The first discovery was a two-legger dwelling that felt strangely familiar - strangely, compellingly, bizarrely familiar. It tugged on my memories, but I could not place it. The structure looked quite unlike my cottage. Made of stone, it sat amidst an orchard at the edge of the forest. Red apples hung from the trees. There were fields on the other side, and a pair of donkeys tethered in a small stable.

I blinked and sat on my rump, inhaling deeply familiar, unsettling scents.

Staring, I tried to process what I was seeing, around the racing of my heart, the quickening of my veins. I knew this place. I knew it. How did I know it when I had never been this way before?

It hit me in a rush. My eyes had hardly been open, but somehow I knew…I had been born in that stable. This was the home of the murder-man, the horrible, booming, shouting two-legger who had tried to drown us. Who had drowned us.

I rushed inside, fully expecting Mama to be within, waiting for me with a purr and a cuddle.

There was no one there but the donkeys.

“Where is the cat that used to live here?” I demanded.

The pair looked at me with dull, confused eyes.

One of them tried to take a nibble of my ears. But there was no sign of Mama. I called her, but she did not answer. The old panic gripped me and I crushed it down mercilessly. I was a cultivator, not a helpless mewling kit. Perhaps in the house?

The thought filled me with deep unease. I was afraid of that house.

As I looked up at that small stone house surrounded by apple trees the front door opened.

I knew terror.

A booming figure emerged, square shouldered, bellowing behind him as he walked. The murder-man himself. The figure that still haunted my nightmares. I shrank into the hay, pressing myself into the shadows as he passed by.

He disappeared down the narrow lane without even glancing my way, and I got a hold of myself. He was not as big as I remembered. He had no sack in his hands. I was alive, ALIVE, I was not drowned. But was I big enough to kill him? I was not sure.

I waited a while to make sure he was gone, then slipped inside the house through an open shutter. A smaller, female two-legged giant was cooking over a stove. She did not notice me, and I was able to search without her interference. She too was familiar.

My memories of her were hazy but not cruel. I did not hate her. Well, maybe a little bit, but mostly because she had not stopped him. I remember she had tried. That counted for something. I remembered the shouts, the smells, the fear- All of it pounding through my head in a cacophony of remembrance.

Just being here was almost more than I could bear, and I crouched under a cupboard hyperventilating for a few minutes. Mental stillness. Breathing, in, out, in.

But there was no Mama.

She must have left after he tried to kill us. It made sense. Why would she stay in such a place? I knew she was okay. I knew she was alive, she spoke to me in my dreams, but where was she?

I finished searching.

Sure she was not there, I left, but not before I peed on the murder-man’s bedding, and on as much of the rest of the house as my bladder would allow. I also stole a string of sausages from an unattended hook, and dug up all the flowers in their window boxes, leaving them wilting and rootless under the sun.

Small revenge, for now, but I left feeling lighter.

I would be back, and I would drink plenty before I came. Now I knew where he lived, I vowed that no more kittens would go into the water by his hands. Of that I would make sure. I might not be big enough to kill him yet but I could certainly make his life uncomfortable.

My second discovery was that my two tabby siblings were living only a short distance away, in the nearby two-legger village. I found out when they turned up for classes with Wuot, at the rising of the very next full moon.

As the giant grey goose waddled out of the orange forest with a disgruntled expression on her daft bird face, I noticed the two small cats in her wake. I threw myself on my brother and sister with joyous abandon, and all three of us went down in a happy tumble. I thought our collective purring would vibrate my bones out of my body.

“Oh no,” said the three mean toads, looking down at us from their log. “Oh noooooo. More of them. Wuot, why did you bring more stupid little cats?”

“It’s not my fault,” said Wuot, “they followed me here.”

But she did not sound like she minded.

“Welcome!” Beamed Montadie, and our wrestling stopped momentarily as my siblings stared up at her in awe. I disentangled myself and licked some stray hairs back into place. “New students?”

