For any imperial sage, war was a constant. War amongst political factions, war games in the provinces, and, most importantly, war against demonic invasion. For Juna Ken in particular, war had been his life practically since he'd first joined the imperial academy in the now-barren province of Aea-ja. The academy had fallen to a demonic hoard within the week, and the next twenty years of his life had been spent desperately fighting until he was strongest among the last of the remaining sword-sages.
He'd earned his reputation for ruthless efficiency, his reputation for genius the day he'd led a hundred sages, barely better than academy students, to sunder the shattered path and end the invasion in a single day.
He'd been leading armies and rising through the ranks for over a thousand years since then, relentlessly pushing against the shifting tides of the demonic host, regaining land even as their enemies grew more powerful. Renowned for a cold heart and analytical mind, his will was singular and his drive unmatched. Those who fought under him sometimes called him cold-blooded, and for all the glory he brought, the wake of his stride was death.
Which, all in all, was why when he was teleported into his command tent at the edge of the demon provinces, the commanders of the grand army he'd been assembling from the capital stopped and stared. Only his second in command, a sword-sage far more powerful than even him, was willing to put words to the question. "A kitten?"
"Yes."
"But… why?"
Even as the kitten leapt down to the table, Juna was spreading out various maps and strategies with a pernatural calm. "She's my new head tactical advisor." Most of the staff chuckled quietly and returned to whatever they'd been doing, leaving only Juna and his top commanders around the central tale. "I have received the impression that you think I am joking." The kitten began gently nosing pieces across the board, scratching esoteric numerals lightly onto slips of paper set up specifically for the purpose, the others watching in awe as a brilliant strategy manifested before them. Juna met their eyes with the most bored, unimpressed look any man could imagine. "I was not joking."
………
Tabs chuckled softly as she butted her head against the tactician's hand, earning a few scritches behind the ear for another plan far beyond the capabilities of local forces. Every time she pulled out some new simple trick, they always lit up in awe and confusion and exuberant joy. They didn't even suspect she was more than an odd, tactically genius, kitten either.
The looks on their faces, every time…
A few years had passed quickly, and they'd made good progress on the campaign. Several important provinces had been reclaimed, focusing on the ones with important deposits of minerals or metals, as prolonged demonic presence tended to degrade the environment quite thoroughly. Currently- as she repositioned a few more pieces, and scrawled a series of potential maneuvers onto a parchment- she was working on an assault plan for a particularly nast demon fortress nestled in an important pass between their current position and sea-borne reinforcements.
Juna picked up the price she was laboriously pushing across the board, holding it contemplatively in his hand. "Do you know what this used to represent?" She shook her head no, then proceeded to immediately ignore him as best as she could- and having lived with Sara and Kitsune her best was good indeed- "...and you weren't listening to me."
Tabs leveled a look at him, that patented cat’s glare that simply said of course she wasn’t listening.
He twirled the piece around in his hand, then dropped it right in front of her. “Well… I’m certain there’s something up with you. You’re incredibly tight about how much energy you have in your core… almost as if you don’t have one at all.”
Tabs still wasn’t listening.
“A kitten, a newborn cat, probably wouldn’t have been able to think up those strategies. And you’re still a kitten. That’s basic, though-”
Tabs still wasn’t listening.
“The demonic host has gotten… fiery, lately- they’re more powerful, and their miasma burns particularly brightly. A bad sign if I ever saw one.”
Tabs jumped off the table to- somehow- carry an entire box full of soldier tokens back up to the map. Without listening.
“...concluding that, I decided you’re probably not a defenseless kitten, and you’re going with me into battle tomorrow.” Juna grinned viscously as if he’d finally managed to figure something out, or at least find a way to get some information. It would have been a triumphant moment, but for one detail.
Tabs was completely oblivious to what he was talking about.
………
She woke up in the morning, drank deeply from the bowl of milk and ate some of the minced meat Juna had prepared for him- he was a total softie, and kittens really managed to drag that out. She leapt up to the dresser, saw Juna strapping on his battle armor, and settled into the nook she’d wait in until he came back.
It was thus to her complete surprise she found herself picked up and placed neatly on his shoulder as he unsheathed the emperor’s sword of starlight and hovered out of the door to stand in the sky a thousand feet above the army as it readied itself for blood war.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The sky this deep into the demonic provinces was thick with a fiery miasma, a reddish corruption to the skies that would have killed any non-sage in an instant. In the distance, beneath a bloody rising sun, a fortress stood built into the very side of the mountain, blocky towers of white stone glimmering bloody red as jagged runes ran across its surface in elegant patterns. It had a presence, however faint- it was the ultimate redoubt for the demonic forces in the region. Take it and they would have essentially ended the war.
