Cantrip Mage B1 C7: The Stray Blue Cat

~Chapter Seven: The Stray Blue Cat~

~Atta~

Atta remembered.

Not all of it. Not even most of it. In fact, now that she thought about it, most of her life had been a fugue. She knew she’d experienced things. The memories felt like words on the tip of her tongue. There’d been a mage. A library. Monsters—and more mages. She’d hunted deep within the rows of books, feasted on monsters and mages alike.

The details of those experiences—and of the ones that had come even earlier—were trapped in her mind, locked away from her.

Odd. She wasn’t particularly bothered by that fact. It must have something to do with the collar, but her memories were…not relevant. What was relevant to her were the last few weeks.

There’d been the spell, of course. The Call and Calm ritual. It had partially worked, despite its utter failure as a spell. Atta had been desperately curious about its caster. There was something familiar about the girl, but she couldn’t quite place it. This Y’aer-cursed fugue was stupid, inconvenient…and irrelevant. The girl. Yes, the stupid girl was interesting. So, after her failure of a spellcasting, Atta had made it her mission to stalk her.

And that mission had cleared her mind more than it had been cleared in years. Decades, perhaps.

Atta knew her purpose. She’d been a familiar—no, she still was a familiar, and if she still existed, then her master was still alive. He’d been working on something. The exact details of it were…currently sealed in her mind. She knew them, and she knew she knew them, but even thinking about them made her throat itch.

…But that didn’t matter, because if the girl reminded her of someone, that someone could only be her master.

This was a Y’aer-blessed gift. This girl could help with whatever her master had been working on. Yes. She could help. He’d been working on…he’d been working on whatever it was in the library. It was all there, in Atta’s head. She just couldn’t think it too loudly.

So, ally with the girl. Help her get up to speed, magically speaking. Then introduce her to her master’s work and see what she made of it. Easy enough. Just one problem.

The binding.

The bell jingled slightly on her collar, and the fugue pushed on her mind. Her memories were bound by spells she couldn’t even identify, much less work to reverse. That would make things more complicated. Not impossible, but more complicated.

She couldn’t remember everything, and she couldn’t share what she knew.

Atta would have to be clever.

◄▼►

The cat closed in.

Eola squeaked again. It wasn’t fear or pain, but a sense of being lost and in over her head. Confusion. That was it. Confusion. Her head spun from the runes that had washed over her, and she sat down hard enough to send a jolt up her spine. The cat’s bell rang as its pink tongue shot out to lick its paw again. Its eyes still hadn’t left hers, and Eola tried to keep from shivering. Cats locked eyes to challenge each other. The loser looked away first.

Solutions. Solutions. 

The sword. The sword was a couple of yards away. She could sketch a Safe Shield, duck behind it, and make a move for the sword. Then she’d be on even footing with the thing, whatever it was, and she could try to maneuver. It wasn’t much, but it was her best bet.

She looked away.

Her eyes flicked to her mother’s blade—and the cat’s followed. “You remind me of someone, girl,” it said. Its paw lashed out and batted the sword, and Eola flinched as its hilt bounced off her booted foot. “Knock that scheming off and pick that up.”

“What?” Eola managed to blurt out.

“You can’t hurt me with that, and your magic’s not up to snuff. If I wanted you gone, you’d be gone.” Both yellow eyes shifted back to hers. “Do you believe me?”

“No.”

The cat laughed, a yowling, howling sound that echoed in the stacks. “You’re funny when you lie. Who’s the boy going for? a librarian?”

“Yes.” Eola stiffened. Her hand wrapped around the sword’s hilt, squeezing tight. It was a lifeline. Her head felt like a ship on the stormy sea beyond Greenarbor’s jetty, and the sword was a rope thrown to a drowning Eola.

“We have a few minutes, then. Good. I’m Atta.” The cat—Atta—lifted a paw as if reaching out to shake hands.

