A cat person of indeterminate gender stared at her with lemon-colored eyes from beneath a worn cloak and leathers. She held her large bow with all the casualness of a toy, smooth features running around the ornate weapon. It was a very nice bow.
Elia had a hard time concentrating on preserving her life that was no doubt in danger, because wow, that was a genuine cat person and not just some kind of human with exotic accessories in fluffy ears and a tail. The face was weird, a rectangular nose smushing feline and human features down between two eyes so large they looked just about ready to pop out. The skull itself fell someplace between human and feline as well, with ears like those of a bobcat, one of which was pierced by small rings from top to bottom. But the further down one went, past the fluffy mane around the neck, the more their limbs and torso turned too long, too lithe with stringy muscles like a cryptid rather than anything human.
Elia still found the shape… fascinating. Maybe it was because this was the first ostensibly non–human race she encountered that wasn’t near unrecognizable from advanced undeath. Maybe it was because she had mistaken most of those as monsters and not as former people. Or maybe she just had a poor sense of priorities.
She blinked, twice. Right, they were having a face off.
“Hi. I’m Elia. I like your bow. Can we be friends?” she said with her best friend-making smile.
“Drop, meow.” Their eyes flicked towards the sword Elia was still holding, then back up.
E-elia? Do what she says. Bekki are notoriously impatient.
They – the bekki – prodded her forehead with the tip of her arrow. With a grumble, Elia let her weapon go, immediately regretting it as they kicked it out of reach.
“Can’t have shit in Loften,” she grumbled. But! Elia was in a forgiving mood today. After all, it was a catboy! Catgirl… Cat person. It was a wish come true, because her favorite fantasy race was real! “You didn’t answer my question, mister gender ambiguous cat person.”
Elia, firstly it’s a her. Secondly, I don’t think she wants to be your friend when she has ostensibly shot at and killed us before!
“Oh, right. Welp, dying isn’t a dealbreaker, it isn’t that bad.” Except, that was in part a lie. Elia touched the bowl seconds ago. Death would bring her back to precisely the moment she was already inside the trap. She wasn’t really practiced in any other tools besides violence. Then again, she wasn’t helpless either. Time for operation: Befriend the cat.
Option number one: Distraction.
“How about you simply let me leave? I’ll pretend I never entered this room; you do the same.” Elia took a half step back. The bekki hissed. Rye squeaked herself into the forefront. “O-ok, no backing out. Wait, is that a… a yew bow? Oh my grug, those are so rare! I mean, they are where I come from. Marcus – he’s my brother, by the way – always said he would get one so he could practice shooting a longbow, but Da’ never gave him one because you have to start training as a young kid and he’d rather Marcus spend his free time studying up where he was lacking, which was in a lot of places but I’d have helped him, yes, I would have. Is any of this getting through to you? Sorry, sorry-sorry, I just get a little bit talky when someone is pointing an arrow at my face and – um, if you don’t mind, I kind of have a place to be so–“
“Quiet! Meow.” The cat person scowled, raspy tongue licking their nose and pointy zig–zag teeth. “Lim kill you meow. Not dead. Never dead meow! How-meow!?”
“Uhhh.” Rye uhhed before tactfully retreating back into her brainspace.
She remembers! She was the one peppering us with arrows and now she’s gonna kill us and suck on our bones! AAAH!
“I knew those broadhead arrows were familiar.” Somehow, Elia couldn’t bother to care. Compared to being locked in an endless maze for years on end, minor setbacks that happened to involve a handful of deaths just didn’t stack up very well. Also, she really wanted to touch those cat ears. She hadn’t touched cat ears in years. If only they weren’t attached to someone with such piss poor patience. “OW. Stop poking me!”
The woman did not. “Intruder. Stranger-meow. Should leave. Meow. Should not be here. Meow!”
She seemed to be choking on and spitting out her meows like they were poison. “Is… everything alright?”
“AM CURSED-MEOW!” the bekki yelled. “IGNORE ME-OW! Meow-meow. POO! Meow…”
Elia tried hard not to laugh at what might be a feline obscenity filter. Laughing out loud would only end one way and she was not fond of having her face grow fletchings.
Option number two, guilt trip.
