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A Dash of Volatility

When Kai set out on a quest to avenge his family’s murders by the overlord Minaito, he had not planned to fall in love. He certainly hadn’t planned on falling in love with a cat. Not that he was in love yet. That happened later. But there he was, flat on the ground because his horse had chosen then of all times to toss him ass over boot-tips with two very wide, human, red eyes inches from his face where moments before had been a black cat and the weird fluttery feeling in his stomach that he recognized as a spell settling over him.

“No,” he said to the spell-settling sensation. “Hell no.” The spell fizzled and died leaving him feeling sick rather than fluttery. Gods, that had been a strong spell, what the hell? And the cat was a cat again.

Kai’s horse proceeded to try and eat his hair. The path of revenge was paved with nothing but hardship. He swatted the horse’s lips away and pushed at the cat. It dug its claws into his chest, ears going flat. Not budging. Kai sighed.

“Cat, you just scared my horse into bucking me off; you’re not winning any points trying to carve into my skin.” He plucked the claws off one by one. The cat let him, scooting down to Kai’s lap as he sat up. His sword was a good two feet away, half out of its scabbard. He’d thought it was tied better. Apparently not. Ah well, he was terrible with a sword anyway. He preferred the approach of “burn it with fire and if it doesn’t burn the first try, douse it with oil and try again.” “Where did you come from?” he asked the cat. It rubbed its head against Kai’s elbow, purring. “Cute.” He scratched it under its chin. “But I don’t forgive you for the scare. Off.”

Surprisingly, the cat listened. Maybe it really wasn’t a cat. He’d never hear of a cat listening to anyone. Kai picked up his sword. Aside for coming half out of the scabbard, it was fine. His horse on the other hand was starting in on pulling leaves off a nearby tree. Kai ran to stop it.

“Why can’t you try to eat grass like a normal horse?” A month ago it almost poisoned itself by eating leaves off the wrong tree. Sometimes he felt like he had acquired a particularly dim toddler rather than a beast of burden. He looked back to the road and the cat was still there, tail swishing back and forth like it was waiting for him to return.

“I don’t suppose you’d be useful trying to defeat an evil overlord and his sorcerer?” he asked the cat. It blinked red eyes at him. Kai sighed. “I’m not sure why I thought that might work. You’re not going to leave are you?”

The cat made a chirping meow at the back of its throat and vaulted up on his horse’s back, on his bedroll and saddle packs, turning once, twice, before settling down with a yawn. Its ear flicked lazily.

“Make yourself at home,” Kai muttered. Well. At least a cat didn’t take up much space. Still, it was an odd cat. It had appeared out of nowhere. It was probably magic, but if it wasn’t hurting Kai, he didn’t mind having a cat tag along. In fact it might be better company than the horse. “First sign of trying to kill me and you’re gone,” he informed the cat. A rumbly purr answered him. Kai swung on his horse and headed down the road.

The cat was definitely magic, but a useful kind of magic. It had the knack of getting into rooms Kai couldn’t and then letting Kai in or of tripping people at opportune moments. Once it even launched itself at the face of a man holding Kai at sword point. Kai was glad to have it along and it did make a much better travel companion to the horse. It responded to Kai when he talked to himself and curled up next to him at night and purred in his ear until he fell asleep. Really Kai got a good deal of it considering the bad start, but he couldn’t figure out why a magical cat would be traveling with him of all people. He was a half-trained fire mage with a habit of making things explode and more blood on his hands than a sixteen year old man should have. He had people out for his head, traveled through the worst places to avoid guards, and brushed with death on a regular basis. Not the best person to spend time around. The cat didn’t seem to care though. If it weren’t for the weird feeling Kai got when he woke in the middle of the night of being watched, Kai would put the mystery of the cat out of his mind.

But he kept waking up.

And one night he realized the eyes watching him were red, like the cat’s, but much larger. Set in a human face. When he blinked, the face was gone.

So he had a cat that wasn’t really a cat—or was it just more than a cat?—and a growing paranoia that he was missing something important.

And what seemed to be four mages on his tail.

Kai apparently had upgraded from nuisance to threat between the last few people he’d charbroiled. He tossed a fire spell over his shoulder as his horse trotted through the trees. If he thought he could gallop without his horse breaking a leg or Kai getting knocked off by a low branch, he’d try it. Unfortunately the other mages included a water mage. A wind or earth or fire mage he could maybe handle one on one, but all together and a water mage on top? Kai might be a prodigy, but he only had a few years of magical studies under his belt. No matter how creative he was with his spells, they still centered around the base spell of make it burn.

