Chapter 145 - A Day in Vel’khan V

Claire kept her breath held as she cast her gaze upon the feline invader. The catgirl carried herself with confidence. She had a hand on the weapon strapped to her waist, a long, thin blade with a pointlessly decorative handle. Her shoulders were relaxed and her tail allowed to rest behind her. Despite being trapped, her body betrayed no signs of tension.

Until the two locked eyes.

Meeting the half-centaur’s cold stare sent a shiver down the cat’s spine. Her tail frazzled up and shot into the air; her shoulders were raised, her fangs were bared, and she even took half a step back.

Log Entry 5363

Charm Catgirl has reached level 2.

But at the same time, her face was flushed. She kept pulling her eyes away from Claire’s, only to meet her gaze again soon after. Her breath grew heavy and her heart started to beat against her chest for reasons amusing only to the degenerate that had crafted her species.

Still, despite the confusing feelings welling up from within, the pervert’s creation fulfilled her duty. She drew her rapier and pointed it at the chimera that stood before her, as would any other brave warrior. “The time for your reckoning has come, bandit! Prepare to die!”

There was a clear misunderstanding, but the lyrkress couldn’t be bothered to correct it. She had no intention of speaking to the catgirl. The last thing she wanted was to give the feline abomination another excuse to talk and grate away at her sanity with her almost divine voice.

After brandishing her weapon and taking a stance, the humanoid shot forward like an arrow loosed from the longest of bows. It was a swift attack, one that would have caught any of the building's previous owners off guard, but Claire was prepared. Raising a hand, she grabbed the feline’s ankle right as she first took off. The joint was pushed back when it was meant to move forwards, and its owner fell face first into the straw that coated the bedroom floor.

She tried to scramble to her feet, but a hoof stomped her back into the ground and kept her locked in place.

Log Entry 5364

Charm Catgirl has reached level 7.

Another stomp threatened to shatter her wrist, but she moved her hand out of the way and retaliated with a quick sweeping slash. The cat-eared freak was sure that the attack had hit the leg head on, but the blade was deflected with an odd clink. The limb she struck felt more like a bone or shell than it did something made of flesh. She tried to swing the weapon again, but her hand refused to move. It was being held in place, pushed into the floor by something she couldn’t see.

Her attention lapsed briefly as she tried to wrench her hand from the bandit’s invisible grasp, just long enough for yet another hoof to crash into her side and send her flying into one of the walls.

The damage itself was negligible. None of the hits were forceful enough to chip away at her health, but each did something to her mind. She could feel the urge to resist slipping away; the half-centaur’s kicks were almost soft and comforting, echoing just far enough to reach her tired bones, like a careful massage.

A hand grabbed her by the throat before she could peel her body off the wall. Her breath grew ragged. She could feel her face reddening, and not because she was short of air. Slowly, she raised her watery eyes to meet the attackers’. For once, she managed not to shy away. She matched the cold, terrifying stare head on, and continued to gaze into it, even as she lost the ability to breathe.

Log Entry 5365

Charm Catgirl has reached level 11.

It was just as eerie and unfeeling as the glare she had fled, just a few weeks prior, only more exciting, more enticing. Her urge to escape was matched, overpowered, by the need to keep her eyes focused on the lovely serpentine pupils before them.

She wasn’t brought back to reality until she spotted the lyrkress’ weapon. It was being raised overhead. So it could split her skull in two. Death was on her doorstep. But she almost didn’t care. She couldn’t bring herself to resist, even as her sister’s voice echoed through her head, reminding her of her vendetta, the debt she had yet to repay.

And yet, she licked her lips. Her tongue moved on its own, as she glanced between the assailant and her weapon. She knew it was crazy not to resist, but an odd sensation welled up from deep inside her, from the very core of her being, and placated her fear with a strange sense of satisfaction.

“Are you going to eat me?” She didn’t know where the words had come from. They confused her as much as the hot sigh that accompanied them.

She almost wanted it. She didn’t know why, and she couldn’t convince herself otherwise. Her mind was too numb. It was just as friends had always said would happen, if she was captured by the enemy. And she, for whatever reason, was on board.

Her attacker, however, was not. The question was met with an annoyed scowl, an angry grimace, and a kick to the gut. But again, it was a light attack, one that barely hurt. And again, she licked her lips and met the half-centaur’s eyes.