“The toad is really big,” said tabby-brother, not very quietly. “Just as you said.”

“Really, really big,” said tabby-sister.

“I told you,” I said.

“You are here to learn?” asked Montadie, ignoring our chatter. “To cultivate? Like your brother?”

I preened as they nodded enthusiastically.

“And what are your names?”

“Hush,” said tabby-sister.

“Thimble,” said tabby-brother.

Tabby-brother being named Thimble amused me quite a bit as he was the largest of all of us and quite rotund in the belly. His stripes stood out in fat, well-fed lines.

I wondered if they had made their own names, or were gifted them as presents like Maud had gifted me Jenkins? I would have to wait to find out, however, as Montadie, excited to have new students, had immediately set us all to work.

While Montadie talked my siblings through the basics of breathing, the rest of us paired off to train. Or fight, more accurately. Being able to keep cultivating while moving was difficult enough; cultivating while a wily snake was trying to sink his fangs into your belly, or stop yourself from being trampled by an overly enthusiastic wolf-pup, was quite the experience.

I still found it difficult to maintain concentration over my qi while moving, but it was becoming easier and easier to see it, in myself and others, to the point where I had gotten used to the strangely overlaid vision of it. It was now just another sense, growing along with the rest of me.

Looking around the glade, my siblings had very little discernible qi. Unsurprisingly, since they were at the beginning of their journey. There were only faint plumes pulsing around them at irregular intervals as they attempted to draw ambient qi inside themselves. I wondered what their affinities were, and if it was sunlight like mine. Montadie, looming over their lessons, was a blaze of carefully controlled illumination. The Awoken and Radiants were wicks burning at the centre of their own qi flames, energy flickering and dancing about them like living things.

I could both see and feel my own qi, surrounding me in an energy field, like an extension of myself. Everything it touched, I knew, and it enabled me to sense things where my eyes were not focused. When I moved I had to pull it in tight, to concentrate it within. When I was still I could send it out around me, which I did now. I needed the distraction, to calm myself down after the excitement of my sibling’s arrival.

“There used to be standards,” muttered one of the mean toads, not so far away.

I could feel her bulgy eyes boring into my back. Her qi tasted off, like swamp water and drowning and something else icky. She seemed unaware that my qi touched her. Or she simply didn’t care.

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“What about us? This is a waste, why would-”

“Shhh.”

“Don’t worry,” said Hangbelly. “They are all just fodder. Just stupid, domes-”

My paws twitched, as I drew the qi back into me.

I would have loved, very dearly, to slap the mean toad girls across their soggy, slimy faces with a qi infused paw - but they were Radiant and I was, as yet, only Awoken. Montadie strictly forbade ‘the trading of pointers’ outside of our levels. The slapping would have to wait.

In the meantime I could practise on my fellow Awoken.

As I squared up to a widely grinning Wuot, I could see Hush and Thimble trying very hard to pretend they weren’t very, very interested in my match.

I lifted my chin haughtily, one qi infused paw in the air, perfectly groomed whiskers quivering in readiness. I knew I looked fine - my coat gleaming with health and gloss, my tail up, my eyes gleaming. But I had to stop watching them watching me, because my vision was now full of aggressive goose.

Wuot swiped at me with a vicious mouthful of teeth. Her teeth, inside her gummy beak were off putting and not something I wanted to experience first hand. I dived to the side, rolled, and sprang onto her feathery back, biting into her neck with my own, smaller, needle sharp superior cat teeth.

Alas, I was not fast enough to move the qi from my paw to my teeth (I had not enough to infuse both.) She shrugged me off with a powerful twist of her shoulders. I went flying, tumbling over and over to land, of course, on all fours. My landing was excellent but it jolted my concentration, and my control over my cultivation evaporated, and my qi with it.

Immediately, I started gathering beautiful, silvery strands of moon qi, coaxing them inside me as fast as I could.

Wuot saw it, and cackled, racing to attack me with wings outstretched.