“But the sludgy knights are welcome, yeah?” She took the continued silence as permission to go on. “You don’t look like you’re with them. You’d have your room a lot closer otherwise. This place is even clean, no sludge and oil here. Seems almost unnatural. Are you sure you should be here? You don’t seem like a killer.”
The bekki just looked at her like she was an idiot. “Oh, Lim love killing. Shoot bow. Thing go ACK! Dead meow. Very fun. Meow.”
“Huh.” Elia couldn’t even say she failed to empathize. The heft of an axe, the spikes on a maul, the feeling of danger in a sword. How would holding her bow feel? How to fire it?
See? She’s insane.
“This is just normal cat behavior, Rye,” she whispered.
“QUIET-MEOW! Lim… Lim think!”
Lim thought, hard and long. Mostly long. It wasn’t very fruitful.
“… you done yet?”
“SHUT! Lim stupid – meow – but Lim not Idiot. Lim kill meow, but not dead still. Happen again. And again. You. Always you. Me-ow.” And that meow was final.
Option number three was their last hope. It was time to gaslight.
“What? Nooo… that, you, you’re crazy. You’ve been seeing things. Imagining them, then and meow – shit, I mean now. Have you had your eyes checked?”
“SHUT! Talk much.” The bekkis eyes narrowed until they were barely paper-thin slits. “Suspicious-meow. Annoying. Hand over to Rhuna. Problem go away, meow!”
Elia eyed her sword. Too far away.
“So, what, she can beat me up all over again? You gonna throw me in a dungeon, let me rot until she comes knocking by?” A single nod. “And if I’m innocent of… whatever accusation you dream up, you’ll give me my sword back?”
“Of course.” Lim nodded, winning the battle against another meow. “Lim not evil.”
Don’t trust a single word out of her mouth, Elia.
“Why?”
Bekki are barbarians and beyond that, willful and disloyal. Never hire them as harvest helpers. They will sleep all day, put in the least amount of effort possible, and steal all your cheese.
There had to be a story behind that. Elia would be happy to hear all about it later.
Time for the true last resort: Reason. Truly, desperate times were upon them.
“Isn’t my kind supposed to, I dunno, keep the whole cycle of life and death going on our journey to Loften? I’m undead, y’know, I just wanna get past. Would you really shoot an innocent undead for following that holiest of prophecies?”
“Yes. Meow.” Lim poked her face. Again. “Why?”
“Oh. Huh.” Elia had heard enough. It was time for regrettable action. “Shame.”
In a single motion she grabbed the tip of the arrow and threw her head to the side. Lim was faster and instead of an easy disarm the arrow burrowed through her right hand. It hurt, but pain was temporary.
Elia went low, dodged a kick to her face and punched up at her chin. Lim made a sound between an angry cat and a gurgling fish as it caught her between the ribs but jumped back in turn with the impact. Elia grasped open air instead of her bow.
There was something special about it. It was large enough to be impractical in close quarters, but a second arrow was already nocked faster than humanly – or catpersonly – possible. Was the bow magical, was it a boon? Elia barreled forward, protecting head and neck with her arms. A pair of arrows rained on her like a one-two knockout punch, hitting her in the upper arm and thigh but they were not enough to stop her.
If she died, the woman would remember and just shoot her right in front of the bowl, over and over. Until she didn’t even know her name anymore. Until she became a dreg.
She impacted the bekki woman as the third arrow was pushed off course by her sole remaining vambrace, surprised to find her light enough to lift despite her tall body. Barreling further, she slammed her into a wide balcony window, breaking the flimsy locks behind her. It flung open and Lim out with it, only to return with reversed velocity as she grasped the head jamb and swung back inside, kicking Elia to the floor. The kick left a feeling like being stabbed in her gut, but she was not bleeding and she found her sword nearby underneath a bed.
Neither expected the other to recover quickly and when their blades met, they locked eyes in an awkward subversion of mutually expected victory.
“I think we could be really good friends,” Elia grunted.
“Liar-Meow!”
“Best friends!” she yelled.
“Liar-liar!”
For once, Rye was not moralizing about the necessity of violence in the post apocalypse but was egging her on.
Go Elia! She killed us, she killed Tertius once, even if he got better! Beat the bekki half-skin! Not to death, but make her feel it!
… okay, they needed to have a talk about racial sensitivity training later.