“That’s it. I’ve had enough,” mumbled the Cadrian. “I should have known that all catgirls would be perverts.” She had on her face a look of visible disgust, one that only further fueled the feline’s desire.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the end approached. But it never came. When she next blinked, the cat found herself flying through the air. She was outside the fortress, tumbling from the second story down to the ground floor.

Her body moved by itself. After landing on all fours, she sprinted straight for the fort’s front entrance and tried to get back inside. But oddly enough, it was locked. Even though she had confirmed, when she first broke in, that no such mechanism existed. It was only once she started pounding at the door that she realised how ludicrous her actions were. By knocking, she was courting her own death, asking to be slain.

While the catgirl was frozen outside, evaluating the lapse in her judgement, Claire spent her time fighting the urge to vomit. She didn’t speak aloud, but internally, she was screaming Alfred’s name in vain. It was all his fault. He was responsible for plaguing her mind with unwanted thoughts, and he was responsible for bestowing upon the catgirl her newly acquired interests.

Claire shivered and quaked as she recalled the manner in which the other girl had stared into her eyes. It was disgusting, revolting even. She had wanted nothing more but to bludgeon the feline’s face, but the curse made it so she couldn’t. Her hand never moved to deliver the final blow, no matter how many orders she gave it.

She grit her feet and clenched her hands into fists as she silently got to her feet. The knocking had resumed again shortly after it stopped; the catgirl hadn’t left, as she had hoped. It wasn’t over. Not yet.

That was why she shook her head at Sylvia, who had spread her arms wide, and walked down the hall. The catgirl didn’t know that she couldn’t kill her. She would continue to hold the initiative, so long as she didn’t reveal the weakness that was her hand.

Claiming victory over the celestial’s curse was as simple as driving the catgirl away. That was all she needed to do to prove that she was still in control, but something about the whole situation was warped. The feline was clearly lacking a sense of reason. She didn’t seem to think anything of her own life.

More important than that, however, was her own inability to act. Her heart was still beating up a storm. Her breathing was heavy, and she didn’t think that her head was quite in the right place. Something was wrong with her body, but she pressed on nonetheless.

She walked to the source of the noise, steadied her breath, and slowly pulled it open to reveal the confused feline on the other side.

“What?” she asked, with an annoyed scowl.

“What did you do to me!?”

“I threw you out the window.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! What did you do to my mind!?”

“Nothing.” It wasn’t a lie. They were both victims; the skill had gone off on its own. “Now leave. I’ll stab you in the face, next time you knock.” Claire slammed the door on the unwelcome guest, only to be subjected to another round of banging.

She tried to ignore it, but the catgirl was too obnoxious to dismiss. She kept hitting the door at uneven intervals, over and over. Claire tried icing her ears, but she could tell that the cursed kitty was still present. Her detector skill was screaming at her, reminding her each time the unwelcome guest attacked the building’s entrance.

Her lips twisted into a scowl, she raised a hand and fired an icy spear through the wooden gateway, followed by a second, a third, and a fourth. Only the final attack, which came after a brief delay, elicited any sort of response. The door was flung open. The angry intruder held the broken handle in one hand and her sword in the other, a thin line of blood dripping from her forehead.

“You had to have done something… else I’d never feel like… like… this.”

To Claire’s displeasure, she found herself incapable of looking away, but not for the same reason as before. She had to keep an eye on the intruder, in case she attacked, and observing her came with the unfortunate side effect of reading her lips. Even with her ears plugged, she could hear the embarrassed tone that had accompanied the flushed catgirl’s words; her voice had already been etched into the back of her mind.

“I don’t care how you feel. The bandits you’re after are dead. Go away.”

The catgirl paused for a moment to adjust the crooked square-rimmed glasses resting on her face. She calmed down, just enough for her blush to start fading away. “Oh… that’s convenient. Is there any evidence?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said the half-moose. “Look around, find it yourself.”

“You’re not going to help me?”

“No.”

The brown-haired pest pressed a hand to her chest and reeled back, as if struck by an arrow. Slowly, she raised her head and gave the lyrkress the most pathetic sad cat look she could. It wasn’t entirely perfect, given that her face had started reddening once more, but it didn’t matter. The lyrkress wouldn’t have had any of it either way.

With an annoyed hiss, Claire kicked the intruder in the gut and sent her flying out the door. An icy wall was constructed in the broken gap soon after, but it wasn’t enough of a deterrent. The catgirl switched up her approach and attempted to enter the building through its many windows, but the ice mage sealed them all before she could.

