It had taken me a long time to get out of that labyrinth of a water network beneath the cathedral. It involved a lot of bashing my head into walls and falling into water as I tried to navigate my way in total darkness. Thankfully, just enough light passed through the water near the grate for my exit to shine dimly like a light at the end of the tunnel. But it was a miracle I even navigated my way to the grate in the first place.

All the while I grappled with a curse which I felt was turning more and more audacious in its attacks.

It serves no purpose to remember this.

Truthfully speaking, it didn't. Which was why I was going to throw this story onto the closest person. I would break several of the rules that were imposed on me by the curse and myself

It sucked that she was the closest person nearby.

Only our caretaker ever needs to know the truth.

That again was probably true. But at the same time, how could I let anyone know the truth about me if even I didn't know myself.

There's a reason why I have this curse. I must follow it's rules.

And there was a truth more sour to swallow than concentrated lemon drops. Deep in my gut I knew this to be the case. There had to be a reason why I had this curse. The more I fought against its grip the more I felt like I was coming close to finding why I shouldn't be.

I was straining against chains. Chains that served a unique purpose. I felt like I catch glimpses of their purpose the more I wrestled with them.

It was hard work. More effort than I'd ever put into anything in my entire life presumably. Hannah made determination look easy even if she didn't bring in good results. This was the closest I'd ever gotten to being able to sympathise with her bullheadedness.

It wasn't fun to be doing this. I didn't see how I'd benefit. Spite was probably the motivating emotion here. There was probably very little material gain from this course of action.

Pain kept my thoughts sharp through the haze. Without a shred of grace I'd slam my body against whatever obstacle I could in order to keep my focus. Running at doors with all the intent of making a hole through them until I could feel the shock reverb back through my skull and into my tail.

All this work until I eventually clawed the door open, my body climbing the sheer wooden surface to the handle fuelled by desperation and all the resentment I'd carried towards doors my entire life.

As the sharp clink alerted me that the mechanism had opened, my thoughts gave way to pause as my four feet hit the ground again and the gap slowly widened, giving me a view of the room.

This is not allowed.

Allowed or not, Hannah was both too busy and far away for me to talk to.

We'll traumatise her.

We certainly wouldn't end up making Linth happy, that was for sure.

“Adam?” Linth's voice shook me back to reality.

Words caught like a boulder in my throat, I paused.

We should stop now before anybody gets hurt. It's far safer for to forget.

It was far safer to forget. Certainly for me. I could end up dissected if this went wrong. Not that Linth would try, but the more people knew then the more scalpels would start gravitating me as though they were in a magnets pull.

But if Linth or Hannah did betray me... The thought sent shivers of indignation down my spine. Humans were proven to be duplicitous or incompetence. Often both. Each was capable of lying, of cheating, of murdering, of betrayal, of the most horrible and contemptible crimes even against the rules of nature. If they betrayed me, then-

“Adam, is that you?”

My mental faculty ground to a halt.

I'm Adam.

That was right. I was Adam. Just what the hell was I thinking? I felt like just for a moment, I was slipping into something else. My own voice, my own thoughts, I felt them change. Not from the influence of the curse, but of my own volition. For a moment, I lost discipline.

What would I do to them? Linth was standing right before me. I forced myself to look her in the eye and dared myself to finish that train of thought.

I couldn't.

But I also couldn't lose sight of why I came here.

“Yes. Also, I'm very sorry in advance.”

I had to apologise. I was about to swing this girl's world around a bit.

Linth froze to the spot. It wasn't a voice she recognised. She looked above and past me through the gap for a person who wasn't there.

“Down here, Linth. The black cat. That's me.” My mouth didn't move when I talked which sure added to the confusion. If I tried to talk through the vocal box of a cat, it'd be a thing of horror. The benefits of this curse were more like mitigations to some of its downsides.

If there was an opportunity to backtrack, to abort mission so to speak, that was it. I'd passed it and I was now going all in.

This reaction was about as much as I expected. She barely said anything. In this situation, what was she supposed to do?