They separated, then met once more, the bekki supremely focused on overwhelming Elia with her superior size and range. But unlike usual, Elia held the advantage in weight over the lithe Lim, a fact the latter was yet to fully realize. Elia feigned flagging strength and let herself be pushed back. The smug grin on Lim’s face was quickly replaced by surprise as Elia tugged on the bow, tearing it from her arms.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
She looked the disarmed bekki in the eye.
“I’m serious. Let’s stop here.”
“Can’t.” Lim snarled. “Won’t.”
Elia sighed. “Well, I tried my best.”
Her expression turned to horror as Elia set one foot on the bow and snapped its polished limbs in two.
“FEW–FEEEWWW!” Lim yowled an ear–rending wail.
H–haha, that’s what you get for uncle Felix, for the raid on Marburg, you scoundrel, you… oh beans, why do I feel so horrible?
Broken Yew Bow “Few–Few”
The splintered remains of a master crafted bow of yew-wood, blessed as the favored material of the Lady of the hunt. A rarity in civilized lands, and one that was deeply cared for.
She loved that bow. It’s so clean. It’s even engraved.
“What’s it say?” She took a moment to break the arrow in her hand and drive out the shaft while Lim had a mild breakdown in the background. “I can’t read chicken scratch.”
It’s empyrean, pretty calligraphy too. It reads: ‘For my big sis, who gave me many warm nights and fuzzy thoughts – Pim.’ Oh nooo…
The bekki woman was vibrating, face of anguish replaced with the purest tear-struck hatred imaginable.
“We’re not the bad guys.” Elia picked up her sword and pointed it at Lim “This is your fault for threatening me. And for killing me those couple of times. We’re even now, you can step away from this. This is me being nice.”
Breaking and entering, homicide of military personnel, property damage… we’re totally the bad guys! Why me, whyyy!?
“EVIL!” the bekki yelled.
“Oh come on, it was just a bow.”
Elia had moments to regret her words as a furious ball of sharp teeth and claws flung itself at her face, entirely devoid of any notion of self–preservation. They clashed, tumbled into a heap on the ground and for the first time ever Elia thought that maybe cat people – be they male or female – were slightly overrated as claws raked her face and Lim bit her hand bloody through the glove.
“LIAR! LIAR! MEOW – BROKE IT – MEOW! BROKE! WHY, WHY, WHY!?”
To say Elia’s situation was entirely helpless would be disingenuous. Her sword was sticking clean through the woman’s chest. By the time she noticed, Elia’s face was torn to ribbons and her nose was missing once again. She died of blood loss, but also due to failing to use her greatest tool for the entire fight.
After all, the bowl was right there. And the bekki didn’t look like an undead.
You have died
You have lost: Soul x12901
You have lost: Bone shard [Common] x13 [Uncommon] x15
----------------------------------------
Elia rose from dunking her head under water, lost souls flowing up her leg standing precisely where she died. She turned with a grin only to dodge an arrow nearly pushing into her throat, reflexes causing it to only pierce her left arm, right where her vambrace was… not. Where it used to be.
She pushed through the pain again, grabbed the bow, and kicked the distraught bekki in the guts before breaking it over her knee. The pained yowl was one of the first sounds in some time that moved anything in her heart, and not just because Elia could relate. Losing good equipment hurt but the bekki should know better than to fuck with her.
“You broke my vambrace,” she said, flinging the bow to the bekki’s feet before sipping her wounds away at the bowl. “Fair’s fair.”
“Not fair meow! NOT FAIR!” Oh, well, of course it wasn’t fair. The bow was payment for her previous deaths, both down below and in the upper courtyard. The vambrace was a piece of metal she could care less about, but Elia would have been pissed too if Lim had broken her staff, or her longsword.
And oh was Lim pissed, her entire face drawn into a scowl, not just her large yellow eyes. They were expressive eyes, comically large when put onto the otherwise unreadable face. Presently, the scowl drove her contours together in a hateful knot. “Can’t stop. Can’t.”
Elia, please talk it out. Say you’re sorry for the bow. We both lost something, we both have more to lose.
Elia was just a tad too angry to put much soul into the attempt. Though she did try. “So. You’re a bekki.”
Just ‘bekki’.