Wild blackberries ripped at his legs and his horse’s flanks, startling it into a canter. The cat growled behind Kai as bushes and branches started whipping at them a lot faster. Or maybe it was growling because the ground was buckling up ahead and the creek was rising up on their right, and they could either go left or turn and fight. “Damn it all,” Kai said through gritted teeth as he fought to slow his horse. He’d burn the whole forest down before he let them herd him.

His horse came to a stop so abruptly that Kai was almost thrown off it, right over its head like the first time he met the cat, but he dug his knees in and kept his seat. A strong wind blew dust and needle-sharp ice shards in his face. Kai swore and covered his face with his arm. It burned with waves of tiny cuts. When he lowered his arm, there were four mages in front of him. Kai gripped his sword. The mage in the center stepped forward.

“Kai Moser, you are under arrest for the deaths of three officials, fourteen soldiers, nine horses and the destruction of five official structures,” the young man in the lead said. Stone crunched and trees groaned as their roots took more and more burden.

Kai didn’t look away from the mage. “And what, you’re arresting me? I thought I was kill on sight.”

The man frowned. “If you don’t come peacefully, we will kill you.”

“You must not know me if you think I’ll just give in.” As the stone crunched louder and the wind and water swirled in the corner of his vision, Kai pulled on his magic. It fought his control, hungry to lash out in destruction. It had always wanted to consume and consume and consume. That was why he was so good at fire magic. He gave it a task. Burn hot, burn fast, burn deep, and let go. Flame arced across the wood, catching trees alight as it radiated away from his horse. His horse didn’t even flinch at the wave of heat and light, too used to it to react like most herd animals would.

The mages’ animals were equally desensitized though. The water mage moved water from the creek up to counter the wave of fire, but it erupted into steam that shot out, hot and pressurized. Someone yelped among the group, but he couldn’t see who. He fed it more energy and felt it burn hotter, but the other fire mage was trying to gain control of his fire. It was keep pouring magic into it or let it go. Kai released it and sent smaller flames toward the party. Above them the trees burned sending thick black smoke through the air. The wind mage would have to be careful or she would burn the whole forest down, provided the water mage didn’t put the flames out.

Rock shot out behind him, knocking him from his horse. His horse shrieked as sharp chips of stone cut into its side. The cat’s growl rumbled under it, its sound mingling with the crunch and grind of the ground buckling under Kai’s shoulder and side. He glimpsed the cat jumping free of his horse’s back as the horse finally broke and ran down the only available path that wasn’t blocked by rock or fire or water or mages. Kai had a moment to wonder if he would ever see it or his belongings again when the ground opened up beneath him. Something struck his head and his world was dark and pain.

When Kai opened his eyes again, he was sitting in soft white ashes, the area around him destroyed. Trees were broken and burned husks of charcoal, ash and mud churned together in lumps where the creek had run, and the ground was broken and uneven. Where the mages had been were four corpses. There was no sign of horses—Kai’s or the mages’—or the cat.

Kai got to his feet, his head aching and his vision spinning, and staggered to the mages’ sides. Their throats had been torn out. Long gashes covered their arms and faces, but the killing blow undoubtedly had been their throats. A few had burns from where Kai’s attacks had gotten through. Kai felt unnerved. Whatever happened here hadn’t been him, and it had left him completely untouched.

With unsteady hands, he searched the corpses. He found talismans to boost magic and block the magic of others. He took them. They were of more use to him than to a corpse. Minaito’s crest was found on a letter in the earth mage’s pocket. Kai burned it. Then he started walking where he remembered his horse running off toward. The corpses could rot as a warning.

The destruction from the magic battle didn’t spread as far as Kai expected. Ten minutes of walking had left most of it far behind and the air and creek water there were clear. It was only five more minute’s walk until he found his horse trying to reach leaves from an elm tree. It was such a familiar scene Kai broke down laughing until he threw up on the roots of that same elm tree and his head throbbed with pain. It was then that he noticed the woman.

She was watching from the other side of the elm, his horse’s reins in her hands. Her expression was not amused and something about her made his head ache worse. She had black hair and tan skin and gray eyes that felt like they would swallow him whole. Kai wiped his mouth on an ash-covered sleeve.

