Catgirl System

When Chora and I tried spelling another message on the board, it didn’t move. Did that mean it was time for me to go?

Huh? Well, did it, punk?

Error: Connection to Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata has been disconnected.

Wh-whuh? You mean permanently?

Error: Referent of “you” unknown.

I tried again with some more delicate, refined wordage.

sysadmin Connection Status: Disconnected
Attempting to reconnect in 20 seconds…

Uh, well…“disconnected” didn’t mean “broken beyond repair.”

Might as well try and get used to my thoughts being more or less on my own. That’d been the usual anyway.

I went over my options. Couldn’t I rest here in the cabin awhile? The doors seemed to be open to me anytime, after all, and Chora said she’d fight for me (with a devotion which was still kind of terrifying). Plus, they had food that was already made, ripe for the eating! They had warmth and toys! Or figurines, they might call them. Collectors’ items? Hopefully not including the ottoman I’d destroyed (whoops)?

And while I was here, I could quietly dump Reed’s quilt back in her room! Then I could avoid the awkward confrontation…

…but by the time that possibility occurred to me, I’d already gone from the doorstep to the dirt.

I was on my way to another adventure. So much was on my revved-up mind that when it came to remembering this inherited thing of deep sentimental value, I just skipped the track, going straight to my Experience-gaining exploration goals.

When I wheeled around to turn back, my vision was filled with Chora’s shoes.

“Safe travels,” Chora said with a small, reverent nod. “I hope to see you again soon, and I’ll be ready with your cantrip. O-oh, and please don’t leave without this…”

The way she squinted with those last words, I could tell she was kicking herself for not doing this part sooner. Chora reached down to her foot, pulled the cloak up a bit, and revealed an anklet of sorts. Several tiny bands of metal pearls held it in place. With almost a minute of delicate and surprisingly complicated effort, Chora unwound these chains, revealing a clasp that seemed to materialize before my eyes—and almost certainly had done just that.

Once it was in her palm, I could get a good look at it: a needle-thin metal ring, its rim studded with dozens of tiny crystals. The crystals were subtly milky, green and yellow and orange and luminous.

Shaking off the chains of pearls like they were useless after all, pushing them backward with a heel, she kneeled and presented the ring to me.

“Would you like this looped through one of the chains so you can wear it?” she asked.

…I couldn’t really answer that without knowing what it even did, or was. So I said nothing, just staring at the gems. I realized now that they were marbled, thunderstruck by trails of white.

Chora began to explain. “This is a very valuable cantrip. A single-use personal teleportation cantrip. If you activate it, it’ll call on another one embedded in my flesh, bringing me to you. And I will drop everything and help you.”

My stomach dropped. The moment she said “embedded in my flesh,” her seriousness climbed to a new height.

I wasn’t prepared to bear this kind of responsibility, was I? Surely in her eyes, she was the one carrying the burden by passing on this rare or pricey artifact. Heck, she no doubt saw this sacrifice as her duty and, in a twisted devotional way, a “pleasure.”

But…I was just a cat, and I didn’t know her. If she died because I asked her to come over and dig me out of a pit, but instead she fell in the pit and died…then I’d have innocent, kindly blood on my hands.

I had killed before, but I’d never killed someone who actually liked me.

Still, I gingerly touched the ring with my nose, touched it with my paw. It felt cool against my skin.

I looked up at Chora, a little imploringly. I wanted to ask her, Are you sure you need to do this?

But she made as little reply now as I’d made to her earlier question.

Alright, have it your way. I’d take the ring, I just would expect to never, ever use it. I might actually prefer dying a third time to subjecting her to that kind of suffering and loss.

It seemed the silence was beginning to get awkward for her. “If you’re thinking of wearing this ring around your leg or ankle, that might be a tough fit, but there’s nothing butter and baby oil can’t do—”

I just poofed it into my Inventory.

“Oh…I forgot you could do that.”

“Mrrah,” I said triumphantly.

“If it works for you, spirit, it works for me,” Chora said, managing a smile as she rose again. “So long, then.”

The door closed, and gently this time.

For a moment I stood gazing at the cabin, feeling a wave of warmth. Suddenly I wanted to know when Reed and that other girl were coming back—because I wanted to know this place when it was full and alive with chatter, with big meals and a raging fire. Or was it a quieter home, with separate dinners in separate rooms, everyone silent like Chora was when she was reading?

Well, no chance of finding out today. The sun was shining brilliant-white, and the world awaited. Prematurely ending my run to the south had left a bitter frustration in my mouth; I didn’t wanna start it again, or even look in that cardinal direction, anytime soon.

Instead, I double-checked my Stats…

HP: 100% (230/230)
SP: 92% (170/185)

…my Inventory…

Inventory: 4/5

Pink Lotus Flower

Reed’s Quit

Heidschi’s Letter

Chora’s Crystal Ring
A single-use cantrip. Calls Chora with a request to summon.

(Chora really could literally teleport to my side if I used that ring? Amazing.)

…and headed out.

Not the same way I’d come, and not with any great speed.

I was just going to take it nice and easy for a while. How long of a while? Didn’t know. Just long enough to calm down and get my bearings again.

And there was no chance I was going right back to the lair of those who’d once killed me, so, yeah, I was going eastward.

***

The Rabbitfoot Plains were just like I remembered them, except that traces of the recent rain were here in puddles and dripping boughs, and a bolt of lightning had knocked a big pine tree dead. A V of geese crossed the sky, flying overhead and away. Slow breezes lapped against the hills.

