Catheroes

by A. J. Chaudhury

  “It’s him! It’s him!” she cried in her joy.

  A message popped up in my vision.

  Quest completed!

  You have found the heart of the statue!

  You receive 100% of your memory!

  Another notification appeared in my vision.

  New quest unlocked!

  Take the heart to Rupasur.

  Rewards: You save the villagers of Duarga from Rupasur’s wrath & you level up.

  While I accepted the second quest, I was filled with confusion, for no memory had come to me. I still didn’t know who I was in my previous life.

  “Damn you, Riya,” the long-necked guard said. He stepped forward and grabbed Riya’s arm, making her stop dancing. “Tell us who he is! Why are you dancing?”

  Riya wrenched her arm free from the guard’s hold.

  “It’s him, you idiot! It’s Kitty, lord of entire Abhaya!”

  The guards all dropped to their knees. I raised an uneasy brow. Lord of Abhaya?

  “He must be shown the monolith!” Riya said. And without further ado, she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the town through the gate. The guards didn’t say a word. They looked wonder struck.

  Through the streets of the town she almost dragged me. She was rather strong though she looked feeble. Everywhere she pulled me along, she kept shouting,

  “Lord Kitty has returned! Lord Kitty has returned!”

  And all cats would fall to their knees, struck with wonder. Even the children were forced by their parents to kneel down. I meanwhile had absolutely no idea of what was going on.

  Finally we reached the town square. There was a big monolith there, an inscription carved onto it.

  Riya let go off me and bowed.

  “Do read it, my lord,” she said.

  I began reading the monolith. By the time I finished, all the memories of my previous life came flooding to my mind, so that my eyes brimmed with tears. I knew every single detail of my previous life now.

  The following was what was written on the monolith:

  Kitty, you asked this monolith to be erected yourself. Recall your purpose in this world. The only reason you will be reading this is if you died and respawned and lost a considerable amount of your memory. Remember that you are the lord of entire Abhaya, the collection of towns, villages and cities over which you are the supreme ruler. You achieved this position by sheer hard work, and due to the blessings of your subjects. But you have another thing to do in this world. To jog your memory, I hope the following word helps: Master.

  I gaped. The one single purpose I had come to this world was to save my master. I recalled the person I had seen in the orb. It had been my master, all tied up in ropes. The same master who had saved me from dying by taking me to his home.

  There had been a fight between my master and his assistant over some argument regarding the portal. The portal from our world to Arun. The lake had been the portal.

  After falling into the lake, I had woken up in complete blackness and then strange glowing shapes had appeared in front of me. I knew those shapes were words, but I didn’t know how to read them. And then suddenly, I had found myself in a glade atop a turtle. The turtle, Goruk, had told me I had yet to create my character in the world of Arun. But to do that I must first acquire reading skills. And then I had found myself back in the void of blackness. The turtle’s voice had then told me that it was a quest, and if I completed it, I would be able to read the letters, which were important if I wanted to create my character. The quest involved catching a rat. A giant one, twice as big as myself. I had surprised myself by catching and killing it. The quest thus completed, I could suddenly read the weird shapes and find meaning in them. I created my character. Interestingly, cats were among the more popular races in the world of Arun. I gladly selected the cat race, for I was already a cat in the real world.

  I named my character after my own name, for it was the name given to me by my dear master. Once that was done, Goruk, allowed me to live and play in the world of Arun. I began to complete more quests, and also met other people in the world. I began to make friends. I levelled up, becoming more and more powerful. Eventually, I found myself being the rule of a village. Then a town came under my rule as well, and then a city. My rule kept extending. But all the while, I never forgot my main purpose: To find my master. It was some time before I realised that he was being held captive by his assistant who had helped him create the portal to Arun. The assistant had somehow become a powerful person in the world of Arun, and he had control of the red dogmen. A race that was in constant dispute with the race of cats, and also with dogmen of other colour.