“You have something of mine,” the woman said.

“Excuse me?” She didn’t look like one of Minaito’s henchmen. If Kai’s head hurt a bit less he was sure it would make sense, but he was fairly sure he had gotten a concussion when the ground swallowed him earlier. (How did he get out of that anyway?)

“You have something of mine,” the woman repeated. She touched Kai’s horse’s mane and it stopped trying to eat leaves to blink at her. That was abnormal behavior.

Actually, Kai was sure that she hadn’t been there when he first looked, which meant that she appeared out of nowhere.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Kai said instead.

The woman smiled and it wasn’t a nice smile. It was the kind of smile an adult gave to an annoying child before explaining why their question had a very obvious answer, and weren’t they actually a very stupid child? She stroked the horse again and it didn’t try to eat her hair like it tried to eat everything else that looked grab-able. “You stole my servant,” the woman said.

“Servant?”

“Yes.” She scowled. “I sent him away to punish him and he slipped his leash. You’re at fault.”

“I don’t see how your servant running away is my fault.”

“You tamper in magic you don’t understand,” she said. “The spell should have had him killed by the first person he came in contact with and sent back to me. It didn’t.” Her eyes darkened with resentment. Kai kind of wanted to laugh because it made her look a bit like a five year old pouting over not getting dessert, but he didn’t. He had a feeling she’d kill him if he did. And what kind of person talked about compelling someone to kill another living being so easily? “You ruined my servant’s punishment.” Her eyes grew thoughtful. “Maybe I should take it out on you instead.”

“Um…” Well, this was peachy. He didn’t even know what was going on. “Look, I just want to blow up overlord Minaito to bits and burn the pieces. If I somehow interfered with your…punishment, it wasn’t intentional.”

There was a sudden chill behind him and he tried not to turn around. He itched between his shoulder blades. “He doesn’t know,” a male voice said, and damn it, where did this guy come from? Icy hands settled on his shoulders and Kai couldn’t move. One hand lingered at Kai’s throat like a threat to choke him if he thought the wrong thought. “And Xanas is not your servant, he’s mine.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I won him fairly. He’s mine.”

“In name only.” The man holding Kai chuckled. “He only obeys me though.”

“I will win him over.”

“Like you did before you sent him to earth to die as punishment?” The man laughed again. Kai tried to breathe and found he couldn’t. Panic started to build at the back of his mind. “He’s not going to come back to you. You lost Xanas all on your own. He’ll return to me when he’s done having his fun here.”

The woman hissed between clenched teeth, then she looked Kai in the eyes. He wished he could take a breath, but the air wouldn’t come. It was like the man’s hands had stopped all but his heart from pumping and his blood from flowing. He couldn’t even blink his eyes. “You will give him back,” she said. “Soon, or you’ll find mages to be the least of your worries.”

The man holding Kai tightened his grip on Kai’s shoulder and throat and Kai felt sharpness there, like the man’s fingernails were closer to claws. “Xanas has free will.” The man whispered and Kai thought it must be for his ears only. “And he chose you. Harm what is mine and even Hell will seem like a haven for the torment your soul will face.”

Then the cold hands were gone and Kai was gasping for breath and the woman was gone. Kai’s legs gave out. This was too much for one day.

His horse gave up its pursuit of tree leaves to try to eat Kai’s hair again. He laughed because really, what else could he do? Some unknown amount of time later, the cat stalked out of the bushes, fur pristine and tail held high like nothing horrible had happened in the last ten hours at all. It didn’t even look tired. It climbed into Kai’s lap purring and butting Kai’s hands to pet it until its perfect black fur was streaked with ash and blood and mud and the hysteria boiling in Kai’s belly had passed. He still didn’t know how they had managed to live through the day. They slept there that night, right in the leaves without even getting the pack out and the cat purred and purred until even Kai’s headache had faded away.

****

The feeling of being watched didn’t stop there. If anything it got more noticeable, like before it had been idle interest and now the eyes watched with intent. Since Kai couldn’t do a damn thing about the feeling he did his best to pretend he didn’t notice. Not much changed after that. They still kept moving and fighting, but something had changed with the cat.

