Alchimia Rex

With the very shadows under the control of her enemy, Monica could only thrust herself through the physical world with all the ferocity she could muster. Wood and stone splintered under her paws as she used every available surface to push herself harder. Her opponent kept slipping through the gaps, vanishing before Monica could even land a meaningful blow. If it weren’t for the stupid-stink, she would’ve lost track of her opponent multiple times by now.

“You weren’t this aggressive in the city,” the old maiden said. “Why?”

“Not want to break home.” Monica replied, grabbing hold of a handful of pebbles and throwing them with everything she had. Tree trunks burst from the pelting of rocks; some exploded on impact, while others buried themselves deep in puffs of splinters or mud.

“Using whatever you can find as a weapon… you remind me of my third daughter.” Her opponent’s voice was heavy, amused, sad, angry, all at the same time. Monica could not understand why the older maiden spoke like this, but she pushed harder, chasing after her the perma-stink. “It couldn’t have been you who killed the Watcher.”

“Green Tree Bitch.” Monica answered, unamused.

“Is that who you’re leading me to?”

With an annoyed ‘tsk’, the Sabertooth tried to push harder, but catching up would be impossible without using her shadows. And the shadows were not a safe place to go to when up against this opponent. Monica’s frustration burned.

“You’re not weak; why are you trying to get someone else to fight your battles?” The older maiden asked. “If you can’t handle a strong opponent on your own, then what hope do you have to be able to protect your young?”

Monica flinched at that, a moment of hesitation that broke the stalemate as a sudden wave of shadows sought to trap her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped up into the air and thrust again, unleashing power through the soles of her paw to turn the air into solid for the split-second necessary to launch herself further away. The area she’d escaped from was covered in a dome of darkness that quickly dissolved back into nothing.

“Why are you fighting?”

Monica snarled, back to the chase. “You took Rick.”

“And you’ll give up your freedom for that?” The maiden snarled.

There was a cold anger, one that came accompanied by a wave of power. Every shadow around Monica exploded in a rain of undodgeable thorns, pelting her body with hundreds of tiny scratches.

“You live in a stinky city, with rocks and wood but no prey. You’re forced to bow and bend for weaklings who’ve no right to tell you what to do.” The voice came from all over, but Monica could tell where the other was by the scent, and she pressed on rather than give the opportunity for another annoying attack. “And what do you get? Rules.”

This time the darkness lashed out, whips reaching out and trying to grasp at her from every angle. Monica twisted and bent, lashing out and clawing through the attack before it could latch on. And yet they kept coming, trying to slow her down. For every one that she tore, two more would find themselves wrapped around a limb. There was nowhere to move that would not expose someplace else, and for every freed limb there would be more whips.

Monica rocketed upwards into the sky and away from the forest and the shadows.

“In the clan you keep what you can protect. We do not presume obedience, only convenience.”

Thrusting against the air to jump higher, Monica’s body rose higher and higher. High enough she could look down at the swamp and the trees were nothing but tiny little bushy-thorns. “If Monica only do what Monica wants, then Rick not stay. If Rick only do what Rick wants, then Monica not stay.”

“But why listen to a weakling? You can just take what you want.” The strong-opponent’s voice came from all around, as if the strong-opponent were right there. Which was both right and wrong; the energy was there, but the matron was down on the ground, looking up at her. Monica thought back to the previous fight with the strong-opponent, and how she’d been able to create darkness out of nothing, how the shadows had not made sense, made out of empty air.

“Rick too stubborn!” Monica roared. “And Monica like it!”

They could’ve stayed in her cave, in the mountains where they first met. Alone, no Dia, no Kiara, no Urtha, no Eva. And Rick would’ve been miserable, and Monica would not have learned so many things she now knew she wanted. She wanted a warm bed, a hot meal, and cooked meat! Why would she raise kittens in a cold cave?

But above all, if they’d stayed in the cave, Monica would have been dumber, because Rick taught her something very important: to think.

Right as she’d begun to fall, everything around her turned black, and with a ‘pop’, Monica suddenly felt her breath leave her lips. She tried to inhale, but nothing came. She tried to jump, but her power could not find any air to condense for her to step on. There was an eerie silence, save that of her own beating heart, and as she tried desperately to push into the darkness, she found no purchase.

She was falling, fast.

Her first kick into the not-air got nothing, just a mild sensation of contact.

But the second found enough purchase to propel her through and out into the light.

Just in time to crash through the canopy of the forest and not into the hard water.

Panting, Monica recovered her bearings after a second.

“You understand the True Darkness? How?” The strong-opponent’s voice was a mix of confusion and disbelief.

“Rick helped!” Monica preened, flashing a smile full of fangs and bloodlust.

Monica had wracked her brain, trying to make sense of what the strong-opponent was doing. The strong-opponent had created shadows where there’d been nothing but sunlight, and used it to steal the air. It wasn’t just cheating, it shouldn’t work! Monica had tried! But clearly she’d missed something, so she asked herself: how would Rick answer this? And there was really only one solution. There had to be some super small shadow she could not see. Because that was Rick’s answer to most things: there were very very small things all around, so small that Monica’s perfect-very-good eyes could not see, but that could do things.

