Monster Party Book 4

Fiction about Ravenloft or Gothic Earth
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jamesfirecat
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Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Author Notes: Yes I know I haven't finished posting book 3 yet. Just can't stand to do the formatting right now, so we're gonna post some of this book instead. Like I've probably mentioned before these books are so serialized that you won't spoil anything in book 3 by reading some of this one.

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Chapter one: If there's somethin' strange in your neighborhood...

"Another day, another ten coppers..." Reflected Nicolai Androv.

All things considered the Nova Vassan merchant was quite content with his life and had every reason to be.

He had followed the Lawgiver's tenants his entire life and he had been rewarded with inheriting his father's antique shop and continued reliable business for it. His wealth was by no means grand, but neither did he need to fall into crime and depravity to avoid starvation.

He took a moment to caress his black mustache as he examined his latest purchases. They had arrived last night near closing time so he hadn't been able to properly inspect them until now.
Four finely crafted coffins imported from the forests of Barovia, nothing too spectacular, but they should last far longer and prove much studier than those made of local wood.

Not antiques in and of themselves, but his shop did all kinds of business and he was certain he'd be able to find a buyer for them sooner or later. If worse came to worse he could always have them broken apart and remade into desks, chairs, or something else, strong stout wood would always fetch a reasonable price in Nova Vassa.

As he carefully felt out each coffin by hand a strange realization came upon Nicolai, he had paid for four coffins, four coffins had been unloaded last night... so why where there five coffins inside his shop?

The door had been locked up tight and showed no signs of tampering, besides who would break into his store to leave behind a coffin? Surely there were simpler more effective ways of disposing of a dead body?

Besides, this fifth coffin... what a coffin it was!

He ran his hands along it and felt the smooth material it had been draped in making it practically a joy to the touch. He pulled back some of the stuff and saw to his surprise that the wood beneath was black as the material covering it.

Yet a couple quick wraps on its side proved that it was neither rotted nor burnt, but stern and strong.

No sane criminal (or even an insane one) would leave behind a coffin like this, it looked grand enough that even Prince Othmar could not have objected to it being his final resting place!
As that thought struck him Nicolai began to rub his hands together, the ways of the Lawgiver were not his to question, but surely this coffin must be a minor sign of his favor! Only a gem encrusted silver spear could have been a more obvious gift from on high!

If only he could find the right buyer he was certain this coffin would be worth several month's regular business!

The only problem with possibly interesting the Prince (well the only problem other than the fact that he was still several decades away from needing a coffin) in it would be the slogan it currently bore, even if it had been done in beautiful golden thread.

"Touch Not The Cat Without a Glove."

That was very impressing sounding but the Prince would want his own family motto "Unity from us, power for us" put in its place.

Still that phrase it.. it reminded the merchant of something that he had seen somewhere, he just wasn't sure where.

He scooped up his book of records and began to search through it hoping that he could find an answer, lest curiosity distract him for who knew how long? He ended up needing to go back through several of his family's record books (keeping careful track of everything one owns and sells was a minor way of venerating the Lawgiver after all) till he finally found it.

So pleased was he with his discovery that he couldn't keep himself from announcing it to the otherwise vacant shop.

"Aha, here we are, 'Touch Not The Cat Without a Glove' it showed up on a moth bitten tapestry believed to date back to a time roughly around...!" Nicolai's eyes bulged in their sockets and he dropped the book.

Forget selling the coffin to the Prince, he'd just had a fantastic antique from the Bridling period dropped into his lap!

The coffin must have some sort of magical spell on it to be this well preserved! What other explanation could there be for why a coffin should have written in Nova Vassan a slogan that hadn't actually been used in his country for over a century?

He reached for a crowbar, realizing that if he'd been able to lay a hand on the coffin, it must not have any magical protections that would flay the skin from his bones if he tried to open it.
Who knew what greater wonders might lay inside?

As he turned around, the strange coffin suddenly swung open of its own accord.

A beautiful woman dressed in a manner both shockingly foreign and shockingly masculine rose from the coffin. Her clothing amounted to little more than a simple white jacket with white shirt underneath and a black pair of pants, while a white hat rested upon her black hair that was parted by a streak of white in the middle.

The woman's outfit was a study in contradiction for the masculine way it clung to her body ended up leaving her feminine figure far more fully on display and she wore the simple outfit with grace and elegance that would have befitted a noblewoman in a resplendent scarf and blouse.

She stretched and cricked her neck slightly as she looked around the shop her ruby red eyes paying him no more attention than they did any of his wears.

"Hmm... this doesn't look like were I remember going to sleep. Still, you don't especially look like the kidnapping type." She certainly had mastered the highborn skill of having a conversation "about you" without needing to have a conversation "with you" if nothing else.

"Did you remember going to sleep in a coffin in the first place?" Nicolai ventured hoping against hope that he might retain ownership of the strange antique.

"Oh that part I remember quite clearly. Still, I don't think we're in Kartakass anymore Kitten." The woman reflected seemingly speaking to no one in particular.

"You've got that right Mirri!" Answered a young man who emerged from the coffin a few moments later.

Nicolai turned his head to the side slightly, trying to a better look at the black coffin.

It was large yes, certainly larger than the four he had actually bought, still unless it possessed additional magic that made it larger on the inside, it was hard to imagine that two people could have comfortably fit inside it.

The coffin's second occupant proved even stranger upon the eyes than its first one had. He was a young man with soulful brown eyes. Still, he was not so young that his lip should have been without at least some faint traces of a mustache starting to come in.

Nicolai couldn't help but conclude that the man must be at least as foreign as the woman's method of dress due to his lack of the traditional Nova Vassan well groomed facial hair.

Leaving aside his lack of a mustache he was dressed in a riotous bright red jacket, shirt, pants, shoes, and wide brimmed hat that came close to completely covering his head. If he squinted hard Nicolai could just barely catch a glimpse of how the hair underneath that hat seemed to be equally red.

"No of course not, you are in finest antique shop of all of Kantora!" Nicolai exclaimed, instinct rising to the occasion where actual coherent understanding had long since fled.

"Kantora, you mean I'm back in... well this is just wonderful. At least I still have my coffin..." The woman muttered to herself in irritation.

Her Vassi was without trace of foreign accent but hinted at its owner being of the upper-crust. By comparison her companion's came with a Mordentish accent (if you were going to have business dealings with traders who traveled any further west than Barovia you were sure to have at least some exposure to that language) and was of a much more baseborn nature.

Clues began to accumulate and Nicolai now had a theory he would carefully keep to himself.
The woman came from a family of some means and had committed Viggo's Folly or something close enough to it by becoming smitten with a foreign commoner, perhaps some son of a merchant who passed through these realms.

They might have eloped in the night carrying off the coffin either to sell or as a memento her of family's past wealth. Granted his theory still did nothing at all to answer the much stranger question of why they had been sleeping inside the thing.

The pair looked far too healthy (the woman's skin was more than a touch on the pale side but she moved with a confidence and grace that suggested no illness would be so crass as to dare infect her. If their clothing was bizarrely designed it was also mostly clean and without noticeable tears) and vibrant for them to have been so lacking in funds that a coffin was the only shelter they could seek at night!

Nicolai was tempted to insist that the mysterious coffin in question was rightfully his, but a single look into the woman's eyes was enough to make him decide against it.

It was hardly as if he had paid for the coffin, and perhaps it was not a gift from the Lawgiver but a test? This beautiful woman clearly thought it was her own, what right did he have to take it from her?

Then the other coffins he had just bought opened up and more figure emerged from them, two men and two women.

One of the men had long silver hair, and a single green left eye while his right was covered by an eyepatch.

He was wearing a black outfit of some vaguely martial nature with silver symbols of a mystic nature inscribed upon it.

The other man had dirty blond hair and blue eyes and was dressed in a simple brown cloak with a blue shirt on underneath.

Of the women, one of them was an elf with blue hair and blue eyes in a close cut blue dress. The other was even stranger, she had green tinted skin, yellow hair that seemed to be strangely straw-like, and was dressed in a green leotard of some sort. She must have been either foreign or cursed (or both) for Nicolai had never seen someone whose very skin seemed to call out in morning.

"Boss, I don't recall going to bed in a coffin, let alone a coffin in the middle of some guy's store..." Reflected the dirty blond haired man.

Nicolai blinked a few times, he hadn't inspected the coffins, but he was fairly certain he would have noticed if people had been inside them when they were delivered...

"I don't suppose you're going to claim you own those coffins as well?" He muttered dourly wondering if whatever strange business was going on at the moment would result in not just the black coffin but even the one's he had rightful purchased being taken from him.

The silver haired man looked back at the coffin he had just emerged from and shook his head.

"Never seen it before in my life. Given that I could say the same about you, perhaps some introductions are in order? I'm Alexander Diamondclaw..." He offered.

At that point it would been most impolite for the store's owner not to respond in kind.
"Nicolai Androv. As I was explaining to your female companion, at least supposing you people already know one another, I own the finest antique shop in Kantora. Do you see anything you like?" He abruptly added as an after thought.

Further introductions were made, the man in red was James Firecat, the one in brown was Cal Wright, the elf was Devi Skye, the woman in green was Florence Bastien and the beautiful woman in white and black was Mirri Catwarrior.

Nicolai fully expected that all of them including (make that ESPECIALLY) Mirri would not be looked kindly upon by the Lawgiver or his priests, but as a merchant he'd long ago accustomed himself to dealing with those who were destined to spend their afterlives in the Hell of Slaves.

To their credit his unexpected guests didn't take their frustration at having been hurled halfway across the Core out on any of his delicate merchandise. Even more wonderfully they'd been lucky enough not to have been separated from their collective money pouch by whatever mystic misfortune they had suffered.

Alas, none of Nicolai's stock interested them at all.

Knowing that foreigners (and these people were about as foreign as you could get) could be counted on to purchase what no Nova Vassan would, the merchant didn't want to loose the unique chance they represented and decided to display one final item for them.

"I wouldn't go showing this off to my normal customers you understand. It's antique I've no doubt of that, but all the same some members of the Iron Faith might make regrettable mistakes concerning my devotion to the Lawgiver if I left it out in the open for anyone to see..." Nicolai explained as he searched for the strange curio he had decided to purchase two days ago.

It had gone for a song because of its blasphemous nature but it had been so well made that he hadn't been able to refuse the offer.

It was another coffin of sorts. An ornately carved wooden container perhaps two feet in length, designed in the shape of a cat.

Many tiny gems were studded in the coffin while the cat's face seemed to have been gilded with gold. If Nicolai was unable to find a buyer for the object before much longer he planned to start prying the gems loose.

For now it was unmarred and in almost shockingly pristine condition.

"To be perfectly honest, I have no idea exactly how old this item is. It clearly dates back to before the reign of Saint Gorkyn Beloved of the Lawgiver, but perhaps it goes even back beyond the arrival of the Old Vassi?

I can not say for sure, only that it has been quite some time since anyone has revered cats in Nova Vassa to the point that they would bury one in such a resplendent fashion. It can be yours for a mere, ten platinum say?" Nicolai offered as he held up the item in question gingerly.

The price he asked was certainly twice what the gems in the coffin were worth, and he had no intentions of mentioning how he'd bought it for only fifty gold. To his delight he saw James Firecat start to search through the many pockets of his outfit, and then to his horror he felt the coffin in his hands move.

So great was his surprise that he dropped the exquisitely carved coffin and could do nothing but curse himself for a fumble fingered fool as it plummeted to the floor. It struck the ground and snapped open, a small brownish feline figure popping out.

It looked vaguely cat shaped, but more like someone had baked a cat out of clay rather than a living animal. Yet it was animate enough to open its mouth and let loose with an ominous hiss and shake itself vigorously. Flecks of dust and who knew what else fell from its body as raggedy tufts of fur emerged from gaps in the clay coating that surrounded its body.

It turned a baleful glance in Nicolai's direction and he discovered that its eye sockets were little more than withered husks. Its teeth were discolored and broken, but in such a way to only make them more fearsome.

The shopkeeper didn't think, he acted on pure reflex and kicked out at the creature trying to knock it away from him. It jumped over his leg showing shocking dexterity despite its decrepit appearance.

Its claws flashed out and Nicolai screamed in pain as there was a sudden searing sensation from his leg. His entire body felt weak and he collapsed to the ground.

"HELP ME!" He pleaded to the other occupants of the shop, worried that this bizarre beast might prove more than capable of killing even a fully grown man.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a metallic flail that had been wrapped around the elf's right arm unfolded and lashed out. It wrapped itself about the neck off the catbeast and with a firm pull she managed to yank it away from the prone merchant.

The feline terror hissed and spluttered in anger, its claws striking out at anything within reach, but they were not sharp or strong enough to damage the flail that held it in place. Only after failing several times over did it occur to the creature to turn its ire on the one who had bound it, spinning around to hiss at the elf.

It bounded towards her, only to have its head caved in by a blow from the back of Cal Wright's weapon, some manner of firearm Nicolai believed, such things were too expensive for him to be very familiar with them.

Either way the clay coated cat jerked and spluttered a few more times then went blessedly still. Nicolai breathed a sigh of relief, which came far too soon as he suddenly found the blade of a longsword being held to his throat.

Alexander Diamondclaw stood above him weapon in hand, his grip far from traditional, but perfectly capable of ending the life of a shop keeper should he so wish it.

"I have no intention of hurting you, but I want you to understand just how seriously I am taking this matter. So lets both be reasonable people, I am going to put this sword back in its sheath, and you are going to tell me the truth. Did you know that thing was in there?" He demanded in a very vexed voice.

"No, of course I didn't!" Nicolai gasped, amazed that sure enough Alexander did return his sword to its sheath.

"I wouldn't ever sell something that I knew was dangerous to a customer! You can ask around this entire city, people will speak for how I have always been fair and honest in my dealings!" He explained.

"Where did that thing come from, and is there anything else you know about it you haven't told us?" Alexander 'requested' from him.

"It came from the quarry in the Koshka Bluffs... if I had to guess I'd say it was supposed to be some sort of holy relic of..." Nicolai concluded the sentence in a whisper so soft that no one else in the room was able to hear it.

"Say that last part again..." Alexander prompted him.

Beads of sweat began to roll down the shopkeeper's face.

"Look... I only know this name because it is part of our history, from a very long time ago... I don't worship it, venerate it, or respect it in any way! It's just a name, and it existed and in the dark past, the days before the coming of Saint Gorkyn Beloved of the Lawgiver, it is a name that shows up with some frequency among the name of false cults.

So, that is why I was given to suspect that the coffin might have been some sort of heathen fetish made to honor the 'cat goddess' Bubahkaa who is nothing but a lie, who does not exist and never existed..." He finally admitted.

"You mean Bubastis, or possibly Bastet? The difference in language can play havoc with the names of divine beings which tend to be pretty fancy to start with. Was she depicted as a female goddess with the head of a housecat? Known for being quite even tempered as far as goddesses go, has a sister called Sekhmet, a woman with the head of a lioness and tends to be a lot meaner?" Suggested James Firecat eagerly."

Nicolai looked around the room, there were on six people in it, none of them who made their homes in Nova Vassa, and one of them had a put a blade to his throat a few moments ago.

"I couldn't possibly say anything about a deity that might or might not be known as Sehkmaa, I do not know what gender that god is, I do not know who might worship him, her or it, and I do not know in what manner they might dress, or what weapons they might consider holy, I KNOW NOTHING about Sehkmaa! Nobody worships that mysterious being anymore, just as I have never heard of anyone who worships Bubahkaa! She is nothing but a myth that no one is foolish enough to believe in!" He protested with incredible vehemence.

Alexander saw that whatever the man might or might not know, he was already starting to fear for his life.

"Well then, I don't think any further questions are called for. I am deeply sorry for any unnecessary stress I caused you, I don't like it when I wind up being attacked by monsters before breakfast." He apologized.

Someone else wasn't in the mood to apologize though, there was a loud "AHEM!" from behind Alexander.

James Firecat stepped forward, and began to rifle through the many pockets of his outfit. Eventually he found what he was looking for, a small figure of a cat seated upright on all fours carved out of dark stone and ran a gloved finger along it comfortingly.

"I'll have you know that me and my maternal family have been Bastet worshipers of the Purrbyterian sect in good standing for generation upon generation! That's a lot like the Meowthedist branch of the faith except unlike them we know our Lady's Prayer should include the line 'forgive us our debts as we we forgive our debtors', while those those blind fools insist it should be 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us' can you believe there are still people thick headed enough to think that way?" All present (even Mirri, even Alexander) suddenly found themselves overcome with a great desire to sneeze, that or for some other reason decided to bury their faces in the crooks of their elbows.

"Hey this is an important distinction!" James protested.

"The phrase 'trespasses' refers to committing actions that are against one's moral code, while 'debts' has far more wide reaching consequences, it pertains to matters material and secular rather than just moral. There have been centuries worth of disagreement over this issue!" There were noises that sounded decidedly like sniggering coming from most the room's occupants now.

"Well also there was some stuff about how while we believe that the holy texts were divinely inspired, this divine inspiration only involves the original texts which nobody bothers to, or even possibly could read any more, and while there is still the gift of Bastet's divine mercy and wisdom within the translations it can also be as flawed as anything else produced by mortal hands, while they insist that any translation is just as perfect as the original, which is silly if you ask me because how can so many different translations all be perfectly correct?

That said, I will give them something in that they believe that the act of mouse catching is pleasing to Bastet and success at is a sign she favors you. On the other hand 'we' 'believe' that mouse catching alone done without actual faith in one's heart is not looked kindly upon by Bastet.
You can fill a litter box with that point of view in my opinion as I think that the Mewothedists were probably right on that one, some things Bastet likes to see done just because honestly they just need to be done, which was why in my free time I've always been contemplating how best to combine the two separated branches though I'm not sure what I wold call it." By this point laughter filled the room from all directions and in the face of it James cold not maintain his righteous fury, his fully erect stance giving way to a slight crouch as he continued to stroke the statue.

"So as you could probably guess, I'm not surprised that Bastet worship isn't exactly a major religion, we're just a little, maybe a touch more than a little, prone to schism. I think my mom once told me that every layman would come to worship service with a high priestess's mask in their pack. Assuming they would come to worship service at all, since getting the congregation together for anything tended to be like herding cats." He admitted.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Two: So glad I got the f**k out of our hometown

“So what can you tell us about Nova Vassa Mirri?” Alexander Diamondclaw inquired as the group departed from the antique store and stepped out into the streets of Kantora.

“What exactly do you want to hear? I got out of this place a long time ago...” Mirri replied being careful not to say exactly how long, less someone overhear her and decide to start paying particularly close attention to the group.

“I'm still not sad about shaking its dust from my feet either. I stopped being into ponies a long time ago, and that's all this place really has going for it, horses, horses, and more horses.

All the best horses in the world come from Nova Vassa and we make sure to only sell geldings to foreigners to stay in unquestioned control of the supply. If anyone ever found a way to smuggle even a single Nova Vassan stallion into Barovia they'd go down in the history books as being the Strahd Von Zarovich of crime.” She reflected.

After about five seconds she spun around, her red eyes wide and pleading.

“You know Sir, a thought occurs...” She began.

“No Mirri.” Alexander instantly declared.

“We wouldn't even have to start breaking laws till we got to the border you know. I can put on the right sort of airs since I doubt looking down your nose at the Vistani who often actually raise the horses will go out of fashion before the Lawgiver hands out his Final Judgment! We tell them I'm a representative of some noble family or other...” She continued.

“No Mirri.” Alexander repeated.

“To pay for it we're going to need to acquire a lot of local coinage, no wait maybe we don't! We make it seem like we're buying the horse to use as a ringer in some big important sporting event which is why we want to do it legally but without a lot of fanfare or direct traces to what noble family I'm a member of.” She suggested.

“No Mirri.” Alexander reiterated.

“Once we have the horse, that's when the fun really starts... I think we should probably repaint its coat a different color just to be on the safe side, Cal can help with that. Still, to actively get it out of Nova Vassa we'll need something like a minor goblin incursion out of Tepest to scare off the boarder guards...” The black haired woman continued to plot.

“Mirri, we're not doing it and that's final. There are more important things in this world than grand theft equine.

Besides, even if you could carry off this particular scheme, how do you plan to prove you did it once the horse is accord the boarder? Have some artist paint a picture of you riding it and attach a note saying 'this is a real pure blood Nova Vassan stallion that I have stolen' and hope that they're willing to take an admitted criminal at their word?” Alexander pointed out.

Mirri pouted heavily went back to walking down the street.

“Ugh, you're no fun any more.

Why do you have to be so reasonable and logical about everything? The worst part is you're probably right, I bet somebody already has pulled it off but it's kept hush hush so that nobody has to admit to being at fault.

Anyway, aside from the horses, the only thing that Nova Vassa has plenty of is jerks. Jerks, jerks, jerks, jerks jerks, and that's putting it mildly.

The rich people are all pompous assholes who are intent on squeezing the peasants for every single copper they can.

Meanwhile, the poor people are all thieves and brigands of one sort or another who are intent on swindling as many of their fellows as possible in the vain hope that some day they can become a pompous rich asshole!

All of it dressed up in nice words about duty, honor and devotion, with the priests chanting about how it's only natural for the rich to be wealthy because they were born with the favor of the Lawgiver.

There are all sorts of fancy mounted games, but if you ask me. the national sport should be spraying perfume on horseshit.

There's nothing good about this place, nobody is going to deal anything close to fairly with us, and if we're smart the sooner we make plans to leave the better. I don't know why the Mists thought to bring us here, but if anything important has changed I certainly can't see it!” Mirri spat bitterly.

“Well there was that undead cat and the coffin that supposedly came from the Kantora Bluffs...” Devi pointed out evenly.

Mirri waved such concerns away dispassionately.

“One undead cat so mangy not even flees would touch it barely counts in the grand scheme of things Elf Lass.” The black haired woman insisted.

“Oh lets go see the market!” Suggested James Firecat eagerly pointing in the direction a great deal of noise and scents were coming from.

Mirri hung her head and huffed in irritation.

“Sure, why don't we go spend our time having various people try to hawk us overpriced low quality crud that's they probably stole from someone else so recently the original owner is still looking for it! Shopping in Nova Vassa, it's not just our prices that are a steal!” She noted sarcastically.

Florence placed a calming hand on Mirri's shoulder to keep her from continuing her tirade even further.

“We went to bed in an inn, and we woke up in coffins. The Mists want us to be in Nova Vassa... do you really believe that you can outrun the Mists? It'd be as foolish as trying to outrun Gaia upon whose soil we eternally stand.” She pointed out.

Mirri contemplated her words for a moment and then her shoulder's slumped.

“I don't always stand on the ground.... however I will admit that if the Mists feel like taking us here all the way from Kartakass, they could probably do the same from Barovia or Tepest.

Fine, lets go see what cat needs to be rescued from what tree, and what villain needs to be taught a stern lesson about how evil never prospers before we're allowed to leave. James lead on, you have a never ceasing talent for finding people who are down on their luck and in need of help.” Mirri suggested in a deadpan monotone.

XXX XXX XXX

Despite the fact that Kantora was the capital of Nova Vassa the particular market that James had suggested they walk through seemed to cater mostly to the lower class. Thus while there was a great deal for sale, none of it didn't have a much better quality version being sold elsewhere at reasonably higher prices.

Alexander only needed to take one good look at most of the “meat” products being sold to figure out that he wasn't quite that hungry, not yet at least.

Still, after half an hour or so of mostly aimless wandering one stall in particular ended up drawing the group's interest, even if it wasn't because of what they were selling.

“Look, I'll get what I owe you, I promise. I just need a few days...” A gaunt woman whimpered.

She was talking to two men, both of them had black hair and blue eyes, one of them was dressed in ring mail armor and holding a club while the other was dressed in unremarkable robes and held a cloth bag in both hands.

“Mirri... is this that bit you mentioned before, the poor victimizing each other?” James asked, suspecting that what was taking place surely had to be some manner of illegal.

Mirri however just sniffed in disapproval and shook her head.

“I guess one thing has changed, now there seem to be all these middle class assholes, who if I don't miss my guess probably enjoy lording over their lessers even more than the rich assholes do since it's the only way they can forget how much the upper class lord over them directly.” Mirri theorized.

James just blinked a few times in confusion having trouble following her.

“The fat one is a tax collector, and the other one a soldier in the service of the Bolshnik family, I can tell by the symbol of a snake curling around an axe on his hat. The woman probably made the mistake of thinking that food was more important than keeping certain palm's greased.” She explained.

A moment later the tax man motioned towards his companion, who leaned heavily on one shelf of the woman's stall.

There was a harsh cracking noise and some of her goods were sent rolling haphazardly into the street.

“Oops.” The militiaman declared in a voice so devoid of regret that even James could tell his actions had been intentional.

“That bully! Taxes are supposed to be about building new roads and making sure that Falkovnia doesn't invade, not making people suffer!” James huffed in irritation.

There was a pathetic mewling sound as a cat with visible ribs emerged from somewhere. It rubbed itself against the woman's legs for a few moments before turning to try and do the same to the two men.

The militiaman pulled back his right leg clearly intending to punt the poor animal as far as he possibly could, but before his kick got a chance to connect the beleaguered stall owner picked up the cat and began to stroke it nervously.

“Are you done?” She begged them, clearly worried that the two would inflict still more damage to her meager belongings before they left.

“That must be the reason you can't pay, you're wasting your money feeding that cat. Why it's fatter than you are! But we'll soon fixed that...” The tax collector promised before motioning towards his more martial companion again.

The militiaman reached for the cat's neck, and in response it hissed and struck out with its claws before jumping from the woman's arms and vanishing into the crowd among a sea of human legs.

“He, he scratched me!” The man complained holding out his hand.

Sure enough, his leather glove had been torn clean through and there were four gashes in his hand, gashes that looked like they had been delivered by something much more vicious (and much larger) than an everyday alley cat.

“It serves you right.” James stated with complete and utter certainty.

“That cat never tried to hurt you, and you were going to strangle it for fun! More to the point, how do you expect this poor woman to ever pay her the taxes she owes you if you keep breaking her property?” He added warming to the topic.

“Oh great fuzz face is going to get us into...” Cal began but he got no further before Mirri elbowed him in the stomach.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up! Lower class people NEVER openly mouth off to their betters in Nova Vassa... this is gonna be great!” Mirri predicted with an almost unseemly degree of delight in her voice.

“Who in the name of the Sacred Spear are you?” The militiaman demanded.

“Yes, I want to make sure that YOUR taxes are payed up!” The bureaucrat added with obvious predatory relish.

“My name is James Fir-ey-cah and I don't see how I could possibly owe you people any taxes since I'm not from around here and I only just arrived in Nova Vassa less than an hour ago.” Announced James Firecat proudly, allowing his Lower Mordentish accent to play heavily upon the pronunciation of his last name, giving it a full three syllables instead of the two that it would have in Balok or Vassi.

“How did you only just arrive in Nova Vassa an hour ago and already reach Kantora?” The bean counter prompted, suspecting that something must be amiss somewhere.

“Well it's pretty simple really, I went to bed in Kartakass, and I woke up in an antique shop in Kantora.” James told them point blank.

This explanation won him a pair of very disbelieving looks.

“The shop's owner, Nicolai Androv can vouch for the truth of that particular matter, he saw all six of us get out of coffins in his store.” Alexander added not wanting to let James dig himself in too deep if possible.

“Hmm... I will be inquiring with him soon enough just to be on the safe side. As for the matter at hand though, if you are a foreigner you should not bother Nova Vassan officials attempting to carry out their sanctioned duties.” The taxman declared while the militiaman gave James a soft prod with his club to drive the point home.

“How much doe she owe exactly?” I can probably cover it.” James suggested.

Someone who knew Mirri well might expect her to be rather deflated by James taking this simple, open, honest, and reasonable approach to resolving the problem at hand.

Someone who knew Mirri VERY well and was also equally knowledgeable about the Iron Faith's dogma would understand why she was suddenly crossing her fingers, smiling cheekily and looking like she was just about to start jumping up and down with glee.

The militia member promptly rapped James with his club again, quite a bit harder this time.

“It is her foolishness which has squandered the money that she should have saved to pay the Prince's taxes with. The Lawgiver believes that people should be made to suffer for their failures.” He growled angrily.

James paused for a moment, then reached down and picked up one of the meat stuffed cabbage rolls that the militiaman had knocked to the ground. He gingerly exhaled on it, blowing away a few specks of dirt and and rubbed it on his sleeve.

“I'm feeling hungry and given that a certain relic I was thinking about buying seemed to have some sort of horrific curse on it, I've got some cash burning a hole in my pocket. Here, keep the change.” James declared before flipping the stall owner a platinum coin and taking a large bite out of his purchase.

No one in the history of the Core had probably paid more for less of a meal while looking as pleased with themselves about it as James Firecat did at that instant.

The woman gazed in shock at the platinum coin, it was of foreign make, but even the most ludicrous of exchange rates would still result in it being more money than she had likely ever held in her entire life.

The tax collector was likewise left in complete and utter stunned silence by the sight of the sparkling coin.

The militiaman however decidedly wasn't at a loss for words.

“Upstart!” He shouted while punching James in the face.

James Firecat winced as the blow struck home and spat out some of the half chewed food he'd been eating.

“Please don't hit me.” He suggested evenly enough, not particularly worried about the fact that one of his eyes was starting to swell shut.

His piece said he took another bite, keeping his uninjured eye on the militiaman the entire time.

That meant he got a good long look as the fist came forward and struck him again.

James' head twisted slightly from the blow and this time when he spat things both blood red and bone white left his mouth.

From a few steps back it was just possible to hear Mirri's breathing suddenly become a great deal more energetic than normal.

“Oh Black Mother, I your humble supplicant thank you for the destruction I am about to witness...” She half prayed half panted.

James Firecat for his part took a single deep breath, his body still contorted at a rather awkward angle from the punch he had just taken.

Then he twisted around to face the militiaman again, moving with a celerity that shocked all but his companions. He turned every single ounce of that speed into additional momentum behind the blow he delivered.

James Firecat's lighting fast punch struck the unexpecting militiaman with such force that the armored man twisted about a full hundred and eighty degrees before collapsing to the ground.

James casually exhaled upon the his gloved left hand which had struck the blow and shrugged.

“I tried asking him politely.” He stated with neither anger nor satisfaction.

Despite the fact that he'd been caught flat footed (and then some) by James' counter attack, the militiaman was far from unconscious.

He pushed himself up off the ground his entire face alight with an enraged snarl.

“I'm going to kill at least one alley cat before today is over!” He vowed.

As he spoke the militiaman’s armor began to jangle ominously, his mustache growing larger and longer as hair becoming thicker everywhere his skin was visible.

“He's a lycanthrope also? I think the I'm gonna like second act of this production even better than the first!” Mirri gasped, savoring this unexpected turn of events.

James stared up into the face of a man who was now about only three quarters human, while the remainder of his morphology happened to be of a decidedly lupine nature, and did not flinch.

“You know... if you keep this up, you're going to wind up with something a lot worse than some minor cat scratches.” James warned the werewolf.