“Am Lim. Idiot meow. Broke FEW–FEW, MEOW!” She was still holding the sad halves of her bow dangling by a string. “Evil. EVIL!”
The bekki thrust forward with a shortsword conjured up from thin air. Elia parried the ice–blue weapon, her longsword screeching as the ice cut across its blade. But parry she did and while enduring the frightening assault, her petal knife found its way into her offhand. Suddenly, with two blades against one and thousands of days of practicing ambidextrous wielding, she had the advantage. As Lim bounced back, Elia found her left hand fingers cut to the bone by a second hidden blade.
“Where did you get a second shortsword from? That isn’t fair!” Elia yelled in mock–dismay.
All bekki are ambidextrous. They also smell weird. Also, apologize. Bekki have feelings too.
“EVIL! BAD! LIAR! MEOW!” Lim sniveled, blinking away a tear in her eye. “Stinky.”
“Oh shut up, you killed me like three–“ She bit her tongue as a throwing knife cut past her face, her own underhanded throw missing the bekki by just as much. “Stop copying me!”
“NO-MEOW!”
“Copycat!”
“YOU! COPYHUMAN!”
Their blades met, failed to poke each other’s eyes out, separated, then clashed again. Elia was more armored and had the advantage of reach with her longsword, but Lim was no slouch and used both of her conjured swords so fluidly there had to be a boon involved, or simply a lot of experience.
They met, fought, then retreated. Sometimes they both came away with shallow wounds, sometimes only one of them did. As it stood, Elia’s arm was cut up heavily and Lim was favoring her left leg, blood soaking into a stain along her leather pants.
An equal exchange. They were evenly matched.
Elia smirked and Lim, expecting her to attack, leapt back as she went for the bowl. She took a few good swigs, felt her arm stitch back together and shot Lim the biggest shit-eating grin imaginable. She had the resources in this room to keep the fight going until one of them collapsed or gave up.
The bekki woman hissed but in their next exchange Elia came away with fewer wounds, the healing waters already having a compounding effect on the outcome of the battle.
“Give up. I can do this all day. Literally–” She ducked under a chair, hooked and returned it back to sender. “Alright, guess that’s a no–”
Lim looked up from the bowl, licking her lips as her own wounds mended. This time anger melded with a smug grin, smugger than any person had the right or ability to be.
She was an undead like the attendant, hiding the effect behind some magic hullabaloo or another.
“Fuck.”
Her lips turned up in a sharp–toothed snarl. “Rude-meow!”
…hey, that’s right! I haven’t chastised you for your crass language in a while, Elia. Thank the bekki for reminding me of my duties. I feel inclined to repeat my warnings: A loose tongue invites corruption of morals, body and spirit. You ought to watch your own or someone else will watch it for you. In short: Rude.
“Not the time,” she yelled as she backstepped one of Lim’s blows.
“Rude!” Lim yelled, following up with a scissoring cut.
Rude.
“Shut up!”
Rude. Rude. Rudy–rude–eeeek!
The fight went on as they fought and drunk and fought. Up the tower, down the tower, out the door, on the table, on the floor and at some point in a much too cramped broom closet armed with nothing but rags and faux-feather dusters. Every time someone got an edge or a good hit in, the other retreated to get another sip of divine water.
What soon established itself but went unsaid was that the other would only give a show of pursuit. Lim’s tears eventually grew dry, Elia mellowed out and at some point, the two had gone from a duel over life-and-death, to a duel for pleasure, amusement and trying to one-up the other.
I can’t believe this is happening. Leave it to the barbarians to BOND over trying to kill each other.
At some point a goop knight found them, got in the way, and struggled to do more than hold his shield in desperate defense. They didn’t even pause their fight. This unexpected variable was simply too tantalizing not to goad the opponent into making a mistake with.
The knight, surprisingly, was the first to give. He should have invested more into constitution.
You have gained: Soul x800
“Wait!” Elia gasped for a breath. “He dropped some shards.”
“Shards meow?” Squinted eyes, suspicious eyes, greedy eyes. “How meowny – meow – how many?”
“A green and two grays. I’ll take the green, you can have the other two.”
“No! Want green meow.”
“Oh c’mon, why not?”
“Green better!”
“Please?”
“Green. BETTER!”