Eola stared at it for another moment, then clambered to her feet and shook her head, trying to clear it. She had her smallsword, her whistle, and her spells; there was no reason to take this lying down—or sitting down.

For the first time, the cat looked offended. Its tail fluffed out, and its back arched. “This is your fault, you know. You did this, not me.”

“What are you talking about? You’re a monster, hunting me in the library,” Eola said. Her sword tip wavered, though. The power in the air before—now that she was upright, and the cat wasn’t attacking, that power felt…different. Not calmer, but more…controllable? More.

“No, I’m a familiar.”

Oh. Oh!

“It worked?” Eola asked. Then the second implication hit her. “You’re my familiar?”

“No, silly girl. That spell doesn’t work without attuned Mana, and you know it. And you’re definitely not my master. I’m—“ A hacking fit washed over the cat. Its back arched, and its collar’s runes glowed. Eola tried to identify them, but there had to be thousands of them, and they were both tiny and constantly swimming back and forth. After a moment, Atta recovered, coughing once more before mewling slightly. “I’m someone else’s familiar.”

“Then…” Eola closed her eyes for a moment.

“Like I said, not your familiar, not my mage.”

Eola’s shoulders slumped, both from disappointment and from exhaustion. Y’aer, she was tired. And to be this close to a familiar of her own, only to be denied…

But on the other hand….she was curious, and a little curiosity probably wouldn’t kill her. It certainly wouldn’t kill the cat. “Whose familiar are you, then?”

“Rude. You know I can’t say.” Atta’s eyes flicked from hers to the sword for a moment. “Put it away, silly girl. You’re in no danger.”

Eola hesitated. Then she slid her smallsword back into its scabbard. “You can’t say because…”

“Of the binding.” Atta batted the bell with a paw. “Obviously.”

“Right.” An idea sprang to life in her head. It was insane, but once it took root, it blossomed instantly. “But you’re a familiar. You could help me! I’m—“

“Attuned all wrong. I know. I’ve been watching you for weeks. You want me to pretend to be your familiar, right? Trick that teacher of yours? Not going to work. Become yours? Not happening. But I’ll point you in the right direction for your studies. I know a lot about—“ Another wave of coughs shook the cat. “Y’aer’s curse! I can’t tell you the details, but you’re on the right track.”

Atta’s ears flicked behind it, then flattened against her head. “Out of time. We’ll talk later, girl. Somewhere private. You’ll know how to call me when the time comes.”

Then the cat vanished, and a small weight dropped into Eola’s pocket, thumping against her side. She reached inside and wrapped her fingers around a piece of stone. A rune was carved into it, and the whole thing was shaped like a cat. And, of course, it was warm—and…purring?

She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up to her ear. Yes. It was purring. A tiny bell rang around its neck when she moved it, and a thin smile cracked her lips. A familiar! Not her familiar, but a familiar all the same.

Then boots echoed on the marble floor, Tagg and Colin skidded into Row Thirty-Nine, sword and spear ready, and Eola dropped the blue-black cat figurine into her pocket.

◄▼►

Five minutes later, they were past the first gate, and Eola found herself on one of the public section’s padded benches. Her hand was still in her pocket—she hadn’t so much as drawn her sword as Tagg escorted her back to safety—and she kept rubbing the cat figuring’s ears. It was hard to believe no one else could hear the purring. She couldn’t stop, though.

“You’re sure you’re fine, Miss Lemiene?” Tagg asked. “I can have your friend take you to the hospital floor for a check-up.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she murmured. “It didn’t do anything except stalk me and then vanish when you two got close.”

“Like it was playing with you?” Tagg asked.

“Exactly.”

“Sounds like a Srilla. It’s a third-floor monster, more of an opportunist than anything else. Magical shapeshifter. It looks for prey with lots of Mana, then drains them dry. I’ll get some librarians together and hunt it down. Mr. Tremory, keep your friend out of the library for a couple of days. Srillas fixate on their targets, but they’re not too smart until they’ve fed on things, so they don’t fixate for too long. Forty-eight hours, and you’ll be fine.”