As I moved, a breeze blowing through the building shut the door behind me. I jumped up onto the table and sat near the edge opposite Linth.

“Linth, you've got to hear me out. I don't have time to explain everything. No that's not right. I will have time soon. Eventually. But not at the beginning of this conversation.” I was wasting valuable time just trying to fill in the silence. But with my thoughts so broken up, even now that I'd come this far, I didn't know where to begin.

Linth pinched the palm of her hand, probably hoping the pain would wake her up. “Is this real?” Shock and confusion sometimes left people's eyes looking vacant. In an unfamiliar situation, what past experience did the mind have to act upon?

“Hrrk... I'm sorry I don't have time to explain. But before I forget this I need to tell you. Make sure you remember and tell Hannah. There's a powerful spellcaster walking around the beneath cathedral and I think they are connected to my curse. Linth? Are you listening? Linth!” I snap, finally eliciting a frightened response from the girl. “You. Have. To. Do. This. Please, you're the only one I can rely on.”

If I had time, I'd beg, I'd plead, but I didn't.

Linth backed away from me slowly. “Cats don't talk.”

“Lin-” I felt my patience giving but it would do me no good. How far would getting angry or forceful get me with someone slipping into denial. Not very far at all. “Look, I know I'm not the most handsome talking cat around, and this is probably pretty weird considering all the fuss you gave me whenever-”

Linth turned as white as paper at the memory.

“Ah I really shouldn't have brought that up.” I could feel my previous thoughts eroding. Memories were slipping from my grasp and had been doing so for sometime. “Look, you've got a lot of books on crazy folklore and religious stories. Use that to fill in the blanks. Oh, and don't tell anyone else. Only you and Hannah know right now. Just don't forget about... The...”

Crap, what did I want to tell her? There was something important that I needed to make sure I didn't forget. It had something to do with the cathedral.

“W-w-w-well I'm pretty sure talking black cats are bad luck.” The sight of Linth reeling at the sound of my voice was quite hurtful.

She was fine with black cats, but talking black cats was where she drew the line. 'Bad luck' once again reared its ugly head in the way people looked at me. I didn't need an oracle to tell me that our future relationship would probably be quite rocky.

No no no, I was going off topic. I needed to get my thoughts in order. What was I here to talk about?

We found Killian sneaking into the cathedral.

Right, of course.

“Listen, this is really important. Think of it from my perspective.” I tried to reason. “There's a list incomprehensibly long filled with reasons why I wouldn't want to reveal I can talk. Understand my plight?”

I could feel bitter frustration rising in the pit of my stomach. Something felt wrong here. Was I going off track?

For better or for worse, Linth was no longer glancing towards the exit. She was either very reluctantly willing to hear me out, or was paralysed working her brain hard to rationalise what she was seeing in front of her.

“I need to talk about Killia-” I caught myself midsentance. Something felt wrong. This wasn't what I wanted to talk about, was it? I was sure it had something to do with my curse.

Why would I need to tell Linth about Killian sneaking into the cathedral? It wasn't like her life depended on it. It wasn't something I'd easily forget either.

“It's... About...” I grappled for the right words. But they weren't coming to my head. “Why... Why am I here?”

Why had I revealed I could talk to Linth? What was the point of this?

I looked up hoping to find the answer on Linth's face but all I could see was the shock I'd instilled in her. This day would not be one she would forget easily, I was sure.

To have done this, I certainly needed a reason. Doing without reason wasn't my style. Combined with my slothfulness, it meant I always needed a really good reason to open my eyes in the morning. Surely I had a reason for doing this. I must have had a big one.

My headache only grew as time passed by. No voice in my head could come up with a reasonable explanation as to what the actual hell I was doing here.

“I... I um...” This was frustrating. Almost too frustrating. I felt a heavy tightness in my chest. “I'm really sorry Linth, I'm not sure why here.”

“Are you really Adam?” After seconds of confused and painful silence passed, she finally asked with a steadiness in her voice.