By this point unsurprisingly lots of people were screaming.

One of them was the tax collector, who was trying to calm down the militiaman, desperately trying to keep the situation from getting still more out of hand.

“Not here you fool! Not in front of so many people! Besides, remember the reward!” He pleaded.

The werewolf didn't reverse his transformation, but he temporarily halted it.

“Reward?” He grumbled as if the bureaucrat was babbling nonsense.

“The Prince's Reward. He's been looking for some poisonous needles, and I think we may have just found them...” The tax collector insisted, torn between trying to make his advice private, and yet also loud enough to break through the haze of bloodlust which was no doubt starting to cloud his lycanthropic partner's mind.

The latter won out as both the werewolf and James (along with his companions) heard him.

The changes now did reverse themselves, luckily they hadn't gotten far enough along to seriously damage his clothing.

“Speak.” The militiaman suggested, in exactly the same tone of voice one uses to command a dog.

The bureaucrat ignored the obvious insult and took a few steps forward.

“Look, I am not a man of violence by any stretch of the imagination. Likewise, I only need one look at you to know you truly are foreigners, and if it is true that you only just woke up in the middle of Nova Vassa's capital I can understand how you might have blundered into things you had no understanding of.

If you would come with me to see Prince Othmar, we'll forget this all ever happened, I'll even personally show this woman some leniency on the matter of her taxes.” He suggested in a tone of obvious appeasement.

“Even better, you could make sure you personally never see her again for a few months.” Suggested Alexander Diamondclaw.

“As for going to see the Prince... should we consider ourselves under arrest?” He inquired while starting to finger his longsword.

“Not in the least! You will have a rare opportunities to be honored guests of Prince Othmar. You can feel free to keep your weapons, though we will need to peace bond them before you encounter the Prince personally.” The tax collector explained.

“Hmm... would being personal guests of the Prince Othmar happen to involve breakfast?” Alexander contemplated.

“Breakfast?” The tax collector repeated in a slightly bewildered tone of voice.

“We woke up in an antique shop less than an hour ago.” Alexander reminded him.

“Ah yes of course, breakfast! I'm certain that if you are interested visiting the Prince, he'll have the royal cooks furnish you with some of the finest food in all of Nova Vassa.” The tax collector promised.

“Well then, I'll be only to happy to pay him a visit.” Alexander decided.

The militiaman seeing that there would be no further fighting let loose with a low lupine growl in James' direction.

In response the redhead shot back a hiss that was clearly meant to mimic the sound of an angry cat and even made a clawing motion with his left hand.

“I don't know why you're so down on this place Mirri, anywhere that you can punch an officer of the law in the face and get rewarded with a private audience to the ruler of the land and a free meal must have something going for it!” Cal noted.

“Don't get your hopes up too much Alchemist. He said they were looking for poison needles.” Mirri warned Cal.

“So? It wouldn't be the first time I've brewed up a poison..” The blond haired man replied.

“There's a type of cactus found only in Nova Vassa that is known for the paralytic venom its needles are coated with. We call it a catspaw.” Mirri answered.

End Chapter.
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Three: I am the leader, the great successor, who would have known, ME! I should have known! I'd run for office, but who'd oppose me?

"What, is, that?" Asked Mirri Catwarrior as they were lead through a seemingly unimportant hallway in the Princes' Palace.

"It's a painting of Prince Othmar Bolshinik." The tax collector who was still guiding them answered, evidently quite confused by what had got one of his 'guests' so upset all of a sudden.

"What are those things he's holding in his hands?" Mirri continued, if anything growing more irritated rather than less, gesturing wildly at the painting which was only one of several.

"The Whip of Right, and the Rod of Might, symbols of how the Lawgiver has chosen him to rule Nova Vassa." The minor bureaucrat answered, still not certain why this conversation was starting to feel so much like poking an ill-tempered plains cat.

"The Whip of Right and the Rod of Might. The Whip of Right and the Rod of Might? Please excuse me, I find myself feeling sickly all of a sudden... do you think you could possibly find a small room in which I might lay down and compose myself? One with thick walls would be best, you can stand outside and be certain that we will emerge as soon as I am better..." Mirri suggested.

Their guide's face filled with confusion, but at the same time one look into Mirri's eyes was all he needed to decide that granting this request would be a very good idea.

XXX XXX XXX

"The Whip of Right and the Rod of Might?! The Whip of Right and the Rod of Might! Of all the assholes to have ever sat at the head of Council Table he is unquestionably the biggest!" Mirri exclaimed in Low Mordentish as soon as the door was closed.

"Is there something you'd like to tell the group Mirri?" Suggested Alexander Diamondclaw before her temper could build up any more momentum.

"Look, you know I don't like this place. Still I make it a habit to find out how it is doing every so often. I've got a few contacts, every century or so I pick up a book or two on Nova Vassan history with an eye towards everything that's happened recently. That's honestly about as frequently as I ever feel the need to check." Mirri explained.

"With that in mind, it has being how long exactly since you picked up your last history book?" Devi interjected.

"Ninety five, ninety six years... but that's not the point! The point is the Whip of Right and the Rod of Might! He's had painting done of himself, while he is holding them! Why doesn't he just take a crap in the Storsortstenstol while he's at it!" The black haired woman spat venomously.

"You missed the part where you told the rest of us exactly what is so important about some random whip and stick." Cal reminded her.

"It's not a stick, it's a rod!" Mirri insisted at once, before gaining some small manner of control over her temper.

"The Whip of Right and the Rod of Might are the the two sole remaining artifacts of Zaanji the Højplads! Yet Othmar's had a picture, make that PICTURES, PLURAL, of himself painted while he's holding them! They're supposed to be so carefully guarded most of the time that peasants only ever hear stories about what they actually look like!

A Prince is only supposed to ever hold them during his coronation ceremony and even then only for a short period, who does Othmar think he is, holding those things long enough for some artist to paint his picture with them?" Mirri demanded to know, though no one in the room seemed forthcoming with an answer.

"Who was Zaanji the Højplads?" James asked, sensing that there was a good story waiting to be told.

Mirri hung her head and sighed.

"Skulls for Kali, it really is amazing how this stuff sticks with you no matter how long you're away. Okay, we don't have time for me to describe the entire history of Nova Vassa in any real detail so I'll just give you the extra short version.

The current Nova Vassan people, myself included, are actually a hybrid. It is just that we became so in the far distant past, to the point that no one even bothers to think about it anymore.

Half of our history and lineage comes from a group of people known as the Tygaami who are lucky anyone even remembers their name for reasons that will soon become clear.

The other half comes from a group of people known as the Old Vassans, who used to live out on some unpleasant chunk of never quite thawing ice, where the five tribes made minor wars against one another, basically running out the clock until some large prosperous empire decided to wipe them out.

Then came Zaanji.

He started out as a chieftain of the Bolshnik tribe, the same clan that Othmar hails from, a fact that I'm sure is making Zaanji's skeleton ready to crawl out of its grave and come looking for revenge any day now.

Zaanji was many things, among them a master diplomat, at least as far as you consider such things Sir..." She addressed to Alexander.

"You mean he had a talent for grabbing two people about the shoulders, shaking them nice and hard, then telling them that if they ever wanted to amount to anything they should follow his orders?" The silver haired man translated.

"Just so." Mirri agreed.

"Except that Zaanji wasn't just able to do it with people, he was able to it with an entire race of people! I'd say an entire nation, but before he came along the Old Vassans didn't really deserve the term.

He convinced them that it was pointless to wage wars that only killed off Old Vassans and passed a few miles of land back and forth, when if they turned their aggression outwards they might be able capture entirely new land!

So he lead the Old Vassan's out of their homeland as one huge rampaging horde, basically smashing their way through one kingdom after another like a drunken battering ram crew who didn't know when to stop and keeps ploughing through the walls of different farm houses.

It was glorious.

The Old Vassans had the strength of unity, combined with the fact that they'd been going to war against one another for who knew how long, which meat that only the really vicious warlike bastards survived to breed, and finally Zaanji's tactical genius on their side, which allowed them to conquer many more prosperous and numerous foes.

It didn't hurt that if you believe what the priests have to say on the matter, Zaanji was also the first to believe in the Lawgiver and for this faith he was rewarded with the ability to rupture the ground and summon forth an army of the dead souls yanked from the Hell of Slaves who were forced to obey him.

I'm not denying that he may have been a powerful spell caster of some kind, it is just that their claim has a distinct stench of 'history is written by the winners' about it.

Zaanji went onto proclaim that the more severely any land tried to resist him, the more severely they would suffer under his rule. Thus, as the tales of his power grew people began falling over themselves to surrender the first chance they got.

Zaanji conquered as much of the world as he could find, from the oceans on one side to the oceans on the other. The last people to fall to his armies were the Tygaami, the eastern horse-lords who ruled over a vast kingdom of rolling... well look out any window and you probably get the idea.

For their fierce resistance Zaanji's decree demanded that he slaughter the Tygaami down to the last woman and child as an example to others. Except that there were no others, as I already mentioned every other land had already been conquered.

So Zaanji, like a true Nova Vassa, refused to let a little thing like having sworn an oath on the subject get in his way. Instead, he decided that the Tygaami would be spared in exchange for a steady supply of their horses which were... well once again just look out a window.

To simplify the matter and help pacify the land Zaanji established that Tygaam would be his new home and eventually the rulers of the four other tribes did the same.

In addition to the breeding of horses, breeding of other kind occurred, and when a rampaging beserker Old Vassan found a Maiden Tygaami very beautiful and worthy of ravishing nine months or so later a child of a hybrid stock which would eventually come to be known as 'New Vassan' or Nova Vassans is born.

Zaanji's got to live out the rest of his life in contentment and opulence, so if most of his empire fell apart after his death, well nobody was willing to try and beard the lion while he could still roar.

Before he died he established that in the wake of his death each tribe's chieftain should serve as a first among equals for five years before passing it along to the next, as a way to ensure a lasting peace among the five tribes.

The point of the story is of course, that until Prince Othmar has conquered as far north as Castle Avernus and as far west as Castle Pantara he shouldn't be getting himself painted holding the Whip of Right and the Rod of Might! It's..." She paused for a long moment searching for what she wanted to say next.

"It is disrespectful to the memory of Nova Vassa's first and only king!" She finally settled on.

"Wow, I never knew you were a patriot like me..." James Firecat admitted surprised at how seriously Mirri took the history of her country.

"Patriot? Hah! That implies there's something I like about Nova Vassa! I just... just have a healthy respect for those who earned their power the proper way, being born with nothing and conquering their way to the top.

That's why I respect you after all Sir, having a wooden sword shoved through your heart is a clear and indisputable way for someone to establish their dominance over you.

Anyway, I think I've pretty much cleared my head now and can be in the same room as Othmar for maybe half an hour without trying to kill him.

That said, for all I know he's going to be committing some fresh offense against the memory of a man a thousand times greater than him once we do see him in person. If that is the case, I highly suggest one of you gags me and tells him that I'm suffering from one of those weird illnesses where you think you're possessed by some divine being and babble words of a frequently obscene nature.

I'd hate to think that shooting my mouth of got all you killed needlessly, especially when if we'd gotten a chance to do some proper plotting ahead of time we'd be the ones doing the killing." She advised the group.

"Rope or cloth?" Devi inquired.

XXX XXX XXX

"Behold, the ruler of Nova Vassa, Prince Othmar Bolshnik!" Declared the herald before a few others blew notes upon their instruments.

Othmar sat before them upon a magnificent black stone throne.

"He's actually sitting on the..." Was all Mirri got out before Devi, Cal, James, and Florence tackled her to the ground.

"Dissension in the ranks?" Prince Othmar asked in a voice that for the moment was more amused than affronted.

He was a tall man in early middle age who had so far retained the darkness of his auburn hair, while his large and well groomed mustache (in point of fact it was so large that its tips were even with his ears) had become smokey gray.

Alexander bowed graciously as if there weren't five people rolling on the ground behind him, one of them hissing like a recently soaked cat.

"One of my companions is suffering from a minor mental malady at the moment. As you may have already been told, we were unexpectedly taken to your fine city, so we have not been able to get it treated yet. Your summons struck me as being so gracious that I could not possibly ask for it to be delayed for any reason. While she may have the strength of a madwoman my companions can see to it that she harms no one." He predicted.

Sure enough, James eventually managed to get a cloth gag around Mirri's mouth while Devi slipped some rope about her hands binding them together. A stream of extremely muffled words that a careful ear might just be able to discern as hailing from the more 'colorful' section of the Low Mordentish language emerged from Mirri's mouth, but then she offered no further protest and lay still.

"Your servants told me that you are faced with a task that might best be resolved via the service of outsiders..." Alexander explained in a completely unruffled tone of voice.

"Yes. Though from what I've been told if you had bothered to display such good manners in the first place we would not be having this conversation." The Prince huffed with a touch of anger.

"If such were the case, you would still be searching for help, and I would be wondering where to eat breakfast. A net loss for both of us, no?" Alexander pointed out.

The Prince of Nova Vassa took another long moment to size up the silver haired man.

"Well said. If my father had not taken ill when he did it would have been over two decades before this land could be graced by my rulership. Sometimes a small tragedy is necessary so that a greater good may come from it.

Before I tell you of my problems, I will know your names and skills so that I may be certain you are capable of resolving it, I will not have my time be wasted." He insisted.

"As you wish. My name is Alexander Diamondclaw, a humble sellsword who simply seeks to make some minor profit in the world. For reasons I can not fathom, the Mists have seen fit to place me within your capital. Still, it would be an honor to think that I and my companions could prove worthy of serving the ruler of as a land as vast and powerful as Nova Vassa.

My blond haired male companion is Cal Wright, a master of mechanisms and mixtures. The red haired member of the group is James Firecat, he is skilled with a knife and at the disarming of traps. The woman in green is Florence Bastien, if there is someone more knowledgeable about plants of any kind upon the Core I have not met them.

The elf is Devi Skye, upon whose all too often unlauded shoulders lays the burden of keeping us all fed and watered, for every army be it large or small, marches on its stomach. Finally, on the floor is Mirri Catwarrior, our expert in the undead.

As for our exactly how skilled we are in our chosen field... select yourself a champion, and find me a wooden sword. " Alexander offered in the most courtly manner imaginable.

Prince Othmar pondered that particular request and then shook his head.

"That will not be necessary... there is a look in your eye, the look a man not easily denied what he desires. You are not very many but neither are they supposedly. I shall give you a chance, and if you earn my ire by failing it will be as if the Silver Spear of the Lawgiver himself struck you down.

I lament that Nova Vassa is ever beset by bandits, no sooner has one group been eradicated than another springs up. One band that operates out of a forest known as the Briarweed has become bolder than I could possibly imagine though! They attacked a tribute caravan being sent to me by my most trusted servant Tristen Hiregaard.

The Lawgiver hates bandits and as his representative upon the mortal plane it is my duty to see them punished for their actions.

The caravan itself was loaded down with gold, silver, and platinum, along with some mystical artifacts he claims to have recently discovered. I know how mercenaries are drawn to such things like magpies, so if you can recover what has been stolen you may keep those artifacts, and one out of every four coins you find.

I would normally send my own soldiers to deal with such matters, but I fear that one of my captains may have been suborned or even actively in league with the bandits, for they always seem to know when my men are going on the hunt.

A few unassuming half vagabonds like you are much less likely to draw attention." Othmar predicted.

"A sound and just strategy. It will be a great honor to have such a just and princely task placed before me. I trust that we shall be furnished with all that we could reasonably require to see it through to its success? I can boil my requirements down to two simple things at the moment, a map and a meal." Alexander replied.

"See to it." Prince Othmar Bolshinik of Nova Vassa commanded at once.

XXX XXX XXX

"Ahh, there's nothing like a good breakfast to help a man recover from the unwelcome surprise of being tossed halfway across the Core." Ruminated Alexander Diamondclaw after having just wolfed down a large haunch of well cooked meat.

"MGGRIGJSSDFJSLSH!" Noted Mirri Catwarrior who was still wearing a cloth gag.

"Do you agree to behave if we take it off?" Alexander replied calmly.

Mirri shook her head emphatically.

"Fair enough, given that I can't recall you ever actually 'behaving', still, are you at least willing to promise that you won't make any comments regarding illicit acts our host's maternal ancestor may have preformed with hoofed quadrupeds, or anything else of a similarly invective nature?" He suggested as a compromise.

Mirri reluctantly nodded.

James swiftly removed her gag.

"I still can't believe you prance around like that for someone who isn't one twentieth the man you are." Mirri groused.

"Fine honeyed words have no substance, no true meaning, they cease to be even before one is finished speaking them. Actions on the other hand, actions have meaning. Actions like Othmar arranging to have this rather splendid little feast made for us.

I addressed Othmar in the manner all men of his ilk tend to favor, lavish praise. As early as tomorrow I doubt he'll even remember exactly what I said to him, I on the other hand, think I'll be keeping the memory of this meal with me for a good long while..." Alexander boasted happily.

"He's the darklord of Nova Vassa, I'm sure of it." Mirri growled at a barely audible level.

"He won't be the first that we've ever done a task for." Alexander reflected, his eyes briefly glancing in Cal's direction.

"Just because he's a darklord doesn't mean all of his foes are pure of heart and noble of spirit. It is in the nature of evil to turn upon itself sooner or later, in fact I consider myself something of an expert at speeding the process along." Alexander promised turning to meet Mirri's scorching gaze.

"He was sitting on the Storsortstenstol, the Great Black Throne of Zaanji the Højplads! At this rate why doesn't he just hang a sign outside his palace, 'I'm what's wrong with Nova Vassa, I'm the evil at the heart of the land, I'm making everything worse for everybody!' This city... this nation deserves a better class of dictator." Mirri pouted, whatever sort of appetite she might have possibly possessed quite soured by her recent discoveries.

"You mean the benevolent kind like Jacqueline?" James Firecat eagerly suggested. For all his love of Richemulot and the Renier family's current matriarch he wasn't quite vapid enough to avoid noticing that Le Grande Dame ruled with an unquestionable iron fist beneath her velvet glove.

"No, I mean the smart kind." Mirri responded at once.

Then after she noticed a certain amount of twitching of the eyebrows and gaping of the jaws coming from her red haired companion she clarified.

"Look, I can't speak to how smart or not Jacqueline is, I've never been to Richemulot while she was in charge. From everything I've heard the woman is a tactical genius who helped single highhandedly blunt two different invasions of her homeland, one of them back when her Grandfather was still running the country.

That said, that information doesn't exactly come from the most trustworth... the most unbias... the most historical of sources, so I'm simply not qualified to make a judgment one way or another.

What I can say is that things aren't supposed to be done like this in Nova Vassa! Remember how I said spraying perfume on horse dung in the national sport? Well you're supposed to be actively doing it!

Whatever evil acts you're committing, there's supposed to be a thin veneer of respectability over them! I mean give me a tyrant like Saint Jokum the Pacifier!

Do you know how he obeyed the rules about switching which family the prince comes from every five years?

By spending his five years of legitimate power hiring assassins, forging evidence, holding show trials, brewing poisons, and otherwise killing off each and every single member of the four other families who were of age to rule. This was swiftly followed by having himself declared regent of all their offspring, so when his five years were up, he continued to reign in the name of one of the children whose parents he had murdered.

THERE was a man who knew how to grab an entire country by the throat and do it with style!

Given all the changes we're seeing I somehow doubt Prince Othmar is sticking to the five year trade offs either but I bet his excuse boils down to 'f**k you, what you gonna do about it?' and nothing else.

It is... it is depressing to see fine Nova Vassan treachery falling by the wayside for such a banal system of rulership by brute force." Mirri sighed despondently.

"So, is anyone else glad I decided to pour an oil of silence on the door into this room?" Cal asked his eyes locked tight on the door in question.

He was quite certain that if one word of Mirri's commentary on the current ruler had managed to reach the ears of anyone listening outside there would already be people breaking it down to drag them all off to the closest dungeon.

Luckily, he had lifetime of knowledge about how it was still quite possible to get burned at the stake (among other even more unpleasant things) in certain places for practicing alchemy. Thus he'd perfected the art of knowing when not to say anything... and how to brew up oils of silence which would help keep people from hearing the things you did actually say.

"So after we go get what he wants, try to hand it over to him, then find ourselves faced with his sudden but inevitable betrayal, I get to claim Prince Othmar's head, right?" Mirri suggested licking her lips in anticipation for the event.

"If that's what it takes to make you happy, I've never found it matters terribly much who killed someone as long as they're dead." Alexander noted calmly.

End Chapter.
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Four: I fought the law, and the law won, I fought the law and the law won.

"You know, just once, it would be nice to go someplace and not find the locals screaming their heads off in terror." Cal Wright reflected.

Sure enough a great many people were doing exactly that at the moment, if they weren’t busy running about like recently beheaded cockatrices.

After their meeting with (and meal without) Prince Othmar the group had decided to leave the city. The quickest way out of Kantora took them past the section of the city where its largest temple to the Lawgiver was located.

Mirri had been tempted to take a moment and poke her head in just to prove a point, but before she'd gotten the chance matters had gotten somewhat out of hand.

"SURRRPNNNT FURRR MEEEHHHHH CCAAAAAAHH REEVVVVVURRRR MEEEEH!" Announced a vaguely humanoid figure that stalked through the streets.

It was the right generally symmetrical shape, but it was horribly emaciated, with bones clearly visible beneath its parchment-thin skin while clumps of dried earth clung to its withered frame. There were even two visible gaping wounds on its neck where all skin had been torn clean off.

Its "words" were accompanied by feline yowls as a large number of cats had taken up position on the roofs overhead gazing down at the figure.

"You know it really is a shame, all of a sudden I wish I could have had a bite of that roast you ate Sir." Mirri informed Alexander.

The group's standard 'code' was that any time it would be contraindicated to reveal exactly how sharp her sense really were, Mirri would instead make references to being hungry to inform them that she was seeing something but not hearing its heartbeat.

That meant that either the creature before them was nothing but an illusion, or far more likely, it was undead. It certainly moved with the sort of stiff unbending gait that one would associate with mindless undead.

Alexander slowly nodded to himself and began to approach the creature. As he did so, it began to turn towards one person in particular who was awkwardly hobbling away from it. He moved much slower than the others and was unlikely to outrun his pursuer.

"Hello again Nicolai." Alexander noted in an offhand manner as he brushed past the merchant one hand on his blade's hilt.

The creature headed straight for Alexander, not as if to attack him, but rather as if unable to realize that he was even standing in its way.

"Do you know what you're doing?" He demanded of the gaunt figure.

"SURRRPNNNT FURRR MEEEHHHHH CCAAAAAAHH REEVVVVVURRRR MEEEEH!" It roared again.

"I'll take that as no." He decided.

It was practically over before it started.

Alexander took one step forward and the sun briefly glinted off Wolf Claw as it slid free from its sheath. He executed a single precise swing which severed his target's head, and then plunged back into its sheath.

The monster sunk to the ground, its head landing next to it a few moments later. Both of them rapidly dissolved into dust, a strange wispy shape like a bird with a human head quickly taking flight in its wake.

Then everything seemed to go back to normal and the cats who had been watching scattered as cats are ever wont to do.

"Anything about that cat box you've suddenly remembered since we last talked?" Alexander asked in a surprisingly convivial tone of voice.

The antique store owner shook his head rapidly.

"I don’t know what is going on. After you left I pried the gems out of that coffin because I needed to pay for the priests to fix this..." He paused for a moment and pulled up his right pants leg.

The scratches that the cat creature had given him earlier in the morning were now marked by ugly red inflammation.

"I still don't know what that thing was... but I suspect that wounds such of these... well the sooner I have a priest look at them the better." He explained.

Alexander nodded in agreement taking a long moment to examine the wound also.

"Hmm... I've had some experience with a few diseases of a decidedly mystical nature myself, don't think I've seen this one before though." He admitted.

"Well I'd have lost a bet with myself, it isn’t mummy rot." Admitted Mirri Catwarrior as she also examined the wound in question.

"Mummy rot?" Nicolai gasped, clearly put on edge.

"Nasty disease. People tend to pick it up after being physically attacked by mummies, hence the name. Causes the body to decay and rot away from the inside until the victim turns into dust.

That cat which attacked you, it wasn't exactly wrapped in linens, but you said yourself that its container was some sort of religious icon correct? You find mummies inside those things the same way that you find vampires in coffins. Luckily for you mummy rot is yellow and purple, not red.

Still, if I were you, I might want to make sure all the gems you took from that coffin wind up in the church's coffers.

After all, who lays on their deathbed wishing they had done less to support the Lawgiver?" She noted whimsically.

Nicolai nodded in agreement, lowered his pants leg and hobbled off favoring his uninjured leg.

"I'm not quite sure what that thing you just killed was Sir, but I really hope there's more than one of them..." She reflected with flagrant malice.

"That's not very nice." Devi Skye interjected.

"Are you familiar with what the Iron Faith has to say about elves?" Mirri asked pointedly.

"Just an observation, not a condemnation." Devi amended.

XXX XXX XXX

"You're next." Announced a sign hanging from the body of a decaying Nova Vassan soldier at the edge of the Briarweed Forest.

It wasn't the only such body there either.

"Not the most cordial of greetings I've ever gotten from bandits..." Reflected Alexander Diamondclaw.

"What's your plan?" Cal asked as he studied the heavy green foliage that lay before him.

Alexander looked up at the setting sun, they were probably only a few hours away from nightfall now.

"Florence, it's a forest, impress me." The silver haired man commanded.

The dryad nodded and then began to repeat a series of gestures and chants once for each member of the group except for Mirri. Then she stepped past the dead bodies and into the Briarweed Forest proper.

Trees limbs, grasses, brambles, and all other manner of plant life seemed to slide away from her allowing Florence to pass through the foliage without her movement being slowed in the slightest.

"Whatever they may have going for them, they don't seem to have any magical precautions." She confidently told the others.

"There are plenty of ways that people can make a visitor feel unwelcome even without magic. James get up there with Florence and keep your eyes open." Alexander commanded.

XXX XXX XXX

"Snare trap connected to that tree, which along with the pit trap about fifty feet up ahead of us makes an even dozen. You're right Alex, this is one of the most 'unwelcome' style 'welcomes' I've gotten in a good long while." James Firecat reflected, using one of his many knives to carefully disable the trap in question.

"Shrieker mushrooms also." Florence advised.

"Shrieker what now?" James repeated the word in confusion and surprise.

"Shrieker mushrooms. If you brush up against them they emit a loud and piercing noise, hence their name. Best to keep our distance." The dryad explained.

"We're managing to make good time even with all these traps, but there's only so much of this that I'm willing to take. If they think their safety lays in tricks and traps then we're going to show them a few of our own. Mirri... PHHHTT..." Alexander bit down softly on his lower lip and exhaled through his mouth forcefully.

The black haired woman nodded.

She closed her eyes, and then slowly but surely her entire body transformed into a swirling white mist that drifted away from the five remaining members of the group.

For their part they just stood around waiting, leaning against various trees while they waited.

Eventually the white mist returned and reformed itself into the shape of Mirri Catwarrior, who looked no more discomforted by her transformation than a normal woman would have been by the process of changing clothes.

"Six of them. They're four hundred and thirty six meters ahead and twenty seven to the left. Leader is a woman with red hair. They were sitting around cooking a meal when I last saw them, not sure if they still are... as you might guess I haven't spent a lot of time studying how long it takes to heat up food." She pointed out, as like most vampires Mirri Catwarrior subsided on an all liquid diet.

"You're sure that you have the distance down exactly?" Alexander demanded.

"I counted and double counted it Sir." She insisted.

"You said that you triple counted it that time that time with the cliff." Cal reminded her bitterly.

"Back then I was lying. I do that." Mirri noted in the same tone of voice that a cobbler might mention that they repaired shoes.

"Anyway, after that particular instance I took a some time to familiarize myself with the distance system that the rest of the Core uses. Frankly the only amounts I really care about are quarts and gallons.

Still, since evidently Nova Vassan feet aren't good enough for the rest of the Core, I sorted out how meters work. Now, is our plan for victory to stand here and keep talking until they die of old age? Because if that is the plan Alchemist, you won't be around to see it work." She advised.

"Tree type?" Alexander requested, completely ignoring the quarrel that had been going on a few moments ago.

"Oak. A strong oak tree that their leader has her back to. That should be a perfect for us." She advised.

"Any sign of the treasure that they stole?" Alexander inquired.

"No great big piles of glinting coins laying around waiting for us to claim them if that's what you mean." She admitted.

Alexander Diamondclaw nodded and turned back to Florence.

"James and Mirri will make it easy for you, once we get there, lets try and knock them out cold in a friendly sort of manner. Present company excluded, it is very hard to get useful information out of a corpse." Alexander commanded.

Then he started walking towards the oak tree that Mirri had pointed out for him.

XXX XXX XXX

Chezna the Blood-Cat leader of the Briarweed Forest Bandits was sitting down with her back to an oak tree enjoying a simple meal as she had countless times before.

Then all of a sudden she felt it happen, something was about to go horribly, dreadfully, wrong.

Such premonitions were one of the few ties she retained to the people who had exiled her, and they were never, ever wrong.

The red haired woman drew her dagger and rolled away from the tree careful not to tumble her way right into the fire.

"What is it Chezna?" Asked Andor just in time for her follower's question to be answered in the most unpleasant way possible.

It was as if the tree that she was leaning against suddenly was something else entirely. A tall silver haired man wearing an eyepatch stepped out it, a longsword held loosely in one hand, the other reaching into the tree itself.

He was dressed in a black outfit, and on his right shoulder was a housecat with fur as red as Chezna's hair, while on his left was a bat. Before any of them could gather their wits enough to the react he tugged with his "empty" hand and pulled a woman into being through the tree.

She had one hand reaching into the tree and pulled out another woman, who had a hand reaching into the tree and pulled from it a man.

A man who she pulled through by the shoulder, because he'd been using both of his hands to hold steady a wicked looking firearm of some sort that he now leveled straight at Chezna.

Then the silver haired man spoke.

"Sorry to get in the way of a dinner, believe me, I of all people am well aware of how annoying it is to have a meal interrupted. Still, I have a very important question I'd like to ask you.

Which of you really, deeply, passionately, ferociously, tremendously, enjoy being alive?" He asked flashing them a smile as he now used both hands to steady his sword.

At the same time the cat jumped from his shoulder and transformed into a snarling beast the size of a plains cat while the bat took flight, perching on the branches of one of the nearby trees and transforming into a maliciously smiling woman.

Then Chezna felt it again.

Things were bad, and about to get worse, much much worse.

As the paranormal feeling subsided, Chezna found it being replaced with something much more tangible as she could suddenly hear the trees rustle without wind to move their branches. It was as if the entire Briarweed Forest was alive, and closing ranks against her.

"My offer will remain open for the next thirty seconds or until another of you draws their weapons whichever comes first." He clarified, his single green eye glinting in the campfire light.

End Chapter.
jamesfirecat
Evil Genius
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck!

Chapter Five: What if God was one of us?

