Kilter Cove was dark outside during the day and even darker during the night. It consisted mainly of a system of caves and tunnels, and all of it was surrounded by the tallest spruce and pine trees. It all added up to make every other densely packed woods look brighter and more colorful in comparison. Most of its population lived underground, and so it was only the lurkers, stalkers, and lost wanderers navigating the surface.

On his way through the mostly unfamiliar forests, Mr. Fluffington shone with the light of the dragon scale attached to his back. He walked on all fours because he was used to it, but it forced him to drag the Ex-Calibur. The sword reflected some of the light from the scale. His bandages technically reflected the orange too, but they had been stained red to begin with.

As he wandered, the surrounding bushes sometimes shook. The branches of the trees swayed, dropping leaves and twigs. The grasses ahead and behind parted ways, and little heads popped out and back into their burrows. The forest watched him as he passed by. They judged him. They sized him up. He was injured, and weak, and tired; yet he burned bright all the same. The sword and its light followed him rather than the opposite. Wherever he was headed, the bystanders made sure to watch. There would be witnesses no matter what.

At first he had no idea where he was headed. He mostly went north, but there was little rhyme or reason for it. He hoped the assassin might show themselves first, but he quickly realized it would be harder than that. If anything, the assassin would strike first. They could see him wherever he went.

He also knew that he didn’t have all day. Soon it would turn morning, and although Kilter Cove would look largely the same, he would suffer exhaustion and a loss of minutes and hours that he couldn’t bear to waste. So, he did the only thing an animal could do when in desperate need of finding another animal: he relied on his nose.

The memory of the assailant’s smell back from when they first fought had almost entirely vanished by then, but he hoped to find the scent familiar enough when he eventually stumbled on it. It was all he had; there wouldn’t be any help around, because he almost never entered the Kilter Cove woods on a regular basis. None of its inhabitants knew him, and if it weren’t for his extra accessories then he probably would’ve been mincemeat already. The surrounding forests looked darker by the minute, even if it were only his imagination, and the smells were only getting him so far.

They led him to his first cave system. He couldn’t help but feel a familiar odor radiating from inside of it. A giant gaping hole faced up out of the dirt. Darkness occupied it, and he could only imagine what occupied the darkness.

Mr. Fluffington was about to find out when a low, guttural groaning noise rumbled from inside the cave. It cut through the low ambience of the woods. He heard the echo of a chorus, and only later did he realize it was his imagination.

Instead of delving deeper, he turned around, his sword cutting the surrounding grass and forestation like a scythe, and then he ran. As he fled from the monstrous groaning from the cave, the familiar odor only continued to increase in intensity. It clamped down on his nose until the memory of the holder’s scent sprang up.

“Cattrap?” he said, bewildered to the forest in general. He also halted to a stop.

She popped out of the grass in front of him on her hind legs and waved a bundle of paper overhead.

“Fluffy, ya' got this, I know ya' do,” she said with at least enough decency to whisper.

“What are you doing here? It’s dangerous. Someone is going to die," he said.

“And it’s my job as a journalist to capture the news no matter how bloody it may be. This one is going to be a big scoop, I tell ya'.”

Mr. Fluffington spun in a circle. He tried relaxing his nerves whilst simultaneously planning what to do about his little journalist mouse companion.

“You can’t be here,” he said after stopping.

“Yes, I can. Come on, let’s go.”

She started marching ahead, and judging by the amount of sniffing she was doing, she was going to find the killer before him. He ended up following her, and the rest of his vengeful search went on feeling not very vengeful at all, because it was hard to be vengeful and angry when you had someone smaller than you leading at the front like it was a leisurely walk through the woods.

Thankfully, she led him away from the darkness of the cave. She instead led him toward the biggest and darkest cave entrance he’d ever seen.

“I think this is it,” she said.

“You're telling me he's in there?” he cried.

"Yup."

His sword felt like a dagger and his dragon plate felt like a plank of wood.

The entrance to the cave was wide. It was so wide, in fact, that it could have fit any animal ranging from a bear to an elephant. He’d fought the killer before and they were smaller than him, but it was during a moment of adrenaline, desperation, and blinding fury. The animal he imagined waiting for him inside the cave wasn’t a tiny rodent, lizard, or an equally sized cat. It was a giant beast. His sword and dragon scale didn’t feel like nearly enough. But he had no other options.

