Fully healed from my wounds I redoubled my efforts at cultivation. Warm and comfortable in front of the fire, I was now great friends with the spirits who made their home in my hearth. Twisty, twirly, merry spirits, their hot, happy fire qi soon helped me unlock a second meridian, and then a third.

The second meridian governed my small intestine. It ran from the tips of my paws up the lower back of my front legs, behind my shoulder then up the side to my neck, past my whiskers to end in front of my ear. The path was well-known to me now. I travelled it with each full cycle of cultivation, many times a day, the fire energy burning along till I felt like I was glowing. Maybe my insides were glowing.

I chased the qi along, warm, intense vitality burning through the blockages. The heat stung but it was not unpleasant, I knew it was scouring me clean. When it was done I felt instantly renewed and ready to take on whatever nasty things might come lurking in my house. I stretched out my beautifully clean legs in satisfaction, flexing my toes apart.

Apart from the increased energy that each meridian seemed to grant, the specific benefits of clearing this meridian were not immediately apparent. It was mid month, so I was not able to ask Montadie. I observed myself carefully, determined to figure it out by myself.

Over the next few days I realised that I was now better able to regulate the heat of my body. It was a small, but significant improvement. I was warmer for longer on colder days, likewise it took a lot more to overheat my body. I cooled off faster when my muscles were hard pressed, which meant I could train myself for just that much longer, and push that much harder. This was all very useful.

I was excited to see how else my body would change, and I spent some of my daydreams imagining the future improvements I would unlock. What would I be able to do? I encountered only a single, brief disappointment, at my next session with Montadie, on learning that there was no meridian that governed the ability of flight.

“That is …quite the ambition,” the monster toad rasped, looking down at me with some consternation, “but flight, or something like it, is not impossible in the later stages of cultivation. The ability to make more intentioned changes to your body will come with the mastery of qi. But you must have patience. This takes time. Much time, much patience. Pace yourself, Jenkins.”

She could tell from my face that I was disappointed with this answer so the great moon-toad sighed and told me more about cultivated body changes. I knew I was being placated but I still appreciated the information.

“Most chose things like…growth.” She flexed an enormous limb in a pleased fashion. The ground quivered a little. “Growing larger is a common aim, especially amongst the smaller creatures- ahem - there is a sect in the hills where the majority of students are insects. While small is stealthy and has advantages, of course there are limitations. Big can be beautiful!” More flexing. “At some point I’m sure we will meet them in tournament and you will have the pleasure of fighting a ladybug the size of Skol, or a woodlouse the size of a horse.”

Montadie eyed me balefully.

“Well perhaps not just yet. Anyway, with qi manipulations there are many skills and abilities you can learn, according to your personal strengths and natural compatibilities. Your strongest affinity will usually manifest your first, and related skill. Ule, for example, has a darkness affinity. His first skill was the ability to wrap himself in shadows. Hangbelly has a metal affinity, and she can coat herself with poison.” I made a mental note to keep my distance from the toad girls. Even more than I was already. “Moonsap feels kinship with the lunar cycle in particular,” continued Montadie. “She can fashion a blade out of moonlight that is sharp enough to cut flesh.

“Some of these skills are born out of thought, out of time and mastery. Used to shore up existing weaknesses. Others are born out of stress and need, created quickly and unexpectedly in times of danger. These ones tend to be more unexpected. If you have your heart set on flying it can be done, at some point but I’m not sure I would recommend wings for a feline. For example-”

I stopped listening after that, my head full of visions of flying me.

That was all the information I needed. I would fly one day. I simply need to be patient and I could happily daydream about my inevitable mastery of the air! Perhaps I would manifest golden wings of sunlight?

Fully healed now, I soon got back to my gruelling training regiment. Idle dreams were fine but they would not help me unlock my third meridian, or help me achieve mental stillness in combat. Fortunately, after clearing the second meridian, I made quick work towards the next. Mama had warned me that my progress would slow after the passing of summer, but right now the days were warm and bright, and sunlight and cat-mint were plentiful.

Life was good.

I basked in the garden, cultivating up a storm, and soon I was rewarded with a rush of power. This meridian governed my liver. While I had eaten quite a few livers in my time, (mostly small, rodent-y livers, and quite a few rabbit ones) I did not really know what the point of them was - only that they were tasty.

“The liver clears wastes and toxins in your blood,” beamed Montadie, on hearing the news at my next full moon class. “Opening this meridian will aid you greatly on your cultivation journey. Clearing your liver meridian makes you less prone to illness in general, especially that borne through the air, or infection. It will also help you absorb and digest food better.”

That all sounded fine.

I was quite pleased with myself and endured the jealous admiration of my fellow students with good grace. Meanwhile my classmates were making their own advancements, albeit at a naturally slower pace. Adders had opened his first meridian, as well as Wuot and Lavellan. Skol was lagging behind but I was not surprised since he was mostly dog.

While I was pleased to learn the benefits of a well functioning liver, I preferred improvements that I could actually feel in my body. Or improvements that I could quantify with physical performance. Fortunately, as well as adding fuel to my growing cultivation engine, I discovered that my eyesight was now much improved. I could now see further than ever before, and in more detail. Every barb of the feathers of every flyer, every twitch of a squeaker, come day or night, all I could see in great clarity.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

At home there was no further sign of Awakened rats, or anyone else Awakened at all, even though I kept up a careful watch. Further out in the forest I did encounter a sinister thing: an unnatural tree, a single, slender ash standing alone in a copse, and south of the marsh. Well, it used to be an ash.