"So this is what has become of the proud bandits who who once dared to raid my lands!" Chuckled Prince Othmar when he saw what had become of Chezna and her followers.

They were still alive and unhurt, that was the only good thing one could say about their situation.

They had been hung upside down at the edge of the Briarweed Forest right next to the corpses that they had left as a warning. All of them had their hands bound behind their backs (Devi's bag of holding could always be counted on to have plenty of rope) and every one of them except the leader herself had been gagged.

That task accomplished, Florence had used her magic to summon a bird which had brought word of their success to Nova Vassa's Prince.

A few hours past the dawn of the next day he'd ridden out with two dozen of his knights to handle the matter personally.

"That's all I am to you Othmar? You never write, you never send any of your servants who aren't trying to kill me, and now you don't even remember me! I'm hurt Othmar, hurt! Why I remember you back when Tristen Hiregaard was your regent and you were only... well I'd show you how high but my hands are quite literally tied at the moment. That, and the entire hanging upside down thing." Chezna mocked Othmar.

Mirri who had been rather disappointed about Alexander managing to convince the bandits to surrender peacefully now seemed a great deal more enthusiastic.

"Oh, what's all this? Tell me more, tell me more..." She cooed.

Chezna shot a "smile" at Mirri, but only because she was hanging upside down.

"If you don't know what I mean then I'm not saying anything else. All the Princeling needs to know is that just because he's captured me and all my men, doesn't mean he's captured all my friends.

In particular, a friend who will go looking for certain buried documents if I don't keep in contact with them fairly frequently.

So go ahead Othmar, lock me up, have me and my men beheaded, just make sure to wear plenty of green to my funeral though, you'll be needing it to morn your reign over Nova Vassa also!" The red headed woman growled.

"Is there something that we should going on we should be aware of?" Alexander inquired in a conversational enough tone.

"Only that bandits will say anything when faced with the prospect of having to pay for their crimes. Captain, see to it that this woman and her followers are taken to my finest dungeon cells.

After that, we can interrogate them at our leisure, and see to it that justice is done. Now then, as for you..." Othmar twisted his hips as he spoke, making his horse turn to face Alexander.

"Yes?" The silver haired man responded, while at the same time one of his hands began to twitch slightly in the direction of Wolf Claw.

"I must say, you and your band have succeeded beyond my wildest hopes! Have you also been able to find my lost treasure?" Nova Vassa's ruler wanted to know.

"We ended up finding somebody's treasure, that’s for certain. When she's not suffering from debilitating illnesses Mirri is quite persuasive. Devi?" Alexander half commanded half requested.

The elf nodded and then began to pull out several handfuls of coins laying them on the ground. Once she was done, she stepped away from them and gave a small rather forced bow.

The knights began to sort through the pile and a once they were done, they pushed a noticeably smaller pile back towards Alexander. Othmar watched the process and nodded slowly.

"There is the one in four I promised you. You know, a lesser man might have been brazen enough to lie to me, and claim they didn't find anything." Prince Othmar reflected.

Alexander simply shrugged calmly.

"Lesser men never plan far enough ahead. If we disappointed you, then you'd never even think of hiring us again. Why, you might even tell these men you're traveling with to attack us! Life is a great deal easier for everyone if we all work together." Alexander reflected.

"A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. Your words do the Lawgiver proud. Enjoy your magical items, you've earned them." Othmar decreed.

He turned his horse around and took off with his knights following.

Mirri watched him go and then made a vaguely beckoning gesture in his direction.

"Come back... you forgot to betray us so we could kill you!" She stated to empty air, as if she couldn't believe what had just happened.

"It looks like Othmar plays a deeper game then you give him credit for." Devi noted.

"Probably too cowardly to come at us without his entire army." Mirri decided, though she was still clearly miffed.

"Either way, lets go see if we can't find the other half of our payment." Cal Wright suggested.

"Chezna said there was a magical staff of some kind hidden inside a tree that looks like a monster. Tell me Florence, do you think that you can possibly find one particular tree inside an entire forest?" Alexander asked the dryad.

"Trust me, where you see a needle in a haystack, I see picking out a thoroughbred racehorse amid a collection of nags." She replied confidently.

XXX XXX XXX

"Which would be this one." She declared as the group paused before a tree.

Sure enough, its bark had been carved in an unpleasant replica of a human face, one that looked ready to close around a large opening in its trunk. Florence casually wrapped a hand against the side of the thing then nodded to herself.

"Nothing but simple woodcarving to terrify the unaware, this tree is alive, but only in the way all trees are." She reassured them.

"Glad to hear it, still best to take precautions before sticking a hand somewhere you can't see." Alexander reminded the group.

He drew Wolf Claw and then began to slowly and carefully insert the longsword into the opening. He shifted his grip and waved it around some as well, actions certain to provoke any creatures currently living within the hole.

When none responded he took a step back and nodded in satisfaction.

"There might still be traps, but at least we can rule out poisonous snakes and the like." He informed the group.

"In that case just stand clear Alex, I'll handle this..." James Firecat promised the others.

The werecat approached the opening, studied it for a moment, then gingerly worked his gloved hands around it.

Only once he had completed a full 360 degree rotation did he then carefully stick a hand into the opening.

Inch by inch he reached further and further until his probing fingers were rewarded.

"Hello... what's this... feels like it's made of wood, but a different kind of wood than the tree itself..." He happily announced before wrapping both hands around it and yanking hard.

A moment later James Firecat fell backwards his body stiff and motionless. Both of his hands were gripped tightly around a wooden staff with exquisitely carved cat figures on either end.

"Hey, are you still with us Fuzz Face?" Cal asked, wondering what could possibly have happened to James.

"Heart rate is roughly... one hundred ten beats per minute, that's on the low side for him." Mirri informed the group.

A vampire’s ears tended to be incredibly sensitive to the sound of a beating heart (given the pumping of blood which accompanied it) and James' faster than normal heart rate betrayed his nature as a natural lycanthrope.

"Check his gloves, if they don't have any holes, rips, or tears in them then it can't be poison." Devi suggested.

Mirri got down on her feet to do exactly that, and began to slowly try and pry the staff from James' hands so she could get a better look at his gloves.

All of a sudden a pair of brown eyes flew wide open and James yanked back, trying to pull the staff tight against his chest.

"My mother... my mother wanted me to have this." He announced in a dreamy voice.

"What in the name of Kali's six arms are you talking about James? You haven't gotten a letter from your mother in over a month, and there's no way a letter from her could have found you in Nova Vassa when she thought you were in Kartakass." Mirri pointed out, finding his statements nonsensical even by the more liberal standards of "sense" that James often employed.

She did however let go of the staff, in fact all of a sudden, it felt like she HAD to let go of the staff.

Not only that, but even just looking too closely at staff was starting to make her head pound and eyes feel bloody.

"James? Why did you call me James? My name is Maahes." Asked James Firecat in a confused faraway voice.

"Florence, is that staff magic?" Alexander asked abruptly, trusting his female companion to be more knowledgeable about such matters than he was.

"Do plants thrive on sunlight and water?" She responded instantly.

"Can you tell if it's currently casting some kind of spell on James?" He further prompted.

"My own powers have never been that precise. Luckily, Gaia also gifted me with plenty of common sense, so I think it is safe to assume 'yes' until we see proof otherwise. Let me try hitting it with my strongest dispel..." The blond haired woman decided.

She made a few complicated hand motion and uttered words that sounded like the cool clear blubbing of a brook.

Nothing happened.

Her shoulder's slumped and she shook her head.

"No, not even close. The enchantment on that staff, it's ancient and powerful in a way that very few things in this world are." She admitted.

'Maahes' looked up at them and smiled.

"It most assuredly is, as befits a gift from my mother who has passed it on to me so that I might use it to strike down evil." He stated proudly.

"This is getting absurd, but clearly that's never stopped my life before, so might as well play along... Maahes what is your mother's name?" Cal Wright asked in the sort of sing song voice people used to patronize the insane.

"Bastet." “Maahes” answered without a moment's hesitation.

Cal held up his right hand next to his head (index finger extended) and spun it around swiftly in a more or less Core universal gesture for insanity.

"I can see you doing that Callan, and I don't appreciate it." Maahes grumbled.

"Well I hate it when people call me Callan so that makes two of us." Cal shot back.

"You still remember his name?" Alexander interrupted before this particular feud could go any further.

"Why shouldn't I? We've all been traveling companions for more than long enough Alexander." The red haired werecat replied.

"Alexander?" The single eyed man repeated his full name in bemusement, as prior to this James had always favored the diminutive 'Alex' which Alexander tended to allow only James (for the reason that it would be too difficult to convince him to do otherwise) and Florence (for reasons of affection) to use.

"Do you still remember me?" Mirri practically growled ready for this particular conversation to abruptly take a turn for the worse.

"Miriam, what kind of a question is that? I would sooner forget my own ears than forget you!" He pleaded.

"Miriam?" Mirri gasped in astonishment.

"Okay, that's it, I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more. My father had a way of dealing with magical items that wouldn't behave, it probably also works on people under the sway of magical artifacts." She noted before straddling James.

"What's your name?" She repeated.

"Maahes." James answered.

She slapped him.

Not hard, or at least not "hard" for a vampire, given that Mirri was more than capable of slapping someone with such force that their neck (along with the person in question) didn't survive the experience.

"What's your name?" Mirri asked again.

"Maahes Firecat." James answered.

Which earned him another slap.

"What is your name?" She repeated.

"James Maahes." James answered at which point Mirri struck him a third time.

"What is your name?" The vampire hissed.

"James Maahes Firecat." Answered James.

Mirri paused for a moment, pulled back her white gloved hand, and then let it go limp and shrugged.

"You know what... that's really about the best I could probably hope for." Mirri admitted as she clambered off James' body.

"I'm pleased to hear that, I know my flesh knits quickly but that doesn't mean I am immune to pain." James muttered while rubbing his darkened cheek.

"Why don't we figure out how much else he still remembers about his past?" Devi suggested.

"Why are we even having this conversation, do we not have more important matters to attend to?" James insisted.

Alexander's Diamondclaw’s right leg twitched slightly, the sort of twitch that suggested it might soon be pressing down on James' stomach, or doing even more unpleasant things to him.

"Nothing is more important to me than the safety and well being of my pack, both physically and mentally. That includes the you Omega. Now why don't you stand up and let go of the staff?" He suggested pointedly.

James willingly let go of the staff exactly as Alexander commanded him to.

"If you truly insist, but I hardly see how putting it down makes much of a difference." He pointed out as he stood up and left the staff on the ground.

"Well so much for the theory that not touching the staff would change your personality." Alexander admitted openly.

"Why should it? It is just a piece of wood. Granted it is a piece of wood enchanted with some of the strongest magic my mother's high priestesses could ever muster. Still, at the end of the day, it is not so different from Wolf Claw." James noted, sounding quite confused as to why everyone else thought something strange was going on.

"Does the word 'Richemulot' ring a bell for you at the moment James? Perhaps 'Jacqueline' also?" Mirri suggested figuring that certain words would likely help "James" win out over "Maahes" and if that pair didn't have some sort of effect, she was fresh out of ideas.

James just stood there, his entire body suddenly hunched over at an awkward angle. It was almost physically possible to see that behind his eyes half of his brain was vehemently disagreeing with the other half.

Eventually some kind of agreement was reached.

"You mean the land from which my father hails from, where I was born, and to whose Grande Dame I have sworn an utmost oath of earthly fealty?" He exclaimed sounding just a touch unsure of himself.

Even Mirri couldn't help but wince.

She had never met James' mother, but to be somehow completely and utterly edited out of your own son's memories, that seemed to be unnecessarily cruel fate even to her!

"So you're the son of a mortal man from Richemulot, and a goddess named Bastet?" Mirri repeated making it clear that she found this particular prospect highly dubious.

"Haven't you ever heard stories of mortal women being impregnated by male deities? Same principle." The werecat insisted.

There might have been some stories like that involving ancient Nova Vassan gods but even Mirri wasn't old enough to remember them.

So instead she turned her attention back to Alexander.

"What are we going to do about... this?" She exclaimed, holding a hand out in James' direction, trying to encompass the changes he’d gone through.

"That staff, Othmar said it was recently found by Tristen Hiregaard, I think we need to go see him and discover exactly how much he knows about the it." Alexander decided.

"So your current plan is to just go waltzing into a castle which belongs to one of the five most powerful men in Nova Vassa, then interrogate him at your leisure? With all due respect Sir, I think Maahes is talking more sense than you are." Mirri warned.

"If he doesn't feel like seeing me, I'm sure you could convince him to lend me some of his time. After all, I've heard you can be quite persuasive, can't you Mirri?" Alexander fired back.

Mirri knew that he was just trying to deflect from the overall weakness of his plan by shoving that particular burden onto her.

Knowing it, and being able to resist rising to the challenge were two separate things though.

"Manipulating one of the heads of the five families to have a meeting with some random commoner who isn't even from Nova Vassa? That sort of meeting is so far outside normal procedure I think its actively illegal.

It's called Viggo's Folly, people aren't supposed to associate with those far below or above their stature. Othmar probably couldn't have gotten away with meeting us if he didn’t clearly believe that laws are for other people." Mirri explained.

"Now, that means if I pull it off, not only will we get some more ideas about that staff... but we'll also be able hold this meeting over Tristen's Hireegard's head as blackmail material, which just so happens to be my favorite color of mail!" She noted with joy while clasping her hands together deviously.

"Well then, I think we have our marching orders orders, any objections James?" Alexander offered.

James Maahes Firecat bent down to pick up the staff and then shook his head offering the group a friendly if slightly vacant smile.

XXX XXX XXX

"Serpents fear me, cat's revere me! Serpents fear me, cats revere me! Serpents fear me, cats revere me!" The figure chanted.

The group had no sooner made it out of the forest than a vaguely humanoid figure came stumbling towards them. Skin was stretch tight across its body, it’s eyes were empty and sunken, and there were two noticeable patches on its neck where it was possible to see bare uncovered bones.

"Boss, if I might?" Cal requested.

"Do it." Alexander commanded as his patience already in a somewhat frayed state.

"Serpents fear me me cats revere..." The linen wrapped figure began once again.

CRACK!

Cal's trusty firearm Phoenix barked.

A bullet punched through the head of the undead monster before them.

Cal worked the weapon's lever and ejected the spent casing. He fished another round from a pocket of his brown jacket, inserted it into the breach, and yanked the lever forward.

CRACK!

The creature stopped talking, most likely because Cal's first two shots had obliterate a fair amount of its face.

He kept working his weapon with silent determination until he had emptied a full five rounds into the thing.

At that point the monster collapsed to the ground and disintegrated into a pile of dust.

A gust of wind swept the stuff up and spun it around, reforming it into the shape of a ghostly bird with a human head.

Instantly James Firecat let go of his staff and went racing forward, he tried to pounce on the bird creature but while he was in midair himself, it took to the wing and flew off at astounding speed.

James hissed in anger at the departing... whatever it was exactly.

"I know you like chasing birds Kitten, but I don't think you could have hurt that one even if you did get your paws on it." Mirri advised the werecat, gently kicking the staff in his direction so that she didn't have to pick it up herself.

James took the staff to hand once again shaking his head dourly.

"That was no bird, it was that beast's ba." He rumbled, his entire body shaking with barely suppressed energy.

"Mummies don't 'baah' that's sheep." Cal abruptly interjected finding this comment a bit much even coming from James.

The redhead turned and glowered at the alchemist.

"Not 'baah' like the sound, ba! It is the portion of a person's soul that represents their physical vitality!" He insisted.

"Is this another of those Bastet things?" Cal suggested, he was a great deal more liberal on the subject of gods than most Lamordians (in so far as was now willing to admit they probably existed, though until one of them gave him amazing law of physics shattering magic powers he didn't really see the need to start worshiping one) but his relationship with all things divine was still very much the long finger.

"It does not pertain exclusively to Bastet by any means, still if it simplifies matters for you, yes it is one of those 'Bastet things', as you put it." James muttered, his tone much more biting than normal.

"Either way, until we find a way to catch, capture, or destroy that thing, I think we are unlikely to have seen the last of that monster." James clarified for the sake of the others.

"So it is a particularly resilient zombie, no skin off my nose, it comes back again I shoot, Boss slices, plenty of other options, one way or another it 'dies' all over again. Maybe third time will be the charm for teaching it not to mess with us." Cal reflected, still unworried by James' predictions.

"We can have this particular theological discussion without needing to stand still while we do it, lets march." Alexander commanded.

XXX XXX XXX

"Well this is awkward." Mirri Catwarrior admitted.

As she did ever night, she'd retrieved her coffin from Devi's bag of holding (which couldn't hold "objects" that was either alive or sentient) after storing it in there every morning.

The group was settling down for the night and she'd laid it out on the ground. She stood by its head while while James stood by the back.

Mirri did not need her coffin to exist, she knew that, but vampires sleeping in coffins was traditional. Besides, it put an extra layer of security between you and anyone who trying to take advantage of you in your sleep.

Not only that, but Mirri's coffin was larger than those of most vampires, both as a testament to her own importance, and for purely functional reasons. Except she wasn’t quite sure she wanted it to serve that function tonight.

"I can't comprehend why you approach this matter with such trepidation Miriam, it is something we have done countless times before." Insisted James.

Mirri glowered at him, as no matter how she tried to beg, badger, or berate, he now insisted on using her "proper" name instead of the version she preferred.

"Look, I know that you insist that you're you, and that nothing is different...

But, bear with me please, because I know how insane this sounds, I'm still not really sure that you're you." Mirri admitted as she wasn't sure how much of the werecat standing before her was "James" and how much was "Maahes" right now.

"So to start from scratch; rule number one, the staff goes in Devi's bag of holding, it doesn't go in the coffin. Holy relics of good gods and I don't get along." Mirri insisted.

James casually tossed aside the staff without a moment's hesitation.

"Do I look like such a fool that I would allow any object to come between our love?" He inquired earnestly.

The problem of course was that even when he wasn't holding it, Mirri still felt like that staff was between her and James, at least the version of James who she was familiar with.

"Where and how did we meet?" She demanded to know.

"It was in Dementlieu, I was playing a harmonica beneath a tree after opening up a wound on the back of my neck." He answered instantly.

Mirri purposely drew in a very deep breath and then heaved it out as a sigh. That was the correct answer of course, but even hearing it straight from his lips didn't make her feel any more comfortable about their situation.

"Miriam, what foe must I slay, what mountain must I climb, what labor must I complete to prove my love for you is steadfast and true? Let your unbeating heart be eased by the knowledge that I shall not shirk from any task no matter how perilous!" He promised her.

That sounded more like James, the sentiment at least if not the flowery language, yet she still couldn't bring herself to say anything.

Now for one of the very few times since they had met, Mirri saw what James looked like when he was cross.

Not the sort of battle ready fury he unleashed upon darklords and their minions, simply cross, upset without being angry.

"If you say I am not myself, then give me a chance to bare my veins to you and prove otherwise. If you do not... if you do not, then where do you plan to find sustenance from this night?" James wanted to know.

That finally did the trick.

There, there was that stupid undeniable fundamental sort of demi-human decency that caused him to offer her his neck in the first place.

It should have gotten him killed a very long time ago, and the only reason it hadn't was because he was a monster, and monsters got to make their own rules, even if the rules they wanted were those that society suggested but never lived up to.

He was so concerned about other people that he was willing to let her drink his blood so that she didn't take it from someone else.

Whoever, whatever, "James Maahes Firecat" was, he didn't want to let Mirri's hunger for blood to end up hurting anyone if she just could hurt him instead.

"Okay, you know what, we're doing this, get in the coffin." Mirri insisted.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book Four: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Six: I'm what you face when you face in the mirror!

“Do you all understand how importance this plan is?” The shadowy figure asked those gathered before him.

“Not really, you haven't told us WHAT the plan is yet.” One of them pointed out before being rather soundly rebuffed by his fellows.

“Of course we understand, the Boss' plans are always important. We also understand that if we don't do a good job on it, then we'll be taking orders from him rather than you.” A much smarter shadowy figure answered.

“That's right, and you won't like the kind of orders he gives.” Their leader reflected.

“I hear he makes you dance.” One of them whispered.

“What's so bad about dancing?” The same dunderhead as before inquired.

“Nothing, if you don't mind doing it for hours on end until you drop dead.” Another hissed back, at which point several began to wonder why they were working with such a fool.

“If you don't think that working directly for the Boss is so bad, maybe you'd like to come with me when I report to him?” Their leader offered.

There was a long and protracted silence that none dared break.

“That's right. He's the Cat and we're just his paws. Not exactly a fair arrangement, but if life were fair none of us would be here in the first place. Now, lets get down to business of discussing how the plan is supposed to go down....” Their leader stated calmly.

Then suddenly there was a knock at the door.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” One of the minions inquired.

“We're all already here...” Their leader answered just in time for the knocking to suddenly become much louder and more forceful.

“DESTROY THE PLANS AND RUN!” Their leader screamed.

By the time that the guardsmen of Tristen Hiregaard had managed to batter down the door there was no one left inside.

The armored soldiers had completely encircled the building, but they hadn’t expected there to be an underground tunnel system which had allowed the conspirators to slip through their fingers.

The only thing of any importance the soldiers recovered was a mostly burnt piece of parchment that wasn't quite charred to the point of illegibility.

It contained a drawing of a stallion.

XXX XXX XXX

As it turned out, almost as soon as the group approached the outskirts of Castle Faerhaaven they were noticed by some of the local guards.

“You, with the silver hair and the eye-patch!” One of them called out, his voice stuttering slightly as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying.

Alexander sighed and then turned to face the man, tilting his shoulders slightly, positioning Wolf Claw so that it would easily slide free from its sheath.

“Is there some matter in which I can be of service to you?” He offered with icy politeness.

“Is your name Alexander Diamondclaw?” The guard inquired.

“It would seem my reputation proceeds me.” He admitted.

“Prince Othmar had access to some of the swiftest horses in all of Nova Vassa. Meanwhile you simply swim in the ocean that is Nova Vassa. Are you truly surprised?” The guard replied with a touch of pride.

Alexander thought about that for a moment then shrugged dismissively.

“In the right conditions a man can outrace a horse. Still, what exactly makes me so important that you asked for me by name?” Alexander asked calmly.

“Not me, The Captain.” The Guard explained.

“Of course. Guess we'll have to work our way up the chain of command as usual.” Alexander admitted.

XXX XXX XXX

“Presenting Sir Tristen Hiregaard, current head of the Hiregaard Family, protector of the Borchava Duchy, faithful servant of Iron Faith and Prince Othmar Of Nova Vassa! In the name of the Eternal King, by the will of the Lawgiver show proper deference to him!” Announced the herald before more fanfare was blown.

“Their chain has a lot fewer links than I expected.” Cal whispered softly and with as little movement of his lips as possible.

Once all the pomp and circumstances was completed “The Captain” showed himself to Alexander and his companions stepping out from behind a moth bitten curtain.

“Such proclamations are more than I deserve honestly.” Were his first words.

Luckily this didn't cause his servants to start exclaiming the long list of Sir Tristen's many virtues all over again making sure to add “humility” at the end.

Tristen Hiregaard was a descendant of Romir Hiregaard, of that Mirri was sure since Romir had just become the family's leader when she'd gotten her last book on the history of Nova Vassa. Romir had either lived a very long life (and remained vigorous enough to produce a son very late in it), was Tristen's grandfather, or Tristen Hiregaard was a man upon whom the years laid lightly.

At a rough guess she would page Tristen's age at somewhere in his early fifties, but the kind of “early fifties” that only men of wealth and privilege ever lived to, where they could retain an air of vitality and strength that would shame any peasant in their forties (or sometimes even their thirties).

For one of the richest men in Nova Vassa he was dressed in a surprisingly simple manner: loose black trousers, high black riding boots and a red shirt. His black mustache was slightly graying and had been waxed and well cared for, but it'd be hard to find a man in Nova Vassa who didn't support the most dramatic set of lip-whiskers possibly. By comparison the hair on his head was still completely black without sign of age.

His outfit was mostly bare of adornments save a yellow scarf embroidered with black and red horses worn about his neck and a pair of scarves patterned with diagonal bands of red and black tied around either arm. He had large brown eyes, the kind that spoke of a man who had sen a great deal of suffering in his life but had refused to let it harden his heart.

While Othmar had decided to lounge in the legendary throne of the Nova Vassan people Tristen remained standing the same as his guests. He had also refrained from having the group's weapons peace bonded, only insisting that Cal unload his guns.

“I'm afraid you have me somewhat at a disadvantage... when I was told I was going to be meeting with 'The Captain' I assumed your servant meant the Captain of the Guard. My knowledge of current Nova Vassan social graces is sadly a bit lacking, what is the correct title to address someone who is in line to be the prince, but does not actually hold the position?” Alexander inquired a touch hesitantly.

He also made sure to refrain from mentioning the fact that while Tristen might be “in line” it was unlikely that the line would be doing any moving until Othmar Bolshnik had moved onto the afterlife.

Tristen blushed slightly and waved away Alexander's concerns.

“My proper title is Patriarch, but since you are not from these lands exceptions can be made, speaking of which...” He made a few quick hand motions to a couple of servants who were at the moment hauling a trio of fine chairs into the room.

“I normally prefer that those who meet with me stand as equals, but given that there are women among your ranks, I would be failing in my duties as a host if I did not offer them some form of respite.” He explained with a soft twinkle in his eye as the servants departed even more quickly then they had entered.

Florence and Devi took their seats, and while Mirri rather pointedly did not, she did lounge against the third chair in a somewhat relaxed manner.

“So why 'The Captain' then?” Alexander couldn't help but ask.

“Several years back I was Captain of the Kantora City Guard. It was during that time period when some would say I did more to serve Nova Vassa than I ever have as leader of the Hiregaard family. Chief among my deeds were uncovering the horrific truth behind a godless cult who called themselves the Claws of Sehkmaa.” He began.

James looked ready to chip in with a few choice comments, but Mirri and Cal very firmly (but also very surreptitiously) made sure he didn't. If what James had to say to an antique dealer was off putting, what Maahes might end up saying to a patriarch would doubtlessly be even worse.

“It was not a pleasant discovery in the least, to realize that a group who proclaimed that they had come to feed the hungry and help the needy were in truth nothing but a front for vices beyond measure.

I personally saw to the mater after making this discovery... and they were all suitably punished. All, except their leader Malken. If... if I could have been stronger and faster... if I could have discovered some way to deal with Malken as well, Nova Vassa would be a happier place today.

Alas, he escaped, and now his name or some version of it seems to be on the lips of every wrong doer in the land.

That is why I allow them to call me The Captain even though I resigned the post years ago. It is because I feel the title is still accurate. Just as my time then was defined by my struggle against Malken... I have dedicated what remains of my life to the struggle against the vice and corruption Malken spread like a disease, just one which attacked the soul rather than the body.” Tristen explained, his face seeming to age twenty years as he spoke.

Then it faded or (at least became less prominent) as he focused his eyes carefully on Alexander.

“I'm sorry, I didn't intend to drag you into my unpleasant past when I brought you here to have a meeting about the future.” Tristen apologized.

Alexander took a deep breath of his own, and then gave one of the most meaningful “casual” shoulder shrugs imaginable.

“Be at ease Patriarch Hiregaard, who can possibly speak of the future with any wisdom unless they understand the past?” The silver haired man responded.

There was a soft light in Tristen's dark eyes.

“You are sadly all too correct. Still, the 'past' relating to why I brought you here is luckily simple enough.

Much of the wealth of the Hiregaard family comes from our quarry in the Koshka Bluffs. A few weeks ago, it seemed that this might be the most profitable year the Lawgiver had ever blessed my family with thanks to a strange bounty the bluffs were offering up.

There were small simple things at first, half broken ceramic cat statues I believe. A few of them were intact though, and they looked to be ancient beyond belief, dating back to the days before The Lawgiver's Iron Faith came to this land.

I at once informed Prince Othmar of the fact, but he assured me that I and my servants have been far to loyal to him for a few cat statues to suddenly make him think we were heretics. So, I decided that those who worked the bluffs could keep the statues as harmless curiosities, rewards for their hard work.

Still, as more of them showed up I assigned soldiers to carefully inspect the workers leaving the bluffs so that none of them attempted to spirit off anything truly valuable. The workers at the bluffs soon discovered two items of great magical power, one of them was a shield the other was a staff.

A staff that I sent to Prince Othmar along with other tribute as a share of my family's new found prosperity.” Tristen pointed out, his eyes focusing keenly on the staff James was holding.

“Othmar gave us the staff in question as payment for helping deal with the Briarweed Bandits.” Alexander promptly explained, well aware that James' possession of the staff could easily be taken in the wrong light.

Tristen softened slightly and sighed once again.

“Not long after those finds though, we started to suffer accidents. There were always accidents of course, but now, there have never been so many of them in such a short time span... Not just rock falls, or workers slipping from scaffolding, but also people being mauled to death by plains cats! Worst of all, five men had their bodies battered beyond recognition by we know not what. Their corpses were all marked with a strange rot and the bodies were burned as a precaution.” Tristen explained.

“What color was the rot?” Mirri cut in.

“I didn't think to ask and the bodies had already been burned by the time I heard report.” Tristen answered.

“I'll lay good money it was yellow and purple.” Mirri whispered in her companions ears’.

“As these 'accidents' keep piling up, work kept slowing down, and slower work means less product to sell and thus less money.

I have always prided myself on the fact that the Hiregaard family requires less in the way of taxes than any of the other four families, but that does not make me blind to the realities of the world around me. I can get by with a castle that is a touch downtrodden, but soldiers and guardsmen need to have dependable paymasters, otherwise they'll be no better than the brigands we expect them to fight in the first place. I need someone to go to the bluffs, find out what is wrong, and put a stop to it.” Tristen concluded.

“So you think that we could be those people?” Alexander added, just to put a fine point on the matter.

Tristen looked him over again slowly.

“Othmar said that you did as fine a job as could be expected from foreigners. He is the ruler of Nova Vassa and so his standards must be the most exacting in our land at telling right from wrong and good from evil.

The words he spoke of you were why I wanted this meeting. I have ever believed that if you want to be truly impressed, you must give someone a chance.

For my skill at being stern without being harsh, the Lawgiver has rewarded me with many fine servants, it is how I met Sigfrid after all...” Tristen Hiregaard turned as if intending to draw attention to someone, a person who was not in the room.

“Sigfrid...” He muttered to himself a moment later in pained tones.

“A fallen friend?” Alexander's voice was a tender whisper.

Tristen's eyes grew slightly bleary as he nodded in agreement.

“A casualty from my war with Malken. Illness and madness claimed my first wife, but Malken claimed the son she gave me and my dear friend Sigfrid Skolsson who I loved like a brother.” Tristen admitted, and with those words it became astoundingly clear that while the guillotine sharp hands of time have been kind to Tristen Hiregaard's body, his soul was another matter entirely.

“Few things make the loss of a boon companion worse than the knowledge that they remain unavenged. Perhaps after we deal with this more urgent matter at the bluffs we could give you a hand with Malken as well?” Alexander offered in commiseration.

