Marvela Mystic | ✔️

Chapter 16 ✨ New Light

Urgency made the kitten's voice higher and higher as she spoke. Her fluffed-up tail thrashed behind her. She dug her claws into the cold soil of the Spirit Realm.

Yet none of the spirits moved when she spoke. None of them responded to her warning.

At least not in the way she had been expecting.

Echoing laughter reverberated from every inky black tree trunk in the forest.

Marvela spun around to gawk at the chuckling specters. "Wait. What's so funny?" she wailed. "This is serious! Slight needs help!"

A tiny spirit, barely taller than Marvela and adorned with the skull of a mouse, stepped from behind the wolf spirit, tittering with laughter like a tiny bell. "Slight should've listened to us."

Marvela glared at the little creature. "Stop laughing!" she said to him. She turned to regard the wolf-skulled spirit, the only silent one. "Spirit! I need your help! I need to go back somehow! Send me back and help me defeat Asra!"

The wolf-skulled spirit raised a clawed hand, her blue eye-flames flickering. "You can just call me Slender, little witch-cat."

Marvela sat back on her haunches and froze. "You know I'm a witch?" she questioned. "Even though I'm just a cat and not a human?"

Slender's eyes continued to flicker. Though her engraved boney maw was incapable of expression, she strangely appeared to smile down at the kitten. "Yes," she said, breathing more moths into existence. "The magic in you is potent. We can all feel it."

The kitten threw her ears backward and curled her tail around her paws. "That doesn't bother you, Slender?"

Slender tilted her skull to the side. "Why would it?"

"Your gift... Magic. You gave it to humans."

"Magic was given to humans originally, yes."

Marvela floundered for words. They don't care that I have magic of my own? She shook her head. There were more pressing matters at hand. She raised her chin. "But now humans aren't even using magic for its intended purpose!" she mewled up at Slender. "Asra is using it to destroy other witches! Does that bother you?"

"Yes."

Marvela sputtered at the spirits who continued to gawk at her, unbothered by her pleadings. She rose to her paws. "So help me!" she yowled at them all. "Do something about it and help me!"

The kitten clawed at the dirt, willing another portal to open again. But no void of light appeared before her while she furiously dug.

Slender sighed and then settled onto the ground next to the tiny kitten. Her bluish-black fur rustled as she patted the undisturbed earth beside her. "Sit, witch-cat," the spirit said. "Sit and listen."

Marvela paused and regarded the spirit for a moment, pouting in sullen silence. She ran her tongue down the raised fur of her spine to settle it, bitter that her coat was once again singed, and sat beside Slender. Begrudgingly.

She tried not to consider what could possibly be happening that moment back home while she was stuck here with these spirits.

Slender's eye-flames narrowed at the kitten. "What do you know of the First Witch?" she pondered.

Marvela's ears twitched. She kneaded the dirt impatiently. "The First Witch..." she began, recalling her lesson to Curious. "She fell into the spirit realm. And... And..." She met Slender's eyes. "You gave her magic. And then you gave magic to other humans, creating witches."