I could not look away from that malevolent gaze.

The rat-king’s rock chipped eyes swirled with thunderclouds, the red light glinting off his golden crown, and spilling out onto the earthen walls of the surrounding cavern. The metal was rusting where it rested on his head, as if his very flesh was corrosive.

I could not look away.

The rat-king was no longer on the throne.

His face filled my vision, each ratty hair, each foetid pore, the stink of his breath enveloping him in a haze of green and brown. Enveloping me. My dream-qi pulling away from me, as if it was no longer mine.

I could not look away.

Crimson eyes bored into my own, flame licking down the edge of his face. The smell of charred flesh adding to the rancid cacophony of scents fighting for attention in my nostrils.

I could not look away.

For-Molsnian drew a grime encrusted claw across my throat.

It was so sharp I was not immediately aware I had been cut. Until I died. I died then. In my dream, while I was dream-walking. The absolute nerve, the sheer gall of the jumped up squeaker killing me in my sleep.

I had not known I could die in my dreams.

Darkness enveloped me, gathering shadows with dim shapes and too many eyes, cold and empty. The sound of sand, dry and dusty in the distance.

A bell rang.

I was wretched backwards, not by my body but by…whatever it was that made me, me.

I awoke gasping in my basket. Coughing, and retching up the memory of blood that was no longer there. Reaching a paw up, I carefully felt at my throat, but the pads of my toes met only soft fur.

Had I really died or had it just been a nightmare? But I could smell blood and the edges of the basket were stained with blood, thick and wet. My blood. I had died. I had heard the silver bell calling me home. It was not my imagination, it had been real. Somehow.

Four lives. Four lives, two meridians left to open, and now I was out of time.

The cottage was silent. The embers of the fire were low, and the sounds of sleeping pixies filled my ears. A few of them stirred, looking at me blearily. Despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I forced my breath under control. Carefully, carefully, I had trained for this, I slipped into a meditative state, and then somehow, at last, back into sleep.

Once there I barged through balmy forest, and moonlit ponds, interrupting passionate trysts and flying toads to bellowing my warnings. Mama, my siblings, Wuot, Moððe, Montadie, River, the trees, the land, I told them all: they are coming.

The land already knew, it was trembling under the patter of a hundred diseased feet.

“Run,” said Montadie. “Now is the time to leave. Flee.”

“GET READY!” I screamed.

I awoke with a start to the bang of the front door.

Peering out a shutter I saw Maud hurrying down the garden path with one of the small two-leggers from the village. She looked worried. They both disappeared into the trees in the direction of the village, as was often the case. It was good she was out of the way. Maud was no use against rodents, she had demonstrated that many times.

I thought no more of it and in the murky light of that false dawn, I assembled my yawning squadrons of pixies. A ramshackle army to be sure but not one without tricks up its stolen raggedy sleeves and mismatched hankies.

“Remember,” I said to them, “You are invisible to them, apart from your qi signatures. The lesser rats will not be able to detect you. But do not get cocky! Do not get too close, do not let them corner you or they will feed off your spirits.”

Berryman nodded, and carefully affixed a crown of thorns to his pinecone head.

Polly-wally donned one of Maud’s thimbles, while the rest smeared their face with war-paint, rolled up their sleeves, metaphorical and otherwise, and brandished tiny bows and various sharp, bladed implements that appeared from all over the house.

We went outside, the Small Folk hiding, myself seeking the high ground of the roof. I wanted to see what was coming.

We did not have long to wait.

I heard them coming before I saw them, a distant rumble that grew to a cacophony within seconds. My senses tingling like lightning. Then, the rats came pouring over the garden wall in a tidal wave of brown, furry, squeaking filth.

The geese roared forwards, the nanny goat careened out of her shed screaming and stomping. The bees boiled out of their hives, stinging with a fury I had not known they possessed. I, myself let out an ear-splitting battle cry before leaping into the fray, my claws sharp and ready.

As I laid into the rats, something fast and feathery zoomed past my nose. The chickens… well the chickens were magnificent. Fluffy steeds, each one with a pair of pixies on their backs, one rider, one fighter! They tore around the flowerbeds, the warlike Small Folk pelting the rats with all manner of vicious implements and whooping loudly.

I scoured rats with fire, and sun, and claw, defending my flower beds, my limbs a whirling qi infused death trap, my breath laying waste to any who got too close. Those rats with advanced cultivation stopped to fight, pestilent breath against my fire, but they did not seem keen. They seemed distracted, running through the garden, running around me, leaping the fence on the other side, to disappear into the trees on the other side.

“Stand and fight!” I roared, disembowelling as many as I could before they leapt the wall.

Moððe arrived in a flurry of light.

“They follow the necromancer,” he shouted.

