The familiar, all four eyes shining, pounced.

It did not close the distance between itself and the terrible creature. It landed just before it and snapped its maw. A set of magical silver teeth, larger than the familiar itself, appeared and closed around the root of one of the massive black tipped hands that held the half body of the creature aloft.

The creature raised its eyeless face and let out a muffled cry of pain against its skin mask.

The familiar thrashed its wolven head from side to side and the silver teeth tore into the ruined flesh of the attacker.

The hand that was not held in the clutches of the familiars attack fingered its way around the trunk of a tree and closed, sending the sound of splintering wood through the dark night. I saw its muscles writhe under its flesh and it snapped the tall tree from the ground, leaving nothing but roots and broken ground where the tree had been.

Like a club, it brought the straight down towards the familiar and where I stood.

The next second, the tree crashed to the ground in a cloud of leaves and soil right where I had been.

Trails of silver light faded from where the familiar had been. The glowing trail led back to the spot under the felled tree I would have died in if I had not been moved.

The familiar's flank leaned against my legs, silver light pooling at its feet.

"Run." It growled. Then, just as the creature fingered itself over the top of the tree it had picked up, the familiar vanished, leaving nothing but silver trails of light in its wake.

It reappeared in a flash and slide into the cage of arms that bottomed the creature, where it tore into them with its ferocious maw.

I listened and ran, leaving the sounds of the supernatural struggle behind me.

If the unfamiliar familiar felt it necessary to protect me, so be it. I would take the time it gave me to find Arthur and get him to safety.

Running blind through the woods was no easy task. The fear made it more manageable. Being too scared to care about gullies and holes and fallen trees gave me a blind confidence that managed to carry me over the treacherous ground at a speed that I would have never been able to replicate without the horrifying visage of torso creature to run away from.

Where are you going? The question came and went through my mind faster than I could realize I had thought it.

Why was it always the worst situations that I had my most reasonable thoughts. I had no clue where I was going. I had just ran. The notion that I had actually plunged myself deeper into the woods creeped up on the back of my neck.

"Arthur?" I called out, not taking the risk of slowing down. Moving in the wrong direction had to be better than not moving at all when you were being hunted, right?

No response.

Maybe the spirit had led him somewhere safe, where he could wait out the nightmare unfolding in the woods.

I still didn't know why Sam had come and why the stupid cat had run off from the clearing. If he had somehow known that danger lurked in the dark trees and had come to protect me, running away and leaving me had not been a successful strategy.

"Arthur?" I called again.

"Dani?" I heard my friend yell back.

"Where are you?" I called again.

"Over here!" Arthur responded.

Thank the Mothers. I thought. By some stroke of luck, I had been heading in the right direction. Just as I caught sight of my friend, the artificial light he carried blinked out and left both of us in the dark. I kept my eyes set on where I thought his silhouette was and called again. "Arthur."

"Hey, Dani! I've got Sam," Arthur called from the other side of the wood line, his voice shaky and full of worry. "He's hurt, I think he got in a fight with something!"

"Leave him! Go inside!" I yelled back, struggling to keep my speed without tripping over the tangled branches that seemed to be precisely where ever I stepped.

Arthur called back. "What?"

I broke out of the woods, keeping my pace, and grabbed my friend by the sleeve of his canvas jacket. I pulled him into motion and ran until we reached the dark steps that led down from the back door of the boarding house. "Go inside, lock the doors, don't come out until I come get you. Understand?"

The small trace of Arthur's constant smile vanished. "No, I don't understand. What's going on?"

"Arthur. Go!" I demanded, giving him a shove towards the stairs. The lich's creature was after me. All I had to do was get Arthur in the house and run away. If I wasn't there, it would have no reason to bother either of my friends. I hoped.

A flash of blinding light illuminated the backyard and blinded me just as Arthur said. "Sam is hurt."

I shielded my eyes. What else was going to decide to attack me?

In truth, the light was not the warning shot of another hostile force. The back door of the house opened and Anna came down the stairs.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Shit.

The amount of people I had to convince to go inside had doubled and she would be much harder to persuade.

"What's happening," She asked, her eyes focused and sharp. They darted between her brother and I until they landed on the bloody mess in Arthur's arms. "Oh fuck."

Anna knew that Sam was not a normal kitten. As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she looked at me. I saw her face change from worry to fear in an instant. Anna knew there were monsters in the world. Anna knew that there were monsters in the world that knew where I was.

"Is it?" She asked.

"It is. I think." I answered, the remnants of the series of scents that I had smelled both times I had encountered the lich playing in my nose again.

“Anna! Arthur! Why is there yelling? What is the matter?” Ms. Laos voice snapped from inside the boarding house. The small woman appeared in the doorway and the truth of what Arthur had told me about her sickness struck me again.

