Ivy and Miva’s expression was as priceless as I’d expected when I made the announcement. Midnight looked up and shuddered a bit. “Meowstress is serious. I died. I can still vividly remember the jaws closing around my head, and the pain…” She buried her face in my lap as I resumed my attempts at calming her. It was quite the traumatic event, after all.

“There’s even a grave for her out behind the house, though it’s pretty overgrown these days.” Miva and Ivy looked more confused than ever. "Wait, if that’s the case, then how is Midnight…?" Miva seemed to have an epiphany. “The familiar ritual has a resurrection possibility, doesn’t it?” I gave her a crooked smile. “True it does. However, while the familiar ritual indeed has such a function, it might surprise you to hear that I have never made use of it.”

Now Miva looked even more confused than before. “Then how?” I grinned. “That’s a part of the story further down the line, so why don’t you ponder that meanwhile?” Miva and Ivy both immediately booed. “No fair, tell us!” I shook my head. “No more tangents, remember? If it’s any consolation, it’s not too far down the line.”

The two looked quite displeased at the prospect of having to wait. However, with no other option, Miva laid down on the couch with a sulking Ivy sitting on her head. Well, it was my petty revenge on the two for being so reckless earlier, despite knowing full well they shouldn’t be. “Now that I looked down at the small kitten in my hand…”

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I was slowly realizing I would need to fetch a few things. Over the years, I made a concentrated effort to accommodate Soot around the house, and now I would have to do the same for this little new kitten. I glanced into the big pocket where the lil thing was lying. It looked up at me, then yawned and closed its eyes. Well, that solved one issue. Since the little thing trusted me enough to sleep, then I wouldn’t have to worry about her running away.

Finding a water bowl for the kitten wasn’t that hard. As for the rest, I would have to make that myself when I got home. However, I wasn’t about to go home without dropping off a warning to Faye and Alder. The last thing I needed was for that pack to maul their family members.

When I landed at the farm, I was met with happy if somewhat curious greetings from Alder and Faye, though when they saw my serious expression, their smiles faded somewhat. “Hello again, sorry to disturb you once more, but I have some news I felt you needed to know.” The two glanced at each other, but remained quiet as I explained that occurred earlier.

Alder’s expression grew as grim as my own. “Thanks for the warning, Morgana. I’ll make sure that if they try anything around the farm, they’ll regret it. It wouldn’t be my first tussle with a pack of those damn things. Although that was long ago now…” His voice trailed off, before he shook his head. “But that’s neither here nor there. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to rig some traps around the pens.” He took off while calling out to the kids to come along.

I gave Faye a polite nod and took off again. I would take care of that warg pack proper later, if Alder didn’t deal with them, but not while having a defenseless kitten with me. With that thought on the forefront of my mind, I turned the broom towards home.

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Soot seemed calmer now as he hopped from my lap and down on the floor. “Not that it did us any good. Those damn beasts were gone, vanished. Even with magical tracking, we came up empty. Of course, if we knew then what we know now…” I cleared my throat. Soot glanced up at me. “Right, no tangents, sorry.” I reached down and gave his head a gentle pat. “No worries. I can understand that those beasts are a topic you wish to leave behind.”

I leaned back and turned my attention back to Midnight. “That being said, you’re right, of course. They were gone and no one in the area saw them again for quite a while. As for the Warg I killed… well, you have all seen what happened to it.” That earned me curious glances from Miva and Ivy. I simply pointed to my outer robe, which was hanging near the door. “It’s a warg-skin coat. It was difficult to make on my own, because of the extra work I needed to do, but I got it done.”

Miva host me a doubting glance, then seemed to understand. “Alchemical duplication.” That earned her a crooked grin. “Indeed. Took me about a month to puzzle out how to get that done. I’ll go into some details about it later if you’d like, but it was pretty basic all things considered.” Midnight looked up at me. “Yeah, it was so basic you blew yourself up about a dozen times while doing so, Meowstress.” I glanced down at her. “Oh, feeling better now, considering you can make sarcastic remarks like that?” Midnight nodded and slipped from my lap. “I do.”

She pranced over to her water bowl and took a sip before returning to the couch. “That aside, Meowstress, aren’t you being a bit too hasty?” I arched an eyebrow. “How so?” Midnight stretched for a moment, then sat down and looked at me. “I mean, when we began you went into much more detail, while now you are skipping the minor stuff a lot. I am pretty sure that if this was when you began the story, you would have set off an entire afternoon to tell us all about how much you struggled to make the coat, rather than just point it out.”

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

I lifted my tail to my chin and used it to scratch under it like a brush, a habit I picked up when I was mulling over things. “Huh… you might be right, actually, I have been doing that these past few days, haven’t I?” I paused for a moment. “That reminds me. There is a small little occurrence during that duplication. We need to discuss the process anyhow. So I’m glad you pointed that out.” I looked at Midnight while I said so, causing her to tilt her head, confused.

