“Kitty!” Junaki said suddenly, so that I realised that she was struggling against my hold on her, trying to pull me to a halt.
“What?” I said to her, mystified.
“We were making preparations for this! Why are you running?”
At that moment Abhat, Jurim and the others also caught up with us.
“She’s right,” Abhat said, “we must fight, or perish.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” I said to Junaki. But I was thinking fast over what she had said. We needed to fight. The sudden death of the nephew had struck me unawares and made me flee, but I was now in better control of my senses. “But we shall fight.”
“Give the swords to the villagers,” Abhat said to me. I rummaged in my bag and began to pull out the swords one by one. I handed them to the cats. They seemed keen to get hold on a sword.
“Do you think your friend has prepared the explosives?” I asked.
“He should have. I will get them right away.” Abhat suddenly whirled around to Jurim, who still looked shaken at his nephew’s death as though he didn’t believe what had happened. “See? Your ignorance has taken your nephew’s life. But all is not lost, let the lives of your villagers not be taken. Ask them to fight! Give them hope!”
Jurim suddenly seemed to snap out of the trance he had fallen into. His eyes went wide with determination and he nodded earnestly at Abhat.
“I shall tell them to fight,” he said. I handed Jurim a sword as well. A leader with a sword was more charismatic than one without it.
“Good,” Abhat said and patted the chieftain on the shoulder, “We shall win.”
“I think we should send cats to the gate,” Junaki said. She was right, we had come only a short distance from the gate and already I could see dogmen reaching it.
“I think we should send cats to the every part of the wall instead,” Abhat said. He pointed at a portion of the wall surrounding the village in the distance. A dogmen had just climbed over it and was now inside the village.
And then the worst thing happened.
It was as if the number of stars in the night sky suddenly increased, and these were fast moving stars— arrows with their heads lighted.
“Take cover!” Abhat yelled at the cats.
“Come here,” a female cat called from her home at us. Abhat, Junaki and I ran to the home, while Jurim and the other cats fled to other homes. Barely had we closed the door of the home that a rain of fire arrows struck the streets outside.
“What is happening?” one of the sons of the female cat asked. He had wild curious eyes, and he seemed to be enjoying the end-of-the-world feeling. I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and patted him on the head.
The female cat however had her face contorted with extreme emotions like she was going to cry.
“They are going to kill us all, aren’t they?”
“Not if we fight,” Abhat said.
“I am ready to fight,” the female cat said. She turned at her children, telling the older child to take care of the younger one.
“If you have any weapons use them,” Abhat said, “or use spells you know.”
The rain of arrows was over. And we went outside. The dogmen were coming into the village climbing the walls. They were also pouring through the unguarded gates. But the cats were engaging them in combat at several places, determined to protect their village. Some were using swords, while others were using spells. But the dogmen had bigger bodies and they were the ones winning against the unprepared cats.
“I need to bring the bombs,” Abhat said. “I hope I’ll see you two again.” He said to us and then he ran away.
I had a sudden idea. I turned to the female cat. I took out all the herbs that I had from my bag and handed them to her.
“Go around the village healing those that have been wounded,” I told her. “If possible give these herbs to others and tell them to heal the wounded as well.” The female cat nodded vigorously.
“I am going to kill some dogmen,” I said to Junaki, “you coming with me?”
“Is that a question you should ask?” Junaki grimaced, slicing air with her new sword.
Chapter 25
The two of us went towards a couple of dogmen who were giving a hard time to a brave young cat fighting them alone.
I had more stamina now than the last time I had fought dogmen thanks to levelling up. I landed a hard hit on the sword of one of the dogmen such that he fell down. The younger cat took advantage and sliced the dogman’s neck before he could get up. I turned to the other dogmen Junaki was battling. I threw my sword. The sword flew through air and became embedded onto the chest of the dogmen. Junaki buried her sword into the dogman’s stomach as well and that was the end of him. I removed my sword from the dogman’s chest.
I decided that it would be a good idea to collect the swords of the fallen dogmen as I could then give them to cats that didn’t have swords. I noted as I put the dogmen’s swords inside my bags that the swords of the dogmen were almost identical to the ones we ourselves carried. Abhat was right then, Tali the wizard had in fact sold swords to the dogmen.
Then suddenly out of nowhere I felt a sharp pain on the back of my shoulder.
You have been hit!
You receive -50 health!
I craned my head and saw an arrow sticking on the back of my shoulder. The dogmen who had shot the arrow was lodging a second arrow to his bow. Pain flaring up my shoulder, I disregarded the arrow sticking to it and ran towards the dogman. Seeing me charging, he fired the arrow, but he hadn’t aimed well and it whizzed past my ear. I reached him and before he could pull out his dagger, I landed multiple hits on his vital parts with my sword. He died.
With much difficulty, I pulled out the arrow from my back. I was bleeding and losing health continuously but at a slow rate. There was nothing I could do about it at the moment as I had given away the herbs and so I decided to ignore it for the best.
Wait, Junaki! I had almost forgotten about her. I turned around, she was nowhere to be seen. She was missing from the spot where we had together killed the two dogmen.
