Commission for  Caervec! A very special one because this is an illustration to his story that involves our Sualokin character, Ing (on the right).
 Caervec was kind enough to create an amazing story to add to this art.

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It had been a long day. A very long day of placing orders and filling his own. In between having to replenish his stock of cold tonic since Samir decided to 'accidentally' upend the jug into an urn of precious earth salts -which themselves also needed replacing thereafter- and receiving an unusual order for a high volume of special preserving agents, Yin had spent the better part of the day checking in on his emulsions as they simmered and running to every corner of the market possible looking for supplies. This wasn't helped by Sania insisting she come along with him, leaving the chemist to worry over just what mess the male could get into unsupervised. He expected Aizkorri to visit that evening and the house and workshop were both a pig stye.
And all of this was made so very much more antagonizing when Sania made it clear to him she had her own shopping plans. And no amount of arguing was going to change her mind. In the end, it felt as though she didn't buy anything -or barely so. A new set of ribbons for her hair, a fine pair of very expensive gloves (which Yin knew damn well she would never wear) and a small assortment of brushes. Hardly a catch worth spending the extra three hours he had no plans nor budget for. Not to mention the fact that he was paying for all of it.
Needless to say, he missed their date to say the least of it... Arriving back home with the sun already setting, his satchel over-loaded with materials and his wallet half-drained just from trying to recoup the cost of the earth-salts, he had chanced across her on the way home, Sania giving them a moment for Yin to provide his apologies and sending her off to her own home for the night -it was too late and he still had work to do.
He had arrived home to a surprisingly quiet house, that blasted cat hadn't made a wreck of the place and he was nowhere in sight. Sania seemed confident that he was home and for Yin that was a good sign that he was -provided she wasn't covering for him of course. As he moved to clean the messes that had been made earlier the chemist found a few strange peculiarities. The first was that the vat of ruined tonics and earth salts was empty. Clean, even. He'd never even so much as dreamed that Samir would clean up after himself and here he had done so! Miracles do happen after all, so Yin thought. But then he found other ingredients missing from the shelves. Strange. One of the rare wood ashes was completely empty, half of his powdered silver was gone, and the bottle of enriched mineral water was missing from the shelf outright. ...None of those mixed to produce anything useful -or even active for that matter. So if Samir took them, what on earth had he taken them for? Yin had passed if off angrily as more wasted materials -he'd have to replace them tomorrow as well.
The evening's work went smoothly enough, and he had everything in final order within an hour. The sun had sunk down completely now so the house was cast in twilight, the blue hue of dusk slowly fading to black as he was forced to start lighting lamps around the house to do his final business before bed. He could even hear the chirrup of crickets, the bleating of a toad or two in the gardens near town square, and the soft whine of wind between the buildings in the relative silence of his neighborhood. And that was when he noticed it. A bizarre pink light, soft, almost imperceptible from the corner of his eye. On the counter top in the back of the workshop, a workspace he rarely used except to store concoctions that took weeks or more to mature, a canister stood. It was slim, this cylinder. With strange, trailing marks. And it glowed. He recognized the canister itself, it was a large phial, meant to store liquid. He'd purchased it months ago as a curiosity of sorts. Specifically, Samir said he found it curious and was going to shoplift it anyway, thus Yin had to pay for it. It had disappeared since then. Yin had assumed it was simply buried in some trove of snitched goods he always suspected the male cat of having tucked away in a corner somewhere in his house. And here it was. Glowing.
Approaching the thing, Yin frowned at it, taking off his glasses for a better look up-close as he reached to lift the strange cylinder from the table. Was Samir responsible for this thing? A familiar voice piped up from his right, almost making him jump as he turned his head with a glare. "It's for you! I spent weeks making it, I hope you like it! You were a big help, too." It was Samir, of course. He and his sister both, seated on the railing that led up to the second floor as they peered down at him almost imperiously from a height of half a meter over his head. "Honored, I'm sure." Yin said flatly. "I assume this is what you wasted half our inventory on. And just what is this supposed to do?" He was sure of it then: Sania was stalling him for this reason. His attitude went from one of mild disappointment at having missed his evening with Aizkorri to one of outright indignation and irritation. Of all the lousy things to do to him.