“Yeah. I'm Hannah's 'friend'? I guess you could call me that?”

“And-” She paused, leaning in a little closer as if to examine me closer. “And you really are a talking cat?”

Surely that was evident by now. “Nobody's hiding behind that door, you know? Hannah's not making funny voices underneath the floorboards to play a prank.”

“Oddly specific.” Linth muttered under her breath as she glanced under the table. “You said, um, something about a curse.”

“Did I?” My head felt dizzyingly light. “Well I imagine it takes a lot of funny magic to make a talking cat.”

Linth looked down at me apprehensively before shaking her head. She opened her mouth, but really had to work up the courage to speak out her next words. “How long have you been a, um...”

“Talking cat?” I finish. It was the natural thing to wonder in her position. “Well, I'm not really a cat. Please don't call me that unless you have to.”

“But how long?” She insisted on this line of questioning despite my tentative attempt to tiptoe around the topic.

I sigh. “It's impolite to ask a woman their age. A few decades... at least.” Linth looked ready to faint. “Hey hey hey I wasn't ever planning on revealing it okay! Don't collapse now!”

She took a few wobbly steps back before settling against the bookcase.

“Come on, it's not that bad if you think about me as being an ordinary cat that can, well, talk. Sure I'm not exactly very pretty right now but-”

“But you're not a cat, right?” She cut in despondently. This entire time she'd been running her hands across me thinking I was just a cat. An ordinary, innocent, very dumb cat. And there in lies where the shock was coming from.

Once, a long time ago, I was forced to wear a collar with a bell on it for my caretaker. She was old and had a nasty sense of humour. But the reason why she did it was because the sound of the bell relaxed her. She grew old and old until her time to die was nearly upon her. On her death bed she revealed two things. She loved the sound of the bell and whenever she heard it she smiled. After all, when she found me, I was a scruffy wounded ball of fur that could barely move.

Now wasn't that sweet? Well, she then revealed the next thing.

That collar was made from cat's leather. She thought, for some reason, that this was funny.

Ever since I have refused to wear leather collars. When something so innocent has a nasty twist it's hard not to despair or feel upset.

“Weeeellll... No.” I was probably going to need to repeat that I wasn't a cat a lot.

“You're probably a pervy overweight middle aged white man being punished for his crimes against humanity.” Linth landed her words like a sucker punch from a demon.

Wow. Where did the 'pervy' part come from? “That's totally not true. I don't remember who I was before I got cursed, but I could well be a woman for all you know!” Did that make the situation better? Probably not. But this wasn't what I was here to talk about. “Do you by any chance know why I'm here?”

Linth looked like she'd just been slapped. That was a cruel thing of me to ask, I realised. How would she know? I could understand how she'd take offence from that.

“Maybe... Maybe I should go?” I suggested. “I don't feel very well.” This gnawing bitterness and frustration that had been growing in my chest was surely the shame I felt for my actions. “I, uh, I'm not sure there's anything I can say to justify this. I should really go. I've walked all this mud into your den.”

Again, I wondered to myself about what the hell I was doing here.

I got up shakily, mind numb from mental exhaustion. I was lame, pathetic, and horrible. After revealing I could talk, I couldn't even word a proper apology.

I turned to leave, bitter at my own performance. I hoped Hannah kicked me all the way to the moon for this. That way there'd be a suitable distance between me and any of my disasters.

“Ah, hate to ask you this.” I ground to a halt just before the exit to the room. “Could you open this door and let me out?”

Linth was staring at me, not quite sure how to respond. I didn't want to be here. At the very least, I could count on her tendency to overthink things to give me a big enough opening to escape.

But that aside, how the hell did I get in here in the first place?

It was for the best to leave. Conversational skills and tact were needed to navigate that precarious topic. Whilst blunt, Hannah was a whole lot more considerate than me. It would be a good idea to tell her so she could get this mess sorted as soon as possible.

The walk back to the campus was fraught with anxiety. My usual attitude of leaving today's problems for the tomorrow's me really only worked when it was small things out of place.

