Then, she sprung up into the air like a rocket, and came back down again. She dived right into a hole in the ground. A rabbit hole…
The ground shook, and a white rabbit came out and gazed blankly ahead. I didn’t even care where it had come from. I crouched down and readied myself. It twitched its ears and sniffed at the air, but it didn’t seem to notice me stalking through the long grass.
I curled up my hind legs, then I pounced forwards. It tried to run away at the last minute. But it was too late. I kept it pinned with my claws, and I don’t know what happened next. I remember wild thoughts going around my mind. I saw red, I tasted iron on my tongue, and my nostrils filled with the scent of something sweet and, in retrospect, sickly. I tore into the flesh with claws and teeth, and the grass bowed around me as a strong and icy wind rolled through the vale. Clouds boiled in the sky, thunder booming out of them. Soon, the fields became sodden with virgin rain.
I woke up from my trance feeling strong, satisfied, a powerful beast of the wild. My ancestors, at that moment, must have stirred in their graves.
The rain had stopped by that point. Beneath me was a carcass, almost completely stripped of flesh. Flies buzzed around it and vultures wheeled overhead. But they wouldn’t dare come down until this beast of the wild, the great Bengal of South Wales, had abandoned his feast.
I gave them permission by turning away from the carcass and walking through the wild grass. “That’s it, Dragoncat,” Astravar said in my head, and I wanted him to be there. “This is truly what it means to be wild and free. Now come, and we shall explore the world together.”
I didn’t feel afraid. Nor did I feel ashamed to have abandoned my friends and my dragon back at the academy. After all, humans were worthless creatures who tried to exploit cats like me for their own benefit. But what they never realised was that it was actually the cats that exploited them.
I felt truly complete, as if I was pursuing my destiny as a hidden force inside me pulled me onwards. It was as if there was something solid in my head, right in front of my nose that was acting as a compass. It told me exactly where I needed to go, and I only needed to follow it.
I crossed over into a swampland where a purple gas rose from the reedy plants and the water. There was something about this that was absolutely intoxicating. This was where a wild Bengal truly belonged.
But all this while, the world was gaining clarity, as if I was just emerging from an incredibly vivid dream.
31
Scorpions and Spiders
The intoxication wore off eventually as I delved deeper into the Wastelands, and a sinking realisation came over me that I shouldn’t have gone so far. I wanted to turn around and go back. But that was the thing, I’d lost that directional compass at the front of my nose and I really didn’t remember the way I’d come.
What a fool I’d been. How had I allowed myself to get tricked like this? But Astravar had used my mind to get me here. He was leading me into a trap which I was sure I’d spring any moment now, and without knowing exactly where the tripwire might be, I had no chance of escape. I should have listened to Salanraja. I should have listened to the Council. But instead, I just had to go around doing things my own way.
Astravar had stopped talking in my head by that point, and so I was completely alone as I continually cursed myself for my stupidity. The purple gas didn’t just rise out of the ground, but it seemed to follow me. It twisted into shapes as I went, almost as if it had magic inside it. Every so often, I’d get the creepy sensation of something watching me, and then I swear I would turn around and see something humanoid dissolve into the mist.
After a moment, I could hear the sounds of skittering feet and then a chittering that sounded like magpies cackling at ten times their normal speed and volume. I spun around in circles until I was dizzy, trying to identify the source of the sound. But the purple mist was getting denser all around me, and I could see nothing.
More chittering came out of the murk, as if the sound had formed a cloud itself. When I thought I could hear it coming from one direction, another sound would emerge behind me. It’s as if there were evil creatures in the mist that wanted to toy with me. They wanted to see how much they could agitate poor Ben.
That was when I saw the first of them. A bulky arthropod armoured with interlaced plates of slimy chitin, and a tail that towered up as high as a telephone pole. A massive purple bulb teetered at the top of the tail, with a long black sting shooting out of the front of it. The creature had two fat pincers on either side of it, with sharp blades on them, making them look like incredibly sharp scissors. Although I couldn’t see any eyeballs within the creature’s narrow jet-black eyes to show where it was looking, I knew it had its gaze affixed on me.