  But I didn’t know the location where my master was being kept. One of my friends, Meow, told me that he had come to know the location where my master was being kept. I went with him to the place. I trusted him. It was my mistake, for Meow betrayed me. I died.

  Thankfully, I had earlier erected monoliths in all the towns, cities and villages that belonged to me so that I could regain my memory if I died and respawned and ever happened to visit any part of my kingdom. I had also prepared my kingdom for such a situation beforehand with strict rules that were to be followed if I died. I didn’t want my kingdom to be destroyed by the dogmen, specially the red dogmen of the north, over whom my master’s assistant had somehow come to have great authority to the point that the red dogmen were ready to kill and die for him. The assistant was called Lord Nahom Htan by the red dogmen. I had tried to sneak into his territory with a small group of my soldiers. But the attempt had failed. What more, one of my cat friends had died, falling down a great drop.

  I also remembered the love of my previous life. Amina, her name had been. She had loved me dearly. My heart pained since I had already given my word to Junaki.

  Chapter 29

  Presently, I looked at the people gathered around me. They were all looking at me as though I was some kind of an extraordinary being.

  “Tell them you are indeed you,” Riya whispered to me. I pulled out my sword and lifted it to the air.

  “I am King Kitty,” I said, boldly, “and I have returned.”

  The people assembled cheered and clapped and hugged each other. I was so happy seeing them that my eyes filled up with tears. So many people loved me. A warm sensation spread about m body and I couldn’t help but smile. Yes, there were things I needed to do in the near future, big things, but all that mattered as for the moment were the happy people.

  Just then a cat wearing a cloak pushed his way through the crowd. He seemed to be sobbing and was covering his face. He fell onto my knees. I tried to lift him up.

  The next moment I made a sudden move towards the right that saved me from the dagger the cat had been carrying in his hands. The cat was seemingly surprised that his attack had failed, perhaps as surprised as I was at being attacked. But he lunged forward with his dagger once again. I was too perplexed and even though I dodged him, I was too slow. The edge of the blade landed a light cut on my arm. Stinging pain shot up as blood leaked out.

  I let out a grunt. I seemed to have suddenly come back to my senses. This was an assassin and he wanted to kill me. I lashed out at him with my own sword that I had been holding like a stick till then. I missed him, he was quick. But I made a sudden movement with my wrist and was able to hit him with the hilt of the sword on his head. And I hit him hard. He was thrown sideways. He looked at me with murder in his eyes.

  I didn’t wait for him to strike back. I kicked him right on the stomach so that he yelped. A forward thrust with my sword and I grazed his shoulder. The crowd that had been too perplexed with what was going on between the two of us only now seemed to come back to its senses. Some of the cats came to catch the assassin who had tried to kill me.

  The assassin gritted his teeth at me, snarling. He seemed to have realised he would never be able to kill me today. He whirled around at the other cats approaching him. He began to swing his dagger with force at them randomly, giving cuts to a few cats s
o that they fell backwards. The assassin was quick footed and he pushed his way through the crowd with relative ease.

  Why the heck are you waiting? A voice yelled at the back of my head. Get him!

  I ran after him. I saw that the assassin had thrown off the cloak he had been wearing, and it would be very easy to lose him in the crowd. So I increased my pace.

  I could have shot air arrows at him, but I didn’t want to harm any of the other cats. I pushed my way through the crowd. Some of the other cats grabbed my hands or legs, but not to stop me. They simply wanted to touch their old king. I had to shake them off. Suddenly I realised that the assassin had disappeared in the crowd. My heart sank.

  Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulder. I turned to see that it was Riya. Her staff had fallen from my hand when I had been attacked and she had picked it up.

  “There he is!” she said in her croaky voice, pointing at an alley about a hundred metres away, where a cat was fast moving. I could see the glint of his dagger and knew he was the assassin.

  But the crowd around me had grown too thick. Some of the people were crying, happy to see me, others were saying things to me that I barely registered. I tried to push my way through them, but it was just impossible.