Tristen's face did not look sorrowful anymore, instead it simply looked blank, as if he was dead to the world.

“Malken is not so easy to track down. It is said he has enough lairs in Nova Vassa that he can spend each night in a different one. I worry that I would have you racing hither and yon across Nova Vassa with nothing to show for it and no way to properly pay you.

For this task payment at least comes easily enough, doubtless there is some great evil at the heart of the Koshka Bluffs, but just as surely there remain still more magical artifacts that have yet to be found. I will gladly give you whatever examples of the later you find if you will rid me of the former.” Tristen declared.

“You said that it was 'war' between you and Malken. Do you think that all these accidents might have something to do with him? After all, wars aren't won just on the front lines, if the Koshka Bluffs are a source of great wealth for you and your family, then disrupting them disrupts your wealth, and thus disrupt your ability to fight Malken.” Alexander pointed out.

Tristen shook his head sternly.

“It has been my great displeasure to have grown to know Malken very well over the years, this... it is not his style.

He is fond of enough and more of cats, but why would he harass my workers when instead he might simply pilfer the stone on its way to market, both robbing me and enriching himself at the same time? Also if I truly had to, I could simply raise taxes, meaning that while he might create more misery he would not reduce my ability to fight him him. Malken is a fiend, but he is no fool.” Tristen warned them.

“You said there was a shield also, found in the same general region as the staff?” Mirri brought the topic of conversation back around to the item in question since no one else seemed about to.

This finally managed to snap Tristen out of his brooding intensity and he nodded slowly in agreement.

“Yes, and if it will help you resolve the matter I'll be only too glad to show it to you. Both I and my court priestess Sofya came to the same conclusion; it was magic and powerfully so. I have no idea what it does, but if you need it you are welcome to it.” Tristen offered.

“Well lets start by taking a look at it, best to take these things one small step at a time.” Alexander suggested.

XXX XXX XXX

Tristen lead the group into his trophy room, (located inside one of the tallest towers in his castle) and his eyes fell upon one chest in particular. It was a chest that currently had two occupants laying flat out on top of it.

“Forgive the cats, I know they're rather out of fashion at the moment, but my first wife was quite fond of them, and they grew on me over the years. If nothing else, they're cheaper to keep around than full time rat catchers.” Tristen explained as he picked up one of the sleeping animals and lifted it off the treasure chest.

The animal took this with surprising grace, purring happily in Tristen's hands. He repeated the process with the other then produced a key from a pants pocket, unlocked the chest, and withdrew a single object from it.

He laid it flat on the ground so that the group could gather around and look it over at their leisure.

It was a shield sure enough, seemingly made of brass. Embossed on its face around the rim were a series of nine cats. Five of them were fast asleep, but the other four stood erect, one paw raised as if to strike.

The group didn't get very long to study the shield, because James was only able to hold himself back for a handful of seconds.

Then he pounced forward, landed atop the shield and began to try to twist his entire body around it. His breath became heavy and every time he exhaled there was a “chuffing” sound.

It was as if James trying to purr, and only failing because his body couldn't possibly produce those particular sounds at the moment.

Tristen Hiregaard twisted his head to the side and gazed at this particular event with an understandable amount of confusion.

“When our friend here came in contact with the magic staff that your workers found it insorcised some kind of ancient cat spirit into him.” Devi explained in a completely blase tone of voice, as if this sort of bizarre event happened every other day.

Tristen blinked a few times taking her words in before deciding to stay safely neutral on the whole matter.

“I'm sorry to hear that the staff has created problems for you. I and some of my servants along with the worker who originally found it all handled it without any kinds of precautions and yet suffered no such strange maladies.” He promised them.

“We don't blame you.” Mirri replied, a little shocked to discover that she actually meant it.

There was terrible earnesty about Tristen Hiregaard, it was an almost James-like quality, blaming him for something he had no control over was the sort of evil that wasn't even amusing in its perversity.

“Given how... enthralled our companion is with the shield it probably would be for the best if we take it with us. Devi, see if you can get it out form under him and store it in the Bag of Holding.” Alexander decided.

After a fair amount of coxing from Mirri, James reluctantly parted ways with the shield and allowed it to be deposited inside the group's bag of holding.

XXX XXX XX

“Serpents fear me, cats revere me! Give me back my shield give me back my staff!” A creature that might have once been human appeared before them as they left the trophy room.

How it had reached this place was hard to say, but it was here and it was advancing on them menacingly.

“Guess it's my turn.” Mirri reflected as she prepared to meet the monster in combat.

Before battle could be joined however, Tristen Hiregaard suddenly placed himself between the two.

“Please my lady, what kind of host would I be if I allowed a female guest to fight while I still drew breath? Allow me.” Tristen insisted.

There was a sparkle in his eye again, just like when he'd ordered the chairs brought in, it somehow made Tristen look as young as Alexander Diamondclaw, as if twenty years or more had just melted from his hansom and now playfully confident face.

“If you really insist...” She agreed while doing a quick inspection of their “host’s” outfit, Tristen wore no noticeable weapons at the moments, the most he could have concealed were a few daggers.

Whatever weapon he favored, there was no time for further argument, the beast was almost upon them.

Tristen turned to face the monster, and made a few quick hand motions as he whispered strange words.

Tristen's guests felt a strange chill in the air, the effect on the patriarch’s foe was a bit more pronounced.

The monster began to take another creaking step forward, but could not bring its leg properly into position to catch itself. It fell, and when it did it's entire body shattered into countless tiny shards of frozen ice upon the floor.

A ghostly birdlike figure with a human head took flight from what was left of the monster.

Tristen watched it depart and then brushed his bare hands against one another in a show of contentment.

“Not even Malken takes my protection Castle Faerhaaven lightly these days.” Tristen declared proudly.

Mirri had a faraway look in her eyes.

“That looked a lot like magic. Not the priestly kind of magic either...” She pointed out, as if not quite able to believe what she'd seen.

Tristen nodded in agreement.

Then he paused for a moment before explaining further.

“I see that while you are foreigners you know at least some of Nova Vassa's ways.

When I was fifteen years old my father committed suicide. His body was scarcely cold in the ground before I discovered that I had been touched by the foul hand of Mytteri.

I was granted a rare privilege though, the ruler of Nova Vassa at the time, Prince Kethmaar of the Bolshnik family was only a few years my senior and we had been friends growing up. From his position as head of the Iron Faith he decreed that my magic was to be completely ignored unless I used it for evil.

So, I did what I could to study my strange curse, and the little magics I've mastered have proven quite useful at times.” Tristen explained.

Mirri said nothing, either because she realized it was the wise thing to do at the moment or she honestly couldn't think of any sort of comment to make.

XXX XXX XX

“So what did you think of Sir Tristen Hiregaard?” Cal Wright asked when the group set out for the bluffs after the finest meal that Castle Faerhaaven's cooks could provide.

It might already be starting to get dark, but if any of the local bandits or wildlife decided to attack the group then they'd soon regret it.

In order to pass the time the alchemist figured he could get an amusing rant or two our of the vampire by continuing to needle her about the state of her nation's nobility.

He wasn't disappointed either.

“What gelding!” Mirri snickered.

“Sir Tristen High-Regard, the last, no, the only honest man in Nova Vassa! Witness my valiant and fruitless struggle to not notice how the rest of my countrymen are busy undoing every single good deed I do!” Mirri chortled mispronouncing the man's name on purpose.

While she might be above verbally abusing the man to his face, insulting him behind her back was was another matter entirely.

“I don't know why he keeps those mousers around his castle, he's all horse and not cat!” She added with complete and total certainty.

XXX XXX XXX

Tristen Hiregaard had met with some lovely ladies today, that was good. There might be some new pieces entering onto the board, that was even better. Best of all, whatever was causing problems at the Koshka Bluffs would soon be eliminated.

The white haired man took a moment to examine himself in the mirror, his outfit was completely disheveled and his hair wild... exactly the way he liked it.

Lust always came easily to him, but the image he now called to mind fanned the flames still further. Those dementedly bewitching red eyes, that black and white hair, those high cheekbones, that angular chin!

She had to be of Nova Vassan stock, she just had to be.

She carried herself with such a regal air, and yet she deemed to spend time with common adventurers. What shameless flouting of the Lawgiver's tenants, harlots in dance halls showed more self restraint, at least they had the excuse of their base-born birth to explain away their sins, she wore hers with pride like a fine scarf!

What delightful deviancy!

Even her name was exactly as it should be for a 'lady' of her nature...

“Catwarrior.” The man whispered to himself, and the words sent a shiver of delight up his spine.

Some fools might stand by their trusty steeds, but those who understood the way the world really worked, they rode upon cats!

He was certain that she knew, how could she not?

She must have intended it, that couldn't have been her actual birth name, no she must have chosen it for herself. What cheek! She had turned her name itself into a bellow of defiance, a fist shaken in rage against all that was proper and orderly in the world!

To say nothing of her style of dress!

The image of those legs concealed (though not very well of course) beneath no dress or skirt but masculine trousers (and not even the baggy Nova Vassan style either) was extremely pleasing to say the least.

They were right shape, but the movements had a strange exotic air to them, a feline prowl rather than the traditional rolling gate of men and women alike in Nova Vaasa. It must have been a long time indeed since she had last ridden, well, he would give her a ride!

Of that there could be no doubt, and who knew, she was so enticing that he might even be able to bring himself not to wring her pretty little neck once he was done, so long as she was receptive and agreeable throughout.

Maybe she would be after all, he'd seen the way that she'd been fawning over the red haired youth with a face as bare as a maiden in waiting, did she seek such companions just to further spit in the eye of all that was considered right and just?

How could he not feel some warped form of respect for her, how could he not crave her with every inch of his loins? In this land of masks and duplicity she had cast aside all pretense of proper nobility leaving behind naught but contempt and comeliness.

She was without respect for the church or law, she was without shame, she was without doubt the most perfect women Tristen had ever been kind enough to bring to his attention!

Sadly, he simply couldn't afford to do anything that might jeopardize their mission, something out there was messing with his control of the cats, and if he didn't control his four legged spies, then he didn't control Nova Vassa. A knife at a man's throat would make him obey, but only for as long as you could keep it there. Information that made a man fear for his life, that you could hold over his head without even needing to lift a finger!

No, for the moment as strange as it might sound, he and Tristen were in perfect agreement (though of course Tristen didn't know it) that the matter at Koshka Bluffs needed to settled.

So, he would be.... patient... That word also sent a shiver through his body though this time it was one of revulsion.

He would have to wait for her to return to him, but once she did… Then he would truly lay bare before her all the vice and venality of Nova Vaasa, just as she would bare her flesh to him either by choice or by force.

For now... for now... for now he slipped a dark cloak around himself tightly to better hide his twisted appearance. With the cloak drawn up tight around him, he seemed a figure more of shadow than of flesh.

“Purrrfect.” He trilled to himself.

For he was Malken, the true ruler of Nova Vaasa, and tonight would strangle the first red haired man he could get his hands around.
jamesfirecat
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2014 11:30 am

Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Seven: We slip through the streets while everyone sleeps getting bigger and sleeker and wider and brighter

“Who in the name of the Lawgiver are you?” Demanded a soldier in slightly beaten armor as the group approached the Koshka Bluffs.

Alexander opened his mouth to answer when suddenly Cal held up a finger.

“Boss, if I may?” The alchemist suggested.

Alexander shot a preemptive look at James, and then one at Cal.

“If you really think it'll be so worthwhile, go right ahead, just don't waste too much time.” He warned the alchemist.

Cal nodded and then advanced toward the guard, smiling broadly.

“You know, I want you to keep that expression you're wearing right now fixed very clearly in you mind. Now then.... Devi, why don't you show this fine gentleman exactly who we are?” He suggested.

Devi Skye stepped forward and the guard recoiled slightly, clearly having no intentions of taking anything that an elf had to offer him.

She reached into her bag of holding and held out a scroll that was bound up with the Hiregaard family’s seal.

A moment after laying eyes upon that seal could the guard slowly reached out to take the scroll. What he found waiting for him a letter that Sir Tristen Hiregaard had written while sharing a meal with the group yesterday.

“The six standing before you have already done a great service for Prince Othmar and Nova Vaasa. For that reason I have placed my trust in them to help resolve the issue at the Koshka Bluffs. Show them the same loyalty you would me, and remember; masters in this world can be slaves in the next. --Sir Tristen Hiregaard.” Was all it said.

What went unsaid was quite obvious though, Tristen Hiregaard was an arcane magic user, when he died he would be sent to the Hell of Slaves. Devi Skye was an elf, so would she. That still didn't mean their orders could be blithely disregarded here and now.

The guard paled for a moment, then his face began to deepen into an interesting mix between the green of revulsion and red of anger.

Eventually he regained control and his face slowly started to show something bordering on genuine relief.

“I see.... well... just last night I and the others were wishing that Sir Tristen would reinforce us, clearly the Lawgiver provides for those who obey his tenants.” The guard replied.

He must have wanted reinforcements very badly indeed because he seemed to be finding some comfort in the sight of the group now, no matter how unorthodox they looked.

“My name is Alexander Diamondclaw, this woman with the blond hair is Florence Bastien.” Alexander explained, very pointedly not mentioning the fact that Florence's skin had a rather greenish tint to it.

The guard noticed it of course, but once you had decided that you were going to take orders from an elf, no point in objecting to a dryad, if he even realized what she was.

“The woman with black hair is Mirri Catwarrior, and her companion is James Firecat.” Alexander continued.

“Blessings of Bastet be upon you fellow guardian.” James declared cheerfully even though his words made the guard just about ready to jump out of his skin.

“Yep we're not just foreigners we're foreign heretics as you might expect. Do kindly remember the letter though.” Mirri pointed out.

She was certain that the more “Maahesian” aspects of James' personality would quite promptly get in trouble with the Lawgiver’s true believers.

Luckily, it was a lot easier to find people in Nova Vaasa who believed in the law (especially the unspoken one about how obeying even the strangest orders without question was how you got ahead in life, or at least didn't fall behind) than 'truly' believed in the Lawgiver.

In short, so long as the group had the favor of the rich and powerful, the Iron Faith couldn't touch them with them a ten foot poll, let alone an axehead, noose or one of their holy spears.

“I'm Cal Wright, and you've already met Devi Skye. You are?” Cal inquired, wanting to wrap up introductions while the day was still fairly fresh.

“Gunnar Erickson. I'll take you to see Sir Jiscaard, he's the knight Sir Tristen has placed in charge of this area.” Gunnar explained.

XXX XXX XXX

Sir Jiscaard was in his late twenties with black hair, a fine black mustache, and armor that was much better taken care of than his subordinate's. What wasn't different about him was the way that he reacted to Tristen's Hiregaard's letter.

If anything, his emotions were even easier to watch bounce back and forth as his eyes did the same between the group and the letter they’d presented him with. After recovering from his shock and managing to resist an obvious impulse to rip the letter to shreds and pretend he'd never seen it, he gave Alexander a restrained nod.

“Well, you're here. So long as that's the case, you might as well make yourselves useful. I suppose having you lot around might have some advantages. You're proof that Sir Tristen commands the respect of more than just ordinary men. If you want to be really useful you could bring me a few plains cat pelts.” The knight suggested.

James looked back and forth in slight confusion.

“Could you point us in the direction of the nearest market where we might procure such items?” He inquired.

For a moment it looked like only the fact that Sir Jiscaard was wearing heavy mail gauntlets kept him from slamming a hand against his face.

“I don't mean buy them, I mean kill the bloody beasts!” The knight blustered in irritation.

Either the force of of the black haired man's anger, or the shock of realizing that Sir Jiscaard was suggesting he be about killing his fellow felines of any kind, (or even more likely, a combination of both) was enough to make James jerk backward in surprise.

“It's not normally like this, most of the time they'll leave you alone so long as you don't get blind stinking drunk and decide to go off for a midnight walk by yourself. Now however, now I've got to assign my soldiers to stand guard in groups of three just to keep the cats at bay!

Show any sign of weakness, and they'll be on you in an instant!” Jiscaard warned them.

A moment later there was a horrific scream, the kind of sound you normally only heard shortly after a woman was surprised in a dark alley.

James immediately began to grip his staff tightly, looking ready to throw himself into the fray as soon as he was certain in which direction the foe lay.

Four other members of the group likewise began to reach for their own weapons, but Mirri and Jiscaard were more or less nonplussed.

“See what I mean?” Jiscaard groaned, more in irritation than actual fear or anger.

“Plains cats normally hunt at night, cause their fur is black as Mytteri's heart. Now though, I'm not even sure if they're hunting, maybe they're just watching, and they want us to know they're watching. Maybe I just need more sleep, but I'd swear I've fought bandits who were less coordinated than those cats!” Jiscaard admitted.

“A cat made that sound?” Cal gasped, not sure if he could bring himself to believe it.

“Yep, it isn’t too too hard to tell from an actual woman's scream once you know get the hang of it.” Mirri confirmed, though she didn't offer any direct advice on how to accomplish that particular trick.

“Over the years the mewing of a house cat has more and more come to resemble the crying of a child, I suspect this is a rather less pleasant version of the same principle.” James suggested.

“Like I was saying, make yourselves at home, aside from the possibility of having part of the bluffs come loose and crush you like a bug, falling off a ladder, or being eaten by a plains cat things aren't too bad. At the very least, the closest thing any of the workers have to weapons are daggers and pickaxes so you shouldn't have much to fear from them.” Jiscaard informed the group.

XXX XXX XXX

Indeed the first day did pass in a relatively dull and unremarkable fashion.

There was one brief 'exciting' moment when a ladder snapped and fell over with unpleasant (if entirely mundane) results for the worker who had been using it.

Florence spent much of the rest of the day surreptitiously (knowing that her magic (having nothing to do with the Lawgiver) would not be looked fondly upon) doing what she could to make sure that there would be no more such failures.

The six new arrivals had been assigned beds in the guards’ barracks, in fact they'd been assigned a not so small chunk of it, as if everyone had shifted themselves away from the new arrivals (the barracks had room for twice as many people as it currently housed, another sign of the Hiregaard family's financial troubles) as if they carried some unknown but obviously very contagious disease.

Making the area even more spacious (if no more luxuriant) was that only Cal and Devi decided to take advantage of the offer, Alexander, Florence, Mirri, and James all desired less mundane sleeping arrangements.

Which of course meant that Florence (a dryad's work was never done) needed to use her magic to create two small sanctuaries, one for herself and Alexander, one for Mirri's coffin.

XXX XXX XXX

Mirri woke up from her traditionally dreamless sleep (dreams were for the living) and instantly knew that there was something wrong.

She wasn't sure what it was at first, while she'd shed many of life's little irritations thanks to becoming a vampire, having to deal with a few moments of thickheadedness upon first waking was not one of them.

At the moment her eyes were not being flooded by sunlight or even torchlight so it was unlikely that some vampire hunter had thrown the lid to her coffin open and was about to drive a stake through her heart.

She fumbled around in the dark (not that she couldn't see perfectly well in darkness of course) confines of her coffin trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.

So far as she could tell the answer was nothing, nothing that she touched felt out of place or drastically unusual.

Nothing she touched was wrong, but the things that she couldn't touch were.

As she groped and flailed around inside her coffin the only things that she could feel was either dirt (dirt that was starting to feel rather superfluous at the moment, given that there was plenty of Nova Vaasan soil outside her coffin) or its wooden structure.

There was no warm flesh to be found, she was alone in the coffin.

“If he left to have some time alone with his staff...” Mirri grumbled to herself in irritation at James' absence.

The vampiress popped open the lid to her coffin and crawled out. She reached back into the coffin for her white hat (the only part of her outfit she'd taken off while having fun with James) and checked the ground.

Quite frequently James Firecat could move with a tread light enough that even she had trouble following him but “Maahes” clearly showed no such concerns.

She followed his trail leading out of the cave (she and James hadn't entered into it till they'd been ready to settle down for the night, thus there was only one possible set to follow) determined to get to the bottom of this, and the sooner the better.

Then she heard a sound like a woman's scream, that is to say to her practiced ear she heard the sound of a plains cat.

It was swiftly followed by another sound, this time something much more along the lines of a man screaming. Male and female plains cats alike had similar roars and both of them sounded like a female human.

That meant that whoever had just cried out like that was an actual human being, most likely suffering some terrible pain.

Mirri sighed and headed in that direction because she had yet to meet the poor sod in dire straights who James didn't try to help.

Her ears soon picked up the sounds of several beating hearts around the same time that her eyes caught sight of their source. There were two workers, one of them trying desperately to press his somewhat tattered clothing against an obviously fresh gash in his arm.

Even though she'd 'eaten' recently Mirri's eyes couldn't help but focus intently upon the crimson droplets working their way free from his wound. Then her eyes fell upon four plains cats and one prone figure laying flat upon the ground.

“So, who wants to tell me what's going on here?” Mirri asked in a calm tone of voice that suggested her mood might not stay that way for long.

She also started to overlay it with plenty of vampiric charm gaze once the two men turned their attention away from the plains cats.

Between the blood loss, shock at his situation, and (of course) her charm gaze, the wounded man's will melted like butter.

“We found a bag of golden coins while we were working on the bluffs today. They looked ancient, not like somebody had simply lost them or left them behind! So we decided to bury them before our shift ended and the guards searched us! But when we came back out to dig them up, those beasts attacked us!” He admitted openly.

“What is he doing here?” She demanded gesturing in the direction of the prone figure.

“Olav and I had just finished digging up the bag, when a beast pounced on him from behind and started tearing at his arm. I was sure he was a goner, and I'd be next when suddenly this voice called out to them! 'Hold! What you are doing to them is wrong! Why do you do this thing?'

Then the lad walks over bold as brass, and tosses himself on the ground face first and they've been on him ever since.” The uninjured worker explained.

Sure enough James Firecat was laying stiff and still upon the ground the Staff of Bastet in his hands. The plains cats circled him, licking him again and again with their bright pink tongues.

There was no scent of blood coming from James, well at least none beyond a few faint traces from the recently reopened scars on his neck (nightly feeding sessions for over a year had left him with marks there that even his lycanthropic flesh couldn't quite fully mend).

“Leave the coins behind, get back to wherever it is you sleep and if you say nothing of this neither will I.” Mirri promised them.

She might even keep her word, Mirri tended to prefer that people had offered her at least some kind of offense (even a relatively minor one) before she could draw true pleasure from their suffering, and helping people avoid servants of the Lawgiver could be its own reward.

The two workers departed swiftly, leaving her “alone” with James and the plains cats.

“All right then, so what do you think you're doing with my kitten?” She demanded of the black furred beasts.

Two of them took their attention off of James and positioned themselves between him and Mirri. One of them even snarled angrily at her.

“Do you seriously want to come between the two of us?” She snarled right back.

Now that she didn't have to worry about anyone watching she decided that it was time to start really cutting loose with her own powers.

Mist swirled around Mirri and a moment later there was no trace left of the woman in white. Instead, there was a tawny furred lioness.

Mirri promptly let loose with a proper feline “roar” making it clear that she had no intention of backing down.

She was outnumbered, but on the other hand, the claws and jaws of ordinary animals tended to be extremely inefficient weapons up against a vampire, and she wouldn't even need to unsheathe her own claws, not when she kill simply by draining lifeforce.

Except that it wasn't even going to come to a fight.

Mirri knew that James would probably have some unpleasant things to say to her if he found out that she'd killed some of these things, at least when they weren't actively posing a threat to someone. That fact would have bothered Mirri a great deal more if how to get what she wanted without harming them wasn't so incredibly obvious.

“You are going to leave, now.” She insisted to the four plains cats.

Much like the human workers had been no match for her charm gaze, these things were no match for her ability to command animals.

Granted, most vampires tended to only use this particular ability to give the command of “KILL” but in at the moment “leave” would get the job done just fine.

With the plains cats dismissed Mirri returned to her human form, and then since James still showed no signs of moving she turned her attention to the simple looking brown bag the workers had been after.

She flipped it over and watched as a dozen golden coins fell to the ground. Sure enough, they didn’t look any she'd ever seen in Nova Vaasa.

They had lettering on them that was so ancient (or so foreign) that Mirri couldn't make heads or tails out of it. What she could tell was that they seemed to have some sort of reclining cat figure on one side.

“Render unto Bastet what is Bastet's....” In the blink of an eye James had gone from laying on the ground seemingly dead to the world, to leaning over her shoulder looking down at the coins.

“So you're saying that since you're her son, those things belong to you?” She asked getting a distinct sense that she was talking to Maahes rather than James at the moment.

“No, I'm saying leave those coins alone.” He intoned dramatically.

Mirri looked down at the coins, then shrugged, they were only gold after all, given that they'd need to be converted to local currency her cut probably wouldn't have even been able to afford a proper portrait.

“Fine, you can explain all this to Alex tomorrow morning. Lets get back to my coffin.” She instructed him.

“If such is your will, know that my body has yet more fluids to impart upon yours should you so desire it.” James promised.

Mirri's right eyebrow twitched slightly.

“You know, only you would say something like that.” Mirri admitted, and she wasn't sure which occupant of the werecat's body she was talking to.

XXX XXX XXX

The next day things went worse, much, much, much, worse.

Before the group was able to finish breakfast (well before everyone except Mirri (who had already had her “breakfast” (along with “lunch” and “dinner”) several hours ago)) ten workers had died to a rock slide.

Leaving aside their meals (or in Alexander's case after hastily wolfing down enough iron rations to choke a lesser man) the group raced out to see the situation and do what they could to help.

“It's... it's a cat!” Cried out one of the surviving workers pointing to the section of the bluffs whose shape had been altered by the rock slide.

What they could see looked as if it had been carefully shaped, not roughly hacked away at by workers so it could be carted off, but lovingly carved.

It was shaped like the point of a claw.

A moment later another of the workers gasped and pointed at a spot where the surveyors were clearing bushes up on the bluff.

“An eye, a giant eye has opened!” He cried out in panic.

Sure enough, where the surveyors finished clearing away the bushes the now bare hillside seemed to be shaped like a round eye, except on a massive scale. The vertical crack that formed the pupil of the eye was nearly a mile from top to bottom.

“Well... anyone else feel like they're being watched?” Cal reflected as he gazed up into the stone eye.


XXX XXX XXX

Things quickly went down hill from there as one of the workers who was trying to chip away at the carved claw ended up getting killed by a plains cat on his way to lunch.

Before the meal was over it had been decided that no one could “cut the cat” and live.

Which soon enough lead to a human avalanche that put day’s earlier rock based one to shame. Before it was time for dinner there wasn't a single worker left in the bluffs, all of them had picked up as many of their belongings they could carry and headed off to try and find something, ANYTHING else that might offer a source of employment and didn't seem to be obviously cursed.

“This is all your fault.” Grumbled Jiscaard as he stood around the now deserted quarry.

Alexander just shrugged calmly as he surveyed the empty workers' camp.

“You saw what sort of state those people were in, what did you want me to do, cut off their legs? Some things nobody can do anything about.” Alexander insisted.

Jiscaard kicked at the ground in irritation.

Then he suddenly discovered a much better target, one that might actually give him some satisfaction to take out his aggression out on.

“All this 'cut not the cat' nonsense, I'll show them what happens if you harm one of those mangy felines, nothing!” He promised before lashing out at one of the cats that the workers had originally kept as a pet but decided to leave behind.

The animal flew through the air and landed hissing in pain and anger.

James looked on in shocked horror at the man's mistreatment of the otherwise completely innocent feline, but wasn't quite able to bring himself to say anything yet.

“See? Being worried about cats, thinking they have magical powers, that's the sort of nonsense the Lawgiver banished from Nova Vaasa! We shouldn't allow it to come sneaking back the first moment that something goes wron...” Jiscaard began but never quite managed to finish.

He flopped to the ground, making it possible to see that something had just toprn his spine in half.

Floating above his back was a pair of spectral claws.

“Those who are cruel to cats... will have true cruelty done to them...” Announced a sibilant voice.

It came from an approaching plains cat... an approaching dead plains cat.

It was possible to see bones poking out through the creature's decaying skin, while only a few raggedy clumps of fur still clung to its body.

A moment later it transformed into a woman, a dead woman.

She was dressed in a starched white kilt, the hem of which was embroidered with images of tiny gold cats pouncing on black snakes. Upon her feet she wore golden sandals, and her face was hidden behind a combination headdress and mask. It was made of carefully carved and painted wood to make it resemble a cat's head.

So long as you focused on the mask, the sandals, or the outfit, it was just barely possible to ignore the fact that the woman was dead.

A thin veneer of mortality and beauty hung upon a long deceased carcass, no more able to truly deceive than a scarecrow could pass for a living person. Once you looked south of the mask you saw how she had two noticeable gaps in the flesh upon her neck exposing the bone beneath.

She raised a hand thrusting it threateningly in the group's direction, but said nothing more.

Cal abruptly began to shuffle himself around to position James between himself and the undead woman (well the undead woman who wasn't officially part of the group) as she approached them.

“You say that you love cats? That's great, we have long had nothing but the utmost of appreciation for cats, in fact, right now this guy thinks that he's the son of a cat goddess! Funny world isn't it? Maahes or whatever it is you call yourself, why don't you explain to the nice lady why she doesn’t want to kill us?” Cal suggested with a quite distinct air of forced jocularity.

Then there came the sound of a woman's scream, and more plains cats, living plains cats began to approach.

They weren't the only ones either, it seemed like every housecat for miles around was coming closer watching them with the sort of rapt attention a housecat would never EVER show a human (maybe a fish the human was holding, but not the human themselves) normally.

“Who... who are you?” James Firecat demanded as he took a step forward toward the dead woman, his voice quivering slightly clutching the Staff of Bastet tightly against his chest.

“My name is Tiyet, Highest Priestess in service of She of the Ointment Jar. I have come to pass judgment upon the vile serpents and ignorant monkeys of this land. I have come to bring about the age of the cat!” She cried out in the sort of dramatic manner which suggested a person wasn't so much interested in having a conversation as shouting loudly at anyone who they could force to listen.

“Hey, I happen to be a very well educated monkey!” Cal insisted, not willing to let a little thing like self preservation get in the way of making it clear that he wasn't a fool.

That, and he was fairly certain he'd faced down much greater threats than undead women who evidently had decided to spend their afterlife in the service of cosmetic products.

“Two of you dared to harm me in a previous life, you will be made to pay for it!” She promised them as more and more cats edged closer to the group.

Huge plains cat and smaller housecats alike snarled in anger, ears pressed flat against their heads.

Tiyet walked closer and closer with each passing moment, until she was only a short lunge away.

“I want to see the looks of pain in your eyes... while you suffer....” She snarled in anger.

“Well that makes two of us...” Said Devi Skye as she raised her right hand.

Lighting crackled forth from the magical ring she wore on the middle finger of that hand, and it jumped out at Tiyet.

It crossed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and then suddenly was deflected downwards into the ground harmlessly.

“Foolish.” Mocked Tiyet.

“Now then my pets. the time has come to....” She began to command.

The words died on her lips.

When magic had proven completely ineffective against Tiyet, Devi had decided to try for a more down to earth approach.