It sped forwards on its long spiny legs. I didn’t even think about it. I darted away before it could plunge its sting into me. It hissed, and I ran as far towards the horizon as I could, not caring anymore where I was going.
But another of these creatures blocked my path. I turned to be again blocked by another, then another. They seemed to be crowding around from all directions, the ethereal purple mist swirling around them as if it belonged to them.
“You know,” Astravar said in my head. “These were such fun to conjure. In my land, you call them serkets. But oh, how I’ve studied your world from afar. Once upon a time there, I believe a desert princess summoned one, and the people worshipped it as a god. Alas now, all you have on your planet is measly little scorpions. You are used to a world that’s so tame.”
The serkets continued to close in around me, their massive stings wavering in the air. I tried to look for a gap through them. I might have been able to make it past one, but many more were closing in from behind the front row. The monsters continued to shuffle around until they had me surrounded in a horseshoe formation, opening at a massive crag that rose high into the sky. There was nowhere to go but a cave mouth, shrouded in complete darkness.
I backed into this darkness, shivering at a sudden wave of cold washing over me. The serkets continued to chitter and snap their pincers, ever more unnerving as I couldn’t see them now.
It was so dark in the cave that I couldn’t navigate by sight. But I had my sense of smell, and I had my whiskers to detect the variations in the air currents. I didn’t want to run as the ground was slippery. But I kept my ears attuned to the serkets behind me, making sure they kept their distance.
The cold air flowed through the cave, and I knew there must be an exit somewhere further in. But not a sliver of light came from within. I heard bats squealing away, and I wondered if some of them were those horrible vampire bats that the Savannah cats had told me about. Those things, they said, could tear off your flesh in your sleep. They weren’t as scary as the hippopotamus but terrifying all the same.
Suddenly, something sticky brushed against my nose. Yeuch, a cobweb. There would have to be spiders in here. I’d been bitten by a wolf spider once, and it hurt so much I thought I was going to die.
I turned around, considering backing back into the serkets. But I could hear them inside the cave now, and I didn’t fancy my chances of ducking away from their stings in the dark.
I swiped the cobwebs away with my paw and continued onwards. But the stickiness got worse and worse, and before I knew it, I couldn’t move forwards. I struggled in the dark, trying to claw away the cobwebs, but I ended up getting further entangled. Soon, I found myself half suspended off the ground, and I couldn’t budge a muscle.
I mewled, and I groaned, as I waited for the horrible sting of a serket to pierce my flesh. Those things looked like they’d have so much venom inside them, they’d kill me in an instant. I just hoped it would be painless. There was no point struggling anymore. This was finally my time to die.
Then, a light came on, green and witchlike. It wasn’t coming from a crystal, or a torch, or an oil lamp, or anything like that. It belonged to the body of something massive and swollen. The light emanated out of a creature’s abdom
en, which was even bigger than each of the serkets that had now crowded around as if part of a religious congregation. This glowing belly belonged to a spider with eight hairy legs as big as tree trunks, eight eyes that looked like polished stones, and two raised fangs which dripped with a glowing green substance.
This wasn’t a wolf spider. This was the biggest spider I’d ever seen. It smelled of all the things that nature shouldn’t smell of – like a dustbin full of food that had been left alone in the heat for months.
“You really were a disappointment to me, Dragoncat,” Astravar said in my mind. “I thought you might even put up a small fight. But don’t worry, my pets will strip the flesh off you and then we’ll reanimate you in a new form. You shall soon become the creature you were meant to be. Wild, and undead, and so powerful that you won’t even need a soul.”
I thought the spider was going to tear me apart with one of those massive fangs. But instead, it crawled a little along the web, and then it spat some venom in my face. It burned so much that I soon lost consciousness.