I had spent no great amount of time with the woman, but the brief and terrifying encounters I had spent, she had been nothing but form and strength. Every strand of her jet black hair pulled neatly back in a bun, her clothes pressed and unwrinkled, and the way she carried herself had been straight and proud. The small woman who was slowly descending the short steps into the back yard, the mother of the only two friends I had ever had, wore the veil of a slow death that lessened what she had been before. Her hair was messed and thinning. Dark circles made sunken shadows under her tired eyes. She wore layers of soft clothes, bunched in a manner that made me think she had just risen from her bed.

Tripled. I had three people to get back into the house and could feel in my bones that I was running out of time.

“Ma, go inside. It’s too cold out.” Arthur said, not taking his eyes off Sam’s bloody little body.

Ms. Lao made her way down to where the three of us stood, a furious scowl on her tired face. “Why do you have a cat? No pets! Whose is it?”

Arthur didn’t mean to, I know he didn’t, but he commuted a small betrayal by glancing at me only for a second.

“I knew it! You have been sneaking around her since the day I let you move in. I made it very clear that there were no pets,” Ms. Lao tore into me verbally. She wasn’t yelling, but every word hit me like a hammer. “I want you out. Now. Pack your things and I will have Arthur drive you to the bus stop.”

I knew it was coming, It had been nothing but luck and happenstance that had allowed me to remain in the birding house as long as I had.

It still hurt. It still made tears rush up and nearly fall from my face. The boarding house had not exactly been what I had fantasized about before I charmed my way out of Zenithcidel, but more memories that I had come to hold near to my heart had happened in that place more than anywhere else.

“Ma.” Anna said, staring at her mother with a clear look of defiance.

“Hush. Go inside. I do not care that you have become friends with her, she broke the rules.” Ms. Lao responded

“He’s hurt, Ma.” Arthur whispered, turning and extending the cradle he had made with his arms so his mother could see the battered body of my familiar.

“I do not. . . ,” Ms. Lao trailed off when she looked down at the bloody blue kitten her son held. “Oh no,” A softness I had never and never expected to see in the small woman’s eyes appeared when she looked at my familiar. “What happened to him? Let me see.”

The bright white light hanging off the back of the boarding house gave me my first real look at the state of Sam.

My familiar's yellow eyes were half lidded and rolled back into his head. HIs tongue lolled out of his open mouth. His white fangs were stained red with blood and his blue tortoiseshell coat was slick with it as well. The little kittens body looked wrong, bulging and swelling in all the wrong places. The memory of Uma, a name I didn't think I would ever forget no matter how many memories I viewed, and how she had crumpled under the deathly grasp of the lich came screaming back to my mind.

If Sam wasn't dead, he would be soon.

I had no way to help him.

What had he fought? What other horror lurked within the woods behind the boarding house?

As if my thoughts had been called into the darkness, the sound of something heavy moving quickly through the dark trees echoed off the back wall of the house.

"What is that? Do you have a dog too?" Ms. Lao asked, carefully taking Sam into her arms.

"All of you need to go inside. Right. Fucking. Now." I said, anger laced through my command. A disgusting creature that had been sent by an evil and malevolent entity was hot on my heels and all I had done was feel sad because I couldn't stay in the boarding house any longer. Every second I allowed them to stay outside, to stay near me, I invited the chance for them to end up like my familiar.

I envisioned it in my mind. I wish I hadn't.

"Autumn?" Anna said, gently putting a red tinted hand on my arm.

The sounds of horrid movement grew louder and faster.

"Do not use that language with me, young lady!" Ms. Lao snapped.

Closer.

"Go inside!" I yelled, pointing my own red tinted hand at the door.

Ms. Lao spun to face me just before Arthur let go of Sam's body.

My familiar tore in half.

All four of us screamed in shock.

Sam's front half stayed in Arthur's arms. His back half went with Ms. Lao. Both of them were too shocked to do anything but stare down at the hunks of flesh left in their grasp.

"Thank you, mortal mother." A deep voice snapped the shocked silence that we had all fallen into.

All of us looked down to where the voice had come from.

Standing twice the height I was used to him being, the not so little anymore skeleton of Sam stretched out at our feet. My familiar had grown. From being small enough to fit in my palm, Sam was the size of the largest house cat I had ever seen, the tip of his segmented tail extended past my knee. I doubt he'd be able to fit into four hands. Long canine teeth stretched down from his top jaw. Burning yellow were lights hung in his eye sockets.

Being the only one that had the mental stability necessary to engage with such an unexplainable situation, I asked. "What the fuck just happened?"

Sam, done with his audible stretching, turned up to look at me. "I have been made anew."

"Samsara." Anna whispered.

What did his name mean?" I wondered.

The creature made of nothing but hands and torso burst from the tress faster than anything that size should be able to move, the black nailed fingers of its largest hands needling across the ground towards us.

"Let us see if something of your ilk can contend with me now," Sam growled, taking slow steps toward the oncoming horror. "Come, my lady. We shall commit great acts of violence together!"