That was when Sania herself spoke up. "Oh, we think you'll love it. Give it a whiff, lover boy." And she had the nerve to tease him about it! It was bad enough people at the market place were inclined to think he was 'with' her, even though he'd played the "cousin card" more times than he cared to recall. But now she was practically confessing she'd made him miss the date -and on purpose besides. Grumbling angry epitaphs under his breath, Yin carefully undid the cap from the phial. It was brighter inside than out and it smelled...weird. The color was off, not exactly pink. Something highly suspect was about it. The scent was unlike anything he'd ever smelled. It made his nose feel like it was missing somehow. Shaking his head, he put the cap back on it and glared at them. It didn't smell bad, but it didn't smell like anything he could even describe. Not sweet...not flowery...not spiced. But something in between them all.
"Riveting. I hate you guys." Yin proclaimed as he put the pink canister back. "And just what was I supposed to get out of-" As he looked back up at them, the two cats tensed up. In fact, everything tensed. Their eyes were locked on the doorway and Yin became keenly aware in that moment that the sounds of night had ceased; no wind, no crickets. Nothing. Aware still more of a feeling creeping up his spine. It was a gut-wrenching feeling, the kind you get when you know that you've crossed the threshold into haunted territory. He turned slowly to cast his gaze in the direction the cats were fixated on. It was dark outside. The front windows of the shop had their curtains half-drawn, and what parts of the windows could be seen were black with the ink of night. Except... There it was. A glow. Just like the phial, but redder, magenta in hue. It hovered outside the window for a brief second, hanging on the edges of it. "...What?" He whispered on instinct. The glow coalesced into two bright orbs. Eyes. Quietly, terrified, Samir whispered. "Grab. The. Vial." As Yin reached, the magenta disks drew rapidly closer to the window, illuminating the space behind it and revealing a face. Wicked, huge teeth in a wild smile on a scarred muzzle crowned with manically-arranged feathers. Something flashed in front of it and the window shattered. "Run! Yin! Up here!" Sania's voice cut through the roar of breaking glass and upending benches as something huge and serpentine burst through the threshold.
His hand gripping the phial, Yin clambered around the half-flight to the balcony floor and followed the twins in a mad dash to the back room, his glasses abandoned. From his vantage he got a good look at what had come inside. And it got a good look at him. He almost froze in his tracks, as if time had suddenly stopped for him, pieces of splintered wood and glass suspended in air as they met gazes. It was wearing goggles but he had a feeling without them its gaze might have killed him outright for his heart bursting from fear. Sania landing on his shoulder and digging her claws in him broke the spell and he stumbled backwards into the back room. He knew what it was -from stories and descriptions alone, he knew a sualokin when he saw it -even if he'd never laid eyes on one before in his life. But this wasn't like anything he'd heard tales about. It was crazed, he could see that. This wasn't an ordinary tsourai, if one could consider anything about such creatures to be "ordinary".
He could hear it moving, crashing after him as it approached the stairs -there was no time. "Yin. The phial. Open it." Samir called to him, having leapt onto his other shoulder opposite Sania. Practically falling behind the storage shelf, Yin crawled under it and fumbled with the lid -it had opened so easily before. Slipping from his shoulders the two felines tucked themselves between him and the backboard of the furniture. An eerie, horrible sound issued from the stairwell just outside the door. It took Yin a moment to realize it was a voice. "I can smell your fear, little ones. You can't hide." That was a sound Yin never wanted to hear again. And it would haunt his dreams for years. Finally his hands won against the phial and the cap slipped free. On instinct, he waved it around in the air -it was an aromatic from what he could tell. That strange 'not-there-ness' feeling was all over him. He knew then what Samir had made.
Cringing, he grasped the vial. It didn't seem to be emptying fast, but who knew how long it would last? He held Sania by her tiny paw. This was it. This was what they had been needing protection from. Whatever this thing was. He heard it speak again as it neared the door. He could hear it moving...the magenta glow filled the air. "Dead end? So soon?" He prayed. Prayed to the grahn, if they would listen, anyone who might hear him, that this concoction of Samir's would work. He could see it, now. It was hovering over them, looking around. As it slid over the cabinet where they hid, he could hear the rustle of scale and fur against wood, heavy, threatening to shatter the besieged furniture with its weight alone. But he heard something else. A crackle. Wisps of smoke, thin, acridly bitter-sweet in scent curled around them. Something had caught fire from the initial attack -a lamp no doubt had fallen into one of the more volatile alcohols.
The thought made Yin's heart stop. As a chemist, his home was filled to the brim with reactive reagents. Nearly a third of them flammable, and a not-inconsiderable volume of those being explosive under enough heat. They had to get out of there.

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"We knew this day would come."

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Art, Ing and Shang-La setting © Lingrimm
Original Designer: Lingrimm (Yin), Enlus (Samir, Sania)
Samir, Sania, Yin, the beautiful story © Caervec