“Please, no! I was fine. I’ll be fine for the first floor, at the very least!”

Eola tried to stand up, but Tagg’s calloused hand pressed down on her shoulder. “Not risking it, and you’ve been here too much, Miss Lemiene. Take a couple of days. Eat some regular meals, catch up on your homework. Be a normal student for a while.”

“Regular meals? I could be studying.”

Colin coughed. “Eola, you think the cafeteria food’s good.”

“She does?” Tagg asked.

“She does. She wanted my vegetables tonight.”

“You’re both eating there? And you’re eating there all the time, Miss Lemiene? Y’aer save you. Mr. Tremory, follow me. You and I need to have a serious talk. Miss Lemiene, don’t move. We’ll be back in a minute.” Tagg stalked away down a nearby row of shelves, and Colin followed, looking over his shoulder apologetically.

For her part, Eola didn’t move.

The cafeteria food was great. She’d eat it more if she had the time to spare. But that wasn’t what was on her mind.

A Srilla. There’d been one near Greenarbor when she was a kid. It had hunted people outside of the hold, but a group of mages had put it down. She’d seen it—a long, burning-white snake the size of a tree trunk, patternless and shimmering. That was the most common form the shapeshifting monster took, but not the only one. The thing was, just like Tagg had said, a Srilla wasn’t that smart. They certainly wouldn’t talk. Besides, Eola had seen the flowing yellow eyes for weeks, not a couple of days. She was pretty sure Atta wasn’t a Srilla, but that didn’t mean the cat had been telling the truth.

The smartest thing to do would be to pull the figurine out of her pocket and hand it to Tagg. That’d solve the problem right there. But Eola didn’t want to. The familiar knew something about her magic, and she had to know what it was. If she got rid of Atta, she’d lose her chance at knowledge and at having a familiar of her own. She had to make the best choice for herself.

So, when Tagg and a red-flushed Colin came back a few minutes later, her hand wasn’t in her pocket anymore, and she was upright.

“Miss Lemiene, get some rest,” Tagg said. “Mr. Tremory, think about what we talked about. You’re both dismissed.”

Colin didn’t so much as glance at Eola as they walked to the lockers. They pulled on their robes and cloaks and stepped out into the wind and snow. Neither of them said a word the whole walk around the academy’s circular path, or as they climbed the stairs to their suite. Eola wanted to say something about what had happened in the library, but she couldn’t find the right words.

At the door, though, she couldn’t help herself. She was out of time. “Colin—“

“Eola,” he said at the same time. She hesitated, and he kept going, bulling ahead. “Thank you for…all of that. Tagg’s right. It was a bad trade for you. How about dinner tomorrow night, in Varin’s Town? I’ll get some real food in you. Good food.”

“Uh, sure,” Eola said quickly. Her stomach rumbled even though it should have had enough, and she opened the door. “Hope you get some good reading in, and thanks for, um, the talk about your magic.”

Then, before he could say anything else, she fled to her room and locked the door behind her.

◄▼►

Monsters were a fact of life all across Alemia.

Eola had grown up in Greenarbor, on the kingdom’s northwestern coast. She’d seen her share of them and even watched her uncle and parents kill some with magic and spellsteel. Everyone knew they were out there, even if the magecraft holds-turned cities had been safe for a thousand years or more. And Tagg’s warning about the ‘Srilla’ loose on the second floor of the library had knocked some sense into Eola. She was in some danger as long as she had the figurine—and as long as Atta hadn’t proved it could be trusted.

So, before Eola even tried to wake up the familiar, she took a few precautions.

The first was a Child’s Magic spell. A hexagon of Old Alemic writing, with a diamond in the middle. It was one of the slowest cantrips in her spellbook—practically a ritual—but when it finally finished, a thin diamond of magic formed on her floor around both her and the cat figurine. Guard Shape would keep both of them inside it until Eola dispelled it or the cat broke free. That should buy her roommates time to flee if it did turn out to be a Srilla.

