As Victor desperately scrambled backwards, his mind raced. He had seen a shadow, that much was now obvious. Why had he ignored it? His previous sense of ease seemed totally… artificial.

But he didn’t have much time to try to puzzle it out, as he desperately needed to get a grip on the new predicament he currently found himself in.

As his back hit the corridor wall, his frantic eyes finally landed on his shadowy attacker. It was a cat.

A really big cat. Unlike the small feral vermin killers that were so rampant in the streets of the capital above, or their pampered kin in rich households, this beast’s shoulders would have risen above Victor’s waist had he been standing fully upright.

From his current position — propped up on his back while trying his best not to panic — the stealthy feline towered over him. Pale blue eyes reflected the ambient light back into his own, and Victor shivered. Something in the monster’s gaze made him feel so cold.

Like death’s chill was already clutching on to him, icily refusing to let go.

Victor shook his head. Just like his total obliviousness just moments prior, the feeling was totally unnatural — it had to be some trick of the monster’s magic.

Clearing his head just in time, Victor rolled over to the side just in time to avoid being pounced on again. His dagger had clattered to the ground when he slipped, and he began crawling towards it — only to be forced to roll again.

It felt like it was toying with him.

Cursing his own stupidity, Victor realized he didn’t need to get to the dagger. In one swift mental motion, he yanked the enchanted fang back into his inventory and then summoned it to his hand.

At the same time, he flexed his body as well, leaping to his shaking feet.

Brandishing the dagger, he snarled at the cat — but the black furred monster lazily stalked forwards, completely unbothered and unintimidated. Victor’s gaze narrowed as he stared down the creature’s own ice blue eyes.

Once more, a chill seeped into his bones, numbing his body even further, making it feel heavy and sluggish.

Victor realized he needed to look away. Clearly, the monster had some kind of psychological effect that was tied to eye contact.

Averting his gaze, Victor focused on its nose instead from the corner of his eye. As the beast padded closer, he considered his options.

Running wouldn’t work. Even an overfed housecat was faster than him under ideal conditions — for short distances, at least — and his opponent was no pampered pet.

He couldn’t hide — the very thought was ridiculous, and he chastised himself for even attempting to consider it. The only option was to fight.

So he took the initiative.

Deciding to bank on the element of surprise, Victor charged forward, dagger clutched and ready. It sort of worked, as the monstrous feline paused, clearly uncertain of what to make of the sudden reversal of the situation.

Victor prayed that it would be the monster’s fatal mistake.

Just as he got two paces away, Victor instinctively dropped and slid. The flat but rough stone of the floor of the passageway ripped his trousers, exposing the tender skin underneath. Victor cried out in pain as his knee and part of his shin was rubbed raw, but his momentum carried him forward anyway.

The cat had clearly prepared for his attack — but it hadn’t prepared for him to drop down, and the swipe of its paw went high.

It managed to correct, of course — but the large paw only whacked the top of Victor’s hair with a glancing blow instead of tearing open his stomach.

The cat instinctively leapt back — but not before Victor buried the soulforged dagger deep into its skull through its eerily beautiful eye.

Releasing the dagger, Victor scrambled backwards once more at the same time as his opponent. The cat continued to back up, letting out a horrible, pained cry. It wasn’t an ordinary cry of pain — or at least, not one that Victor would have expected from a cat. Even one of its colossal size.

As he stood back up, Victor furrowed his brow. The cat was beginning to twitch even as it turned to flee — had he managed to inflict a fatal blow?

As the cat stumbled away down the icy corridor with none of its former deadly grace, Victor made what he himself even considered an irrational decision — he followed it.

Something had been building inside of him ever since he left Lord Harvey’s mansion — a hot anger that burned at his chest and demanded a violent release. He hadn’t been aware of it until now, but he was pissed.

At Lord Grantly, at the world, even at himself. He had the shit kicked out of him, and now he wanted nothing more than to kick shit right back.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

And so now that he had turned the situation on its head, he wanted nothing more than to taste his victory firsthand.

Keeping up with the monstrous cat wasn’t very hard — it was slowing down now, swaying drunkenly back and forth. Just as it neared the entrance passageway where the bats nested, it collapsed to the ground, twitching slightly.

Slowing down, Victor circled around with caution — and no small degree of excitement.

The beast’s remaining eye was now vacant looking — though its chest still shakily rose up and down. Victor approached, towering over its prone form.

The single good eye slowly moved to meet his own, and Victor held his gaze. This time, he still felt cold — but it felt good. Rather than feeling himself subjected to the icy hands of death, Victor took cold satisfaction in wielding them.

The cat twitched, and then any intelligence in its gaze vaporized.

Soul Harvested

Harvested Souls: 1

Victor didn’t smile.

Instead, he knelt to the floor, sparing only a disinterested glance over to the nesting bats, who remained motionless.

He won.

And it felt good. He could do this. He could take on Lord Grantly, there was nothing preventing him from taking on the whole world if he wished, and he even felt he had what it took to overcome himself.

