The meal was beef gravy this time, flecked with Targon and garlic. He was beating off the others to gulp down as much of it as possible. All it was missing was a bit of salt and pepper.
He tried to shove aside another black cat, bigger than he was, but wider and most surely not muscular. But the heft of the creature proved to be a greater obstacle than he thought, and a weapon his opponent knew how to use well. As the black creature ended up knocking Darwin away and then sat on him.
After the meal, he removed himself, and Darwin spat fur from his mouth in horrified disgust. Pulling himself back to his hidden cupboard space.
"This cannot go on. I'll lose my sanity within the day if this continues. I must find something to support my Evil Eye power before these animals become the death of me." he growled.
But he still needed something. He would have to search the other rooms of the house in order to find it. There were two other rooms, as far as he could tell, the front room and the witch's bedroom, right next to the kitchen. Presumably, the bath wasn't far beyond it. He couldn't imagine any sane person letting that thing bathe in a fountain.
Searching through the closed cabinets and drawers of the kitchen once again yielded similar results, though he found a rusty old parting knife in the very back. If properly cleaned, it might be useful.
In the back, next to the litter box, he found a can of phosphor rat poison he'd missed before. An interesting addition, he thought about painting with it. But then he would need a brush and something to act as canvas. A commodity he was already searching for, so unless he found a few old rags to use instead, he would have to keep searching. But it was a promising alternative.
Phosphor had a unique glow to in dark places, and Pneuma could fan this volatile substance into fuel for a mighty reagent, but perhaps not in this state. Still, leaving glowing marks on the wall to surprise his enemies was a tantalizing idea, but the point of the Evil Eye was subtlety, not theatrics.
The Living room proved more promising, the gathering cloud of the hairy horror's tried to chase him off, but he stole away one of the cheap tin candle holders, with a burnt stub off a candle trapped inside a puddle of itself, like a cup of pure ivory milk, frozen at the moment of the last drop hitting the surface, and at a canted angle.
Back in his makeshift lair in the broom closet, he adapted his previous attempts to render out the Evil Eye, onto the door frame, to act as a deterrent to any of the flea bags that might try to follow him in. Now he could fondle his prize. This was what he was looking for, the sunken sad remnants of last night's illumination, languished in front of him, his milky prize and soon to be a tool in a meteoric rise in power for one coal black mastermind.
He curled his Pneuma around it, holding it there till the wax softened like butter under the rays of the sun.His claws could easily carve such a supple substance, and then allow it to harden into place. Forming complete circles for him to experiment with, as for more permanent use, that can of poison gave him ideas, but that didn't seem fitting. Besides, he wasn't about to risk poisoning himself by mistake.
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He required a different pigment to paint his colors with, something not so easily given away.
The door creaked a little as Darwin turned to find the disturbance, blasting his pneuma into the arcane sigil etched into the door frame. Feeling it twist and lunge as the intruder was suddenly at the mercy of the contorted vortex of force permeating its body and commanding a terrible change.
Darwin watched as the interloper staggered for a moment, then righted itself and stumbled off to annoy someone else for a while. He tch'ed to himself, this weaker Pneuma would take longer to permeate than if it had been-
A dull thump of the creature falling over in a grim death as its body turned over in grips of a wretched flux. The Power of the Evil Eye manifested as the beast's delicate regulatory organs suddenly spun out of control and inflicted a brief but potent illness.
Darwin smiled slightly to himself. In his haste, he might have put it on a bit strong. The Evil Eye didn't need too much power to operate. But the satisfaction of there being one less potential distraction in the world did soothe him greatly, and his rage quelled a little watching it drop.
No one would notice a dead cat, especially if he dropped it in the street.
The Hag would probably find it first. Maybe she'd scream. He grimaced. Screaming would be bad, he'd have to move it. If only to spare himself the sound of that banshee's wail.
Speaking of the terrible creature, where was she, anyway? Not that he cared, he just didn't want to be seen hiding a body, and there weren't any convenient culverts to drop this thing into and pretend it never happened. And If she spotted him, he was liable to becoming the next victim.
Not that he didn't secretly believe she kept these cats around to eat them later, like a pagan. Disgusting, he'd heard of people in the farther east eating dogs, confusingly enough they also held a taboo about them. damn heathens. Couldn't make up their minds.
But that still left him with a conspicuous Body to deal with, and no clue on how to conceal it without dragging it across the whole house.
If he could unravel the mysteries of human combustion, that would make this somewhat easier. He'd only have to conceal the feet and just sweep away the ashes. But that secret vanished at the Baleful Poet's execution, along with half a dozen other petty wizard kings.
Bastards were only jealous, that's all, couldn't stand the thought of someone being more powerful than them. So they banded together and kill them, with the Church covering them to take control of the wretched populace once they were done.
Augh, Darwin shook himself. He was getting distracted. He still had to conceal this body. And where was the hag, anyway? Did she go out, if so, to do what? and why?
Darwin supposed she had a job somewhere in the city. Feeding this many gnawing little mouths must cost a few gildings, at least six or five. Bet he could find more on the floors of some restaurants he was robbing before being taken here. Only reason to print coin so small was so the poor had something to hoard to themselves, damned rich men making a mockery of him.
The body of the fallen feline stirred slightly. Darwin lept back, ready to deliver another charge, then watched in horror as the creature yawned, then marched off like nothing had happened.
Darwin sighed and frowned at the same time. On one hand, he no longer needed to hide the body. On the other, the cat had failed to die. But if he did everything correctly that wouldn't matter and all he need do is wait and watch.
Words from the past unbidden made his lip curl in disgust, something from his brief formal schooling. Leave nothing unfinished, the only lesson he ever learned from Father Bryon in that stuffy chapel library, that and don't leave food out where rats can find it. He'd learned that one the hard way.
Darwin decided he would teach a slightly different lesson to these churlish cats, never interrupt a warlock while he's working. You might just become the next experiment.