More and more Kai felt awkward to think of it as “the cat” like he did the horse. It felt like the cat should have a name, but since the cat wasn’t completely a cat (and Kai was sure of this by now, as sure as he could be with only half caught glimpses and gut feelings could be) it probably had a name already. So he kept calling it “the cat” because it felt stupid to give it a name that wasn’t its own. (He supposed it would help if he checked the cat’s sex to stop thinking of it as an it, but that seemed like a violation of the cat’s privacy so he didn’t do that either. Never mind that it was probably male.)

While most things didn’t change, the cat did. Where before it came and went and acted like a typical cat, it started following Kai around and reacting more than small vocalizations to Kai’s commentary. At one point he could swear the cat laughed at him. On the other hand it could have been the start of a hair ball, but the weird choking-gasping meows hadn’t been repeated since, and he had seen it hack up a hair ball once, looking as disgusted as Kai felt after it was done.

“So cat,” Kai said as they sat by the fire. “We’re almost at our next target.” He played with the cat’s silky ear, smiling when the cat kept twitching it away. The cat swatted at his hand, claws sheathed to batter at Kai’s fingers to get him to stop. He laughed at the red eyed glower it sent up at him. “The next man is active in the trade of magical beasts and beings, catching and selling to the highest bidder. What do you say to setting his menagerie free, hmm?” He kept his hands to himself as the cat cocked its head to one side.

It meowed, the sound rising at the end like a question.

“I don’t know how dangerous some of the beasts are, no, but for the ones that are sentient, they don’t deserve to be locked up.” He leaned back. I suppose we’ll have to be careful about the villagers and the household staff, but I’m tempted to burn the place to the ground.” Kai wrinkled his nose. “He deals in humans too, sex slave trafficking mostly. Makes me want to be more creative in killing him than the others. I keep thinking if he had got his hands on my sisters…” His sisters hadn’t passed through the man’s hands before they were killed, but they had been held captive before they died unlike Kai’s parents. Lake…Kai wasn’t sure when Lake had died, just that by the time he figured out where Myst and Rowe had been taken they were dead and Lake had died long before they got there. Kai always felt a weird mixture of guilt and relief that he had been at school when it happened. They had come for him, but his professors had gotten him out, and Kai had managed to find out what happened from his grandfather. They’d gone into hiding for a while, but when Grandpa died, Kai had decided enough was enough; he’d kill Minaito or die trying.

The cat crawled into his lap, putting its paws on Kai’s shoulders to look Kai in the face. Its eyes were serious as it stretched forward to brush its nose against Kai’s. Then it rubbed its face along Kai’s jaw.

He smiled and ran a hand down its back. “He didn’t touch them,” Kai said. “But he’s hurt a lot of other people. Have any ideas on how to make his last moments miserable?” The cat flexed its claws. “I considered handing him over to those he imprisoned, letting them rip him apart, then burning the place. Would that work?”

The can made a grumbling sound at the back of its throat.

“Mm, you’re right, that would take too long and we can’t afford to be there longer than it takes to kill him and set his prisoners free. Too many risks.” The scratchy tickle of the cat’s tongue rasped against his cheek. He had a feeling he was missing something, but that was okay. He couldn’t really understand the cat’s vocalizations, only make his best guesses. He rubbed the fluff behind the cat’s ears. It sighed with the edge of a purr rumbling through it. “Can I leave opening cages to you? I think I can manage to knock out guards and catch his lordship in his room.” He grinned. “I think I’ve finally got the sleep spell down.”

The cat smacked him on the nose with a soft paw, claws tucked away.

“Hey! Fine.” He laughed and lay back, letting the cat curl up on his chest. “But can you?”

A short meow answered him and one red eye slit open to give him a look that said he was being stupid.

“Fine. I won’t doubt your abilities again.” Kai yawned; feeling a bit like a sleep spell had been cast on him, though he hadn’t felt any tingle of magic.

***

The attack went smoothly until Kai actually reached the lord’s study and found the man dead already. A young woman wielded the knife, her hair pulled back in a ponytail with a boy looking much like her on the floor next to the body, staring at his hands shakily. There was another knife nearby with blood on it as well. Neither wore clothing. Kai had to feel respect that they’d managed to kill the man. He was said to have magic of his own that let him manipulate those he traded in to complete obedience.

The girl whirled on him when he entered, and he wondered if she was even older than Kai was or if she was his age. She and the other boy had one earring in each ear in the shape of a feather. Twins? He couldn’t contemplate it more as she lunged at Kai’s throat in the next instant, her knife still dripping the lord’s blood. Kai dodged back.