The weather had still not cleared up. Cold rain helped flush away some of the muck and grime that had begun to dry on my fur. Horrible taste of the river water was still lodged in the back of my nose.

Ordinarily, I'd be nervous about catching a glimpse of the tests run on Hannah. If she wasn't in the Nurse's office, I'd abandon my search. Killing time in a city filled with nasty children sounded more pleasant. She'd managed to give the impression that horrible torture was involved in the tests.

As gracefully as a sopping wet ball of fur could, I leapt through the window conveniently left open all times of the year and into the office building. Come monsoon or blistering drought, that window would remain steadfastly open. Even if there was a swarm of locusts or it was raining snakes, that window would not close an inch.

Surely people noticed this open window as they passed. All the others were closed. Did everyone just assume that this particular window was outside of their jurisdiction? Was it booby trapped?

These questions gave me a break from thinking about my other disasters today.

I came to a stop outside the nurse's office. The door was closed. And since I wasn't some sort of hissing raging ball of insidious fur straight from a horror story, I wasn't even going to try and open it.

No. I was a creature who was composed at least in part out of spite.

I began pawing at the door. If anybody was here, they'd notice. But if the Nurse was away doing the tests somewhere else, I'd have wasted my time. But if a student with a serious injury showed up, that'd be even worse. Someone had not thought this through. They should definitely hire a second nurse.

I knew they were here though. My sensitive ears caught dull chatter and footsteps on the otherside. Someone got up from where they sat, their chair or stool scraping across the ground as they rose. Slowly they moved to the door.

What would I see on the otherside?

Clink. The door opened. It was the nurse.

He stared down at me with an expression that I relished. He, the Nurse, was opening the door for me, his number one most loathed animal.

I sat down. Outside the room of course. For you see, I was composed of spite. That and as I tilted my head to see further in the room, I noticed that Hannah had all four limbs.

In fact, Hannah had all four limbs, all her hair, fingers, toes, clothes, and nothing else out of place. If I were to guess, the entire time I'd been swimming through mucky water, she'd been relaxing in the Nurse office not doing much.

No, that wasn't true.

She was eating some lunch she'd gotten from the canteen.

Where's the pain, Hannah? Where's the weakness and inability to keep down your food? I don't see any needles or scalpels, Hannah. There was an empty bucket nearby her feet. There was also a tray of vials on the Nurse's desk but he looked in the process of tidying up his medical cabinet and putting them all back.

Now this in of itself, was not bad. In fact, it was quite relieving that no gruesome torture was taking place. But I'd still been under the impression I'd be seeing horror here and-

And the Nurse just shut the door. I took a bit too long to get inside.

I pawed at the door again and he opened the door for a second time, having not budged from the spot. He shot me a warning through his glare. This would definitely be the last time he opened the door.

I wandered inside.

The Nurse shut the door behind him with an exhausted sigh. “That's a little creepy.”

“My cat's just faithful.” Hannah spoke in-between chewing.

Perhaps that's where the real problem was in this situation. She'd been sitting here having a picnic whilst I'd been swimming in the city's pollution problems.

I shot her a quizzical look. If she didn't do something to explain soon I was going to yank the food out of her hands.

In return she glanced towards the Nurse. Although his resting face was a scowl, he looked an awful lot more angry. The air about him was sort of... Simmering. That was the impression I got at least.

“Does this mean I can go?” Hannah asked hopefully.

The Nurse set down a glass vial into his medical cabinet and sighed again through grit teeth. “I don't know. Can you?”

“You should become a teacher.” Hannah was noticeably upbeat.

“Perhaps the situation hasn't dawned on you yet. But remind me again, who sponsors you to study here?” Mather was absent. I was under the impression he had to be here.

Hannah didn't reply. Her expression did turned ambivalent.

“You and me have been stood up.” The Nurse cursed.

I looked between the two. The tests had clearly not taken place. Evidently Mather must have played an important role in the tests for them not to carry on in his absence.

