Steel doors slid shut behind him, gliding under their own power and casting him into total darkness. Liam’s elven eyes might be able to adjust. If he spent an hour meditating.
Forget waiting for that.
Liam conjured a ball of fire, illuminating the room. He was in a small hallway, one that curved slightly more quickly than the tree had. So he followed it to the tree’s center. Where a stairway led to the next floor, rising through a hole in the ceiling. The cat pointed up. Making Liam grumble about turning the serval into a pair of shoes for forcing him to walk across the entire world.
“You better have an airplane that can fly me to Nyota, or I’m gonna be more than a little pissed about being kidnapped.” Said Liam.
He poked his head into the next floor, fully expecting something weird, but totally unprepared for what he found. It was a sort of honeycombed hive, and the second he entered the room it illuminated. Clinical white lights nuked his darkvision and a jet of water hit his guiding fireball, neutralizing it without any additional overspray. Precise beyond measure. Once again making him cry as dazzling lights and hot steam assaulted his nose. He took a moment to blink away the tears, then took in the room once more. On every wall there were honeycombes made up of hexagonal cells, and in each cell there was some sort of creature. A quick scan told him they were all different, or some kind of variation of existing creatures, different colors, or sizes. There was also a short description on each cell window, with a number of icons on them. Often grouping the creature with its traditional magical affinity.
That is when he realized there were human fetuses in some of the cells. Human infants. Not just one, but an entire row of them. Lined up in various states of development. Alongside them he saw cells with gorgons, felinids, werewolves, elves, and about a dozen other species he couldn’t recognize at all.
“This… this is not what I was expecting…” Liam gasped.
The ever-annoying yellow tail ran across his chin stubble and the sabertoothed serval pointed him forward, towards a second stairwell that ran along the exterior of the room. Similarly to how the previous stairwell had been positioned, except, the space wasn’t large enough. Somehow the stairs seemed to occupy the same point in space, overlapping their steps while landings and mouths were in separate locations. Eerie, like some kind of MC Escher trickery with the dimensions. As if this room was larger on the inside than it was on the outside.
It all made Liam’s head spin, so he gave up, and decided to trust in the strange cat. He walked down the staircase, trying not to oogle the various cells, but unable to help himself. It felt like every inch of the building was some kind of ark, filled from crown to sole with lifeforms. All preserved in various states of infancy. The cells were illuminated, and the lifeforms seemed to be suspended somehow, but there was no visible liquid or gas, and nothing was moving.
It was terrifying. Far more disturbing than all his years spent in the dissection laboratory. A place where he had cut open human cadavers so the next year of medical students could learn their trade. This was somehow worse.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
And still the serval directed him onwards, traversing thousands of stairs until they came to another stainless steel door. The cat touched this door as well, and it slid open, revealing a room absolutely stuffed with everything a cat of any size or shape could ever want. There were several litter boxes, all tastefully concealed in corners or behind furniture, several white bunny rabbits peeked at Liam, and the room had green grass sprouting out of hard steel. How that worked was impossible to guess, so Liam didn’t. He stepped into the room and found three eclipsiarchs sitting on cushions. While another lounged in a jacuzzi. Not a hot tub, a literal, plastic walled, water jet, heated jacuzzi! Complete with the brand name on the side.
“I need to sit down.” Whispered Liam, his voice carrying in the sudden silence.
As if the eclipsiarchs had been chatting before he walked in. The eldest eclipsiarch, a fit man with heavy wrinkles on his face looked Liam up and down, his eyes lingering on the serval in his arms. His lips twisted downwards at the sight, and his eyes narrowed.
“Elf, release her.” Ordered the man, somehow mingling mana into the order.
It hit Liam like a punch to the jaw, taking hold of his spine and ordering his arms to flex, to drop the cat. Which he wanted to do, but the rudeness of the old man triggered something rebellious inside him. The part of him that had laughed when King Aldric’s windows shattered, and spat in Pandora’s eye.
[Mana Domination] activated, he snapped the spell with a thought, dispersing the order into a localized rainfall. A cloud of water appeared over the old catman’s head and fell. Raining a cold shower for the impertinent old cat-fart.
“Meow!” Said the serval, and everyone else burst into laughter, though a second catman was sensible enough to whisk the water away, dropping it into the jacuzzi with a flick of his hand.
Liam bent at the waist, gingerly lowering the serval onto the floor. It dashed behind a folding wall, something Sarah had once called a pingfeng. Clothing was folded over the walltop, which was roughly six feet tall and freestanding due to its zig zag nature. Bones popped and crunched, occasionally slurping as Liam heard the telltale sounds of a transformation.
Ah fuck. The cat isn’t a cat. Who have I been cradling?!
Liam watched the clothing, desperately hoping he hadn’t been cradling someone else’s girlfriend. Although if he’d been holding a dude… Well, that wasn’t much better. A dress was pulled onto the other side of the divider, as was a bra.
He tried not to curse, but found the preposition extremely difficult. One that became even harder when a teen emerged from behind the wall. She appeared to be in her mid teens, clearly not an adult, but also not a child. It made Liam feel dirty. He’d been cradling a teenager far more familiarly than he ever consciously would have. Most striking of all was her dark skin, and oddly pointed cat ears. Which were a full inch too long for felinids.
“You’re not a cat…” Grumbled Liam.
The girl smiled as if he’d said she was the most beautiful creature on God’s green earth. “Nope! I’m me!” She cried, going to sit beside the woman. It was only then that Liam realized the woman wasn’t a felinid at all, but an elf. With skin as dark as his own. Almost exactly the same shade. It sent a shiver down Liam’s spine, something was wrong with the woman, a distinct sensation of uncanny valley. The eerie quality heightened when the teen sat beside her, with their faces nearly identical, ageless, though one had cat ears and the other possessed elven ears. Their eyes were almost identical, as were their chins and overall height, while the catman beside her shared the girl’s cheekbones and forehead.
Great, I held their naked daughter captive, in front of them. Ya know, Taloc isn’t looking like the weirdest Lightning Lord right now.