Her flail lashed out, wrapped itself around the undead woman's throat and dragged her close.

“Magic worked just fine against you last time, so I have a theory about why it doesn't now., As for your pets...” The elf reflected.

Her hands moved rapidly.

Her right hand kept a firm grip on Tiyet's head to keep her from slipping free while her left pushed the mask free from her face.

After doing that it reached into the bag of holding she always wore at her hip.

From it she pulled a brass shield and tossed it as far away from the group as she could manage.

Countless green eyes turned in the direction of the shield, and James was only just able to keep himself from leaping in its direction as well.

With the cats distracted by the magical shield Devi let loose with another bolt of lighting at point blank range.

This one followed the straightest path imaginable, right into Tiyet's body, flash frying her into a pile of dust.

The mask she'd been wearing disintegrated just as quickly as its previous owner had.

A few moments later a bird like figure with a human head took flight in a manner that was starting to seem very familiar to the group.

Seeing that the immediate danger had passed Cal turned his attention toward the not so small clowder of cats gathering around the shield.

“You know what, I say we let them keep it, they seem to want it a lot more than we do.” The alchemist advised.

“Render unto Bastet what is Bastet's.” James agreed stoically.

“Still... what was with that weird mask, and how could it keep Devi's magic from working?” Cal pondered.

“Items that have a strong enough connection, a not just magical but outright mystical connection, after having been prayed over, sanctified and otherwise empowered with some aspect of a god, they tend to protect their owner from any magic not associated with that god.” Alexander answered instantly.

“She was clearly dead, still throwing around magic spells, claimed to be a high priestess, I'm starting to think that we've got ourselves a badly preserved ancient dead.” Mirri reflected.

“We seem to have made ourselves a new enemy and if that thing we ran into three times before was Tiyet...” Florence began before Alex cut her off.

“Then she seems to be coming back smarter and more powerful every time she 'dies' so to speak. Which means we need to do exactly what James suggested and find where her Ba goes when she dies and destroy it. The bird creature was flying off in a westward direction, I'd say we've got our bearing.” The silver haired man commanded.
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Eight: Sweet perfumes of incense, graceful rooms of alabaster stone...

“This, this is where she came from...” James informed the rest of the group.

He'd tracked Tiyet's trail with all his traditional skill, and since both her feline and human form had been decidedly on the decrepit side he'd been able to sort out her foot/paw prints from any of those left by other animals/people.

Eventually he'd brought them back to her starting point, or something close to it as the trail of prints terminated next to a large bronze door.

James followed up his successful tracking feat with a little quick trap detection and having been certain that there were no hidden panels, switches or levers, gave the door a firm push.

It swung open allowing the adventurers to enter.

Inside the strange structure, everything was oddly peaceful, both the near constant dust and wind which had assaulted them outside were complete absent.

The air did however smell faintly of decay, spice, and blood.

Standing in the doorway it was just possible to make out a niche in each of the room's far corners. A box of some sort filled each niche. Directly across from the door was an alcove, filled with a dark, hulking shape. Two red eyes peered out at the group reflecting the light of the doorway.

James pressed on fearlessly and soon the exact nature of the shape became clear, nothing more threatening than a granite statue of a reclining cat with rubies used for its eyes.

Still, almost the very instant that Cal (who as usual was bringing up the rear of the group) entered through the door there was a soft “click” and it swung shut behind them.

Where there might have been a handle on any other door on the inside of this one there was a carved stone cat's head, its mouth spread wide open.

Alexander had other things to worry about at the moment though.

“Cal what do those things say?” He demanded pointing at a series of strange symbols on one wall.

Before the alchemist could answer, James did.

“Walk softly, mortal, with head bowed. For thou hast entered the resting place of the high priestess. Wake not her ba through stealing that which lies within! Touch not her provisions, neither meat nor drink!

Disturb not the sleep of the holy cats, lest the wrath of the goddess herself fall upon you. When the time of pleasure is come, the goddess will restore life to her priestess by rejoining ka and ba in one. So too will she raise all of the faithful from the sleep of death unto a time of joy when every desire shall be satisfied.

Pray for that day, and do nothing unclean in this holy place. Now depart, mortal, and keep the name of our goddess holy.

But, if thou art a servant of the goddess, thy intentions be true, and if thou hast just cause to enter this place, give to the cat that which she hungers for.” He intoned in a strangely calm tone.

After the werecat finished speaking the blond haired man removed his glasses from his face, breathed on them, and wiped them clean on a sleeve of his brown coat.

“That is about the gist of it Boss, at least so far as the 'comprehend languages' spell I got placed on these thing can tell.” He admitted.

“Is this place actually sanctified?” Alexander wanted to know at once.

“If it is, not in the name of any sort of 'good' deity. Proper 'holy faith' and 'sanctification' does more to keep me out than a brick wall.” Mirri reminded the group, as she'd been able to walk through the bronze door with no more difficulty than any of the others.

“Well then that at least makes how to deal with these things simpler...” The silver haired man reflected.

Alexander began to approach one of the niches which held a large sarcophagus, that had been crafted in almost the exact same shape as the one Nicolai Androv had bought (including having several bright shining gems embedded in it) except on a larger scale.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of pain, I bet Wolf Claw is more than one twelfth your weight.” He ruminated as the sword slid free form its scabbard into his hands.

Alexander then began to drive his weapon through the wooden sarcophagus over and over and over again.

It did not emerge stained red with blood, but instead a few flecks of brown clay. A great hissing and spitting noise came from within the wooden box, and Alexander's stabbing increased in both speed and ferocity.

After thirty seconds or so the container went quite, but not about to fall for the oldest trick in the book, the group's leader gave it several more stabs just to be certain. Only then did he gingerly open up what remained of the severely perforated sarcophagus.

Inside lay a dead (make that very dead) cat creature roughly the size of a plains cat. It looked as if it had passed away some time ago, but been preserved in much the same manner as the undead housecat they had seen back in Kantora. Wolf Claw's strikes had finished off this particular beasts “second life” quite definitively.

“That one won't bother us, or anyone else, but all the same, lets leave the gems behind Devi. Something tells me that taking them would be more trouble than they're worth.” He insisted.

Then he headed over to the second sarcophagus and repeated the process with even more enthusiasm until the undead cat within wouldn't be able to finish off a maimed mouse, let alone present a danger to the group.

“Done and done, James check the door.” Alexander commanded.

James did as he was told, and after being certain that there were no mechanical traps waiting for him he swung the door open abruptly finding himself face to face with a brick wall.

“Whoever built this place had a really low sense of humor.” Cal couldn't help but reflect.

Before any further discussion could take place a thin stream of mist emerged from the wall. It floated toward the group assuming the shape of a ghostly cat hanging mysterious in midair. It licked it lips and then opened its mouth wide releasing a horrific shriek.

Then it vanished just as quickly as it had come.

“Well that could have been worse.” Alexander sighed releasing the grip he'd taken on Wolf Claw as the strange beast had appeared.

“WHAT?” Shouted Cal Wright in the sort of voice one tends to use when they fear speaking at anything less than maximum volume would risk not being heard.

“Cal what are you doing?” Alexander asked turning to face the alchemist.

“GUYS THIS ISN'T FUNNY! IT JUST GOT VERY DARK AND VERY QUITE IN HERE!” He screamed waving his hands around wildly.

“Magical trap that blinds and deafens?” Alexander suggested turning his green eyes in Florence's direction.

The dryad nodded.

“One of those weird ones that only affects those who aren't 'pure of heart' or something similar?” He further contemplated, noticing that where once Mirri had been standing before now there was only a collection of white mist.

“If the spell's effect on her had been at all similar to what it had done to Cal, she's probably taken precautions to keep herself safe.” Alex suggested.

Florence nodded again.

Alexander sighed and walked over to Cal, taking the blond haired man's right hand and guiding them up to the strands of his own silver hair.

“EITHER THAT'S YOU BOSS, OR YOU'RE A WOMN WITH SOME VERY LONG SILKY HAIR!? EITHER WAY, I NOW FEEL MUCH BETTER ABOUT THIS SITUATION!” The alchemist declared bombastically.

Devi abruptly elbowed the temporarily blind man in the stomach and then took his other hand and guided it to one of her pointed ears.

“HI DEVI, OR SOME OTHER ELF, BUT I THINK DEVI IS PROBABLY THE MORE LIKELY OPTION AT THE MOMENT! IF I'M WRONG I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAVE NOTHING BUT THE GREATEST OF RESPECT FOR YOUR LONG LIVE PEOPLE AND THEIR GREAT HISTORY OF...” Cal doubtlessly would have gone on in this vein for some time but Devi slipped a hand over his mouth.

“We still don't know how to get any deeper into this place, or even how to get out.” Florence reflected as there was no sign of any hidden doors built into the walls.

“If thou hast just cause to enter this place, give the cat that which she hungers for.” James repeated with a smile on his lips.

“I know what the cat hungers for... if I can just get outside again.” He ruminated turning towards the doors which had closed behind them to lock the group in.

“I can have a go at them with Wolf Claw if worse comes to worse, but before we do anything so dramatic, I think we should probably wait for that spell to wear off.” Alexander decided.

So they waited.

Soon enough Cal's eyes focused clearly on Devi and he lifted her hand for his mouth.

“So we're still in the exact same room where we started, well it wouldn't be the first time I made an ass of myself.” He admitted openly.

A moment after that the doors they had entered through swung open. Mirri was standing behind them with a smug smile on her face.

“Sir, it might be time to think about pulling back. There's still no faith barrier, but whatever that was, I'd rather not go through it again.” The vampire informed them.

James eyes went wide at a sight of the open doors.

“Miriam please watch over this sacred item until I can return.” He instructed before tossing her the staff.

Mirri did nothing at all, the staff bouncing off of her and dropping to the ground.

“No.” She insisted flatly.

“I am unable to safeguard it when I assume Bastet's sacred shape though...” James pleaded looking quite crestfallen.

“Jeez it is bad enough when I have my own romantic squabbles to deal with, but now I have to sort out someone else's... Look Whiskers, I'll hold onto your sacred stick, just go do whatever it is that you need to get this over with.” Cal promised.

XXX XXX XXX

A short while later James returned in hybrid form, a very dead rat clutched tightly in his jaws.

Mirri held the door open and he proudly strode through them, rising up onto his hind legs in order to gently place the deceased rodent into the jaws of the jewel eyed cat statue.

The statue's mouth was depressed by the added weight and there was a soft “click” sound.

Then there came a second “click” as a section of the floor in the middle of the room began to slide away revealing a rusty iron ladder leading downwards.

James returned to his human form and took the Staff of Bastet from Cal's waiting hands.

“Thus is our path laid bare.” He declared proudly before heading for the ladder in question.

XXX XXX XXX

The group headed down the ladder and soon found themselves faced with a corridor that split into four different directions. A pair of false starts later the group finally found one direction that didn't lead them to an abrupt dead end.

“Well I'm glad that we got that mess out of the way, now we should finally only have... some more weird... magical... bullshit... to worry about....” Callan Wright muttered as he suddenly found himself much more alone in the corridor than he had been a moment ago.

“Okay this is new... with the last spell everything went blank and I couldn't see at all. Now I can still see, it is just that there's nothing else to see.

Also I can hear my own voice so my ears seem to be working properly, it is just that there's not a lot else to hear. I don't suppose you guys are there but invisible?” He asked tentatively.

“Why do you deny the truth that lies open plainly before you?” Demanded a familiar (but not at all friendly) female voice.

Then all of a sudden “she” was right there in front of him, the undead woman who called herself Tiyet.

She didn't look any better than she had the last time Cal had seen her (right down to those weird bare skinless holes in her neck), but on the other hand, she also didn't look much worse, was a pretty impressive achievement given what Devi had done to her.

“What truth would that be?” Cal asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

He had no idea what was going on, where his teammates were, or what this woman's real deal was, but the longer he kept her talking, the more likely it was help would arrive, he hoped.

“The power of my goddess flows through me, this entire tomb is a monument to her, here I am unbeatable!” She gloated proudly.

“Lots of people think that they're unbeatable, I tend not to trust them on the mater I've seen how they react to a round from Phoenix. If that was you we met before. well it seemed like bullets worked pretty well...” The alchemist reflected.

Phoenix rose up with serpentine speed but as his hand reached for the trigger suddenly it was filled with an intense burning sensation.

“BALL LIGHTING!” Cal shouted in pain as the heat was so great that it even disrupted his other hand which was holding onto the still cool wooden stock.

Phoenix slipped free from his grip and clattered to the floor, Cal's blue eyes watching every single inch of its descent.

Only once it had stopped clattering did he look up and discover that Tiyet was no longer there.

XXX XXX XXX

One moment Devi Skye was walking through a corridor, the next she found herself in a room so small that her outstretched hands could touch the hard stone walls on either side.

Not just that, but the ceiling was uncomfortably low, to the degree that her pointed ears were brushing up against it. All sound was muffled, the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat.

“I'm in a cage... I really hate being in cages...” Devi growled to herself.

A moment later she heard a rumbling sound and the pressure on her ears began to increase.

“Wonderful.” Was all she said as the ceiling began to get lower and lower.

Devi did the only thing she could, she laid down flat on her back so as to take up as little space as possible.

“I have seen worse than this, I have seen worse than this, I have seen worse than this.....” Devi repeated the words over and over again as a mantra against panicking.

The ceiling continued to lower itself until her nose was pressing against it.

A moment later, she wasn't alone in the small room any more. She felt something unpleasant rubbing against her right foot.

“Merrroww...” An undead cat just like the one that had attacked Nicolai Androv gazed deeply into her eyes.

It seemed at least somewhat more friendly than that first beast though.

“How did you get into this room?” Devi wanted to know.

The cat rubbed itself against her and then began to lick her face with its decomposing tongue, and she could a second one doing the same to her feet.

Devi neither flinched or fought back.

“I have endured worse than this, I have endured worse than this....” She began to repeat to herself stoically.

Eventually both cats grew tired of their games and stopped. Devi awkwardly tilted her head backwards slightly and watched as the cat near her head paced over to a section of the wall and pressed against it, opening up a tiny doorway.

Devi clumsily began to inch her way towards that opening on her back slowly but surely pulling herself free from the claustrophobic trap.

XXX XXX XXX


One moment Alexander had been leading the party through a corridor that had stretched out ahead and behind him. Then there was was suddenly a wall of cold solid stone directly behind him.

There had been no sound of a mechanism triggering, but here he was. Likewise there was no sign of his companions, he was alone with only a dark corridor stretching out before him.

“Do you know how powerful it is, to be a servant of a goddess?” Demanded Tiyet as she suddenly came into being before him.

“What is power without a good reason to use it?” Alexander replied advancing slowly towards the undead woman.

“Soon, I will reveal my mistress' strength to the entire word, all shall see the truth of her beauty and fall on bended knee before her!” Tiyet boasted.

“Do you know what it would take to make me believe?” Alexander demanded as Wolf Claw slid free from his sheath.

“A god manifesting in our world and punching a darklord in the face. Several darklords would be preferable, but I'll settle for just one. Until that happens, you might as well be worshiping the Mists themselves, given all the concern most 'gods' show for demi-humanity.” He replied gruffly.

“My flames will warm the fires of belief in your heart!” She cried out as she made a few mystical gestures in Alexander's direction.

Absolutely nothing happened, and Wolf Claw swung a powerful blow straight at Tiyet's head.

She vanished just a fraction of a second before it would have connected leaving Alexander alone in the corridor.

“Well, that's at least one problem dealt with...” He reflected.

XXX XXX XXX

Mirri felt a moment of dizziness. As soon as it passed there was no sign of the others.

She'd been walking down a straight corridor that kept right on going straight as far as she could see just a moment ago, now the one she was in ended a few feet ahead of her as it joined another at a right angle.

From somewhere behind her, she heard a faint echoing “meow” sound.

Mirri twitched her neck in it's direction but saw nothing, and when she looked back Tiyet was coming around the corner.

“You think the cats are your ally. You merely adopted them, I was born to them, have served them since I was old enough to walk.” She mocked Mirri.

The vampire raised both of her hands curling them into fists.

“You talk a big game, but lets see how well you can throw down! Trust me, you're gonna have a hard time making those fancy speeches with my fist lodged down your throat.” She warned the undead priestess.

Tiyet made a few quick hand motions in Mirri's direction, and Mirri vaguely felt something starting to pull against her body trying to lock her muscles in place. The relationship between Mirri and her muscles had been entirely one sided for a very long time though, and that wasn't about to change today.

She ran towards Tiyet and turned her headlong dash into a picture perfect slide. She knocked her foe's legs out from beneath her. For a few brief seconds, she had the pleasure of seeing Tiyet's eye sockets wiggle slightly as she no longer had eyes with which to display.

Then she was gone.

“Yeah, that's what I thought..” Mirri growled, certain that Tiyet wouldn't come back to taunt her again for a good long while.

XXX XXX XXX

Suddenly the corridor that James Firecat had been exploring was plunged into a darkness so great that even he had trouble seeing.

A moment later he stumbled as if what had been flat level corridor before was now a downward leading set of stairs. James immediately took a step back, and began to feel out his surroundings.

He was in the middle of some sort of four way intersection. Shaking his head he began to retrace his steps. A moment later from behind him he heard an eerie whisper.

“James Firecat... this way...” It called out.

James turned in its direction and took a slow cautious step back.

“No, this way...” Another voice whispered.

James did nothing at all this time. He stood still for a moment, then clicked his tongue.

His ears were good, not good as Mirri's but still quite good, especially after he took a few seconds to remove his wide brimmed red hat.

If there had been enough light to see by it would be easy to notice how they grew from the top of his head and were covered with fur rather than anything approaching normal human anatomy.

As the sounds he generated ricocheted about the darkened room and bounced back to his ears, he tried to paint a mental picture, though the results were extremely fuzzy to say the least. He turned around slowly and clicked his tongue in the direction he'd come as well.

Then he continued to work on retracing his steps. He heard voices calling out to him from every direction and ignored them.

At the very end of the hallway he was able to feel out the existence of a stone lion, though he could locate nothing unnatural about it.

He turned his back on it, and promptly from behind hear a voice calling out to him.

“You had your turn.” James stated calmly, he was determined to explore each corridor and find out what lay down each of them.

“We are more alike than you could possibly know...” Whispered a voice in the darkness, a voice unlike any of the ones he'd been taunted by before.

He clicked his tongue one last time, but by the time he did it, as far as he could tell the corridor was empty once again.

He made his way to the end of the corridor and found another cat statue waiting for him. This one was different though, its jaw had “give” and as he pushed it shut the wall slid away finally allowing light in.

XXX XXX XXX

In the blink of an eye a stone wall appeared in front of Florence Bastien. So quickly did it appear that she was unable to stop herself and walked right into it.

A thin trickle of golden fluid fell from her nose as she inspect her surroundings. A moment ago the corridor had been straight, now it was all twist and turns, and on the dusty floor she could see a single set of paw-prints, like those of a huge cat.

That was when she heard a low growl behind her.

Florence Bastien spun around and found herself face to face with another undead cat every bit as large as a plains cat.

The beast leaped for her, and Florence raised her hands and spoke a few words.

Before it could land and pin her to the ground beneath its bulk suddenly a huge twisting turning mass of vines and thorns sprung into being catching the cat in mid-leap.

It hissed, spat, and struggled, but all it managed to do was tear open fresh holes in its skin as it clearly lacked the strength to force its way through the thorns.

“Who do you serve? What do you hope to achieve?” Demanded a raspy voice.

The dryad now had to deal with the beast's mistress, Tiyet.

Florence Bastien raised her staff to face down the undead woman.

“I serve every single blade of grass that yearns to rises towards the sun, I serve every single tree root which searches for water, I am at the service of every form and shape of existence that wishes nothing more than simply to have the chance to be.” Florence declared raising her staff towards Tiyet.

The mummy laughed ominously at her.

“Do not waste both our time, I have my goddess' blessing. Under Bastet's paws, I am immune to your magic.” Tiyet reminded her.

Florence was taken aback, but only for a very short moment.

“You know there's a funny thing about my staff that you seem to be forgetting...” Florence announced.

Then she hurled her staff through the air, and a moment later it exploded into countless wooden shards that perforated Tiyet's body from head to toe cutting her to ribbons.

“It's also a WOODEN staff...” Florence told no one in particular as Tiyet's body turned to dust and a familiar human headed bird took flight away from the dryad.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Part Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck.

Chapter Nine: But dear God, you're the only North Star I would follow this far...


As the different members of the group found various secret doors leading out of the chambers they'd been teleported into, they rediscovered one another, and thankfully it seemed that the teleportation spell had been a one time trap.

Once they’d all found one another Florence informed the others about what she'd heard Tiyet say.

James Maahes Firecat took it well all things considered.

“This... this will not stand!” The werecat hissed, his muscles bunching up beneath his red jacket as he gripped the Staff of Bastet tighter than ever.

“James, do try and keep in mind that Tiyet is probably so old that she makes even me look young. Religions change over time, I should know after all, I've spent several centuries watching how the Iron Faith fluctuates.” Mirri pointed out.

Her words did nothing to calm the cold fury that was building within the werecat though, most likely because “Maahes” was probably as ancient as Tiyet, if not more so.

“The teachings of Bastet, they are not to be interpreted or preached in such a way, they are not to be used to such an end! This once sacred place has been made profane by her! This... this is why I sent here, I must correct this heresy, or sell my life as dearly as possible in the attempt.” He intoned with deadly seriousness.

“We are here for you Omega.” Alexander reminded him.

“This isn't your fight, it is our fight.” The silver haired man insisted, wanting James to remember that he could rely on the other five to help him.

“The decisive blow must be mine Alexander, when the time comes, by my mouth or by my paw this will end.” James insisted.

That seemed to be about as close to any reasonable compromise as James Maahes Firecat might be willing to offer, so Alexander didn't press the issue and simply got the group moving again.

XXX XXX XXX

“The mouse goes into the hole, it looks to the left, it looks to the right, it raises its nose to sniff for cheese, it buries its head to the floor, it looks to the right again....” James Firecat whispered the words so softly and gently that a miniscule “click” was still louder than they were.

He gently withdrew his lockpicks from the door he'd been carefully working on (opening locked doors dedicated to Bastet was evidently acceptable behavior so long as it was done without damaging them) and pressed it open leading the group into another chamber.

As the door swung open it was possible to smell two very different odors. One was a sweat earthy smell; a fragrance like perfume. The other was the odor of wet rot.

Directly before the door leading into the room was a low altar heaped with piles of tiny white bones. To either side was a stone pillar carved into the shape of an elongated sitting cat, and each cat had one eye open.

The center of the room was taken up by a low platform. To one side of it was a coffin-sized tray lined with silver and smeared with a thin residue of sweet smelling dried mud.

To the other side was a round opening, reminiscent of a well. A faint gurgling noise came from below. In front of the far wall was a granite statue of a reclining cat, both of its eye sockets empty.

As the group carefully entered into the room they made sure be prepared for the possibility of an ambush.

Devi pointed out more strange writing on one of the walls and no sooner was it noticed then did James begin to translate it.

“Welcome, faithful servants, to the place where the bodies of the pious are prepared for the dreamless sleep. Here shall they be encased in the preserving earth until such time as the goddess awakens and raises them unto her garden of eternal pleasures.

Here, under the watchful eyes of the children of Bast, shall ye mix oils, salves, and earth. Here shall ye do what is needful to preserve the flesh, thus providing eternal home for the ka that gives it motion and life.

Observe carefully the rituals, and chant the sacred words, lest the ka fly from the body and be forever lost. This done and thy secret tasks here fulfilled, restore to the cat that which is needful.” The werecat intoned solemnly.

“Can I get a translation of that translation, because I have no idea what a 'ka' is.” Cal pointed out.

“The 'ka' is the vital spark. While the 'ba' holds our physical memories, the things that make us who we are, it is the 'ka' is what separates the living from the dead, or undead as the case may be. To use the most obvious example at hand, while Miriam does not draw breath, does not eat, does not drink, well does not drink water at least, she still has her 'ka' within her body.” James explained.

“Okay then. Anyway, I was gonna point out that since the statue is missing its eyes, that's not exactly the hardest ancient riddle we've ever come across...” Cal pointed out eagerly.

“Somehow I don't think solving it will be as simple as going back outside, killing some kind of animal and placing its eyes in the statue...” Alexander predicted dourly.

“There are three obvious doors in this room, we came in through one, and we should probably explore the other two first before trying anything too desperate.” Devi suggested.

James once again checked it for traps, and after opening was rewarded with something more inviting than a brick wall.

It took them to a short hallway and then a downwards leading spiral staircase. At the bottom of the staircase was an even shorter hallway and beyond that was a room filled with murky water where there was only a foot of airspace between its surface and the ceiling.

Those portions of the walls above the waterline were coated in a thick green algae. The surface of the water was likewise covered with viridian scum and the air was foul with decay. The room itself was on the narrow side, just ten feet wide, but it stretched out for over a hundred feet, though the keener eyed members of the group could make out an algae encrusted door awaiting them on the other side.

“Well this doesn't look at all like a trap just waiting to happen...” Cal pointed out ominously.

“The muck is too thick to see any traps coming, barely enough room keep your head above water, and no easy escape routes. Lets go double back and find us some actual cat eyes, we could use those from those two I killed back by the entrance.” Alexander suggested.

SPLASH!

Headless of his leader's orders, James jumped straight into the water and began to wade through it towards the door on the other side.

“Omega, what do yo think you're doing?” Alexander shouted at him, edging towards the water but not following the werecat into it.

“Following the will of Bastet.” James answered calmly as step by step he worked his way slowly but steadily forward.

“I'm not going to take my entire pack out onto razor thin ice because you have a hunch! If you go, you go alone!” Alexander warned him, his voice tinged with pain.

“With Bastet's blessings, I have no need for further aid.” James promised him.

At first all seemed to be going well, but then after he had covered fifty feet or so, suddenly the surface around him began to move.

Ripples formed everywhere as tiny waves lapped against the walls.

Then a skull coated with algae rose slowly from the water before him. To his right another boney hand broke free of the muck as behind him a third skeleton arose, fetid water pouring from its gaping mouth.

In short order James was surrounded by skeletal forms who stared at him with empty eye sockets, their bony arms reaching out to grab him and drag him down to their watery graves.

“Florence, magic me now!” Mirri insisted, figuring that it would be useless to try and second guess the dryad's spell selection.

Florence Bastien laid a hand on Mirri's shoulder, and then the vampire plunged into the water. Every step of the way she reminded herself that vampires were only vulnerable to running water, and this stuff looked like it couldn't even crawl.

As she did so the skeletons began their assault upon the werecat, but James was far from easy prey. He pulled the Staff of Bastet fully out of the water, and began spinning it around, first this way then that, deflecting one fleshless limb after another.

To the front, to the back, to the side, to the other side, to the back again, no sooner did each attack begin then he knocked the limb aside, though he was kept so busy defending himself that he had no time to launch counterattacks of his own.

With the aid of Florence's spell Mirri was able to advance through the water much more quickly than James had. The stuff seemed part before her body as if wanted as little to do with her as she did with it, allowing Mirri to race ahead as quickly as if she was on dry ground.

She came up behind the pair of skeletal foes who were attacking James from the rear, her face splattered with muck and sporting in a feral snarl.

“DON'T, TOUCH, MY, KITTEN!” She screamed, slamming their skulls together, causing both to explode in a shower of ivory splinters.

With one of his flanks secured James was finally able to go on the offensive, and a few moments later he'd reduced two skeletons directly in front of him to powerless broken bone fragments. He and Mirri swiftly finished off the last two remaining skeletons and then took a moment to catch their breath.

“Spectacularly done Miriam!” James congratulated her.

“Mindless undead never give me much trouble.” Mirri replied, struggling to brush a few bits of who knew what from her hair.

The pair pushed forward, once again Mirri having an easier time of it, though James showed no signs of wanting to retrace his steps and let Florence to enchant him also.

No more zombies rose to challenge the pair, though with each step Mirri took it felt as though she was treading on someone's bones. She made sure to walk extra hard, broken bones were a lot less likely to come to life and attack you.

As the pair got about three quarters of the way across the room they got their next unpleasant surprise.

There was a loud “THUNK” as a block of stone slid out of the way and water began to pour into the room.

A moment later there was another even louder “WHUMP” as a huge block of stone slid down in front of Alexander and the others, sealing the hallway.

“Miriam, you need to depart at once!” James pleaded with her, holding tight to his staff, even as the water began to rise inch by ominous inch.

“LIKE HELL!” Mirri growled back at him, and pushed on.

A moment later their situation grew worse still as another section of the roof pulled back and a huge deluge of water poured down, slamming into Mirri and completely submerging her. A moment later she forced her way back to the surface spitting out water.

“The seal might be water tight, but in gaseous form it could be possible for you to...” James began to suggest as he kicked his legs and rose with the water.

He could swim well enough to avoid drowning for the moment, but the gap between the water and the ceiling was already alarmingly small.

“Worry about yourself Maahes, you may be part god, but I don't need to breath.” Mirri insisted as she headed for the door.

She reached it at around the same time that James' head was starting to bump up against the ceiling. Mirri resisted the urge to take a deep breath, then dove into the murky water.

She promptly discovered that even her eyes had trouble seeing anything through the gunk and grime. The only good news was that even with water flowing into the room, it still didn't seem to count as the proper sort of mystical “running water” which proved hazardous for vampires.

Her hands grabbed hold of the door and she tugged as hard as she could trying to pull it open.

It was no good though, whatever was on the other side of that door it wasn't filled with water she was fairly certain. While that was in theory good news, it also meant this door was the next best thing to impossible to open. Cal had once mentioned some long boring mathematical principle dealing with such things, but Mirri hadn’t cared enough to pay attention.

The only thing that mattered to her was that opening this door wasn't an option, she'd have to take a difference approach.

“Miriam...” She heard a voice gasping out for her.

She kicked her way to the surface (what little there was of it) her face red with anger.

“I CAN'T DROWN, HOW HARD IS IT FOR YOU TO REMEMBER THAT?!” She screamed back at him, before heading back into the water.

The door was built on a “lip” of sorts so there was no way for her to directly run right at her, further limiting her options.

Since physical force, even vampirical physical force would not be enough to force the door open, rather than try to make the door swing back, she'd have to simply make the door simply cease to be there at all.

She dropped as far down to the bone “floor” as she could possibly go, and stood there only an arms length away from the bottom of the door.

It was a very, very good thing that Florence had enchanted her, otherwise there was no way this could possibly work.

She rolled her shoulder back and then let loose with one of the most powerful punches she possibly could.

The door creaked slightly before her blow, but didn't break. Mirri pulled back her arm and let loose with another punch, leaving the door more obviously dented this time around.

Risking a look up, she was fairly certain that the water now filled up every single inch of the room. She pulled her fist back and gave the door the mightiest blow she could imagine. She'd never hated an inanimate object as much as she hated that door at the moment.

KRSSSSSSHHHHH!

Mirri punched a roughly fist sized hole in the bottom of the door.

Fetid water began to drain out of the room splashing its way down the stairs she'd just revealed a path to.

