Messian Foxes

OVERVIEW

Messian Foxes cannot be caught. Packs of red foxes blessed—or cursed—by Dionysus with uncatchable speed roam the olive groves and mountain forests of Krios, and while most steal chickens and raid granaries like ordinary vermin, some have developed a taste for human infants, slipping through locked doors and barred windows. They're small, no larger than hunting dogs, beautiful and wrong.

REPORTS

The first reports came from Botein's eastern villages three years ago.

A baby vanished from its cradle. The window was barred. The door was locked. The mother had been sleeping three feet away and heard nothing—no cry, no struggle, no sound of entry. When she woke at dawn, the infant was simply gone.

They found fox tracks in the flour she'd spilled on the floor the night before, small paw prints leading to the cradle, then away toward the window.

More children disappeared, always infants under six months, always from locked rooms, and always with only fox tracks as evidence.

The village organized hunts, borrowed hounds from Phrixus and set traps baited with meat and blood. The foxes came anyway, were seen clearly by hunters, and could not be caught. Arrows missed by inches. Nets closed on empty air. The hounds chased until they collapsed from exhaustion, and the foxes would sit just out of reach, watching with eyes too intelligent for animals, tongues lolling in what looked like amusement.

Then they'd vanish.

Not run away—vanish, like smoke dispersing.

HISTORY

The priests researched and found the old story of the Teumessian Fox, sent by Dionysus to punish Thebes, destined never to be caught because the god made it that way, but that was one fox. A giant. This was dozens of normal-sized foxes scattered throughout Krios.

High Priestess Themiste offered a theory: perhaps when the original fox died—or when Dionysus tired of it—the blessing fragmented and scattered into a bloodline, every descendant carrying a fraction of the uncatchable nature, enough to make them impossible to trap but not enough to make them legendary.

Just enough to make them devastating.

The hunts continue. Always fail. The foxes take babies every few weeks now, spreading from Botein into the foothills near Phrixus, ranging as far north as the passes where the Bronze Bulls stand.

Here's what makes it worse: some babies come back.

Not all. Maybe one in ten. They're found on doorsteps weeks or months later, unharmed, healthy even, but changed. They cry less. Watch more. As they grow, they question everything and develop cunning instead of courage.

They think before they act.

The military has classified these children as tainted. Some families hide them. Others send them to Parthenos or Zygos, kingdoms that value thought over action. A few have been quietly killed by fathers who'd rather have dead sons than clever ones.

The foxes keep hunting.

Hunters have noticed patterns. The foxes take children from families of warriors more often than merchants, from Hamal and Phrixus more than Botein or Helle, from houses where weapons are blessed and Ares is praised daily.

It's deliberate. Targeted.

They're not just stealing babies. They're stealing warriors' babies. Aries babies. Children who would grow to charge first and think never.

And the ones they return? They've been taught something, shown something, given something that Krios's culture will spend years beating out of them—if it can be beaten out at all.

Some scholars think the foxes are agents of Athena, goddess of wisdom in warfare, trying to balance Ares's blind aggression. Others think Dionysus himself is having a joke at Krios's expense, teaching them that sometimes the thing you cannot catch is the lesson you most need to learn.

The foxes themselves remain beautiful and terrible and impossible to kill. They slip through walls. They outrun arrows. They dodge traps that haven't been set yet, as if they can see moments into the future and adjust accordingly.

King Tyrus placed a bounty: a hundred gold coins per fox pelt. A thousand for a live capture.

The bounty has gone unclaimed for three years.