the fissure of space between you.

If you and Yoongi don't figure out a plan to get out of here quick, you'll end up right back where you started.

"Okay, what's the plan?" you ask, not slowing down in your running as the words bump and tumble out of you. You're surprised Yoongi can even hear you among all the alien clatter and shrieking at all.

"I know where his space craft is," Yoongi says. Even though he isn't much larger than you in stature, he's incredibly fast, his slender legs moving in a quick blur that makes you struggle to keep up. The two of you swerve and weave through the people, feeling like salmon forcing your way upstream a torrid river. "I was watching this whole time as he brought me here, and I think I can fly it. We just have to get there!"

Even while running, you have to gaze at Yoongi with open-mouthed awe. "You learned to fly a spaceship just by watching? You can do - eek!" You cut yourself short for a moment to duck beneath a winged lemur careening past your head. "You can do that?"

"Sure," huffs Yoongi. "Can't you?"

Oh holy heck. Not only are you boring to look at in compared with these other species, you're also an imbecile.

That's just brilliant.

You continue behind Yoongi, the two of you keeping up your frantic pace through the chaotic masses from the auction. The longer you run, however, the more you see it.

Everyone is running almost in the exact same direction, fleeing toward the outer rims of the glass dome where the spaceships docks are hammered into the sides. You guess that isn't strange - people are trying to get away and need to transportation to do that, of course.

But there's something about the direction of it, of the flow of people through the crowd, that strikes you as odd. No one else in the entire space center is cutting across the middle section to get to the other side.

Sure, you can glimpse moving bodies around the sides, running with the curve of the glass dome, but it seems they refuse to take the straight-away path across the dome. With the giant tree behind you, casting down its shadow as a giant, foreboding monolith, a pit is growing in your stomach.

Something about this feels wrong.

No one is traveling in the same direction as you - wherever you're going, people are running away from it.

"Yoongi," you start to say, but you're unable to finish due to a massive, paw-like hand grasping the back of your shirt. You're dragged backward with a scream, unable to resist due to your captor's superior strength. Your grip on Yoongi's chains tighten involuntarily, dragging him back with you.

"Y/N!" Yoongi shouts.

His old master, the grey-furred creature with the barely visible ebony eyes, holds you up by the back of your shirt. You squirm against his hold to no avail.

If you can't get away, at least you can make sure your companion gets free. You toss the end of Yoongi's chain toward him and choke out, "Run!".

The word is barely a whisper - the collar of your own shirt is crushing your throat to the point that you can hardly breathe.

Through your slitted eyes, you can see that Yoongi is going the opposite of running - in fact, he's standing completely still, a contrast to the motion shaking and slithering all around him.

The vibrant blue of his eyes are locked firmly on the figure behind you - wide, and strangely startled.

You're confused by his expression all the way until you're suddenly dropped back down to your feet, and something thumps down to the ground behind you.

You fall to your knees with your head bowed to the ground.

Choking on the deep inhales you suck into your lungs, you realize with watering eyes that the crowd is now very pointedly running directly away from you, in every way. Yoongi hasn't made a move toward you, his eyes still staring at something behind you.

Warily, you let your head turn to see.

Where the grey-furred creature once stood tall and strong now lies a limp, hairy lump, a thick brown substance beginning to puddle around.

When your vision is struck with the figure kneeling behind said lump, your heart palpitates and almost self-destructs behind your ribs.

Massive wings extend into the air, feathers sparkling a vibrant gold threaded through with grey.

Your first thought is that Mihal somehow escaped the grasp of the living flame and found you again, but when this man lifts his head, his hair is coal black, almost as black as the sparkling ebony of his eyes.

He's bigger, too, tall and long-legged and golden-skinned, and less delicate - more masculine. Like Mihal, he looks almost human if it weren't for his wings, which span a much greater length than Mihal's had.

The angel man also had a sword - a huge broadsword that's almost as long as you are, the blade wicked and deadly and streaks with that same brownish liquid.

This blade is the thing that's rendered Yoongi's ex-master into a pile of grey fur and leaking blood.

The winged man looks at you and Yoongi, almost expectantly.

What do you say? All you can do is stare.

Then, as the sound of a another cry rings out and bounces off the high-vaulting glass of the dome, the man leaps into the air with one push of his giant wings and disappears.

"Come on," Yoongi says hoarsely. He grabs your bound wrist with his own and pulls you back onto your path.

You can barely run straight - your mind sits as a frantic tangle of color and memory inside your head, scorching over the last day at light speed.

Twice now, you've been saved from slavery or death by a strange man.

The prince and his gang of freaks.

Mihal's spitting tone replays in your head hauntingly.

Was that black-eyed, golden-winged man another part of the 'gang of freaks'?

Your train of thought is torn off its tracks when a tremendous roar vibrates through Servus, shaking the very foundations of the space port. It's the same creature that howled so violently when you were caged.

At the sound, Yoongi's feet stop abruptly, sending up a spray of loose earth as he skids to a halt. You nearly crash into his back but manage to stop yourself just short.

"I know that," Yoongi whispers. "He's from my planet. He's from my planet!"

He runs.

"Yoongi!" you cry, reaching out desperately to grab some part of, anything to keep him from being swallowed by the crowd.

You don't know what he's talking about, but there's a crazed light in his eyes that signals to you one thing - making sure the two of you stay together and get to the space ship is no longer priority in his mind.

When Yoongi was aware of you trying to stay with him, it was much easier to do so. Now, though, the steady bob of his bright blue hair is disappearing faster than your hope.

It's a dot, then a speck, then nothing.

You feel sick.

"Move," someone shouts, shoving you to the side. You fall to the ground harshly, your ribs aching at the impact.

You have to get up - if you don't you'll surely be trampled.

Leaves the color of metal crunch beneath your hands as you attempt to push yourself to your feet.

It's hard with people flying by so quickly, limbs and tails and feathers pushing at your sides until you're back on the ground.

Fear beating at your mind, all you can do to protect against the onslaught is curl into a ball, covering your face and the most vulnerable parts of you from hooves and paws alike that beat into you with unintentional abandon.

A loud whinny catches your ears, and you glance through the gap between your arms to glimpse a buffalo-like creature with three horns and scaly hide rears in fright, snorting at the disorienting flashes of noise and light.

It's too close to you, close enough that you know, without a doubt, it's rear of terror will land not on solid dirt, but the unshielded flesh of your body.

And you know one strike from its hooves is enough to end you.

It's with resignation and a sort of sadness that you watch the creature's hoof descend, dropping heavily through the air with the bulk of its weight as a driving force.

In that moment, it seems that your mind refuses to go blank.

Within the span of a few seconds, a million thoughts whirl through your consciousness.

You wonder if your family has begun to look for you, back on earth - if Yoongi would have come back for you, here in Servus.

If Mihal is alive, or only a mere pile of ash - if Thing has been arrested by the troupe of heroic aliens that threw the auction into chaos - if Yoongi will find the thing he abandoned you in the crowd for.

You wonder how much time has passed on earth, and if your mother has cried for you.

From space to Earth to Servus to Mars and back again, you wonder.

You wonder.

You wander.

And then you close your eyes.

[A/N]
Unedited
Happy New Year! Let 2019 be a year of courage and fulfilled dreams. Good luck in all your endeavors in this beautiful new year!
Also, I'm almost done with the new Blood Ink chapter, so wait just a bit!
❤️PB