“Wait! I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to kill him!”

“Fat chance!” the girl snarled. Her knife slashed up, stinging a line across Kai’s cheek that came uncomfortably close to his eye. He let loose a stream of fire to ward her off and she rolled away, eyes narrowing. “A mage?”

“Damn it, I’m here to kill the bastard, but obviously you already killed him.” Kai kept fire around his hands in case he needed to lash out again. “Look, I’m going to burn this place down, you don’t want to be in here.”

“No, I’m not done yet.” The girl narrowed her eyes. They flicked to her brother and back to Kai. “Stay. If you don’t interfere until I’m done I won’t kill you.”

“Done with what?” Kai’s internal sense of time said he had maybe fifteen minutes to finish up before the guards started waking. His horse was waiting and he knew the cat would meet up with him there. If he didn’t burn the place, it would be a failure and a risk for nothing. Well, not nothing as the cat was freeing the creatures and people locked up but still.

The girl ignored him and moved back to the corpse. She nudged the second knife to her brother and he picked it up again, looking sick. His eyes darted to Kai and away, his legs snapping shut to try and shield his nudity. Kai, not really one to be phased by something like nudity, watched the girl cut a line down the corpse’s face from hair line to chin straight down the forehead and over the nose and lips. Some blood oozed from the cut, but most had already spilled from the cuts in his neck and side. She dipped her finger in the blood and drew three circles, took her brother’s hand, and forced him to draw the same on the other half of the man’s face. The temperature in the room dropped. “I claim this sacrifice for the Controller,” she said in a harsh voice, “and call him to aid his followers.”

To the part of Kai that felt magic, it was like the room broke in half, the corpse unleashing energy that surrounded the siblings. The same horrible feeling from the woods that had stopped Kai’s lungs returned, and again, Kai felt his chest struggle to rise and fall with breaths. The siblings didn’t seem to have the same problem. The girl lifted her head boldly to stare the man that materialized in the face.

He had light brown hair and wire spectacles that one wouldn’t expect to see on a god. His hair was pulled back in a bushy horsetail and he had robes like those of a high mage, but at his belt was a long, wicked looking dagger stained with blood.

“Ah,” he said, surveying the scene. “You gave me one of Nona’s servants. She’s not going to be pleased, but then I have never minded a bit of theft at her expense.” He smirked at the mention of the Manipulator goddess. The two gods’ realms of control overlapped and they were said to have an ongoing feud. The Controller reached out to the siblings and touched both on the forehead. Their eyes slid shut and their mouths gaped open though if it was in pain or from being overwhelmed by the god’s presence, Kai couldn’t say. “You did well, children. The spells binding you have been removed and the curse he placed in his last moments is gone. You will be free to go as you please.”

Kai felt that there was both irony and something fitting in a god of control giving free will to two slaves. The other side to order and control was anarchy and freedom.

The god’s eyes lifted to meet Kai’s and this time Kai’s lungs did fail. The god’s expression was cruelly amused. “You can go freely as well, provided you don’t harm these children. Clean up their mess though. It wouldn’t do for my new servants to get implicated in a murder case when you have enough blood on your hands to cover for them.”

Kai thought he should be annoyed, but he couldn’t feel much more than relief at the feeling that he had just escaped a great deal of pain.

The god looked away. “I should leave. He won’t be happy that I interfered with you,” he sighed. “Beware of Nona. She’s not nearly as lenient as I am.”

Then the god was gone and Kai could breathe again. He was annoyed that this seemed to be becoming a thing. The girl kneeling next to the body shuddered like she was shaking off a spell and looked Kai over. Her eyes that had been brown before were red now. Kai felt a chill fill him. They looked a lot like the cat’s eyes.

The girl and her brother staggered to their feet, the knives in hand and moved past Kai to the door like he wasn’t even there. He hoped wherever they were going they went there fast and found clothes somewhere. Then he set fire to the room, starting with the body first, burning it hot enough to crack the stone floor and turn the bones to ash.

Smoke was filling the sky as he met up with his horse. Elsewhere he could hear screams and roars as creatures that had been locked away were suddenly free and very angry. There would probably be a lot of backlash for this. Kai couldn’t bring himself to care.

The cat slunk out of the bushes, feeling larger than it looked. It growled at Kai when it close, its nose twitching and its ears laying flat.

