Marvela gradually became aware of a cool breeze ruffling her patchy, singed coat. The sensation brought back hazy memories of flying high above the treetops of Grudgewood Forest, clinging to an enraged crow by her claws. That's right... There had been fire everywhere. Where had it come from? She remembered she had fallen, but it wasn't the gnarled branches of her familiar forest that had risen to catch her.
Slowly, the black kitten opened her eyes.
She was no longer in her forest of gold. She was in a dark and dingy place; an alleyway that was foreign to her. The coldness of the human-made cobbled stones beneath her paws and the scents of hundreds of strange people made her fur stand on end. She winced, giving her poor singed coat a good once-over with her tongue to soothe it.
Marvela thrashed her tail at the cacophonous street noise just beyond the lit entryway of the alley. Cars and trucks rumbled by, roaring and belching foul-smelling smoke. Silhouettes of passersby strolled past the alley where she hid, laughing and smiling and completely unaware of the terrified kitten hiding in the shadows. Marvela's whiskers drooped. Her heart sank with a painful pang.
Vigilance. She had fallen into the town of Vigilance.
Marvela pressed her back against a stack of old crates left abandoned in the alley, blinking into the blinding sunlight streaming in from the street. The buildings at either side of her caged her and left her feeling claustrophobic. In all her life, she had never left the safety and comfort of Grudgewood, a place where she knew each of the animal inhabitants by name.
A place she desperately wanted to return to.
Her little heart beat against her chest as if struggling to free itself and lead the way back home.
The sunlight shifted. Now patches of it dappled the stone ground, wavering on the leather-bound spellbook lying in front of her. Fresh claw-marks raked its worn cover.
The kitten uttered a gasp and scooped up the heavy book with her forepaws. This book was all that she had left of her cottage—of home. Marvela cracked open the old tome, breathing in the scent of cinnamon and spices that wafted from the weathered pages.
It smelled like her witch.
Marvela shut her eyes to stifle the tears welling in the corners. "Sable... Oh, Sable... What do I do...?"
She tried to conjure images of her witch's smiling face in her mind's eye, but all she saw were the flames that had engulfed their home and reduced it to ashes.
All she saw was Asra's cruel smile as her witch disappeared right before her eyes.
Her ears pivoted back toward the sound of approaching padded paw-steps. Marvela whirled around with a jolt, coming face to menacing face with a scruffy full-grown cat perched upon the boxes. The enormous tabby grinned down at her with a face full of scars.
"What do we have here?" asked the laughing cat through broken fangs. His rancid breath almost made the kitten's whiskers shrivel and curl. "Are you lost, little kitty?"
Marvela squeaked up at the beastly cat. She didn't think she could pacify him with any berries. She arched her back and fluffed up her tail. Her wide orange eyes were aflame. Despite her efforts, she was still hopelessly small in the face of the other laughing cat.
So, she turned tail and ran, mewling, "Ah! What do I do?" as she snapped up the old book by the spine in her jaws and dragged it with her as she bolted from the alley and the cackling cat in the shadows.
She scurried onto the sidewalk and into a forest of busy legs. People uttered exclamations of surprise at the panicked kitten. Some reached down to grab at Marvela, but she was too quick, too fearful, too concentrated on not getting stepped on. She ran with no destination or goal in mind.
Something pounced on top of her from above. The kitten yowled, briefly dropping her treasured book to thrash and swat at the skeleton that had pinned her to the pavement.
"Whoa, look out there!" someone yelled.
The skeleton rose, releasing Marvela who was now little more than a blinking and twitching black ball of frizzled fur.
"Oh!" exclaimed the man holding up the plastic skeleton. "Looks like Mr. Bones fell over and almost squashed this little kitten! Hey there, kitty cat, are you okay?"
Marvela blinked and twitched some more. She didn't think her tail would ever unfluff itself after this ordeal. She stared up at the old man who carried the skeleton in his arms. The... fake skeleton. Oh. So it wasn't real. Slowly, she turned her head, finally taking notice of her surroundings.
The sidewalk and street were almost buried in bright orange and crispy leaves. Up and down the street, every quaint shop had ghoulish decorations plastered on their windows and hanging from every surface. Plump, hollowed-out pumpkins beamed at her with carved smiles. Cutouts of grinning bats were taped to glass storefronts. Cheerful ghosts made from old bed sheets swayed from the rooftop overhangs they dangled from. Replicas of jeering witches with warty green skin and pointed hats cackled down at the kitten in the street. The plaster black cats at their sides arched their backs menacingly. Marvela felt inclined to do the same.