  “Let him go!’ Riya cried, a strange authority in her voice. It was odd, but the people around me listened to her and I was able to make my way through the crowd. In about half a minute I had reached the alley. My eyes frantically searched for him. Then I noticed a cat sitting casually at a doorstep, smoking a pipe. He looked strangely familiar to the assassin, but why wasn’t he running? Maybe he wasn’t the assassin in the first place. But then I spotted that the cat had placed a paw over a particular spot on his shoulder. It was the same spot where I had hit the assassin with my blade. I realised it was really the assassin, trying to fool me by acting like a civilian.

  “You wait right there!” I yelled. The assassin didn’t even flinch. He just looked at me with a confused expression. Quite an actor he was, wasn’t he?

  I sprinted to him, but he just stared at me, like he didn’t get me at all. Only when I had reached him and pointed my sword at his eye, did he look frightened.

  The assassin reluctantly removed his paw from his shoulder. My heart missed a beat when I saw there was no trace of the cut there.

  “I- I am sorry sir,” he stammered. He held out a necklace. “This— this isn’t mine. I stole— I found it…”

  But I wasn’t listening to him. Where had the real assassin gone?

  Just then, a hard kicked landed on my back. I fell onto the ground. I heard a yell from behind, I rolled away just in time to see a blade hit the ground at the spot where I had been but a split-second ago.

  Still on the ground, I kicked the assassin on his face. As he winched with the pain, I took advantage and swung my sword— at his hand, the one with which he was holding the sword. A moment later, the assassin’s hand had separated from the rest of his body. It was been a swift cut, and my own blade was smeared with the assassin’s blood.

  The assassin let out a cry of horror and pain, as he looked from his bleeding wrist to the hand that lay on the ground. The hand on the ground slowly transformed. It was a cat’s hand that looked like that of a human’s when I had cut it because of the Human Hands spell. However, now, all cat characteristics left the hand, and it became the hand of a real human. I gasped. I looked at the assassin. Even he was transforming. His head became more and more pointed, until it had become the shape of a dog’s head. The rest of his body lost the fur and became the body of a human. And yes, he retained the tail, only it became more furry like a dog’s.

  A dogman.

  A red dogman from the north, for the tail and the head of the dogman were of red fur.

  In his pain and fury, the dogman lunged at me, his jaws wide open, revealing the canines. Before I knew it, the dogman had his canines buried in my shoulder. Even as I battled to get him off me, I couldn’t help but think that I was lucky, for he hadn’t bit my neck and punctured my windpipe. For a moment I struggled, the notifications about me being injured not helping at all, if anything disturbing my vision.

  Somehow, I was able to get my hand and my sword behind his back. With extreme effort, I pushed the tip of my sword against his lungs from behind. My sword tip was sharp. It pierced his skin and punctured his lung. The assassin’s hold on my shoulder loosened and I was able to push him off. Within a few seconds I had decapitated him, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, while the rest of his body lying a metre away twitched frantically on the ground for a moment before going limp.

  I fell on my knees, clutching my shoulder, which bled profusely. A throbbing pain made its way all the way up to my head. Only now did the rest of the cats that had earlier surrounded me at the town square came towards me. Even Riya reached only now, supporting herself with the staff.

  She knelt beside me, peering at my wound.

  “Oh my,” she said, while the other cats were pointing at the beheaded dogmen. “Somebody bring a carriage, we must take him to the mayor’s place.”

  ***

  Chapter 30

  The mayor’s chamber was large. The last time I had been here it was in my last life. The mayor seemed to have lost weight in the period. He had also acquired dark circles around his eyes.

  “I hope you are feeling better now?” the mayor asked me.

  I nodded, looking at the glass vial that I had just emptied into my mouth a few seconds back. I looked at my shoulder. My wound was healing fast. The marks of the dogman’s teeth were fast vanishing, and fur was growing back. Only the blood that had earlier leaked out still remained. I thought of all the previous times when I had been injured and had to resort to herbs to heal. This miracle potion was so much faster than the herbs. Riya hobbled up to me and wiped my shoulder with a wet towel to clean me of the blood.

