Chương 13: What Could a Cat Even Do

She was bored. The kind that sits in the chest instead of her legs, heavy and flat, with nothing underneath it worth getting up for. Time had gone strange since some of the new ones left. She couldn't have said how long, only that it had been a while, long enough that the snow outside had thinned at the edges and gone gray instead of white. Her fur had grown out longer than she liked. She hadn't bothered grooming it properly in longer than she cared to think about. Her legs felt slower than they should.

Not from anything hurting. Just tired, in a way she didn't have a name for. It had been getting worse for a while now. Something sat heavy under her ribs and had for days, too full and too still, the way a stomach sits after eating past the point of wanting more. She'd stopped noticing when it started. She only noticed that it never left. What could a cat do? The thought arrived plain and complete, no warning to it, the way the worst thoughts always did. She heard the boots before she saw them.

Not the usual morning shuffle. Heavier. Faster. Something in her sat up at the sound even though the rest of her still felt slow, dragged along behind it rather than moving with any real purpose of its own. Garr stood by the door already dressed for it. Full armor, not the half-gear he wore around the hall most days. A sword sat sheathed at his hip, longer than the one he usually carried. A handful of adventurers were already gone.

She caught their scent thinning out past the gate, already too far to follow by the time she reached the yard. The next pack hit the floor by the door, and she was on top of it before it finished landing, sitting square in the middle of it the way she always did when a bag like that meant someone was about to disappear. Whoever it belonged to packed around her instead, gentle about it, moving her aside with one hand when she wouldn't budge on her own. She tried the door next, planting herself low in front of it.

A boot nudged her aside without much thought behind it at all, and the door opened anyway. None of it worked. She kept doing it anyway. She went after the next group instead. She made it as far as the gate before a hand closed around her middle, firm and quick, and lifted her clean off the ground mid-stride.

"Oh, no you don't." Ren. Papers still tucked under one arm, somehow, even with a cat now caught against her hip. Amber twisted once, testing the grip. It didn't loosen.

"Not this time." Ren's voice stayed light, but her eyes didn't leave the gate.

"You stay where I can see you." Amber went still instead of fighting it, because fighting it had never once worked on Ren, and watching was better than nothing. So she watched from the yard instead of the road, and the group that had gone ahead of Garr's got smaller and smaller until the street swallowed the last of them, and the gate stood open a while longer before somebody finally thought to close it. Ren didn't put her down after that. Not right away.

She carried her back into the hall still tucked against her side, checking on her every so often like she expected her to bolt the second her attention slipped. She didn't. There was nowhere left to run to. But she didn't stop thinking about it either. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. The gate stayed shut the rest of the morning, and she stayed near it anyway, close enough to smell the last of them still hanging faint in the cold air outside.

She could still catch it if she tried. The particular mix of oil and leather and nerves that always clung to a group heading somewhere they weren't sure they'd come back from. She sat with her nose an inch from the crack under the door and breathed it in until there was nothing left to breathe. Ren caught her there twice more before noon. Didn't say anything the second time, just scooped her up, set her on the desk instead, and went back to her ledgers like that settled it. It didn't.

Amber sat where she was told to sit and watched the door instead of the papers, ears swiveling toward every sound that wasn't the one she wanted. She wasn't trying to follow anymore. She'd learned that lesson, mostly. She just couldn't make herself stop wanting to. She left the desk before Ren noticed she'd gone. Garr's door was shut, same as always. She went in there often enough when he was home, curled up on the end of his bed or watching him from the chair while he worked.

She'd never once gone in when he wasn't. It never felt like hers to enter without him. She went in tonight anyway. His room smelled like him even with him gone. Oiled leather. Metal. The desk sat cluttered, more than usual, papers shoved aside in a hurry, like he hadn't had time to put anything away properly before he left. A handful of cores sat scattered across it, ordinary ones, the kind that came out of low passages by the dozen and meant nothing to anyone who'd been doing this long enough.

He must have emptied a pouch out looking for something else and never gotten back to sorting it. She hadn't meant to eat them. She'd only gone up to smell what was left of him in the room, and the cores were just sitting there, small and unguarded, and she was already restless in a way that wanted something to do with her mouth. She ate them anyway. Four of them, one after another, barely tasting any of it. She was still sitting there, licking the last of it from one paw, when the pale square opened without asking.

[SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 30/30 Capacity full. No further prompts followed. No words asking for a response, no flickering demand the way there had been before. Just quiet, the kind that came before something rather than after it. [SYSTEM] Host response capability: deemed insufficient. Preventing overload. Autonomous allocation proceeding. The square still sat where it always did. She still didn't understand the words, same as she never had. But this time something came with them, plain and immediate as a sound.

[SYSTEM] Cost: -35 Mana (System Upgrade) Adjustment applied. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: -5/30 Deprivation threshold crossed. Debuff applied: Mana Debt [SYSTEM] Direct Cognition Link: Enabled. Her legs gave out under her all at once, the same sudden weakness as standing up too fast, except this time it didn't pass. The floor came up hard, faster than it should have. Her mind went blank. She came back to a number. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 1/30 Regenerating. She understood it.

All of it, plain as a voice speaking out loud, no gap left in it this time for her to fill in on her own. Her ears flattened back. Her pupils blew wide, and her whole body dropped low and still, the same way it went right before something struck at her from somewhere she couldn't see. That scared her worse than the falling had. She'd never once understood the words before. Not really. Only a feeling underneath them, a shape she could lean on without knowing what it meant.

If words suddenly meant something, plain and whole, something had to be badly wrong with her. She thought of the floor coming up too fast, her legs giving out under her, and decided this must be what dying felt like, creeping in quiet after the worst of it had already passed. [SYSTEM] Skill acquired: Slow Mana Recovery The hollow feeling in her chest eased, just enough to tell the difference between unbearable and almost. Nothing else happened. No more pain. No dark closing back in.

Just the words, sitting there in her head exactly the way they had a moment ago, refusing to go strange again no matter how long she waited for them to. They didn't stop making sense. [SYSTEM] Direct Cognition Link: integration complete. Basic communication function now active within host consciousness. She tried a sound at it. Short and questioning, the same meow she used at the kitchen door when she wanted it opened and nobody had noticed yet. Nothing answered.

No new words arrived to sit plain and understood in her head the way the last ones had. No square opening fresh in reply. Just quiet, and her own voice sounding small in a room this empty. She tried again, longer, more insistent, the same building complaint she used on anyone in the hall who ignored her past what she considered reasonable. Still nothing. Whatever had changed a moment ago, it didn't work the way asking at a door worked. It hadn't started answering just because she wanted it to.

She gave up on it the way she gave up on most things that didn't answer back. [SYSTEM] Debuff lifted: Mana Fatigue Capacity no longer overburdened. The heaviness under her ribs was gone. Not eased. Gone, the way it goes when a full stomach finally settles, and she hadn't understood how long she'd been carrying it until she wasn't anymore. The room had gone full dark while she was out.

Garr's lamp had burned itself down to nothing, and the door sat shut the way she'd left it, and nobody had come looking for her the whole time she'd been lying there. She climbed up onto his bed instead, into the dip in the blanket that still held his shape, and let the rest of the night pass without further comment from either of them. [SYSTEM] Synergy: Futile Wish + Fleeting Envy = Desire A fleeting, futile desire. It's still a desire nonetheless.