The two hidden sections above seemed to have only contained enough water to completely fill the chamber, now that there was a way out, the room was starting to drain.

Once the water level had lowered enough that her head broke the surface again, Mirri breathed an unnecessary sigh of relief.

A moment later she was half bowled over from behind as the rescinding water carried James into her, though he did try to make up for it by throwing his arms tenderly around her.

“You were right.... the skeletons were no great feat... but that was truly spectacular.” He gushed.

“It had to be done.” Mirri replied in the most dispassionate voice she could manage.

“Just because I can't drown doesn't mean I wouldn't be bored spending an eternity down here with only some bones to keep me company.” She added a moment later.

“Further down and further in...” James suggested gazing at the small opening Mirri had managed to bash in the door.

It was probably a bit too small for him (even in cat form) but since the water pressure had equalized James and Mirri had no trouble forcing what remained of the doors open the old fashioned way.

The trip down the stairs was uneventful, and at the bottom they found a carefully designed grate in the floor along with another door.

This one opened easily to the touch but as it swung outwards a foul odor like that of rotted flesh sprang forth to great them.

Behind the door was a circular room that was empty except for a pair of round brown stones.

“Well this should be easy enough... don't do anything until I get back James.” Mirri insisted.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I disobey such a command.” James promised her.

Mirri promptly about faced and made her way back up to the top of the stairs she'd just come down. Given that her outfit was pretty much ruined beyond the point of anything but magic helping, she felt no regrets about jumping back in the water, reaching down to grab hold of some of the bones that she'd walked across..

She brought it back down to James, and then proceeded to gently toss it into the room.

Despite the additional weight she'd just added, no trapdoors swung open, no hidden blades stabbed out, and no additional gasses or liquids began to flow into the room.

“Well, that could have gone worse, you can take it from here...” She suggested.

James did a quick once over of the entire room and still didn't find any further traps. Which just left them, the empty room, and the stones.

Now that she could get a closer look at them, she noticed that they each had a dark stripe rather like the pupil of cat's eye. Granted, their color reminded her of one 'cat' in particular at the moment.

Since there was nothing left to do, Mirri reached out for them.

Just before her hand could close around them, the stones rotated slightly until the dark line on each of them faced her directly.

Before she had time to react, the air shimmered. The stench grew a great deal worse, and suddenly standing before her was a mangy looking tiger.

Its fur hung from it in strips, while its rotten flesh revealed pale white bones. What had been harmless brown stones were now this beast's eyes.

It was at times like this that Mirri hated two things, one of them was magic, the other was the fact that unlike most vampires, she'd never gotten the knack for commanding other undead.

Controlling actual living tigers were no problem, but undead ones, those were completely outside her ability to influence.

Luckily, no sooner had the creature finished materializing, then it got a few things of its own to hate.

“BEGON FOWL MOCKERY OF A ONCE LIVING BEAST… no offense Miriam!” James cried out as he transformed into his hybrid form, still holding onto the staff of Bastet and leaped up onto the monster's shoulders.

The staff slammed into the tiger's back again and again. Each time it struck the undead monster bright orange sparks filled the air. If the tiger had originally been “thinking” about attacking Mirri, it now had much bigger things to occupy its mind.

It rampaged about the room snarling and slashing as it tried to toss James from its back so it could bring its claws and teeth into play. It did so without any sort of success though, James clung on for dear life in a not entirely metaphorical manner, using his own clawed feet for all they were worth.

Mirri wasn't going to let him have all the fun though, she executed a near picture perfect reverse scissor kick, leaping up into the air and twisting her body around in order to slam one booted foot firmly into the distracted beast's head.

Its skull shattered like a cheap plate that had just gotten an up close and personal introduction to a sledgehammer.

The rest of its body dropped to the ground, its bones instantly turning to dust, while the two stones which had started this entire mess popped out and bounced away.

The vampire quickly scooped them up before an undead lion, or worse yet an undead liger could come into existence.

Just to be on the safe side, she kept the eyes firmly in her hand, ready to start squeezing if some new monster tried to materialize.

“Another glorious victory!” James declared proudly slamming his staff on the ground for emphasis.

“Let's just hope we don't need to win any more before we can get back in touch with the others.” Mirri grumbled.

She and James retraced their paces back up the stairs, and then waded/walked their way back through the water towards the door they'd originally come through which still had a large stone block sealing it up.

At least it had one, up until they were about halfway across the room.

Then all of a sudden there was a few loud repeated “THWACK” sounds, and the entire thing fell apart into several much smaller chunks which tumbled into water below.

His task finally completed Alexander sheathed Wolf Claw and crossed his arms.

“Well that took much longer than I expected it would, how come you two weren't helping on the other side?” He inquired.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book Four: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Chapter Ten: Please don't be in love with someone else, please don't have somebody waiting on you. Please don't be in love with someone else....

With the group reunited, they retraced their steps back to the larger room up above with the three cat statues. Mirri carefully approached the one which was lacking eyes and slid the twin stones into place. They looked so right and natural there that she could have sworn for a moment they “blinked” at her.

Shaking away such absurd notions, she instead focused her attention on the sound of a soft “click” from elsewhere in the room. A moment later another masterfully hidden passage in the floor slid open revealing a ladder leading down.

“Is anyone else starting to detect a pattern to this place?” Cal reflected dryly.

No one else bothered to answer, and James swiftly began to scuttle down the ladder to see what else lay in store for them.

One long passage later they came upon another unlocked door that James gently and carefully began to apply pressure to.

The doors slowly creaked open and for a moment the room remained dark.

Then they could hear a faint “pop” noise on either side of the door.

Hidden in shadowy niches were two metal braziers, something red glowing inside each. The sweet smell of incense began to tickle the group's nostrils as smoke curled up from the braziers and formed clouds bumping against the ceiling.

Watching closely, it was possible to see the clouds starting to take on a vaguely catlike shape. Sparks from one of the braziers raced up towards the smoke and swirled there, forming two malevolent glowing eyes.

“This bodes ill...” James reflected.

Those were the only words he managed to get out before one of the smokey cats suddenly proceeded to “pounce” on him, in the process loosing all aspects of being feline and becoming nothing more than a cloud of dark smog.

Instantly James' voice became nothing more than a hacking cough.

“How are we supposed to kill smoke?” Cal asked looking to Alexander for suggestions.

“I've yet to meet a problem that punching can't solve...” Mirri growled before stepping up to bat.

Her hands began to swing through the strange creatures, and though it was impossible to tell if she was truly harming the thing, they seemed to recoil away from her limbs.

The other smoke cat attacked Mirri just as it companion had James, and while she was unbothered by its attempts to cut off her supply of oxygen, she could still keenly feel flames starting to flicker around her head and scorch her skin.

Before the creatures could continue their attack Florence's hands traced mystical motions in midair while her mouth called forth an incantation. From out of nowhere came a powerful gust of wind that blew the black clouds of smoke clear across the room, finally allowing James to get a breath of fresh air.

“Greatly... appreciated... Florence...” The werecat gasped in between desperately huffing and puffing for as much oxygen as he could possibly get.

On the other side of the room the two clouds of smoke began to pull themselves together into misty cats again.

“Shoot them?” Cal pondered.

“Shoot them.” Alex agreed.

Phoenix barked, and the bullet passed right through the smoke cat, momentarily creating a hole in it, but soon the smoke poured back into the hole, leaving the monster completely unharmed.

As the magical gust of wind abated from Florence's hands the two cats began to dash across midair back towards the group.

“Devi, magic bullet now!” Cal demanded as he worked his weapon's lever.

Seeing that there was no way Cal would be able to win this particular race, Florence quickly summoned up another gust of wind and used it to send the smoke cats sailing backwards a second time.

From within her bag of holding Devi pulled out a seemingly ordinary bullet and tossed it to her partner. Cal caught it, and in one smooth motion slammed it into place. His left hand worked the lever, he aimed, and then he fired.

The bullet slammed through the same smoke cat as before, and this time it exploded into a puff of dark fog. Cal began to call out for another magic bullet, but before he'd even started to raise his voice, Devi had another sailing his way.

The remaining creature turned its attention in the alchemist's direction and attacked. Just as the smoke cat was about to completely encompass his head, Cal raised Phoenix up, sticking it into the midst of the mist beast and pulled the trigger.

There was another loud “BANG” and the smoke cat was spread to every corner of the room.

There was silence, and no further mystical beasts arriving to attack the group.

With no major monsters or other problems to worry about, the group progressed toward the one obvious door leading out of the room.

The door was locked, but like so many of its companions, the lock proved to be no match for James' masterful skill at opening that which others had sought to keep closed.

Once the door was opened, he headed in and discovered that dominating the center of the room was a large statue of a reclining cat. It rested on a dais surrounded by two low steps while its head was slightly tilted to the side as if listening.

Something about the room wasn't right though, an unnatural stillness hung in the air. It was almost as if the room contained a palpable barrier of some kind. James went into the room, and looked around, seeing two obvious doors leading out.

“....” Said James Firecat.

“....” Countered Alexander who was looking right at the werecat but hadn't heard anything.

“....” Added Cal Wright as he hoped up and down (making not a single bit of noise) pointing at a series of strange markings on the wall.

“...” Suggested Mirri.

“...!” Growled Alexander motioning everyone to follow him as he retreated out of the room.

They followed him back out and he turned to Florence.

“Some kind of magical silence field?” He pondered.

“Well we could step back inside, and you could try asking me again if you want to be sure...” Florence reflected dryly.

“There was more of that mystic writing in there, but I didn't get a long enough look to memorize it.” Cal pointed out to the others.

Alexander made a few quick motions with one hand, and then twitched his head at Cal, as if suddenly deciding that they were back in the silent room.

Devi pulled out a sheaf of paper and a pen and handed it to Cal.

Cal went into the room and got to writing, and shortly enough he retreated back out.

“I got it all Boss. Ahem.... Enter, faithful servants, unto the place where the ba is withdrawn from the flesh and placed into vessels of safekeeping. Here shall every thought be made as clear and imperishable as glass, until such time as the goddess breaths them, gently as dreams, back into the bodies of the faithful.

Here, under the listening ears of the children of Bast, shall ye place the body in the casket of dreams. Observe carefully the rituals, and chant the sacred words, lest the fragments of ba slip from the body like whispers on the wind and be forever lost. This done and thy secret tasks fulfilled, provide unto the cat that which she finds pleasurable.” Cal explained.

“I shall provide unto the cat that which she finds pleasurable!” James abruptly promised and tramped right back into the room.

He reached out and began to stroke the statue slowly and carefully, as if it was alive. Despite the fact that nothing else James did created sounds, when the werecat stroked the statue a noise emerged from the statue itself. It was the sound of a deep throaty purr.

In response the door on the right side of the room swung open.

James motioned towards the other and they followed him. The newly opened door was a spiral staircase leading them downwards still deeper into the crypt. Once they managed to travel the entire length of the staircase, they found a large door waiting for them. A quick test revealed that they were unlocked, and as he put pressure on them, the doors creaked open revealing a large room.

Directly across from the group on a rectangular dais set against the far wall was a statue of a reclining cat with its mouth open, a golden tube hanging above its head.

To either side of the dais were two fountains, each of which sent a steady trickle of liquid down into a square pool. One of those liquids was clotted and white, and from its rank scent it was most likely sour cream. Small and mangy undead cats clustered around it, lapping up the foul-smelling liquid.

The other fountain spewed a pale yellow liquid that smelt like vinegar.

Nearby lay a large lump of torn flesh and another swarm of undead cats with dirty matted fur tore at it, hiding its exact nature from the group. Still, they could make out that one of the cats happened to be busy playing with what might have once been a human finger, batting at it about before tossing it into the air like a mouse.

A table had been set up with meat that had long ago become unpalatable to any human, make that any mammalian stomach. Flies swarm around the rotten meat filling the air with a low droning noise that could almost be mistaken for purring.

“They... they are cats.” James gasped in surprise.

“Wait, you're seriously surprised? I don't know who is in control at the moment, but Maahes, James, even YOU are supposed to be better than this! We're in a gigantic crypt that was carved in the shape of a cat, that's dedicated to a cat goddess, and we've only had to solve at least three different cat related puzzles so far, you're really surprised that we're running into more cats?” Cal gasped shaking his head in amazement.

“No, I mean look at them...” Even as James spoke, the room’s feline occupants continued the same actions that they'd been doing when the door had first been opened.

“Every other undead cat we've come across, no matter its size, they've attacked any living target they could find. These ones, they are simply behaving as they might have in life.” James point out.

Now that he'd actually bothered to explain his thinking Cal was unable to find any flaw with James' comments.

“Let's try not to disturb them.” The werecat suggested calmly.

“I've heard worse ideas.” Devi agreed.

The group slowly entered into the room. The undead cats began to approach them, then began to run rapidly in circles around them. James' brown eyes watered slightly and reached down a hand to stroke one of the undead beasts.

“Kitten, do you really want to think about what kind of disease even you might end up catching from one of those things?” Mirri warned him.

“All things strive....” James whispered solemnly before petting the undead animal.

“You're not exactly in a position to talk to anyone about the dangers of associating with undead things are you?” Cal pointed out rather smugly.

“They're mindless undead, and that's assuming we'd even be able to tell the difference given that they're animals. For all we know becoming zombies actually made them smarter.” Mirri replied, throwing in a haughty sniff just to complete the effect.

As the group proceeded still further into the room the were able to get a better view of the nearby areas.

To the left and right the wall bulged into a large niche, each containing a wide planter filled with flora that had long ago turned brown and brittle.

Yet, something stirred in them causing the leaves to rustle slightly.

Directly before the altar a large carpet and several cushions had been spread out on the floor. All of them were thick with dust, their colors and patterns obscured.

An undead cat was hunched at the center of the rug, methodically clawing one of the cushions to bits. Sensing the group draw near, it paused in its shredding to look up at them. Sure enough the creature's skin and fur were just as shredded as the cushion it had been attacking.

It hissed at them, but a moment later a chime sounded, and the cat turned away, racing over to the others who had begun drinking from the fountain of spoiled cream.

At the same time, James' hat began to shift slightly as his ears twitched about beneath it and he turned his eyes in the direction of the rotted food.

Many of the undead cats were leaping up on the table to nibble at it and James looked like he might be about to do the same, except Mirri promptly put a very firm hand on his shoulder.

“Hungry Kitten?” She asked in a voice somewhere between soothing and anger.

“Yes...” James rumbled.

“Does that meat look fresh? Because unless it is, is it going to make you any fuller to eat it?” The vampire pointed out.

James thought it over for a moment, and then shook his head clear as he realized how right Mirri was.

“Hardly, that fetid carcass might tax even my stomach...” He admitted.

Then, trying to clear his head he slowly sank to his knees and smiled softly as he looked down at the design on the carpet before him.

It depicted a woman with the head of a cat holding a bunch of herbs, offering them to the many happily playful cats which surrounded her.

“Mother...” The werecat whispered reverently.

Mirri couldn't help but lean in close herself to take a good look at the carpet. She'd seen James pay reverence to Bastet through his black stone icon of her, but this was the first time she'd seen the goddess depicted as something other than a cat.

She was honestly a little surprised, for some reason Mirri would have expected Bastet to look more like a hybrid werecreature, instead she looked... well like a cat form the neck up and a human from the neck down.

“Hey whiskers, I found another bunch of those weird glyphs, you want to translate this batch?” Cal offered, figuring that only James' duty to the group was likely to break him out of his devotion to Bastet.

Sure enough, the werecat stood up and followed the alchemist to the runes in question and began to read.

“Welcome, Tiyet, to thy second life. Here thy faithful servants have placed everything which is pleasurable to the palate. Eat from the plates of plenty, drink from the restorative fountain. Surround thyself with the goddess' chosen children and enjoy this sacred bounty.

Should ye who are reading these words instead be faithful servant of the goddess, come to lay another worthy servant away then offer to the cat that which she craves.” James explained.

“How is 'that which she craves' different from 'that which she finds pleasurable' exactly?” Cal couldn't help but ask.

The group turned their eyes toward the cat large cat statue in the room.

“We've seen a lot of drawings of cats, but that one James just knelt by, that's the first one we've seen with herbs in it. Something tells me we need to find some of whatever the herbs, it depicts are.” Devi suggested.

“I'm not sure how accurate the carpet painting is, but it certainly looks like catnip to me.” Florence suggested.

In the time it took her to say those words the other four members of the group had all chimed in as well.

“Catnip.” Alexander predicted authoritatively.

“You want happy cats, you use catnip.” Mirri pointed out.

“Given the sort of stuff I've heard you been ask to keep in your bag of holding, catnip.” Cal advised.

“Surely it must be the most favored plant of my mother, nepta catria, also known as catnip.” James declared confidently.

Silence hung in the air for a moment as Devi sighed.

“Well of course I could have just guessed it was catnip. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some other obvious answer I might have overlooked.” The elf insisted.

“Do you happen to have any of your own personal stash left?” Cal asked as he leaned in closer to Devi and her bag of holding.

“I.... um... used the last of it recently... Miriam and I found it helpful to help cement the strength of our relationship which has been shaken by my recent supposed mental malady....” James explained, looking rather embarrassed.

Mirri on the other hand was decidedly less reserved when it came to her thoughts on the matter.

“You know, I just love the way that the four of you are just standing there glowering at us.

Like we could have seen it coming, that we'd wind up in some strange dungeon where our recreational material is necessary to saving the day?

I want you to keep those looks you're giving us in mind very clearly, because some day, we're gonna wind up in an even weirder dungeon where we need sheep bladders, and you lot are gonna have used them all up!” The vampire pointed out derisively.

“Lets not have this discussion, lets really not have this discussion.” Cal suggested.

It didn't take too long for the group to come to an agreement on that front.

They proceeded into the only obvious door leading out of the room other than the one they’d come in through. Inside they found a much smaller room....

XXX XXX XXX

Mirri looked around the side room and her attention was instantly drawn to one shelf in particular. It held a total of eighteen large jars of a most unusual nature. They seemed to be made of some crystal clear material that made it possible to see what lay inside them, and they glowed with a mystical internal light.

Within each of the jars lay a perfectly still housecat.

They were curled up as if asleep, eyes closed, and Mirri could not hear a heart beat coming from any of them.

That wasn't too surprising given that as she worked her gaze from topmost shelf down she saw that cat after cat resembled the undead decaying creatures that they'd already seen so many of.

As she came to the bottom row however two felines stood out from all the rest, their fur was unmatted, and they showed no clear signs of sickness or decay. Mirri shook her hea,d not sure what to make of it.

“I get the mummification, it is sort of creepy but I can understand why they did if it was common for important people back then also. The pair on the bottom though, they look as if they were... taxidermied? Why would they change the method of preservation for the last two?” She pondered aloud

Devi pushed past and began to run her blue gloved hands along the containers, starting with those higher up and eventually working her way down to the last two.

“They're not taxidermied, they look like that because they aren't dead or undead, they are alive.” Devi informed her.

Mirri found that a bit hard to believe to say the least.

“Yeah right, cats that don't have beating hearts and have been trapped in jars for who knows how long are still alive? Pull the other one it's got bells on.” The vampire snarkily insisted.

Devi gestured toward one of the containers holding a half decayed cat.

“These things, they're not just fancy looking pots. They're jars of preservation, I'm sure of it. Not very powerful magic all things considered, you mostly hear about them being used in places where they have trouble storing crops normally. Hundreds of years taking place outside are just the blink of an eye to whatever is inside.

Granted, I've never heard of anyone bothering to use them in this manner before, but I'm sure those two cats are still alive. The other sixteen would have been also, when the ceiling caved in most of these jars ended up chipped or cracked badly enough that the magic failed and time caught up with their occupants.

Those two however, it might be because they were farthest from the ceiling, it might be because they were lucky, but their jars are still intact. As soon as the top is removed they'll awaken and should be no worse for wear.” Devi explained.

“Miriam we must rescue those two poor creatures from an eternity of waiting for some sacred duty that will never come!” James advocated at once.

Mirri shrugged and pushed past Devi to unscrew the lids on the jars and pull the cats free from them. It didn't hurt to humor James even if she suspected two live cats running around surrounded by a horde of their undead brethren might soon join them in that particular state.

“You know, they're almost a matching set, I wonder if they were a mated pair?” Florence pondered as she looked upon the cats in question.

Sure enough the two cats did have quite distinctive fur patterns. The male was all black except for a noticeable white streak located underneath his chin. It almost reminded Mirri of the color of her own hair or a gentleman dressed up in all his finery.

In turn, the female was pure white, except for a black streak below her chin. Regardless of if the pair had been mates before going into the jars, or were simply happy to see another living cat, as soon as they were roused from their magical sleep they began to quite vigorously groom one another and purr.

“They'll need names.” James insisted.

“Names?” Alexander gasped clearly feeling that the group was spending far too much time worrying over the state of a simple pair of housecats.

Now that he was “James Maahes Firecat” though Mirri suspected that neither of them would be willing to back down, and decided to just get it over with.

“Count and Countess.” She suggested.

As the newly christened Count and Countess were busy examining their surroundings the six adventurers did likewise.

Their attention was next drawn to a withered pile of leaves in one corner of the room. It was hard to tell exactly what they were, and it didn't help that when the two cats drew close all of a sudden they hissed and fled.

Then a small collection of brightly colored insects began to scuttle out from beneath the dead leaves.

STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP!

James rapidly began to stomp away on the various bugs, and seeing the sheer enthusiasm with which he struck, the others joined in.

When none of the insects remained willing to show themselves James slowly picked up a leaf of the dead plant.

“It's catnip... the most distinctly dead catnip that I've ever seen.” James reflected.

“Do you think it will still work?” Alexander suggested, willing to follow the werecat’s gut in this matter.

“If it doesn't... I will place my trust in you Florence that you might be able to rekindle it's spirit.” He answered.

That seemed to be as good a plan as any, so James carried the dead catnip in one hand and the Staff of Bastet in the other as they went back into the main room. He slowly approached the cat statue and placed the catnip into the statue's mouth.

A moment later, he pulled his hand out with a yelp of pain.

“What is it?” Mirri was at James' side almost instantly.

A moment later she got her answer as a brightly colored snake slithered into view. It had obviously been curled up inside the statue, and it was responsible for the rip in James' glove, along with his angry red welt on his hand.

Mirri asked no questions, she placed her lips to James' hand, (it wasn't as if she really needed an excuse) and began to suckle gently from it, if nothing else she wasn't afraid to accidentally drink snake venom..

A few moments later the cat statue finally manged to make up its mind and decide that it was willing to accept the dead catnip and yet another hidden door began to swing open, though this one had been built into a wall.

“Hello Maahes...” Huskily announced Tiyet who was standing behind the newly opened door.

“You.” James snarled back at her.

“You're upset with me aren't you?” Tiyet inquired, her face looking as upset as she possibly could, with her lack of eyes, and decrepit features.

“You may hate me now Maahes... but you need to realize, we were meant for each other.

In this entire foul land... we two are the only ones who know the truth of Bastet, the only two who offer up our voices in prayer of her mighty name.” Tiyet intoned solemnly.

“James what are you doing? Less talking more murder!” Mirri growled and prepared to suit word to deed.

As she moved forward she abruptly discovered that her eyes had been so busy flickering back and forth between James and Tiyet that she hadn't bothered to check the path directly before her was clear. Several of the undead cats had clustered around feet while Tiyet been talking and she tripped on one of them, sending her sprawling towards the ground.

She began to say something but it turned into a scream as the many undead cats converged on her, and out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Count and Countess joining in as well. They dug into her body with gusto, ripping away as much as their small claws and her own vampiric resilience would allow.

The only way to escape quickly was for Mirri to take on gaseous form, and in that ethereal state she was powerless to do more than watch what came next.

“The future of my mother's faith must come first....” Maahes decided.

Then he took off running, like Mirri even his normally sure footed steps were unable to find a perfect path through the maze of cats, and he tripped. His face was still filled with a dreamy far away expression of pleasure as he tossed the Staff of Bastet across the room and began to transform.

He hit the ground on all fours in cat form, and a red furred blur streaking across the room, and jumped into Tiyet's waiting right arm, just as her left caught the Staff of Bastet.

Then both of them vanished.

End Chapter.
jamesfirecat
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Chapter Eleven: You left without me?! And now you're somewhere out there with that; bitch, slut, psycho babe!? I hate you! Why are guys so lame?!

Mirri reformed herself back to being solid flesh and turned her gaze on Count on Countess.

Those two ungrateful fleabags, how dare they claw her in the back (in more ways than one) like that?

She went and acted like a dull fanged fool, let them out of their stupid magic jars, yet this was how they repaid her? The scratches they'd inflicted on her were completely cosmetic, but that didn't change the sting she felt from the being betrayed.

“You two... you two bloody ungrateful beasts...” She growled, her eyes flickering towards a nearby fountain gushing spoiled cream.

She hadn't bothered to use her ability to control living animals yet today, and these two were the first, surely the only ones that she'd encounter any time soon. She should make them pay for what they'd done to her!

“Everyone stand back, I'm going mesmerize these flee bags. Then I'm going to make them give themselves a great big bath!” Mirri chortled with wicked glee.

Yes that would be appropriate, they said drowning was a horrible way to die, probably a doubly horrible way for a cat to go, triply horrible in such a blighted liquid, but these two had earned it and then some for their treachery!

Just as she was about to begin unleashing her powers a firm hand seized her shoulder.

“Beta, think about what you are doing for a moment, and realize... you could just stop. Are Count and Countess really the cats you're angry with?” Florence asked.

Even looking at her for a single second Mirri could tell that the dryad was looking distinctly more “bristly” than normal, like she was starting sprout wooden spikes (or stakes) from her skin.

Mirri momentarily wished that she had an ability that would let her control trees, but as far as she knew vampires just didn't get that kind of power, so she was left with no choice but to face up to Florence's words.

“No alpha female...” She replied in a voice that had just a touch of false petulance and a generous dollop of the genuine article.

“Firstly I'm not feeling angry at Count and Countless, not even at James. It's that faux cat faced feline manipulating bitch Tiyet who I have a score to settle with.

Secondly, I am not angry, I AM FURIOUS! I AM INCENSED! I AM INFLAMED! I AM PIQUED, PROVOKED, SPLENETIC, VEXED, AND MOST OF ALL I AM WRATHFUL!” Mirri shouted the words to every corner of the room.

That helped some, not a lot, but some.

“Now then, would one of you be kind enough to return Count and Countess to their jars? I have a feeling that it will be a while yet until this place is safe for them.” Mirri requested with all the politeness she could muster at the moment.

“Once we've done that, I'm going to show that prehistoric bitch how we do things in Kantora!” She vowed.

XXX XXX XXX

The group chased after Tiyet through the most recently revealed secret door. On the other side of said door they found themselves in a room whose walls were alive with shifting cat-shaped shadows. It was as if the room was filled with cats: cats running, cats leaping and cats playing.

Near the center of the room was a life-sized statue of a housecat carved of smoky crystal. After a moment it begins to shimmer and transform.

Its eyes blinked, then its fur fluffed and the statue slowly came to life. A gray kitten looked up at the group with wide eyes, meowed sweetly and stepped forth to brush against their legs in greeting.

It did one complete circuit of room, brushing against every pair of legs it could find playfully before returning to its starting position and transforming back to a statue.

“Well, that was weird.” Cal reflected, unable to find any other way to describe the event.

Then he turned his attention to an obvious door leading out of the room, but a quick tug on the handle showed that it was just as obviously locked.

He began to inspect the lock very closely and whistled.

“I don't build my entire life around this sort of thing, but this looks like one of the best locks that we've come across for a good long while, Devi get me my tools and I'll see if I can't....” Cal began.

He was interrupted by a soft “wush” of air and another sound that wasn't anywhere near so soft.

“I guess that works also.” He admitted, as before he'd even finished inspecting the lock Mirri had kicked the door open with one well placed blow.

XXX XXX XXX

The five adventures pressed onwards through another corridor and then entered into the next room (Mirri still in the lead, striding forward with such speed that the others had trouble keeping up) and she found herself in a large circular room.

Aside from the door she had just entered in through there were nine more, all spread evenly around the room. Mirri could see an image of a cat on each door, but suspected that only one would actually lead forward while some sort of bizarre feline themed trap would lurk behind the other eight.

Whump, whump, whump, whump whump whump!

There was a strange sound building in the room, and then Mirri heard another much louder “WHUMP” from behind her. Turning around she saw Florence had fallen to the floor. Alexander was already beside her, the dryad’s hands pressed tightly against her chest, while her face contorted with pain.

“Too fast... too fast...” She gasped.

Mirri heard the words but only just barely, not because of how softly Florence spoke them, but because of the other sound.

The sound that she had learned to identify with food, with safety, with, as much as a she was still capable of this particular emotion by any human standard... love.

It was the sound of a cat's heart beating .

It filled the room, beating louder than James' ever had and as it did so a small crimson speck fell upon Mirri's cheek.

It was blood.

Her mind was temporarily overwhelmed by the sound, and her tongue casually licked up the droplet. As she did, so she realized that the feline heartbeat was surrounding her more and more.

It wasn't growing louder, it was just growing more ever present, the rapid beat being echoed from the chest of Cal, Devi, Alexander, and even Florence. All four of their hearts had begun to beat at a rate they could never hope to sustain.

“We need to get out of here now...” Alexander gasped, picking Florence up off the floor, only to have his legs buckle and he suddenly fall to the ground himself.

Cal and Devi likewised collapsed a scant few seconds later.

“My legs... can't move my legs... that stupid cat statue, it did something to our legs!” Cried out Cal as he struggled to pull himself out of the with his arms alone.

Mirri remained stationary, standing there in the middle of the room as more and more blood began to drip from the ceiling in time with the sound of a cat's heartbeat.

Maybe they were meant to drown in the blood, maybe they would perish from whatever spell was speeding up their heartbeats and the accompanying cardiovascular distress...

Maybe that f#$%ing bitch Tiyet should have designed her traps after contemplating that she wasn't the only undead creature in the world?

Not even the strange sympathetic magic of this room could rouse Mirri's unbeating heart to action, and likewise her legs, animated by her own willpower alone were not as easily immobilized as those of living flesh.

Still, she had to be swift and sure, most of the others might last a minute or two, but Florence’s face was already turning a deep mottled green color that was probably a very bad sign indeed.

Red eyes perused door after door, which one was different from the others? One showed a cat leaping through the air, one a cat in confident stride, one a cat cornering a mouse, one a cat chasing a ball, one a cat climbing a tree, one a cat with its fur raised in fierce defiance as it stared down a dog, one a cat scratching at a tree to sharpen its claws and.... one a cat laying peacefully in a sunbeam.

Mirri hurled that door open, and found another seemingly ordinary corridor behind it. A seemingly ordinary corridor without the sound of a cat's heart beat.

The sound began to fade slowly, first it ceased to come from in front of her, then it ceased to echo from the chests of her companions, and finally no longer pounded down from above.

The four living adventures present breathed sighs of relief though Devi still twisted about on the ground awkwardly.