Looking for her, I missed the shadow of the dogman who had crept up to me. He punched me on the back with massive force. I lost my balance and fell face first onto the ground, losing more health in the process.
I made an abrupt move sideways and only barely missed being struck by his sword that he had swung at me. I yelled and clambered up to my feet. This dogman was stouter than the others I had killed. With a muscular hand he grabbed my neck and lifted me up. I had no other choice, I cast paralysis on him even though it drained me of considerable mana. I killed him and took his sword. I massaged my neck, it sure hurt.
My eyes began to search for Junaki again. I ran from one place to another, but I could see her nowhere. All around me the cats and the dogmen were fighting. Male cats and female cats fought the dogmen in equal numbers. Meanwhile the little kids were kept inside their homes with their older brothers and sisters. The dogmen were pouring over the walls continuously. How were we going to survive this? There was no way out.
For a moment, I wanted to give up. We were fighting a lost cause. I felt the arms of defeat embrace me. My heart sank. All the fighting around me seemed to go on in slow motion. I saw brave cats battling the dogmen with whatever they had only to be killed by the dogmen.
Then I shook my head. One is defeated only when they accept it. And I chose not to accept defeat. A sudden fury took over me. I took giant leaps in the direction of a dogman that had just cut the head of a male cat and was holding it high as though it were a trophy. I threw myself at the dogman. I didn’t use my sword this time. I used my teeth. I sank my teeth deep into the throat of the dogman and ripped a chunk of his throat out. The dogman fell on his knees and then his body dropped limp onto the ground.
Other dogman had come to attack me, but seeing me kill their comrade in the merciless fashion, they tarried. I had struck fear into their hearts. I took advantage of the
ir slow response, and within five minutes I had killed all except one of them. I beat up the last one. He was covered in bruises from my blows. I raised my sword, and he closed his eyes accepting his death. I didn’t kill him. Instead I cut off his tail, and he yelped.
I took away his weapons and kicked him, indicating him to flee. And he did. He fled like he had seen a devil. I tied the tail of the dog around my neck. I had shaken off the defeat that had tried to grip me and instead I had become a symbol of fear for the dogmen. I felt a very primitive urge inside me to kill and I quenched the urge by butchering one dogman after another. Seeing the tail of their fellow dogman hanging around my neck, they feared me. And this fear gave me the upper hand over them.
I had just finished slaying a dogman in a very brutal fashion that involved chopping his torso into two, when I heard a voice call me. I turned. It was Abhat. He was carrying a large sack filled with something.
“Kitty!” he said, and there was fear in his voice. My blade was drenched with blood and so was my fur. I reckoned I was striking fear into the hearts of dogmen and cats alike although the cats had no reason to be afraid of me. “Kitty, is that you?” Abhat said, approaching me with some hesitation.
“It is,” I said, and I noted the grim tone that I had acquired. My voice felt like that of a stranger’s to myself.
“I got the bombs,” Abhat said. He paused, and then he blurted, “Damn, Kitty, you are all covered in blood.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “little of that is mine.”
“And what is that you are wearing around your neck?”
“A dogman’s tail,” I said, “don’t keep asking me irrelevant questions,” I said and I was surprised that I sounded stern, “tell me what I need to do with the bombs.”
“Can you help me distribute them among the villagers?”
I thought about it for a while.
“I would rather use them myself,” I found myself speaking. “Give me half of the bombs.”
Abhat’s eyes widened a bit. But without any question, he immediately began to take out bombs from his sack. I filled them up in my bag. He gave me at least a hundred bombs. I was going to kill all the dogmen I could lay my eyes upon.
“Have you seen Junaki?” I asked.
Abhat nodded with some unease.
“Yes, she seems to have received a wound of considerable size on her stomach. She is being treated.”
Hearing those words was like a knife piercing into my soul.
“Take me to her,” I said.
I followed Abhat through the village streets. Fighting continued all around us, but I couldn’t help but note that whenever a dogman saw me he would momentarily pause. The cats would take advantage of the distraction and kill the dogman. Wearing the dogman’s tail around my neck had been a crude idea concocted by the darker side of my mind. But it was working, and that was all that mattered.
Eventually we reached a home around which not much fighting was going on. I entered it with Abhat. The sight that I saw made my eyes swell with tears. Junaki lay on a bed, a big would on the side of her stomach. I focussed at her and saw that she barely had any health left. Some female cats were tending to her, applying medicines on the wound, but it barely seemed to help.
Junaki lifted a paw towards me when she recognised me through my attire of blood and dogman tail.
“Kitty,” she said. I knew at that moment that Junaki was going to die. I couldn’t bear it at all. I went out of the house. My quest to regain my memory was going to cost Junaki her life. My heart pounded loud in my chest. In the distance I saw more and more dogmen climbing the walls. Fresh anger flared within me, plus I already had Junaki’s wound raw in my mind’s eye.
I ran away from the home in which Junaki was being kept. I ran towards the walls. I opened my bag and began throwing the bombs. Wherever they landed, the ground would explode and dogmen would fly to the air already dead.