But he was still cold — physically, not just his emotional detachment — and he knew that he would die if he didn’t warm up.

He could take on anything — but only if he could survive the elements.

Yanking out the dagger, Victor stood back up. Curiously, the fang was completely bloodless, instead covered in black soot.

Something to investigate later.

Turning around, Victor decided there was no other direction than to continue back in the direction he had originally been walking in when the cat ambushed him.

A whooshing sound and a gust of frigid air caused him to duck in alarm. Whirling around, Victor’s wild gaze landed on a small, shining steel chest in a dissipating cloud of extra thick fog.

Frowning, Victor scanned the rest of his surroundings. Nothing. It seemed the dungeon was merely rewarding him.

Approaching the chest slowly, Victor continued to remain vigilant, but nothing unexpected happened. Cautiously, Victor tapped the chest with his foot, retracting it immediately. Nothing happened.

Satisfied — or at least, as confident that it was safe as he reasonably could be — Victor knelt down and unlatched the chest. It wasn’t locked, to his relief. He didn’t want to have to do anything with the monster corpse, so he was thankful that it didn’t contain the key like the rat had.

Please be a blanket. Or something else to keep me warm.

Victor flipped open the chest — revealing a sewing kit, thread, shears, and an assortment of buttons.

His face crumpled. Turning his head, he glared at the corpse of the cat. Of the fluffy, furry, man sized cat.

Creation fucking damnit.

----------------------------------------

Victor had been letting out a single string of increasingly absurd curses for the past half hour that he had been working on the corpse.

Every now and then, he would glance around to make sure that he was still at least relatively safe — but even the bats seemed content to leave him be as he worked, merely watching him with their little beady eyes.

The dagger had actually turned out to be incredibly useful for his current work. When he peered into the monster’s skull, nothing but black soot had come out — it seemed that the enchanted fang was capable of decaying flesh into nothing more than fragile ash.

Thus, Victor had a particularly convenient way of extracting the fluffy black coat from the rest of the animal.

And what a luxurious coat it was, indeed. Soft, warm, perfectly sized… he would have been overjoyed to work with it had he not been freezing to death in the dungeon.

His fingers were so numb that it was exceedingly difficult just to thread the needle — and the actual stitching was slow work. In fact, he had resorted to wrapping himself in the hide even as he worked on it.

While Victor was no expert tailor, he knew enough to fashion a crude, loosely fitting design that would hopefully keep him warm enough without obstructing his movements too much.

You picked up all kinds of crafting techniques, working as a butcher. The profession was a bit of a jack of all trades, for good or ill.

The shears provided by the dungeon also turned out to be some of the best he had ever laid hands on, and as Victor began wrapping up, he decided to sew interior pockets just so he could keep them.

And pockets were pretty nice to have regardless — especially interior coat pockets. Something about that method of tailoring had fascinated Victor ever since he was a small child. One of his particular quirks, he supposed.

Finally, after what felt like far too long but that he knew was the fastest he had ever worked, Victor’s coat was finished.

He admitted he had gotten a bit carried away when he reattached the ears to the hood — but hey, what was the point of life without style?

Technically, he had been wearing it since he first extracted it from the flesh and bone, but now it was time to try it on properly. Standing up, Victor stretched practically every part of his body, then adjusted the coat to wear it as intended.

It fit better than expected, and Victor buttoned it up with pride. The coat was designed with two layers in front, the outside longer, so that he could either wear it open while still having a layer of protection from the elements, or wrap the whole thing up tighter.

As he raised the hood, he wished he had a mirror. He felt like a primeval assassin from a fanciful story.

But this was real life, and real life was even more dangerous. Now that his need for warmth was mostly taken care of, Victor decided that he needed to press forward. Rubbing his hands together, he also realized that he felt energized.

Yes, he was tired from the work, but it had renewed his spirit as well — not to mention that warming up worked wonders for the numbness now leaving his body.

Frowning, Victor belatedly realized that he had been working in near darkness, yet he still had a small bit of the reservoir of arcane energy from the bat soul — not to mention the cat soul now bound to his own spirit.

Victor summoned the fiend — and decided he had to know something. “Are you the same being that I summoned the first time?”

The crimson ball of light cheerfully bobbed up and down, to Victor’s immense relief. A weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying lifted off his shoulders.

Victor would prioritize his own life and his family’s over a summon without hesitation — but that didn’t mean he was completely uncaring towards the spirit.

Smiling, he twirled around for the flame to see his coat. “Do you like it?” Once more, the fiend bobbed up and down. “Well then,” Victor continued, “let’s see what more we can do with it.”

And then he activated Soulforge.

The cat’s soul slipped into the cloak without issue, and Victor noticed a difference immediately.

The whole world seemed brighter, clearer and more vivid — and he himself felt… Well, it was hard to explain, but he felt physically lighter as well as somehow darker.

Cave-cat Cloak of Assassin’s Stealth (Rank E) equipped.