The fields themselves suggested a certain pace of life. A certain way of going about things. A visitor might amble around, chase rabbits and dragonflies in a restful kind of…

Nah, I actually felt more restless than ever.

My mind wasn’t letting me enter some zen state of wandering. I couldn’t even convince myself to jump into the zen of hunting. I sought the clarity of a simpler, more well-defined goal. So I was going to run. Run and find more of the Map.

The Kaug Mountains Chora had mentioned, those must’ve been the absurdly pointy things I’d glimpsed. Those things due south. You know what the opposite of south is? North.

I checked the sun against the shadows, just to make doubly quadruply sure that I was headed in the right direction. Then I sped on, running full tilt, feeling like a ship in mighty currents. The bark of a gallant creature, a wild dog or bear, crossed my path. I didn’t stop. I stayed fearless and focused.

The farther I ran, the more the land transformed. Gradually. Splashes of new color started appearing in the grass—golden poppies, each bunch standing alone like a dropped jack. Then more, strange jumbles going whizzing past my marathon run. Orange, deep blue, magenta, black, sunflowers, daisies, floppy propellery things. Very tall, sea-green dandelions that turned out to be trees.

Eventually, when I was already knee-deep in a clump of blooms, I had to slow down and look. That was because the scent was overpowering: floral with notes of honey and musk. And at some point the breezes had stopped. The world was hot, and the heat made the flower scents radiate.

There was something else good in the air too…and somewhere I couldn’t yet see.

But I could stick my nose up and take a good long sniff.

Berries?

Wow. I must’ve eaten only two hours ago, yet now my stomach was growling. Was this the power of dessert?

I could nearly imagine how it tasted already. And I knew already that it was sweeter than anything I’d ever liked, y-yet…I wanted it! The tart edge of a fine wine! The refined delicacy of petals in tea!

My sense of smell was good enough to make my mouth water, but not to tell me where the food was. Now to rely on my eyes.

Explosions of clashing colors—of floral hues that could only be found together in a fantasy world, I guessed—overwhelmed the plains. Bare grass was outnumbered. Trees and lumps were about as frequent as before, with the occasional huge green dandelion.

And maybe those trees—the new ones, the ones I hadn’t even recognized as trees—had the fruit.

I swiveled my head to target one in particular about thirty meters away. I wasn’t sure whether that tree was the sole source of the fruit smell or not, since the smell was just that strong, and that omnipresent. But that one tree was without a doubt the heart of it. Then I scanned the land and air around it, watching for moving shapes, vermin. Was anyone else after what I wanted? Well, how could they not be? Those berries smelled so good. The smell made me imagine a rich, full, bittersweet flavor, perfectly ripe in the fruit.

On second thought, watching other animals eat it was exactly what I should have wanted to see. I didn’t wanna be eating poison fruit, after all.

I saw a couple of little grey birds flitting toward the sea-green tree, through that perfectly spherical wall of leaves. Once inside, they disappeared behind their leafy curtain. My cue to get closer.

I got low in the bluish-brown flower petals, just in case I needed the element of surprise, and stalked closer. My Speed was the slightest notch slower than I expected—the tip-off that despite hiding, I was being watched. (It hit me that my Stealth ability worked almost like an automatic, extrasensory impulse—the way your muscles tense when you know you’ve been caught. Except with one hundred percent accuracy.)

Someone was watching me. But who? The answer was buzzing directly into my left ear.

I flinched away, and would’ve yelped too if I hadn’t stopped my throat just in time. It wasn’t some friendly bulbous stingerless bee; it was a spindly wasp almost twice the size of the flower it was pollinating. And its carapace was black with yellow and red streaks—not rings around the body, but head-to-stinger racing stripes.

I prided myself on my Intelligence Stat, just as Sierra intended, so I didn’t lurch forward and eat the wasp. Instead, I heeded its warning when it buzzed again and waved its butt threateningly. I stalked on.

Closer to the trunk of the dandelion tree, I saw a few burrows, as well as bunches of flowers torn out by the roots. What was going on there? Were some clever rabbits trying to hoard food for the winter? Was that even a viable strategy?

Well, finding out wasn’t my main goal. I paid more attention to all the deep-fuchsia splatters of berries and juice that were also clustered around this trunk.

The scent was so thick now that it filled my head. Now I could say for sure that the fruit was alcoholic. That or narcotic, or sleep-inducing, or something else that struck me right now as unusually pleasant. Or maybe it was magic! I supposed that could explain why it simply didn’t exist on Earth. ‘Cept there didn’t seem to be anything outwardly magical about the weird black-and-orange birch trees that also grew on Vencia, so maybe that theory was flawed.

Okay, if I wanted to test that theory, it’d be wise not to try eating, licking, or even touching the fruits until I got a better handle on them. If I could get a bit closer to the dandelion tree, I’d have the perfect vantage point from which to either study the birds or get defecated on by the birds.

Luckily, there seemed to be enough space between the dropped berries for me to tiptoe through.

…A suspicion prodded my mind.

I lifted a paw and turned it over.

The mark of the juice was dull and dry, but a mark nonetheless. I’d already stepped in it…and if the slight throb in the back of my head was any indication, its effects were seeping through my skin.

I was…drunk?

Oh no. Please, universe, don’t follow up one horrible death with a second, even less smart one.