He stepped toward the cave, treading nearer and nearer to the mouth where the darkness solidified into an impenetrable black veil. The plunge he was going to take was possibly his last. It engulfed him quickly, and the dragon scale continued to be his only source of light. Unfortunately, the light only clung around him, and so he couldn’t see very far, whereas everyone could see him.

He stepped cautiously through the darkness, mostly running into walls and stumbling blindly around. There were twigs and leaves scattered across the ground. He reached one side of the cave before realizing it wasn’t all that deep to begin with. The walls surrounded him. They cornered him, and at the center of it all was a pile of feline bones and a wall with dark writing smeared over it.

It read: “Equl Rits, Equll Lvis - 13 LIVS IS A CRIME”

Cattrap squealed outside with perfect timing as he reached the final word.

He ran as quick as he could, which admittedly wasn’t very quick, until he caught up with her.

She was alone outside.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“I smell him!”

And she couldn’t have said it a second later, because an arrow whizzed through the air and rebounded back into the forest. The only reason it hadn’t killed Mr. Fluffington was because his dragon scale armor reflected it. However, he only saw the direction the arrow was fired from and nothing else about the location of the shooter.

Mr. Fluffington stood up on his hind legs in order to better wield his sword but then lowered back down after realizing that it made his stomach vulnerable to the next arrow. He instead put himself between Cattrap and the bushes. A second passed. Then two. And then a third. The entire time he reacquainted himself with their scent so that they could never run from this encounter…

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

As the second arrow left the bushes, he ducked his head to the ground and dragged the Ex-Calibur with one of his two back paws. It ricocheted off his plate armor again and landed somewhere behind, but it no longer mattered. He had enough time to break through the bushes and land on his assailant.

They were small and wore a hooded cloak, and so he couldn’t see their expression as he landed on top of them.

They dropped their crossbow on contact and barely managed to slip out of his grasp. But they didn’t move away in time to dodge the Ex-Calibur he swung out from his side. The metal of the blade gleamed with the intertwining combination of the dragon scale's orange and the nightlight beams' white. However, instead of cutting directly through the small creature, it sent the little thing flying in a crumpled ball of hair and cloak. A knife shot out of the fold after it landed and barely scraped through one of Mr. Fluffington’s legs.

He yelped in pain as the killer unraveled themselves from their own cloak and revealed themselves to be a rat―a rat with another knife.

Mr. Fluffington ducked again so as to block the thrown dagger with his dragon plate but then quickly realized the rat hadn’t thrown it. They waited for him to peer back up before jumping on him. They slid off the rough scale without getting a hold, but they had managed to stab the knife into his side. It fell out and landed on the ground.

The two of them spun around to face each other so that it was a small rat facing an armored cat with a sword.

“You’re not going to win this,” said Mr. Fluffington, backing the rat into a corner while simultaneously wincing from the pain.

“Yes, I will.” The rat mirrored him by taking an equal amount of steps back.

“Then you’re delusional.”

“And you have cheated death twelve times too many.”

Mr. Fluffington swung out the sword again. It hit the rat, but it once again failed to cut him in half. No, the rat blocked it straight on with its own body. It looked at Mr. Fluffington, who was far larger than it even without factoring in the dragon scale and sword.

The little rat flashed a smile, in so far as a rat can smile, and then its whole body lurched. It didn’t move from the spot where it stood, but its whole body vibrated once before beginning to expand. Mr. Fluffington watched in horror as the rat’s hair and skin stretched outward. It started moving only in certain regions. Blobs formed under the skin and then moved until they almost became entirely independent chunks of hair and flesh hanging loose from the rest of its body. The creature went from a rat to a giant ball of gray fur in a matter of seconds. Its stubby nose and whiskers became a snout. Its eyes rounded. Its small, little cupped ears sharpened to finer points. Its legs and arms lengthened, and so did its tail. Its little black eyes turned yellow.

What was once a rat a third of his size was now a wolf triple his size―plate and sword included.

Mr. Fluffington ran.

He made it about ten feet, into the clearing where Cattrap was trying to watch them fight without getting involved herself, and then he unintentionally involved her.

“Run!” he shouted.

But she didn’t move. In fact, she was frozen in place.

He turned around to avoid trapping her between the two of them and caught a full force lunge head on. From there, everything fell apart. He felt the giant beast’s claws enter his sides. He felt its jaws crunch his back. He tried lifting himself up or shifting out of the way, but his legs gave out underneath. His final remaining energy fled, and the once lightweight dragon scale collapsed over him. His vision blurred and then blackened. The wererat kicked his limp body one last time, and then turned its attention to the mouse. She was now the main witness, and quite the witness she certainly was.

