The All black cat glared down its nose towards the stumbling orange tabby, as it staggard about haphazardly around the room. Toppling over occasionally and making slightly sickened mewing sounds, before righting itself and trotting away.
Darwin made a note of its condition before returning to his other task, rummaging through the closets and cupboards of the house again.
He found a string toy that seemed useful at first, then discarded. Next he found that phosphorus rat poison again and tiptoed it into his makeshift lair. He had plans for it that would come later. For now, he set back out to find a cup. Drinking the same water as animals disturbed him and he wouldn't put up with it any longer. He would drink from his own cup, damn it, not a trough like a horse.
That took a little longer to scrounge up, but it pleased him to have a full cup of sloshing water, dark cool liquid all to his own, sitting next to his stolen candle wax scribe board. His alone pried away from the world to be his. It soothed him to no end and in a way that felt like a drifting sailor, glimpsing a lighthouse at long last in a dire storm.
Filling it would be a problem for him to solve later. For now, the cup was enough to satisfy him.
He poked his head out to see if he could find the subject of his current scheme, the cat that had poked it's rude nose into his business, and had been exposed to his Evil Eye charm. Now Darwin was amusing himself by counting down how long it took for the thing to die.
In the meantime, he was rummaging through everything once more, looking for items of use. At first glance, he'd incorrectly assumed the woman was an inept the possessed no useful materials. He was wrong; He found many useful items, utensils, ingredients, large pans, and even a few small magic charms to keep vermin out of the cupboards, which he planned to scrap for useful parts.
The only place he hadn't searched was the ogress bedroom. A shudder passed through him as he considered even approaching the door, closed and looming in its corner just off the forward room. Giving the entire wretched tilting house a kind of "U" shape.
Anything living here had to be more than just 'around the bend.' Even the house was a crooked mess, like a snake's den, twisting and turning, filled with evil beasts.
Either way, he'd searched everywhere else, and this was the only room left open, and likely hiding some jewel or treasure that could be useful to him. But he'd feel better if he thinned the heard a little beforehand. These creatures were rubbing all over him when trying to search the other rooms, distracting him as he worked. He could only imagine what the punishments would be if they discovered him skulking about the bed chambers.
Her heavy hand reaching for him, enclosed by her arms, the image of helplessness. He shuddered to think about it. Their confrontation would come when he was ready, and empowered by the resurrection of his dark magic's. It would be child's play to mark the house with some evil sign or lines of detrimental madness, but he didn't yet have the means to enforce such powers on this household.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Thought at his current power, it might just eliminate all the cats at the very least. He could live with that.
On that note, he felt like chasing down his recent victim and check in on their condition. He needed an accurate gauge of potency, and since the average weight of a cat is about five pounds, it would give him a crude approximation for his current upper level of power.
Though in brutal honesty, it likely was lower than that of the lowest class of mage. But even that should be enough to kill a simple cat, provided it didn't take too long.
It took him a moment to locate the hairy thing, but when he did, the creature was curled up and hurling into the litter box.
Darwin made a note of its condition, panting, vomit with slight blood flecking and looked to be in a fair amount of pain. Normal for this spell, but nothing to suggest that it was dying. In fact, at this rate, the cat would live, and he would need to try a different configuration.
As of now, it appeared to be attacking the creature's blood flow or lungs. Darwin considered nudging it into releasing a fever or something closer to the sweats, like it would normally do for a human host, but decided against it. He wasn't as well versed in feline or animal anatomy as he was in Human anatomy. Had this been a human target, he could have them writhing in agony and swearing their feeble allegiances to him within a few torturous hours.
The enfeeble cat then twitched and something was expelled from it's backside. He leapt back and let out an involuntary hiss, as his nose crinkled at the sight of the parasitic worms flee their host's body.
The flat white tangle devils writhed for a moment, then died screeching amidst a pile of excrement and piss. The cat gave a mournful sound, then passed out. Darwin looked on in abject horror.
Parasites, the stupid thing had allowed itself to be taken over by bleeding white parasites, nibbling on it's living entrails. IF he hadn't-
"No, you stupid Cat, don't you dare-"
The cat purred in it's sleep, very much alive and, though he might have imagined, Smiling.
"Damn YOu Stoopid Animals!" Darwin tried to scream, but only got so far and screeching and wailing like a cat, instead of cussing aloud like the Man he thought himself.
His precious power, his vaunted magic, wasted on the bowel feeding scum living insides the most despicable creature imaginable. The Bolt of Pneuma designed specifically to kill anything that entered his lair, in slow and painful fashion, only for the force of his rage, to be absorbed by a shit-eating worm, living inside a filthy alley whore cat.
The painful spasms and blood, wasn't the cat dying from his magic, it was damages accrued from the Worms slowly dying inside the creature and damaging the surrounding tissues.
This wretch survived certain death, with nothing more than a nasty cough and severe stomach pain, and literally shit out all his hard work onto the floor, alongside the dead vagrants that once occupied it's deepest bowels.
There is no justice in the universe, and God is Jester, mocking all who catch sight of him.
Truly, this is the true purpose of the universe, to mock him and all his efforts to break free of its suffocating coddling embrace of mediocrity. Damn Everything and Damn those stupid devil whoring worms, stopping him from killing a lazy dumb Cat.
Darwin was angry enough to kill the cat right there.
But first he was going to throw up after watching the nightmare of all three and a half feet of tape worm exploding out a cat's ass. And then never eat ever again.