Mostly be stinky.

So it could only mean there were tiny shadows too, she’d realized, just ones Rick did not know about (because he said that shadow was nothing at all, which Monica quickly proved wrong by using the shadows to make him trip. Which started The Big Argument). And it was with this crucial understanding that she tried to reach out, not to the Big-Darkness, but the Small-Darkness.

“You mean to say a weak human… no, that is too absurd.” The strong-opponent’s powers flared out, and the air became thicker.

“You just stupid.” Monica replied, slowly moving her paws back and forth, trying to get a better feel for the Small-Darkness. She didn’t fully understand how it worked, but she could sense that the matron was somehow using it to make the Big-Darkness dangerous for her to escape into. Also how she’d used the Small-Darkness to take away her breath.

But there was no more time for thinking, as the strong-opponent began creating small black orbs. “Let’s see how well you understand it, then.” As she said this, the orbs, a dozen or so of them, began to let out an ear-splitting wheezing sound, one that made Monica’s fur prickle with a foreboding sense of danger.

No matter what, she could not let the orbs touch her.

This theory was confirmed when the strong-opponent had one such orb fly towards Monica, and though she dodged the thing, it punctured through the tree behind her. It left a perfectly round hole through the tree, and the tree behind that, and the one behind that, and the one after, and the one after.

The sense of danger intensified as the orbs shot out in her direction, and the ground exploded under Monica as she violently lept away. It was now the strong-opponent that gave chase, floating over a coalescence of shadows while the dark spheres orbited around her. Every opportunity Monica had to gain distance, she took it, but the older maiden leapt through shadows distances far greater than anything Monica had done before, keeping up easily, bombarding her with the attacks that tore through everything in their path.

Though she tried to have some semblance of direction, Monica was reduced to instinctually leaping and bending herself in impossible contortionism just to avoid the onslaught. Even trying to counter-attack by throwing things back at the old maiden proved useless; the orbs would merely consume all that came their way, just as easily as they could destroy that which they touched.

“Throag never understood the true darkness.” The older maiden proclaimed. “She came close, but not quite as much as you have. You have no need to-”

It was at this moment that a tree struck the strong-opponent. The older maiden snarled, destroying it with one of her orbs.

“Do not mind my interruption.” A voice echoed from all around them. It was the green-tree-bitch.

The older maiden snarled, her single eye tracing the forest around them in search of the source. “Don’t get in the way.”

“I care not for your ego nor your malformed, backward practices.” The voice shook the ground, roots and branches shivering, caught in an invisible storm. “But I will make it fair. I will only use my pinky finger.”

All around them, the jungle began to shake violently, trees, roots, and branches thickening and wriggling like worms. Monica felt no danger, but the strong-opponent clearly did, as her orbs began to tear through the vegetation, spinning around the older maiden like a tornado as she used the shadows to launch herself towards Monica once more.

The chase was renewed, but this time, the very forest was alive and helping Monica every step of the way. As she bound and bounced around the swamp, she found the trees, branches, and roots shifting and moving to make themselves ready footholds. And while this was happening, those very same trees would thrust themselves into the way of the strong-opponent, causing innumerable deviations to her attacks that reduced the pressure on Monica’s race.

“You are annoying.” The matron proclaimed, sending another barrage of destructive orbs, but the distance between her and Monica had grown.

“I did say I was only using my pinky.” The green-bitch chuckled.

“I’d rather you show yourself.”

“She cheat.” Monica agreed with a sagely nod, emphasizing with the enemy even if just a little. Fighting enemies that you could not see was just the worst.

“That would be a meaningless risk.” The voice scoffed, though one more voice joined in, a whisper in Monica’s ear. “Rick, the healer, and a little… an interesting group of tagalongs have been retrieved. Retreat would be suggested, I hesitate to believe we could trap her well enough to finish the job.”

Monica had to agree; the strong-opponent was tricky in ways she could not handle or understand. She scowled in thought as she raced through the deadlands. “She will chase.” She finally concluded, they’d taken the strong-opponent’s prey, killed Throag, and who knew what else. The strong-opponent had little reason not to pursue and attack when the chance was right.

“Hm… I do see the inconvenience that would present. Perhaps a political approach?”

Ugh. The word left a bad taste in Monica’s mouth. Every time Rick had said it, it meant something was going to be annoying in an unforseen way or “complicated” as he put it. But with the growing number of dark orbs spinning around the strong-opponent, it was clear this was no fight Monica would be able to win.

“Why Rick!?” She shouted out at the matron.

“With his blood, I will be able to have stronger children. Our clan will outlast and survive all others.” The matron spoke.

“Ah, I believe I know what kind of cat this one is.” The green-bitch spoke amusedly, her next words no longer private but echoing through the forest. “There are other humans like Rick, with pure blood, and younger as well, better able to sire children for far longer.”

The older maiden did not slow in her pursuit, even as the air became charged with more power. Monica was still far too occupied with bouncing around and dodging the attacks, annoyed by the two old-ones’ exchange as if all the ongoing attacks were barely important.

“I can smell the trickery in your voice; you are no different to the blood-suckers.” The strong-opponent scoffed. “What is your trap?”

