Chương 66: Three Cat Ladies

Boots didn't know why Kitten had left him behind with some strangers, but it didn't take long for him to open a window. The wind was heavy with the scent of creatures like the one that attacked the Pet last night. He climbed onto the rooftops and from there made his way toward the water, changing to a bigger shape so that he could leap from building to building clear across the streets. There was a lot of energy in the air, and it only got denser denser as he went along.

He came upon a battle up ahead, though not much of one, as the humans were casting their fire from up on high. It didn't make any sense to him, the behavior of either side. Why these weird goop creatures ran unendingly to their doom, and why the humans would burn up so many perfectly good meals. He passed on by, sticking to the shadows, until the noise and fire faded behind him. The goop creatures below sometimes turned when he passed.

Some tried to get at him, but they weren't very good climbers—even the ones with four feet. But one did manage to make it up. It then lunged at him, but he lithely coiled around and pinned it down. He couldn't strike a killing blow because it didn't have any of the weak points that prey usually had. No matter how he tore into it, the creature never stopped moving. Lacerations closed up and lost fingers reattached themselves.

But the moment he took a chunk into his mouth to chew it down, the piece melted away into pure essence that he could then absorb. And what an essence it was. So pure, so formless. Ready to be shaped into anything he desired. And so he got greedy. He went further out, to where the creatures surfaced from the water in their huge swarms. An endless supply—all you can eat. Along the way he sensed a familiar presence. One that brought back fond memories from a time long ago.

One that he'd thought had died and had mourned her passing. He decided to take a detour. This person was only a couple of streets away, but he would have gone further just to see her again. The buffet could wait. He found himself at a building that was completely surrounded by the goop creatures. The door had been broken down, with more of the creatures crowded inside. But she was also in there, this Old Friend of his.

He enlarged and dropped down in front of the entrance, knocking the creatures there to the ground. A short burst of lightning caused more to fall, their tight packing working in his favor to chain the spell outward. But this close to the water, reinforcements came fast, clambering over their fallen allies to get at him. And the ones on the ground weren't actually dead, continuing to crawl forward even as they were trodden on.

He needed to get bigger, and that's what he did, until his jaws were able to bite the creatures clean in half. The swarm pounded on his back, more a nuisance than a threat, while he cleared a path into the building. When the gap was big enough, he cloaked himself in lightning once more and, while the creatures were incapacitated, shrank himself down to fit in through the doorway. This spacious building had a high ceiling, and the floor was stained with the lingering scent of fish.

There was no fish anymore, only the strange creatures, reaching up for something up in the rafters. It was his Old Friend, he'd recognize her anywhere, and from the way she greeted him with that sweet smile just like she used to whenever he returned home from a hunt, it was clear that she recognized him too. While the goop creatures struggled to get at her, it was no trouble for him to climb up there to join her side.

"Fancy seeing you here, Whiskers." Her voice was as gentle as always. And he noticed that she wasn't alone. Cradled in her arms was a cat. Black. She always had a fondness for that color. It matched her eyes, though at the moment they were silver like her hair.

"Could you be a dear and help me out here, Whiskers?" his Old Friend asked. He sharpened his claws and within moments had carved a hole in the roof. He climbed up first to make sure the coast was clear, and then she joined him, still cradling the cat in her arms. She looked around, eyes lingering on the tall towers in the places where the humans were doing battle.

"I'm afraid I can't risk showing my wings here. Whiskers, could I trouble you with getting me where I need to go?" She pointed back toward the human territory. Boots happily led the way while listening to his Old Friend tell him about what she'd been up to all these years and how hard she'd tried to find him.

Remore had thought he was dead for sure. Then this warrior just dropped out of the sky and started beating the mucks back with her bare hands. So when she ordered him to come down off the roof, of course he obeyed. He stood there transfixed, everything around him feeling like a dream. The way the warrior's hair flowed in the moonlight, the fiery trails left behind by her fists, and those sharp, focused eyes that pierced right into the soul.

He'd always wondered how the bards of old were able to find the right words in their famous verses. Now he needed to wonder no longer. The inspiration he felt in this very moment could fuel him for a lifetime. He would search to the ends of the dictionary if that's what it took to immortalize this warrior in song. In an effort to make himself useful, he took up his gittar and started strumming out a song to boost her stamina.

"Hey, buddy?" He realized that the warrior was talking to him.

"Y-yes?" If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Now isn't the time." He lowered his gittar.

"You see that building in the corner over there?" she continued.

"The one with the intact awning?"

"Y-yes?"

"Let's make our way over and get off the ground, shall we?" While they were surrounded by mucks, she'd cleared enough space for him to take a few steps. And when he did, she kept the space ahead of him clear. In this way, they got to the corner, where he gently tossed his gittar up onto the awning before climbing after it, and then onto the roof. The warrior shortly joined him. Up here they had room to breathe. There was a road separating their block of rooftops from the ones with all the mucks.

"What's your name?" the warrior asked.

"Remore."

"I'm Amberlin." He'd never heard of a hero by that name. That was a problem he intended to remedy. Some mucks were already trying to climb up after them, but Amberlin stomped at the awning until it came crashing down. Remore searched around for a path to the safety of the second zone. The streets were a no-go.

While Amberlin had been able to clear the way for them to this rooftop, the lane leading to the second gate was far too dense with mucks, being fed by two streams—the ones flooding through the perimeter gate, and those coming across the rooftops. He looked back to see how they were even getting up there and saw the mucks flowing out of a number of bulkheads. All the buildings outside the perimeter had been boarded up, but the mucks had been breaking their way in more and more lately.

