YOU HAVE DIED

Fang stared at the box in disbelief. He was right here, he was perfectly fine. Apart from being weightless, that is. He was twisting around in the air as he tried to anticipate his eventual landing, but the ground didn't rush up to meet him. No, it stayed right where it was, splattered with burning pumpkin chunks, and one limp black cat body. Clearly not his. He was up here after all; how could that be his body?

Fang looked around as he tumbled and twisted in place. That was a mistake. As he looked toward the center of the room, something looked back. Floating over the shattered pillar in the middle of the room was a face made of flames. Its baleful eyes were fixed on the fractured wall hiding the squad, and its jagged mouth was turned down into a frown. "A shame, the main course survived. But," its focus turned toward Fang, "At least I still have my snack."

A slim tongue of flame slithered away from the fiery maw like a snake, sliding around Fang's flailing, airborne form. It singed everything it touched, charring fur into smoke, then plasma, and scalding the skin beneath. It moved so quickly that Fang hardly had time to react, and by the time he even thought to attempt escape, the ribbon of fire was already flying back towards the face. It slipped into the inferno and the jagged gash into the heart of the sun curled upwards as the being began to chuckle, sparks popping in the corners of its eyes. It spoke again, this time in words that somehow formed coherent thoughts in Fang's incorporeal kitty brain. "Oh my, what an interesting creature you are. Wherever did you steal that spark from? You certainly didn't have when you first entered my sight," it chortled, giggling to itself as it continued, "And a dimension traveler as well, at such a low level. You 'cats' are certainly an interesting species."

The being seemed positive and at least vaguely respectful, so Fang decided to put his misgivings about the flaming entity aside for the moment. He calmed his squirming, doing his best to calmly and disdainful ignore the roaring bonfire in the middle of the room. A slow revolution through the air took his eyes off of Jack for a few seconds. He was instead treated to a view of the floor, where his pets were breaking through the somehow ephemeral wall Angela had erected.

Lillian was the first one through, looking for something. The others followed close behind, but they all seemed somehow muted. Everything seemed muted in fact. The colors of the splattered pumpkin were grey, the blood splatter on the wall seemed black and dried, even the flashy Alex barely made his eyes ache. They all seemed blissfully unaware of the massive floating demon face in the room. Come to think of it, they seemed to be ignoring him as well!

Just as this thought popped into Fang's mind, it was slapped right back out as he rotated far enough to bring Jack back into his peripheral vision. The face had drifted closer, and its burning eyes almost crossed as they looked down on him. A tongue of flame ran along the edges of its mouth, far too irregular and jagged to be called lips, then slithered out towards Fang. "Come along now snack. I have places to go, puffed up puppeteers to torment."

Fang did not like the tone nearly so much now, and snack was not a term he believed should ever apply to him. More importantly, that tongue looked bigger than the little ribbon which had tasted him before. That had hurt quite enough, thank you very much. It still did hurt actually. Fang blinked down away from the fire just as it reached him, and frustratedly began paddling in the air to attempt to move towards his healing pet. After another moment's futile flailing, he turned on his Dimensionless Stride skill and suddenly shot forward, nearly smacking into the ground this time.

The face twisted and the eyes tracked him. "Not quite as helpless as the average wisp either," the face laughed, "Run, run little cat," it singsonged with the timbre of hissing water escaping a log. Another tongue of flame split off from the mouth and flickered through the air towards Fang's tumbling form, "or we'll see what shadows your pain casts as your soul burns away." Fang paddled at the air for a moment as the fiery snakes drew closer, then activated his skill again and raced off into the air.

Fang did not like fire. Or more accurately, fire did not like Fang. More than once he'd had his tail lit up by a stray spark when he let his tail stray too close to a nice warm fireplace. Then there had been the way he lost his third home. Since he had chased down that rabbit, things had gotten even worse, with first that fox, then the pumpkin, and now this thing all trying to burn him. Fang was starting to think that the warmth he got from fire wasn't worth the risk. He raced around the room, the streamers of flame hot on his heels, sometimes separating to flank him, or joining together into a larger stream of incineration. Some small part of Fang's mind pulled him to attack the flames whenever the snakes wiggled in a particularly enticing way, but a much larger portion of him screamed that fire was something to run away from.