“Well he doesn't exactly bring much.” In a running theme, the world or more specifically, Hannah countered my assumption.

Shaking his head heavily, the Nurse closed the medical cabinet. “Technically, he's running the tests and I'm the observer. Everything these tests produce, he owns.”

“That's a pretty harsh deal.”

“Is it?” The Nurse furrowed his brows. “Whether the credit goes to the professor or the queen of Tallis, people will be able to reap the rewards.”

“Are you sure?” Hannah wore a sceptical look. “Neither of those two seem very generous in my experience.”

Folding his arms across his chest the Nurse shot Hannah a hard glare. “This is going to happen again.” The Nurse said with the foreboding of an economist during a recession. “You will need to find a new sponsor. Looks like he's not interested in our exchange anymore.”

Hannah's eyes slowly widened with a mixture of emotions. The Nurse was not joking. “Shit.”

“Indeed.” The Nurse sighed. “I'm in the same situation.”

“Well I'm sure you'll do fine. Show some pity to the girl who has to ask for sponsorship to attend a magic institute when she can can't use magic without spell aids.” Hannah sighed.

“I don't envy you.” The Nurse admitted.

“In that case, do you think you cou-”

“No.” The Nurse looked down at Hannah with such disgust I could have been convinced she just asked for his soul. “Do you have any idea how much that would cost? I'm a Nurse. They can't even pay me on time let alone a decent wage.”

Ah the troubles of the employment market.

Hannah returned his demeaning look with one of her own. “Get a better job you lazy slouch. Time spent complaining is time spent not making money which you can spend on sponsering me.” How ruthlessly capitalist. “You said you were in the army, right? Maybe I could get the money together on my own if you taught me how to mug people without leaving evidence.”

“No.” The Nurse growled. “You'd probably screw it up and implicate me anyway. Besides, I know one kid in need of training more than you do. He's the only exception I'd be willing to make.”

“Exception to what?”

“I gave up fighting quite a while ago. I earned my out.” The Nurse's tone was forceful and strained.

“Huh... Sorry for asking.”

The Nurse had always walked with a peculiar lethality that I wouldn't have expected for a nurse. Sure, whilst a Nurse could kill their patient with relative ease and were often in a really convenient position to be able to do so, pushing air bubbles discreetly into someone's veins to encourage a heart attack didn't hone the reflexes.

He was tall, and whilst his long white coat hide his figure, his muscles were probably quite well defined. It might have been dramatic to say so, but his negative attitude was probably consequence of his previous career.

“I'm guessing you mean Killian.” Hannah noted dryly. “I think he shows up here slightly less often than I do.”

“But always in bad shape.” The Nurse finished. “Sometimes you do have to fight your way out of a bad situation. You teach other people how to treat you. Everytime he shows up, I can tell he took a beating without putting up a fight.”

“How?”

“Because if he was putting up a fight, he'd have taken my offer. And a kid with his level of energy would have brought at least one of his attackers to a hospital bed with him.” The Nurse noted harshly. “I hate seeing violence as much as the next man- No, maybe the problem is that the next man and the ones after all love violence. They can't get enough of watching it or that infamous fantasy of winning gloriously. But from where I'm looking, that boy isn't putting up a fight at all. Violence or no violence, if Killian doesn't do something then he's going to be stuck in his situation until he graduates.”

Hannah pauses for a moment, mulling over the Nurse's words. “Is that advice really meant for Killian?”

Once again the Nurse frowned at one of Hannah's questions. “It's not meant for you. I'd like you to try a little less. At least wait until I've quit my job before you try another stunt like roasting your arms.”

“They are healing very nicely, thank you very much.”

“That's good. You took my advice properly then. The best way to have healthy arms though would be not to roast them in the first place.” The Nurse had a point that was hard to refute. Hannah really had brought it on herself.

Hannah was probably going to end up breaking her arms again punching a wall as soon as she learned what I'd done to Linth though.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted this conversation to end sooner or later.