This was strange, this... celebration of the macabre. Surreal.
And very, very frightening.
The frazzled kitten swallowed and looked back up at the man as he finished hanging the plastic skeleton in the entryway of his shop. Her whiskers twitched at this human who seemed so unperturbed by the morbid decor around him.
"Um, excuse me?" she mewled at the man. Her voice was little more than a squeak. "C–can you please help me? I'm lost and—"
"Yes, such a sweet little kitty cat you are. Come here, you..." The man knelt and gingerly held out a hand to her. Marvela recoiled from it, a knot forming in her stomach.
That's right. People without magic couldn't understand animals.
Turning her back on the old man, she picked up her book again and hurried on her way, ducking and dodging all sorts of horrid black and orange decor.
Her ears perked. Her whiskers quivered. Her eyes flitted across every passing human's face as she padded along. No one here had magic. No one here could help her. No one here could—
The scream of a car horn startled her, making her leap into the air, diving blindly out of the way of the tire that sped by less than a tail's length away from her.
The last thing Marvela saw before she and her book fell into the open maw of a gutter was the bright blue sunlit sky above Vigilance.
Then the sunlight disappeared.
"Ow..." Marvela whimpered into the darkness. She scrambled upright from the soggy pile of leaves that had cushioned her fall. Swatting a leaf from her face, she stared up at the thin sliver of light that marked the opening to the street above. There was no way she could reach it.
She shivered, cold and alone. She now had nothing to her name besides a patchy coat and her battle-scarred book of spells.
Marvela's little heart stopped fluttering. With a chill running down her spine, she dug into the leaves around her and tossed them to the side haphazardly. Her book... Her book was gone.
"Look at the little kitten," laughed something in the shadows.
Marvela squeaked in surprise at the sound, pressing herself flat to the filthy ground. Her eyes adjusted. Creatures stared at her in the dark. Hushed paw-steps around her informed her that she was surrounded.
Round, black eyes caught the dim light with white flashes. Hairless tails dragged across the ground and writhed like worms. Yellow teeth gnashed in hungry anticipation.
Rats. Rats surrounded her.
"Go away!" Marvela hissed at them, arching her back. "Go away, or I'll..."
The rats only cackled at her. Their voices were high and grating.
"Or you'll what?" giggled one of the rats. "Hiss at us some more?"
"Cat, you're barely bigger than us," chortled another.
One rat, larger and meaner than the rest, stepped forward. A sliver of light from above cut across his grinning, gray-furred visage. He rubbed his forepaws together as he eyed the kitten up and down. Malevolence gleamed in his nasty eyes. "Aw, poor itty bitty kitty fell into our territory. Don't you know that everything in the Belowground belongs to us?"
He took another step toward her.
Marvela did the only thing she could think of. On instinct, she called for her magic and hoped she still possessed it. A familiar who had lost their witch gradually lost their magic as well shortly after.
Lost their witch...
A lump rose in Marvela's throat at that thought.
Her witch... Her witch was gone.
A swirling feeling inside her snapped the kitten from her thoughts. She felt that achingly familiar sensation in her chest, thankful that her magic still stirred within her.
And yet something was different.
Her meager magic used to feel like a fluttering songbird, light and airy. Now it felt like a screeching bird of prey trapped in a cage that was far too small to contain it.
Now it had claws.
Now it had power.
Marvela had only meant to release her usual wave of magic to startle her captors and send them running. But her magic escaped from her like a raging tsunami. She couldn't reign that rampaging beast back in. A flood of orange sparks exploded forth from her claw-tips with a bang. Leaves were thrown up into the air, as were all the rats.
The kitten sat, stunned, as a cyclone of squealing rats orbited her. Orange lightning crackled through the air around her, making her fur stand on end. Unlike her dance with the crickets the evening before, this chaos was beyond her control. She willed it to stop. Pleaded with it.
Finally, her unruly magic obeyed her. As quickly as it had appeared, it dissipated, dropping rats into the leaves like stones.
The kitten held her forepaws to her face as the panicking rats squeaked and took off running with bruised egos and backsides.
She stared at the sparks still shooting from her splayed claws. Her magic wasn't fading as it should have been. It was different. Changed.
Marvela's eyes narrowed. Sable's mysterious last words before she succumbed to Asra played in her mind.
Magic never changes, her witch had said.