She was immensely big from this angle. I crouched low, pretending to be intimidated, as I breathed carefully, regaining my equilibrium. The goose hurtled towards me, qi concentrated in her beak, as was her want, but it was weak, a mere shimmer. I could also see qi collecting in the veins of her webbed right foot. The sneaky old goose thought she would trick me with a surprise leg.

Her beak jabbed down.

I sprang, but instead of falling into the perfect position to be kicked by the sneaky foot, I rebounded high into the air, concentrating qi to my right paw till it glowed with suppressed energy. I slapped the silly goose across the side of her face so hard that the crack reverberated around the glade. Wuot’s head snapped back, completely dazed.

A single, soft grey feather drifted to the ground between us.

“Match to Jenkins,” called Ule, lazily.

I bowed to Wuot, who staggered, laughed, then returned the gesture before wobbling off, her neck still held at an angle.

“Nice one,” she mumbled over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” I returned graciously, doing my best to hide my own limp as I stepped off to one side.

I had overdone the slapping in my excitement, and bruised myself on her hard head. Curses. Hunting and shadowboxing the flowers was not quite the same as fighting another living, breathing cultivator. Still, I had won.

Next up were Skol and Nadders, and I was able to catch my breath.

The winner of this match would fight me, and the winner of that fight would fight Lavellan who was the current reigning champion of those of us Awake. No one wanted to fight Lavellan, the smug rodent was a psychotic terror.

I had some ideas though, that I had been mulling over in my mind ever since the last time she had beaten me into a pulp. Well not quite a pulp but I had been almost as sore afterwards, almost as sore as I had been when I recovered from the demonic rats. The water-vole had torn patches of my beautiful fur free, and I was determined to return the favour.

My eyes narrowed as I looked at her, the water-vole so small and deceptively chubby. As far as I could tell Lavellan Vollj was not demonic in any way, just really really strong and really really angry. Being a rodent would make me angry so I understood. Since our last match up we had both improved our cultivation. I was still ahead in one regard: with three meridians open, but there was something else to consider. The fight was a measure of physicality, fighting technique and cultivation but Lavellan had developed a skill that I had not. Of the group of us she was the only one with what Montadie called ‘a killing intent’. When the crazy little water-vole stared at me I could feel how much she wanted to murder me and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.

Well, we would fight soon enough, and she was already distracting me. While the Skol and Nadders fought I concentrated on pushing qi through the channels of my body and the throbbing in my paw alleviated somewhat. I watched them absent-mindedly.

The wolf and the adder were a physically mismatched pair. The small, slender snake, slithered between the feet of the much larger, fluffier wolf-cub, scales glinting green in flashes of moonlight. For a moment it seemed like Skol was going to lose. Nadders was clearly the more intelligent of the two, and his cultivation more advanced. Skol was on the back foot, lifting his big fat paws in confusion, as the whip-fast snake wove and tripped him. But what Skol lacked in brains he made up for in brute strength.

Nadders fastened his jaws around Skol’s leg but the wolf’s coat was so thick, and his skin so dense, that he was having trouble penetrating through it with his fangs. Skol’s hide gleamed with qi. The puppy was learning. Nadder’s venom was his best attack, and unable to utilise it he was soon sent flying, dashed against a log.

The little snake crumpled to the ground in a dejected coil.

“Match to Skol,” hooted the owl.

The bone-head mutt howled in triumph before turning to me, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth in a wide smile. The only reason he won was because Nadders hadn’t infused his fangs. It was fine. I was not the slightest bit intimidated, and I was not at all worried that my siblings were watching.

I pranced over, excluding confidence from every pore. I might not have developed a killing intent yet, but I did know the importance of appearances.

“Begin,” shouted the Radiant Owl, stifling a yawn.

Skol bounded forwards.