The Nurse cursed under his breath. “Listen here, even I want a life y'know? I can't spend every waking second of the day stuck inside this office treating people's stupidity. Don't you dare get yourself hurt over the festival. I want to be able to enjoy one holiday. Is that so much to ask? Just one holiday!” Not so much pleading, but rather growling a warning like a captain to his troops, the Nurse's expression darkened as he talked.

“You know for someone who's so 'do no harm unto others'-”

“At least not directly in a way authorities can prove.”

“You sure didn't hold back in the tests.” Hannah glared. “I get that it was mostly at Mather's request but still.”

The Nurse fell silent. He looked to the door. “The tests probably won't happen anymore if Mather's is cutting us loose so I should admit to you here and now.” The air in the room grew suddenly a lot more tense. “They were pointless.”

Pointless? I could see Hannah's mind stall at those words. “What do you mean they were pointless?”

The Nurse sighed. “We... I know so little about magic, about your condition that I might as well have been treating you with water. So I should apologise for all the time and effort you wasted.”

“Oh...” Hannah mouthed. It was quite a pathetic reaction. She looked as though she'd been drained of all colour. But credit where it was due, I was impressed she hadn't descended into a flying rage. “I guess that was always a possibility.” She admitted.

Meanwhile the Nurse quietly went back to his medical cabinet and started pointing out vials. “This is an anti-inflammatory. That is good for hang-overs. This here is a catalyst I can use to repair nerve damage in your shoulders. With this I can give a soldier the eyesight to see clearly up to a distance of four hundred meters so long as with this, I treat the internal bleeding around his occipital lobe.” The Nurse went on and on. “But everysingle one of these needs to be administered in a specific way, in a specific order, to match the many variables unique to a person's body. What I'm saying here is-”

He had his back turned the entire time but I could feel the shame he had behind his hidden stoic expression reflected in the glass.

“-it's all had no effect. I might as well have run these tests with tea and water.”

Damn. The Nurse wasn't even going easy. He was really hammering it home. 'White lie' was clearly not a concept familiar to him. I couldn't help but feel like this harshness did more to put himself at ease than it was in consideration of Hannah's sacrifices.

“That's not true.” Hannah spoke up. A twist that turned my head upside down. There was clear conflict in her eyes. She was probably torn between saying many different things in her given situation. There was probably a real possibility she was going to leap up off her chair and punch the guy square in the face. But she bit back her temper. “I mean this hurts. God damn what you're saying hurts. But you can only say that in hindsight.”

I wasn't sure I agreed with her on that one. This felt like some wishful denial. An attempt to fend off reality. If the Nurse said it was pointless, I believed him because he was in a position to know.

But the Nurse wasn't having any of it. “I'm sorry Hannah, I shouldn't have waited for you to snap under the pressure of my research. This is how I lost my medical licence in the first place.”

“Oh.” Hannah mouthed again lamely. “So you really could have just treated me with tea and water. So it was a con all along. I'm guessing you went this far just so you could pretend to Mather you were doing an experiment. Man and here I thought you actually knew what you were doing...”

I could see the steam rising steadily. I could see the pressure building. Alarms were blaring. Whistles were screaming. The place was ready to blow. I stepped away from Hannah, a movement which the Nurse noticed and seemed to understand.

Crash. I'd never seen so much weight put into a single step before. I felt the ground shake and heard the medical cabinet rattle as Hannah stomped her way, her eyes hidden behind her hair as she closed the distance between her and the Nurse steadily with clenched fists.

The Nurse didn't react. He had seconds to. Plenty of time of time to attempt something. But he stood there firmly.

Slam. Hannah drew to a halt with one final step. Although she was shorter, she somehow managed to stare down at the Nurse. She drew in a deep breath and “Too bad. Maybe you'll accidentally stumble across the cure with your next victim.” Slam. She turned on her feet and headed towards the door. “Adam, don't fall behind.”

Ah shit.

Thanks for that Nurse. I looked behind me as I followed in the shadow of my giant. This was really going to make explaining what I'd been up to much more difficult.