My best friend was a were-cat

I stood there a while digesting the news “Who else knows?” I finally asked.

“About me? No one. My parent, the one who turned me, died.” Isiah looked down, took a deep breath and exhaled. “I was out in the woods hunting, when I found this woman. She was bleeding from these horrific wounds on her chest, so I quickly went to help her. She thought she was under attack so she slashed me, nearly killing me. The next thing I know I am waking up in her arms with a metal taste in my mouth. She explained that she had been attacked by a pack of were-wolves, and she almost killed me by accident. She explained that she had turned me to save my life. Weres are really hard to kill, so she lived for 10 days before succumbing to her injuries, she taught me all she could during those 10 days. It has been 5 years since, I figured out most of the rest on my own.”

“Thank you for telling me.” I said.

“Now we know each other’s secrets.” He said. “Although I know you aren’t telling me everything, like how you really learnt to fight.”

“Mages and weres both live for an extremely long time, I am sure that in time we will know everything about each other.” This was true, truly powerful mages could live up to 5000yrs old (not to mention I was an immortal) and weres could live for almost 2000yrs, but they rarely did, due to the constant interspecies wars. Fighting like cats and dogs had a completely different meaning in the true world.

“So what do we do now?” Isiah asked.

“We hide amongst the humans and carry on. I suppose, technically we should be on the side of the witch, but my parents were humans, all of the people I know are humans… I just can’t side with the witch” I said.

“No, you idiot. I meant what do we do now?” he said bursting out into laughter

“Well, I feel like I am about to make a breakthrough in power and I have no tent. Would you mind being my lookout as I meditate?”

I sat down to meditate, folding my legs underneath me. I opened up my connection to the void. Two tiny holes opened up on the palms of my hand, I started gathering the energy into my meridians, the gaseous vortex of void energy in my core started to rotate. My meridians started to vibrate, phasing in and out of reality until they achieved a quantum state of duality, being both here and in the void at the same time. I clapped my hands together, completing the circuit. The energy started to rotate through my body. Each rotation seemed to speed up the vortex, increasing its centripetal force, causing the gaseous vortex to compress into itself. The speed of the vortex rotation kept increasing, until I reached 99 rotations; normally at this point the vortex would have reached its apex of speed and collapsed back out, like a hurricane losing energy and turning back into a tropical storm. But this time it didn’t, I managed to break past the 99 rotation barrier reaching a 100 rotations and the vortex imploded inwards. The vortex turned inwards forming a ball which kept condensing in on itself. After what felt like hours the ball condensed into a singularity and then exploded. The void energy washed through my body. I braced myself for pain expecting the void energy to rip my organs apart to reforge them, again. The pain I was expecting never came; instead all I got was a cool refreshing sensation as if jumping into a refreshing pool on a hot summer’s day. The void energy that rushed in was different from before. It was denser, almost a liquid, it was much more compressed and more potent. It went into all the cells and caused a qualitative change to the void energy inside those cells. I felt refreshed, like I had boundless energy and I couldn’t get tired, no matter how much I worked. Previously I had a near infinite stamina, but that was mainly an inexhaustible mental stamina, my body still got tired, but my mind would push past those limits. Now it felt those physical limits simply no longer existed.

I breathed in deeply and exhaled. I was finally a true mage, with the ability to enter the true world, whatever that actually meant. I looked inside myself to see what changes had occurred to my core. Gone was the simple gaseous vortex, now there was a circular liquid ball of void energy surrounded by a spiralling disk of gaseous void energy clouds: Like a newly formed protostar surrounded by its circumstellar disk. These gas clouds were constantly being condensed into a liquid and accreted into the core. My meridians were now in a constant quantum dual phase, pulling in just enough energy from the void to sustain the slow expansion of the liquid protostar that was now at my core.

I opened my eyes, they adjusted to the dark instantly, I was able to see much more clearly in the dark, it wasn’t like I expected it to be, everything was in different shades of blue, purple or black, you could guess at the actual colour of things but it was all just a blue-purple. Even the grass was more purple than green.

“Before you even say anything, go to the stream and clean up. Jeez you stink” Isiah said, he was standing about 10 yards away from me holding his nose.