The other precaution was simpler. Eola threw her cloak and robe against the door, blocking out the narrow sliver of darkness below it. No one was up this late, but she was reasonably confident that Atta wasn’t a threat, and she wanted all the privacy she could muster.

Unfortunately, there were no silencing cantrips, and the Silent modifying mark only made the cast quiet, not the spell itself.

Then, sword at the ready, Eola tapped the statue between the ears and released the Mana bottled up inside her.

She didn’t expect it to work, but the statue disappeared, and the thin, blue cat sat right where it had been. “I could have done that myself,” it hissed softly.

“You said I was on the right track. What does that mean?” Eola asked quickly, before the cat could move or say anything else.

“It means that you’re on the right track. I can’t say more than that, otherwise—“ the hairball-coughing, collar-glowing fit returned, and Atta’s eyes narrowed as it passed. “Otherwise, that.”

“How can I trust you’re not a monster?”

Atta batted at the sword tip only a few inches from its face. “Because, silly girl, I would have killed and eaten you if I were. You’re not asking the questions you need to ask. Quit being stupid.”

Eola paused. Then she unbuckled her spellbook, sat at her desk, and cracked it open. Atta gathered itself and bounded onto the wooden desk, watching as Eola licked her finger and flipped through it until her finger landed on Call and Calm. Then she pulled a small chalkboard from the desk’s single shelf, fished a piece of chalk from its box, and started drawing.

“Just before you attacked us—“

“I didn’t attack you,” Atta yowled. “I just stalked you. For fun.”

“Just before that, I was talking to Colin about the way he does magic.” Eola’s hand flew across the board, sketching and erasing as she talked softly. “He has a hard time seeing magic as anything more than all of its individual parts because of his attunement, and it makes him an incredibly slow caster. But it gave me an idea.”

The Call and Calm symbol appeared, identical to the one in her spellbook. “This works, right?”

Atta’s ears perked up, and the cat stared at the board, then nodded.

Eola started erasing. Her movements looked random, but they weren’t. Gradually, bit by bit, she chipped away at the rune, eliminating two entire rings and the diamond in the center. All that was left was the Old Alemic and a single Forsooth mark. “I know every cantrip. Every piece of Child’s Magic. So what is this spell, and why don’t I recognize it or the mark?”

The cat looked at it for a long time. Then its head tilted. “It’s incorrect, that’s why. You’re—”

Another hacking fit rocked the cat’s body, and it arched its back, its entire frame going into every disgusting cough. “Y’aer curse all of it. One moment.”

Eola stared in horror, then reached out to pick Atta up and put the cat on the floor. A trio of bloody lines appeared on her hand, and she gasped and pulled back at the sudden pain. The cat’s mouth stretched impossibly wide, and a tattered, faded, and very soggy ball of parchment fell onto the table. “Got this gift for you. It’s all I could do to smuggle it out of there, so you’d better be thankful.”

Eola stared at the slimy papers, stomach churning. “Thanks?” she muttered, not reaching for the so-called gift. The cat was…incredibly cat-like, vulgar, and a mix of arrogant and condescending that Eola didn’t quite understand. She was also the strangest familiar Eola had ever heard of; the only ones that talked were parrots, thrushes, and a few other birds, and they didn’t hold conversations like this. But on the other hand…

On the other hand, Atta was a familiar. Maybe not Eola’s familiar, but one all the same. And she did appreciate the help—any help. Even a coughed-up piece of parchment.

“You’re welcome. Look at your chalk-sketch again when you’ve deciphered that page, and try to figure out what you’re missing. You’re a silly girl, but even you can do that,” the cat said. She curled up, bell jingling as the wind rattled the shutter outside. Eola scratched her just below the collar, and the cat purred softly. “And wake me if you happen to find some fish.

◄▼►
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