32
Cocooned
I woke up cocooned in spider’s silk. My skin felt numb, and I wondered if it was even there. I couldn’t feel any sensation in my whiskers, I couldn’t smell, I couldn’t taste. All I could see was the ground far below me now, lit by the hideous green light from the spider sitting in its web, and the serkets skittering around below it.
The web stretched out in all directions, emanating a slight green, spooky glow. I couldn’t see the cocoon I was in, as I couldn’t move my head, but I imagined it looked much the same. This stuff was probably eating me alive. Tenderising my skin, perhaps so I’d be tastier for the serkets and the spiders when they decided to feast.
I wanted to shudder, but I couldn’t even do that. I knew only one thing, that I was completely and utterly doomed.
I’d been stupid, and I deserved it.
As if the spider had sensed that I’d awoken, it climbed up the web towards me, and then regarded me with its ugly eyes. I could smell something terrible on its breath, and if I could have turned my head away, I would have. But instead, I could only feel sick. But I couldn’t even move my diaphragm to throw up.
The spider edged closer to me, and then it let out a shriek, and it raised one of its fangs. I didn’t even close my eyes, waiting for the final moment of death to come.
Suddenly, there came a bright blue flash followed by an even more intense white light. I didn’t see it directly, only the reflection off the serkets and the spiders. Below me, the serkets screeched out as another orange light filled the cavern. A pleasant warmth arose from somewhere, followed by a loud and bellowing roar.
“Gracious demons, it’s a good job we’re bonded, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a chance of finding you.” I couldn’t tell you how glad I was to hear Salanraja’s voice inside my head. But I was so delirious that I couldn’t even put words to thought. Whiskers, I wasn’t even sure if what I saw was real, or just some hallucination caused by the spider’s poison.
Another blue light streamed through the cavern, this time attached to some kind of glowing ball. This hit me, or at least it hit the cocoon I was entangled in. An intense wave of cold spasmed down my body, as if someone had just thrown me into a bucket of icy water.
Well, it certainly woke me up. “I’m freezing,” I said back to Salanraja.
“Good,” Salanraja said. “You deserve a little suffering after what you pulled. You know, when I finally woke, I couldn’t reach you for a long time. There was this voice in your head, mumbling something about rabbits over and over again. Then when you started talking about giant scorpions and spiders, I’d pretty much worked out where you’d gone. I don’t know if I can forgive you for this, Bengie…”
“Salanraja…”
But she said nothing else. Instead, another bright orange light came from the entrance, followed by a crackling sound. Then, I heard the frozen web I was in begin to crack. I couldn’t feel the venom on my body and leaching into my blood anymore. Instead, I felt strangely refreshed.
The serkets had now turned to face the entrance, gathering in one closely knit crowd. This wasn’t the smartest idea, because a wide flame reached out right into the cavern. The walls became laced with terrifying screeches, and the serkets skittered about randomly, many of them turning on their backs with their legs kicking up into the air. Initiate Rine appeared at the entrance, and he shot out icicles from his staff at some serkets that remained standing. The momentum sent them rolling across the ground as they curled up in balls. Rine sent more icicles after them, pinning them against the wall.
Another human figure then entered the cave but, before I could see who it was, he reached up with his staff and let out these brilliant flashes of light. Yellow and white streaks of lightning shot out from his crystal, connecting one adjacent serket to the next.
If Initiate Rine was powerful, this man was a master. I waited for the light to subside and I only just made out the wrinkles on the familiar face before the cocoon underneath me shattered to pieces.
I hit the ground with a thud, sending up splashes of water from a stream at the bottom of the cave. I rolled over, forgetting that my muscles were still weak and full of poison. I shook off the water in my fur, and then I looked back towards the cave mouth.