  “There you go, King,” Riya said with a toothy smile. I glanced at the orb of her staff. I would ask her to give it to me. I hoped she wouldn’t complain.

  “Why don’t you drink one of these health potions yourself, Alam?” I asked the mayor. We had been on so many adventures in the past. Alam had been one of the cats that I had first met in the world of Arun. He had been a mere trader in a small village, who had had the guts to go on adventures with me, leaving his home.

  Alam shook his head. He looked aged beyond his years.

  “The health potions can heal bodily wounds,” Alam said, “things like stress are not possible for it to heal. Plus, health potions are so hard to create. I only have a few of them”

  “Then why take the stress?” Riya said. “Look at me! Who would say I am three hundred years old?”

  I looked at Riya. She was an old lady, mostly skin covering bones with no flesh. But for a three hundred year old, she couldn’t be in better health. Riya was one of those unique people who were willing to have fun even when all things were going wrong. She didn’t care for respect that others gave her, because she said that if she got used to it, then she would try to do things in ways that others wanted her to, which was not something her conscience allowed her. Riya had not gone gaga with age, but she had only grown wiser— in her own way. Apparently, after I died in my last life, she would spend huge amounts of her time, sitting at the gate of the town, looking out for me. Her wait had paid off today. The guards would have never allowed me in if she had not been there.

  “You don’t understand,” Alam said with a small grimace. “Kitty’s rules are holding, but the dogmen are giving their best to break up our kingdom. They already have the capital. Don’t you know that the capital is now divided into two parts? In one part cats are not allowed to set foot. In our own lands we have been made second owners!”

  My mind reeled back to the time when I had sliced the hand of the dogman, and then again to the time when I had beheaded him. I felt guilty. I shouldn’t have killed him like that. No one deserved such a ghastly death. For once I had almost become the person that I had become back in Duar
ga during the attack of the dogmen. The devil had gotten inside me again. I wondered what Junaki would think if she came to know what I had done today. My heart sank.

  “You seem lost, Kitty,” Riya said.

  “The dogman,” I muttered as the scene played in my mind’s eye all over again.

  “Yes,” Alam said, “I never knew that a dogman spy could have gotten inside our very own town despite all the security measures that we take.” Apparently Alam didn’t understand the reason why I was lost in thought.

  But Riya placed a paw on my shoulder.

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice sounded motherly— grandmotherly to be precise, “you shouldn’t have killed the dogman in such a fashion. But you did what your instinct made you to. You shouldn’t be sad over that.”

  A tear leaked down my eyes much to my own surprise.

  “I didn’t know what had gotten inside me,” I said, as Riya hugged me. “I could have just beat him up and maybe the other cats could have subdued him and we could have asked him about how he had gotten inside.”

  “It’s okay,” Riya said, while Alam glanced uneasily at the two of us, “what’s done is done. Just be sure that you don’t repeat your mistake. If you must give death to your enemies, then make it as painless as possible.”

  I nodded. I wiped my tears. I wouldn’t turn into a demon the next time I was in the heat of battle. And I had a feeling I would be in the heat of battle quite a few times in the coming future.

  I exhaled.

  “Give me the scroll I wrote,” I said to Alam. “I assume you have a copy?”

  He nodded. He searched in his bookshelf and drew out the scroll and handed it to me. I read through the rules. I could remember the night I had written them with the help of candlelight. Amina had helped me come up with a few of the rules.

  The rules mostly made it clear that if I died it didn’t mean that the rulers of the individual units of my kingdom would stop following my leadership. Ordinary life would go on as it was. Anyone who tried to take over my place would be killed. The defences of the towns, cities and villages that comprised my kingdom would be increased. Each of the towns, cities and villages would receive a certain amount of autonomy, but none could become completely autonomous. If any of the rulers of the individual semi-autonomous units decided to break away then he or she would be overthrown by the rulers of the other units.