I sniffed the air, BIG MISTAKE, holly hell I stunk. There was an oily film of impurities stuck on my skin slowly drying into a smelly crusty mess. This was all the stuff ejected from my cells when they were “washed”. I quickly ran to the stream which was nothing more than an artificial water channel that was diverted from the River Soar to bring water to the farms.

After a thorough cleaning, I sniffed myself again. Satisfied that I was clean, I dried myself and changed into new clothing. Those old clothes needed to be burnt, they were covered in David’s blood from last night and now the filth from whatever came out of my every pore. Without even thinking I manipulated the void to be in anti-phase with the world, I used this discordant edge to vaporise those old clothes. This power could be useful, but I wasn’t strong enough to sustain this power for long.

I walked up to Isiah. “Thanks for looking out for me, I felt like the breakthrough was imminent and I couldn’t waste the opportunity.” I said gratefully

“That power of yours is really useful” He ignored my thanks and said, looking at my clothes. “What else have you got stored in there?”

“Anything and everything, I have my whole life’s possessions stored inside. It is very useful in that way. ” I said looking up at the sky; it was still at least a couple of hours until dawn.

Suddenly I felt all of the night’s events crash down on me. I had killed someone. I had taken a life. At that moment my new reality finally sank in. Even after almost 4 months of living here in the 6th century I still thought of myself as a 21 year old from modern England, temporarily stuck back in time. I had half expected John to Deus ex Machina his way into my life at the first sign of trouble and whisk me back to my present time and into my safe life. I was finally accepting my new reality, I was stuck here, out of my depth, in a time not my own and a reality that I barely recognised anymore. My best friend was a were-cat.

Thinking of Isiah also reminded me of the fact that Isiah had also shot David. I sat down opposite Isiah and said “That was the first person I have ever killed. I should be freaking out, but I am not. That is what is freaking me out.”

“Maybe it’s because I am no longer a human, maybe it is because I grew up a huntsman. I didn’t really feel anything when I took aim and loosed that arrow. He was just another deer for me to kill. Perhaps that makes me a monster, but that’s what I am now” he said transforming his hands into claws, his eyes going yellow with an eerie glow, his slit like cats eyes dilating into vertical eye shapes in the night

“A monster wouldn’t have risked being exposed to help a friend in need.” I said thanking him. “I need a drink, can we even get drunk anymore?” I hadn’t even managed to get a buzz even after spending many of my evenings at Ian’s public house. My new improved metabolism seemed to be able to process the alcohol faster than it could affect me.

“Wouldn’t know, wasn’t a fan of Ian’s beer when I was young. And your improved beer came along after I was turned, so I have never been drunk.” Isiah said.

I opened up a connection to the void and looked through John’s greatest gift to me, his collection of alcoholic beverages. It had every imaginable vintage of wine from some of the best wine makers to have ever lived. I saw an entire case, A CASE, of Henri Jayer’s Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru- Cros Parantoux among the thousands of bottles. But these weren’t what I loved. I could appreciate wine, its history and artistry, but I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of wine. What I loved was hidden away right at the heart of the all of the drinks stored inside my void space. Stored inside its own special vault

Whisky. There were thousands of bottles of whisky, from hundreds of distilleries; there were some truly ridiculous whiskies there: Shackleton, Macallan Ms, 1966 Springbank, Dalmore constellation 1964, Black Bowmore, 1974 Ardbeg. It was a truly ridiculous collection of whisky, worth billions in modern money.

I pulled out one of my favourite bottles of whisky for beginners, Bulleit bourbon, from the vault and poured it into a clean water pouch. I took out the water skin from the void, careful to make sure Isiah didn’t see the modern bottles inside the void.

“I want you to try something” I said offering him the water skin. “I used a process called distillation to distil beer. It was a method used by Alexander of Aphrodisias to distil water in order to purify it; I thought doing the same to beer might improve the taste. Didn’t work, but I left the result in a barrel for about six months, and when I came back it tasted like this.” He looked at me suspiciously and took a tentative sip, and immediately spat it out, coughing and spluttering. He was looking at me angrily, but then he tasted whatever was still left in his mouth. He sniffed the water skin again, and then took an even more tentative sip. This time he didn’t spit it out, but he did grimace when swallowing. By the time he had his fifth sip he was clearly enjoying it. We sat up all night drinking and talking. We both couldn’t get drunk; our metabolisms were too strong for something like alcohol to affect us.