I leaned back. “It was…”

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About a week later, and the kitten was getting used to living with us. She wasn’t yet able to speak, not aside from meowing for food. But it would come in time, no doubt. I was reading up on Wargs, more to the point, use cases for different warg bits and the meat. Waste not, want not, after all. I flipped to the part of the bestiary describing Wargs and read aloud for Soots and the kitten’s benefit.

“Wargs, a distant, magically mutated relative of the regular wolf, possesses high intelligence and malicious cunning. Their appetites are insatiable, and they will spend most of their time hunting for their next meal. This also means that Wargs mate far rarer than regular wolves, as an abundance of food must be available for a pair of Wargs to raise their young. Should food grow scarce before the young can learn to hunt, the parents won’t hesitate to turn to cannibalism to have fewer mouths to feed. In rare cases, Wargs will be rared from a young age by malevolent Fae, who use them as hunting dogs and beasts of war.”

Hmm, I didn’t like that. If the pack disappeared, not because they went into hiding, but because they returned to a Fae they served… That could spell trouble. Well, there was nothing I could do with that right now. So I would have to bide my time until the pack popped up again, if it ever did.

I resumed my reading of the book. My findings were simple, the meat was edible, if not exactly tasty. There were only niche cases of warg parts being useful in alchemy or potion brewing, although a few witches’ brews used warg claws. No need to save that, then. The pelt of a warg, however, was an interesting thing. Wargs were magical creatures, and so was their pelt. Because of this, it would be straightforward to enchant it. The pelt itself made for extremely durable clothing as is and was warm, wind and waterproof, even if untreated.

I pulled out the corpse from my bag. It was pretty damn big for a canine. However, despite the size of the beast, there was no way I’d get much in the way of clothing out of it, a warm hat and maybe some mittens. But boots, pants or coat? No way, I’d need at least one more pelt. A bummer really, was I’d really wanted to use it for a raincoat… Wait, didn’t the Beginner’s guide to Alchemy…?

I got up from the chair and rushed into the potion room and grabbed the tome. Then, as I walked back, I scoured the table of contents. There it was. “Say Soot, you think we can alchemically duplicate the pelt of the warg?” Soot looked at the corpse for a moment. “I don’t see why not, but I would recommend practicing on something smaller first. After all, if you failed when trying to duplicate the pelt, it wouldn’t be around anymore.”

Soot was making a good point. “Hmm, something easy to duplicate…” As I pondered that, there was a crash from the potion room. “Wait, where is… ah crap.” I rushed back into the room and there, lying on the ground and soaked in several potions was the soaked, kitten, a jet black splotch against a mess of colorful liquids. "Dammit." I picked the little troublemaker up by her scruff and carried her out into the kitchen to rinse her off. “Soot, stay out of the potion room. There’s no telling what that mix of potions might do.”

With that said, I brought the kitten to the sink to clean her, while also hoping she didn’t ingest any of that mess. Mixing potions was a bad idea. Who knew what sort of effects those might have, even on skin contact. At least she didn’t look any worse for wear. With the kitten thoroughly cleaned, and vehemently trying to escape my grasp, I carried her back into the living room, where I dried her off with a simple spell.

I put her down on the couch, where she curled up in the shadows and meowed pitifully, displeased at the sudden bath. From my perspective, she was like a small splotch of midnight black darkness against… wait, that was it. I leaned down and gently scratched her tiny head with a finger. While taking care to not cut her with my nails/claws. “Well, if there is anything good that’s come from this, I have found a good name for you, you little troublemaker.” The lil thing’s pitiful meows slowly faded to purring as I kept scratching.

Soot landed on my shoulder, and I used my other free hand to scratch him as well. “So, Mistress, what name have you come up with?” I looked down at the kitten again. “Her name will be Midnight.” The kitten, Midnight, meowed happily.

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Midnight tilted her head. “I don’t recall that incident… then again, if I really got exposed to that many potions, I guess I would be delirious.” She paused for a moment. “Say, Meowstress, you don’t think that would cause…” Her voice trailed off as she saw me shake my head. “Even if that was the case, it wouldn’t work like that. Potions, even the rare ones with lasting effects, would not allow what you can do.” Midnight didn’t seem entirely convinced, but seemed content to let the matter drop.

I glanced over at the clock. “Now everyone, as much as I would love to keep going with this, we will miss out on lunch if we go any further.” As if to concur, Miva’s stomach growled. I got to my feet. “That settles it, then. Lunchtime everyone” As I announced it, I walked towards the kitchen to prepare for said lunch.