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He dodged and juked and twisted out of the way of the fire, even after a third stream of fire split off from Jack's mouth and joined the chase. Things were getting hairy for Fang though, and the flames hounding him occasionally came close enough to sear a patch from his fur before he dashed or blinked out of the way. Suddenly, a fourth party joined the chase.

Lillian Souris has healed your body and is attempting to revive you. Would you like to heed the call and reunite your soul and body?

Accept

Refuse

Fang didn't hesitate, he immediately pressed the button. He didn't need to understand the words to know that the window expected him to press the left button, so there was no doubt in his mind as he hit Refuse.

A fourth ribbon of fire joined the hunt, quickly followed by a fifth as some of the mirth drained from the flaming face's eyes. Fang was forced to dodge faster and faster, spending more sunlight on blinks as the threats multiplied. Jack's will-o-wisp eyes looked around the room and focused in on Lillian's ephemeral image. She was kneeling over the small fuzzy thing that was definitely not Fang, and she was pushing an inordinate amount of glowing white mana into it. "Well well, Revitalize at her level. It's rare to see that sort of commitment in one so young. Even rarer to see a soul refuse. Do you wish to die little cat? Or are your self-preservation instincts simply that poor?"

Fang was too busy to notice most of the exchange. Though dodging took most of his attention, the words on that blue box still began to percolate through his brain, and he did not much like what they implied. Not being alive was bad, and not having his body was worse. His body was the pinnacle of hunting perfection, and something dared to separate him from it? Unacceptable! As he continued to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge, he realized something else. Something to do with his familiar was able to solve all of those problems, and yet the blue box had tricked him into refusing by practically ordering him to accept! He mentally added the blue boxes back onto his list below the red ones, and while he was at it, he added FIRE as feline enemy number one.

Feline enemy number one was insulting him, but its crimes were bad enough already, so he couldn't really get any more angry at it, and he simply started to dodge more in the direction of his familiar, supposedly the solution to his problems. The ribbons of flame teamed up to herd him away from his goal, but strands of white mana began reaching up from what he now definitely recognized as his body. They lifted away from his oversaturated body and waved around the room, but Fang couldn't get away from the flames long enough to chase one down. In fact, he couldn't get away from the flames at all. Even when he tried to blink past them, they were somehow ready for his reappearance and went right back to herding him up against the wall.

He was rapidly running out of room to maneuver, with his tail touching and even phasing slightly through the rock. He tried dashing away through the rock, but past a few inches in he was violently ejected, and one of the flames wrapped around his leg in the moments before he could reorient himself enough to blink away. The burnt leg slowed him, but the flames must have been getting tired too, as they slowed down just a touch too. They scored more glancing touches on him, but somehow they never wrapped around him long enough to do serious damage.

At some point, the face had started laughing again, but that abruptly stopped as Fang felt something pull tight. Not quite in the way of that one particularly foolish pet that had tried to walk him with a harness, but he felt a similar feeling in the same way he felt his blue-box-paw. "Oh? It seems the young one has talent to match her decisiveness." The tightness seemed to form an intangible strand leading straight back to not his body, but his familiar. White light was racing up it, directly towards Fang. "I don't suppose you'll refuse again? It's been so long since I had such an entertaining snack."

The light reached Fang, and another box appeared.

Your trusted familiar, Lillian Souris, has healed your body and is attempting to revive you. Would you like to heed the call and reunite your soul and body?

Accept

Refuse

With that kind of emphasis demanding he accept, Fang very nearly hit Refuse on reflex. But he managed to fight down the urge; the box didn't decide what he did, not even with reverse psychology. He hit Accept, and the light flowed along the last inch of the strand.

In the instants before it connected, a tongue of flame whipped out from the face once more, this time so fast that it seemed like the other flaming serpents had been standing still. It darted to Fang's tail before he could so much as twitch, and seared into the tip just as the light flowed into him. The light flowed through him and resolved into a glowing nimbus, extinguishing the flame but leaving the badly charred ring. The pulling that had been faint before started physically reeling him in as Jack watched on.

The burning face curled into its typical mirthful grin, and said, "Goodbye for now little Cat. I look forward to seeing how your taste develops by the next time we meet."

Then, Fang was pulled into his body, and his consciousness dissolved into pleasant sunshine.