From their roof, there wasn't any path back to a safe zone that didn't require them to climb back down. This was an option, if they only had to cross a street briefly, but he wasn't confident in his climbing skills. He continued to search for an alternative, but the only paths with jumps small enough for him to make all led out toward the harbor.

"Hey, there's someone over there!" Amberlin cried. He looked where she was pointing. On a distant rooftop, far outside the defensive perimeter, was a woman being pursued by mucks.

"We've got to help her," Amberlin said.

"We?" he said weakly.

"Leave your gittar behind. There's going to be some tricky jumps." He looked around for somewhere safe to stow it.

"Just tuck it behind those pots over there." Amberlin pointed.

"The mucks will stop trying to get up here once we're gone." He did as she commanded and then followed along, climbing from balcony to balcony and rooftop to rooftop. Some of the jumps were tricky, and he gained more than a few scrapes and bruises. But he didn't want to fall behind. What kept him going through the pain was the desire not to look bad in the epics that would later be sung about Amberlin. When they got close, Amberlin leaped into action, kicking the pursuing mucks off the rooftops.

The other woman came to a stop, and Remore saw that she was holding a cat, with another one by her heels.

"Boots!" Amberlin scooped up the second cat.

"What are you doing out here?" Glancing at the woman, she said to the cat, "Did you make a new friend?" The woman made Remore uneasy. With the horns and the tail, she clearly wasn't human, but there was something else about her. Her eyes felt like he was staring into a bottomless pit. And there was an odd lack of fear and urgency in her demeanor. You wouldn't have been able to tell, looking at her now, how close this woman had just come to being torn apart by mucks.

"Are you his current owner?" the woman asked Amberlin.

"Nobody owns Boots!" Amberlin replied.

"He chooses where he wants to be." The woman smiled.

"Isn't that right? My name's Ella."

"I'm Amberlin. This is Remore."

"Can we save the introductions for later?" He glanced around nervously. A couple of mucks had found their way back up onto the rooftops. Nothing that Amberlin couldn't handle, but he didn't want to stay out here longer than necessary.

"I know a way back," Ella said.

"I've been caught out here more than a few times after dark."

"Lead the way!" Amberlin said.

Rufus glanced nervously down Eltershay Avenue toward the inner perimeter wall that cut the habitable section of the road off from the first buffer zone. The soldiers assembled there were looking grim too. Even with their human ears, they should be able to hear as well as him the fighting over the wall. The shouting that was growing ever hoarser and the explosions creeping ever closer. Rhianna came out next to him.

"You should be resting. I'm the one on night duty."

"I'm worried about Ella," he said.

"She said she'd be searching down by the harbor districts today." He could see from Rhianna's eyes that she was worried too. There were also other little tells. The way she held her tail, and the twitchiness of her whiskers.

"You don't think she was still out that way when night fell?" Rhianna asked.

"Why else wouldn't she be back by now?" he replied.

"Should we go and look for her?" As much as he wanted to, if something happened to him and Rhianna, who would be left to look after the animals? Since Lorelark had been running out of strays to rescue, the two of them had decided to move their operation to Ygg Latten Bay after catching wind that the lockdown had to do with monster attacks. While they wouldn't be able to get the animals out until the lockdown ended, they could at least keep them safe until then. His mistake was letting Ella go out searching alone.

Her nose nowhere near as good as his, so how was she supposed to track down any strays? But his problem had been precisely that his nose was too good. The harbor districts were nauseating with the stench of death brought up from the sea by the mucks and lathered thickly everywhere like a nobleman's perfume. Seeing him hesitate, Rhianna ruffled the fur on his head. She was the only one allowed to do that.

"You worry too much. She's a sensible woman. I'm sure she's just busy tracking down a cat, and doing it in a secure sector." She was right, but he had many reasons to worry. He nodded toward the nearby watchtower.

"They pulled a couple of mages from there earlier to reinforce another sector. That might not seem like it should make much of a difference, but look how close the swarm is to reaching the final zone."

"Are you thinking of volunteering?" she asked. It would be a bad idea. He didn't want to get too close to the humans. Becoming too well known would make it hard to continue their work. But if the mucks broke through the inner perimeter, he would have no choice but to fight. He had a responsibility to the animals collected in the building behind him. He caught a whiff of something on the wind.

"Do you smell that?" Rhianna sniffed.

"It's Ella! But who's that with her?" For some reason, instead of approaching along the road, the group came down from the rooftops. Besides Ella, there were two cats and two humans. But one of those cats didn't smell right. The one with the tuxedo pattern had the stink of mucks all over it. But it was more than that. He had no time to think about it, as Ella was introducing her new companions.

Once he and Rhianna introduced themselves, the young lady named Amberlin said, "Since you guys know how to look after animals, I'll leave Boots in your care. I've got to return to the Eechipay District. They might have some trouble without me."

"Did you say the Eechipay District?" Rufus said.

"I imagine they're well reinforced by now, since they've been pulling troops from other sectors. Maybe a little too many—they've left the avenue a little underdefended." He pointed in the direction of the fighting.

"At this rate, the mucks will break through the inner perimeter. before sunup."

"So you guys are the ones who need my help?" Amberlin turned to the bard beside her.

"What do you think, Remore?" Before the young lad could answer, there came a loud clang from the defensive zone, suggesting that a gate had been breached, followed by a lot of frantic shouting.

"I don't think these guys will make it through the night without you," Remore replied.