I ducked, zooming beneath the wolf pup’s belly before his jaws could finish snapping over empty air. I spun about, and delivered one intense, qi-infused slap to his rump. It knocked this back half sideways, and a look of surprise crossed his dense amber eyes at the strength of the blow. I was so pleased my cultivation slipped. Whoops. My smugness nearly cost me the match.

I pressed my advantage but misstepped and ended up between the wolf’s powerful jaws.

His canines pressed into my flesh, which I desperately reinforced with qi. Unable to chomp on me, Skol shook me till my bones rattled and I thought my brains might scramble. But all my practising paid off. While he shook, I focused my qi long enough to infuse a single, razor sharp claw. Twisting my body, still held in his mouth I raked my claw across the inside of his tender flesh of his jaw, and across his muzzle, leaving a deep, gushing crimson line. I dug as deep as I could.

Skol dropped me with a yelp and I got in some more face-slapping at last.

“Jenkins,” called the owl over his yelps.

Skol slunk away to lick his wounds and Lavellan Vollj sauntered forwards.

My lungs were like a bellows.

The small water-vole’s eyes brightened as they met mine. She was as chubby-round as a ball of dandelion fluff. Her tiny paws, were weirdly small and delicate, but elongated and clever like a two-leggers. Clasped in front, she looked deceptively relaxed.

She tilted her head as she surveyed me. Was that a glint of red in one eye? No, it was just her killing intent pushing at me, smothering me in a blanket of fear. It was like inhaling sickly fog. I had to swallow to keep the contents of my stomach where it should be. The weight made me want to cower on my belly, but I could not let a water-vole beat me in a fight. Not in front of my siblings.

I lifted my head.

“Ready to be beaten again?” Lavellan asked, each word laced with promised violence.

“And begin,” said Ule.

Muscles shifted under fat fluff. The water-vole sprang, without waiting for a reply, gone almost faster than my eyes could track. I moved too, randomly picking a direction because staying still would be suicide.

We missed each other by a hair's breadth.

A blur of motion, and I pulled back, letting Lavellan run full force into my left slapping paw. The force of her body hitting spun us both. It was like being hit by the trunk of a falling tree. A very angry, very solid, very small tree. I gritted my teeth, sweating with concentration, forcing myself to move through the weight of the crushing fear.

Lavellan leapt, gleefully swiping with qi infused claws and teeth. I sank my own claws into her flesh, and we tumbled over and over, biting and scratching till we were both ripped and bleeding but she didn’t stop. The water-vole screamed, the sound coming out in panting, high pitched bursts that hurt my ears. It was almost impossible to keep my qi circulating, with her wailing, no doubt as she intended.

I spat loose a mouthful of brown fluff. Her tail was shining. I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye and ripped myself away. The floofy appendate landed in the dirt with a loud CRACK, splitting the ground beneath. But the effort had winded her. I knew she had meant for it to split my skull.

Holding that crushing intent was costing her energy. I could feel it weakening. I could outlast her. I was outlasting her.

Forcing qi into my bruised limbs I propelled myself forward, again, and again. A slap landed here, a hit missed there. She bit my side, I yowled, and whalloped her with a reverse kick from my hind legs that sent her tumbling. That was satisfying, I should use them more often, the gryphon had spoken about the power of a hind legged attack. No time to think about it now.

We sprang apart, both of us hissing.

She lunged, and instead of dodging I let her slice my belly open. The unexpected forward motion gave me an opening, and I kicked her in the teeth, feeling one crack. Her killing intent vanished, and suddenly I felt lighter.

Foam gathered at the corners of her enraged mouth. I was losing a lot of blood, white fire lancing along my belly. The edges of my vision darkened. I forced myself forward. Another slap, another kick. Crack, slap, punch. One for her, one for me. I swayed on my legs.

“Truce?” Lavellan Vollji, panting. She was also unsteady and bleeding from multiple lacerations.

“Truce,” I agreed.

“A draw!” shouted the Radiant Owl. “No winner.”

We both flopped over onto the ground. “Till next time,” I muttered.

“Till next time,” Lavellan agreed.