“An alliance.” Green-bitch answered. “The Watcher is dead, the humans will come, and the Vampires will use your clans as a bloody wall for their own convenience. If the clans do not unite, they will fall one by one, or worse, betray one another for their own convenience and make themselves easy prey. This is your one chance to take your freedom for yourselves.”

This time there was no answer, but her chase slowed, the onslaught of orbs coming to a crawl as they hovered around the old maiden like flies around a corpse. Monica didn’t bother to stop, not until she could sense the shift in the shadows no longer being under the control of the strong-opponent. She could hear them talking some more, but did not bother to pay attention, instead turning her focus towards the darkness.

She had an idea.

Carefully, she pulled on the Small-darkness, and then wrapped it in Large-darkness. Bit by bit, she wrapped that with more Small-darkness, then with Large-darkness. Like a stinky bad onion, she added layers and pulled it tighter, and tighter. Then, grabbing the very dangerous Monica orb, she turned right around, jumping up, and up, and up, away from any large-shadows so that the strong-opponent could not sense her.

And when she’d gone up enough she could spot where the strong-opponent was, she remembered something Rick had said about big-fights in his world.

‘It’s all about who can throw the strongest rocks the furthest.’

Well.

This was Monica’s very special darkness-rock.

“So we are in agreement?” Camilla asked through the trees, remotely watching the Panthress’ reactions. The old matron was a veteran in betrayal, no doubt. From what little the former Empress had learned of the local politics, betrayal and self-serving interests were the bread and butter amongst the Tigress clans.

It was a trait feline maidens often expressed, but this looked like it’d been a trait that’d been empowered by the Vampires over the years. Camilla felt curious enough she just might ask the fellow ageless maidens for notes. If this had been intentional, the blood-suckers had truly done a thorough job at it.

“I think-” The Panthress replied.

Camilla frowned ever so minutely when she sensed something amiss. At first, she couldn’t quite place it, but once her spells confirmed her suspicion, she let out a sigh. “It seems there was a change of plans.”

She might have claimed she’d use only one finger, but the situation warranted a more serious approach. Pulling upon her deep magic, she focused upon a singular spell, channeling it through the trees. “My partner doesn’t appear to wish for a diplomatic solution.”

The old maiden realized something was coming, but Camilla’s disabling spell removed any capacity for her to control her elemental energies, for just a split second.

Long enough for a fist-sized black sphere to implode right in front of the Panthress.

Camilla lost sight of what happened next, a sign all vegetation in the area had been damaged far too thoroughly. The forest shuddered at the power behind the attack, the sky turning paler and darker for barely a moment before all was silent.

The Elf Queen let out a long, barely restrained sigh, brushing off the sweat of her brow. She tried to recall the last time she’d ever pushed herself this hard, but her life before the Deep Sleep was often covered in fog whenever she attempted to draw upon exact details. Faces and names blurred, events meshed and were hard to put into chronological order. Camilla was mostly certain she’d once been exhausted to the point of collapse when she’d been an Elf, but that was the only thing she could claim with certainty.

Disregarding the navigation of her past, she focused on the present. Not being one to leave things half-finished, the Elf Queen ordered her hunters to seek out any traces of the Panthress and confirm her death. Even if it’d been crippled beyond repair, it would just not do to allow such a powerful creature to run amok.

Though it’d been true that the Elf Queen lacked the means to hold a Panthress in place for long enough to guarantee her demise. At best, she could pin her in place for half a second. And after having watched the fight, Monica clearly lacked the capacity to finish the Panthress in that time.

Apparently Monica had opted to prove her wrong.

“To be able to draw inspiration from an Elementalist’s spell to create an attack of her own on the fly…” Camilla glanced over at Rick. “By all measures, she is a genius of her craft.”

The human was currently being held tightly by a Salalexis, the reptilian feralborn maiden wrapping around him like an attempt at being a living shield of some sort. It kept hissing at Dia as the healer, despite her poor condition, tried to fuss over the human.

He was frowning.

“What is it?” She asked, casually.

“You allowed the kingdom to learn Dia’s a Nightingale. You sabotaged any attempt at peace.”

“There can never be peace against a force that would enslave your daughters at the first opportunity, only temporary cease-fires.” Camilla replied coldly. “Even at best, you would see nothing but an imaginary line drawn on the sand, where any maiden that crossed it would see their necks adorned in chains.”

“That is your problem; you do not represent Sinco.” He frowned further. “It was not your call to reveal that knowledge.”

That was a rather debatable point, but one Camilla saw no reason to argue. Her gaze instead turned eastward. “Your alignment with the kingdom can be mended. Given some time and effort, I am sure they will be ecstatic to receive that which Aubria and the Viscount refused. But as of right now, with how well-aligned you appear to be with its enemies, would that not make transactions easier with the Vampires?”

Rick did not answer.

Camilla only gave him a bow, turning back towards the forces to prepare for their retreat. She idly wondered whether Rick would leave the humans from Sinco that’d not been found to their fate, but pushed the thought aside.

There could be more talks of politics and strategy once her units were back and she and the human were properly safe.