“The cat statue in that other room, its magic is independent of whatever spell was placed on this one. That's why our legs as still paralyzed.” The elf pointed out.

Mirri walked over and began to carry them out of the enchanted room and back into the hallway. With neither cursed statue or demonic heartbeat they should be able to lay there safely till they could walk again, even if that didn’t happen till she tore what passed for Tiyet's heart from her bony chest.

“I don't have time to wait for this curse to wear off, I've got to get get James back.” Mirri informed them in a tone of voice that said no one, not Alexander, not even Florence could change her mind.

“Take these...” Cal offered as he removed his blue lenses.

“If there's more of that crazy writing up ahead something tell me you better be able to read it.” The alchemist pointed out.

Mirri took the blue lenses and slowly gingerly slid them over her eyes. Her vision swum for an instant before returning to normal or at least near enough normal.

“Thank you...” She said slowly, knowing how Cal loathed to part with any of his toys.

“Take this also.” Devi insisted as she slipped off one of her gloves and removed the ring from around her pinkie finger.

“I normally use it to give my flail some extra punch, but it should work just fine for your fists.” The elf offered.

Mirri slipped the ring over her right middle finger, she intended for Tiyet to get very familiar with it in the near future.

“Mirri, lean in close.” Florence insisted.

The vampire did, unsure of what the dryad had in mind.

Florence placed her hands on top of Mirri's.

“There are those who think that creatures like you are monstrous things to behold because you persist after 'death', I am not among them.

If death can be accepted as part of the natural cycle, then surely undeath must be as well. Life, death, undeath, ripeness and rot, they are all part of the cycle of the existence. So I will not shirk from the chance to sharpen your claws for the coming battle...” As she spoke Mirri felt strange energy flowing through her body.

She couldn't describe it, but she was happy to have it all the same.

Once Florence completed the spell she passed out, clearly the heartbeat trap had pushed the dryad to the edge of exhaustion even before she tried to use her magic.

Then Mirri turned to the leader member of the group.

The silver haired man reached up and adjusted his eye-patch slightly, sliding it over so that his covered his left eye instead of his right. Alexander Diamondclaw's right eye was a strange deep golden yellow color, and when light struck it, it reflected the stuff back with an unnatural glimmer.

Almost the very instant it was left bare to the world its owner stood up with no difficulty at all, seemingly shaking off the paralysis without a second thought.

“Do you have a gift for me also sir?” She asked rather cheekily.

“I've got to look after the others, especially Florence. As for you... Considered yourself officially ordered to come back undead with James in tow. You know what will happen if you disobey my orders....” Alexander Diamondclaw declared before he threw in a salute.

Mirri returned it and then she was off, racing back through the room with the cat's heartbeat (though the trap did not trigger this time around) through the door with the sleeping cat, and onwards towards whatever obstacle might dare to try and impede her progress next.

So it was that Mirri left the rest of the group behind and pressed on.

She didn't need them, she didn't anyone, all she needed was revenge!

An unlocked door was swung open with such force that it ended up developing a noticeable dent after striking the wall beside it.

Mirri instantly found herself face to face with a room whose walls were covered by still more of that strange writing. Granted, now that she had Cal's glasses she was finally able to read it with her own eyes.

“Arise, Tiyet, and take up the battle once more against the evil minions of Set. Lead the priestesses of Bast in their quest to sever the head of the serpent and free the citizens of Bubastis to follow the truest of callings-- the pursuit of pleasure.

Gird thyself well for battle from the holy relics of your tomb. Assemble ye the children of Bast in an assault on our enemies. With those who have accompanied thee on thine long sleep, ye cannot fail. Fight with tooth and claw against those who took the first of the lives Bastet bestowed upon thee.

Go forth into the world once more, and seek ye your pleasures. We await thee there.

Should ye who are reading these words instead be a faithful servant of the goddess, come to place another offering in the tomb of the high priestess, then assume the position of reverence and pass unhindered.” Was how it went.

Mirri blinked a few times and shook her head. Whoever had written these messages certainly seemed to be preaching a different brand of Bastet worship than James normally did.

James' version was heavy on the importance of the cat as a guardian of hearth and home, and how he would be derelict in his duty if he did not protect such places, even when they belonged to others. These writings though, well the repeated mentions of 'pleasure' reminded Mirri of the rantings she'd heard from a fey at one point about a spider goddess.

Mirri had already joined the dark sisterhood of Kali by that particular point in her unlife so she'd seen no real reason to consider changing deities again, but the Spider Queen's overall approach to existence hadn't sounded too objectionable.

So was James preaching an especially... Jameish version of Bastet's teachings, or were Tiyet's followers equally off the mark? Neither of them seemed to be a very unbiased source...

Mirri shook her head trying to drive all thoughts of both James and theological debate from her mind, the true teachings of Bastet didn't matter. The only divine dogma that really mattered was what Kali had to say, like “once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific dance out of the sheer joy of victory.”

Still, for a brief moment Mirri did feel vaguely disconcerted by the fact that she wasn't carrying any symbols of her devotion to the Dark Mother. It had never really seemed very important up until now, but without the heartbeats of her living companions present, her ears she could very clearly hear how this place seemed to practically throb (one might even say “purr”) with some sort of mystical energy.

She decided that she'd kill two birds with one stone by using Tiyet's skull as her own way of showing reverence to Kali. That decision made, she pressed onward through an open door, pretty as you please.

She raced through it and Mirri instantly found herself face to face with a room whose walls were covered by still more of that strange writing.

A single glance with Cal's glasses was all the vampire needed to know that she was seeing the exact same words as she had a few moments ago. She risked a look back and instead of seeing the room she'd just left, she saw the corridor where she'd left the group behind.

“Very funny.” She growled, realizing that she must have been teleported when she'd passed through the door.

Figuring that it might be a one time effect like that other teleporting trap they'd discovered earlier in the crypt, she ran through the open door again.

Mirri instantly found herself face to face with a room whose walls were covered by still more of that strange writing.

“Well so much for that theory.” She growled in irritation.

Mirri concentrated and her body dissolved into a rolling white fog bank that flowed across the room and through the open door.

When she pulled herself back together in a solid shape Mirri instantly found herself face to face with a room whose walls were covered by still more of that strange writing.

“OH COME ON!” She screamed at the ceiling.

The trap must be keyed to something going through the door, which meant she could avoid it if she tore down enough of the walls, but that would take time, time she didn't care to waste at the moment.

Just how time consuming a process it would be was promptly proven when in her frustration she kicked the wall beside the door and saw barely a single fleck of stone fly free.

“This is stupid! How the hell am I supposed to have any idea what the 'position of reverence' I need to assume to 'pass unhindered' is?” She called out turning her head to the skyward in ever mounting rage.

Looking up at the ceiling she saw that it had been painted to depict a scene similar to many others on display throughout out the crypt, basically cats playing happily with women dressed in white.

At which point what she needed to do became blindingly obvious.

Mist swirled around Mirri again, but this time instead of seeking to become one with it, Mirri took on the form of a tawny furred lioness.

She walked sedately on all fours through the open doors, and found herself in someplace that looked like a gigantic library.

A glance back showed her that the room she'd just walked through was still behind her as well. She returned to human form and as she did so her eyes fell upon a scroll that was laid out on a nearby dais.

She would have ignored it completely in favor of her hunt for Tiyet, if not for the fact that her foe’s name was plastered across the top of it.

“The first life Tiyet, High Priestess of Bastet...” Was the title of the thing written in big bold letters.

For the first half of the scroll the lettering was fairly sedate and calm (Mirri wasn't quite sure how Cal's glasses managed to translate both the words and the style in which they'd been written but that was magic for you), the subject matter dry and uninteresting.

A little past that halfway point however the letters became larger and slightly scrawled as if the writer had become quite emotional.

“Today a man named Tekhen angered Bastet by deliberately killing one of her temple cats in a fit of rage when his child was stillborn. As High Priestess I have decided that the punishment must fit the crime. As he caused death of one of Bastet's prized creatures, I took the form of a gigantic cat and mauled him to death. It was a most... exhilarating experience!” The scroll announced.

Mirri blinked in bemusement a few times.

Just by reading that one portion alone, she could take a pretty good guess at what she'd find if she kept going.

Sure enough, as she would all too willingly attest, if you found killing someone pleasurable, you didn't do it only once.

The writing promptly became larger and more florid going into greater and greater detail of the further deaths Tiyet inflicted. Sure enough, what had started out only being a punishment for followers of an evil cult or people who killed temple cats grew steadily more and more common.

Before long Tiyet was choosing to “play” (the euphemism she favored) with people because their cart had ended up rolling across a random cat's tail, or because they were giving her prized feline's dirty looks.

Miriam Kantrar who worshiped the Dark Mother and fed exclusively on the blood of demi-humans was perhaps not the most morally justified person to take offense at someone else's approach to religion or morality, but at the moment she certainly felt like doing it.

“Kal-li!” She couldn't help but gasp after reading Tiyet's description of how she'd turned herself into a cat and hamstrung a man before starting to eat him alive from the feet up.

While Mirri tended to offer up prayers (if she had the time) to Kali after having a little “fun” of her own, she was fairly certain that she'd never killed someone just because she imagined that her goddess wanted her to do it (granted there had been plenty of other reasons, but still, never that particular one).

“You were one sick pussycat even when you alive weren't you...” She reflected as she forced herself to keep reading.

The next section concerned a man named Kematef who killed one of the temple cats. It'd evidently been so long since someone had been foolish enough to commit an actual real crime worthy of punishment that Tiyet's blood lust practically flew off the page.

“Keep it in your kilt sister...” Mirri sighed, she was no stranger to bloodlust, (in fact she had quite a bit of experience with both the traditional and a more... literal interpretations of the phrase) but there was something vaguely unseemly about seeing the details written down.

Murder was supposed to be a private guilty pleasure that you indulged in someplace dark away from prying eyes, like those chocolate candies she'd liked back when she was still alive. It was supposed to be fun because it was bad for you, and society would “tut-tut” (well more like “chop-chop”) if they caught you doing it.

The way that Tiyet reveled in her actions and didn't seem to realize that what she was doing was wrong (Mirri by comparison was very aware that she frequently did things that were wrong, she just didn't care) it all added up to someone who capital “C” “Crazy”.

If Mirri hadn't already been sure of that particular fact, she would have been once the writing suddenly became lurid in an entirely different manner as Tiyet began to describe how for a condemned man she had promised to brutally murder, Kematef seemed to be doing a surprisingly good job of being alive and sweeping Tiyet off her feet.

Mirri had to fight back an urge to cheer a moment later when the handwriting on the scroll changed to a completely new style.

“Much to the anger and sorrow of all, we discovered that Kematef has secretly hollowed out his teeth, and filled them with a deadly poison. One single bite took Tiyet to death's door, and she left us less than a day later. We have taken her body to be interred within the crypt, where she will lay until Bastet awakens her to begin her second life.” Was the second to last line in the scroll.

The very last line was back to that familiar hand, if at its most unsteady.

“Serpents Fear Me... Cat's Revere Me....” Were Tiyet's final words.

Mirri rolled it up, ripped it in half, then a few more times for good measure, and finally stomped on the scraps of paper.

Whatever else, Tiyet didn't deserve to have her history recorded in such detail. Still, with the scroll taken care of, Mirri turned her attention back to the room. There were no obvious ways out of it other than the one that she'd come in through.

“You know what, screw fancy riddles...” Mirri concentrated and transformed into a cloud of white mist and began to roll through the room.

She rubbed herself against each and every inch of the wall and ceiling, inspecting the room for even the slightest crack. It didn't take her long in order to discover that there was a secret passage hidden behind a picture of Bastet hanging on one of the walls. Mirri poured in through the it and reformed herself, having managed to take one more step closer to Tiyet....

Slipping into this new corridor and returning to human form Mirri could see no sign forward yet again as the corridor terminated in an abrupt dead end.

She ran a hand along it looking to see if that would trigger any sort of hidden switches or pressure plates before a cold mist began to rise from the floor. In a matter of moments it was swirling around her knees and growing so thick she had trouble seeing through it.

She felt something soft brushing up against her legs and then the mist began to spiral upwards to form a ghostly shape in the air. A giant mouth with long white fangs took shape in the air and gradually a feline face formed behind it. The mist cat blinked and focused it eyes intently upon her...

“Seek you to enter the tomb of the high priestess? Preform the ritual cleansing or become my prey.” The ghostly cat intoned.

There were two possible meanings to this request, one of them was that the answer was so blindingly obvious it couldn't not occur to her. The other was that there was some intricate cleansing ritual known only to extremely devout followers of Bastet and given that this was a tomb built to her who knows how long ago not even James would have a clue what it was.

If it was the second then she had no chance at all of getting it right, so best go with her first guess and if she got it wrong, well the creature was going to attack her anyway if she did nothing.

“Please stout hearted and loyal guardian I will only be a moment.” Mirri responded, figuring that she had yet to meet a cat (magical or otherwise) that didn't on some level enjoy flattery.

Then she daintily removed her white gloves revealing the pale skin beneath. Mirri carefully turned her hands so that they lay palm up before her, lowered her head. She ran her tongue along them, gently applying a thin coating of saliva to each palm.

Having done that, she began to run her hands through her hair recalling that she'd only seen James in various forms clean (or at least attempt to clean) himself in this manner about a million times.

The smokey cat's eyes widened slightly and then it lowered its head and offered her a smile.

“Having cleansed thyself of impurities of the body, the path to the high priestess lies open to you so that she may cleanse you of impurities of the soul.” The cat announced, before starting to fade away one bit at a time, his smile going last.

As it vanished a pair of double doors that hadn't been there beforehand were now plainly visible.

Only once she was completely certain the mist cat was gone and not coming back did Mirri speak up.

“Oh there's gonna be some 'cleansing' going on, that's for sure...” She muttered to the empty room before pressing onward yet again.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Final Chapter (Part 1): Sick of all the good guys saving the day, cause the villain always wins when the heroes away!

The doors to the crypt's inner sanctum swung open before Mirri, and fell off their hinges a few moments later.

Given that said doors had been unlocked there had been no real need for her to kick it down but sweet Kali it had felt good.

On the other side of the door was an oddly shaped room with a ceiling so high up that Mirri couldn't even see it, though she could vaguely make out a few lanterns hanging up above. She instantly noticed how the air smelled faintly of spice and dust.

Just a few paces ahead of her stood an immense bronze statue that had the body of a woman and the head of a cat. Although its eyes were half-closed in a feline smile, its hands reached out towards her, fingers curved like claws.

Some distance behind it was a wide low dais that was ringed by large stone cat statues. They faced the center of the platform, each gripping a glass jar between their paws. At the center of the dais was a large sarcophagus glinting with silver and gold.

Its lid was already slightly open.

Suddenly Mirri heard a faint popping noise. A tiny green spark flared near one of the statues that surrounded the dais, but it faded as quickly as it had come into being.

Her undead eyes pierced the gloom she saw an emaciated hand whose fingers twitched and trembled resting on the rim of the sarcophagus, suggesting its occupant would not be asleep for long.

Mirri began to approach the grand sarcophagus. She wasn't all that sure of what was going on, but she knew a few things about how to slay undead (from self preservation if nothing else) and one of them was that anything actively laying unmoving in its resting place of choice was probably easy prey.

As she began to ascend the steps Mirri suddenly felt heat blaze about her body.

“F$&K!” The vampire cried out and she leaped off of the stairs keenly aware that somehow her clothing and even her hair had burst into green flames!

Thinking fast she dispersed her physical form and became a cloud of rolling white mist. She floated there in midair for a moment as the flecks of emerald fire that had licked at her began to sputter out. Mirri could never be entirely sure what it was exactly that she and other vampires turned into (maybe each of them had their own unique gaseous form) but luckily whatever she became had never been especially flammable.

That didn't mean she planned to press her luck though, and rather than try to approach the coffin in her mist form she settled back down to the ground and returned to her human shape. The mystical fires had still left their mark upon Mirri though, leaving the edges of her outfit singed.

“Well... that wasn't good.” She admitted wishing that she had Alexander with her.

The stone cat statues as if reacting to her aborted attempt to approach the sarcophagus began to move. One by one the glass jars they held slipped free from their paws fell to the ground, shattering as they landed. Strangely colored mixtures drifted from the broken bottles, and all of them were drawn towards the central sarcophagus which suddenly opened and Tiyet the high priestess of Bastet (or whatever was left of her) emerged.

The dried husks that had once been her eyes gazed down at out at Mirri with boundless hatred.

“Fool, no creature of darkness like yourself may approach me as I slumber within my sarcophagus of resurrection, for the mystical powers of Bastet keep me safe as a kitten at its mother's side!” Tiyet derided her.

Mirri sighed heavily and then kicked at a small loose section of the tile floor. She knocked free into the air, grabbed it, and hurled it with all possible dispatch straight at Tiyet.

The mummified priestess rocked back slightly as the small stone slammed into her forehead.

Clearly even propelled by vampiric strength it had failed to do her any lasting damage. Not that it really mattered though, the results of that test were still enough to bring a smile to Mirri's lips.

“Looks like the magic only works while you're inside that special box of yours. So why don't you save us both some time, climb back inside it, then never come back out? Whatever weird cat controlling domination you might be spinning around MY suck buddy is over. Understand?

Because if you don't, I'm going to turn your little lame liaison into a threesome, starring yours truly, and I don't kiss nice!” As if to prove that particular fact Mirri proceeded to flash a toothy grin in Tiyet's direction.

The undead priestess however was something less than overawed.

“You are nothing but a mewling quim next to me! You will not defeat me, not here, not in my sanctuary. Not among my army of loyal followers!” As she spoke, more sarcophagus lids began to opening up.

Arising from their graves were still more of the sickly undead housecats, but accompanying them were their larger plains cat sized cousins.

There had to be at least two dozen of the smaller cats augmented by a handful of the larger ones, all of them arrayed against Mirri.

Sure enough, she was lone vampire against Tiyet and her small army of undead feline servants... Mirri was not liking the odds even a little bit.

She was actually so worried that she drove a fang into her own lower lip as she pondered how best to handle the situation, wondering when Tiyet would unleash the feline horde upon her.

There was nothing for it, just like back with the ghost cat, if she tried and failed then she was no worse off than if she did not try at all.

Mirri Catwarrior opened up her mind, body, and whatever sanguine essence had taken up residence within her corpse.

She called upon all the living predators of the world to come to her aid, for she was a vampire, she was the greatest hunter of them all, she deserved their allegiance. Except that even though she had the power to dominate living animals, she could not simply call them into existence.

That was Mirri's curse.

For all her ability to walk around in the sunlight, to sleep in bed or coffin at any hour of the day or night, feats she'd heard even the legendary Strahd Von Zarovich could not match... there was a price.

There was always a price to pay for power in the land of the Mists, it did not matter if the power was used for good or ill.

Mirri's curse was that her fate would always be tied to the living she was so adept at immitating but not actually among.

Any other vampire would have had at least an even chance to turn Tiyet's own undead minions against her.

Mirri couldn't, she couldn't control so much as a single zombie louse, let alone the collection of crypt cats Tiyet had organized agianst her.

The only kind of minons that Mirri could command were those that lived, and here in very heart of this long buried tomb Mirri figured she'd be lucky to get a couple of centipedes.

CRACK!

“MERROW?” Announced a somewhat confused but otherwise unhurt and completely alive housecat that had been contained within a now broken jar.

Confusion vanished from the cat's green eyes as it suddenly turned in the direction of its undead cousins and hissed, its fur puffing up in anger.

“How cute, one lone kitten against my entire glaring. Your black power to twist the minds of my living servants offers you no chance of victory, only still greater torment at the paws of Bastet!” Tiyet mocked, amused by how precious little Mirri's ability to control living predators had come to.

Then there was a sound from above, like the creaking of a rusty chain links starting to give, and a thought occurred to Mirri.

Those weren't some sort of mystical light source hanging up above, or at least not solely a mystical light source.

No, they were was jars, jars of preservation.

Lots of jars preservation, and down here they had been spared the trials which had broken so many of the first set they'd encountered.

Jars of preservation which contained still living felines who were no longer content to sit passively and wait to be released. Now they strove with all their might to break free and answer the call of their new mistress.

More and more jars rained downwards like divine judgment, though delivered in the form of pottery rather than the more conventional lightning bolt. Cat after cat was left standing unharmed in the wreckage of the magical artifact crafted to keep them from suffering the passage of time.

WHAM!

That was no ordinary jar of preservation, it might have better been described as a “cauldron of preservation” the thing was at least five feet tall if it was an inch!

Say better it had been five feet tall, now it was just a huge pile of broken splinters surrounding an honest to goodness tawny furred lioness.

WHAM!

WHAM!

WHAM!

WHAM!

Still more of the huge things broke free from the chains that had held them locked in place for who knew how long. A small pride of lionesses soon stood side by side with the housecats, one and all glaring defiance out at the undead beasts Tiyet commanded.

Mirri couldn't help herself, she actually pumped her fist in delight like a giddy little girl at this unexpected turn of fortune.

Then she turned her gaze reverently up towards the far away ceiling of the room.

“Kali, you know I've always been one of your faithful followers what with the killing, the maiming, and manipulation but... right now, if I can be open with you, practitioner to patron deity... Bastet is making as really persuasive argument for converting.” Mirri had to admit.

Then she returned her mind to the task at hand.

The two undead women locked gazes yet again, each also seeking to survey the other's force of feline guardians.

On Mirri's side of the field, was her lot of scruffy recently released still living cats who as far as she could tell were no different from any that might have been found chasing mice in a market place. Well except for the fact that under her control they were united in a way no normal gathering of cats could be.

The lionesses at least seemed to cut a somewhat more imposing figure, but even they were seemingly just ordinary examples of their kind.

On the other side, Tiyet's crypt cats were decadency given (rotting) flesh.

Not a single one lacked for some form of expensive adornment; be it silver ear rings, jewel encrusted collars, or even golden bells about their necks. The last showed how they were such cherished pets that they need not concern themselves with hunting in the slightest.

The great crypt cats were even more elaborately bedecked with finery, each having bright golden headdresses at the very least. It was as if someone had decided that the brilliance of their accessories could hide the simple and obvious fact that the beasts were now cruel decaying mockeries of the sleek graceful creatures they had been in life.

This was clearly not a turn of events that Tiyet had planned for and Mirri was determined to press her advantage.

“TOUCH NOT THE CAT WITHOUT A GLOVE!” For the first time in her unlife, Mirri bellowed the Kantrar family motto loudly and proudly.

The words resounded throughout the chamber, echoing back to a time as ancient as Tiyet herself, to a time when nobility was not about castles, money, or servants, but how big a pile of slain foes you could leave in your wake.

Mirri charged forward, the vampire easily moving faster than the swiftest lioness.

She hurdled up the stairs to the dais while Tiyet waved her hands and suddenly right in front of Mirri arose a pair of ghostly oversized cat paws with claws extended.

They slashed at her, and there was nothing ethereal in the least about the way they cut through her outfit and left gashes in her skin.

“I hate magic...” She growled to herself, but took some satisfaction in the fact that the distance between her and Tiyet was decreasing rapidly.

She leaped forward, intending to pounce on the mummy and force her to the ground.

As she was sailing through the air one of the rotting dark furred beasts jumped up to meet her, either out of a warped desire to protect the priestess or simple feline hunting instinct. Either way, it didn't matter much, all Mirri could think about was the flashing claws and snapping yellowed teeth.

SLAM!

Getting nailed by those spectral claws had slowed Mirri down more than she had though, and one of the lionesses had caught up with her. Seeing the black beast take to the air Mirri's lioness pounced as well, slamming headfirst into the oversized crypt cat, knocking it aside and viciously tearing at its rotting guts.

Mirri didn't have time to be grateful, all her attention was focused on Tiyet. Just like her own advancing clowder, she was driven by a single burning desire, to hunt.

The undead priestess tried to cast another spell, but her efforts fell apart as Mirri landed directly before her, then let loose with an uppercut that probably could have felled a bear.

Tiyet was knocked back and Mirri's entire body thrilled to the sensation of dry bones shattering to dust beneath her first. Unfortunately being a mummy Tiyet was immune to pain, even worse the broken (say better demolished) jaw somehow didn't keep her from talking.

“You might have claimed me in my mortal life, but your fangs will not have me in this one serpent!” She declared dramatically and Mirri winced as she felt those stupid ghostly claws catch up with her and rake her back.

“What part of you do I have to break to make you shut up?” Mirri demanded as she dashed forward and dragged Tiyet to the ground.

She'd been thinking about this all the way here, no fangs, no fancy vitality draining abilities, she was going to have to win this fight on pure strength and speed by pulverizing Tiyet into a pile of bone splinters.

That was her game plan, what was Tiyet's?

The mummy's hands seized Mirri tightly and magic flowed through the undead priestess of Bastet.

Blue light glistened on her finger tips and forced its way into Mirri.

The minor tears that those mystical claws had torn in her flesh were suddenly split wide open. Nor were they the only ones, all over the vampire's body, new wounds were forcing themselves open as blood began to leak from her eyes and nostrils as well.

Tiyet cackled triumphantly as she rose to her feet, knocking Mirri aside like a broken toy.

“Pitiful creature! See how your own body rebels against my healing touch? One as dark as you can not within stand the light of Bastet!” Tiyet cackled as Mirri's form was racked convulsions and she coughed up still more crimson upon the floor.

Mirri struggled to stand up, needing to brace herself against the floor before she could make the attempt. Sadly the moment she started, Tiyet delivered a kick that knocked her flat again.

“On the ground! On the ground! That is where you belong serpent. You and all fanged beasts scheme and plot against myself and my mistress Bastet, but your evil schemes will come to naught in the end! No scaled fiend shall escape my boot, no snake shall be spared my fury!” She punctuated each and every sentence with yet another kick to Mirri's face, sending her baddy battered body rolling this way and that across the dais.

“See how your fowl minions have....” Tiyet paused at this point, suddenly realizing that her force of undead felines had not fared quite as well as she’d expected.

It was discovery driven home by the fact that there were several wounded but still living housecats arching their backs and hissing at her in anger.

Tiyet was discomforted for only a moment, then simply made a sweeping motion with her hands, not even bothering to use magic.

“You blind fools can not raise paws against your true mistress. No cat worthy of the name can harm me!” To prove her point she stepped forward, and sure enough the cats began to edge away.

While Tiyet was displaying her ability to overawe even Mirri's mind controlled cats, the vampiress found herself being approached by a large tawny furred shape. The lioness lowered her head and licked its tongue against one of the many open wounds in Mirri's side.

“Thanks for trying girl. You and your friends have done everything I could ask for, you gave me a chance... don't worry I'm not quite done yet.” Mirri comforted lioness.

The stupid beastie just kept licking hopelessly at Mirri's flesh and then looked deeply into her eyes.

Vampire powers were not suppose to work like this, she had control, she told the creatures what to do, she couldn't tell what they thought, they probably couldn’t even think while they were under her thrall.

All that she had come to believe since her rebirth, and yet somehow when she looked into the lioness' eyes she knew what it wanted her to do.

“Seriously? Your head is as empty as James’ must be!” Mirri berated the creature.

Just speaking his name aloud was enough to make the decision for her; she could lay here and hope that Tiyet kept spouting off self congratulatory gibberish while Mirri's body slowly pulled itself together or she could take some drastic actions.

“Good kitty... best kitty...” Mirri whispered to the lioness as her hands reached up and scratched the creature behind the ears, causing it to chuff in happiness.

When her hand withdrew a few seconds the lioness was already dead.

Not even blood this time, her touch had drained the pure essence of life itself from the beast. That sort of thing couldn't sate her daily hunger for blood, couldn't make her feel full... but it could make her feel whole, could make her feel powerful.

Mirri rose to her feet with liquid grace, her flesh knitting itself closed with speed that even that impressed even her.

“Hey mouse breath, if you're going kill someone, finish the job!” Mirri reminded the priestess.

“Now then, are you ready for round two, or do you need a moment to powder your nose first?” Mirri mocked.

“This time my magic to mend wounds will free your tormented soul from its prison, by tearing your body into shreds!” Tiyet hissed.

The two undead women raced at one another, the priestess' palms already aglow with mystical energy once again. Mirri saw them coming towards her and doubted she would be able to recover from another brush with them.

So rather than face them head on, she spun to the side and dodged Tiyet's grasping hands keeping a foot or two between them. Without a target to leap Tiyet was unable to sustain the magic charge, otherwise she’d risk falling victim to her own positive energy spell. Then Mirri darted back in and preformed a textbook elbow strike, driving the crook of her right limb into Tiyet's left shoulder.

Bone chips filled the air and one of Tiyet's arms was wrenched free from its socket and dropped to the ground.

“Answer me this pretty pretty princess... how do you plan to channel all that mystical energy into me, when you don't have fingers?” Mirri inquired, before dancing around Tiyet, always keeping just out of reach of her remaining arm.

“By the way Tiyet, do you know what I have that you don't? Besides the obvious stuff of course; like a pretty face, no delusions in regards to my own malicious nature, and the love of James Firecat?” Sure enough, that last jibe struck home and for a brief moment Tiyet was too busy trying to think of a rejoinder to properly to defend herself.

That brief moment was all Mirri needed, she dashed forward, hefted Tiyet up over her head.

“MUSCLES BITCH!” The vampiress declared triumphantly.

Before Tiyet could try and seize some part of her body, Mirri cast her down upon the dais with all the strength she could muster.

Bones cracked and splintered, dry leathery flesh was tenderized, and a look of infinite rage was shot up at Mirri from Tiyet's empty eye sockets.

“Now, let me give you another quick lesson, you don't kick someone while they are down, you stomp on them.” Mirri pointed out, darting around to Tiyet's head and bringing her white booted foot down upon that fancy headdress she was wearing.

Whatever mystical powers it possessed didn't seem quite up to the task of protecting its wearer from getting their skull crushed by a pissed off vampiress.

“This is for all the random people you've hurt because at least I fucking wanted to become a monster, what is your excuse?” WHAM

“This one is for nearly killing my companions with that stupid cat statue and heart beat trap because nobody hurts my minions but me!” WHUMP

“This one is for James because if you touched so much as one hair on his furry ears I'll trace your essence down into the next world and keep kicking the shit out of you there!” POW

“This is for that stupid fucking lion I had to energy drain because for some reason that made me feel sad, and I hate feeling sad! Hell I'm undead I shouldn't even have to 'feel' anything!” SNAP

“AND THIS IS FOR ME.... because if you haven't noticed yet, I'm a sadistic bitch.” CRUNCH!

That last boot stomp finished up the job of transforming Tiyet's body into a fine white powder.

“There, lets see you come back from that.” Mirri scoffed.

Then she heard a strange humming noise and saw the gems engraved in Tiyet's sarcophagus start to glow.

“OH NO, NOT THIS TIME!” A Catwarrior once burned was twice fearful and she departed from the dais quickly before the magical aura which surged into being while Tiyet rested could burn her again.

If it had managed to give her such a fright just from bumping up against its edges she had no desire at all to experience what it might do to her were she caught near the spell's epicenter.