I went around the periphery of the village thus throwing bombs at dogmen climbing over the walls. In the process, I did blow up parts of the wall without wanting to. But dogmen were dying and it was all that mattered. I had used up about half the bombs and I could hear bombs going off in the interior of the village too, which meant that Abhat had given the remaining bombs to the other villagers and they were using it to kill the dogmen.
I thought of how earlier I had almost felt like the village would succumb to the terror of the dogmen, but now it seemed that it was the dogmen who would suffer and never dare to attack Duarga again.
Chapter 26
Through one of the holes in the wall that I had created myself, I saw torches gleaming in the forest in the distance that lay on the other side of the wall. I realised that the dogmen were probably coming from that camp in groups. If I could use the remaining bombs on their camp then I would be able to wipe out the dogmen altogether or at least kill a huge number of the vile beings.
I raced towards the hole in the wall. Through it I emerged outside the village boundaries. A dogmen who had been coming towards the wall ran at me. He was too close to use a bomb and I pulled out my sword. Once again when he realised that I was wearing the tail of a dogmen he stopped short. I used the opportunity and in a minute his corpse lay on the ground. I had buried my sword into his head through his eye. I pulled out the sword now. Blood, brains and eye came out sticking to my sword. I had to wipe it on a tree.
I approached the camp of the dogmen. I saw that some of the dogmen that had already fought with the cats and survived were returning to the camp to take a break from the killing.
I opened my bag. I would need to keep throwing the bombs continuously. One good thing about the bombs was that you needn’t light them. They would just burst terrifically the moment they were thrown and hit anything. I thanked Abhat’s friend inwardly. Whatever mechanism he had used to make the bombs was a good one.
I took in a breath. Junaki’s pale face still hung in my mind’s eye and I had to close my eyes for a moment to calm myself. The camp was at a considerable distance and I needed to be calm to throw the bombs on target.
I began to throw the bombs. The dogmen at the camp were stricken with fear as blasts of fire occurred all around them, killing them, injuring them. I kept throwing the bombs until the camp was devastated and barely anyone there was still on his feet. I sprinted to the camp. If anybody was alive, I would kill them with my sword. There were corpses littered all around the place. The dogmen that were still alive and were moaning, I put a swift end to their lives with my blade.
And then I saw what was a pure surprise to me. Not far from the camp I had destroyed was another camp. The dogmen there hadn’t lit any torches and so I had missed them completely! Bloody cunning they were, eh?
I spotted some of the dogmen in the camp pointing at me. Standing amidst the corpses of their comrades, bathed in blood and wearing a dogman tail around my neck, I must have looked quite grotesque. The dogmen were panicking. However, this time instead of fleeing from me, their panic made them come towards me. Perhaps they had realised that the only way they had any chance of survival was by killing me. I checked my bag. I realised the bag was quite empty of bombs.
Not a problem.
I had a plan in my mind. As the scores of dogmen approached me and formed a circle around me, I found myself chuckling. So far I had made only decisions that I thought I would have taken in my previous life to regain my memory. The decision that I was going to take now I also betted I would have taken in my previous life had I been faced with a similar situation. If it worked and I survived, then well… I would regain my memory. If what I was going to do next didn’t work out and I died… well, I hoped when I respawned I would meet Junaki again. She was a fine girl, too bad she was going to die tonight.
The dogmen closed in on me. Some were snarling, but in the faces of most there was pure fear of me. Perhaps they realised that they were going to die tonight, regardless of whether I died.
Once the dogmen had come close enough, I stretched my
arms wide. I let my sword fall from my hand. I deactivated the Human Hands spell. I sighed. One of the dogmen raised his sword to strike me. I closed my eyes.
“Activate Blast,” I thought.
As the wave of power left me, I felt week in my knees. I fell to the ground. I opened my eyes to see through the blur that none of the dogmen who had previously surrounded me were alive. I smiled as my vision kept getting more and more blurry.
You have been injured!
You receive -150 health
I only had three health left in me and I was sure that my health would soon turn zero. Everything went black as I slumped onto the ground.
***
When my eyes opened, I found myself in a big room lying on a large bed.
I tried to remember what had happened to me before I had lost consciousness. I could remember everything, so I reckoned I hadn’t died. The blast spell… the scores of dogmen I had killed. Besides, if I died, I would respawn on the back of the turtle Goruk, wouldn’t I?
There was a big window in the room, and beyond it there was a garden. A light breeze blew in, I savoured the feel of the breeze on my fur. I looked down at my body. Someone had washed me, and none of the blood stains remained. At a few places where I had been struck by swords of the dogmen, somebody had put medicinal pastes. The dogman tail that I had worn to strike fear was also absent from my neck.
I checked my stats. I saw that my health was at 50% and so was my stamina. I recalled I had had only three health left before I had blacked out.
There was a sound at the door and presently a female cat entered the room. She was carrying what looked like more medicinal pastes on a tray. When she saw that I was conscious, her eyes bulged. She hurriedly went out of the room.
In a few seconds many cats rushed into the room. Among them were Abhat, Herim, Jurim the chieftain and… Junaki.
Catheroes Page 14