They would take it. She’d pulled out all the stops for this- her plans were beyond genius, filled with contingent upon contingency-
“Imperials!” Juna’s booming voice echoed across the massed army beneath, resolute, cold. “The last night of the soul is here! This fortress is all that stands between us and the pure seas of the empire! It will not remain!” The resounding cheer was almost enough to drive all the air from her body. Luckily, she hadn’t gone to the effort of making an actual biological form, so that didn’t matter.
Juna unsheathed a sword- a bolt of glittering starlight, sunlight wrought from the skies and enmeshed into physical form, singing with the eternal power of the skies- the emperor’s blade. It caught the rising dawn, and the army moved, rank upon rank marching forward in careful but loose formation-
The battle rapidly turned chaotic, but from her position above it all she could clearly see the patterns, the gentle motions each unit slowly worked as they encircled the enemy and pulled them apart, a hundred little insects gnawing a beast to death…
The fact that something was wrong was immediately apparent. The enemy had decided to take some sort of reserve strategy- clearly, for all that both sides were locked in mortal struggle the higher level forces yet hovered above the battlefield, unengaged. Why, though… she’d had trillions upon trillions of years to refine her tactical sense, and knowing when something was a trap was something she’d mastered in the first few. She carefully scanned the battlefield, looking for anything off-
She noticed it immediately. The runic formations on the fortress were wrong- just subtly off, close enough that anyone else would have missed it. It wasn’t the local scripting pattern, but rather something entirely different… something from beyond the bonds of the universe around them.
It didn’t reinforce-
It hid.
A final demon rose from the fortress, immensely powerful and crackling with an almost tangible sense of fire- a breath on the air that made it seem the world was a spark away from igniting. The sky drew dark and bloody red as the runes flickered and died, rising sun and stars twisting into a shifting visage of blood and fire. The exact sort of effect that occurred around a shattered path.
The demon unleashed from its hand a sword of flame as it ascended to face them from a thousand feet away, viscous grin resolute in its superiority. Juna paled and flinched back against that malicious glare, holding his now bloodred sword steadily against the advancing foe. Tabs was content to let him face it- she’d managed to drill in retreat when outgunned to the commanders in great nuance, and it wasn’t a complete disaster-
A second time, she felt something- a touch of fire beyond even the archdemon’s, an elemental burning that she was intimately familiar with. This had just rapidly jumped from botched engagement to a duel critical to the fate of the planet. If Kitsune learnt she was here before she managed to truly set up her plans…
She stood up, licked Juna on the cheek in farewell, then jumped off his shoulder.
Air hardened beneath her, cooled, crystals of solid oxygen manifesting out of nothing in sheer panes as she rand through the sky as little more than a flicker of blue, eyes alight, thinking about the consequences of what had to be one of Kitsune’s prime lieutenants being on a world like this. Then she was crashing into the demon with the crackle of order, energy manifesting from nothing, fractal blue lightning arcing from the point of impact and slamming into the ground with a roar of bright energy.
The demon responded with a firestorm, a hundred thousand darts streaming out of a whirlwind of flame, strange multidimensional runes forming and disappearing in a second it tried desperately to contain her. Vast pillars of scarlet fire erupted from the ground, twisted infernos written in a rictus of pain as the demon’s body quivered from the power of the attack.
When the light faded a blue star hung in the air, wreathed in infinite fractals twisting away to nothing as it slowly ponderously moved, inevitably drove its way straight back into the demon’s chest. The moment they touched it erupted in a blinding flare of light, blasting the archdemon through the walls of the castle. “Seriously…” shaking her head, she alighted in the central courtyard, gently hopping over shattered stones to see the tear in reality that pulled at the space between here and there- the shattered path itself. “If I had my luck, then this whole thing would have been a lot more fun. Just blasting people gets old fast.”
“The…” the demon hacked up blood, grinning all the while- “host- lives. The king burns all. You and yours will eventually be ash beneath her… tails.” The last word was choked around a brilliant bar of energy as it speared its body, exploding outwards into a fractal storm that lacerated the fortress into a million pieces of dust and stone, sundering the shattered path to nothing more than memories and fragments of bloody sky.
“ISON, record a message for me, with video- ‘You totally deserve having to deal with this sort of thing. Love, a person who can’t manipulate probability because one of your stupid rules.’” ISON gave her a confirmation and she grinned, fully prepared to enjoy lording something over the fox at some undetermined date in the future.
Two hours later, when the smoke had once again smeared the pristine sky and the demonic forces had been thoroughly routed, an exhausted and thoroughly shaken Juna Ken found his kitten sitting on the charred wreckage of an entire enemy fortress, licking the ash off its fur with an innocent expression.
He didn’t buy it for a second.
………
It was only after a few days of acting like a kitten- or, in other words, an absolute menace- that Tabs realized that Juna had actually managed to outmaneuver her by forcing her into battle.
She resolved to tie his shoelaces together at least five times.