“Wow, she’s kinda weird,” said Sylvia, from her place atop the stairs.

“Very.” The other halfbreed pressed a hand to her face and leaned against the wall. She was finally safe; the whole fort was encased in a thick layer of ice.

“Yeah, I think I’m starting to see why Al thinks they’re perfect now. She’s totally his type.”

“Because she had cat parts?”

“Well, there’s that too… but it’s not just that. It’s also ‘cause they’re super easy to mindbre—” She clasped a hand to her mouth, and stopped the word from making it all the way out. “Actually, you know what? Nevermind, it's not important.” Turning back into a fox, Sylvia leapt down the stairs, crawled over to Claire’s lap, and curled up on top of it. She yawned once, then pushed the side of her face straight into the other halfbreed’s stomach and closed her eyes. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Much better. It stopped being so bad, once I got used to her.” Claire placed a hand on the fox’s head and ruffled her fur. Catgirl detector was still going off, but it no longer contributed to her stress. She had already identified the intruder as something of a living brick undeserving of attention or respect, an impression that Alfred’s influence was nowhere near powerful enough to change.

A smile crossed her lips right as the building was ripped apart. A diagonal cleave cut across it and separated the first and second floors. The ceiling slowly slid away, falling along an incline to reveal the catgirl, standing atop the branch of a nearby tree.

“What the heck!?” Sylvia reacted with a start. She jumped to her feet and started growling with her midsection raised and her front paws spread far apart.

It started to storm as the invader entered the exposed building. The dark clouds gave way to a thundering, evening shower, just as they had almost every other night.

“Let’s start over.” The swordswoman brandished her weapon and pointed it straight at Claire’s neck. “I’m Lia, Armidian Fastpaw, and bounty hunter extraordinaire. I’m here for the head of bandit chief Vik Sinnue, and I won’t leave until it’s mine.”

Claire rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t care. Go away.”

“I’ll go away as soon as you tell me where it i—”

“I’m not telling you anything,” said the half-lamia, with a hiss.

“Why n—”

The question was cut off by an annoyed magical glare. “Why not? Why not?” Claire’s hands trembled as she smashed the back of her fist into the wall. Large cracks shot through ice and stone alike as she grit her teeth hard enough for her gums to bleed. “You just cut apart my home.”

Lia’s confident tail started to fall. She tried to back off, but her feet wouldn’t budge. Instead, she found herself falling forwards, towards the source of her terror.

“Fix it,” demanded the moose.

“F-fix it?” The catgirl gulped. Her eyes darted to and fro as she sought a path to escape, but her body refused to move, regardless of how many she identified.

“Fix the building.”

A long chain made of ice appeared around the catgirl’s ankle. The shackle’s other end was tied to the doorframe, anchored to the giant block of ice that sealed it shut.

“H-how!?” stuttered Lia.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Claire. “But you’re not allowed to leave until it’s fixed.” Her eyes narrowed, she picked up her pet fox, and moved towards the kitchen.

The captive construction worker slashed at her chains as soon as the lyrkress turned her back. Surely enough, her trusty blade slipped right through the ice, but that was as far as she got.

All the hairs on her body suddenly rose as everything grew hot. She didn’t know where the heat was coming from, but it was accompanied by a dull pain. The burning sensation grew a thousand times stronger in the next instant and turned to a fiery agony. It started at the top of her head, but spread rapidly and pulsed through the rest of her body a moment later. Her muscles spasmed, twitching and jumping in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. Everything turned white; she was caught in a blinding flash of bright light.

“I forgot to mention. You’ll be struck by lightning. Every time you try to escape.”

Log Entry 5366

Charm Catgirl has reached level 13.

She gasped for air as the electric charge faded, the insides of her roasted lungs screaming for the sweet release of death. Collapsing onto the ground, she turned her gaze to the two-legged centaur, whose eyes were alight with a sadistic glint. Just like her sister’s murderer.

She couldn’t tell if she had imagined it. It was gone when she next looked again. But whatever the case, the catgirl coughed and pushed herself off the ground. Slowly, she raised her head and saw in the ice covered walls her own mirror image. Her heart began to pound as she realised that she was not wearing the look of twisted anguish she expected. Her face featured instead a strange, unfamiliar expression, one that mixed a blush and a captivated, drooling smile.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she knew. She knew that she had found something that could never be replaced.