Elia sighed, settling back into a fighting stance.
“Alright. Winner takes all. You ready to surrender yet?”
Lim glared, again, eyes squinted so tight they were like horizontal daggers. “NO. BROKE FEW–FEW!”
Can you two stop already? Please? You’ve been at this for an hour.
“Not up for me to decide when the cat lady throws in the towel, brain bud.”
You could just walk away. Or concede. Or you know, USE OUR MENDING WEDGELING TO REPAIR HER BOW!
“And what, waste a one–of–a–kind, rare resource?” Elia scoffed. “Not before the sun goes out I will. I won’t die either, I’ve got her on the ropes, you’ll see.”
----------------------------------------
Ten hours had passed.
“Ugh. Draw?” Elia asked, lying slung over the bowl of respite’s rim like a wet towel.
“Nnnh.” The bekki woman plunged her head under water, intent on drowning herself as an overly theatrical answer.
Finally. It’s been SO long.
Elia Yawned. Rye yawned. Lim blew bubbles. Finally, the bloodshed was over.
Hopefully, Elia had used this time for more than witty quips. She roused, Rye feeling the heaviness of what was weighing on her mind. “Hey, Lim.”
“Hnnn?”
“I… shouldn’t have snapped your bow. It wasn’t a… nice thing to do.”
The catwoman blinked, half in an exhausted stupor, half in disbelief.
“Lim is… Lim no care, anymeowre. Few–Few just favorite bow.” More bubbles breached the surface as she blew frustration through her teeth. “Was, meow.”
There it was again, that awkward silence. Elia sure was glancing around a lot. Rye knew exactly what she was trying and failing to say. It shouldn’t be that hard.
“I… I could, maybe…” Rye squeezed into their shared face, unwilling to let this bumbling fool talk herself into another atrocity. “We will fix your bow.”
The bekki didn’t look impressed. Rye wouldn’t have believed herself either. She had nothing to gain and too much enmity for the people that stole uncle Felix, even if he went willingly, the old deviant.
They shared in their silence again. A toad swam by, gliding elegantly across the healing water. Lim’s ear twitched, but Elia’s hands snatched it out of the water first.
“EW, Quibbles no! Bad toad. The bowl–water is for drinking, not swimming.” Despite Rye chastizing him greatly, Elia only squeezed him once, patted him on the head and stuffed him back into the moistened pocket. “You oughtn’t spoil your toad, Elia. He needs to be taught manners. Now come, do what we should have done hours ago.”
Elia tapped her finger against her arm, exaggerated gestures the only way for communication while her vocal cords were occupied. Under the continued scrutiny of the bekki, Rye slowly approached and traced the sign on her little wedge before touching it to the bow.
You have used: Mending Wedgling
Nothing happened. Lim continued blowing bubbles. “Few–Few broke.”
“I know! I know. Just… wait, maybe? Oh beans, I thought this would work. I–“
The two snapped ends of the bow shuddered. They twitched, pulling themselves together by invisible strings and conjoined at the break before the same force pulled in splinters from across the room. Wending, winding, mending, the room fizzed with pre-thunderstorm static that drifted inwards until with a dull fwomph, the bow ceased levitating and clattered to the floor.
Lim’s body was making its best imitation of a triangle as she scooted into a corner, every part of her pointy and standing on end.
Rye meanwhile was stuck with no way to hide as Elia steered them forwards, poking the bow which was hale and whole again.
“Magic goes… fwomph?” If Lim was underwhelmed by the sound too, she didn’t show it.
“… Few–Few?” Apprehensively, the bekki woman crawled forward and grasped the bow. This time, tears of joy marked her face. “FEW–FEW! Not broke meow! Not!”
She hugged it close, hesitated, then embraced them both as well.
It was harder and harder to hate the woman, hate Lim. A bekki was a human. Even if they had teeth like a lion, cloven hooves or a tendency for kleptomania. In the end, her father let slip that uncle Felix was doing well. He had passion and great love for his wife and still wrote frequently and paid for the cost of a letter traveling across the country out of his own pocket.
With a single sigh, Rye let go of the grudge and found herself sharing in the simple joy of having done one good thing that didn’t end in the death of somebody else along the way. She barely noticed the point where she returned control as she drifted back into the depths, into dreamland.