I ducked to avoid a savage bite, but before I could move myself, a force like a wall struck me from the side, sending me tumbling nose over tail. A familiar force.

Brosnod. His face delightfully hairless, the burn damage evident on the pink and patched skin. The horrible rat pulled away immediately, out of range of my fire, and I felt a moment of satisfaction. I had left an impression on his face and mind.

“Well, cauldron,” he sneered. “You have grown Radiant, congratulations.”

He unleashed his killing intent, but I straightened beneath the weight of fear, unleashing my own in return. Did he flinch?

“Ready for a rematch?” I asked.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Whips of hissing darkness crackled from his paws. They snapped at my coat, and I leapt, the air spirits boosting me up, higher, lighter than I should have been able to leap. As I landed I felt that familiar, horrible, tug at my qi. But I had dreamed of this fight, many, many times (and I always won in my dreams).

Blasting dirt into his eyes with a rush of wind, I followed the attack with spikes of ice. The tips, sharp and gleaming, buried themselves in the remains of his fur.

“Bah,” Brosnod said, shaking them off.

Darkness exploded out from his mouth, seeping through the air like wet, hot ink.

I leap to the side, avoiding a blow that did not come, speeding away using all my senses but my eyes. I could not even see my whiskers. The ground beneath my feet, the scent of goat-shed and garden, no one would get the better of me in my own garden but where was he? The cloud of darkness was huge and the expected attack did not come.

I drew cold starlight straight from my dantian to light my way but the action was unnecessary. The cloud of darkness dissipated on its own, leaving me standing in the centre of the garden surrounded by scores of rat corpses, and the odd confused chicken.

Brosnod had run with the rest. What a coward. Or…?

I ran then, following the trail. Moððe was somewhere up ahead.

The wind danced around me, bringing me strange tidings, the stench of death, a myriad unfamiliar smells, blood, and rot, and I hurried as fast as I could. The train of rats was easy to find, just from the smell.

Then I saw him, the necromancer, and slid to a halt.

A cloaked and cowled two-legger male, he strode through my forest, exuding an aura of power and a killing intent like I had never felt before. The intent was not focussed directly on me, but even so I cowered beneath the trees, momentarily losing my will.

My belly pressed low to the ground I watched, shaking, and sizing him up, but alas, this was no drunken murder-man who could be dispatched by a quick hamstringing and a blow to the head. I had seen him before, from a distance but never like this.

Mist gathered about him, mournful and thick, and clouds swirled in a vortex overhead, not unlike my tribulation but this - this was not qi manipulation. This stank of Old two-legger God.

The forest was growing as dim as full night. The fog was sticky and rank, not the grouchy friend I was used to. I did not like it. As the necromancer walked, the path behind him withered and died, huge swathes of the forest transforming with a sigh into pools of rot and slime. Shadows thickened as I watched, taking on weird shapes. Eyes, always eyes, watching. The rats pranced behind like a parade, sucking the qi from the mortal remains of his leavings.

This was their intent then, to follow the death wizard, feeding off those spirits already weakened by his passage. Lazy, even when killing.

It disgusted me.

The disgust broke his spell and I moved. Keeping as much distance between myself and the necromancer as I could, I attacked the trailing rats of the vanguard. Several died to me, most ran. They were slippery, not wanting to engage me directly, and I spent annoyingly large amounts of time hunting them through the foliage. Often they slipped away before I could kill them, their fellows rising like a pestilent wave to fend me off, till I had to retreat or risk serious injury. It was frustrating in the extreme, but every death was a victory. Every death diminished the court of rodents.

Once or twice I caught a glimpse of Brosnod, and those he called Adlíc, Of-Sleán, and Málester, but I could not get to them. Of the rat-king I saw no sign but I had no doubt he was here, feeding on my home. The thought filled me up with vengeful anger, but I had to be careful. I had to be clever.

Hours passed, and eventually I found myself alone in the woods, surrounded by five or six corpses and utter silence. It was not a natural silence, but the silence of fear laid thick on the land. The silence of those cowering in their dens and nests, afraid to move to speak lest death come upon them swiftly.

I wondered uneasily what had happened to Moððe, or to my siblings to my pixies army. I had expected them to come and join me, but here I was alone with the uneasy wind.

Seeking more squeakers to fight, I padded across stones, and moss and grass and paused, one foot in the air, nose high. The whiff of the Old Ones was growing stronger. No longer just a whiff, a stench that permeated the entire forest. A chill settled in my bones that would not leave.

Slowly, one by one, the hairs on my back rose up of their own accord.

The air was thick with violence. Something was happening. Not here, but close by.

I followed the scent of that fear. It was coming from the village. The silence was uncanny now, so loud I thought my heart might explode, my steps, whisper soft, sounding like thunderclaps to my sensitive perceptions. Where were the rats?