“GET OUT OF THERE!” She called up to the cats, wondering why she was bothering to shout when the animals were surely still being dominated by her vampiric will.

Her feline forces were in precious little shape for fast movement though. None of them had come through the battle unmarred, and already the foul nature of the crypt cats was starting to make itself evident. Mirri could see scratches and bite marks ringed by red inflammation or in some cases even oozing malignant puss.

It was a stark reminder of just how vile some of the contagions that mummified monsters could spread, and what damage they could do to living flesh.

They were just ordinary cats, there was no way they were going to be able to get off the dais fast enough before the magical spell could come to full power... and that fact made Mirri so... sad...?

That was crazy.

You didn't feel sad about the animals you forced to do your bidding, they existed to act as instruments of your supreme vampiric will. You didn't go around getting upset if the angry mob got lucky and managed to slay some of the wolf pack you dominated into hounding them, and that was a fact she knew from experience!

“Mirri you best not get all bloody eyed because a bunch of your 'furry friends' got killed. So help me, you just beat an undead priestess to unundeath, reach down in your big girl panties and find yourself some ovaries!” The vampire growled.

She'd especially need to do it given that this light show probably meant that Tiyet was about to come back to “life” yet again, and this time she'd probably be slinging every single positive energy magic spell she could think of in Mirri's direction straight off the bat.

As what remained of her animal army began to slowly and cautiously descend from the dais on wounded limbs Mirri could not bring herself to look away from them. Those creatures had served her no more loyally than countless numbers of the rats, bats, or wolves, at one time or another, hell this wasn't even the first time she had dominated the animals who she had renamed herself after!

So why did she feel like her guts about ready to drop out from under her as the wave of magic continued to grow outwards until it washed over them.... and did nothing.

The magic spell expanded beyond the cats and affected them not in the least.

There were a lot of reasonable explanations for that, after all it would make sense for a priestess of Bastet’s resting place to be guarded by both living and undead felines, and the spell had doubtlessly first been designed by someone remarkably less bloodthirsty than Tiyet.

All that was true and yet...

“Bastet I know you're probably not listening because lets face it, that's not the sort of things gods, especially nice gods like you do for people like me. But so long as you seem to be handing out miracles like bandages at a gathering of hemophiliacs, could I have my suck buddy back?” Mirri suggested.

CREAK!

A hidden trapdoor in the floor of the room back behind the dais opened up and a somewhat bedraggled but otherwise unharmed James Firecat emerged.

The staff of Bastet was still gripped tightly in both hands and he looked around for a moment before shifting it to a one handed grip so that he could wave in her direction.

“Sincerest greetings Miriam, my heart swells to see you once more, have you been fairing well?” He asked completely calmly, as if he they had last seen one another before going to bed instead of him jumping into the arms of an evil priestess.

Mirri buried her face in her hands overcome by regret.

“I could have asked to be made a matriarch, I could have asked for a river of blood in a magical vial of holding, I could have asked for anything! Kali please forgive me, I just realized why I can't handle being in the thrall of a goddess with a sense of humor, I'll take good old fashioned reliable cruelty any day of the week!” Her minor metal break down dealt with, she then raised a hand and waved back.

End Chapter
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book Four: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Final Chapter (Part 2): Everybody's pickin' up on that feline beat, 'cause everything else is obsolete!

“So... how exactly did you get here?” Mirri asked figuring that divine intervention probably (probably) wasn't the answer.

“Tis a simple enough tale...” James replied.

XXX XXX XXX

James Firecat lay ensconced in luxury. They had certainly known how to “die well” back in Tiyet's time given all the fine fabrics, and gleaming trinkets which surrounded the priestess.

As for the priestess herself, she was running cold but firm fingers through fur of James' head in an affectionate manner. Right now James was in his hybrid a shape, his body as neither feline nor human, but a blend of both.

For most lycanthropes this form tended to be of a monstrous size, larger than either human or animal, but such wasn’t the case for James Firecat. Granted he was larger than a housecat of course, but he was more or less the exact same size as he was as a human, maybe an inch or two larger, but certainly nowhere near the size of the traditional hybrid lycanthrope.

“All these and more deserve to be yours my pretty little kitty.” Tiyet wheezed out, her voice rough and untested, clearly she had lain in this crypt far longer than Mirri had ever spent in a coffin.

“We just need to get rid of all the nasty humans who insist on being so mean to all my furry followers! The stupid apes will one and all get what's coming to them! Their blood will flow like milk, their cries of horror will be like so many trapped mice, the age of the cat must come to this land, must come to this entire world!” Tiyet vowed, never letting the passion behind her words interrupt the slow and steady movement of her fingers.

“You know, you could just stop.” James piped up, and boy THAT did stop her fingers cold (well colder than usual) instantly.

“What?” Hissed Tiyet through skinless lips.

“I spoke not about the scratching, I was finding that most delightful!” James confided to the undead priestess.

“I was referencing rather the entire whole 'age of the cat' concept. Know Tiyet, I've traveled far and wide, I am neither as stupid nor as blind as some people might suspect. I have witnessed humans mistreating cats, ones who find it amusing to do horrific things to animals; simply because they are unable to fight back, have no means to ask others for help, their mews of pain fall only upon ears that are deaf to them.

I've observed the sight of a housecat coated in tar by a man, and then lit it afalme.” James' voice was a half choked sob at this point, his eyes squinted tight and watery.

He took several deep breaths to regain his composure and then strove onward.

“It's horrific... but you one must approach each human as an individual. Maligning or punishing an entire group due to the actions of a few members, to do such a thing has never brought joy to my heart.” James declared with conviction.

“Besides, if you really care about creating a world for the enjoyment of felines everywhere, are you certain your 'age of the cat' is the best approach?” As James said those words, he rose to his feet and hopped off of Tiyet's lap.

His red furred paws began to beat a meaningless circle around the room as he paced and talked.

“The 'age of the ape' as you call it, has been as much a blessing for us cats as it has been for the 'monkeys' themselves.

It all began when they started to gather food in one place for long periods of time, and in turn rats and mice began to gather to try and feast upon that food... then we came.

We came forth from the desert. We came forth and with our claws that catch and teeth that bite, and we reaped a terrible vengeance upon those rodents.

It was never our intention to help the humans, not at first, it was just about going where our food was. Humans in making food plentiful for the rodents made the vermin gather together in numbers the likes of which we could not believe.

We winnowed their numbers without a care for the grain that the humans sought to protect, all that mattered was the hunt, was the feast.

Once that initial glorious blow had been struck and in turn the grain was protected, and the rats dispersed. We were ready to do the same, we followed the rats after all.

Then, however, then, one very smart human had a brilliant idea.

Granted with next year's harvest the rats would return, and sure enough sooner or later we would have come of our own accord without any human intervention.

The very smart idea changed all of that however, because that human took a strip of meat from some fallen domestic beast, and placed it before our paws in supplication.

It was an offering unto us, the first most important offering given unto Bastet.

The humans could not stand to see us go, could not stand the thought of trying to live without us, so they brought forth meat to eat, brought forth water to drink, brought forth shelters from the stinging winds and chill nights, brought forth concoctions to kill flees and gnats, brought forth medicine and magic with which to bind our flesh and heal wounds, and brought forth milk for our kittens.

All of these gifts humans brought forth so that we the glorious feline saviors of their civilization who had delivered them from the horrors of the rodent horde would remain their eternal guardians.

You must understand Tiyet, if you wipe out humans everywhere, you destroy that as well.

You eradicate thousands of years of one of the most successful partnerships to ever exist in the world, for we cats were not broken before the leash as wolves were when they became dogs. We remain true to our inner wild spirit, we remain the terror that stalks in the night, the paws that pin rodents to the floor!

You are surely a mighty priestess Tiyet, but are you powerful enough to look after an entire world of cats who will suddenly want for the things that are rightfully ours in return for the services we've grant humanity?

Do you really think a world where we one misstep leads to a thorn becoming wedged in a paw which will remain there, constantly causing pain, till simple irritation gives way to infection, is a superior to one in which a human will notice a cat's limp, remove the thorn, clean the wound and bandage the paw?

Are you doing what you are doing because it is really what cats want, or because it is what you want? If it is because this world is what you desire, then why not just... stop?

Stop, and let us cats enjoy the adoration and offerings we have justly won from humanity?” As James delivered those dramatic lines he finally stopped pacing and sat back on two legs, trying to look as cerebral as it was possible to in his current shape.

“MONGREL! ASP AT MY BOSOM! SNAKE THAT WOULD DECEIVE BY CLOAKING ITS SCALES IN FAIR FURR! BEAST UNFIT TO WALK UPON SO MUCH AS A SINGLE LEG LET ALONE FOUR! I WILL FLAY THE SKIN FROM YOUR BODY AND REVEAL THE COLD FLESH WHICH LAYS BENEATH! I WILL YANK THE FORKED TONGUE FROM YOUR THROAT AND CRUSH YOU BENEATH MY HEEL!” It seemed that Tiyet was something less than fully sold on James' beliefs concerning the state of cross species relations between homo sapiens and felis catus domestica.

James weathered Tiyet's verbal torrent and just smiled back at her.

“Why are you so perturbed? Haven't you heard that the ways to worship Bastet are more numerous than the whiskers on a cat's face?” He reminded the priestess.

“NO LONGER!” Tiyet announced, rising to her feet clutching the staff of Bastet tightly in her hands.

“For too long have I slumbered, for too long have Bastet's followers fractiously argued amongst themselves and ignored that rats, serpents, and other vermin which surrounded them! All shall be united under my velvet paw, those who will not serve me in life shall do so in death instead... and that applies to cats just as much as the foul apes.” Tiyet warned James.

James Firecat twisted his head to the side, and flashed the priestess a smile full of gleaming white incredibly sharp fangs.

“You know... you showed considerable interested in my neck before this unpleasantness, for we bare quite similar markings, don’t you agree? Do you desire to learn how I acquired these disfigurements?” James offered.

For a moment Tiyet's fury was abated and she leaned forward intently, determined to know for surely James had once been struck down by some vicious serpent exactly as she had been.

As her eyes focused intently on the twin puncture marks the werecat kept right on smiling at her.

He walked forward so that she could get a good look, and there was a soft clicking sounds, as the shape of legs altered slightly. His knees were suddenly bending backwards instead of forwards, but he didn't seem to be in any pain.

Then his leg rocketed forward with blinding speed and struck Tiyet in the face.

There was simply no other way to describe it, the mummy's head... exploded.

Flesh, bone chips, and other viscera flew in all direction.

“My name is Maahes, 'he who is true beside her', how do you think I got them?!” James shouted as Tiyet's body toppled forward and turned to dust.

“Now then, you clearly have no further need of this.” James reflected, picking up the Staff of Bast from where it had fallen. He swiftly returned himself to his normal human shape and began to examine the room in greater detail.

“Alas, I was so utterly certain that at this very moment I would be mystically returning to the sides of my companions. Clearly I had not thought this matter through quite as deeply as I should have.” Reflected James Maahes Firecat, before getting to work searching the room for hidden passages, after all no one would build a room that could only be reached by magic... would they?

XXX XXX XXX

Unfortunately, while James had been giving Mirri a brief recounting of the last hour or so of his life still more crypt cats (luckily only the small ones this time around) had emerged from the sort of hidden back up sarcophagi that only a truly deranged mind would bother to include, with still more bottles of glowing mist.

The pair had been so absorbed in catching up that neither one of them had noticed these cats arrival until it was too late.

They knocked over their bottles, which were promptly smashed on the floor and Tiyet rose yet again breathing deeply of the fumes.

“I really hope the others get over their paralysis soon, this might take a while...” Mirri muttered to herself, wondering just how many times she'd have to kill Tiyet to make it stick, and how many more times could she actually pull it off?

If the undead priestess just kept coming back, well Tiyet was bound to get lucky sooner or later...

Before Mirri could rush into combat once more though, James strode forward confidently, and fixed the mummy with the most drop dead serious stare Mirri had ever seen him give anyone.

“It's time to end this Tiyet.

The ways to worship Bastet are more numerous than the whiskers on a cat's face, but I possess a sneaking suspicion none of them involve murdering her servants so that you can remake them as twisted, corrupted, mockeries of all things cat. I will willing to abide by your crypt cats at first.. people die and they don't always stay dead, just look my dear Miriam...” He threw off a quick head-bob at this point before returning to the subject at hand.

“While her appearance may be far less decrepit than those of your crypt cats, such is hardly their fault, since they're mummified rather than vampire cats. How they look is in fact completely immaterial at the moment! What matters is that when you told me, your 'age of the cat' must involve transforming ALL cats who will not serve you into crypt cats... such is beyond the pale.” James warned her.

Tiyet fixed her own gaze (though the lack of eyes made it somewhat less impressive) upon James.

“You will...” She began.

James interrupted her with a swing of the Staff of Bastet.

It didn't hit Tiyet, it didn't even come close, instead the cat shaped adornment on its top effortlessly scooped up Tiyet's mystical headdress (it had fallen unattended to the floor after Mirri had dispatched her at the conclusion of their previous battle) and knocked it into the air.

The mask sailed up, flipped end over end, and landed perfectly balanced atop James' head, as if it had been made just for him. There surely must have been something mystical about the mask (beyond the obvious stuff like deflecting lightning bolts) because it had always seemed to depict a female cat when Tiyet wore it, and yet on James' it was clearly a tom.

“It is you who will do nothing, nothing but repent!” James insisted.

In response Tiyet summoned up another pair of spectral claws and turned them loose on him.

“YOU WILL BOW BEFORE ME OR BE DESTROYED!” Tiyet screamed.

The claws passing did not even stir his garments, let alone mar his flesh.

“Fuck that, for my faith is a shield proof against your blandishments.” James declared with a dramatic flourish of his arm which produced his icon of Bastet and easily looped the string he had attached to it around his neck.

There was something decidedly unearthly about him now, and it left Mirri rooted to the spot.

She didn't even try to help, right now what she possibly do to help? Even that simple black statue he was wearing now seemed to gleam like finest onyx.

Her magic having failed her Tiyet flew at James at in a seemingly near mindless rage. She wrapped her arms around the staff trying to drag it from his grip.

“GIVE IT TO ME! GIVE ME MY YOUTH, GIVE ME MY FLESH, GIVE ME MY PLEASURE!” Tiyet screamed as she tugged with all the strength her limbs still held.

James’ grip on the staff was unshakeable, he didn't even try to pull it away from her or force the priestess back. Instead, he simply stood there and leveled a pair of brown eyes at Tiyet, they were both filled to the brim with contempt.

“You betrayed Bastet.” He declared ominously as the bottommost section of the staff began to glow.

“Vous êtes un traître de Bastet, you betrayed Bastet.” He repeated the words again, first in his native Low Mordentish, then in Vassi as the glow slowly began to work its way up the entire length of the staff.

“Vous êtes un traître de Bastet, YOU BETRAYED BASTET.” James did not shout the words, not really, shouting implied emotion. This was something else, it was as if he had somehow packed pure concentrated force into his words in a way any spell slinger would have envied.

As soon as he finished speaking that strange glow reached the portions of the staff that Tiyet was holding onto and smoke began to rise from her hands as bright green sparks flickered among her bandaged flesh.

Mirri could not hide a smile at that sight, clearly it was Tiyet's turn to taste the blessed fires of her goddess. Yet for all the trauma it caused her, she still clung on with grim silent determination.

“VOUS, ÊTES, TRAITRE, DE, BASTET, YOU, BETRAYED, BASTET!” Now the glow passed through the parts of the staff that James was holding onto, and yet it did not affect his hands in the slightest.

The staff which blazed with the heat of an inferno in Tiyet's hands was just a piece of wood in the paws of James Firecat.

Tiyet watched his red gloves helplessly, desperately willing for him to show some sign of the same suffering she was enduring just to hold the relic of her goddess.

There was none at all, and her grip gave way as the flames consumed her hands to the point of leaving them utterly useless.

“VOUS, ÊTES, TRAITRE, DE, BASTET, YOU, BETRAYED, BASTET!” James insisted before swinging the holy relic around with blinding speed and driving the cat figured which adorned its top straight into Tiyet's stomach, instantly causing green fires to erupt there as well.

“FACE YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR OPPOSING THE LORD OF SLAUGHTER!” James decreed and lashed out yet again, the staff knocking Tiyet's head right off of her body and birthing still more flames upon her dry garments.

Instead of simply falling to dust this time the priestess’ body practically exploded in ash as the flames devoured it.

Then James turned to the sarcophagus that she had emerged from, he brought his staff down upon it. One solid blow alone was enough to crumple it beyond repair.

“The time has come to let Bastet's blessed tongue fall upon this place and lick clean its festering wounds. Act me through me Mother, let us cast out sickness, cast out evil, cast out unlife!” James cried out.

“Hey some of us are perfectly happy with unlife!” Mirri tired to interrupt but it did her no good.

James swung the staff again and the floor of the temple seemed to give way as if he was not so much bashing a hole in it as planting the staff somewhere it had always been meant to be.

There was a blast of blinding light and Mirri was hurled backwards, slamming into a wall so hard her head swam.

End Chapter.
jamesfirecat
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Re: Monster Party Book 4

Post by jamesfirecat »

Monster Party Book 4: I slither like a viper and get you by the neck...

Epilogue: You've suffered in the darkness, I'll suck the pain right out. So come and taste the reason I'm nothing like the rest!


By the time Mirri was finally able to clear her head the lighting in the room had returned to normal, and it wasn't the only thing either.

“Um... you all are looking very... healthy, that's a good thing... I think...” Mirri stumbled her way verbally through the discover that those cats who were still loyal to her were now completely healed.

There was no sign of either the wounds inflicted on them or the terrible diseases they been suffering from mere moments ago. Determined to make sure that James was equally unharmed she headed up the stairs to the dais yet again. As she crested the final steps she was near dumbfounded by what she found waiting for her.

“Okay, what sort of fairytale happy ending bullshit is this?” Mirri spat out in disbelief that anything in her “life”, in anyone's life could be this aggressive saccharin.

There were no dead or undead crypt cats left on the dais.

Not to say that it was devoid of feline creatures of course, there were a great many live cats up there now. Live cats who some of whom who were adorned with all manner of golden accessories just to drive the point home beyond the shadow of a doubt these cats had been undead monstrosities mere moments ago.

Not only that, but monstrosities that had been ripped to pieces by Mirri's living cats it was worth keeping in mind.

A couple large black beasts were perched awkwardly on their haunches trying to dislodge golden headdresses by vigorously scratching at them. Mirri's heart almost hit a beat (please, please, please let it not have done exactly that!) and she turned her eyes down toward her own bare fingers dreading what she might find there.

Despite the mystical restorative powers of whatever James had just done, her hand remained naturally pale, and beneath that ivory flesh it was possible to see veins colored cerulean as they carried oxygen free blood through her body.

“Oh thank goodness...” Mirri relaxed considerably upon seeing that her own blessed curse was still intact, she had spent way too much time to being a no-life queen to want to return to being an ordinary countess.

“Hey Mirri...” A somewhat weak voice called out to her.

Not even during her fight against Tiyet had Mirri moved faster than she did at that moment.

All but instantly she was at James Firecat's side and seizing in him a embrace that might have broken the bones of a less hearty participant. James chuckled at her show of affection, and playfully extended his tongue to lick at her cheek.

“Jeez Mirri, you act like you haven't had a bite to drink in weeks. Though um... for all I know... have you had one? You know that memory is not really my strong suit, but right now things are sort of extra fuzzy wuzzy. The last thing I recall we were supposed to recover some fancy staff from a bunch of bandits... sort of like that staff right over there in fact.

Weren't we about to find it in a forest though? Right now we seem to be, well this is a very strange sort of forest, also I don't recall there being quite so many cats. In fact, I don't recall there ever being quite so many cats anywhere I've ever been to.” James admitted, words spilling freely from his mouth.

Mirri loosened her grip slightly and ran a tongue over the two holes in James' neck that had still not closed, though she did not seek his blood at the moment, merely to caress the twin symbols of his loyalty to her.

“It's a long story James. A very long story, but that said, I've heard one thing that can help sort out foggy memories is to talk about something you know well. Now I'll be honest, sometimes I sort of zone out when you go on and on about Bastet. Still, since you’re so knowledgeable about her, does the name Maahes has anything to do with her?” She asked.

James wiggled free from Mirri's grip.

“Maahes? Sure! Maahes is the son of Bastet. Granted the identity of his father is a subject of lively debate and disagreement; some creeds hold it was Phat the god of creation and pottery, I think the Cat-Licks branch of the faith believe that he was conceived within Bastet's womb by congress with a neutered tomcat.

That's sort of silly on the face of it, but on the other hand Bastet is a goddess of fertility so I guess she could conceive a however she saw fit. Anyway, that's not really important, what we all... well almost all... well most of us agree on is that Maahes, however he came to be, was a fully divine being with the body of a man and the head of a lion.

You know how I've told you that my sect believes that Bastet was a decidedly polite and kind goddess who was quick with the gifts and slow with the lightning bolts? Well once again, just about everyone agrees that Maahes wasn't like that at all. He was known to fall upon those who broke the law viciously, either cutting them to pieces with his blessed knife or simply devouring them whole.

Not that he was a bad guy or anything, he was supposed to spend just as much of his time protecting the innocent as he did punishing the guilty. If you did something that broke the tenants of Bastet he was probably a lot more likely to show up to handle your punishment than his mother herself. He was probably a lot like Alex I guess.... Mirri why are you laughing?” James broke of out of his explanation to ask the obvious question.

Vampires have very weak lungs. Years and years and years of needing to inhale and exhale only to either speak, or better mimic some semblance of life would do that to you. Thus, as Mirri rolled about on the dais her body wracked with laughter she had not a hope of getting a word in edgewise.

However when the laughter ended.... when the laughter ended a horrible sense of purpose descended upon her.

“James there is something I need to tell you...” Mirri said, very slowly, in fact each pause was longer than the one which had preceeded it.

“I want you to know...” This time it was no pause, it was a full on stop.

She just sat there unable to communicate further.

/Come on Miriam, you can do this. Also if you don't do it now, are you ever, EVER going to be able to bring yourself to?\ She reminded herself as she took in a deep breath.

“That I luuu.... loooo... luvvv....” She began to stumble over the word in question, finding herself approaching it from several different possible directions, like a thief wanting to familiarize themselves with an estate before actually breaking in.

But no matter how she tried, she couldn't say it.

If she said this now, there was no going back...

/Miriam think about this, be reasonable. You've known for how long now that he's your Haldor, and you're his Gudrun? He's not going to change who he is, he's bound by oaths of honor and that sort of nonsense.

What binds you though? You are wild and free, you needn't be loyal to anyone but yourself... and that gives you a chance to be loyal to him above all others....\ She reminded herself, at least she thought that was her own voice, she couldn't quite be sure.

If she said this now, there was no going back... but if she didn't say it, then there was no going forward.

“James Firecat, I love your blood. I love your blood with all my unbeating heart. I love your blood more than I've loved anyone else's. I love your blood so much that I can barely take it. I want to go on loving your blood for the rest of my unlife. I know that I can't though, because you're mortal, and eventually your blood will run out. If I turned you into a vampire groom all that would achieve is making it so I wouldn't be able to love your blood properly that much sooner.

I know it is stupid, and it's bad for me, because in a couple decades at most your blood won't be around for me anymore. In the longest long run imaginable though, I'll probably just get tossed into a river, or staked through the heart and have my head cut off, or, you get the idea. So, even though it is stupid, even though it is only going to hurt me before too long, I wanted you to know just how much I love your blood, before it was too late.” Mirri gushed.

/There, was that so bad?\ The voice in the back of her head asked sardonically.

/Yes it was! Also, I don't know who or what you are, but we're going to have a very long talk when all this is over! I'm undead, I don't have a subconscious just like I don't have a conscience either!\ She noted bitterly.

Now that the wound had been opened though it wasn't so hard to keep things flowing.

She began to undo her jacket and pulled her shirt off, leaving her naked from the waist up other than a strip of cloth tied about her breasts.

Then she held out her hand.

“James, give me Bastet, your statue I mean...” She instructed.

The werecat was understandably confused but he went along with Mirri's request. Mirri was careful to hold onto the string rather than the statue itself, and lowered it against the left side of her chest.

There was sound of sizzling and the unpleasant smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

Against her better judgment Mirri pulled the cat statue away, only to adjust her grip on its string slightly and lower it once again to her flesh.

The sound and smell returned stronger than ever.

When the holy object's work was done Mirri handed it back to James, gazing down at the marks it had left upon her.

“I've heard that tattoos are all the rage among the right, or should I say wrong, elements of the lower class in Nova Vaasa. Sometimes, if a pair of them work well together, like one is great at picking pockets and other is amazing at opening locks, they'll get matching tattoos of two cats nuzzling one another. Both of them will get that symbol tattooed on the same part of their bodies.

Being a vampire I'd probably need to get marked with a ink that had been blessed and that would probably hurt even worse than something simple like this to get a proper tattoo. This was meant to be I think, after all, you had just the right holy symbol for it all this time...” Sure enough, as Mirri spoke it was now possible to see (so long as you looked at it with the right frame of mind) the symbol of two cats seated nose to nose nuzzling one another affectionately burnt upon her chest by the relic's rejection of her undead flesh.

As James took the statue back she beat a hasty verbal retreat towards what dignity she could still muster as she redonned her clothing.

“So when we get back to some place normal, you better ask Cal about what kind of inks and dyes a lycanthrope needs to use to get a permanent tattoo. Not that it is like we're you know, betrothed or anything, it is just, we work together well. So well that it is worth making a note of.” She babbled.

Then for the first time since she'd begun James finally spoke up.

“My blood loves you Miriam Kantrar.” It was silly, it was childish it, was stupid, it was absurd, it was down right nonsensical... it was perfect

Mirri threw her arms around the werecat's neck and her crimson tears began to leak from eyes.

“F*&k you James, I'm gonna need to drink more to make up for these...” The vampire whimpered in between her sobs.

“Well my femoral artery isn't going to start bleeding on its own Mirri.” He responded with an amazing mix of innocence, comforting reassurance, and perversity.

Slowly her hands began to reach for James' belt.

“GET A COFFIN!” Cried out Cal Wright who had just arrived along with the rest of the group.

XXX XXX XXX

He looked at himself in the mirror. His outfit was exact and emaculate as befitted a man of his station.

He looked down at the note, though he had no need to read it a second time. It was clear enough, they had succeeded. They had not just driven away, but utterly slain the monster which had been plaguing his workers. Excavation could begin once again in the quarry, the Hiregaard family would remain financially secure without him needing to raise taxes.

They were on their way back here to the heroes welcome that they deserved. He'd already ordered his chefs to prepare a truly excellent feast and his servants to arrange all possible festivities.

Sadly, as certain as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow morning, he was equally sure that the gaiety would conclude with the death of James Firecat and most likely Mirri Catwarrior as well.

The white haired devil would not be denied on the mater, for who could deny what a stunning beauty that woman was? He had done battle with his twisted reflection long enough to know how that brute would react to looks for a certainty.

He had tried all manner of things to keep his inner demon at bay, locking himself up here in the tallest tower of Castle Faerhaaven, binding himself with tight ropes or stout chains, the fiend never failed to make mockeries of his precautions and break free to wreak havoc none the less.

So today he was trying something different.

His eyes gazed at the bottle on the table before him, the potion maker he'd purchased it from said that anyone who drank it would sleep like the dead for a full week straight.

The guards had been instructed in how to carry out the festival without him, and to tell others that he had come down with a minor infectious malady.

With luck, while he slumbered the snowy haired fiend would do likewise, or if the fiend did rise he would be at least slowed by the powerful sedative he was about to ingest.

He had no hope that such an approach would work twice if it even worked once, the bare faced monster was brilliant and had a way with alchemy that doubtlessly blossomed from the countless hidden distilleries producing all manner of illegal substances that he oversaw.

If it was required of him the man who ran nearly all of Nova Vaasa's criminal enterprise on some level or another would doubtlessly find a way to contaminate an entire nation's supply of this potion when next he broke free.

None the less, he would do all within his power to see to it that those who had done so much for his family were not repaid for the service with suffering and brutality.

He removed the stopper and drank deeply.

He felt himself succumbing to sleep almost immediately but for as long as he could he watched the mirror wondering if he would see his hair change color in it.

No such transformation was taking place though, and as he drifted off into land of slumber he was still Tristen Hiregaard, duty from without brings honor from within!

XXX XXX XXX

“Hey, you the pale skinned pretty lady?” A gruff male voice whispered from the shadows.

“What if I am?” Mirri shot back.

One of the bog standard masculine “toughs” who could be found in just about any nation emerged from the shadows. Mirri was confident that if she couldn't turn his mind into jelly she could do the same to his spine instead.

Such was not to be today though....

“He wanted you to have this.” The man “explained” pressing a small package into Mirri's hands before fading away back into the shadows.

“Must be a gift from your adoring public. Let's see what's inside!” James chirped happily.

Mirri gazed down at the small package, then decided she didn't have a lot to loose so she did exactly that.

The first thing she found was the note.

“To the sweet pussy I wanted but couldn't have. Come back soon.... M.” Along with the note was an elegant and carefully crafted paper make mask designed to give its wearer the features of a snarling plains cat.

It was made with such detail that it even captured the beast's ears, and given the omission of white tufts the feline being depicted was clearly female.

“Guess you've got a secret admirer.” James reflected.

Mirri played with the mask for a few moments and then held it over her face.

“Well whoever sent it, I think it's looks purrrfect.” The vampire trilled, quite pleased with her newest accessory.


XXX XXX XXX

Dear Dame Renier

I happy to report that I now realize there are wonderful things in the world you can't explain, but that doesn't necessarily make them any less true. It just means that you have to choose to believe in them! So really when they happen, it is best not to get overly concerned about that kind of thing and roll with the punches. Like if you get told that you were temporarily possessed by the spirit of some divine feline deity for the sake of smiting one particular undead priestess who had transgressed against that lesser deity's mother who is a still more powerful goddess. Sorry, it has been kind of a weird month, even for me!

PS: I'm just glad that I have friends I can count on to put up with me no matter how weird I get. I guess in some ways I'm still having trouble growing into my paws just like you told me so many years ago!

PPS: I hope I didn't try to write you any messages while 'Maahes' (previously mentioned feline demigod I was possessed by) was influencing me. That would be embarrassing!

PPPS: Due to a shockingly favorable deal Tristen Hiregaard made with us about how we could take whatever relics we found so long as we managed to stop the evil that was slaying his quarry workers, we managed to make off with several wagons worth of relics dating back to the days that Nova Vaasan's (heck I bet it was before the Nova Vaasans as we call them today came to Nova Vaasa) worshiped Bastet. I know cat related stuff isn't very popular back home (not sure why, guess people begrudge the fact that you need a werecat to offer any real protection against a wererat) but I'm sure ancient cat stuff this ancient is so prestigious that you're bound to be able to think of some use for it! Just don't deface the stuff by say pulling the jewels out of the cat coffins, Bastet wouldn't like that.

Your Faithful Servant,
Longhair.


End Book.
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