En route to my lessons, the night was suitably stormy and wild. Already concerned that I would not have enough moonlight to cultivate with, I had been trotting through the gusty forest with my head full of thoughts. The stink of the marsh was already filling my nostrils, when the hair on my back started to rise, alerting me to something… not right, before my eyes and brain had a chance to catch up. What was it?

I looked around and found the source of my unease. The dead ash rose from the ground like a brittle, accusing finger. The ground around it was slick and dark with rot. The smell made me sneeze and the air tasted foul. Oily. Everything around it had died also. It had died. But… it was not just a dead tree, I had seen those many times. There was a nice dead tree lying on its side not that far from my cottage. It was a good place to nap, the brittle wood warmer than that of a living tree.

This one was nothing like that. Here there was something wrong, although I was too young to understand what, exactly. I just knew it was wrong.

Whiskers quivering, I crept closer.

No sign of life. No birds, no bugs, no squirrels. The normally pale trunk was dark as soot, bare, creaking branches reaching up to the sky. The wind moved through them with a mournful groan.

Born in the spring, I had never seen a tree without leaves.

I knew about winter trees. Hypothetically. The others had told me about them. If winter looked like this then I made up my mind right then that I did not like it. I was a child of the sun, of life, of warmth. The woods around the dead tree were green and fresh, filled with the busy rustling of creatures and Small Folk going about their nightly business. Here there was only silence.

Had I unwittingly found the rat’s nest?

I watched and watched with my newly sharpened eyes, but nothing came in or out of the hollow roots. Nothing approached. No birds sat on its branches, no insects buzzed at its base. In the end I went right up to it, heart pounding in my chest. I shoved my face into the darkness. Nothing was there but foul smells.

The trunk was brittle on the outside but coated with some strange slime on the inside. I hurriedly removed my nose from the small hollow. It was just a strange dead tree in the middle of the singing green forest. Harmless.

I waited one more minute, ridiculously afraid that the moment I turned my back something foul would rush out from the darkness and fasten its teeth onto my body. It did not. Nothing came. Nothing moved.

Just in case, I galloped the rest of the way to the glade as fast as I could.

On my arrival, I immediately told Montadie about the uncanny tree, speaking into the silence of the glade. I took the opportunity to tell them of the rats too, having recognised the stench. Not even the mean toad girls said anything, their warty faces serious.

“They smelled the same?” rasped Montadie.

“They did.”

“Show me.”

The entire sect trooped through the forest in a fashion that would have pleased me merrily if I had not been so spooked. This was the first time I had ever seen Montadie away from her glade. Watching her move through the forest was quite a treat. Every jump propelled her high into the air, her spongy, toad head appearing briefly above the canopy (to the consternation of the local bird population). She landed with controlled lightness, and yet, still, every impact rattled the forest floor. For all her size not a single twig was snapped, nor a single trunk had broken. Montadie’s control of her enormous body was absolute.

The rest of us followed in a motley train, flying, running, bounding and slithering, as suited each of us best.

We soon arrived, and there, under the scudding clouds, my master set the tree ablaze with a fearsome plume of fire. We all backed away from the heat of it. My heart felt better as it started to burn.

“What is it though?” I demanded, while the rest watched in silence.

The moon-toad shook her head. “A sickness,” she said. “Something that should not be here.”

She moved to poke at the blighted soil but stopped short of touching it.

“This here is not a healthy rot. It is not natural. See how nothing grows?”

We all leaned in closer. Even me, who had seen it before. Skol sneezed, and then threw down his head, scraping at his long snout. The ash continued to burn, reflected orange in Montadie’ globe-like, bulbous eyes. It gave her eyeballs themselves, the appearance of being alight.

“Normal rot is the decomposition of living matter that births new energies from its death throes. The natural cycle. Life in waiting. This - this is blight.” She sniffed, the massive slits of her nostrils quivering. “This reeks of Old God and demonic cultivation.”

“Demonic cultivators?” squealed the mean toad girls.

“Yes,” said Montadie, grimly. “We had all best take precautions.”

“Old God?” I asked. My mind had flown immediately flew to my Maud’s altar in the garden, where she had a small wooden statue of her goddess and various other trinkets. That place smelled…extra earthy, like pollen on a hot summer day. Flowers and honey and mead. Rich earth and petrichor after the rain. It smelt nothing like this.

“Old God,” said Montadie, grimly. “Someone did this. Some foolish two-legger messing with things they do not understand most likely. When the soul of a living thing is taken, and its qi consumed, this is the result.”

The remains of the dead tree collapsed with a soft whoosh, into a pile of dust and ash.

“Tell me if you find another,” said Montadie. “Immediately. All of you. And remember this can be done to more than trees.”

We all nodded, solemnly.

Perhaps it had not been a good idea to stick my face in the hollow.

We trooped back to the glade in thoughtful silence.

Montadie’s talk of Old Gods and demonic cultivators was disquieting. I did not think the rats had anything to do with the divine. They had been squishy and vile, but…they were still squeakers? At the bottom of the food chain. But then the only god I knew personally was the Small God who lived on top of the round hill to the north and walked around pretending to be a tree. He was quite boring. And River. Maybe. I wasn’t sure if River was a Small God or just a big wet spirit, I didn’t want to think about her too much.

I presumed Old Gods did different things. They were probably bigger, and more powerful. Still, why would an Old God want to kill a random tree in the middle of my forest? It made no sense. It was such an odd thing to do. Perhaps the old god hated trees? Perhaps they made him sneeze like when I accidentally put my nose in a bowl of Maud’s ground pepper.

Back at the glade we continued our lessons with what remained of the night.