“There were a few complications,” Kai said, feeling like he was building an excuse rather than an explanation. “The lord was dead. Two kids sacrificed him to the Controller.” The cat’s growl rumbled deeper until it sounded more like a panther than a house cat. Kai had never heard it so angry. “He told me to cover for the kids.” Kai blinked. “I would have done that even if a god hadn’t ordered me to.”

The next thing Kai knew he was flat on his back with the cat rubbing its face along Kai’s with little grumbling growls vibrating trough its whole body. “What are you…?” He tried to push the cat off, but it dug its claws in hard enough to draw blood and Kai let it finish whatever it was doing. Only once it had rubbed its face along every inch of Kai’s did the growl taper off. It narrowed its eyes at Kai in a glare like he had done something wrong. Was it Kai’s fault that he came in contact with a god? No. Kai scowled back. “I don’t see what I could have done differently here. I can’t even move when he shows up. What was I supposed to do, attack a god?”

The cat’s meow felt like an emphatic yes. Some days Kai thought the cat must actually be crazy.

The shouts from the manor and shrieks of the freed beasts took on a different note, and Kai knew they needed to leave. “I still hold that I wasn’t actually able to do a damn thing,” Kai grunted, rolling to his feet and knocking the cat off his chest with a disgruntled hiss. “But we’ll have this conversation later.” Kai’s horse, already nervous from the shrieking and the smoke was more than happy to move away from it all. If Kai saw two black haired figures dressed in ill-fitting clothing disappearing into the woods, he wasn’t telling anyone.

***

The cat was weirdly clingy for several days after that, sitting in Kai’s lap whenever it had the chance and trying so many times to groom Kai’s hair (and failing spectacularly) that Kai decided he must really need a bath to get that kind of reaction.

Kai chose the next river they came across to bathe in because he was getting tired of having the cat accidentally bit him when it tried to untangle Kai’s hair from its tongue. When he finally found one, he plucked the cat from his shoulder and put it on the horse’s back. “Look, I’ll clean whatever it is that’s bothering you off. Stop eating my hair. You’re acting like the horse.” At the cat’s affronted look, he added, “Well not exactly like the horse, but I’d like to have some hair and scalp left.” He took a square of soap from his bag. “You stay here; I’ll be done in a bit.” The cat meowed loudly, but it didn’t follow him. That was actually a bit surprising. He expected the cat to push itself along like it pushed itself into every other part of Kai’s life. Apparently bathing merited some privacy. After tying the horse up—away from any toxic trees, if it was going to eat leaves, it could strip something that wouldn’t give it terrible indigestion—and continued to the river on his own.

The water wasn’t very deep, only about to his waist, but it ran clear and cold with stones along the bottom. He swore when he stepped into it. It was going to half-freeze his balls off. Kai had just finished lathering soap into his hair when a female voice said, “You’re pretty dense aren’t you?”

The soap almost slid from his fingers. On the bank was the woman from the woods weeks before. He had a pretty strong feeling that she was the goddess Nona, the Manipulator.

Her smile widened like she could hear his thoughts, and maybe she could. Kai didn’t know enough about her to list off her powers from the top of his head. She looked him over and Kai was very conscious of being naked. The hand holding the soap dipped into the water to cover his crotch. “You still haven’t given me my servant back,” Nona said. “And what’s more, you helped two of Cain’s servants kill one of mine.” She sighed. “You must either think that you’re invulnerable or you’re just that dense.”

“No,” Kai said. He still didn’t know what servant she was talking about but hell no was he going to do anything for a goddess that had supported a lord that ruined people’s lives.

She sighed again. “If you had any relatives to hold over you, I would.” Then she leaned forward. “I could keep the soldiers and mages and everyone out for your head away. I could get you right into Minaito’s castle to kill him. That would be more than fair trade for my servant back.”

Part of Kai wanted that. Most of Kai, the part that was already shaking his head in refusal, knew it would be pointless unless he did it himself. “No. I won’t make any deals with you.”

“Fine.” The goddess eyed him again. “It’s not like it matters much anyway.” She smirked. “It’s just to get back at Cain. But…” Her eyes narrowed. Kai felt his body tingle with a spell, but no matter how he pushed against it, the feeling wouldn’t disperse. “That…should make things a bit more interesting.” She grinned.