Marvela watched the last of the sparks fade from her claw-tips. Gradually, the stirring within her settled and returned to its slumber. "It just takes a new form..." she whispered aloud as she dropped her paws.
But... What does that mean?
Something about her magic felt off to her, but also... So familiar. She had felt this same aura whenever Sable had summoned her magic.
Sable.
This was Sable's magic.
Marvela's heart fluttered back to life.
No. This was Marvela's magic now.
Last night when Sable had disappeared, her magic wasn't taken by Asra. It had been given to Marvela.
Marvela was no longer a familiar.
She was a witch.
The kitten shivered in the dark at the revelation. Her fur stood on end.
That was impossible. Cats couldn't be witches. Only humans could.
The tattered corner of her spellbook caught her eye from underneath the leaves. With a little mewl of victory, she hastily unburied the rest of it, throwing it open and pawing through the pages. That couldn't be right... She couldn't be a witch. She just couldn't. The minor burns that marred her black fur pained her. Yes. Maybe that was the cause of her disobedient and inexplicable swell in magic. Perhaps she was just too distracted.
"Oh!" the kitten breathed, finding a page that listed a recipe for a healing potion. It looked simple enough. Her orange eyes scanned the ingredients. A vessel, clear water, a young blossoming vine, and a... a...
Marvela sighed at her rotten luck and thumped her tail into the leaves behind her. The pages of the book had gotten soggy in the murky storm drain. The hand-written ink had melted from the paper. She couldn't make out the last ingredient amongst the spreading stains.
She searched the dark maze of chambers and pipes around her. "Wonder if I can find any of these ingredients down here..."
The kitten gathered her courage and puffed out her star-spotted chest. She was a familiar at heart. And if there was one thing she knew, it was how to be a familiar. She could find those ingredients before her magic started to fade. She could figure out the missing ingredient and make that potion and heal herself, no mistakes this time. And then...
And then what?
Could she possibly find the way out of this dark maze back up to the surface? Back to the town of horrors called Vigilance?
Marvela swished her tail across the damp leaves at the bottom of the chamber she had fallen into. A single beam of light, its origin so far away, illuminated her as she pondered.
Asra was somewhere up there in Vigilance. There was no telling what that venomous witch and her horrible crow familiar were up to at that very moment...
The kitten gnawed at her patchy coat, a growl in her throat. The doubts plaguing her mind would have to wait. Marvela needed to heal herself. One thing at a time. She rose to her paws, prepared to charge blindly into the dark.
No sooner had she turned her back to her book; there came a shuffling sound behind her. Marvela spun around just in time to witness her spellbook snatched away by a cackling cluster of rats.
"Hey! Stop!" the kitten yowled, giving chase into the dark tunnels. "Give that back, you nasty rats!"
The rats hurled back taunts at the kitten that ran after them. Even with the weight of the tome they carried, they were still faster than her. They also knew the storm drain they called home much better than Marvela did. They knew every turn and obstacle in their path by heart.
As well as all its hidden traps.
Lost in her anger, Marvela was so preoccupied with pursuing the wiggling pink tails in front of her she failed to see the gaping hole in the ground that the rats had craftily avoided.
The kitten fell again, this time into an even darker place. Regaining her senses, Marvela let out a yowl of frustration. She clawed at the sleek sides of the dead-end pipe she had stumbled into, desperate for a foothold, but her efforts were in vain. She let herself slide back down to the bottom of the basin that imprisoned her.
Above her, the rats had doubled back and poked their heads down into the kitten's makeshift prison.
"Oh, darn! Looks like the itty bitty kitty is trapped!"
"Sure hope she doesn't mind being stuck down here forever!"
"What's the matter, tiny kitty? Do more sparkly stuff!"
Ears pressed back, Marvela hissed up at her captors. She could get out of there. Yes, of course. All she had to do was get her magic under control...
A stream of sparks shot forth from her claw-tips like whizzing firecrackers. The rats all guffawed at the spectacle; their beady eyes wide in awe.
"Haha! See, I told you! This little kitten is weird! Never seen anything like it!"
One of the rats she recognized as the big bully rat from before stared down at her. "The Rat King would love to meet you, kitty. See you in a bit!"
There came a heavy dragging sound above her. The rats closed a metal grate over her prison, blocking out the last trace of light from above.
Marvela curled up in a ball in the dark. With her face buried in her paws, she lay listening to the echoing sounds of raucous laughter fade as the rats skittered away, taking her book with them.
Her magic didn't come to her.
But her tears did.