Where was everyone?

As I approached the reek of blood hit my snout like a blow. I flinched, doing my best not to vomit. I needed to be quiet, I needed to find out what was going on, but I could smell nothing else, and it was overwhelming my senses.

So much blood. It was cloying, suffocating. I threw up part of the mouse I ate earlier, into a neat pile, and then I was able to continue on my way, alert. My paws beat a soft staccato across the fallen leaves as I pick up my pace.

Something moved. Thimble. My brother came howling out of the bushes, his eyes wide, and his fur standing upright in a ridge along his back

“What happened?”

His only answer was a wail.

Thimble spat as he ran, clearly terrified, and was soon gone into the darkness.

I stood for a long while looking after him, then turned, dread curiosity driving me on.

The Folk are as absent as the birds.

Wuot says curiosity is the true curse of our kind, but it is not true, merely a misunderstanding. I am a seeker after knowledge. My curiosity is not idle. I must know what has happened. How else can I act? I must know. And soon, I did.

The centre of the village was a horror.

The two-leggers had been slaughtered. Every last one. They lay everywhere, flung about like discarded scarecrows, with their stuffing coming out. But who had slaughtered them? The necromancer? My instincts told me the necromancer is to blame, and the Old God that came with him. But here, the necromancer lay dead also. His body prone, his chest a ribbon of cuts and slashes.

Someone very angry killed him.

The remains of an arrow is buried in one arm. There, a few strangers lie, men and women I knew not, in strange clothing. They were as dead as the rest. What a perplexing occurrence.

I crept closer, sneezing at the reek, lifting my paws delicately, threading my way across the mess. That was the necromancer, there can be no mistake. He looked quite different dead. I patted him a bit, in case he was playing, as sometimes squeakers like to do. He was not playing, and it was definitely him. He was exactly the same as the two-legger I followed through the forest, only now he was a corpse, and there were no more rats.

I swept the still village with my eyes, so different from the last time I saw it, buzzing with life. Even the houses are dead. The timber rotted. Anything that could mould or decay had done so. Shadows converged under the rafters, those that still stood, under the trees, under the wreckage. One of them moved, and I leapt forward, but it was only the stupid black cockerel, alive and haughty as ever, though his plumage was stained with blood.

I turned back to the puzzle, determined to figure out what occurred while I was hunting rats.

I sniffed. There, under the reek of blood and Old God was my Maud’s scent. I panicked then, and started looking for her in the piles of the dead, but relaxed once I was sure she was not there. She was not there… and yet… her scent was here. Her scent was all over the place. She had definitely been here, which was a horrible thought. While I had been fighting rats in the forest… Maud had been here with… whatever had been going on in the madness of two-leggers.

My nose led me back to the necromancer.

I sniffed the handle of the blade that was still buried hilt deep in the necromancer’s chest. Ahh!

My Maud might not be able to kill mice, but it seems she had been saving herself for something bigger! She had taken revenge on those who have done the tribe of two-leggers wrong, as was only fitting! I sniffed again. Her scent was definitely her, but… it had changed. I decided that was a mystery for another time. It was hard to distinguish what was what, and as long as Maud was alright everything was fine.

I did not want to stay here, I wanted to make sure everyone I cared about was alright. I wanted Maud to fuss over me.

A noise drew my attention to the edge of the village. Some unfamiliar two-leggers were tramping about there. Perhaps they also wanted to know what was happening but I decided I couldn’t be bothered with them. I would find Hush, and Wuot. And I wanted to hunt down the rest of the rats.

I checked the passage that led to Hush’s den but it was empty, so I slipped around the noisy two-leggers who were poking and wheezing quite noisily, and made my way back into the forest, following the passage of Thimble’s fear.

It hung in the air like a solid trail, and I had no trouble finding him some distance into the trees, close to River’s banks. Here things were dark and quiet, and the forest was still living. River reared up anxiously as I arrived, slopping nervously against her banks.

A single rat corpse floated down her length, and she flicked it away in disgust. I was too busy cuddling Thimble however, who was shaking with fear. To my intense relief, Hush arrived moments later, her tail as large as a brush. All three of us huddled against the roots of a friendly Old Man Willow, and I wound my body against theirs comfortingly.

Hush spat at me, half- heartedly. I think all of us were a bit too upset to talk, even me. A moment later she leaned into my warmth and we purred together in the darkness. It would be okay. We had each other. A few of the Small Folk arrived then too. A tiny, mushroom capped sprite quivering in terror, and a handful of the pinecone pixies.

Not Berryman, but some of his smaller kin. They burrowed into my sides. The sharp edges of their hats were uncomfortable but I did not mind that much. Everyone needed comfort that night, and as the most important cat in the forest, it was my job to provide it.