Kai was alone at the river with a fluttery feeling in his stomach, soap in his hair, and he was still freezing in places that shouldn’t be exposed to so much cold. What the hell did the spell even do? He dunked underwater and finished cleaning as best as he could.

The cat was still on the horse when he got back, Kai shivering at the cold water dripping down the back of his shirt. “I ran into another god,” he informed it. “Nona. She still seems pretty annoyed with me for reasons unknown. She cast some kind of spell.”

The cat stared at him solemnly and meowed. When he got close, it licked water off his face. Then it tried to groom his hair again. Kai wasn’t sure if he should laugh or groan when its tongue got caught again.

***

The spell didn’t seem to have any effect that he could notice in his day to day life. He could cast magic as well as ever. It didn’t interfere when he killed a corrupt baron, or when he fought a group of men trying to get the bounty on his head. He didn’t run into any larger number of attempts on his life than before. The horse still tried to eat his hair and plants that might kill it. The cat still came and went and occasionally tried to groom him. The only thing that had happened at all was that he caught glimpses of the cat with a human face more often. It was still only at night, and only between sleeping in waking when his mind could dismiss it as a dream if he wanted. Kai didn’t think much of it (or at least not any more than he already did) until they ran into a servant of the god Alain, the Shadow, who actually managed to catch Kai.

Actually, Kai was surprised he wasn’t killed. There was something weird how his opponents tried to capture him alive when Kai had repeatedly shown lethal force in return. Instead he woke up in a pit cell with iron bars at the top that Kai wouldn’t be able to reach unless there was some sort of rope lowered. He also had magic dampening chains which made it impossible to do more than spit a few ineffectual sparks of fire magic. It was terribly frustrating. And worse, once Damien caught him, he’d left Kai in the pit and hadn’t returned.

Food was tossed down with a water skin once a day, but that was it. For three days. Kai had no idea what happened to the cat or to the horse or if Damien had decided to let Kai rot or if he’d summoned guards and was just waiting for them to arrive before Kai got carted off to the capital. While Kai wanted to get to the capital eventually, he certainly didn’t want to go there in chains to die. That would ruin the plan of publically burning the overlord and his sorcerer alive.

The fourth day in the pit, Kai heard the sound of fighting and people in pain. He wasn’t sure who would attack Damien—most people weren’t as bold as Kai to try direct confrontation—but it sounded like they were doing a good job of it. He was almost hopeful that someone in the attacking force would decide any captives Damien had should go free. Then the sounds stopped.

Kai waited. And waited. Did they get killed? Did they stop Damien’s forces? Did they cut their losses and run? Nothing.

Then a face peeked over the edge of the pit, too far up to make out clearly, just a tan oval of skin and a dark fringe of hair.

“Hey!” Kai called. “Any chance of being let out?” The face didn’t look like a guard—they wore helmets—and it didn’t look scared like a servant might. The face didn’t move for so long Kai wondered if they didn’t understand what he said or were going to let him wait until his hope ran out. Then a rope fell down the hole with a loop in one end for his foot. Whoever it was started pulling him up, using the bars as leverage, when he tugged to show he was ready. Kai reached the bars and hung onto those instead of the rope. He wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to get past them.

The face from before was just outside of his field of view from where he hung. Instead he could see black hair cut choppily short that stuck up in weird directions around the person’s forehead. What he glimpsed of the person’s eyebrows, they were thin and angular, but he couldn’t make out anything below them. A section of the bars pulled away and Kai could clamber out, chains trailing and clanking along with him until he rolled free of the pit. Only then did he see his rescuer’s face.

He was a young man wearing clothing two sizes too large with a wiry body, short hair except for a bit at the nape of his neck that had been left to grow longer like a tail. There was blood on his hands and a bit on his face, but the most striking part of him were his eyes that were a bright, bright red.

“Oh,” Kai said, something clicking in his brain. The cat. Then he felt the tingle of magic as he passed out.

***

When he woke up, the chains were gone, he was on a straw mattress, and the cat was on his chest. It…he…looked worried when Kai tried to move and shoved his face against Kai’s to push him back down. Kai felt like his brain had been scrambled. But he was sure he hadn’t imagined that the cat rescued him in the form of a young man. Covered in blood. Actually, there was still blood caught under the cat’s claws making the translucent white look dull brown. Then he remembered the magic he’d felt before he collapsed.

“Damn it,” Kai groaned. “Nona’s spell.”

The cat’s ears flicked back. His paw tapped Kai’s cheek.