Cattrap hadn’t moved at all during the time between its first lunge and its attack on Mr. Fluffington. She barely moved during his second lunge.

“Wait, wait, wait! Stop! You’re a murderer!” she said.

The wererat stopped only once. “No. I am just leveling the playing field.”

“What?”

Before it could finish her off on the spot, Mr. Fluffington leapt one last time and caught the wolf with the Ex-Calibur. The wererat fell to the ground, but before it could get back up, the Ex-Calibur was pushed into it to the limit of the sword's length.

Cattrap watched as the wererat twitched. A red pool formed from the wound, and it dribbled around the sword which remained in the beast’s torso.

The wolf picked up its head an inch off the ground and howled as loud as it could. After the strained whisper of a howl ended, it finished bleeding out and died.

Cattrap rushed to Mr. Fluffington, who remained limp since his final sword plunge.

He also wasn’t moving. He also wasn’t breathing.

The sky and outstretched sands were entirely black. In the distance, there was an oily river. A boat eventually came through and stopped by a small dock set up by the water. It was a wooden canoe with a single hooded rider carrying an oar. On this particular moment in the infinite emptiness of the underworld, the Charon picked up two passengers and carried the most awkward ride it had ever had the displeasure of carrying down the river. Neither passenger carried coins, and one of them had explicitly promised to carry coins on their next ride―this was that ride.

There was hatred simmering between the two passegners, but due to the laws of intangibility related to the dead, their stronger emotions were fleeting. They also couldn’t fight, at least not physically.

The rat sat by the Charon. Mr. Fluffington sat by the very front of the boat. His back faced the river.

“It is a shame it ended this way, but I won, you know,” said the rat.

“I wouldn’t personally call it winning. You’re dead,” said Mr. Fluffington.

“You both are,” said the Charon. The two animals paused to look at them and then both resumed their staring match.

“You are a liar and a cheat,” said the rat. “Nine lives is already a travesty. It is unfair to all other animals, and it is a disgrace to life itself. I may be dead, but so are you and that is a net gain for the world.”

“The Overworld,” said the Charon, correcting him, even if they didn’t otherwise care about the feud.

“Not to mention,” continued the rat, “that you were not satisfied with nine lives, am I correct? Thirteen total lives? Really? I am sure you would agree this was only fair.”

Mr. Fluffington sat in silence. His eyes did the only speaking for him, and for the time being he was taking the gloating from the rat. Equal Rights, Equal Lives. And he had indeed lived thirteen lives.

“I want to show you something when we reach Limbo,” said Mr. Fluffington as calm as could be.

Although the rat continued bathing in its self-righteousness, Mr. Fluffington endured the lines with him, and the lines after the first one, and even stayed with him after they dealt with the Department of Mortem Visits’ ID system, all the way until they reached the final counter together.

“Ah, Mr. Fluffington, back so soon, are you?” said the all too familiar skeletal worker.

Mr. Fluffington looked at the confused wererat standing next to him. He had been there twelve times before, but it was the rat’s first time.

“You hurt a lot of animals,” said Mr. Fluffington to the rat. “And so I do not feel bad for you in the slightest.”

“I am merely the equalizer between the supernatural abusers and the abused,” said the rat. “I do not feel bad either.”

Mr. Fluffington smiled and then turned to the skeleton. “I am here to use my last life.”

“What?” cried the rat.

“Of course,” said the skeleton. It stamped his Nine Lives pass. “You may enter the Altar room.”

“Last?” cried the rat. “You were already on your last! Everyone said you were!”

“And who told them that?” said the smiling cat. “Who could possibly know how many lives I’ve lived but me?” And then his smile became a grin.

“You cheat! You liar! You thief!”

“Thirteen would have been an unlucky number, you idiot,” said Mr. Fluffington. “And if you have a problem, take it up with the gods. It is through them that I live again, even if it is my last, and through them that you will rot down here for the rest of eternity.”

“You lied!!!”

But Mr. Fluffington had already slipped around the counter. He could hear the rat howling and making a scene in the room behind him, but he no longer cared about that. He would be returning to a Forest without killer wererats, dogs, and the endless paranoia created by them.

As the familiar blue glow of the Altar enveloped him for the last time, Mr. Fluffington allowed himself a smile. For the worst week of his life was finally over. He still had a lot of work to do when he returned, but he found early on in life that it always helped to help others.

You never know when you might need a second chance, and you never know when you might need an extra thirteen.