We made our way back to the campsite when the first rays of the morning came. we made it just in time to hear the morning clangs, Isiah went into his tent to clean up and get ready for the new day. I did the same, except out in the open, because my tent was ruined to bits. I was done in 5 minutes, and then I used the remaining time to salvage anything useful from the ruined tent and make my way down to the assembly point. I informed Mark that I was going to see the quartermaster about my tent and made my way to see the quarter master.

The quarter master yelled at me for what seemed like days, he seemed to imply I had done this on purpose, destroying his property on purpose to undermine his authority. He told me that I had personally disrespected him by letting his tent get destroyed. At no point during his near hour long rant did he mention, David or the fact that I had killed a human being, but he made sure to point out that I had scratched his leather pack that he had let me borrow.

By the time the quartermaster had finished with me: all of the recruits had assembled. The Staff Sergeant had addressed all of last night’s excitement and everyone had run their laps. We were told to pretend that everything was normal and that we were to carry on as if nothing had happened.

Incredibly that is precisely what happened, no one asked any questions as I joined the others for breakfast. The day carried on as usual, we carried on practicing with the bow in the morning, trying to improve the speed at which we did everything. Improving the speed at which we strung our bow. Improving the speed at which we drew our bow. Improving the rate at which we reloaded. Improving the rate of our releases. Improving our technique of loosing the arrow. It seemed to me that they were more interested in the rate of fire than individual accuracy, hoping to turn the enemy into pin cushions with sheer rate of fire rather than accurate archery. We hadn’t yet been given any fletched arrows to fire at any targets.

Things continued on as normal for the next week, we were trained with the bow in the mornings learning how to shoot the bow. By the end of the week we were even given fletched arrows and targets to shoot. Isiah proved to be the best shot, firing into the centre ring with unerring accuracy. The afternoons were spent practising with the either spear or the sword. The only change came in the form of the more domestic training sessions that had started happening on Sunday mornings.

Sundays were supposed to be a day of rest, this was a Christian nation and Sundays were meant for rest and for going to church. But we were preparing for war, so a day of relaxation was too much time wasted. In order to do something useful with that time we were given lessons, these lessons were important and necessary, but no one thought of them as part of a soldier’s life. We were taught how to sew our clothes in order to maintain them. We learnt to cook, so that we had variety on our long marches and didn’t survive solely on hard bread and dried meats. Some of the more dextrous were taught fletching arrows, whilst the rest of us were taught how to maintain weapons and armour.

The issue of David’s attack and his subsequent death had been ignored for the most part, but it had caused some logistical problems. Mainly it meant that there were 5 recruits without an instructor. This issue was not as big as it could have been because David had been in the brig, so the other instructors had already been covering up the gap left by David. the issue arose with the sword training instructor. Me. Since I was the one who killed David and these were David’s recruits, it was deemed that I was not allowed to teach them. For reasons. Eventually the hassle of the instructor shuffle went too far and it was decided that they would be split up amongst the squads that had 4 recruits. That plan also fell apart as I was in one of the 4 man squads.

In the end after almost a month of total training it was decided that the entire platoon would get shuffled around. And in that shuffle they decided to form an elite squad of recruits to act as an example to the rest of the recruits. The new squad was given to Mark to control, Mark had been in the military for 5 years and was one of the senior instructors. Also it helped that 3 of the 5 were his recruits. The squad consisted of:

Me. I was chosen for my sword skills.

Isiah was chosen for his archery skills.

Josiah, who had become my obedient lackey since his beating, was the best shield bearer. He had been under close scrutiny since the fight and his change in attitude had corresponded with his improvement in skill, so they stuck him with me because I was a good influence.

Frank from Leicester, who was supposed to be the spear specialist, but I thought I was better (I still hadn’t given up on making the spear my primary weapon).

And Merlin. He was the second best with the sword and sneaky good with knives. It was as part of this legendary squad that I got to know Merlin.