It had been two weeks since they had arrived in the misty lands beyond Endaria’s border, yet there was still no sign of the Astar. During the trip across the land to get here, the five young cats had been quite exuberant, energetic and joyous. That was, apart from when Pounce had been swallowed by the worm, though their dulled mood from that event hadn’t lasted long once they left the swamps.
Over the past two weeks, Zalia, Ember and Boreal had been taking one or two of the kittens each out into the mist to look for clues pertaining to the whereabouts of the Astar. Four of the five had already developed passive abilities to see better in the mist, with none of the higher-ranked members of the group having acquired one yet. Throughout this time, Zalia had noticed a definite switch from the young cats to a more careful and reserved behaviour. Perhaps the attack by the worm had finally sunk in, or the strangeness and danger of their current surroundings had got to them but whatever it was, they had definitely been calmer, more alert and a lot quieter.
Each of the three had been teaching the young cats a different skill when with them. Boreal taught them how to sneak and how to fight, as she had the best knowledge when it came to both, especially when you took into account that the others wouldn’t even know where to start with how to fight as a cat. Zalia could have taught them stealth perhaps, but Boreal was just that little bit better.
Zalia taught them some of the finer points of hunting, though the skills were applicable in a much wider range of use cases. It might sound odd to the average person but she had to teach them how to see properly. Sure, they had quite perceptive eyes naturally, but being able to see something and actually seeing it were two different things. One required only sight, while the other required the right skills and mindset to process the information your eyes collected for you.
What that entailed was a proper introduction into tracking others, as well as seeing things from afar. She taught them to see the trails in the nature around them, how different materials from mud to dirt to grass to the plants around them showed that something had moved through. It also included trying to get them to see not only what they were looking at but to process what they saw in their peripheral vision.
This was just a start in the long process of training them, but it would hopefully yield results down the line. Many of them would most likely develop other types of perception as Zalia, Boreal and Aylie all had. When that happened, this process of learning would begin again, though quicker each time they would have to do it.
Ember taught them the most important lesson of all, compassion, mindfulness and empathy.
This might have been the hardest of all the lessons as well, as it didn’t exactly entail definites and easy-to-follow instructions. For the most part, she tried to get the young cats to think about their actions and the effects they had on others. This could range from something small, like how it made one of their siblings feel when they ganged up on them in a play-fight, to bigger things like ethical hunting.
When you go about the action of killing a creature for its meat or leather, you can do it in a brutal manner that puts the animal through a huge amount of suffering and fear before the end. You could also do it in a quick, efficient and instantly lethal manner that left the animal without the knowledge that it was even being hunted before it died.
Zalia herself had been a culprit of the former more than a few times and sometimes it was hard to avoid such things. What Ember tried to teach them was to be mindful of their actions and to treat others in the way they wanted to be treated back. Of course, these were lifelong lessons that Zalia, Ember and Boreal were all still in the process of learning and most likely always would be as well.
While they were all doing their own things, Aylie was focusing on her way of seeing the world.
She found the mist to be strange, unnatural. Zalia agreed with her on this, as the mist had not faded since their arrival there, ever-present and too thick to see far in. she was most interested in the strange amorphous mist creatures that lived within as while they showed no visible rank or aura, they were an extremely strong presence in the astral.
Most of the time, Aylie resided on top of an old tree stump, shaped into a comfortable seat by Zalia. There, she tried to make contact with the mist creatures, hopeful that if she was successful, they could provide some information as to where the Astar lived. It wasn’t a bad idea and Zalia encouraged her to continue the efforts.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Today, Zalia was going to teach Prance and Pounce a little about how to observe creatures from a distance.
She pushed through the undergrowth with Prance and Pounce by her side, emerging out the top of the blanket of mist and making her way up the mountainside. Pounce was quite formidable in her stealth for her rank, better than Boreal had been at that age, while Prance was still inept at it, managing to trip over or bump into what seemed like every stick, twig and trunk in the forest. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t getting better, as she was, but she had a long way to go to reach Pounce’s skill, let alone Boreals.
They made their way up as high as Zalia risked, a light touch of snow here and there amongst the rocks, boulders and grass of the higher mountain. She found a nice covert spot between two particularly big boulders that offered shade and a good hiding place. There, they waited, observing the mist down below.
Zalia was learning from this experience too, the Silver rank Teaching passive especially useful. By attempting to teach the young cats how to see into and within the mist, she was learning the best ways to go about it herself.
Over the next few hours in their spot amongst the boulders, Zalia managed to spot three of the mist creatures as they made slight disturbances within the mist in their wanderings, while Pounce and Prance both spotted one each. Unfortunately, they saw no Astar. Zalia held back the frustration, knowing that with time, they would find something.
They left their spot there, travelling further out from the little clearing they currently called home. Each day, they tried to range out further and further in hopes of stumbling across something. The one place they hadn’t gone very far towards was into the mountains. Zalia wanted to go there eventually with her flight powers but thought it could wait for a bit. For now, there was much space to cover at the base of the mountain and if she wanted to place a hidden outpost to launch stealth assaults against Endaria, this is where she would put it. Of course, the Astar might not follow any kind of logic that was similar, seeing as they were quite proficient with teleportation abilities.
It was there, a few hour's walk away from the clearing and far up the mountain that they saw their first hint of the Astar. Well, something more than a hint, really.
Out of the mist, a solitary figure hovered upwards. It hung there for a moment, long braided hair reaching down to its feet, as a circle of runes appeared beneath it, activating a moment later. The Astar vanished in a brief flash, moving instantly across the world.
Meanwhile, Zalia, Pounce and Prance were frozen where they stood, thankfully having gone unseen.
With a gesture, Zalia and the two cats moved away from where they were and back a bit to a safer location.
She thought for a moment on what to do. On one hand, she wanted to go down there and scout out where the Astar had come from immediately. On the other, she didn’t want to do so with the cats following her, nor did she want to send them back to the clearing on their own. While they were out here, the cats had to stay with one of the higher-ranked amongst them at all times.
With a start, Zalia realised she should be able to teleport the little ones out of there. She worked quickly, crafting a ritual circle much larger than usual. The ritual targeted the living one back in the clearing, using the same keyrune as that did. She knew instinctively that it would work, though the time required was quite significant.
It took half an hour for the materials to be created and then the mana to be pushed into the ritual but once it was done, the entire thing activated with a flash, sending the cats back to the clearing. She had explained what she would be doing to the young ones at the same time she had told Ember through their bond. Her return point for the long-distance teleportation ability of Mobility was set to the clearing which meant that even if the others were here, it would be safer for her to scout out whatever was down there on her own anyway.
Zalia crept down the mountain and back into the mist, relying on the vibration perception to make her way through it toward where the Astar had risen from. Quicker now that she was alone, Zalia reached it within ten minutes, finding a lot more than she expected.
There was some kind of invisible barrier in the mist that held it back, though the mist collected atop it creating a squat cylinder of clear space within the mist. In that space, sat what she had been looking for.
The Astar outpost she had expected turned out to be a town instead.
There were many squat buildings throughout the space, all of them shaped in that strange geometrical way that the keep she had been imprisoned in had been.
As she watched from out of the very edge of the mist, Zalia saw not only Astar moving through the town but humans as well. Each and every one of them was miserable, shackled at the ankles and wearing power-subduing bracelets. The Astar weren’t killing off the high-rank humans, they were using them as slaves.