Kai patted him back. “I think it’s making it so I can’t try to talk to you when you’re not in cat form. I was fine until I tried to talk.”

The cat’s ears pinned further and his tail lashed.

“Yeah, it’s annoying.” Kai blinked. “I wonder if I could be around you without it affecting me if I didn’t try talking.”

A growl told him that that wasn’t happening. Then the cat licked Kai’s nose. Kai tried not to sneeze.

“I really don’t understand you sometimes,” Kai said with a sigh. He curled both arms over the cat in a loose hug. The cat purred his approval and pressed his head against Kai’s chin, his whiskers tickling Kai’s throat and the purr vibrating in time with Kai’s pulse. “Thank you though. How did you save me anyway? You must be powerful, but I can’t figure out how powerful.”

The cat made the choking laughter sound. The red eyes said he was missing the obvious. Red eyes. His brain made another connection and he groaned.

“Oh my god, you’re Cain’s Demon.”

The cat laughed again and curled as close to Kai’s face as he could without suffocating him in fur.

Kai shook his head. Cain’s Demon was said to be a monstrous cat with eyes of fire that could rip apart cities with a flick of its claws. And he’d been traveling with him for months now. The cat had slept in his bed. He’d helped Kai kill people. He’d killed people for Kai. What the hell? And there was another thing not adding up. “How the heck did you end up serving Nona?”

The cat snorted. His tail smacked Kai between the eyes. Kai could almost imagine someone saying You have a brain, use it.

“Fine. They made some kind of bet? And Cain lost. Huh, bet that pissed him off. Why on earth would Nona want you? Wait, no, mass destructive power, that would probably be right up her alley. But you don’t listen to her so she threw you on earth.” He thought for a moment about the feeling of magic he had shrugged off when he first met the cat. “I was supposed to kill you wasn’t I?”

The cat murred. He blinked at Kai and licked Kai’s nose again.

“I’m glad I didn’t kill you too.” The idea was pretty horrifying actually. He hugged the cat tighter. His purr rumbled through Kai’s bones. “I think Cain’s happy to let you do whatever you want for a while. He seemed pretty amused whenever you came up.”

The cat hissed between breaths, purr pausing for a moment.

“I can imagine you don’t like being in his control,” Kai agreed. “I’m not sure why Nona put that spell on me though. She sounded like she didn’t care that you were traveling with me anymore.”

The cat batted Kai’s face like he did when he thought Kai was being stupid.

“No, really.”

The purring ended in a heavy sigh and the cat squirmed free. Kai frowned at him, but then the cat was shifting, becoming larger and heavier and much more human. Much more naked human. Kai blushed, but kept his mouth closed. Nona’s spell didn’t trigger.

The cat rotated his jaw a few times to feel it out and then spoke. “Think about it. I’m not actually a cat, Kai. It’s just my preferred form.” He smirked and he looked a little bit like Cain in a way that made Kai’s brain feel confused. Then the cat leaned forward, still splayed over Kai’s chest, and kissed him. Oh. Ooooh. Well, that put a lot of things into a different perspective. Kai felt like his magic had caught his face on fire. The cat was laughing at him and Kai still didn’t know what his name was. He couldn’t keep calling him the cat or Cain’s Demon when he was kissing him.

“No talking,” the cat said, covering Kai’s mouth with a hand that had rough skin and a bit too sharp nails and smelled metallic like blood. “You’ll be knocked out again and you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to connect the dots. I can’t just show myself to anyone. I had to wait for you to understand.”

Oh, Kai thought again. He held out a hand, and when the cat held out his free hand, Kai traced letters on it. He knew the cat could read, had known ever since the one pass through a village where the cat had pointed out a sign to Kai. N-A-M-E-? He spelled.

“Oh. Xanas.” The cat smiled. “I am called Xanas, though if you want to keep calling me Cat, I’m not going to complain.” He laughed at Kai’s raised eyebrow. “It was fun. It’s been years since people called me a cat and even longer since someone treated me as a person when I’m in cat form.” He grinned, showing sharp teeth. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

Kai let him and kissed back. He hadn’t planned to fall in love with a cat. He couldn’t really complain.

#writing #AU #meme fill #demon march #crossed:creating chaos #drown in the sky #killer kai #kai #xanas #nona #cain #saki #seiko #crack pairing #universe mash up #fantasy #An Unstable World