Aleam stood there hunched over his staff. He looked left and right across the cavern, assessing the state of a crowd of dying serkets. Many of them had stopped and were motionless. Others still moved their legs, but they did so very slowly, as if on the verge of death.
There came this high-pitched noise like a circular saw grating against metal. A massive shape thudded down in front of me, separating me from Aleam. I was staring right at the massive terrible eyes of that spider, and its huge dripping fangs.
It raised its fangs and charged, shooting a strand of web at me as it did so, as if it was that silly man in the tight red costume the little one liked to watch on TV back in South Wales. I ducked before the web could hit me in the face, and then I dodged under its fangs, trying not to touch that dripping venom.
The spider turned around and reared up on four of its hind legs, as it tried to swipe at me with the front four. I dodged them, hoping that either Rine and Aleam would hurry and work some of their magic on this beast. But I then realised that I might not have that much time. I had to try to take it down by myself.
The spider raised another of its fangs high in the air again, and I waited for the right moment. Just as it came down towards me, I rolled out of the way, and then jumped onto the spider’s head. I sprinted across the creature’s back, as it screamed and tossed and turned, trying to throw me off. But after those flights Salanraja had taken me on, trying to stay steady on this spider rodeo was nothing in comparison.
That was when I spotted a crystal nestled between two plates at the peak of the spider’s bulbous back. It glowed green, much as the rest of the abdomen.
The spider shuddered like an earthquake, sending me tumbling back down its back again. I rolled as if falling down a hill, and I only just caught myself on the chitin of one of the spider’s hairy legs. It lifted another leg in front of me and tried to spear me with the single claw at the end of it. But I twisted in the air, and then I pulled myself back onto the back. I ran towards the crystal.
I tried to swipe it out of its socket, but it was a lot harder to dislodge than the crystals in the golem and the Manipulator had been. As the spider was screeched and wriggled underneath me, I suddenly realised that I was backing me into one of its webs.
I had another go with my claw again, trying to get underneath the green crystal. It was wedged between two thick layers of chitin that were pressing against each other like a vice. I tried once more, then I swallowed my fears about swallowing this venom and clasped my teeth around it.
Just as I felt the stickiness of the web against my back, I managed to pry out the crystal. I felt the bitter, rancid taste of spider venom on my tongue, and some wetness trickled do
wn my throat. At the same time, there came a bubbling sound from beneath me, and the venom on the spider’s skin boiled as if it were lava. This happened for a few seconds, before the spider exploded, throwing me up into the air together with spatters of green, yucky goo. I yowled out as I hit the wall.
Before I could even turn towards my friends, I was greeted by a grating chittering noise from behind. I could sense the serket right behind me, and I turned to look at its black and lifeless eyes. It had me cornered within a slimy and cold alcove. I tried to scramble up the walls of it, but they were too slippery. There was absolutely no escape.
The serket charged and lunged its stinger forwards. I closed my eyes and prepared to die. What irony – especially right after I’d killed that massive spider.
“Oh no you don’t,” Ta’ra said from somewhere nearby. The serket hissed, then turned to engage her. It lunged downwards with its sting, but Ta’ra ducked out of the way, shrinking in size as she did. She led the serket away for a moment, then she turned on the charging beast and grew again, until she was three times the size of the arthropod.
Whiskers, she was larger than a lion at this point. She was as large, in fact, as a dragon. The scorpion stuck its sting into her paw, but she looked down at it and yawned. “Is that all you’ve got, you stupid critter?”
With her other paw, she swiped underneath the serket and knocked it flat on its back. There was something glowing red on its underbelly – another crystal. “You might as well do the honours, Ben,” she said. “But be quick, we haven’t got all day.”
I mewled, and then I ran over. Or more, I should say, I hobbled over. I was still incredibly weak with whiskers knows what chemicals I had inside me. I swiped at the red crystal with my claws. The serket had an unusually soft underbelly, and I managed to knock the crystal away with ease.
A Cat's Guide to Bonding with Dragons Page 14